Climate crisis woven into 2024 DNC; 99% of Americans affected by extreme weather since May; PLUS: 2024 second only to 2023 for billion dollar weather disasters so far...
Guests: Heather Digby Parton of Salon, 'Driftglass' of The Pro Left Podcast; Also: A problem worth noting after FL's Congressional primary elections on Tuesday...
Catastrophic flooding in CT; Climate change dramatically increased record wildfires last year; PLUS: As DNC gets underway, climate groups endorse Harris-Walz...
Ernesto takes down Puerto Rico grid, again; Wealthy beachfront property owners cost taxpayer dollars; U.S. Forest Service tells freeloading bottled water company to beat it...
CO election clerk 'guilty' of vote software breach; NY rules RFK Jr. used 'sham' residence for ballot; Musk, Trump charged with labor complaint after disastrous Twitter chat...
Hurricane Debby releases tons of raw sewage across FL; July 2024 was hottest ever; PLUS: Repubs' Project 2025 aims to delete all govt references to 'climate change'...
THIS WEEK: Rs Get Weird and Weirder ... Ds Try Something New ... RFK's Bear Bones ... and more! In our latest collection of the week's best political toons...
Debby isn't done with the East Coast yet; Hottest oceans in 400 years threaten Great Barrier Reef; PLUS: Dem VP candidate, Gov. Tim Walz, is a proven climate champion...
Felony charges dropped against VA Republican caught trashing voter registrations before last year's election. Did GOP AG, Prosecutor conflicts of interest play role?...
State investigators widening criminal probe of man arrested destroying registration forms, said now looking at violations of law by Nathan Sproul's RNC-hired firm...
Arrest of RNC/Sproul man caught destroying registration forms brings official calls for wider criminal probe from compromised VA AG Cuccinelli and U.S. AG Holder...
'RNC official' charged on 13 counts, for allegely trashing voter registration forms in a dumpster, worked for Romney consultant, 'fired' GOP operative Nathan Sproul...
So much for the RNC's 'zero tolerance' policy, as discredited Republican registration fraud operative still hiring for dozens of GOP 'Get Out The Vote' campaigns...
The other companies of Romney's GOP operative Nathan Sproul, at center of Voter Registration Fraud Scandal, still at it; Congressional Dems seek answers...
The belated and begrudging coverage by Fox' Eric Shawn includes two different video reports featuring an interview with The BRAD BLOG's Brad Friedman...
FL Dept. of Law Enforcement confirms 'enough evidence to warrant full-blown investigation'; Election officials told fraudulent forms 'may become evidence in court'...
Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL) sends blistering letter to Gov. Rick Scott (R) demanding bi-partisan reg fraud probe in FL; Slams 'shocking and hypocritical' silence, lack of action...
After FL & NC GOP fire Romney-tied group, RNC does same; Dead people found reg'd as new voters; RNC paid firm over $3m over 2 months in 5 battleground states...
After fraudulent registration forms from Romney-tied GOP firm found in Palm Beach, Election Supe says state's 'fraud'-obsessed top election official failed to return call...
[Ed Note: Desi will be joining me on the Mike Malloy Show tonight, which I'm guest hosting this week, for a live version of the Green News Report and to take your calls! Details here... -BF]
IN TODAY'S AUDIO REPORT: Saving the planet on less than 50 cents a day!; Energy companies sued for conspiracy; Do not ask for whom the Toll House cookie crumbles... PLUS: Flaming rivers of fire ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!
Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail, delicious E. coli cookies? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.
IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (links below): Navajo homes demolished due to uranium contamination; "Cash for Clunkers" program --- What you need to know; TN Coal ash spill cleanup slow, cause remains unknown ... PLUS: 'Green' cattle? Nature's diet reduces cows' emissions!
Info/links on those stories and all the ones we talked about on today's episode follow below...
I'll be Guest Hosting the The Mike Malloy Show LIVE from L.A.'s KTLK am1150 all this week from 9pm-Midnight ET (6p-9p PT) each night. Hope you'll tune in and call in!
MARCY WINOGRAD, progressive Democratic primary challenger to the embattled U.S. House Rep. Jane Harman (CA-36).
MIMI KENNEDY Advisory Board Chair of Progressive Democrats of America (PDA), Dharma's mom from Dharma & Greg, discussing all-things Progressive, including her new film, In the Loop, a political black comedy about the run-up to war.
PLUS: Today's news, my rants & your calls (877-520-1150)! (Later this week: Sibel Edmonds, Ed Asner, much more!)
Malloy's show is nationally syndicated on a number of air affiliates around the country, also on Sirius Ch. 146 & XM Ch. 167, or listen to the free online stream here or here!
Consider this an Open Show Thread, where, as always, "Agent 99" will be your rascible host throughout. See ya tonight!
* * *
POST-SHOW UPDATE, AUDIO ARCHIVES: After a technical glitch or two getting on the air for the first two minutes out of Los Angeles, all went well enough thereafter. The archives for all three hours (about :36 mins each with commercials removed, courtesy of Ben Burch at WhiteRoseSociety.org) follow below...
It's been nearly five months since the official complaint about Ann Coulter's alleged voter fraud in 2002 and 2004 was filed in Connecticut, yet state election officials continue to refuse comment on the status of the case beyond acknowledging that it's "still pending," as recently confirmed by The BRAD BLOG.
Several charges of absentee voter fraud were alleged in the complaint against Coulter in Connecticut, where evidence shows she cast absentee ballots illegally while living in her then permanent New York City residence.
In addition to the head of the California GOP's voter registration firm pleading guilty to fraud last week (his company, Young Political Majors, is under investigation in several other states as well, and is alleged to have secretly changed thousands of registrations from Democratic to Republican, denying voters the ability to cast votes in last year's primary), and the Republican election official in Kentucky who last month pleaded guilty to participating in a massive election fraud conspiracy beginning in 2002, there still remains the outstanding official investigation into the allegations against Coulter, the GOP's storied Queen of Voter Fraud.
If all you watched was the Fox "News" Channel, however, and their increasingly bizarre --- and yet still evidence-free --- "investigation" into "voter fraud" by ACORN, you'd have no idea. That, even though Coulter herself continues to parade in front of their cameras as a regular guest without ever being asked about the official inquiry in the second state to investigate voting improprieties by the GOP superstar.
"The delay in this case is inexplicable given they need to prove two things: where she registered to vote/voted and where she lived when she registered to vote/voted," the complainant in the case, Daniel Borchers, a Christian conservative who has long opposed Coulter's behavior, told The BRAD BLOG. "Both are easily proven."...
[Ed Note: Winograd will be one of my guests on the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show, which I'll be guest hosting all this week from 6p-9p PT, 9p-Mid. ET, on Monday night. Please tune in! - BF]
On October 20, 2005 Time magazine reported that when confronted with the prospect of an FBI investigation into whether she improperly enlisted the support of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Representative Jane Harman (D-CA) left a voicemail stating that any investigation of her would be "irresponsible, laughable and scurrilous."
Yet, as reported by Jeff Stein of CQ Politics on April 19, 2009, Harman “was overheard on a 2005 National Security Agency wiretap telling a suspected Israeli agent that she would lobby the Justice Department to reduce espionage-related charges against two former [AIPAC] officials. “In return, the Israeli agent pledged to help lobby for Harman to become chairwoman of the House Intelligence Committee,” Stein reported.
According to Tim Rutten in the LA Times on April 22, 2009, however, "Harman denies any inappropriate actions, let alone a quid pro quo, and Tuesday sent an angry letter to Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. demanding that the full transcripts be released." Rutten, who described it as a "faux scandal," points out that Harman neither "intervened on behalf of the lobbyists" nor became chairwoman of the House Intelligence Committee.
Recently, Marcy Winograd, President of Progressive Democrats of Los Angeles (PDLA), whose 2006 campaign was covered by The BRAD BLOG, announced her intentions to challenge Harman again in the 2010 Democratic primary election. In an email response to our query asking about her intention to run again against Harman, against whom she lost in '06, and about some specific issues of interest to our readers, Winograd noted that she has been a champion of election integrity issues, taking on a Republican CA Secretary of State for his direct work with Diebold lobbyists, as well as challenging U.S. Rep Rush Holt (D-NJ) for his 2007 election reform bill because of "its institutionalization of electronic voting systems."
She also said she intends to hold President Obama "accountable, whether it be closing Guantanamo or ending military tribunals or promoting diplomacy over war," even as she notes that she was "alarmed" by the "recent news reports of Harman's quid pro quo with AIPAC," and writes: "I feel it is my responsibility to run [against Harman], to offer constituents a choice, a real choice."
In last week's "New Rules" segment on HBO's Real Time, Bill Maher blasted President Obama for "not getting the job done," adding "this is not what I voted for." He had been critical of Obama's lack of fight for health care reform, and "nibbling" that's leaving insurance companies "still running the show," bailed out banks "laughing at us about how easy it was to get back to 'business as usual,'" and scientists' vital warnings about serious climate change being largely ignored.
We ran that video last week, and found it was linked to by an enormous number of rightwing websites, using the opportunity to suggest that Maher now agreed with them about Obama.
This week (video above-right) Maher clarified the record. He first noted: "Last week in this space, I criticized President Obama for not fighting corporate influence enough, and it made some Liberals very angry. My phone rang off the hook." But he then removed any doubt about whether he was actually "in league" with those on the Right.
"As far as you folks on the Right that think that we're somehow in league --- we're not in league! I was criticizing Obama for not being hard enough on the corporate douche bags you live to defend. I don't wanna be on your team. Pick another kid."
"So I stand by my words," Maher said, before launching into a no-holds barred attack on the Democrats and Obama for their failings, yet again. "There is another side to the story. And that is, that every time Obama tries to take on a Progressive cause, there's a major political party standing in his way --- the Democrats."
"We don't have a Left and a Right party in this country anymore. We have a center-Right party and a crazy party. And over the last thirty-odd years, Democrats have moved to the Right, and the Right has moved into a mental hospital."
He went on to criticize Democrats for becoming the party of "hedge fund managers, credit card companies, banks, defense contractors, big agriculture and the pharmaceutical lobby [who] sit across the aisle from a small group of religious lunatics, flat-earthers, and Civil War re-enacters...who mostly communicate by AM radio and call themselves the Republicans."
The major concluding thesis in his scathing criticism: "Bottom line, Democrats are the new Republicans"
Diane Sweet of RAW STORY observed in her coverage: "If Maher had finished by declaring his candidacy for public office, by the sound of the applause in response to his monologue, he would have left the studio Friday evening with an audience full of supporters."
If you're unable to watch the video (above right), a text-transcript of the key quotes from this week's must-see monologue follow below. As with last week's, we find ourselves hard-pressed to disagree with a word of it...
Following on the heels of this week's guilty plea to voter registration fraud charges by Mark Anthony Jacoby, the man who headed the company which ran the GOP's voter registration efforts in 2008, and last month's guilty plea by Republican election official Paul Bishop for his part in a broad election fraud conspiracy in Clay County, KY (and, oh yeah, we'll have more on the latest voter fraud allegations against Ann Coulter in the next day or two), comes this new disturbing development tonight in that KY case...
Seemingly dead-set on hastening its obsolescence, Washington Post has fired "White House Watch" columnist Dan Froomkin, one of their only unflinching truth-tellers who never stopped telling those truths, even through every dark year of the former oppressive regime when McCarthyesque tactics prevailed, and 99% of the men and women who held jobs like Froomkin's failed the nation by pulling their punches and folding to the cynicism of fear and intimidation.
Says Froomkin in response: "I'm terribly disappointed. I was told that it had been determined that my White House Watch blog wasn't "working" anymore. But from what I could tell, it was still working very well. I also thought White House Watch was a great fit with The Washington Post brand, and what its readers reasonably expect from the Post online."
Ironically, folks like Howard Kurtz and Dana Milbank remain employed by WaPo in the meantime. So do unapologetic wingnut liars and tools such as Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol, George Will and a bevy of others. And in more irony, despite the paper's purge of just about anyone who might have been described as "liberal" or "progressive" (and yes, Froomkin held Obama feet to the same fire he held Bush's), the still-employed wingnuts will continue to label the hard-right charging WaPo as "the liberal media," even as the editors and publishers of the paper run out of money, wonder what happened to them, and blame "the Internet" for their own failures in falling for the bait.
"As I've written elsewhere," Froomkin said in his statement, "I think that the future success of our business depends on journalists enthusiastically pursuing accountability and calling it like they see it. That's what I tried to do every day. Now I guess I'll have to try to do it someplace else."
[Ed note: Correct MP3 version inserted. Tuesday's version of the GNR, rather than today's, had originally been linked to the online player below.]
IN TODAY'S AUDIO REPORT: Energy legislation fight now moves to the Senate; Climate change outlook now worse than before; Libby, MT now a "public health emergency"; Solar soon in the Sahara... PLUS: Rock snot! Yep --- "rock snot" ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!
Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail, Godzilla sightings in your home town? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.
IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (links below): Wired.com looks at "Déjà Poo"; An electrical Eco-switch to rule them all; New energy efficiency techniques tested for jet travel; Reducing DVD packaging helps Warner Bros.' bottom line... PLUS: Should bottled water companies guzzle water while residents are forced to cut back?.... See below for more Green News!
Info/links on those stories and all the ones we talked about on today's episode follow below...
What's perhaps most interesting here is what isn't mentioned in this story, as written on the Los Angeles Times' "L.A. Now" blog. First, here's their entire blog item...
The owner of a voter-registration company pleaded guilty Tuesday to voter-registration fraud, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.
Laguna Beach resident Mark Jacoby, who collects signatures for petition drives, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and was sentenced to three years' probation and 30 days of service with the California Department of Transportation.
Jacoby, owner of Young Political Majors, registered to vote at Los Angeles addresses that were not his own. State law requires petition circulators to be qualified voters. Jacoby will also be required to show proof he is registered at his correct address.
And what they didn't bother to mention in that story?...
Meant to run this clip from Crazy Land (aka Fox "News") over the weekend. You may have seen some portions of O'Reilly's flip-out previously, but the entire thing is worth a look. Feelin' guilty much, Mr. O'Reilly? What a maroon (and that's putting it nicely). Crazy Land gets crazier and crazier by the day...
The BRAD BLOG covers your electoral system fiercely and independently, like no other media outlet in the nation. Please support our work with a donation to help us keep going (Snail mail, more options here). If you like, we'll send you some great, award-winning election integrity documentary films in return! Details right here...
I was on CNN's 'Live' webcast program this morning to discuss the Iran situation, along with two other bloggers, Fausta Wertz of FaustasBlog.com and Ben Parr of Mashable.com, in their "Blogger Bunch" segment (a name that I hate, but maybe that's just me)...
As always, you'll let me know how I did.
(This appearance follows my previous appearance on CNN a month or so ago, discussing 'Plan B'. Just in case you missed it or otherwise just can't get enough of 'Brad on CNN'.)
IN TODAY'S AUDIO REPORT: National security vs. your right to know about highly hazardous waste dumps; A tiny town vs. Big Coal; Digital TV transition vs. disposal of old, toxic TVs ... PLUS: The GOP's "new" energy plan, same as the old plan.... All that and more in today's Green News Report!
Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail, radioactive nuclear waste? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.
IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (links below): How's he doin'? An interview with Energy Secretary (and Nobel Prize Winner) Stephen Chu; Sir Paul promotes "Meat-free Mondays"; High-schoolers solve plastics problems... PLUS: Supreme Court ruling in coal company bias suit ... See below for more Green News!
Info/links on those stories and all the ones we talked about on today's episode follow below...
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About Brad Friedman...
Brad is an independent investigative
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and a Commonweal Institute Fellow.