{"id":11909,"date":"2016-11-01T17:20:20","date_gmt":"2016-11-02T00:20:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=11909"},"modified":"2016-11-01T17:19:47","modified_gmt":"2016-11-02T00:19:47","slug":"giant-meteor-2016-plus-gop-voter-intimidation-suits-ca-ballot-initiatives-bradcast-1112016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=11909","title":{"rendered":"Giant Meteor 2016! Plus: GOP &#8216;Voter Intimidation&#8217; Suits, CA Ballot Initiatives: &#8216;BradCast&#8217; 11\/1\/2016"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/Images\/BradCast_GiantMeteor2016_110116.jpg\" hspace=\"6\" vspace=\"3\" border=\"0\" align=\"right\">On today&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/BradCast\"><i>BradCast<\/i><\/a>, it looks like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usnews.com\/news\/articles\/2016-07-01\/13-percent-of-people-prefer-a-giant-meteor-crashing-to-earth-over-a-trump-or-clinton-presidency\">&#8220;Giant Meteor&#8221;<\/a> could win after all! With one week to go, the race could be back up in the air, as polls tighten, Democrats sue Republicans in federal court, and we take a look at some key statewide ballot measures in California and elsewhere. [<i>Audio link for show is posted below.<\/i>]<\/p>\n<p>The reverberations from FBI Director James Comey&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/james-comey-is-damaging-our-democracy\/2016\/10\/29\/894d0f5e-9e49-11e6-a0ed-ab0774c1eaa5_story.html?utm_term=.21f51fe10fa2\">unprecedented<\/a> and (so far) <a href=\"http:\/\/www.politicususa.com\/2016\/10\/28\/reopening-clinton-email-investigation-gop-hype.html\">evidence-free<\/a> announcement last week concerning a potential new aspect of the agency&#8217;s investigation of Hillary Clinton&#8217;s emails continues to rock the 2016 Presidential Election, just one week before Election Day. Polling is moving back in <a href=\"http:\/\/time.com\/4552904\/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-abc-washington-post-poll\/\">Donald Trump&#8217;s direction<\/a> and we discuss other concerns that are not reflecting by polling numbers. Oh, and it turns out there <i>is<\/i> &#8220;voter fraud&#8221; at the polls, at least <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/post-nation\/wp\/2016\/10\/29\/trump-supporter-charged-with-voting-twice-in-iowa\/?utm_term=.10cf06749586&#038;wpisrc=nl_most-draw6&#038;wpmm=1\">in Iowa<\/a>, and you&#8217;ll never guess who the alleged perp was <i>caught<\/i> voting twice for! (Sound <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=10687\">familiar<\/a>? Seems to <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=9840\">happen a lot<\/a> this time of year.)<\/p>\n<p>Then, attorney and Vietnam veteran <b>Ernest A. Canning<\/b>, long time <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?author=107\">BRAD BLOG legal analyst<\/a> now back from his Primary advisory role with <a href=\"http:\/\/VetsForBernie.org\">Veterans for Bernie<\/a>, joins us to discuss a number of California ballot initiatives he&#8217;s been writing about here, as well as the several lawsuits <a href=\"http:\/\/electionlawblog.org\/?p=88351\">filed by Democrats<\/a> over the weekend charging &#8220;voter intimidation&#8221; by the Trump campaign and state GOP operations in Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, in violation of both the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871.<\/p>\n<p>All of that follows on a decades-long <a href=\"http:\/\/electionlawblog.org\/?p=88127\">consent decree<\/a> barring the Republican National Committee from certain racially targeted &#8220;poll watching&#8221; and &#8220;ballot security&#8221; activities. That is a restriction they agreed to after getting caught using race-based intimidation tactics at polling places in the early 1980s, when one of the named defendants, Roger Stone &#8212; a long time advisor to Trump and GOP dirty trickster going back to the Nixon era &#8212; actually worked on the &#8220;ballot security&#8221; operation that got the RNC in trouble in the first place back in NJ in 1981.<\/p>\n<p>Then, Canning details a number of state initiatives on the California state ballot next week &#8212; and some well-funded lies about them &#8212; which could have a major effect on prescription drug prices, legalized marijuana (and ending the <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=9244\">disastrous &#8220;War on Drugs&#8221;<\/a>), the death penalty (two different, competing measures), <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=11520\"><i>Citizens United<\/i><\/a> and much more&#8230;even porn is on the CA ballot this year!<\/p>\n<p>Speaking about one of the initiatives, Prop 61, which he <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=11845\">wrote about over the weekend<\/a>, and which the pharmaceutical industry is spending tens of millions to defeat by falsely claiming that it will harm veterans, Canning explains: &#8220;This proposition, more than any other, shows you the problem with money in our political system. They put these [false] ads on &#8212; and naturally, the TV station should say, &#8216;We should fact-check that. That&#8217;s not true.&#8217; But they&#8217;re not going to do that because that would be like biting the hand that feeds them. These ads have become a major source of revenue for our commercial media&#8221; which, he ads, are &#8220;the ultimate beneficiaries of <i>Citizens United<\/i>, which is perhaps one of the reasons why they don&#8217;t ask questions in the debates about repealing <i>Citizens United<\/i>!&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\".\/Images\/Speaker_Icon_24.png\" style=\"width: 24px; float: none; vertical-align: middle;\"><span style=\"font-size: 18px; line-height: 18px;\"> <b><i><a href=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/audio\/BradCast_BradFriedman_GiantMeteor2016_ErnieCanning_GOPIntimidation_CAProps_110116.mp3\">CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!&#8230;<\/a><\/i><\/b><br \/>\n[audio:http:\/\/bradblog.com\/audio\/BradCast_BradFriedman_GiantMeteor2016_ErnieCanning_GOPIntimidation_CAProps_110116.mp3]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><center><b>* * *<\/b><\/center><i>While we post <a href=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/BradCast\"><\/i>The BradCast<i><\/a> here every day, and you can hear it across all of our great affiliate stations and websites, to automagically get new episodes as soon as they&#8217;re available sent right to your computer or personal device, subscribe for free at <a href=\"https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/the-bradcast-w-brad-friedman\/id803467610\">iTunes<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/stitcher.com\/s\/player.php?fid=25838&#038;src=psl\">Stitcher<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/tunein.com\/radio\/The-BradCast-with-Brad-Friedman-p477565\/\">TuneIn<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/podcastgen\/bradcast\/feed.xml\">our native RSS feed<\/a>!<\/i><\/p>\n<p><!--BB-DONATEPITCH-START--><\/p>\n<div style=\"background:#f5f0e0; border:2px solid #6b5a2e; border-radius:6px; padding:10px 14px; text-align:center; font-family:Georgia,serif;\"><span style=\"display:block; margin:0 0 8px 0; color:#3a2e0e; font-size:0.95em; line-height:1.5;\"><strong>The BRAD BLOG<\/strong>, <em>The BradCast<\/em> and <em>Green News Report<\/em> are all 100% independent and 100% listener and reader supported!<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/Donate\" style=\"display:inline-block; background:#6b5a2e; color:#ffffff; padding:6px 18px; border-radius:4px; font-weight:bold; text-decoration:none; font-family:Georgia,serif; font-size:0.9em;\">Please CLICK HERE to help support our work today!<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!--BB-DONATEPITCH-END--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On today&#8217;s BradCast, it looks like &#8220;Giant Meteor&#8221; could win after all! With one week to go, the race could be back up in the air, as polls tighten, Democrats sue Republicans in federal court, and we take a look at some key statewide ballot measures in California and elsewhere. [Audio link for show is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,70,89,675,21,299,382,169,123,479,220,594,106,227,288,226,74,635,477,751,43,15,540,572,48,300,126,295,348,243,517,533],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-11909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-accountability","category-arizona","category-media-appearance","category-bradcast","category-california","category-democrats","category-dept-of-veterans-affairs","category-dirty-tricks","category-dnc","category-donald-trump","category-education","category-election-2016","category-election-fraud","category-fbi","category-health-care","category-hillary-clinton","category-iowa","category-james-comey","category-kpfk","category-marijuana","category-north-carolina","category-ohio","category-oil","category-oklahoma","category-pennsylvania","category-republicans","category-rights-and-freedoms","category-rnc","category-vote-by-mail","category-voter-registration","category-voting-rights-act","category-war-on-drugs","bb-type-bradcast"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11909\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11909"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=11909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}