{"id":12486,"date":"2018-02-23T18:03:43","date_gmt":"2018-02-24T02:03:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=12486"},"modified":"2018-02-23T18:02:52","modified_gmt":"2018-02-24T02:02:52","slug":"washington-isnt-broken-the-republicans-are-bradcast-2232018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=12486","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Washington&#8217; Isn&#8217;t Broken. The Republicans Are.: &#8216;BradCast&#8217; 2\/23\/2018"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/Images\/BradCast_StonemanDouglasCandleLightVigil_022318.jpg\" hspace=\"6\" vspace=\"3\" border=\"0\" align=\"right\">We catch up with <i>a lot<\/i> of news today, at the end of another ridiculously busy week, on today&#8217;s very busy <a href=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/BradCast\"><i>BradCast<\/i><\/a>! But, hey, we start with a laugh and end with a song. So, it can&#8217;t be all <i>that<\/i> bad, right? [<i>Audio link to show follows below.<\/i>]\n<p>Among the many stories covered on today&#8217;s program&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Donald Trump&#8217;s horrendous idea for <a href=\"https:\/\/talkingpointsmemo.com\/livewire\/trump-rant-arming-teachers\">arming<\/a> school teachers and workers appears to have come <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=-lDb0Dn8OXE&#038;t=52s\">straight from Archie Bunker<\/a>, and it won&#8217;t work out well, especially for <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/breenewsome\/status\/966523139504164864\">black<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/mochamomma\/status\/966457768902385664\">teachers<\/a>;<\/li>\n<li>After the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nrapvf.org\/articles\/20140918\/nra-endorses-rick-scott-for-governor-in-florida\">NRA&#8217;s A+ rated<\/a>, Florida Gov. Rick Scott joins the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nrapvf.org\/articles\/20160707\/nra-endorses-marco-rubio-for-us-senate\">NRA&#8217;s A+ rated<\/a> Florida Sen. Marco Rubio in blowing away Second Amendment straw-man arguments, he proposes a <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/0dc245e2a8d54dd98cd3df9a0887afee\/After-school-shooting,-Florida-leaders-propose-new-gun-laws\">package<\/a> of tepid gun reforms for the state in the wake of the Parkland, FL massacre, including barring those under 21 from buying a semi-automatic rifle;<\/li>\n<li>A <a href=\"http:\/\/thehill.com\/homenews\/senate\/375142-gop-lawmaker-calls-for-age-restriction-on-ar-15s?amp&#038;__twitter_impression=true\">handful<\/a> of D.C. GOPers also consider raising the federal age for gun purchases (though don&#8217;t hold your breath, the NRA is <a href=\"http:\/\/thehill.com\/regulation\/administration\/374981-nra-opposes-new-age-limits-on-gun-purchases\">against it<\/a>.);<\/li>\n<li>The problem isn&#8217;t &#8216;Washington&#8217; or &#8216;Congress&#8217;, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/amphtml\/opinions\/dont-blame-washington-blame-the-gop\/2018\/02\/19\/f374bf28-15ba-11e8-92c9-376b4fe57ff7_story.html?__twitter_impression=true\">it&#8217;s Republicans<\/a>, and it&#8217;s time to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/amphtml\/blogs\/plum-line\/wp\/2018\/02\/22\/angry-about-trump-and-gun-violence-do-this-now-democrats\/?__twitter_impression=true\">remove them<\/a> from office at the federal, state and local level;<\/li>\n<li>After new charges against him and former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort were <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/c7a095da0aea4df9af0c0593e6a4aed1\/New-charges-brought-against-ex-Trump-campaign-associates\">filed on Thursday<\/a>, Manafort&#8217;s partner and former Trump aide Rick Gates <a href=\"https:\/\/m.nytimes.com\/2018\/02\/23\/us\/politics\/rick-gates-guilty-plea-mueller-investigation.html\">copped a guilty plea<\/a> on Friday and agreed to cooperate with Robert Mueller&#8217;s Special Counsel probe. Mueller filed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2018\/02\/23\/politics\/manafort-mueller\/index.html\">even more new charges<\/a> against Manafort on Friday;<\/li>\n<li>Trump may be <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2018\/02\/22\/politics\/hr-mcmaster-future-trump-white-house\/index.html\">about to fire<\/a> his second National Security Advisor, Gen. H.R. McMaster;<\/li>\n<li>Did <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/fact-checker\/wp\/2018\/02\/13\/whats-the-immigration-status-of-melania-trumps-parents\/?utm_term=.4eb2a7da77fa\">Melania Trump&#8217;s parents<\/a> receive permanent U.S. residency, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/politics\/melania-trumps-parents-are-legal-permanent-residents-raising-questions-about-whether-they-relied-on-chain-migration\/2018\/02\/21\/3b573df8-1687-11e8-8b08-027a6ccb38eb_story.html?utm_term=.e8348383ec50&#038;tid=a_mcntx\">soon citizenship<\/a>, thanks to the &#8220;chain migration&#8221; (family reunification) program that Donald Trump and the GOP are hoping to kill in exchange for protection of DACA kids?;<\/li>\n<li>Fox &#8220;News&#8221; reports that Defense Sec. James Mattis has quietly decided to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/world\/national-security\/mattis-expected-to-back-allowing-transgender-troops-to-stay-in-the-military\/2018\/02\/22\/6a584d9e-17dc-11e8-b681-2d4d462a1921_story.html?utm_term=.24c0a97365fd\">allow transgender troops<\/a> to serve in the military, despite Trump&#8217;s declaration last year that they would be barred from serving &#8220;in any capacity&#8221;;<\/li>\n<li>New effort <a href=\"http:\/\/politi.co\/2ohXW9A\">launched<\/a> by Democrats and gun reform advocates to register high school students to vote in advance of the 2018 mid-terms;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And, finally, some closing thoughts on the heroically shining students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and their performance of the song they wrote just days after a former student, armed with a legally purchased semi-automatic weapon, killed 17 of their fellow students and teachers and wounded more than a dozen others&#8230;<\/p>\n[<i>Note: Angie Coiro is in for us on the next <i>BradCast<\/i> as we take a day off for Desi&#8217;s birthday! If you&#8217;d like to give her a much-deserved birthday gift, please do so in any amount, at <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/Donate\">BradBlog.com\/Donate<\/a>! And thank you!<\/i>]\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_GunReform_Immigration_VoteOutBrokenGOP_StonemanDouglasStudentsShine_022318.mp3\">CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!&#8230;<\/a><\/i><\/b><br \/>\n[audio:http:\/\/bradblog.com\/audio\/BradCast_BradFriedman_GunReform_Immigration_VoteOutBrokenGOP_StonemanDouglasStudentsShine_022318.mp3]<\/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>We catch up with a lot of news today, at the end of another ridiculously busy week, on today&#8217;s very busy BradCast! But, hey, we start with a laugh and end with a song. So, it can&#8217;t be all that bad, right? [Audio link to show follows below.] Among the many stories covered on today&#8217;s [&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,"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,89,675,1036,299,272,479,930,16,942,261,916,477,332,597,1098,551,817,1035,771,300,1065,546,126,977,534,205,1063,127,198,233,243],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-12486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-accountability","category-media-appearance","category-bradcast","category-daca","category-democrats","category-dept-of-defense","category-donald-trump","category-election-2018","category-florida","category-hr-mcmaster","category-immigration","category-james-mattis","category-kpfk","category-lgbt","category-marco-rubio","category-melania-trump","category-nra","category-pat-roberts","category-paul-manafort","category-race","category-republicans","category-rick-gates","category-rick-scott","category-rights-and-freedoms","category-robert-mueller","category-russia","category-stephen-colbert","category-tom-steyer","category-the-constitution","category-us-house","category-us-senate","category-voter-registration"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12486","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=12486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12486\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12486"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=12486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}