{"id":14815,"date":"2023-10-17T18:43:24","date_gmt":"2023-10-18T01:43:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=14815"},"modified":"2023-10-17T19:11:28","modified_gmt":"2023-10-18T02:11:28","slug":"one-big-step-forward-three-steps-back-in-weekend-elections-bradcast-10172023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=14815","title":{"rendered":"One Big Step Forward, Three Steps Back in Weekend Elections: &#8216;BradCast&#8217; 10\/17\/2023"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/Images\/BradCast_GazaMomBoy-DonaldTuskPoland-JimJordan_101723.jpg\" hspace=\"6\" vspace=\"3\" border=\"0\" align=\"right\">Global chaos continues today on <a href=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/BradCast\"><i>The BradCast<\/i><\/a>, in Gaza, in elections around the world, in the U.S. House and, of course, for our worsening climate crisis. [<i>Audio link to full show follows this summary.<\/i>]\n<p>Our coverage today includes&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b>ISRAEL V. HAMAS<\/b>: Some encouraging news last night, after an apparent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/news\/world\/live-blog\/israel-hamas-war-live-updates-rcna120545\/rcrd21687?canonicalCard=true\">diplomatic breakthrough<\/a> on opening up the <b>Gaza Strip<\/b> to humanitarian aid seemed possible following days of shuttle diplomacy by U.S. Sec. of State <b>Antony Blinken<\/b> and some nine hours of marathon negotiations with Israel&#8217;s P.M. <b>Benjamin Netanyahu<\/b>. The effort, reportedly at the direction of <b>President Biden<\/b>, resulted in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.c-span.org\/video\/?531174-1\/secretary-blinken-statement-president-bidens-visit-israel\">announcement<\/a> that he would be visiting Tel Aviv on Wednesday &#8212; a first for a U.S. President during war time &#8212; for a meeting with Netanyahu, followed by meetings with the leaders of <b>Jordan<\/b>, <b>Egypt<\/b> and the <b>Palestinian Authority<\/b> in Jordan. The last part of that encouraging news may have <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/world\/middle-east\/jordan-cancels-summit-with-biden-egyptian-leader-amman-2023-10-17\/\">begun to disintegrate<\/a> with the late Tuesday <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/israel-palestinians-gaza-hamas-war-biden-rafah-e062825a375d9eb62e95509cab95b80c\">bombing<\/a> of a hospital in Gaza, said to have killed hundreds of civilians, including women and children. Hamas blames Israel. Israel blames Hamas. The innocent people of Gaza pay the price.<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<ul>\n<li><b>DEMOCRACY V. AUTOCRACY<\/b>: There were elections both in the U.S. and several nations around the world over the weekend. In three of the four cases &#8212; <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/louisiana-governor-race-election-2023-ed79c5a80af6e59593985c9be4ce5dc8\"><b>Louisiana<\/b><\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/ecuador-presidential-election-cartels-noboa-luisa-65a9d0e3b3e525fac39e02a7d2e0b89c\"><b>Ecuador<\/b><\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2023\/oct\/14\/new-zealand-election-2023-results-national-party-labour-\"><b>New Zealand<\/b><\/a> &#8212; the news was not good for small &#8220;d&#8221; democrats (or capital &#8220;D&#8221; democrats in Louisiana), as voters chose rightwingers to displace progressives (or conservative Democrats in Louisiana). But don&#8217;t forget about <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/poland-election-tusk-opposition-29eb9108f6e9c242e9bb3a2f803b5a63\"><b>Poland<\/b><\/a>! There the news was <i>far<\/i> better in a nation which has had a front-row seat to the existential battle against fascism, as it borders both democratic Ukraine and Vladimir Putin&#8217;s authoritarian Russia. Polish voters, in record numbers, voted out the ruling far-right party in favor of opposition centrist and progressive parties led by former EU President <b>Donald Tusk<\/b>. Good news indeed in perhaps the weekend&#8217;s most important election.<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<ul>\n<li><b>U.S. HOUSE CHAOS<\/b>: After winning his party&#8217;s nomination to become House Speaker last week, election denialist and far-right Ohio Republican <b>Jim Jordan<\/b> was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/politics\/congress\/jim-jordan-suffers-defeat-first-ballot-speaker-race-leaving-fate-uncer-rcna120798\">unable to win<\/a> the 217 vote majority from his own caucus in the <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/jim-jordan-house-speaker-mccarthy-trump-f2b2bf9dc834742bde93d5fc918d9940\">first round of voting<\/a> on the House floor on Tuesday after GOP hard-liners deposed former Speaker <b>Kevin McCarthy<\/b> two weeks ago, and then refused to support the winner of the private caucus election that nominated <b>Steve Scalise<\/b> last week. Republicans no longer recognize elections as valid, unless they win them. As TPM&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/talkingpointsmemo.com\/edblog\/the-deeper-meaning-of-scalises-one-day-speakership-no-really\">Josh Marshall recently wrote<\/a>, regarding the election denialism  Republicans invented to try and steal elections from Democrats in 2020, &#8220;It&#8217;s like the virus had escaped the lab. It wasn&#8217;t just Freedom Caucus weirdos anymore. It&#8217;s now treated as a given that caucus elections are purely advisory or essentially meaningless.&#8221; Or, as TAP&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/prospect.org\/blogs-and-newsletters\/tap\/2023-10-12-everyone-will-be-speaker-for-15-minutes\/\">David Dayen quipped<\/a> last week, while asserting that the internecine House GOP chaos &#8220;could really go on indefinitely&#8221; and that the lack of a House Speaker actually matters to millions of Americans (including you this Thanksgiving), &#8220;In the Future, Everyone Will Be Speaker for 15 Minutes.&#8221;<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<ul>\n<li><b>CLIMATE REALITY AND LIES<\/b>: Desi Doyen joins us for <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=14814\">our latest <i>Green News Report<\/i><\/a>, as the <b>Mississippi River<\/b> hits records lows amid drought, along with rivers in the <b>Brazilian Amazon Basin<\/b>; <b>Exxon Mobil<\/b> makes a huge investment to expand its deadly fossil fuel production, even as climate change ravages bees, beer, coffee and chocolate; and years-long GOP lies about <b>China<\/b> taking no action on climate change are exposed as lies yet again&#8230;<\/ul>\n<\/li>\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-IsraelHamas-ElectionsLouisiana-Ecuador-NZ-Poland-HouseSpeakerChaos_101723.mp3\">CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!&#8230;<\/a><\/i><\/b><\/span><\/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=\"https:\/\/www.pandora.com\/podcast\/the-bradcast-w-brad-friedman\/PC:1000025838\">Pandora<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/tunein.com\/radio\/The-BradCast-with-Brad-Friedman-p477565\/\">TuneIn<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.google.com\/feed\/aHR0cHM6Ly9icmFkYmxvZy5jb20vcG9kY2FzdGdlbi9icmFkY2FzdC9mZWVkLnhtbA\">Google<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/The-BradCast-w-Brad-Friedman\/dp\/B08JJRN86R\/ref=sr_1_1\">Amazon<\/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>Global chaos continues today on The BradCast, in Gaza, in elections around the world, in the U.S. House and, of course, for our worsening climate crisis. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.] Our coverage today includes&#8230; ISRAEL V. HAMAS: Some encouraging news last night, after an apparent diplomatic breakthrough on opening up the [&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":[1307,89,675,1249,598,543,299,526,1845,753,548,701,883,14,1266,428,1425,320,477,199,1314,1168,1921,1730,300,126,198],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-14815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-benjamin-netanyahu","category-media-appearance","category-bradcast","category-brazil","category-china","category-climate-change","category-democrats","category-ecuador","category-election-2023","category-electric-vehicles","category-extreme-weather","category-exxon-mobil","category-fascism","category-fox-news","category-hakeem-jeffries","category-israel","category-jim-jordan","category-joe-biden","category-kpfk","category-louisiana","category-new-zealand","category-palestine","category-pete-aguilar","category-poland","category-republicans","category-rights-and-freedoms","category-us-house","bb-type-bradcast"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14815","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=14815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14815\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14815"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=14815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}