{"id":8442,"date":"2011-04-04T14:11:27","date_gmt":"2011-04-04T21:11:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bradblog.com\/?p=8442"},"modified":"2014-07-01T17:29:37","modified_gmt":"2014-07-02T00:29:37","slug":"on-my-radar-today-wi-election-new-fl-election-laws-gop-medicare-cuts-transocean-apology-wikileaks-nytimes-maine-gopers-spooked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=8442","title":{"rendered":"On My Radar Today: WI &#038; FL Elections, Fukushima, GOP Medicare Cuts, Transocean &#8216;apology&#8217;, WikiLeaks &#038; NYTimes, Maine GOPers Spooked&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>While prepping for tonight&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/MikeMalloy.com\"><i>Mike Malloy Show<\/i><\/a> (which I will be busy guest hosting all week), here are just a few of the items which caught my eye so far today&#8230;in no particular order&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/s\/ap\/20110403\/ap_on_re_us\/us_wisconsin_supreme_court_election\">Record amounts of cash being spent<\/a> by labor unions and the (supposedly grass-roots) &#8220;Tea Party&#8221; on <b>tomorrow&#8217;s Supreme Court election in Wisconsin<\/b>, as the race between the unabashedly pro-Walker Justice David Prosser and Asst. Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg has turned into a proxy battle between the two clashing ideologies right now in WI. A defeat of Prosser would tilt the court&#8217;s 4-3 majority from Right-leaning to not Right-leaning. The race is also seen as a bellwether for <a href=\"http:\/\/tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com\/2011\/04\/wis-dems-could-have-enough-recall-signatures-against-another-goper.php\">upcoming recall elections<\/a> of GOP state Senators likely to occur there in the near future, as <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=8439\">Ernie Canning reported on earlier today at The BRAD BLOG<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Nuclear triage. Workers at the <b>Fukushima Daiichi<\/b> nuclear plant in Japan <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/world-asia-pacific-12954664\">are dumping 11.5 tons of &#8220;low-level&#8221; radioactive water into the ocean<\/a> to make room in filled storage containers for the more radioactive water leaking from reactor Unit 2. They say they have &#8220;no choice,&#8221; but to dump that water (with radiation levels 100 times over the legal limit) as they must continue injecting new water to cool the plant&#8217;s four crippled reactors, even as the radiated water floods out. Over the weekend, workers were unsuccessful in their attempt to use polymer, sawdust and newspaper (BP &#8220;JunkShot&#8221; anyone?!) to plug an 8 inch crack in a flooded tunnel at Unit 2 said to be gushing highly radioactive water, at 100,000 times legal levels, into the ocean.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Transocean<\/b>, the owner of the BP oil rig which blew up last year in the Gulf killing 11 workers (9 of them from Transocean) <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2011\/US\/04\/04\/gulf.spill.bonuses\/index.html\">has apologized for referring to 2010&#8217;s safety record as the company&#8217;s &#8220;best year ever&#8221;<\/a>. They have not, however, apologized for issuing enormous bonuses to their executives in the bargain.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>A sweeping <b>new election law in Florida<\/b> is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.miamiherald.com\/2011\/04\/01\/2145478\/sweeping-elections-law-overhaul.html\">working its way through the GOP-controlled state legislature<\/a> along predictably partisan lines, just in time for the 2012 Presidential election there. Some of the proposed changes will make it much more difficult for non-partisan voter registration groups, such as the League of Women Voters, to do their work, and will likely lead to a huge increase in &#8220;provisional&#8221; (and, therefore, frequently uncounted) ballots. Leon County&#8217;s highly-respected Supervisor of Elections <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wctv.tv\/news\/headlines\/Supervisor_of_Elections_Elections_Bill_is_a_Travesty_119096164.html?ref=164\">Ion Sancho has called the bill &#8220;a travesty&#8221;<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Former U.S. State Department spokesman <b>P.J. Crowley<\/b> &#8212; recently forced to step down for referring to the treatment of alleged WikiLeaks leaker Bradley Manning as &#8220;stupid&#8221; &#8212; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rawstory.com\/rs\/2011\/04\/04\/ex-state-department-spokesman-compares-wikileaks-to-new-york-times\/\">compares WikiLeaks to the <i>New York Times<\/i><\/a>. The paper&#8217;s Editor-in-Chief, who has been bashing Julian Assange and WikiLeaks themselves of late, even though the &#8220;paper of record&#8221; has written hundreds of stories based on WikiLeaks documents, will not be happy. Good. (<em>Coverage at RAW STORY courtesy of BRAD BLOG alum David Edwards.<\/em>)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>After relentlessly bashing Democrats for <b>cuts to Medicare<\/b> vis a vis the 2010 health insurance reform bill, Republican Congressman <a href=\"http:\/\/tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com\/2011\/04\/paul-ryans-radical-plan-to-overhaul-medicare-medicaid.php?ref=dcblt\">Paul Ryan plans to largely do away with the program entirely<\/a> as part of the GOP&#8217;s proposed budget plans to be revealed shortly. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Even <b><i>Republican<\/i> state Senators in Maine<\/b> are beginning to become uncomfortable with the radical statements and extremist behavior of the state&#8217;s new GOP Governor Paul LePage and are asking him to <a href=\"http:\/\/tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com\/2011\/04\/maine-senators-to-paul-lepage-tone-it-down.php\">&#8220;tone it down&#8221;<\/a>.  Beginning to see the writing on the wall, boys?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So what&#8217;s on <i>your<\/i> radar?<\/p>\n<p>In addition to some of the above possibly coming up for discussion tonight, we will <i>definitely<\/i> be discussing the U.S. Chamber Plot (which was to have <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=8354\">targeted, among others, myself and my family<\/a>) with my guest <b>U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA<\/b>) who is <a href=\"http:\/\/hankjohnson.house.gov\/2011\/03\/rep-johnson-seeks-intelligence-firms-contracts-in-chamberleaks-scandal.shtml\"><i>trying<\/i> to see some accountability<\/a> in that horrific affair after House Republicans refused <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=8376\">his request for investigative hearings<\/a> into the matter.<\/p>\n<p>Please tune in at 6p PT (9p ET) tonight &#8212; and all week! We&#8217;ll have live listening links and a lively chat room right here at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.BradBlog.com\">The BRAD BLOG<\/a> during those hours as usual!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While prepping for tonight&#8217;s Mike Malloy Show (which I will be busy guest hosting all week), here are just a few of the items which caught my eye so far today&#8230;in no particular order&#8230; Record amounts of cash being spent by labor unions and the (supposedly grass-roots) &#8220;Tea Party&#8221; on tomorrow&#8217;s Supreme Court election in [&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":[192,450,26,89,466,400,106,200,16,476,288,473,350,111,148,677,300,460,143],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-8442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-accountability","category-bp-oil-disaster","category-brad-blog","category-media-appearance","category-election-2011","category-election-2012","category-election-fraud","category-environment","category-florida","category-hank-johnson","category-health-care","category-japan","category-maine","category-new-york","category-new-york-times","category-paul-lepage","category-republicans","category-wikileaks","category-wisconsin"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8442","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=8442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8442\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8442"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=8442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}