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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Raging Canadian wildfires threaten 'summer of smoke' on both sides of the border; Tens of thousands of dead fish wash up on a Texas beach; PLUS: Montana kids' landmark climate lawsuit gets underway, putting the state on trial for failing to address climate change... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Without climate change, these extreme weather events would not have happened; Spike in ocean heat stuns scientists: Have we breached a climate tipping point?; Oil producers say tech will soon handle climate-wrecking fumes. US envoy Kerry says be skeptical; DOE nuclear docs central to Trump’s indictment; Every stage of plastic production and use is harming human health; Summer intern commutes by plane, because it's cheaper than rent in NYC; Could Mother Nature cut off California’s water guarantee?; How Arizona stands between tribes and their water... PLUS: This all-electric neighborhood may be the future of green living... and much, MUCH more! ...

It's another crazy day in MAGA Land on today's BradCast, as Accountability Season gets a very good start even before the 2022's Election Season fully wraps up. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

Among our stories today from Accountability Season...

• BREAKING at the top of today's program: Stewart Rhodes, founder of the far-right Oath Keepers clan (and former BradCast guest!) is found guilty of seditious conspiracy for his involvement in the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Fellow Oath Keeper Kelly Meggs was found guilty as well. Both now face as much as 20 years in prison on the sedition charges alone. They, and others, were also charged with Obstruction of an Official Proceeding and more. Perhaps our former President who inspired them should begin to be concerned.

• Speaking of the former guy... Earlier this month, Kremlin-linked Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, known as "Putin's Chef", boasted on social media that "we have interfered, are interfering and will interfere" with U.S. elections. "Carefully, precisely, surgically and in our own way, as we know how to do." A week or two later, longtime GOP operative Jesse Benton --- who worked for Ron Paul, Rand Paul, Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump, among others --- was found guilty on six counts related to money laundering some $100,000 for another Russian businessman before the 2016 election. He was charged with helping to funnel money to both the Trump campaign and RNC that year. As it happens, both Benton and seditious conspirator Rhodes both got their start in politics working as aides for Rep. Ron Paul. Benton is now married to Paul's granddaughter. He was charged last year (along with yet another BradCast guest --- who died shortly after being charged) just months after Trump had pardoned Benton for separate charges against him regarding campaign finance violations and bribery during the 2012 election. We 'splain the full sordid story and Russian collusion along with wistful memories of Tibetan monks and nuns and Al Gore from back in the day when Republicans used to pretend to care about unlawful campaign donations from foreign sources.

And from Election Season...

• Welp, the days are getting crazier and crazier in Arizona. On Monday, the deadline for counties there to certify election results before the state certifies all results next Monday, the Board of Supervisors in Cochise County voted against doing so. They claim they will reconsider the matter on Friday. That, despite any evidence of fraud or voting system failure in the Republican-leaning county. Katie Hobbs, the state's Democratic Sec. of State and apparent Governor-elect, quickly went to court yesterday in an attempt to force Cochise to certify their result as, she argues, they are required by law. If they don't, all of the county's voters may be disenfranchised and the results of at least one U.S. House race would flip from Republican to Democratic, along with the statewide contest for Superintendent of Public Instruction. Moreover, any remaining chance for Abe Hamadeh, the GOP candidate running for Attorney General, to overcome his current 510-vote deficit against Democrat Kris Mayes, would almost certainly be gone. As the Arizona Republic's EJ Montini snarks today, if Hobbs was gaming the system to somehow help state Dems this year, as MAGA Republicans baselessly claim, "she really, really stinks at cheating"!

• Meanwhile, Georgia voters are proving to be really, really good at early voting. They shattered all-time records for doing so on Sunday and again on Monday of this week, outpacing both Presidential and other general elections alike in the state's current runoff election between Sen. Raphael Warnock (D) and Herschel Walker (R) for \ U.S. Senate. The big turnout could be a good sign for Democrats, though that's not certain. The long wait times it is causing for many voters around the Peach State, however, is a certain disgrace. (More on all of that, I hope, on tomorrow's show.)

And in other matters...

• A bipartisan "Respect for Marriage" bill has been passed by the lame duck U.S. Senate to protect same-sex marriages following corrupt U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' recent opinion with the overturning of Roe v. Wade arguing that marriage equality should be one of the next rights stolen by the Court from the American people.

• And finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our first Green News Report since returning from Thanksgiving break with a whole lotta important environmental news to catch up on from while we were gone...

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On today's BradCast: The GOP war on democracy and the judicial branch continue today, with a noteworthy lost battle in Wisconsin, an imbecilic turn of events in Maine, and a continuing hung jury in the U.S. Supreme Court. [Audio link to show follows below.]

First today, Austin's police chief finally describes the white evangelical American man who terrorized the city over the past month with a string of deadly package bombs as a "domestic terrorist". Yes, that actually qualifies as news these days.

Then, the nation's dumbest governor, Maine's Paul LePage (R), repeatedly berates a federal court judge as an "imbecile" for allowing a case brought by Maryland and Washington D.C. to move forward. The case charges that Donald Trump's continuing ownership of Trump International Hotel in D.C. is a violation of the U.S. Constitution's Emoluments Clause, barring gifts to the President from foreign or state governments. The "imbecile" judge in question that LePage decided to attack, found merely that plaintiffs have standing to proceed with their case.

In related GOPers-who-hate-the-rule-of-law news, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker finally decided to follow state law today, by scheduling special elections to fill two vacant state legislative seats in Republican districts, which he is terrified could flip to Democrats. After three different state judges each demanded he declare a date for elections by today, Walker and the Republicans in the state legislature appear to have given up their attempted scheme to call a special session of the legislature to change the law in order to undermine the orders of the courts. Their hope had been to leave those seats vacant --- and the voters in their districts unrepresented --- for more than a year. After deciding to do the right thing and follow state law, Walker remained outraged about it today.

Next up, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in another partisan gerrymandering case this week. Last October, speaking of Wisconsin, they heard arguments in Gill v. Whitford, a landmark case where a federal court tossed out all of the state legislative districts after finding them to be unlawfully gerrymandered by state Republicans in violation of the U.S. Constitution. This week, the SCOTUS Justices heard arguments in another redistricting case, Benisek v. Lamone, which focuses on a single U.S. House district in Maryland, held for years by Republicans, before Democrats gerrymandered it in their favor.

We're joined again today by FairVote's DAVID DALEY, who was as the Court for oral arguments in both cases. The author of RATF**KED: The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America's Democracy, explains the differences and similarities in the two SCOTUS cases (along with other recent rulings by both state and federal courts finding Republicans used unlawful partisan gerrymanders in North Carolina, Pennsylvania and elsewhere, in order to assure legislative majorities even when receiving far fewer votes than Democrats.)

Daley also shares his assessment, based on this week's oral arguments, as to whether there will be five Justices willing to finally end the scourge of extreme partisan gerrymanders. If they don't (as a number of others suggest) Daley warns this problem may not be fixed for at least another generation, as the Court's swing-vote, 81-year old Justice Anthony Kennedy, is rumored to be contemplating retirement at the end of the term in June.

"They are searching for a standard to measure [partisan gerrymandering], that this Court can apply, but also that future Courts can apply," Daley tells me. "If the courts do not solve this now, it's not only the last opportunity for the next generation, but the gloves will be off in 2020 in a really aggressive way. No matter what they do, if it is not a finding against partisan gerrymandering, it will essentially take off any guardrails for legislators of either party when this process comes back around" after the next Census.

Then, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report with, as usual, mostly disturbing news --- but also some very good news for a group of natural gas pipeline protesters in Massachusetts, including the daughter of former Vice President Al Gore! (And, for those who may have missed it, here's Angie Coiro's BradCast interview with Gore last December, in which, among many other things worth listening to, he proudly discusses his daughter Karenna's arrest in the protest.)

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On today's BradCast, one last battle over democracy before 2017 comes to a close, and an early look forward to the battles --- and, perhaps, "democracy's revenge" --- that lie ahead in 2018. [Audio link to show follows below.]

In his last minute bid to prevent final certification of the first Democrat to be elected to the U.S. Senate in more than two decades, Alabama's Republican candidate Roy Moore filed an 80-page lawsuit [PDF] late Wednesday night alleging massive "voter fraud" and other somewhat confusing irregularities are to blame for his December 12 Special Election loss to the Democratic candidate Doug Jones.

A state court judge quickly dismissed Moore's complaint on Thursday morning and Jones was certified shortly thereafter as having defeated him by nearly 22,000 votes out of some 1.3 million cast. Jones will fill the seat vacated by Alabama's former Republican Senator turned Donald Trump's U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions shortly after the new year.

We're joined today by long-time BRAD BLOG legal analyst ERNEST A. CANNING who largely dismisses the allegations detailed in Moore's suit. Though, as we discuss, the GOP may have themselves to blame for making it difficult, if not impossible, for federal candidates in Alabama (and elsewhere) to ensure the accuracy of computer-reported vote tallies, even when they are based, as in AL, on hand-marked paper ballots scanned by computer systems but never verified for accuracy by human beings.

Moore's complaint, Canning adds, is also deficient when it comes to presenting any actual hard evidence of fraud by voters. The controversial Republican cites statistical analyses focusing on high turnout in a number of African-American districts said to contrast with Exit Poll data, and the affidavit of one poll worker who claims she saw more out-of-state IDs than usual used by voters even though that's perfectly lawful under the state's strict Photo ID voting restriction. Beyond that, no hard evidence is offered by the complaint to prove that any illegal votes were cast in the election, much less thousands of them.

Then, we discuss two of Canning's recent articles at The BRAD BLOG, both looking forward towards what he describes as the possibility of "democracy's revenge" in 2018. In one, he details why every single Republican U.S. House member from California could be in jeopardy of losing their seat in the "deep blue" state next year. In the other, he lays out what he describes as "Revolutionary Strategies to End GOP Rule in 2018" across the nation.

The CA attorney and 2016 Senior Adviser to Veterans for Bernie also discusses the need for "political maturity" among both progressive and establishment Democrats alike, in order to effectively take on the GOP following the 2016 election of Trump and his compliant Republicans in Congress who, he argues, have since revealed their true nature of legislating only for the benefit of the rich at the expense of the poor and middle class.

Desi Doyen then joins us for our final Green News Report of 2017, rounding up both the good and horrific news over the past year, including, despite Trump's best efforts, a number of very hopeful signs for the environment as we head into 2018. And, finally, we close with one last punch in the face at the intolerable and seemingly endless 2017, from comedian Lewis Black.

Angie Coiro guest-hosts for us on tomorrow's BradCast, and Desi and I will see you again after the New Year holiday! Until then, my thanks to those of you who have answered our call by stopping by BradBlog.com/Donate in support of our efforts to try and continue our work --- over your public airwaves --- as long as possible into the new year!

Peace!

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: 2017 leaves parting gift, dumping record snowfall in Pennsylvania; Southern California's Thomas Fire is now the largest in state history; 2017 to rank among top three hottest years ever recorded; PLUS: The clean energy revolution is unstoppable, no matter what Trump does... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? 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' (see links below): The 10 Most Important U.S. Climate Stories in 2017; How Big Oil lost control of its climate disinformation machine; Climate change is happening faster than predicted; Climate change is creating more refugees, so why don't they count as refugees?; Pentagon strategy document will not include climate change; Pebble Mine kicks of permit process; EPA officials are leaving in droves; Fossil fuel industry makes huge investment in plastics production; How much it will cost the United States to save itself from rising seas over the next 50 years?...PLUS: Megadisasters devastated America this year. They’re going to get worse... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast: We're back at work between the holidays, even as the President only pretends to be. But maybe that's a good thing. For everyone. [Audio link to today's show is posted below.]

(Also, my thanks once again to Angie Coiro of In Deep Radio for filling in for us on Friday! Her must-listen exclusive interview with former Vice President Al Gore is right here!)

Over the weekend before Christmas there were several noteworthy federal court rulings against the Trump Administration. Among them, one blocked a plan by Trump's Housing and Urban Development (HUD) agency to overturn an Obama Administration rule meant to help low-income Americans obtain affordable housing as of January 1, 2018. The judge ruled Trump's HUD overturned Obama's new rule arbitrarily, with no supportable reason for doing so, which is unlawful. Another federal court over the holiday weekend partially lifted parts of Trump's third attempt at banning travelers and refugees from several Muslim-majority countries. The Administration claimed they were doing so for national security purposes. The judge determined that national security was actually threatened by the ban itself.

Then, in related-ish matters, we're joined by the great HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Digby's Hullabaloo to discuss many aspects of the Trump Administration and the GOP's long "War on Truth".

As the President pretended, on Tuesday, to be "back to work" --- before playing another round of golf on his 85th day of staying at one of his own branded properties during his Presidency --- we discuss a number of the ongoing hoaxes played by him and fellow Republicans on the American people, beginning with the absurd, Fox "News"-created "War on Christmas".

"I can't even believe I have to say this," Parton tells me with no small amount of exasperation, but "how far have we come that we are actually at a point that we have to prove that there was no 'War on Christmas'?" Good question, since it seems a non-trivial number of Trump supporters actually believe there was/is such a war. That said, as she further observes, it's become very difficult to know who really believes what anymore and who is playing whom at the end of a remarkably "disorienting" (to say the least) first year of Trump's Presidency.

"If you go over to Fox News, or you look at any of the rightwing media, or talk radio, of course, it's no longer that we're just arguing over stuff," she says, "they're in a completely different dimension than we are. The arguments they are having are not arguments that are taking place in our world. They're not arguing with real people. We're not existing on the same level of reality."

While the "War on Christmas" is a pretend reality, the "War for Truth," on the other hand, is "definitely raging," she argues. Among the many truths and frauds we seek to highlight during our conversation today: we discuss the GOP tax bill and whether voters will be moved by it to vote Republican in 2018 as the GOP seems to think; whether media (and Democrats) will stop falling for the mostly phony "economic concerns" of many Trump voters ("It was not based on economics, it was based on resentment," she argues); whether Democrats should or will take the bait being offered by Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to work across the aisle next year as both he and Trump now claim to want after a year of shutting Dems out of the Congressional process entirely; whether Truth Warrior Al Franken should have resigned from the U.S. Senate amid sexual misconduct claims; and what "Digby" finds herself most surprised by as Trump wraps up his intolerably long first year in office...

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On today's BradCast, I’m happy to sit in for Brad again with a holiday offering and a former Vice President of the United States. [Audio link posted below.]

As the latest blob of crap --- the new tax law --- floats out of Congress and the White House, how about a change of pace: a little hope? Not fairy-tale and pixie-dust hope, but realistic ideas for tackling former VICE PRESIDENT AL GORE tells me is the biggest challenge ever to face the human race: global warming, aka climate change.

The former Veep is also founder and chair of The Climate Reality Project. Eleven years after the original Inconvenient Truth film and book comes his latest, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power. I spent an hour on stage with Gore for my own show, In Deep with Angie Coiro, talking about both the book and its companion documentary.

It seems the right note to strike here on The BradCast as well, when everything is pretty damned bleak. Gore is a walking lesson in how to realistically assess our situation, then push forward with what can be changed. As he says, change can take longer than you expect, then suddenly come faster (and better) than you hoped.

Special thanks to the Kepler's Literary Foundation in Menlo Park, California, who co-produced the original event, and to Brad for his enthusiasm in bringing you highlights of it on The BradCast...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Europe grapples with relentless heat wave, nicknamed 'Lucifer'; Flash drought causing crop failures in the Great Plains; Trump's Department of Agriculture nixes phrase 'climate change'; PLUS: The electric utility industry knew about global warming in 1968, but chose to lie about it and build more coal plants anyway... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? 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' (see links below): Al Gore's carbon footprint doesn't matter (and yours doesn't either); Scientists fear Trump will bury blunt climate report; Interior Dept. rescinds coal valuation rule; WV gov wants new federal coal subsidies; Keystone XL pipeline fate discussed in hearings all week in Nebraska; EPA staff forced to work on fossil fuel industry wish list, former official says; Forestry experts say many forest fires should be allowed to burn; In sweltering South, climate change is now a workplace hazard... PLUS: Pipeline Payday: how pipeline builders win big, whether gas is needed or not... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast, the latest breaking news on how broken optical-scan tabulation computers may have undermined the ability to count tens of thousands of ballots in Michigan --- specifically in or near Detroit --- and much more "recount" 2016 related news, even from Vermont! [Audio link to show is posted below.]

With a reported margin of just over 10,000 votes for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton in MI --- out of some 5 million votes tallied in the state --- the ability to hand-count tens of thousands of votes in Green Party candidate Jill Stein's federal court-ordered [PDF] "recount" may be at risk of "chaos" under state law, thanks to the failure of computerized paper-ballot optical-scanners which may have mistallied ballots in some fashion on Election Day.

Hopefully, hand-counts can reconcile mismatches between poll book signatures and computer printouts from "610 of 1,680" precincts in Wayne County, which includes heavily Democratic-leaning Detroit, where "392 of 662" or 59% of precincts may now be uncountable. That's a major concern, obviously, not just due to the state's razor thin margin, but also, as Stein points out today, since some 75,000 ballots --- until now, completely unexamined by human beings --- were reported by the computers to have no vote at all for President. That's a 70% increase from 2012 in the number of ballots reported to have Presidential undervotes, a number that is more than seven-fold the margin of votes that could flip the state from Trump to Clinton.

All of that as Team Trump ups their efforts in both state and federal court to stop the counting in MI entirely and as Stein pushes back in both court cases, including a move to force the recusal of two state Supreme Court judges named by Trump as potential U.S. Supreme Court nominees.

Also, while a recent change to state law by Republicans in WI has resulted in many of the largest counties simply running paper ballots through the same computer scanners that tallied them (either correctly or incorrectly, who knows?) the first time in that state's "recount", it's not just Republicans who prefer unverified computer tallies over hand-counts. In Vermont, the will of the voters may never been known in two exceedingly close state legislative races, thanks to a 2014 state law supported Democrats, requiring that computers, not people, tally ballots during ongoing "recounts" there. Two incumbent Democratic lawmakers who supported the new law may now be undone by it, as one is set to lose a "recounted" race by just six votes, and the other is facing a tie, depending on whether two questionably marked paper ballots were tallied by the scanner or not. (I wonder how they could figure out if they were?)

All of that may be good news to the Washington Post, however, which published an op-ed yesterday explaining why the authors believe, in contravention of computer scientists and voting systems experts, that "computers are better than humans at counting ballots." Of course, to know that for certain, the authors suggest...um...counting ballots by hand.

Also on today's BradCast: Al Gore meets with Donald Trump to discuss Climate Change and Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report on the weekend's victory for the Standing Rock Sioux tribe against the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota, on Trump reportedly eying Native American lands for energy development and Exxon Mobile's CEO for Sec. of State, and a bit of good renewable energy news out of Texas (of all places)...

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On today's BradCast: Bad hombres! Nasty women! And SUSPENSE! Real coverage of the final Presidential Debate of 2016, some of which is almost guaranteed to piss off just about everybody in one way or another. You're welcome! [Audio link to show posted below.]

For our analysis of the final --- and, by our count, 25th! --- debate of the 2016 cycle, I'm joined once again by award-winning journalist Heather Digby Parton of Salon and the Hullabaloo blog, and by David Dayen, of Fiscal Times and author of Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street's Great Foreclosure Fraud.

As you probably expect, we spend some time focusing on Trump's dishonest claims that the election is being "rigged" and his refusal to promise a peaceful transfer of power. But we also discuss the, at times, disingenuous outrage about it all from the media as well as both Republicans and Democrats, each of whom seem to have developed more than a bit of convenient amnesia about recent elections, about the mechanics of our electoral system, and even very recent assertions about all of the above.

Yes, election fraud and election integrity are topics about which we have some familiarity around here. And, while nuance and complexity and facts may not play well in the corporate media or among angry partisans near the end of an insane election cycle, no small amount of each are called for today. We do our best.

"Digby" and Dayen also bring insight on a number of the other surprisingly substantive issues raised at the debate (as well as important issues that, once again, were not), many of which have been largely overlooked in the wake of Trump's latest embarrassing tantrum(s)...

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On today's BradCast, "this is not normal, this is not politics as usual", Michelle Obama declared. But, at least in Palm Beach County, FL, after last week's hurricane, the top election official says she's ready for whatever storm may be coming. [Audio to the complete show is linked below.]

I'm joined today by Susan Bucher, Palm Beach County, FL Supervisor of Elections, to discuss preparations for late voter registrations following Hurricane Matthew and what she suspects may be record turnout in Early and Election Day voting. She describes yesterday's court order to extend the registration period until October 18th as "a victory for all Floridians," and says that, despite the tight deadlines now before early voting begins on October 24th, her county is ready.

"We're a tough state, we're a tough county --- and we've been working overtime for a month to make sure we're ready for the big push. We opened our doors on the holiday on Monday. We were just slammed with lots of people all day. We opened early, we stayed late. All of our employees have been working overtime. We will get it done before early voting starts," she vows.

"Millennials now outnumber senior citizens and nearly half the voters under 30 are Latino or African-American," Bucher explains. "And, especially after the last debate, we saw a very large push of citizens out there. There are young people registering voters and bringing us stacks [of registrations] that are a foot deep. People are very anxious about this election. We have 880,000 voters and, let me tell you, I have never seen it so supercharged as I see it now. The last Presidential turnout was 70 percent. We're setting up for about 80-85 and maybe more."

Her county was, before she arrived eight years ago, made infamous for its Butterfly Ballot disaster during Florida's 2000 Presidential election debacle, one of the "original sins" leading us directly to the poisonous politics of the 2016 Presidential Election, as I detail once again on today's show. But Bucher says she ready, as we revisit more recent disasters in her county and state, such as Republican Governor Rick Scott's failed attempt to unlawfully purge thousands of legitimate voters from the rolls in 2012; the 6-hour long lines to vote that same year, after Scott cut the number of Early Voting days in half; and the paper ballot computer tabulators which incorrectly reported the results of three races in Palm Beach, declaring losing candidates to be "winners" back in 2010.

(Bucher tells me the software failures in those Sequoia tabulators have now been corrected in her county, but says she has many checks and balances in place, and is ready to go to court to get approval once again for hand-counting, if necessary, as she did in 2010 when she happened to notice the strange results. The state does not allow a hand-count of paper ballots without a court order. "It's unfortunate that it always takes court action with this Governor and this Secretary [of State] but if that's what works, then that's what we need to do," she tells me, going on to describe the recent conference call with the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security regarding concerns of hacks to voting and registration systems in the Sunshine State and elsewhere around the country.)

Meanwhile, in Georgia, as in Florida, voting rights groups filed suit to extend the voter registration deadline there as well, following mandatory evacuations over the final weekend of voter registration.

Also today, hear them roar: Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) excoriates Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf for a lack of accountability, despite the announcement of his resignation after admitting fraudulent practices at the nation's largest bank. Then, Michelle Obama delivers a blistering speech condemning sexual harassment in the wake of Hurricane Trump, as an avalanche of women come forward to detail disturbing allegations against the Republican Presidential nominee. We offer an extended excerpt from her remarks at a New Hampshire rally today.

Finally: Desi Doyen, who also has a thought or two on Michelle's remarks and the allegations against Trump, brings us the latest, very busy, Green News Report...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Al Gore and Hillary Clinton rally Millennial voters to #VoteClimate; Federal appeals court allows construction to resume at Dakota Access pipeline; North Carolina grapples with Hurricane Matthew's toxic aftermath; PLUS: Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin calls for a day of prayer - for oil... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? 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' (see links below): Record Warmth Helps Shrink U.S. Carbon Emissions; Elon Musk hits back at coal baron who called him a 'fraud' over green subsidies; Upward revision of global fossil fuel methane emissions based on isotope database; Efficiency saves developed countries $540 billion a year, IEA reports; New Jersey Transit, a Cautionary Tale of Neglect; Historic Climate Agreement Will Make Air Travel Carbon Neutral By 2020; Why the difference between taxing and trading carbon matters; The biggest climate change story in the world this week is quietly playing out in Rwanda; Solar Power Is About to Hit Texas Generators Where It Hurts Most... PLUS: A Trump presidency is a clean energy nightmare... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast, Al Gore returns to the scene of the 2000 crime in Florida, and so do we, as the fight to vote in the Sunshine State starts all over again. Because of course it does. [Audio link to show posted below.]

Hillary Clinton appears to have opened up a strong lead in national polls following the release of Donald Trump's 2005 'hot mic' tape lewdly boasting about sexually assaulting women. But the Presidential Debate on Sunday may have staunched some of the bleeding for now, as RNC Chair Reince Priebus announces they are standing by their man. Either way, if Trump is to win the White House, he must first take the state of Florida, where his ally, Republican Governor Rick Scott ordered the evacuation of millions last Thursday before Hurricane Matthew tore up the state's east coast.

In the bargain, voter registration drives were canceled on what had been set as the final weekend before the state's deadline to register. Scott --- with a very long and very unfriendly history towards voters --- refused to extend that deadline. Democrats sued [PDF], and a federal judge, who described the state's "irrational" reasons for not extending as "poppycock", has pushed today's deadline to Wednesday, pending a hearing scheduled for tomorrow when he may take further measures.

Election expert Dr. Daniel A. Smith, PhD, President and founder of ElectionSmith, Inc and University of Florida Research Foundation Professor of Political Science joins us to explain why extending the state's "arbitrary deadline" is so important, and to detail some of the empirical numbers and many concerns facing voters and would-be voters in the Sunshine State. For example, in 2012, as he notes, during roughly the same period in which this year's storm sent Floridians scrambling for safety, more than 116,000 new (and disproportionately Democratic-leaning) voters signed up to vote. That, even as many are just now returning home and dealing with flooding and other more pressing concerns in the aftermath of the Matthew.

"We looked at the last five or six days of voter registration prior to that cutoff [in 2012] and the numbers actually jumped out at me. On the last day of voter registration back in 2012 there were at least 64,000 people who registered to vote. On the last day!," he says. President Obama ending up winning Florida that year by just 73,000 votes.

And what of those who did manage to register and get their form into a mailbox mail before evacuating? "Who knows what happened to that mailbox?," Smith observes. Those forms "might not even be processed at all, because it's lost. We don't know. These individuals will have no recourse if they finally get back online and see that they're not registered, if that registration application doesn't get to the Supervisor's office."

We cover quite a bit in the conversation, including Gov. Scott's sorry history of taking extraordinary measures to make both voting and registration more difficult in Florida (remember those ridiculous 6-hour lines for Early Voting in 2012?), the fact that just 117 new voter registration forms have been turned in by the state GOP in the past month, as well as Smith's take on voter fraud and the likelihood of inappropriately purged voting rolls in Florida and other states around the nation. "When we talk about voter fraud in this country, it's really not at the retail level of individuals coming into the polls and falsifying their identity and voting twice or maybe three times. That rarely, if ever happens," he says. "Where we actually do have some concerns is that on the wholesale level, in which it's usually someone in a Supervisor's office, a clerk, or someone is --- it can be malicious, it can be just accidental - cleaning the records in a way that is not permissible under federal law . We certainly had that in 2012, when it was the directive of the [Florida] Sec. of State's office to the Supervisors of Elections. First, some 180,000 individuals who they suspected as being 'non-citizens', and then ultimately 2,625 individuals who they flagged as being potential non-citizens. Most of those were actually citizens."

Finally today, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, on the environmental issues raised (barely) during Sunday's Presidential Debate and a fact-check on the energy-related remarks by the two candidates at the bizarre, town-hall face-off in St. Louis.

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On today's BradCast, it's starting to feel like the 2000 campaign all over again. Last night's "Commander-in-Chief Forum" as well as a comparison of corporate media coverage of "scandals" by both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump both serve to underscore that point. [Audio link to full show posted below.]

First, the back-to-back town halls on national security issues with Clinton and then Trump on NBC on Wednesday night provided another disturbing example of the corporate media seemingly working hard to help level an unlevel playing field between the Democratic and Republican Presidential candidates. Moderator Matt Lauer held Clinton to account with tough questioning while giving a pass to all manner of dishonesty from Trump in response to fairly softball questions. Almost none of it went challenged by Lauer. In the bargain, as I argue on today's program, Trump won the night, which should be another note of great concern to Democrats as the polls continue to tighten in advance of the Presidential debates beginning later this month.

Then, speaking of media-aided false equivalence, Martin Longman, founder of Booman Tribune and Web Editor at Washington Monthly, joins us to discuss the very different ways in which the corporate media has been covering Clinton "scandals" concerning her email server and the Clintons' charitable foundation, versus actual criminal acts committed by Trump and his own foundation regarding illegal pay-offs to state Attorneys General.

Longman details the timeline of the Trump charity's illegal $25,000 payment to the political committee of Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, after she had announced an investigation of his Trump University scam, after she had sought a donation from him, and before she finally decided to drop the case. Once caught, Trump paid a fine to the IRS for the illegal donation. But imagine if the Clinton's had done anything as blatant.

There are "all kinds of double standards" at play here, Longman explains. "Part of it is that the Right does a better job of working the refs." He goes on to cite one way in which Trump seems to avoid accountability in much the same way that the George W. Bush Administration had also managed to game the media.

"Before you can run down the problem with one story, [Trump's] created five more for you to run down," he tells me. "When you look at the variety of factors involved, some of it is bias against the Clintons, some of it is advantages that the right has, and some of it is just unique to Trump. You add it all up, and you've got this situation where you have one clearly --- in my mind --- crazy person who's getting fairly close to the Presidency, and people are treating it as though this is a normal choice between two candidates, and it's just not."

Yes, we've seen this pattern before in the recent past --- the 2000 Bush/Gore campaign comes to mind for good reason --- and it could result in an equally troubling outcome for the nation this November.

Finally, we close with Desi Doyen and our latest Green News Report, and then one last story on a man who really, REALLY, can't stand living with his wife...

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On today's BradCast, oil prices crash, Sanders surges in both Iowa and New Hampshire, the GOP tries to find an alternative to Trump, we're joined by the mathematician who says that the George W. Bush "Presidency" was his fault...sort of --- and we discuss why it all still matters today.

First up, Desi Doyen joins us to discuss the importance of and reasons for the plunging price of oil, which fell below $30/barrel today for the first time since 2003.

Next, new polling out of both Iowa and New Hampshire suggest the potential for very closes races, on both the D and R side of the aisle, this year. Bernie Sanders, who had been trailing Hillary Clinton in IA for months, has now overtaken her there, according to new numbers, and has increased his lead in NH over the woman still described by corporate media as "the Democratic front-runner". On the GOP side of the aisle, Trump retains his lead in NH, while IA tightens and the search for an "establishment" alternative takes a few surprising turns.

Then, speaking of close elections, we're joined by Dr. John Allen Paulos, professor of mathematics at Temple University to discuss the mother of all close elections, and why he believes his November 22, 2000 NYTimes op-ed helped lead directly to the U.S. Supreme Court stopping the ballot count in the Sunshine State, resulting in their (s)election of George W. Bush.

After I recount (pardon the pun), just some of the chicanery and still-unexplained anomalies that resulted in the exceedingly close tallies reported by Florida in 2000, Paulos, author of the New York Times best-seller, Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences and, his latest, A Numerate Life: A Mathematician Explores the Vagaries of Life, His Own and Probably Yours, explains how he still "regrets" his mathematical analysis of the race at the time, which ended up being cited by the courts during the legal battle that eventually stopped the tally of paper ballots in Florida.

(For the record, yes, had Florida counted all of the ballots in the state at the time, as the Times reported on November 12, 2001 --- so you are forgiven, if you didn't notice --- Gore would likely have won the state, "no matter what standard was chosen to judge voter intent.")

"People talk about the 'Butterfly Effect' in dynamical systems [ed note: as opposed to the Butterflly Ballots in Palm Beach County, FL!], where tiny little initial differences lead to huge disparities down the road. This was, in a sense, a case where I was the little butterfly flapping its wings in South America leading, after many intermediate events, to a hurricane in New Orleans."

"In retrospect, obviously, I wish I hadn't done that," Paulos tells me about his op-ed, published 15 years ago last month, adding: "As a moral tiebreaker, Gore won almost half a million more votes nationwide. At the very least, they should have flipped a coin" and "Oh, yeah, they should have counted the ballots. That's what should have happened."

Finally, speaking of the consequences of elections and actually counting votes to determine the intent of voters, we conclude today's show by discussing how the George W. Bush administration allowed North Korea to obtain the atomic bombs that the rogue nation is once again using to threaten the world. Yes, more fallout from the disastrous Bush Administration, still affecting us today because we failed to count the voters' ballots.

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