Before Thursday’s late bombshell news that Trump’s National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster is being replaced by hard-right Fox “News” neo-con wingnut John Bolton, we covered a number of stories on today’s — at times maddening, sad, frightening (and occasionally humorous and encouraging) — BradCast.
Among them…
- The Dow plunges more than 700 points after Trump announces his trade war with China;
- John Dowd, Trump’s lead defense attorney responding to the Special Counsel probe, has had enough, quits, as hard-right Fox ‘News’ conspiracist/attorney Joe diGenova joins the team;
- U.S. House approves massive last-minute $1.3 trillion spending bill to keep the government open before Friday’s midnight deadline for a government shutdown, and so they can get out of town before student protesters show up on Saturday for the “March for Our Lives” gun safety rally;
- Included in the massive, last-minute omnibus spending bill is hundreds of millions of dollars for cybersecurity “upgrades” to our nation’s election systems. That funding comes on the heels of ill-considered new recommendations [PDF] from the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, meant to protect U.S. elections by increasing, rather than decreasing, the amount of cyber hardware and software used in elections, and instead of increasing the ability for public oversight of elections. (I have just a few words to say about all of that,as you might imagine, if you can hear them over the sound of my brain exploding. You might hear me mentioning hand-counted, hand-marked paper ballots once or twice, since election officials and members of Congress still seem to have trouble hearing that phrase, despite what happened in 2016, and after some 15+ years of folks like me trying to warn them about the very vulnerabilities they think they are now trying to correct. P.S. Russia isn’t the only serious and ongoing threat to U.S. elections…by a long shot. But my brain is exploding now again. So just listen to the show.);
- Wisconsin’s Gov. Scott Walker is ordered by a judge (who he appointed) to immediately call special elections for two vacant state legislative seats. He’s avoided doing that ever since a recent long-held Republican seat in the state Senate was lost to a Democrat in a January special election amid anti-Trump fervor;
- Trump-loving Republican U.S. House candidate Rick Saccone finally concedes last week’s special U.S. House election in Pennsylvania’s very Republican 18th Congressional district to Democrat Connor Lamb, who appears to have defeated Saccone by about 750 votes out of more than 225,000 cast;
- Republicans in the PA House of Representatives file articles of impeachment against four Democratic state Supreme Court Justices who mandated a new U.S. House district map before the 2018 mid-term elections, after finding the one drawn by Republicans in 2011 was an unlawful partisan gerrymander resulting in a 13 to 5 advantage in PA’s U.S. House delegation over the last three elections (in an otherwise 50/50, slightly Dem-leaning swingstate);
Finally, just after the breaking news of McMaster out and Bolton in arrives…Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report, with some good news for the EPA, some disturbing news about bottled water, and some heartbreaking news for mankind…
CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!…
[audio:http://bradblog.com/audio/BradCast_BradFriedman_JohnDowdOut_OmnibusBill_USElectionCyberMadness_PASupremeImpeachment_032218.mp3]
(Snail mail support to “Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028” always welcome too!)
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After a certain point, I start to assume that these gov’t officials aren’t really that naive.
IMO, they must KNOW what they are doing will be ineffectual.
IMO, The Establishment knows damn well the system can be gamed, and they want to give the Public the appearance they are doing something, while making damn sure the system stays vulnerable to gaming.
Why?
So somebody on the inside can GAME IT.
That’s why.
Only an educated public can stop this BS and get REAL reforms done in our voting systems.
But flaws will remain persistent as long as insiders get what they want—-The ability to rig elections.
I say: Look for the “shift”!!
What Brad has been chronicling all these years is decline of the republic (A Decline Of The American Republic – 5).
We all have to do that.
The Northern White Rhino extinction story simply made me cry. With that, life has moved from despair to dread. I don’t believe in hell as I am an Atheist — but if anything could be seen as humanity deserving to be sent there, this could qualify.
The heroic efforts by some to save the remaining Rhino subspecies’ population is a segment in the quilt of the delicate, diaphanous tissue standing between man and whatever punishment that any proverbial Eternal may moved to dish out.