Desi and I are back for today’s BradCast — (thanks for saving us over the past three day, Nicole Sandler!) — as the House Judiciary Committee’s debate over two Articles of Impeachment against Donald J. Trump continues and with the first ballots for the 2020 elections set to be mailed out in just over two weeks. That, even as many jurisdictions around the nation are still choosing between gambling on faulty new electronic voting systems or moving to safe, verifiable hand-marked paper ballot systems. [Audio link to full show follows below.]
Among the stories covered today…
- Dems continue to make Trump’s reelection easier for him with fresh compromises in Congress, including approval of his new Space Force military branch and expanded paid parental leave for millions of federal workers (as also supported by Trump);
- The (so far) two-day markup of the Democrats’ two Articles of Impeachment against Trump continued into Thursday after opening statements on Wednesday night. We share some notable and pointed clips from Democratic Reps. Steve Cohen (TN), on the President’s attempts to undermine American democracy itself; Pramila Jayapal (WA), who accurately describes Trump as “the smoking gun”; and Veronica Escobar (TX) who offers a great analogy to explain how Trump’s attempt to force Ukraine to help him in the 2020 election would have landed any other public official in jail;
- In an attempt at fairness, we searched for hours (and hours) to find remarks from the Republican minority that were not comprised of blatantly false claims, wholly misleading information and/or out and out lies. We failed. We did find Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO), however, apparently characterizing 2016 Green Party Presidential candidate Jill Stein as a “Democrat” and falsely claiming that she filed “a frivolous lawsuit…claiming voting machines were rigged in three states” in 2016. She did no such thing. Nor did anybody else to our knowledge. But that’s the sort of knowingly fake news Republicans are now using to try and defend their President from impeachment. They are also claiming that “Abuse of Power” and “Obstruction of Congress” are not actually high crimes and misdemeanors (which would likely come as a delightful surprise to Richard Nixon);
- Three years into his Presidency, major newspapers are now finally jumping in to support Trump’s impeachment — now that he is already being impeached. That, after many of those same courageous outlets called for Bill Clinton to resign from office within just days of a sex scandal that resulted in his own impeachment. But we do offer some well-deserved kudos to the American Conservative magazine, for their non-hypocritical support of Trump’s impeachment, find the case to be “Overwhelming”;
- As to what We, The People, can do about all of this, the first ballots of the 2020 Presidential Primaries will be sent out as early as December 28, just two weeks from now, for military and overseas voters participating in New Hampshire‘s February 11 primary. And voters from more than a dozen states which are holding Super Tuesday primaries on March 3rd — including Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont and Virginia — will begin receiving Vote-by-Mail ballots in just over a month, as of January 18. That’s before the Iowa Caucuses on Feb. 3 or the New Hampshire primary on Feb. 11;
- Nonetheless, there are still many jurisdictions around the country fighting to determine exactly which voting systems they will be using at the polls in the 2020 elections. Recent failures of brand-new touchscreen voting systems in Pennsylvania, Georgia and Texas should spook officials and voters alike, even as officials in the battleground state of North Carolina are facing big problems with their plans to use similarly unverifiable systems.
- Meanwhile, in Missouri, the most populous jurisdiction in the state, St. Louis County, was able to move seamlessly from unverifiable touchscreen systems to a brand new, completely verifiable, “Print-on-Demand” hand-marked paper ballot system last month with no complications, and at a saving of some $3 million for tax payers!;
- Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for both good news and bad in our latest Green News Report, as Exxon is exonerated in a big climate fraud case, while 16-year old climate activist Greta Thunberg is named TIME Magazine’s 2019 “Person of the Year”!…
CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!…
[audio:http://BradBlog.com/audio/BradCast_BradFriedman_JudiciaryImpeachmentMarkup_StLouisPrintOnDemand_121219.mp3]
(Snail mail support to “Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028” always welcome too!)
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What a bitterly disappointing and ominous result has just taken place in the UK election.
The right-wing corporatist-racists win BIG.
But from what I have read, it seems the UK uses paper ballots that are hand-counted.
Establishment media sources seemed to be pushing against it back in 2017, with this:
https://www.ft.com/content/57f42c12-31a1-11e7-9555-23ef563ecf9a
Well, what can you expect from The Financial Times?
But it looks like in 2019 the establishment didn’t even have to worry about rigging the election via electronics or other methods, since the British people seem just fine with harsh, corporate-dominated economic policies.
They just chose them, bigtime.
I’m assuming the results are accurate, and this is the will of the majority of Brits.
Fools.
It looks like the never ending (and false) drumbeat of “antisemitism” against Corbyn, along with the usual “Russian Asset” charges (which both the UK and US establishment loves to use nowadays against progressives), apparently had its effect as well.
That’s how Bernie’s campaign will be buried here in the US, I’ll bet.
Plus, there are new complaints against paper ballots (the establishment never gives up), in THIS election, right here:
https://www.bbc.com/news/election-2019-50761707
Absolutely depressing!!!!!!
The 1st article I gave the link for seems to require subscription, unless you go to it from Google. (WTF?)
Doing a Google search on the title gets the link to the May, 2017 article, while somehow, a regular link does not.
To see article, do Google search on title and follow Google’s link:
“Paper-based voting system slows down UK election results”
House to comment above it seems like a pump and dump scheme for UK paper ballots what has happened there though is Scytl has taken over the poll books electronically and many people were refused a vote even though they had registered beforehand properly. Just like healthcare they want to privatize the elections.
Oh! BTW Clinton was impeached for lying I think we got a lot more going for Trump here