TWITTER: @GreenNewsReport
FACEBOOK: Green News Report
VIA SMART PHONE: Stitcher Radio!

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: With Hurricane Sandy recovery underway, Bloomberg endorses Obama, Romney is heckled, and the impacts of climate change finally begin to dawn on corporate media and public officials; PLUS: Planning ahead for a climate changed future ... 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): CIA's Climate Change Security Report Delayed Due To Hurricane Sandy; Winter Storm May Hit In Early November, Possibly On Election Day; Energy company CEO: Why do we have to talk about climate change today?; Australia Rejects Calls From The Fossil Fuel Industry To Roll Back 20 Percent Renewable Energy Target; Exxon And Shell Earn $54 Billion So Far In 2012, After Taking $800 Million In Annual Tax Breaks; KFC UK will no longer source from Asia Pulp & Paper ... PLUS: The Onion: Nation Suddenly Realizes This Just Going To Be A Thing That Happens From Now On ... and much, MUCH more! ...

[This article was cross-published by Salon.]

With just 5 days to go until the nation holds its next Presidential Election, power remains out in large swaths of the Eastern Seaboard, according to Google Maps' special Hurricane Sandy power outage map.

The outages persist in a number of states which force the majority of their voters to use 100% unverifiable electronic voting machines to cast their votes at the polls on Election Day. If power is out at the polling place on Election Day in those states, voters may not be able to cast their vote at all.

As we warned before Sandy barreled ashore earlier this week, the ability of voters to vote at all --- presuming polling places are not flooded and voters are able to get to them --- is imperiled by states such as Virginia, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, North Carolina and even Ohio, all of which force all, or some of their voters to vote on systems which simply do not work if they do not have power.

While most of those states require a small percentage of emergency paper ballots be made available at the precincts, that number is unlikely to be enough in the event that voting machines are unavailable all day at the polls on November 6th. Moreover, battery backups on the electronic touch-screen systems are unreliable at best and, even when working, can only be counted on for a small number of hours.

In Pennsylvania, for example, as noted yesterday by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "In case of power loss, local election officials are encouraged to keep enough paper ballots on hand for 20 and 25 percent of their registered voters."

While the PA Dept. of State claimed in the same report that voting machines can run on backup batteries "about six hours," a Lehigh County, PA election official offers a more realistic assessment, noting their touch-screen system backup batteries last just 2 and a half hours at best.

The BRAD BLOG has long warned that power loss on Election Day is just another, among a myriad of reasons why forcing voters to use such systems is insane and extraordinarily disrespectful to the electorate in such jurisdictions. Other reasons why these type of voting systems should never be used: They are 100% unverifiable in every case (whether they include a so-called "Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail" or not, as some do) and computer scientists and security experts have long warned, in virtually every instance where these type of systems have been examined over the past decade, that they are both prone to failure and easily manipulated, by both election insiders and hackers alike, in ways that are unlikely to ever be detected.

At The Nation today, Ari Berman notes that "Thanks to a wave of new voting restrictions passed by Republicans, the 2012 election was already shaping up to be pretty chaotic before the arrival of Hurricane Sandy, which left 8.2 million households without power in 15 states and the District of Columbia."

He then goes on to detail some of the worst hotspots for concern...

First his campaign had VP running mate Paul Ryan pretend to work at a soup kitchen for a photo op. Then they sent out faked, Photoshopped campaign rally photos.

All of that doesn't even speak to Mitt Romney's unprecedented campaign of blatant lies.

Now, as if their mendacity to date wasn't nearly enough, as first reported by McKay Coppins at BuzzFeed, they exploit a tragedy by pretending to be collecting food --- food that they had already purchased and then gave to attendees at their rally to pretend as if they were donating --- for the victims of Superstorm Sandy. I don't think I've ever seen anything like this campaign...

As the New Jersey Shore's "surreality" show continues to unfold on TV, one cannot help but note all the ads on CNN and Fox News from those that likely helped make such epic storms possible, or --- at the very least - helped to make them worse. Commercials from the oil and coal industry pepper the coverage like so many reminders of what is NOT being discussed by the mainstream news media; the role our dependence on fossil fuels is playing in this unfolding mega disaster.

The numbers are staggering enough: some 60 million Americans directly impacted by Superstorm Sandy, at least 74 Americans dead, and, at last count up to 10 million people who lost power. When the electricity comes back on and the damage toll is tallied, the bill is likely to reach $20 billion or higher. And that does not include all the travel upheaval or the hit to the economy in general.

It seems the summer that brought us the worst drought in modern history, fires in dozens of states, and some 40,000 temperature records broken this year alone, is now being followed by an autumn that spawned Sandy, what some are already calling the Storm of the Century. Or, at least the latest one. With sand turning Atlantic City into a beach, the boardwalk into the broad wreck, homes broken in Hoboken, and more than 11 feet of floodwater on Wall Street with gale force winds tossing cars around like matchsticks in Manhattan, you'd have to work for the coal and oil industry to miss the irony --- as well as the tragedy --- encompassed in the continued political silence on climate change…

[Now UPDATED with full audio archives below!]

One week until Election Day, so imagine what we'll be talking about on the nationally-syndicated Mike Malloy Show as I guest host while Mike and Kathy take another rare night off.

As usual, we're BradCasting LIVE from 9pm-Mid ET (6p-9p PT), coast-to-coast and around the globe from L.A.'s KTLK am1150 in beautiful downtown Burbank. Join us by tuning in, chatting in, Tweeting in and calling in! Our LIVE chat room will be up and rolling right here at The BRAD BLOG, as usual, while we are on the air. Please stop by and join the fun while you're listening! (The Chat Room will open, at the bottom of this item, a few minutes before airtime, see down below, just above "Comments" section.)

Scheduled tonight (so far):

• ARI BERMAN of The Nation, on the voter suppression we'll be facing next Tuesday. (Weather and power permitting!)
• VICTORIA COLLIER, author of Harper's November cover story: "How to Rig an Election" on the fight against corporations and their proprietary electronic voting systems having taken over our once-public elections. (And the pushback against her article from the left since it's publication.)
• MATT PASCARELLA, Project Director at VideoTheVote.org on how you and your cell phone camera just might save Election 2012!
• PLUS! Breaking Hurricane Sandy news, lots of updates from the War on Democracy, and as many of your calls as we can possible get to over your public airwaves at 877-520-1150 and your tweets to @TheBradBlog!...

The Mike Malloy Show is nationally syndicated on air affiliates across the country and also on SiriusXM Ch. 127. You may also listen online to the free LIVE audio stream at our Sante Fe affiliate KTRC 1260, or our Minnesota affiliate KTNF 950 (tell them you're from "Minnesota" when asked). Also, you should be able to listen live at WhiteRose Society if the radio gods are with us.

POST-SHOW UPDATE: Tonight's show flew by! Lots of good stuff (and a few rants) as Election Day, theoretically, is exactly one week away! Commercial free archives are below for your listening pleasure, as well as the chat room archives. Enjoy!...

TWITTER: @GreenNewsReport
FACEBOOK: Green News Report
VIA SMART PHONE: Stitcher Radio!

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: HURRICANE SANDY SPECIAL REPORT: The storm, the aftermath, and the impacts of climate change; PLUS: A reminder of one Presidential candidate's position on federal disaster relief --- Mitt Romney has called for privatizing it ... 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): Chevron: $2.5 Million To GOP Super PAC. Single Largest Corporate Donation; BP Oil Spill: Researchers Take a Deep Look at Gulf Seafood Safety; BP returns to profitability; WY coal art dispute rages on; There Is No 'Simple Fix' for Commodity Farming; Protests Against Expansion of China Chemical Plant Turn Violent; Sand Mine Riches Are Tough to Refuse ... PLUS: Hurricane Sandy: Haiti in emergency aid plea as disaster piles upon disaster ... and much, MUCH more! ...

This item is less reassuring than it appears at first, once one pays attention to the details. Philadelphia Inquirer reporting...

The article was called to our attention on Twitter by MN's Sec. of State Mark Ritchie who asks: "Maybe other states will follow" in extending their absentee deadlines? But, again, please note that extended deadline only works for those showing up in person to cast their absentee ballot.

And then the Inquirer article also adds this troubling tidbit...

I remember the moment very well, being on the radio at "Camp Casey" in Crawford, TX, where Cindy Sheehan was making her heroic call to meet face to face with George W. Bush, in late Summer of 2005. We were the only broadcast outfit doing regular daily broadcasts from on the ground there, as someone emailed me a warning from the National Weather Service about Hurricane Katrina on the night of Sunday, August 28, as the protest was wrapping up, and as the storm was gaining power and barreling towards New Orleans in the Gulf of Mexico.

The complete bulletin from the NWS was so alarming I wouldn't read it on air, at first, believing that surely it was a hoax. Only after going to commercial break, and checking it out for myself, did I then share it with listeners. It was shocking for such an announcement --- the NWS bulletins are usually rather straight, dry reads, as you probably know --- and included phrases such as "MOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS...PERHAPS LONGER."

Last night, the National Weather Service issued an equally remarkable bulletin in regard to Hurricane Sandy. That announcement, which includes this plea to those who may not wish to evacuate as instructed by authorities --- "IF YOU ARE RELUCTANT, THINK ABOUT YOUR LOVED ONES, THINK ABOUT THE EMERGENCY RESPONDERS WHO WILL BE UNABLE TO REACH YOU WHEN YOU MAKE THE PANICKED PHONE CALL TO BE RESCUED, THINK ABOUT THE RESCUE/RECOVERY TEAMS WHO WILL RESCUE YOU IF YOU ARE INJURED OR RECOVER YOUR REMAINS IF YOU DO NOT SURVIVE" --- follows in full below...

[This article was cross-posted by Salon...]

"History is being written as an extreme weather event continues to unfold, one which will occupy a place in the annals of weather history as one of the most extraordinary to have affected the United States," the Weather Channel's Senior Meteorologist Stu Ostro is warning. "This is an extraordinary situation, and I am not prone to hyperbole."

The National Weather Service has been telling us over the past several days that the serious impact of the super storm which is Hurricane Sandy is not to be underestimated. But there is another concern that has been keeping me awake over the past week or so.

NBC's Al Roker spelled out that concern briefly on Sunday's Meet the Press, explaining what I've been worrying about since it became clear that the storm could have serious ramifications on Election Day.

I'm not talking about the political ramifications about its effect on planned campaign events between now and Election Day, on Early Voting turnout, or even how it's handled by President Obama and FEMA, etc. I'm talking about the serious question of whether voters will be able to vote on Election Day at all, particularly in states which force voters to use electronic voting systems at the precincts.

"We expect massive power outages throughout the area," Roker told NBC's David Gregory (before Gregory hurried to ignore the comment entirely.) "As the system moves on shore it's going to be a long term effect. It's going to last for about 72 hours. And so we're talking about people who could be without power for at least 10 days. That, as you know, will take it right into Election Day. So what will people do if they can't get to the voting booth, or the voting booths don't have power?"

Good question, Al. And one we've warned about here for a number of years.

There are about a half a dozen states (listed below) directly in harm's way where voters are forced to use 100% unverifiable electronic voting systems on Election Day. In those locations, unless they have enough emergency paper ballots printed up to accommodate the entire electorate at precincts where power remains disrupted on Election Day, there could be very serious and unprecedented problems...