But, but...well...GLENDA WAS TELEPORTED, DAMMIT!
2022-02-01 at 6:44 PM UTC
in
Should I be worried
Isn't that your present job?
Don't leave me hangin', mate!
Funny as...shit!
2022-02-01 at 5:09 PM UTC
in
STICK IT, Damn It!
STICK IT, JOE ROGAN
Bloomberg
Spotify Exodus Grows as Graham Nash Signals Withdrawal
Mary Biekert
(Bloomberg) -- Singer-songwriters Graham Nash and India Arie on Tuesday announced plans to remove their music from Spotify Technology SA in protest of its support for controversial podcaster Joe Rogan. The moves come after Neil Young and folk-rocker Joni Mitchell both removed most of their music from the platform last week.
Young, 76, accused Rogan of spreading vaccine misinformation on his show -- called “The Joe Rogan Experience” -- distributed by Spotify. In response, the platform publicized its internal content rules and Rogan pledged more balance and research. Nash said he agrees with his former Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young bandmate after “having heard the Covid disinformation spread by Joe Rogan on Spotify” and is requesting that his solo recordings be removed from the platform, according to a statement from the singer. Arie intends to leave Spotify because of Rogan’s “language about race,” she wrote in a note on Instagram.
The combined exodus further escalates a dispute over the streaming service’s support for Rogan and intensifies questions about Spotify’s responsibility for monitoring content distributed on its platform to hundreds of millions of listeners. Young’s removal of his music from the service led the hashtag #spotifydeleted to trend on social media. While it’s not clear if all of the artists’ labels will comply with their requests, Arie’s efforts to draw attention to Rogan’s comments on race signals the backlash is spreading beyond Covid misinformation.
“Neil Young opened a door that I must walk through,” Arie wrote. “I believe in freedom of speech. However, I find Joe Rogan problematic for reasons other than his Covid interviews. For me, it’s also his language around race.”
Rogan, 54, was criticized last month after his interview with Jordan Peterson, a conservative YouTube personality. In that conversation, Rogan said it’s “very strange” that anyone would call themselves Black unless they’re from the “darkest place” of Africa. The comments and Spotify’s willingness to provide a platform for such rhetoric are “deeply disturbing,” David Johns, executive director of the National Black Justice Coalition, said in an e-mailed statement last week. “Joe Rogan and his friends like Jordan Peterson can describe it however they want - as ’they’re just asking questions’ or ’they’re just discussing skin color’ - but the simple reality remains that they are doing so to perpetuate a system where heterosexual cisgender white men remain in positions of power, while acting like they’re targeted victims.”
Separately this week, the creators of “Science Vs”, an award-winning podcast that streams on Spotify, announced on Twitter that they will focus on fact-checking Rogan and other sources of misinformation on the platform and pause production of other content. The show is produced by Gimlet, which Spotify purchased in 2019.
Spotify has invested billions in podcasting and advertising technology to turn its money-losing music platform into a profitable audio service. It struck a deal in 2020 with Rogan worth more than $100 million. In contrast, many musicians say their streaming royalties are far too meager.
CBS News
Some Trump records were torn up, taped back together, Archives says
Melissa Quinn
Washington — Some of the documents from former President Donald Trump's White House that were turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration were torn up by the former president and had been pieced back together, the agency said.
The Archives confirmed in a statement Trump's habit of tearing up records, citing press reports from 2018 that detailed his practice.
The Archives said "White House records management officials during the Trump Administration recovered and taped together some of the torn-up records. These were turned over to the National Archives at the end of the Trump Administration, along with a number of torn-up records that had not been reconstructed by the White House."
Politico reported in 2018 that the former president's unofficial "filing system" consisted of him ripping up papers and throwing them on the floor or in the trash, which led to the arduous process of taping documents back together to ensure compliance with the Presidential Records Act. The law requires memos, letters, emails and other documents be preserved and given to the Archives at the end of an administration.
The statement from the Archives came after CNN and the Washington Post reported that some of the documents from the Trump White House that the Archives handed over to the House select committee investigating the January 6 assault had been torn up and then reassembled.
House investigators received more than 700 pages of documents from the Archives late last month after Trump lost a court battle with the committee to shield their release. The select committee had requested from the Archives reams of records surrounding the events of January 6, including presidential diaries, visitor logs, handwritten notes from then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, binders from then-White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and a draft executive order on election integrity.
While Trump asserted executive privilege over the records in an attempt to block their release, President Biden declined to uphold his privilege claims. The former president sued the committee and Archives in October to block the disclosure of the records, and the case wound up before the Supreme Court, which declined to stop release of the tranche to the House.
Among the documents obtained by the committee was a draft executive order, published by several news outlets, given to Trump that would have directed the Defense Department to seize voting machines during the 2020 presidential election. Dated December 16, 2020, the order was never issued and it's unclear who authored the document.
Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi, told "Face the Nation" last month investigators "have information that between the Department of Justice, a plan was put forward to potentially seize voting machines in the country and utilize Department of Defense assets to make that happen."
Thompson said public hearings by the panel are expected to begin in the spring.
The Hill
Second draft order by Trump advisers sought to ask DHS to seize voting machines: report
Joseph Choi
Advisers to former President Trump drafted another version of an executive order that would have directed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to seize voting machines, CNN reported on Monday, citing multiple sources.
Second draft order by Trump advisers sought to ask DHS to seize voting machines:
Earlier this month, Politico obtained a draft order from the Trump administration that would have instructed the Department of Defense to seize voting machines.
Now, according to multiple sources who spoke with CNN, the Trump administration also drafted another version of that executive order that had the intention of ordering DHS to seize voting machines. CNN reported there were now two versions of the same document.
The idea was spearheaded by retired Col. Phil Waldron and former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, CNN's sources said, with one source saying Flynn was committed to the idea of seizing election equipment and personally reached out to a senior defense official for help with the plan.
The Hill has reached out to DHS for comment.
In December 2020, Flynn suggested in an interview on Newsmax that Trump could deploy the military to "rerun" the 2020 election. During the interview, he also publicly floated the idea of Trump seizing all voting machines in the country and then deploying the military to swing states in which he lost.
"He could order, within the swing states if he wanted to, he could take military capabilities and basically rerun an election each in those states," he said, claiming that such an action was "not unprecedented," though the military has never been deployed in a nationwide effort to seize voting machines in U.S. history.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) told CNN earlier this month that the draft document for the Pentagon was "an extraordinary document."
"We've got no evidence at this point that there were steps taken in the Department of Defense to implement that memo but ... it's a lawless document and really breathtaking in its approach," she told the network.
WHERE WOULD OUR DEMOCRACY BE TODAY HAD TRUMP SUCCEEDED?
Business Insider
Trump told Giuliani to call the Department of Homeland Security to see if they could 'take control of voting machines': NYT report
salarshani@businessinsider.com (Sarah Al-Arshani) - 24m ago
Former President Donald Trump played a role in plans for seizing voting machines in the 2020 election.
Trump asked Rudy Giuliani to call DHS about confiscating voting machines, The New York Times reported.
Trump weighed the prospect of using the military or the Justice Department to obtain the machines.
Former President Donald Trump asked Rudy Giuliani, his attorney, to call the Department of Homeland Security to see if they could legally take control of voting machines in key states in December 2020, six weeks after the Presidential election, The New York Times reported.
Giuliani called Kenneth Cuccinelli, the acting deputy secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, who told him he did not have the authority to do so, the Times reported.
Insider previously reported people in Trump's orbit had written a draft executive order that was dated to December 2020 that mentioned using the Pentagon to seize machines.
That draft order was recently obtained by the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection.
The Times reported that plans of using other federal agencies were also previously known but new details from three unnamed sources – either briefed on the events by participants or with firsthand knowledge of the events – show which plans Trump considered and advocated for.
Trump's request to Giuliani to call DHS came after he rejected a proposal to use the Pentagon to confiscate the machines to look for evidence of alleged voter fraud that Phil Waldron, a retired Army colonel, claimed to have discovered, the Times reported, adding that Waldron first mentioned this plan to former Trump advisor Michael Flynn.
Waldron also proposed the use of the military to seize the machines, but after Trump presented that idea to Giuliani, the attorney opposed it.
The Times reported that Trump also met with former Attorney General William Barr about the idea of using the Justice Department to seize voting machines. Barr immediately shot down the idea, essentially telling Trump that there was no probable cause that could justify the move, the Times reported.
The former president even asked lawmakers in Michigan and Pennsylvania to use local law enforcement to seize machines, the Times reported.
Kinda like I don't give a shit about yours?
