Sunday, May 1, 2022

And another day of mounting evidence, monuments, new text messages, TX leaders misleading the public, biased CA police, soaring profits, free speech is not an excuse, Twitter hiding tweets, and marijuana linked to risk of heart attacks comes to a close:

“Ukraine should shame us all.  They’re fightin’ to cling to what half our country can’t wait to throw away.” — Tea Pain

Deaths

US: 1,020,854

World: 6,261,598

Cases

US: 83,083,425

World: 513,580,931

Evidence mounts of GOP involvement in Trump election schemes. Texting with then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, a close ally and friend, at nearly midnight on Jan. 5, Jordan offered a legal rationale for what President Donald Trump was publicly demanding — that Vice President Mike Pence, in his ceremonial role presiding over the electoral count, somehow assert the authority to reject electors from Biden-won states. Pence “should call out all electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all,” Jordan wrote. “I have pushed for this,” Meadows replied. “Not sure it is going to happen.” -- Traitors.

Russian occupiers erect a monument to Lenin in Nova Kakhovka. “While Ukraine is the first in the world to launch electronic passports, orcs [Russian soldiers] are restoring a monument to Lenin in temporarily occupied Nova Kakhovka. Just wait, my dears, when these savages leave the territory of our country we’ll see the Fall of Lenin 2.0 ". — And many American conservatives support this Russian regime.

“Last week the GOP…

“1) Claimed the Catholic Church is ‘controlled by Satan.’

“2) Went to war with Disney because they defended LGBTQ kids.

“3) Adopted a billionaire as a “messiah’ because he’s tryin’ to let neo-Nazis back on Twitter.” — Tea Pain

New text messages reveal Fox’s Hannity advising Trump White House and seeking direction. Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Fox’s Sean Hannity exchanged more than 80 text messages between Election Day 2020 and Joe Biden’s January 2021 inauguration, communications that show Hannity’s evolution from staunch supporter of former President Donald Trump’s election lies to being “fed up” with the “lunatics” hurting Trump’s cause in the days before January 6.

Reality Check: Seven Times Texas Leaders Misled the Public About Operation Lone Star. As they investigated Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s border initiative, reporters repeatedly found situations where Abbott and DPS officials cited accomplishments that lacked crucial context or did not match reality. Here are a few examples. — The Republican Party has fully embraced fascism.

Republicans have the advantage with voters in 2022 elections, poll finds. It's the first time in eight years that Marist's survey has found Republicans with an advantage on the congressional ballot test. Back then, months before the 2014 midterm elections, Republicans had a 5-point edge in the poll and then won control of both the House and Senate. — Because a large group of Americans have fully embraced fascism. 

Some California police are biased. A report says they have no clear plans to fix that. A scathing new report by California's Auditor of five large police departments across the state found evidence of officer bias against women, people of color, immigrants, and LGBTQ people, as well as woefully inadequate department policies and procedures to stop discrimination or investigate incidents once they come to light.

ExxonMobil took a $3.4 billion hit for exiting Russia. Its profit still soared. Revenue at ExxonMobil soared 53% to $90.5 billion. Even with the charge for exiting Russia, net income doubled to $5.4 billion. And excluding special items, its income more than tripled to $8.8 billion from $2.7 billion a year earlier...Chevron (CVX) revenue jumped 70% to $54.4 billion, while its profit excluding special items more than tripled to $6.5 billion from $1.7 billion a year earlier, slightly topping Wall Street forecasts. -- They’re playing us all for suckers.

Why Twitter Is Unlikely To Become The ‘Digital Town Square’ Elon Musk Envisions. But the digital town square Musk is envisioning might not materialize because Twitter has never lived up to its goal of being a marketplace of ideas. More than that, Americans seem to dislike the social media platforms that forgo content moderation entirely, with anything-goes platforms never being quite as popular as the larger platforms that limit some of what users see. A town square that is a free-speech free-for-all risks becoming the kind of place that few people want to visit, which serves as its own limit on the kind of speech it fosters.

Why Free Speech Isn’t An Excuse. And that’s the biggest problem with this line of thinking: once you allow toxicity and abuse to flourish under the protection of the first amendment, you actually create less free speech overall.

Twitter Admits It Hid Tweets About HBO's QAnon Docuseries. The documentary criticizes Twitter for the role it has played in the spread of QAnon…Believing the response in error, Hoback’s production house, Hyrax Films, reached out to members of the Twitter communications team to request help. A response came three days later. To Hoback’s surprise, Twitter informed him the decision was intentional…“The way to unravel QAnon was to reveal the underlying mechanics and players behind it; not censoring all discussion around the topic.” — Fuck you, Twitter.

Frequent marijuana smoking linked to higher risk of heart attack, study suggests. People who smoked marijuana more than once per month were more likely to have their first heart attack before age 50, new research found.

RIP Naomi Judd. She was 76.

Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.

Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.