Tracker

Andrew Cuomo Announces He’ll ‘Step Aside’ Because ‘I Love New York’ MSNBC Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo finally announced his resignation on Tuesday amid a spiraling sexual-harassment scandal. After initially resisting calls for him to quit following New York State Attorney General Letitia James’ devastating report last week detailing 11 instances of sexual misconduct, Cuomo claimed he was leaving his post in order to save New Yorkers a long and ugly political fight. “New York tough means New York loving. And I love New York. And I love you. And everything I have ever done has been motivated by that love,” Cuomo said, while insisting he believed he’d never “crossed the line with anyone” sexually. “I think that, given the circumstances, the best way I can help now is if I step aside and let government get back to governing, and therefore, that’s what I’ll do,” he added, saying that his resignation would be effective in 14 days. He went on to say Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul would take over, making her the first female governor in New York state history.

Russian Trolls Spread Wild Lie That COVID Vax Turns People Into Chimps. A Russian marketing firm used “Planet of the Apes” memes to try and discredit Western-made COVID-19 vaccines. Russian trolls have been using Planet of the Apes memes in a vain attempt to convince vaccine skeptics that the AstraZeneca vaccine will turn them into chimpanzees. That’s the conclusion of a new report from Facebook, which found that a Russian marketing agency subsidiary, Fazze, operated dozens of fake Facebook and Instagram accounts as part of disinformation campaign targeting western-made vaccines. The report builds off previous reporting on the same network by The Daily Beast. Facebook officials said they found 65 Facebook accounts and 243 Instagram accounts linked to the effort, which targeted users in India, Latin America, and the United States. Fazze timed its disinformation campaigns to coincide with periods when regulatory authorities in various countries were considering expedited approval for Western vaccines, according to Facebook. The first wave of the company’s disinformation campaign began in late 2020 and targeted the AstraZeneca vaccine and its use in India. Fazze troll accounts harvested from account farms in Bangladesh and Pakistan pivoted off the fact that the AstraZeneca vaccine uses a harmless virus found in chimpanzees to claim that the jab would turn recipients into chimps themselves. The trolls took screenshots from the 1960s sci-fi classic Planet of the Apes showing ape guards manhandling Charlton Heston, captioned with “AstraZeneca's vaccine is safe! Yesterday we took the vaccine ourselves.” As part of their campaign, trolls linked out to Change.org petitions which tried to anchor the wild claims about chimpanzee transformation to out-of-context quotes from AstraZeneca company officials reported in legitimate news outlets. The disinformation campaign “fell flat and it gained almost no traction across the internet," Ben Nimmo, Facebook’s global information operations threat intelligence chief, told reporters. The top performing post by Fazze’s network garnered only five likes and attracted ridicule from fellow Facebook users who heckled sock puppets with epithets like “google expert.” The campaign was also “spammy and sloppy,” according to Nimmo, blasting hundreds of automated posts out and leading operators to mix Portuguese-language hashtags intended for Brazilian audiences on top of Hindi-language memes aimed at India. Russian Trolls Spread Wild Lie That COVID Vax Turns People Into Chimps (thedailybeast.com) (For many Republicans and right-wingers, this would be redundant)

I was not impressed by Bailey during the last game. He is gonna have to do a lot better to stay around.

The gun violence in the US rose by some 50% during the Trump regime and has escalated again during the COVID crisis. Houston must feel relieved to have his wife and kids here and safe. winnipeg is not perfect but, thank God, we do not to fear this sort of thing every day like many Americans.

There's a real election security breach case — focused on a Trump-loving county clerk's office: report Writing for The Bulwark this Monday, Tim Miller says that there's finally a credible investigation into voting machine tampering, and it's not being initiated by Donald Trump's allies. Miller cited a recent report from The Daily Sentinel, detailing how the Mesa County Clerk and Recorder's Office in Colorado is under investigation by the Secretary of State's Office over a "breach in security" in its election system. "Secretary of State Jena Griswold released an order at 10:15 a.m. today calling on Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters to supply surveillance videos and documents showing how the breach occurred, and how security information ended up on a social media post," the Sentinel reports. "If Peters can't show proper chain of custody for that security information, which involves certain passwords that are eyes-only for state and county election workers who have passed background checks, all of the county's election systems could be immediately decertified, meaning the county would be on the hook for an expensive refit of all of its machines." As Miller points out, Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters is fervent Trump supporter "who appears to have executed a self-own of historic proportion." Last week, QAnon conspiracists shared a video claiming a "whistleblower" provided alleged evidence that Dominion voting machines are connected to the internet -- a claim that is a necessary element for voter fraud conspiracy theories. In the video, the alleged whistleblower included an image of their election system's BIOS password, and in doing so "they stepped on a pretty large rake – because the password in the video was unique, which allowed the Colorado Secretary of State's office to identify which county the leak came from and during which meeting it was recorded," Miller writes. "It turns out the election hacker was not Antifa or a Hugo Chavez apparition but a real live human in the office of Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters," writes Miller. There's a real election security breach case — focused on a Trump-loving county clerk's office: report - Alternet.org

He ought to be able to learn when to drop back and when to make palys with his legs.

Five syllables here. Seven more syllables here. Are you happy now?

If Reilly, Bo-Levi and Nichols are all gibbled up, this is bad news for their respective fans as well as the CFL. Gonna be some hard to watch games.

Which came first- the chicken or the egg?

And gonna get better once Adams and Harris are back and the whole offence shakes off the rust.

We all, okay, most of us, knew that the first week or two in the CFL would be a mixed bag of good and bad, so onward we go.

With all of CFL players and coaches out there that are no longer in the game, surely a few of them ought to be able to be better than Milt and Barker.

Toronto's O-line is average at best, and once they get cranked up, the Bomber D-line will pour through. For all his quirkiness, MBT is a pretty good pivot, given a decent amount of time and good receivers.

'They're going to sing like canaries': Flood of DOJ employees expected to expose Trump after Rosen revelations Taking part in a CNN panel discussing former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen's weekend testimony about Donald Trump's efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election results, conservative commentator Amanda Carpenter predicts the floodgates will now open with other DOJ staffers coming forward. On Saturday, Rosen testified before a bipartisan collection of lawmakers and their aides for seven hours, with Sen. **** Durbin (R-IL) saying the former DOJ official handed lawmakers a wealth of information about the former president's maneuverings after losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden. Discussing what will happen next, Carpenter -- a former top aide to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)-- said Rosen's testimony, and the fact that the DOJ has stated it will not block any employees from coming forward, means a lot more details about Trump's backroom dealings are in the offing. "Jeffrey Rosen is talking," New Day host John Berman began. "The former acting attorney general who was running the Justice Department in the days before the insurrection, isn't just talking but wanting to talk. wanting to give information at this point. What's the significance about what we're hearing?" "I mean, I think it just shows how dedicated Donald Trump was to this effort," Carpenter began. "If you don't mind me looking back a little bit, I'm a little frustrated because this would have been very relevant information during the second impeachment trial. Clearly you have people who were willing to talk and maybe they just needed the cover of the DOJ ruling saying they would be free to do so, but the second impeachment was really -- this is the same as the first." "It's Donald Trump abusing official resources in order to get his way politically and stop Joe Biden from becoming president," she continued. "I mean, it's clearly a pattern here and so, I am very thankful that we have a January 6th select committee because I've got to believe there are many more people like Rosen. So once they have this legal, clear pathway in order to talk, they're going to sing like canaries." 'They're going to sing like canaries': Flood of DOJ employees expected to expose Trump after Rosen revelations - Alternet.org

Hard to perform athletics well when you are carrying that much ego weight.

There was a young man from Ghent... Ummmm....wrong kind of poem.

For me a highlight would be Simoni Lawrence being admistered a AED on the field.

I think there is still one of their stores in Polo Park shopping center.

We have two O-linemen (Tua and Gray) who would not only be starters on almost every other team, but stars. At least four other GM's would give up their first round picks for the next two years plus their firstborns for either one.

Or a Noel Thorpe promotion.

Hope he has good hands and the ability to run good routes- Harris was great at both.

Every season, there seems to be shortages of good players in one or two positions. This year there is a dearth of good quarterbacks (usual thing), running backs and good kickers.

Trump DOJ Ally Reportedly Pushed Wild Theory China May Have Used Vote-Hacking Thermometers A Justice Department official appointed by Donald Trump attempted to block results from the 2020 election by pushing a wild theory that votes may have been hacked by Chinese intelligence agents armed with digital thermometers, according to emails obtained by the House Oversight Committee. Jeffrey Clark, who was the head of the DOJ’s civil division at the time, told senior department officials that he had information indicating the Chinese government could use digital thermometers to change results in Dominion machines that were tallying votes, sources told CNN. “Hackers have evidence ... that a Dominion machine accessed the Internet through a smart thermostat with a net connection trail leading back to China,” Clark wrote in an email. The push to hold up the election was part of Trump’s campaign to not leave the White House, even though Joe Biden had been elected president. Trump told then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen in December to “just say the election was corrupt, and leave the rest to me,” according to notes taken of his phone call, which were also obtained by the Oversight Committee. The imagined connection between China and the U.S. presidential election is a key element of QAnon conspiracy theories. The vote audit in Arizona’s Maricopa County — led by Cyber Ninjas CEO and QAnon believer Doug Logan — has also examined ballots for evidence of “bamboo fibers,” which some have baselessly claimed could prove interference by the Chinese government. Clark also wrote a draft letter, published by ABC News, in which he urged Georgia officials to call a special session of the state legislature to challenge the vote there. He falsely claimed in the letter that DOJ had identified “significant concerns that may have impacted of the outcome of the election in multiple States, including the State of Georgia.” Trump DOJ Ally Reportedly Pushed Wild Theory China May Have Used Vote-Hacking Thermometers | HuffPost (If these were rectal thermometers, I can see how they might influence GOP/right wing thinking.)