Category: News

Like most Americans, Michael Flynn wants to retire comfortably. Unlike (most of) the rest of us, he had been relying on some mad cash from Russia to help make that happen. On Tuesday, the former National Security Director sat down for an interview with Real America’s Voice, a far-right network, and lamented the fact that the Department of Defense had found out about the nearly $40,000 he was paid in 2015 for a speaking gig in Russia and that they are hellbent on seizing it.

On May 2, 2022, as Raw Story reports, the Department of the Army sent a letter to Flynn, declaring the $38,557.06 payment illegal and demanding it back. According to the letter (which you can read in its entirety here):

“The Army has determined that in December 2015 you failed to obtain the necessary approval in accordance with Army Regulation (AR) 600-29 before accepting compensation from an entity substantially owned or controlled by a foreign government in violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution. Specifically, the Emoluments Clause prohibits the receipt of such compensation unless Congress consents… The Army has determined that you did not obtain the necessary approvals before engaging in employment activities with Russia Today (RT), a foreign government-controlled entity. Specifically, between December 10-13, 2015, you traveled to Russia and spoke at a conference hosted by the Russian news agency Russia Today (RT).”

If $40,000 sounds like a lot of money to pay a disgraced politician, consider this: he actually gave Russia a discount on his normal fee, which runs between $55,000 and $75,000.

Whatever the amount, Flynn is not happy to have to part with it, as he thinks the whole matter is just a way to further humiliate him.

“It’s just another dig, another means to embarrass,” he told Real America’s Voice of the situation. “They just want me to shut up, and I’m not about to. It’s not in my nature; I’m not designed that way. And I will tell you that it actually stiffens my backbone even more because, at the end of the day, they’re just going to reach into my retirement and they’re going to take some money out. Money… yeah, it means something, but at the end of the day this country means a heck of a lot more.”

You can watch the full interview above.

(Via Raw Story)

When Khris Middleton went down in Game 2 of the Bucks’ first round series against the Chicago Bulls, Milwaukee lost its most reliable perimeter scorer and its most trusted on-ball creator beyond Giannis Antetokounmpo, who already shoulders a considerable creative burden.

The player thrust into the spotlight in Middleton’s absence has been Jrue Holiday, the third star they acquired two years ago who helped them crack the code and finally win a championship last year. Without Middleton alongside him, though, Holiday’s worst tendencies on offense and propensity to go through shooting woes have been magnified. For the second straight year, Holiday has seen his efficiency plummet in the playoffs with the Bucks, as he’s gone from 50.2/40.2/77.2 combined shooting splits in the regular season to 39.5/30.8/75.3 splits in the last two postseasons.

A year ago, his defensive presence alongside Herculean efforts from Giannis and Middleton were enough to mask those issues in a way they never could with Eric Bledsoe, who Holiday was brought in at a hefty price to replace specifically due to postseason struggles. Now, with Middleton out, Holiday needs to be the Bucks’ secondary star on offense and the results have been rough. Against the Celtics, Holiday is averaging 21.1 points, 6.8 rebounds, 6 assists, and 2.8 steals per game, which are all more than respectable raw numbers, but he’s required 23 shot attempts per game to get those 21 points, shooting a dreadful 33.7 percent from the field and 29.6 percent from three on nearly seven attempts per night.

With Middleton ruled out for the rest of the series, the Bucks will need Holiday to turn things around if they’re going to find a way to get past Boston. Holiday has accepted the challenge of being a self-creator to a detrimental degree for the Bucks, as 46.7 percent of his shot attempts in the series (10.8 per game) have been pull-ups. He’s shooting just 34.7 percent on those attempts (31.6 percent from three). The problem is, this isn’t that different from how he operated in the regular season, where 43.7 percent of Holiday’s shots (6.2 per game) were classified as pull-ups, and he shot a terrific 45.8 percent on them (40.6 percent from three).

The biggest issue is that a huge amount of Holiday’s offense is coming in isolation, and without Middleton on the floor, the best perimeter defenders are now assigned to Holiday, meaning he’s no longer getting favorable matchups to attack 1-on-1. That’s an issue against any team, but particularly the Celtics who can deploy a number of terrific one-on-one defenders with length to frustrate him into some rather terrible shots.

Boston is able to consistently throw length in front of Holiday. It can be with his primary defender — usually Marcus Smart and Derrick White — or in switches with Jayson Tatum, Grant Williams, Al Horford, and others. Typically, Holiday feasts on smaller defenders, using his 6’3 frame and tremendous strength to push them into his spots on the floor, create separation, and rise up over them. So far against the Celtics, he’s not creating that same separation and is struggling to finish over good contests from Boston’s tenacious, rangy defenders.

It’s become fairly clear over a 32 game sample across the last two postseasons that Holiday’s normal shot diet is simply not as effective in the playoffs, and those issues are now amplified without Middleton taking some of these possessions and attention away from Holiday. His shot chart for the series is hideous, without any real success from anywhere.

The 14-for-44 on non-restricted area midrange shots are particularly jarring, while 9-for-21 in the restricted area is well below league average. Holiday keeps banging his head into that wall over and over. The Celtics are happy to let him isolate on their terrific individual defenders and put up contested looks that often have little chance of going in. If Milwaukee is going to get its offense going, the answer lies in asking Holiday to try and do less on his own.

The Celtics defense is as good as there is against isolation offenses, as evidenced by their success against the Nets as Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant found it incredibly difficult to create good looks consistently. When the Bucks get the Celtics defense moving, they’ve found some success, and they’re going to have to find ways to do that in Games 5-7 if they’re going to move on. Initiating the offense earlier in the clock has helped, as has sliding Holiday down onto the baseline, allowing him to be an outlet for Giannis when the Celtics send their inevitable help his way, which creates a much better look from the short midrange for Holiday than one of his head-down drives to nowhere.

Boston’s defense knows Holiday and Giannis want to go downhill, and have built their halfcourt defense to try and limit those opportunities. But when the Bucks push the pace and start running action before the Celtics are set up, they can catch them off guard and create driving lanes for Holiday without the same resistance, like this high double drag look that Holiday rejects once Brown jumps to the side, giving him a straight line drive to the rim.

Throughout the series, transition and semi-transition have been where the Bucks have had success, but that can only account for so much of a team’s offense. As such, they’ll have to find halfcourt success and a lot of that is going to be incumbent on Holiday being more trusting in those around him. While Boston is built to frustrate wing and perimeter players, there are opportunities to play above the rim that the Bucks could also look to take more advantage of against the aggressive switching of the Celtics.

This is particularly the case when Giannis is on the bench and the Bucks offense becomes heavily reliant on Holiday for creation. Pairing Brook Lopez with Holiday to work pick-and-roll action, with Lopez diving to the rim against a much smaller defender since Boston is so quick to switch their bigs out on the perimeter, would be a way to take advantage of the Celtics relative lack of size.

The Bucks are going to need Holiday to start making some of the shots he normally does in the regular season, but against a Boston team built to frustrate him with its length, Holiday and the Bucks need to be more adaptable in the final three games of this series. As much as he loves to isolate and attack mismatches, there just aren’t many opportunities to do that, aside from the few minutes Payton Pritchard and Daniel Theis are on the floor.

Otherwise, just about everyone in the Celtics’ rotation is long enough and strong enough to keep him from getting clean looks and, while Milwaukee needs him to continue being aggressive, the end result of that attack needs to be more passing than it has been so far this series.

Recently, Rudy Gobert and Shaquile O’Neal have been connected in an indirect back-and-forth about how the three-time Defensive Player of the Year may fare against the Hall of Fame center one-on-one. When Gobert’s name arose on O’Neal’s podcast, with someone saying he’d score just 12 points on the Utah Jazz big man, O’Neal replied, “Yeah, in three minutes.”

That quote traveled across social media, to which Gobert proclaimed he’d “lock his ass up” defensively against O’Neal. Skip Bayless addressed Gobert’s comments Tuesday on UNDISPUTED and was quite critical of the All-Star.

“Rudy, you gotta wake up, you gotta wise up, and you gotta shut up, and give it up,” Bayless said. “You are nothing but a finesse defender. You are a fake tough guy. I’m sorry. Because I see too many drivers of the basketball who are 6’2″, they just go right up into you and dunk on you. I don’t know what you’re thinking. I know you’ve gotta sort of defend your honor on social media. You are barking up the biggest, wrongest tree you’ve ever barked up on this one. … (Shaq) was the most dominating offensive force in the history of this league.”

Bayless went on to extol the virtues of O’Neal’s offensive prowess in which he blended power and grace as a big man to overwhelm everyone inside the paint. As that 95-second clip traveled across Twitter, Gobert caught wind of it and responded.

Utah’s early playoff exits over the past few years often bring Gobert’s game to the forefront of discussion. With its season ending a few weeks ago, this is yet another example and one that has caught the eye of quite a few voices in the media world. Gobert, though, seems to have heard enough of the critiques of his game and will be replying in kind.

This Friday, the most anticipated album in the world is coming out: Kendrick Lamar’s Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers. Lamar has been dropping hints every step of the way in the lead-up, including a recently posted image of two CDs, indicating that the album might very well be a double album. On Sunday, we were introduced to the album’s first single, “The Heart Part 5,” along with its eye-popping video. Now, Kendrick has posted what appears to be the album cover artwork.

Posted to both his social media platforms, as well as showing up as a new icon on the oklama.com website where every update in the Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers lead up has been posted, the cover photograph might very well be the first time we’ve seen the “Alright” rapper picture with his two children. He wears a christ-like crown of thorns and holds his three-year-old daughter while his fiancée nurses a newborn child on a bed in the background.

This is interesting because Kendrick is famously private about his personal life. In fact, it has only been known that he and Alford have one daughter, so the second child in the background would be a new addition to the family that the world previously did not know about. Regardless, the album is out in two days and everyone is on the edge of their seat.

Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers will be out on Friday 05/13 via TDE Records.

It has been a good five years since we last got a full-length project from Brooklyn rapper Joey Badass — not including, of course, the long-awaited addition of his breakthrough mixtape 1999 to DSPs in 2018. In the years since, he’s ghostwritten for Post Malone; become a father; built an impressive filmography with roles on Mr. Robot, Boomerang, Wu-Tang: An American Saga, and Power Book III: Raising Kanan (although he did turn down a role in The Harder They Fall); and dropped a three-song EP, but fans naturally have wondered all along whether (or rather when) he’d ever make a return to rap full-time.

He may have given the answer today on Twitter. He posted a video of him cruising at a skate park, soundtracked by what sounds like an all-new track. Backed by the sort of nostalgic, throwback beat he used to make his debut in rap back in 2012, he rhymes, “Back on the set like I never left / I’m taking steps to be the best ’til they lay me to rest.” At the end of the 30-second clip, the number 2000 appears — an obvious but still oblique reference to his debut mixtape — and the date June 17 flashes across the screen.

While it’s possible that this could just be a track announcement, the date being so far out plus the tie-in to his fan-favorite full-length suggest that it’s more likely to be an LP. We’re sure to receive more details as June 17 nears, and for those of use who’ve been impatiently waiting, the next month might well be the hardest part of them all.

You can always count on Gwyneth Paltrow to read the room.

As millions of parents worry about not being able to feed their baby during a nationwide shortage of formula, Paltrow’s $piritual emporium Goop decided now was a good time to introduce The Diapér, a “disposable diaper lined with virgin alpaca wool and fastened with amber gemstones, known for their ancient emotional-cleansing properties. Infused with a scent of jasmine and bergamot for a revitalized baby.” And how much will it cost to revitalize your little poop machine? Only $120 for 12 diapers, I mean, Diapérs.

A baby goes through approximately 2,200 diapers every year. At 10 bucks a pop, a parent would have to spend $22,000/annually to keep their baby in Diapérs, because you can’t spell “Goop” without “poop.” Or you can buy a 136-pack of diapers at Target for $42.99 (NOTE: this is not sponsored content for Target; this is anti-Goop content).

Let’s check in with the response to The Diapér on Instagram:

As moms struggle to find formula good timing

This can’t be real

I’m sorry but whaaaaat??!!

This is not April 1 guys!

Dear gawd why

It’s not much kinder on Twitter. “$10 per disposable diaper… maybe Goop should make baby formulas instead because that’s actually what is in shortage and needed,” @ChinHuaLu tweeted, while @ALutkin shared a theory: “I have a theory that goop mostly makes money off ads which means they need lots of engagement so they purposefully release stuff that makes people shit themselves with rage and click.” A lot of people are wondering if it’s real, but considering Goop also sells $66 vagina eggs, I wouldn’t put anything past ol’ Paltrow. We’ll find out tomorrow at 11 am EST.

As Elizabeth Olsen continues to make the interview rounds to promote her surprisingly prominent role in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, the actress opened up to The New York Times about the frustration she experienced during the early days of her Marvel career. Olsen made her MCU debut as Wanda Maximoff in 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron, but stepping into the superhero role came with a price. Olsen had to pass on Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Lobster because of a conflict with her Marvel contract, and she soon began to see more indie roles slip away.

“I started to feel frustrated,” Olsen said via Comic Book. “I had this job security but I was losing these pieces that I felt were more part of my being. And the further I got away from that, the less I became considered for it.”

However, the situation started to improve when Marvel pitched her on WandaVision, which allowed her far more creative freedom than she ever imagined as Wanda:

“I mean, it’s been a ride that I didn’t expect,” Olsen shared. “I got comfortable just taking up a lane and showing just a couple colors of her and it just helping the story and this film as a whole. And then WandaVision, I got to be all the colors of all the rainbows. That was an amazing opportunity, but also an amazing opportunity to remember playfulness and being able to fail and there’s such a freedom that we had while filming that has informed me now in how I approach her.”

Now, Olsen is ready to throw down whenever directors like Martin Scorsese or Francis Ford Coppola take a swing at the MCU. “Throwing Marvel under the bus takes away from the hundreds of very talented crew people,” Olsen recently told The Independent. “That’s where I get a little feisty about that.”

(Via The New York Times)

Young Thug, already facing several felonies in the racketeering indictment against him and YSL Records, was charged with seven additional felonies after police raided his home. According to WSBTV reporter Michael Seiden, Thug was charged with possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute, possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, possession of marijuana with intent to distribute, and possession of a dangerous weapon or silencer, which could include sawed-off-shotguns, sawed-off rifles, or machine guns.

He was also charged with three counts of unlawful participation in criminal gang activity while employed by/associated with a criminal street gang, which is at the root of the case against YSL. According to prosecutors, Young Slime Life, the crew from which Young Stoner Life Records takes its name, is a “hybrid” criminal street gang associated with the larger Bloods organization (insomuch as the Bloods are an actual organization, which… nah). 28 people from the crew, including Young Thug and his artist Gunna, were named in the 88-page indictment and initially charged with 56 felonies, including armed robbery, murder, and conspiracy to violate The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.

The additional charges are lousy news for Thug. Initially, the evidence against him seemed to mainly focus on using his lyrics to prove his affiliation with the “gang.” Now, though, he could face larger consequences from the illegal firearms and drugs.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Elden Ring is not only a game of the year contender for 2022, but it’s also a surprise success. Anyone who paid attention to the lead-up will argue that a game involving Hidetaka Miyazaki, From Software, and George R.R. Martin was going to be a smash hit, but even the game’s biggest optimists likely didn’t expect Elden Ring to become one of the biggest games we’ve seen in years. Despite the name, this was in every way just an open world Souls game. The Souls series, while popular, have always held something of a niche status: Extremely popular among its fans, but not always approachable to newcomers.

While you could argue that Elden Ring still isn’t the most approachable game ever made, that didn’t seem to matter much when it came to sales numbers. People went out and bought Elden Ring in droves, and soon, the internet was filled with comments, memes, and videos about the game. It was an obvious hit, and after a recent sales call from Bandai Namco, we now know just how large the game ended up being.

What is it that made Elden Ring so successful? There are plenty of things you can point to, like the open world format, the few but very necessary quality of life changes, or just how beautiful this game can look sometimes. It’s likely a mix of all three, plus some more details we haven’t even mentioned or thought of.

At the end of the day, it’s just a really fun video game. Despite how challenging it can be sometimes, there is enough in there to keep the player pushing forward for sometimes hundreds of hours. We can spend all day thinking about why it is that Elden Ring sold 13 million copies in a month, and is still being played by many players today, but sometimes the simple solution is the best one.

Action Bronson wears many hats — rapper, chef, television personality, and actor. For the lattermost of the four, he’s auditioned and even been offered several roles that may have been different from how we know them had he accepted the offer to play these characters.

Upon the release of his most recent album, Cocodrillo Turbo, Bronson spoke with Complex about his acting prospects, one of which included HBO’s hit teen drama, Euphoria. Bronson auditioned and was even offered a role on the show, however, he ultimately turned it down.

“They wanted me to play a drug dealer that was getting with the high school girls,” Bronson said. “Action Bronson ain’t doing that, bro.”

The role in question mostly matches the description of Fezco, who is played by Angus Cloud.

Additionally, Bronson revealed he auditioned for Uncut Gems, but admitted he didn’t feel confident about his audition.

“They wanted me to be the guy next to the main goon, the Russian,” Bronson said. “But I bombed at the audition, bro.”

Bronson has appeared in films like The King Of Staten Island and The Irishman, however, has not yet played a lead role in any film project. He is, however, accustomed to the cameras by way of his restaurant exploration show, F*ck, That’s Delicious.