Odds and Ends — 9 April 2024

preparedwombat(78)

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Cryptocurrency, Investing, Money, Economy, Business, and Debt:

1 in 6 new Base meme coins are scams, 91% have vulnerabilities

https://twitter.com/clearing_fog/status/1777422407101489487
- clearing_fog

Elon Musk Didn’t Want His Latest Deposition Released. Here It Is.

Elon Musk was deposed last month over his role in allegedly promoting a false conspiracy theory that a 22-year-old Jewish man participated in a neo-Nazi brawl.
Musk tried to keep the deposition from going public, and perhaps for good reason: It did not go well for him.

Coronavirus News, Analysis, and Opinion:

Long Covid blood clues could prompt future trials

https://twitter.com/mdnij34/status/1776991134062911957
- mdnij34

Politics:

Trump Sues Judge in Attempt to Avert Trial

Donald Trump, a week away from standing trial in Manhattan on criminal charges that he falsified records to cover up a sex scandal, has indicated he plans to file a lawsuit against the judge overseeing the case.
The lawsuit was not immediately made public, but court records showed on Monday that Mr. Trump was filing an action against the judge, Juan M. Merchan, in an 11th-hour bid to delay the case. An online court docket where Mr. Trump is filing the action showed that the related paperwork was sealed.

Um, yeah, good luck with that.

New York appeals judge rejects Donald Trump’s request to delay his April 15 hush money trial

Why does the media keep referring to it as a hush money trial? Paying hush money is not illegal per se and Trump has not been charged with doing so. He is being charged with falsifying his company’s records. If he’d simply paid out of pocket and quietly given Stormy Daniels an envelope filled with cash, he wouldn’t be facing a trial for it.

https://twitter.com/Vernam/status/1777526604903612576
- Vernam

RFK Jr. Official Says Top Priority Is Preventing Biden Win

A New York-based campaign official for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is pitching Republican voters to support his independent presidential bid by arguing that Kennedy will help Donald Trump defeat Joe Biden if he’s on the ballot in New York.
Rita Palma, the Kennedy campaign’s state director in New York, has repeatedly made the case, including in a meeting with Empire State Republicans, that efforts to put Kennedy on the ballot in New York will help ‘get rid of Biden,’ which she called her ‘No. 1 priority,’ and make it easier for Trump to win the historically Democratic state.

Cravenly stupid as this is, I can’t imagine it being successful. In 2020 Biden won by a 23% margin with almost two million more votes than Trump in New York. And for 2024, even the conservative-leaning RealClearPolitics.com rates NY as “Solid Biden.”

”Donald Trump did this”

Why Sonia Sotomayor Must Step Down

If you’re someone who even vaguely cares about progressive political outcomes — someone who would rather not see a 7-2 conservative majority on the Supreme Court even if you don’t agree with liberals on every issue— you should want Sotomayor to retire and be replaced by a younger liberal justice. And — here’s the mean part — if you don’t want that, you deserve what you get.
The nature of lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court — something I’d reform if for some strange reason I was tasked with rewriting the Constitution — is that we as citizens have not just the right but I’d argue the responsibility to think strategically about the justices’ age and health. Perhaps — perhaps — if the political class hadn’t seen such discussions as uncouth, Ruth Bader Ginsburg would have come under more peer pressure to retire when Barack Obama could have replaced her. Instead, of course, RBG died in the waning days of the 2020 presidential campaign, replaced on the bench by Donald Trump’s choice of Amy Coney Barrett.

https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1777428088844099714
- MuellerSheWrote

Lawyers Urge Insurrection Act Reform

A group of former senior officials from Republican and Democratic administrations — co-lead by President Biden’s personal lawyer — is urging Congress to reign in a president’s ability to deploy the military inside the U.S.

An espionage scandal rocks Austria, laying bare alleged Russian spying operations across Europe