“So many books, so little time.” — Frank Zappa

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

Former Binance CEO CZ Begins 4-Month Prison Sentence in California

ECB is likely to jump ahead of the Fed by cutting rates on June 6

Bitcoin hash ribbons flash the first buy signal since $25K BTC price

Coronavirus News, Analysis, and Opinion:

One Arm or Two? How You Get Vaccinated May Make a Difference.

https://twitter.com/TristanSnell/status/1797757939635429804

Politics:

https://twitter.com/smmills1960/status/1797616361952387444

Donald Trump Rails Against Sentencing Date His Own Lawyer Agreed To

https://twitter.com/acnewsitics/status/1797410923424198979

Trump’s Lack of Remorse Could Hurt Him at Sentencing

It’s a truism of the criminal justice system that defendants hoping for lenient treatment at their sentencing are expected to take responsibility for their actions, even express remorse. But that flies in the face of Trump’s longtime refusal to acknowledge any wrongdoing, a tone that he often strikes to portray strength and present himself as a fighter under ceaseless attack.
While the strategy may resonate with his most loyal political supporters, it failed during his New York criminal trial and could complicate his legal team’s efforts to avoid a tough sentence.
Said law professor Jeffrey Cohen: “The fact, I think, that he has no remorse – quite the opposite, he continues to deny his guilt – is going to hurt him at sentencing. It’s one of the things that the judge can really point to that everybody is aware of — that he just denies this — and can use that as a strong basis for his sentence.”

Trumpworld’s Post-Conviction Spin Cycle

If being a convicted felon is so great for Donald Trump, why are Republicans freaking out?

https://twitter.com/Strandjunker/status/1797579376445260120

What Europe Fears

The undercurrent of dread at Truman Hall was not unique. I encountered it in nearly every conversation I had while traveling through Europe this spring. In capitals across the continent—from Brussels to Berlin, Warsaw to Tallinn—leaders and diplomats expressed a sense of alarm bordering on panic at the prospect of Donald Trump’s reelection.
Said one NATO official: “We’re in a very precarious place.”
He wasn’t supposed to talk about such things on the record, but it was hardly a secret. The largest armed conflict in Europe since World War II was grinding into its third year. The Ukrainian counteroffensive had failed, and Russia was gaining momentum. Sixty billion dollars in desperately needed military aid for Ukraine had been stalled for months in the dysfunctional U.S. Congress. And, perhaps most ominous, America—the country with by far the biggest military in NATO—appeared on the verge of reelecting a president who has repeatedly threatened to withdraw the U.S. from the alliance.
Fear of losing Europe’s most powerful ally has translated into a pathologically intense fixation on the U.S. presidential race. European officials can explain the Electoral College in granular detail and cite polling data from battleground states.

https://twitter.com/BlackKnight10k/status/1797639847693496735

Russia Co-Opts Far-Right Politicians in Europe

For nearly a year… the Czech authorities secretly recorded hours of meetings between several far-right politicians from across Europe and the associate, Artem Marchevsky, who was running the propaganda website, Voice of Europe, including at its offices on a quiet side street in the center of Prague. E.U. and Czech authorities, which have shut down the site, have labeled Voice of Europe a Russian propaganda operation.

https://twitter.com/justinbaragona/status/1797652212975563052

DOJ Says MAGA Favorite Epoch Times Is A Massive Money Laundering Scheme

https://twitter.com/Chasten/status/1796988252278378849

Texas professors sue to fail students who seek abortions

Publisher of ‘2,000 Mules’ Issues Apology

The conservative media company behind the book and film 2,000 Mules, which alleged a widespread conspiracy by Democrats to steal the 2020 election and was embraced by former president Donald Trump, has issued an apology and said it would halt distribution of the film and remove both the film and book from its platforms.

https://twitter.com/b_nishanov/status/1797310406186123402

Mike Johnson Tries to Walk Back Comments on Supreme Court

https://twitter.com/MattBinder/status/1797721533479354873

Trump’s Harder Line on Immigration Appears to Resonate

Former President Donald Trump has described his plans to remove large numbers of unauthorized immigrants from the country if elected to a second term by citing the mass deportations under President Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1950s.
In that initiative, federal agents and law enforcement officers used military techniques such as sweeps, raids and surveillance checkpoints — as well as a blunt form of racial profiling — to round up undocumented workers and load them onto buses and boats. As many as 1.3 million people were expelled, mostly Mexican and Mexican American workers, some of whom were U.S. citizens. Critical to the initiative — named Operation Wetback, for the racial slur — was intense anti-immigrant sentiment. Officials at the time used that sentiment to justify family separations and overcrowded and unsanitary detention conditions — practices that the Trump administration would deploy decades later in its own immigration enforcement.
As the 2024 presidential election heats up, some Latino advocacy and immigrant-rights groups are sounding the alarm that Mr. Trump’s tactics could amount to a repetition of a sordid chapter of American history. But recent polling shows that Mr. Trump’s position on immigration appears to be resonating. About half of Americans have said they would support mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, according to a CNN poll conducted by the research firm SSRS in January.

https://twitter.com/acnewsitics/status/1797722609028870295

This is in my backyard, unrelated to Trump: Fraud trial juror reports getting bag of $120,000 and promise of more if she’ll acquit

https://twitter.com/acnewsitics/status/1797050280720109658

Serendipity:

In Baltimore’s Senior Homes, Overdoses Plague a Forgotten Generation

https://twitter.com/Super70sSports/status/1797693441931120698

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