Odds and Ends — 25 February 2025
A Programming Note:
We rented a truck for multiple trips of belongings moving from our old house to our new house. A late posting today, definitely none tomorrow, likely none for a day or three after that. Naproxen is my friend.
Cryptocurrency, Investing, Money, Economy, Business, and Debt:
South Dakota Follows Montana's Lead, Throws Water on Bitcoin Reserve Plans
‘Don’t Buy The Dip’—Stark Bitcoin ETF Warning Adds To ‘Extreme’ Fed Price Crash Fear
Gmail will stop using SMS for two-factor authentication
Grayscale Files for Polkadot ETF, Adding to Portfolio of Offered Funds
Coronavirus News, Analysis, and Opinion:
A small study on Covid vaccine safety sparks an online tempest
Response to preliminary research highlights conundrum faced by scientists
Politics:
https://twitter.com/FT/status/1894407407196860509
Since Trump and Gabbard are both Russian assets, wouldn’t it make more sense for the other four to kick America out, and rename it Four Eyes?
https://twitter.com/YourAnonCentral/status/1893862601173430410
Why Trump Wants to Own the Pentagon
Trump wants to remake the Pentagon, so he has total control over it. Of course, he is the Commander in Chief so it’s his prerogative to do so, but by firing Brown who is Black and Franchetti who was the first woman to run the Navy, Trump signaled that unquestioned loyalty will be the key qualification for these jobs rather than providing the best military advice to the president irrespective of American domestic politics, which is meant to be the key function of the roles…
The scar tissue from Trump’s past fights with Pentagon leaders has resulted in Trump’s intention to take total control over the Department of Defense. We saw a hint of that in the final months of his first term when Trump installed an ultra-loyalist, Kash Patel, to the powerful job of chief of staff at the Pentagon. Patel was recently voted in by the Senate to become the new director of the FBI.
Trump expects nothing less than Patel-levels of loyalty in his generals and top officials at the Pentagon. And Friday night’s purge of six senior military officers is likely to be just the aperitif since Hegseth is now looking for tens of billions of dollars of cuts at his department and he’ll likely have to lose significant numbers of personnel.
https://twitter.com/SilvermanJacob/status/1894130655128162345
https://twitter.com/RepJackKimble/status/1894401096115794126
https://twitter.com/bdquinn/status/1894232690808734116
I’ve been reading a book called How to Be a Bad Emperor: An Ancient Guide to Truly Terrible Leaders, written by Suetonius and translated by Josiah Osgood. Osgood writes of Caligula’s “propensity to give in to every whim and the relish he took in putting down others with cruel remarks.”
As Suetonius noted about Caligula, ‘To the Senate he showed no more mercy or respect. He allowed some who had achieved the highest offices to run alongside his chariot in their togas for several miles or to stand, dressed in a linen cloth, at the head or the foot of his couch as he dined.’
Sound familiar?
https://twitter.com/Wilson__Valdez/status/1894099109176324153
https://twitter.com/mmpadellan/status/1894247126596513920
Oversight Agency Finds Worker Firings Unlawful
An independent federal oversight agency has deemed at least some of President Trump’s mass firings of probationary period employees unlawful, creating a pathway for those employees to regain their jobs.
The Office of Special Counsel, the agency responsible for investigating illegal actions taken against federal employees, issued its decision for six employees, each at different agencies. While the decision was technically limited in scope, it could have immediate impact on all terminated staff at those six agencies and could set a wide-ranging precedent across government. It has not been made public and was provided to Government Executive by a source within the government.
https://twitter.com/TheTNHoller/status/1894045551559086291
States Could be Left With Vast Shortfalls
House Republicans hunting for ways to pay for President Trump’s tax cuts have called for cutting the federal government’s share of Medicaid spending, including a proposal that would effectively gut the Affordable Care Act’s 2014 expansion of the program.
Cutting Medicaid spending, which is central to the budget bill that House Republicans may bring to a vote on Tuesday, could result in millions of Americans across the country losing health coverage unless states decide to play a bigger role in its funding.
https://twitter.com/pesach_lattin/status/1894417109251449083
Even those who expected the worst from his reelection (I among them) expected more rationality. Today, it is clear that what has happened since January 20 is not just a change of administration but a change of regime—a change, that is, in our system of government. But a change to what?
There is an answer, and it is not classic authoritarianism—nor is it autocracy, oligarchy, or monarchy. Trump is installing what scholars call patrimonialism. Understanding patrimonialism is essential to defeating it. In particular, it has a fatal weakness that Democrats and Trump’s other opponents should make their primary and relentless line of attack…
Do the Democrats need a positive message of their own? Sure, they should do that work. But right now, when they are out of power and Trump is the capo di tutti capi, the history of patrimonial rule suggests that their most effective approach will be hammering home the message that he is corrupt. One thing is certain: He will give them plenty to work with.
https://twitter.com/timjacobwise/status/1893788259945165116
Putin Dangles Rare Earths Deals for U.S.
President Vladimir Putin on Monday said American companies could do lucrative business deals in Russia and even help mine rare earths in Russian-occupied Ukraine, further amplifying the Kremlin’s message to President Trump that there was money to be made from a better relationship with Moscow.
https://twitter.com/FPWellman/status/1893852875496829237
https://twitter.com/SenAdamSchiff/status/1894031084343406765
https://twitter.com/CalltoActivism/status/1894039748739563619
The Real Goal of the Trump Economy
The president’s public communion with the business titans who have submitted to him has been analyzed as a signal of his authoritarianism and his alliance with the rich. But it also reveals another emerging aspect of Trumpism: his rejection of the capitalist principles that ultimately generate prosperity.
Trump has never believed in the invisible hand—in leaving people alone to pursue self-interest in a free market; in letting market forces allocate capital and arbitrate any given company’s success or failure. Nor does he even believe in traditional mercantilist protection. He believes, like Putin, in political control of the economy’s commanding heights—success for those executives and companies who please him, failure for those who don’t. And he seems to be seeking that control more actively than he did in 2016.
Already, Trump’s words and actions have brought about a psychological transformation within the executive class. Presidents and business leaders have sometimes tangled, or formed partnerships, but the combination of fear and solicitousness that Trump now commands is wholly new.
https://twitter.com/RepMcGovern/status/1894036612331225467
U.S. Votes Against Resolution to Condemn Russia
The United States voted with Russia, North Korea, Belarus and 14 other Moscow-friendly countries Monday on a resolution condemning Russian aggression in Ukraine and calling for its occupied territory to be returned that passed overwhelmingly in the U.N. General Assembly on Monday.
https://twitter.com/WalshFreedom/status/1894147056014377231
Surprise, surprise: Military Contractors Want to Take Over Mass Deportations
A group of prominent military contractors, including former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince, has pitched the Trump White House on a proposal to carry out mass deportations through a network of ‘processing camps’ on military bases, a private fleet of 100 planes, and a ‘small army’ of private citizens empowered to make arrests.
The blueprint — laid out in a 26-page document President Donald Trump’s advisers received before the inauguration — carries an estimated price tag of $25 billion and recommends a range of aggressive tactics to rapidly deport 12 million people before the 2026 midterms, including some that would likely face legal and operational challenges.
https://twitter.com/JoJoFromJerz/status/1894113825508483237
https://twitter.com/ruth_deyermond/status/1894114807843807528
Federal technology staffers resign rather than help Musk and DOGE
https://twitter.com/jimstewartson/status/1894113894698025443
https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1894288117093572955
https://twitter.com/Billbrowder/status/1894084788010549302
https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1894224679050650047
Ex-Reform UK Wales leader accused of taking Russian-linked bribes
https://twitter.com/biggestfan89/status/1893298150225359020
Why Trump Renamed the Gulf of Mexico
Like many of Trump’s ideas, it is difficult to pinpoint where exactly he got the inspiration. Television host Stephen Colbert had made it a bit of political satire nearly 15 years earlier. A Democratic lawmaker in Mississippi had filed legislation to rename the coast off his state in 2012, also as a joke. Conservative voices for months had been promoting it as a way to showcase American pride and dominance.
But it was Trump, weeks before taking office, who ultimately decided to add the renaming to his Day 1 agenda, elevating a liberal joke turned conservative meme into an Oval Office action that has come to symbolize the tenor of his new presidency.
https://twitter.com/luke_metro/status/1893010377392431385
If the Great Resegregation proves successful, it will restore an America past where racial and ethnic minorities were the occasional token presence in an otherwise white-dominated landscape. It would repeal the gains of the civil-rights era in their entirety. What its advocates want is not a restoration of explicit Jim Crow segregation—that would shatter the illusion that their own achievements are based in a color-blind meritocracy. They want an arrangement that perpetuates racial inequality indefinitely while retaining some plausible deniability, a rigged system that maintains a mirage of equal opportunity while maintaining an unofficial racial hierarchy.
Like elections in authoritarian countries where the autocrat is always reelected in a landslide, they want a system in which they never risk losing but can still pretend they won fairly.
https://twitter.com/DecodingFoxNews/status/1893117561434177758
Trump Repeals Link Between U.S. Arms and Human Rights
The Trump administration has rescinded a Biden-era regulation that sought to ensure American allies don’t use U.S.-made weapons in violation of international humanitarian law.
https://twitter.com/stevemorris__/status/1894161831557509158
White House Seizes Control of Press Pool
The Fourth Estate should take their ball and go home rather than kowtow.
https://twitter.com/jimstewartson/status/1894078005351248351
Serendipity:
Artists release silent album in protest against AI using their work
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