Odds and Ends — 22 May 2025

@preparedwombat 78

9 days ago

oddsandends

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

https://twitter.com/EpsilonTheory/status/1925238904208155026

Texas House passes strategic Bitcoin reserve bill

https://twitter.com/BTC_Archive/status/1925207949355446464

UK Appeals Court Dismisses Bitcoin SV Investors’ $13.3B Damages Bid Against Binance

Coronavirus and Public Health:

COVID Shots for Kids Are Over

Diseases are spreading. The CDC isn't warning the public like it was months ago

Politics:

Republicans Plan $1 Trillion in Cuts to Social Safety Net

House Republicans are pushing to slash nearly $1 trillion from two of the nation’s bedrock safety net programs, Medicaid and food stamps, as part of their sweeping package aimed at enacting President Donald Trump’s agenda.
If the legislation is approved, millions of Americans could lose access to these benefits as a result of a historic pullback in federal support.

What makes them think this will survive cloture in the Senate?

Split US Supreme Court blocks taxpayer-funded religious charter school

The Largest Upward Transfer of Wealth in American History

House Republicans voted to advance a bill that would offer lavish tax cuts for the rich while slashing benefits for the poor.

———— Autocracy R Us ————

Walz: ICE agents ‘modern-day Gestapo’

https://twitter.com/JPHilllllll/status/1924855047445151752

They’re saying they’re going to openly defy SCOTUS: J.D. Vance Says Supreme Court Should Be ‘Deferential’

US must keep control of migrants sent to South Sudan in case removals were unlawful, judge rules

https://twitter.com/thedailybeast/status/1925181561877483845

Judge Says Trump Administration Defied Court Order

A federal judge in Massachusetts said Wednesday the Trump administration’s deportation of several immigrants to conflict-ridden South Sudan violated his order to give detainees a meaningful opportunity to challenge their removal to a country where they are not citizens.
U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy said in a lengthy hearing that the removals Tuesday morning ‘obviously’ violated his prior order. He said the government notified seven immigrants — from Mexico, Cuba, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam — the day before they were deported that they would be sent to the African nation.

Trump sent 50 Venezuelans to prison in El Salvador. They were in the US legally.

Judge blasts ‘embarrassing retraction’ of charge against Newark mayor

A magistrate judge upbraided federal prosecutors Wednesday as he granted their request to dismiss trespassing charges against Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, calling the government’s abrupt about-face ‘a worrisome misstep’ in a case that has stoked a political firestorm.
Said U.S. Magistrate Judge Andre Espinosa: “An arrest of a public figure is not a preliminary investigative tool. It is a severe action. It should only be undertaken after a thorough, dispassionate investigation of credible evidence.”

———— Stark. Raving. Mad. ————

Trump Posts Video of Himself Hitting Bruce Springsteen With a Golf Ball

———— Om wit te wees is nuttig. ————

Trump Ambushes South African President

…Trump pressed South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa to protect White Afrikaner farmers from violent attacks in an extraordinary Oval Office conversation in which Trump made no mention of the African nation’s long-standing epidemic of violence against both White and Black people, nor its violent and discriminatory history of White rule.
Trump amplified false claims that White Afrikaners have been victims of a genocide, even showing video footage of crosses and earthen mounds that he said represented more than a 1,000 grave sites of murdered farmers. The mounds were in fact part of a protest against the violence, not actual graves.

Ramaphosa keeps cool during Trump's choreographed onslaught

https://twitter.com/covie_93/status/1925287088343204155

Fact-checking Trump’s claims of white farmer ‘genocide’ in South Africa

What a moron: Trump displays Democratic Republic of Congo visual as proof of South African 'genocide'

———— Blatant In-Your-Face Corruption ————

Trump Accepts Plane from Qatar

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has accepted a luxury Boeing 747 aircraft from Qatar for President Donald Trump to use as Air Force One, the Pentagon said Wednesday, despite ongoing questions about the ethics and legality of taking the expensive gift from a foreign nation.

Democratic senator says he has recordings of favors ‘promised’ by Trump’s IRS pick

The president promised peace on day one. Now he’s enabling Putin’s advances.

———— Mors Imperii ————

https://twitter.com/RetroAgent12/status/1924890225966534702

Gaming Out a ‘Sudden Stop’

I used to be an economics ambulance-chaser — someone who raced around the world to wherever there was an interesting economic calamity. And this international experience probably made me more sensitive than most economists to the way economies that seem to be doing OK can suddenly fall off a cliff into economic crisis.
In 2008, of course, America had a financial crisis of its own — and it was a nightmare. But it was very different from the emerging-market crises I used to spend so much time on. And right now I’m worried that the U.S. might be facing an emerging-market-type crisis: A ‘sudden stop,’ an abrupt cutoff of inflows of foreign capital. If we have a crisis like that it could, in particular, cause a severe housing crash.

https://twitter.com/HeatherThomasAF/status/1924546331965849807