Odds and Ends — 25 March 2025
Cryptocurrency, Investing, Money, Economy, Business, AI, and Debt:
https://twitter.com/AriCohn/status/1903962638050017558
Wealthy Americans seek refuge from Donald Trump in Swiss banks
https://twitter.com/SilvermanJacob/status/1904151227253858583
https://twitter.com/localhuman/status/1904236008662810830
Bitcoin flips ‘macro bullish’ amid first Hash Ribbon buy signal in 8 months
Coronavirus and Public Health:
Why the COVID Reckoning Is So One-Sided
Bird flu spreads to mammals, fears of human transmission
Politics:
———— Pete Hegseth, DUI Hire ————
The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans
U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. I didn’t think it could be real. Then the bombs started falling.
The world found out shortly before 2 p.m. eastern time on March 15 that the United States was bombing Houthi targets across Yemen.
I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attack might be coming. The reason I knew this is that Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had texted me the war plan at 11:44 a.m. The plan included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing.
https://twitter.com/kenklippenstein/status/1904215179002282086
https://twitter.com/cmclymer/status/1904215937458286922
https://twitter.com/SenTinaSmith/status/1904248911386308659
https://twitter.com/Strandjunker/status/1904247660141228318
https://twitter.com/superduker1301/status/1904276440029540436
This Is Not a Smoothly Functioning Government
Lost amid the headline-grabbing insanity of the classified details is what the principals were discussing on the group chat. It doesn’t take reading too deeply between the lines to see that the principals weren’t entirely clear on what Trump had ordered — someone, apparently Stephen Miller, says, ‘as I heard it, the president was clear: green light’ — which raises some troubling questions about how much White House staff and Cabinet leaders are interpreting or reading the tea leaves on vague presidential directives or desires. When the president of the United States commits US military forces to operations overseas there shouldn’t be any ‘as I heard it’ ambiguity.
Moreover, the principals here were having notably pointed policy discussions in the group chat — which, under a normal functioning government, would be handled at the interagency level by staff and sorted out long before it got a point where the vice president and defense secretary are texting back and forth.
The idea that the highest-ranking officials of the US government are just texting each other in the same group chat you use with your college roommates from a decade ago should raise dizzying questions about how policy is being thoughtfully decided and road-tested inside the federal government right now.
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1904242852827480216
https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1904248426042143020
https://twitter.com/cmclymer/status/1904220508339462215
https://twitter.com/dylanmatt/status/1904226488095834206
“From an operational security perspective, this is the highest level of fuck up imaginable. These people cannot keep America safe.” — Pete Buttigieg
https://twitter.com/Mollyploofkins/status/1904255812488372644
https://twitter.com/NoFear_DogHere/status/1904251116382306434
https://twitter.com/ArtCandee/status/1904313544893718885
https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1904361588452127101
https://twitter.com/GovTimWalz/status/1904345287637848559
———— Melon Husk ————
https://twitter.com/StephenKing/status/1903912509251240399
Why Did Elon Musk Go After Bunkers Full of Seeds?
https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1904209829901570325
———— Krasnov/Putin/Ukraine ————
https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1904173337569264109
https://twitter.com/JayinKyiv/status/1904235123245236634
Kremlin Wants to Drag Out Peace Talks
As high-level delegations from the U.S. and Russia arrive in Saudi Arabia for the second round of bilateral talks aimed at ending the war in Ukraine, Moscow’s envoys will have one goal on their mind: buying time.
For the Kremlin, dragging out peace negotiations for as long as possible is imperative for seizing as much Ukrainian territory as it can and getting an upper hand over Kyiv in relations with the U.S.
https://twitter.com/BonkusBonkers/status/1904110020741964253
https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1904189460104819142
———— Autocracy R Us ————
https://twitter.com/jimstewartson/status/1903815446647939226
https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1904251300188975479
…Donald Trump is at war with the rule of law in the United States. His assault is already the most hostile and sustained political attack on America’s legal and law-enforcement institutions since the Civil War. It is a war he declared before he began his first term, and one he pursued with tenacity once in office. It even had its own call to arms on January 6, 2021, or so many of his supporters believed.
Exiled temporarily from the White House, Trump spent four years vowing to continue this war if he were reelected, and he has made good on that promise, targeting the foundations of almost every institution of law and justice within his reach as the chief executive.
https://twitter.com/billybinion/status/1904026581808386520
https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1903943537760055527
https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1904332078855967066
'Nazis got better treatment,' judge says of Trump administration's Alien Enemies Act deportations
https://twitter.com/NormOrnstein/status/1904145356155154547
https://twitter.com/MaureenLangloss/status/1904166355877642589
https://twitter.com/SymoneDSanders/status/1904216901321978122
https://twitter.com/CBHessick/status/1904240011597238497
———— Alina Habba ————
https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1904186722310643847
———— Mors Imperii ————
https://x.com/AdamKinzinger/status/1903971737793937551
https://twitter.com/acnewsitics/status/1903845796522733820
Social Security Is Breaking Down
The Social Security Administration website crashed four times in 10 days this month, blocking millions of retirees and disabled Americans from logging in to their online accounts because the servers were overloaded. In the field, office managers have resorted to answering phones at the front desk as receptionists because so many employees have been pushed out. But the agency no longer has a system to monitor customers’ experience with these services, because that office was eliminated as part of the cost-cutting efforts led by Elon Musk.
And the phones keep ringing. And ringing.
https://twitter.com/Bricktop_NAFO/status/1903903717293687095
https://twitter.com/KellyScaletta/status/1903977285557919903
Deportations Haven’t Surged Under Trump
In the first two months of President Trump’s immigration crackdown, the administration has taken new and unusual measures to conduct deportations. It has enlisted military planes, pressured other countries to retrieve their citizens, sent people to third countries far from their homes, and invoked a wartime law to remove migrants without due process.
But even as immigration officials have escalated efforts to remove people from the United States, they continue to fall short of the mass deportations Mr. Trump vowed to carry out. Overall, the number of flights and their destinations look largely similar to those under President Joseph Biden.
https://twitter.com/kenklippenstein/status/1903977003142791641
Congratulations @preparedwombat! You have completed the following achievement on the Hive blockchain And have been rewarded with New badge(s)
Your next target is to reach 240000 upvotes.
You can view your badges on your board and compare yourself to others in the Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOPOy vey, as they used to say in my old Bensonhurst neighborhood.
The insanity is literally too much for the system to handle. They are breaking it on purpose, with cheers from their cult. What do we do?
At some point, it all comes crashing down. Unfortunately, not just America.