Odds and Ends — 3 October 2025

@preparedwombat 78

about 11 hours ago

oddsandends

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

What $110K gap? Bitcoin futures are ‘aggressively long’ as whales return

Tokenization Could Revitalize Chile’s Struggling Pension System

The Jobs Report That Wasn’t

Every month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics produces the most reliable gauge of U.S. employment. But close watchers of the economy were left rudderless when the bureau withheld the data on Friday because of the federal government shutdown.
Without the data, the outlook is foggy as hazards abound, so businesses could be even less willing to make decisions about the future.

Coronavirus and Public Health:

The CDC still hasn't issued COVID vaccine guidelines, leaving access in limbo

Politics:

Trump ‘Determined’ U.S. Is Now at War with Drug Cartels

President Trump has decided that the United States is engaged in a formal ‘armed conflict’ with drug cartels his team has labeled terrorist organizations and that suspected smugglers for such groups are ‘unlawful combatants.’
The notice was sent to several congressional committees… It adds new detail to the administration’s thinly articulated legal rationale for why three U.S. military strikes the president ordered on boats in the Caribbean Sea last month, killing all 17 people aboard them, should be seen as lawful rather than murder.

Lawmakers Press Pentagon on Basis for Cartel Boat Strikes

Senators on both sides of the aisle pressed the Pentagon’s top lawyer in a closed-door meeting to provide a better legal explanation for striking alleged Latin American drug boats in the Caribbean.
In a classified Senate Armed Services Committee briefing Wednesday, the Pentagon general counsel, Earl Matthews, detailed the legal basis for the military’s attacks ordered by President Trump.
Matthews repeatedly deferred to Trump’s designation of cartels as foreign terrorist organizations as granting the Defense Department unilateral authority to use military force against them… Matthews refused to provide a written justification for the strikes.

https://twitter.com/EggerDC/status/1973561504663478497

An Autocracy of Dunces

If America still had a fully functioning democracy, Donald Trump’s speech Tuesday to the assembled generals would have ended his presidency.
Trump treated the event like a political rally and was clearly taken aback by the refusal of the audience to applaud or laugh at his jokes. Delivering a nakedly partisan speech to a mandated assembly of military officers was a gross violation of the Hatch Act. The content —telling the officers to be ready to use force against U.S. citizens — was clearly an impeachable offense. In an earlier era, Trump’s incoherent ranting would have paved the way for his immediate removal from office under the 25th Amendment.

https://twitter.com/Wilson__Valdez/status/1973438051222438366

Democrats Pull Away From AIPAC

A quiet retreat by Democrats from the pre-eminent pro-Israel lobbying group is the latest evidence of a realignment underway in Congress on Israel.

https://twitter.com/NateB_Panic/status/1973494044417466786

———— The Trump Shutdown————

https://twitter.com/yashar/status/1973720660825317558

Workers’ Email Changed to Blame Democrats for Shutdown

Department of Education employees furloughed this week discovered their email accounts had been manipulated while they were out of office to include partisan talking points that blamed a government shutdown on Democrats.
Five employees who spoke with NBC News and provided copies of their out-of-office messages said the wording was altered from how they originally had composed them.
Said one: “None of us consented to this. And it’s written in the first-person, as if I’m the one conveying this message, and I’m not. I don’t agree with it. I don’t think it’s ethical or legal. I think it violates the Hatch Act.”

https://twitter.com/SenTinaSmith/status/1973857477767967137

Donald Trump’s Shutdown Power Play

The President learned in 2019 how to undercut Congress in a funding fight, and he’s been making the same move ever since.
During Donald Trump’s first term, the President’s demand that Congress fund his proposed wall on the Mexican border led to the longest shutdown in history—thirty-five days, from December 22, 2018, to January 25, 2019. In the end, Trump caved, agreeing to reopen the government even without the nearly six billion dollars in border-wall funding that he had demanded.
This capitulation was initially portrayed as a triumph for the new Democratic majority under House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a stinging defeat for Trump… but it was not. It was, in fact, a moment of revelation in which he realized that he could do just about anything he wanted. In the end, Trump got his border-wall money. He simply went ahead and took it. The history of the Presidency may never be the same.

Trump charts path to total control amid government shutdown

President Trump is seizing on the government shutdown as an ‘unprecedented opportunity’ to consolidate control in the Oval Office, accelerating a trend toward unchecked power.
Many Democrats see the shutdown as a necessary evil to halt — or at least slow — Trump’s steamrolling of democratic norms and independent institutions. So far, the standoff is only emboldening the White House.

———— The Epstein Coverup ————

https://twitter.com/TheRealThelmaJ1/status/1973332120488845632

https://twitter.com/mmpadellan/status/1973589140634738755

———— Autocracy R Us ————

https://twitter.com/krystalball/status/1973864421576647054

https://twitter.com/KellyScaletta/status/1973571428533596162

Apple Removes ICE Tracking Apps from App Store

Apple on Thursday night said that it was removing ICEBlock and other apps from its App Store that can be used to anonymously report sightings of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
The move came after pressure on Apple from Attorney General Pam Bondi, and amid controversy over the Trump administration’s aggressive enforcement of immigration law with ICE agents and other authorities.

https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1973399925992894774

https://twitter.com/JustinWStapley/status/1973471740283199869

———— Putin&Krasnov vs. Ukraine ————

https://twitter.com/maria_drutska/status/1973653426522456152

https://twitter.com/TheFl0orIsLaVa/status/1973799822726459680

Drones sightings shut down Munich airport overnight

———— Smoot-Hawley 2.0 ————

Leaked texts on Scott Bessent’s phone suggest the White House got played bailing out Argentina—and U.S. soybean farmers are the casualties

Trump Making Plans to Bail Out Farmers

The Trump administration is planning to roll out the first tranche of bailout payments for farmers in the coming weeks using likely billions of dollars in funding from an internal USDA account.
But it won’t be enough: USDA’s Commodity Credit Corporation fund — which President Donald Trump previously tapped to provide $28 billion in farm aid during his first-term trade war with China — has just $4 billion left in the account.
Trump officials, including those at the Treasury Department, are looking at how to tap tariff receipts or other funding to supplement the payments without triggering a messy fight in Congress.

Both bailouts directly related to Trump’s idiotic tariffs. Self-inflicted wounds.

Nonprofit groups with disparate missions are banding together in an alliance aimed at protecting one another if they become targets of President Donald Trump’s ire.
Referring to the effort colloquially as a kind of ‘NATO for nonprofits,’ the groups plan to rally behind an embattled nonprofit by offering strategic and legal support, issuing supportive statements and loaning staff who would help keep it afloat until the crisis passes.
Just as the NATO military alliance views an attack on one member state as an attack on all, the network of nonprofits would serve as a bulwark against Trump administration actions that disrupt the work of groups that are providing lawful services and exercising free speech.

https://twitter.com/okimstillhungry/status/1973631871402778924