Odds and Ends — 5 April 2026

@preparedwombat 78

1 day ago

oddsandends

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

Bad, Very Bad and Much Worse: Pick a Forecast for the War and Economy

Liquidity, not novelty, determines tokenization’s value

Charles Schwab Is Gearing Up to Offer Bitcoin, Ethereum Spot Trading

Coronavirus and Public Health:

COVID‑19 variant BA.3.2 is spreading quickly across US

Iran:

Stark. Raving. Mad. — Trump Threatens to Destroy Iran’s Infrastructure

“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP”

https://twitter.com/MarkHalperin/status/2040789596787630153

https://twitter.com/PinstripeBungle/status/2040715642563678432

https://twitter.com/magnxsium/status/2040098724274221136

A Huge Strategic Defeat

Compared with before the war, Iran’s strategic position is enhanced, not weakened, because a regime that survives this kind of asymmetric war wins it. Buoyant oil prices are now providing Iran with twice the oil revenue it had before the war! IRGC control of the Strait of Hormuz opens another stream of tolls — up to $2 million a ship — for the regime, funding rearmament.
If Iran ends the war with strategic control of almost a fifth of the world’s oil supplies, the Gulf states will have to accommodate it. That’s a huge strategic defeat for us.
And for what? Iran’s nuclear threats had already been defanged last year. There was no immediate threat. There was no looming threat. There was simply an immediate temptation: to exploit Iran’s weakness by launching Netanyahu’s long-sought-for war. And Trump was dumb enough and vain enough to fall for it.

https://twitter.com/DeTocqueville14/status/2040105967430340636

Hegseth Says U.S. Troops Are Fighting for Jesus. The Pope Disagrees.

In sharp contrast to the Trump administration’s calls for Christian prayers for the war effort, Pope Leo XIV says military domination is “entirely foreign to the way of Jesus Christ.”

https://twitter.com/hissgoescobra/status/2040161977155334587
https://twitter.com/Angry_Staffer/status/2040141519500275960

Experts dispute US account of deadly Iran sports hall strike in Lamerd

Politics:

What Trump’s Iran War Means for Republicans

It’s hard to overstate how dramatically the political landscape has shifted.
At this time last year, many Republican leaders believed there was a path to preserve their narrow House majority and easily hold the Senate. Now they privately concede that the House is all but lost and Democrats have a realistic shot at taking the Senate.

https://twitter.com/PaulleyTicks/status/2040115582604046550

Trump wants $152 million to rebuild and reopen Alcatraz as a secure prison

Anyone who’s ever visited Alcatraz knows that Trump’s idea is complete folly. The place is crumbling. There’s no rebuilding it. It would have to be razed to the ground and an entirely new facility built.

———— The Epstein Coverup ————

https://twitter.com/RedPencilScript/status/2039769937384734751

———— Autocracy R Us ————

https://twitter.com/CBoTheEggman/status/2039822295179374900

Judge rejects DOJ's bid to reinstate Powell subpoenas

Judge Rebukes Prosecutors as ICE Protest Cases Falter: “Not Ready for Prime Time”

ICE-linked arrests in Los Angeles are leading to cases that unravel in court, where judges have rebuked prosecutors as “not ready for prime time.”

ICE detains Islamic Society of Milwaukee President Salah Sarsour

Key Trump officials, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, were surprised by the barrage of retaliatory attacks Tehran launched against U.S. and Israeli targets across the region, including in countries long assumed to be off-limits: Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar, a state that had both harbored Iran’s terrorist proxies and served as a conduit for backchannel diplomacy between the U.S. and Hamas. The response shattered the assumption that Tehran would confine itself to performative retaliation.
In internal deliberations before the war’s launch, Hegseth had pointed to Iran’s muted reaction to Trump’s past attacks as evidence that calibrated force could impose costs on Tehran without triggering a broader war.
Said one insider: “Hegseth was caught off guard. There’s no question.”

https://twitter.com/leftcoastbabe/status/2039950744422699087

https://twitter.com/JamieBonkiewicz/status/2040070827794665920

Hegseth’s War on America’s Military

The United States is in the middle of a major war, but that didn’t stop Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on Thursday from firing General Randy George, America’s most senior Army officer. George was the Army’s chief of staff, and he was cashiered along with another four-star general, David Hodne, and Major General William Green Jr., the top Army chaplain, in what has been a rolling purge by Hegseth of senior officers—particularly those close to the secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll.
Why were these men fired while U.S. forces are fighting overseas? The Defense Department has given no official reason for their dismissals, but likely they are the latest victims of Hegseth’s vindictive struggles with the Army, which he feels treated him poorly—the service ‘spit me out,’ he said in his 2024 book—as he struggles in a job for which he remains singularly unqualified.

https://twitter.com/mehdirhasan/status/2040089954609422374