Odds and Ends — 2 July 2025

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

Public Companies Buy More Bitcoin Than ETFs for Third Consecutive Quarter

The Golden Age for Employers Is Ending

For as long as most of us can remember, business has been able to call on a ready supply of foreign workers. The giants of Silicon Valley, farmers and food processors, hotels and restaurants, housebuilders and megastores: All have dealt with labor shortages by recruiting immigrants. One result has been an astonishing demographic transformation: 16% of the British population, 20% of the Swedish population, 19% of the German population and 14.3% of the US population were born abroad.
This golden age for employers is coming to an end.

Coinbase Acquires Token Management Platform LiquiFi as Exchange Aims to Expand Its Services

Coronavirus and Public Health:

Moderna's flu-COVID combo shot will test RFK Jr.'s vaccine regulators

Politics:

A Big, Bad, Very Ugly Bill

The ‘big, beautiful bill’ finances largesse for the rich with austerity for the poor. It will kill tens of thousands of Americans and impoverish millions more to grant million-dollar tax cuts to Trump and other billionaires. It will gut the Affordable Care Act to enrich corporations that move jobs overseas. And it will do nothing to solve the cost-of-living crisis that propelled Trump into office.

They Didn’t Have to Do This

In their heedless rush to enact a deficit-exploding tax bill so massive that they barely understand it, Senate Republicans call to mind a scene in The Sopranos. A group of young aspiring gangsters decides to stick up a Mafia card game in hopes of gaining the mobsters’ respect and being brought into the crew. At the last moment, the guys briefly reconsider, before one of them supplies the decisive argument in favor of proceeding: ‘Let’s do it before the crank wears off.’ After that, things go as you might expect.
Like the Mafia wannabes, congressional Republicans have talked themselves into a plan so incomprehensibly reckless that to describe it is to question its authors’ sanity…
Given that President Donald Trump and the GOP, unlike the morons in The Sopranos, are not collectively under the influence of crystal meth, the question naturally arises: Why are they doing this?

They All Know It’s a Disaster

It’s not just a bill — it’s President Trump’s entire legislative agenda wrapped into one. The only major piece of legislation this Congress will pass. And, some argue, the very reason many of these Republicans were elected in the first place.
It’s border policy. It’s defense spending. It’s tax cuts. It’s health care. Trump is handling everything else unilaterally — even the real wars and the trade wars — so this bill is it.
But behind closed doors, there’s real anxiety. Especially around the Medicaid cuts. They know it could come back to bite them in the midterms.
Said one Republican lawmaker: “The Democrats are rooting for us to fuck ourselves on Medicaid.”

———— Theresienstadt in the Everglades ————

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…the next step in his immigration crackdown

Speaking to reporters, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said he intends to deputise members of the state's National Guard Judge Advocate Corps, or Jags, to act as immigration judges and facilitate rapid removals from the country.

How is that remotely legal? Immigration courts are part of the federal DOJ. Can blue state governors follow his lead and appoint acting as immigration judges who then don’t facilitate rapid removals from the country?


———— Autocracy R Us ————

Kristi Noem Spreads Bizarre, Unsubstantiated Story About Detaining A Cannibal


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

It’s Flat Out Extortion

CBS is reportedly nearing a settlement with Donald Trump over a bizarre lawsuit stemming from a “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris during the 2024 campaign — a case almost all legal experts consider frivolous.
At the heart of the lawsuit is a single answer Harris gave during the interview. >CBS aired the full response, but in two separate broadcasts — one on “60 Minutes,” the other on “CBS Mornings.”

———— Putin&Krasnov vs. Ukraine ————

———— Smoot-Hawley 2.0 ————

Trump threatens Japan with tariff up to 35% as deadline looms

———— Melon Husk ————

———— Israel/Krasnov/Iran ————

Iran Suspends Cooperation With U.N. Nuclear Watchdog

———— Stark. Raving. Mad. ————

———— Mors Imperii ————

Trump Cut Rape Survivor Kits for Congo

…Donald Trump’s administration cancelled a major contract to supply emergency kits for rape survivors in Congo as violence surged in the east this year, leaving thousands without access to life-saving medication,” Reuters reports.
The emergency kits include medication to prevent HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, as well as unwanted pregnancies. The decision to cancel the contract for around 100,000 post-rape kits has not been reported previously.

Morale Plunges at Veterans Affairs Hospitals

They say supplies have gone unordered, appointments go unscheduled, and medical staff fear that these conditions might not only encourage doctors and nurses now working in the over-strained system to quit, but dry up the pipeline for future talent.

Trump Withholds Nearly $7 Billion for Schools

The Trump administration has declined to release nearly $7 billion in federal funding that helps pay for after-school and summer programs, support for students learning English, teacher training and other services…
The move is likely to be challenged in court and has already been criticized as illegal by Democrats and teachers’ unions, who emphasized that the money had been appropriated by Congress and was approved by President Trump in March as part of a broader funding bill.
“This is lawless,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.

Study: 14 million lives could be lost due to Trump aid cuts

Serendipity:

She Rides Shotgun is a damn fine book so I’m really looking forward to the film adaptation:

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Badge thanks to arcange@arcange

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Odds and Ends — 2 July 2025 | Ecency