Odds and Ends — 7 June 2022
Cryptocurrency, Investing, Money, Economy, and Debt:
Americans Are Deeply Pessimistic About the Economy
Crypto lobbying hits fever pitch as Bitcoin's favorite senator finishes bill
The contents of the bill will likely shed light on who holds sway in the ever-expanding universe of crypto lobbying.
Traders think Bitcoin bottomed, but on-chain metrics point to one more capitulation event
Coronavirus News, Analysis, and Opinion:
These charts show the state of the global supply chain as China eases Covid lockdowns
How long covid could change the way we think about disability
Politics:
Why It’s a Mistake for Biden to Visit Saudi Arabia
Proud Boys Leaders Charged with ‘Seditious Conspiracy’
Henry ‘Enrique’ Tarrio, longtime chairman of the extremist group Proud Boys, was indicted on a new federal charge of seditious conspiracy with four top lieutenants on Monday.
The charges expand the Justice Department’s allegations of an organized plot to unleash political violence to prevent the confirmation of President Biden’s election victory on Jan. 6, 2021, when a pro-Trump mob attacked the U.S. Capitol.
Milo Yiannopoulos is Interning for Marjorie Taylor Greene
Yes, that Milo Yiannopoulos.
”He’s a one-man crime wave”: Rep. Jamie Raskin talks Donald Trump and previews the Jan. 6 hearings
Raskin has said the former president will get his “comeuppance,” but whether he’ll face direct criminal justice for his “premeditated” role in an attempted coup remains an open question. Tantalizingly, Raskin deflects on the question of whether former vice president Mike Pence has spoken to the committee or might testify against Trump. “I can’t get into it,” he says.
Trump’s Very Bad Summer Is About to Get Much Worse
Raskin says Jan. 6 panel has found more on Trump than ‘incitement’
Michigan Widens Probe Into Voting System Breaches
State police in Michigan have obtained warrants to seize voting equipment and election-related records in at least three towns and one county in the past six weeks, police records show, widening the largest known investigation into unauthorized attempts by allies of former President Donald Trump to access voting systems.
After a mass shooting, Republicans generally throw their hands up in the air and claim that well, nothing can really be done here, plus it’s the price we have to pay for Our Freedoms under the glory of America’s red, white and blue–but a vast majority of Americans aren’t drinking that water, according to a new CBS News/YouGov poll conducted after the Uvalde elementary school shooting.
A majority of Americans also aren’t buying into the idea that the country’s gun violence epidemic can be chalked up to mental health issues, not because there’s too many guns out there: 54 percent say that the U.S. has more mass shootings than many other countries because it has “more availability of guns,” while only 47 percent believe it’s because the U.S. has “more people with mental health issues.”
Ryanair Afrikaans test: South African fury over language quiz
Fake Electors Told to Use ‘Complete’ Secrecy
The Trump campaign directed a group of Georgia Republicans to meet in secret and obscure their objectives in an email obtained by federal prosecutors as part of their recent investigation into Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the election in several swing states.
The email is part of the intensifying Justice Department investigation focused on the Trump campaign’s interactions with so-called alternate Republican electors in states Trump lost and whether a scheme to organize them could be charged as a crime.
Guerrilla Attacks Signal Rising Resistance to Russian Occupation
Cholera outbreak could be happening in Mariupol
Michigan’s GOP push to fight fake “voter fraud” gets upended by actual fraud
You can discern much of Bannon’s mad character and contradictions in these exchanges. The chaos and the focus, the pugnacity and the enthusiasm, the transparency and the industrial-grade bullshit. Also, the mania: logomania, arithmomania, monomania (he’d likely cop to all of these, especially that last one—he’s the first to say that one of the features of his show is “wash rinse repeat”). Garden-variety hypermania (with a generous assist from espressos). And last of all, perhaps above all else, straight-up megalomania, which even those who profess affection for the man can see, though it appears to be a problem only for those who believe, as I do, that he’s attempting to insert a lit bomb into the mouth of American democracy.
China Building Secret Naval Facility In Cambodia
China is secretly building a naval facility in Cambodia for the exclusive use of its military, with both countries denying that is the case and taking extraordinary measures to conceal the operation.
Modi’s Multipolar Moment Has Arrived
India, now courted by all sides, is the clear beneficiary of Russia’s war.
Serendipity:
This New Style of Climate Denial Will Make You Wish the Bad Old Days Were Back
Colorado Will Lose Half Its Snow by 2080
George R.R. Martin on the importance of death in storytelling
Image credit: I created Frank Zappa’s Legacy using WOMBO Dream