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Odds and Ends — 1 July 2022

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Making Plans for Nigel

For Hive Power Up Day, I powered up 60.71 Hive.

CFTC Charges South African Bitcoin Club Mirror Trading International With $1.7B Fraud

IMF-Sri Lanka bailout talks end without a deal

Trumpism and the Myth of the ‘Free Market’

Let me be clear: Stagnant wages and insecure jobs for most people, and the erosion of the middle class, are not the consequences of the so-called “free market.” They are the results of a massive shift in power.

First reported case of a person getting COVID from a cat

COVID-19 Drives Global Surge in use of Digital Payments

Some morons wear black robes: Justice Thomas cites debunked claim that Covid vaccines are made with cells from ‘aborted children’

Trump denies lunging at Secret Service: ‘Who would do that?’

”She said I jumped from a car and started strangling — think of this — started strangling a Secret Service agent who I know very well.”

Well, that’s an interesting quasi-denial. In that she didn’t said anything about either jumping or strangling.

Trump Is in Trouble and He Knows It

The two big stories of this week are more closely linked than meets the eye.

And not just garden-variety trouble: Trump Is In Deep, Deep, Deep, Deep Trouble

Antiabortion lawmakers want to block patients from crossing state lines

Several national antiabortion groups and their allies in Republican-led state legislatures are advancing plans to stop people in states where abortion is banned from seeking the procedure elsewhere.

This seems to me to be blatantly unconstitutional but, given how batshit crazy the current SCOTUS is, I suppose anything is possible.

Many Secret Service Agents Were Rooting on Trump

”There was a very large contingent of Donald Trump’s detail, who were personally cheering for Biden to fail, and some of them even took to their personal media accounts to cheer on the insurrection and the individuals riding up to the Capitol as patriots. That is problematic.”

Former prosecutors say blockbuster January 6 testimony increases Trump's criminal exposure

Justices to Review State Legislative Power in Elections

Pause on that for a moment: the theory in its extreme is that the state constitution as interpreted by the state supreme court is not a limit on legislative power. This extreme position would essentially neuter the development of any laws protecting voters more broadly than the federal constitution based on voting rights provisions in state constitutions. And this theory might not just restrain state supreme courts: it can also potentially restrain state and local agencies and governors implementing rules for running elections.

New Zealand Labels U.S. Far-Right Groups Terrorists

New Zealand designated two U.S. far-right groups, the Proud Boys and the Base, as terrorist organizations this month, as the Pacific nation grapples with the potential spread of right-wing extremism within its borders.

SCOTUS Shackles EPA’s Authority To Regulate Greenhouse Gas Emissions From Power Plants

Snake Island: Why Russia couldn't hold on to strategic Black Sea outcrop

Don’t Forget That 43 Senate Republicans Let Trump Get Away With It

During former President Donald Trump’s second impeachment, even when Republicans insisted that the assault on the Capitol was an unfortunate consequence of heated rhetoric, most did not attempt to defend Trump’s conduct on the merits. Instead, they relied on the absurd technicality that the president was no longer in office, and therefore could not be convicted… I do not recall these excuses simply to point out how pathetic they seem in hindsight, given the gravity of the allegations and the clarity we now have about Trump’s conduct. I raise them because the thinness of the Republican rationales for acquittal is strong evidence that any justification, no matter how strained, would have sufficed, and yesterday’s revelations are unlikely to change the minds of many Republican legislators now. It is nevertheless crucial to establish for posterity what happened and why.

False Flag

The story we tell ourselves about today’s Stars and Stripes is a lie. The truth is much stranger.

Badge thanks to @arcange

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