Jodi Vittori
@jodi1994
Professor/scholar of nexus of corruption, illicit finance, conflict, and national security. Military Veteran. Views are my own; likes are not endorsements.
#ZacBrown is singing at UFC fight at White House today, saying he’s doing it for veterans. In Nov2014, I saw him sing at Concert for Valor for veterans. (Wikipedia excerpt below) Feels like Zac Brown in 2026 vs Zac Brown in 2014 is an allegory for what has happened to US & patriotism.
Me: The world we’re living in couldn’t possible get any weirder. The World: What are your thoughts about airborne worms…? 🪱
I realize that marketing campaigns are planned out months in advanced, but maybe it’s not a good time for a nationwide bakery to market #Dubai chocolate Bundt cake.
From Wired today. AI results thingy at the top of google searches always had a lot of garbage but now it is used for scams, too. People figured out how to insert scam phone numbers into phone # searches. Am I showing my age if I say how much I miss the days when google was a good search engine?
Given how nasty, brutish, and short life in Afghanistan is, Thomas Hobbes’ #Leviathan is also banned. How says the Taliban don’t do irony?
If #SpaceShuttleDiscovery could be moved without destroying it (which seems unlikely), the exhibit would no longer be free for the public to see…instead, the public would have to 💰. Below is the admissions prices for its destination, #SpaceCenterHouston.
In 1934, Werner Finck put on a Cabaret skit btw a tailor and Finck. The tailor asked how he’d like the jacket, and Finck answers, “Wide Open—in the current fashion” to signify the “open pockets” of corrupt Nazi officials. The show was closed & Finck sent to a concentration camp. (Page 371-2)
When I was a kid, my mom worked at #Disney World. We referred to Walt Disney as “Uncle Walt” because (though long dead) he paid our mortgage. Roy was still alive & active at Disney then. What would Uncle Walt and Uncle Roy think about what the company they built has done?
Is it just me, or does Kim Jong Un’s train car seem to share a lot of decorating similarities to the Oval Office these days? 🤷♀️
Warning for Virginia LLC firms: There’s an LLC called “Business Filing” that is trolling through VA’s LLC files and sending letters out AS IF they were the state of VA regarding annual LLC filing fees. Ignore these!
A Trump executive order signed last night directs that it should cost more for Americans to visit their national parks. Happy 4th of July from Trump! 🇺🇸 www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...
This is the 9May25 DoD memo on subject matter to be pulled from military academic libraries. Even putting aside the clear racism, misogyny, etc, from a practical standpoint, how does one teach law when 2 classes of law & legislation books are no longer available in the school library?
Imagine being at the top of your class and ready to raise your right hand, swear and oath, and serve your country. And then the AF Academy sends you this as you read about them firing civilian professors, cutting majors, and lowering academic requirements. 🫡
The GOP platform had long sections about fighting crime. Pardon for Ross Ulbricht to bringing Tate Bros to US to not enforcing Foreign Corrupt Practices Act to now making money laundering even easier, the door is wide open for fentanyl and human traffickers, etc to make sure crime pays here
The US has never had a pro-corruption administration like this one: stopped enforcing Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), fired 17 Inspectors General, pardoned Blagojevic… Now will stop enforcing most important anti-corruption legislation since FCPA that ended anonymous shell companies. YCMTSU
From today’s Good Morning Crypto Substack. Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) can be great for countries when well-managed (i.e. Norway). But in highly corrupt countries, SWFs are another way for corruption & money laundering. Adding crypto—favorite of criminals—to mix not good financial management
This came in my Veterans’ Administration newsletter yesterday. Thanks for helping me ID fraud, scammers, and hackers that can steal my data, but Elon Musk and cronies are already in the Treasury systems that handle my VA payments so what am I supposed to do? 🤷🏼♀️
As someone who graduated from the US Air Force Academy and later taught in the Political Science Dept there, this in one of last night’s 4 x EOs on the military especially caught my eye. WTF?
My porch appears to have been haunted by the ghost of snowstorms past. 👻
Note that this is incorrect by @economist.com—Tuberville is REINTRODUCING the act he submitted in May But says a lot that he’s trying to undo some of the most important anti-crime, anti-money laundering, anti-corruption legislation in decades (& 🤬 to Economist for not noting this in their article)
Just to note that it was Republicans under President Lincoln who instituted the first US income tax, in case anyone needed a reminder of how much that political party has changed
Why did Carter push for passage of this controversial act? After Watergate and the Vietnam War, Congress held a series of hearings on what went wrong (one of the participants included a young Senator named Joe Biden).
It feels like the @nytimes.com was trolling Syria’s Bashar al Assad as he flees Damascus. 😆 Btw, Assad won’t be living in poverty if Dubai is indeed where he indeed goes: throughout sanctions the Emirati regime allowed his business empire there
An email from my alma mater, the USAF Academy, came in today and it reflects the complex and sad state of our country in many ways: some grads are focused on service to the nation and lifting up others; other grads seek politicization and revenge in the name of supposed “anti woke”
I feel like we might look back and see this as an allegory for the whole #Trump #ElonMusk relationship. (Source: @economist.com.web.brid.gy )