Random News: August 23, 2022

DISCLAIMER: Zak's Random News is very random and doesn't cover many things, and not everything may be accurate, because I'm just some guy. Go find a real news source.

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Good morning. It’s August 23, 2022, and it’s a Tuesday. Some informational content in bullet form is forthcoming…

• The former president filed a lawsuit yesterday. The suit is titled ‘Trump vs. The United States of America’, which is the most appropriate description of the last six years or so.
• The motion and accompanying statement is, in legal terms, a whole lot of hoo-haw. It’s a bunch of malarky. It’s the meaningless drivel of an insane person with no basis in reality as we know it.
• Attorney Ken White’s legal review of the motion: “I mean this is shitty on every level.  It's shitty strategy, shitty lawyering, shitty writing, shitty organization. It's even shitty as propaganda. It's just incompetent.”
• But wait. There’s some comedy.
• When his incompetent legal team initially filed the suit, they initially stated that the FPOTUS is being represented by Donald J. Trump, PRO SE.
• “PRO SE” means he is representing himself. Can you even imagine what a scene that would be, with him pretending to be a lawyer based on something he saw on TV or in a movie one time? That would be comedy gold.
• Sadly, they updated the docket so that he has an actual lawyer listed. I mean, I assume it’s an actual lawyer. It’s Trump, so who even knows for sure?
• Regardless, the known situation for FPOTUS just got a whole lot worse. The New York Times reported yesterday that Trump took over 300 classified documents to Mar-a-Lago. It’s way more than was assumed.
• The 300+ documents include material from the CIA, the National Security Agency, and the FBI, spanning a variety of topics of national security interest.
• Taking a single classified document results in years in jail for most people. Even taking a single UNCLASSIFIED document without permission is a serious crime.
• It’s not looking good at all. I mean, it is looking good for people who believe in justice and equality. But for FPOTUS? It’s looking really, truly, spectacularly bad. 300+ documents bad.
• Trump’s lawyer Christina Bobb, who up until recently had been an anchor for the OAN network, had signed off on a document that all classified documents had already been returned. They, as it turns out, had not, by a long shot.
• So she’s gonna need a lawyer, and if you know anyone who’d like to the the former president’s lawyer’s lawyer, that’s going to fuel the legal industry for awhile. His other lawyers will also need lawyers, and then they, themselves, might need lawyers.
• Speaking of lawyers, I need to quote Ken White again when he says, “I know I am kind of obsessing about this but this is my area and this is historically and flamboyantly incompetent and surreal. Like imagine you love football and it's the Super Bowl and it's kickoff and the kicker whips out a javelin and kills the mascot and yells FOOT FAULT.”
• I think the FPOTUS should be given a light sentence under the circumstances of being a general idiot who has no idea what he’s saying or doing. Say, just five years per document. He’d only have to serve (checks calculator) 1,500 years in prison, and with good behavior could get out in as early as 800 years.
• And now, The Weather: “Here I Land” by Nicholas Stevenson.
• Funny note about today’s Weather. It’s a song I actually first heard on the real ‘The Weather’ from ‘Night Vale’, and I liked it so much I not only bought it, but got to know Nicholas Stevenson and have enjoyed a bunch of his other music as well. So that’s cool, I guess.
• Oh, also it’s Ukraine’s independence day tomorrow, and the situation at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is nasty, with the UN saying that the world is facing a moment of maximum danger.
• Hopefully we’re all alive for the weekend. I was gonna work on some tunes. Can’t do that if I’m dead.
• From the Sports Desk… here are the current ten best teams in Major League baseball: Dodgers (84-37), Mets (79-45), Astros (78-45), Braves (76-48), Yankees (75-48), Cardinals (70-51), Phillies (67-55), Padres (68-56), Rays (66-55), and Blue Jays (65-55).
• It’s Florida’s primary election today. Charlie Crist is going to have a pretty easy victory over Nikki Fried in the Democratic race for governor. He’ll go on to face the thoroughly evil Ron DeSantis in the general election in November.
• Val Demings will be the victor in the Democratic primary for US Senate. She’ll go up against Marco Rubio in November.
• Today in history… the Golden Horde lays siege to Moscow (1382). George III states that the American colonies are in open and avowed rebellion (1775). A state named Franklin in what’s now eastern Tennessee declares itself independent but is not accepted into the USA and only lasts four years (1784). Japan declares war on Germany in WWI (1914). Italy executes anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti (1927). Romania switches sides from the Axis to the Allies in WWII (1944). César Chávez begins the largest farm worker strike in U.S. history (1970). The World Wide Web is opened to the public (1991). Muammar Gaddafi is overthrown during the Libyan Civil War (2011).
• August 23 is the birthday of King Louis XVI of France (1754), physicist/astronomer Sarah Frances Whiting (1847), actor/dancer Gene Kelly (1912), actress Barbara Eden (1931), drumming madman Keith Moon (1946), folk-rock singer-songwriter Linda Thompson (1947), actress Shelly Long (1949), guitarist Dean DeLeo (1961), actor River Phoenix (1970), Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer (1971), NBA eternal legend Kobe Bryant (1978), and NBA player Jeremy Lin (1988).

Well, zippity doo dah, here we go with another fucking day! Let’s do those things that we do. I have work deliverables, meetings, grocery shopping, and probably some other shit that I can’t remember because I need more coffee. You do what you do. Be cool to people and animals. Especially animals. Enjoy your day.