Random News: December 1, 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 December 1, 2022, and it’s a Thursday for some reason. Always busy, so let’s get this schnizzy on the flizzy…

• Rabbit rabbit rabbit. Happy December.
• I’m going to try and not have a shitty December. Far too many of them have been filled with stress and illness for me.
• According to my own insane blog that I write for no one, I was sick enough to see a doctor on December 4, 2021, December 12, 2020, December 16, 2019, and December 11, 2017. I am completely determined to make it through this month unscathed.
• That being said, I still enjoy the other aspects of this month… the holiday planning, gift giving, yummy foods, and all that. I’m a weirdo but I’m also a pretty traditional guy in many aspects.
• Let’s see what’s up.
• I have to start with the passing of Fleetwood Mac’s Christine McVie. 
• When I was a kid in the time frame of 1975-1977, the self-titled album and ‘Rumours’ were a constant presence in my home. I was probably exposed to the voice of Christine as much as that of my own mom during those years.
• What you have to know is this: this wasn’t a singer in a band; she wrote a huge portion of Fleetwood Mac’s biggest hits.
• When Bill Clinton ran for president in 1992, it was a big deal that he used Christine’s song “Don’t Stop” as his campaign theme. Previous to that, no candidate had used a pop/rock song for that purpose.
• Bill sent out his appreciation for her last night, as did thousands and thousands of fellow musicians, celebrities, and fans.
• Per her bandmate Stevie Nicks, no one had any idea that Christine was very ill. She may not have known herself.
• But I will say that she lived for 79 years and created music that was very meaningful to many lives, a soundtrack that defined a generation and will echo into the future for many generations to come. Rest in peace, Songbird.
• Moving on.
• Huge congrats to Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), the next House Minority Leader and first Black man to lead a political party in Congress. He's going to do great things for America and be a nightmare to the GOP for decades to come. Seriously, they’ll wish they had Nancy Pelosi back.
• If things go well, we’ll flip the House in 2024 and Jeffries will be the next Speaker.
• The team they’re building around him is great too. 
• Minority Whip will be Katherine Clark (D-MA), Democratic Caucus Chair will be Pete Aguilar (D-CA). Vice Chair of the Democratic Caucus will be my very own congressional rep from LA’s South Bay and Westside, Ted Lieu (D-CA)!
• So that’s exciting, and frankly getting some new blood in there is such a welcome sight… no offense to the outgoing folks.
• The House voted 290 to 137 to bind rail companies and workers to a September agreement brokered by the Biden administration. It now heads to the Senate.
• The outcome of a separate bill to mandate paid sick leave remains uncertain.
• I liked Senator John Hickenlooper’s (D-CO) statement on the potential rail strike: “Railroad companies are holding the American economy hostage over 56 annual hours of sick leave. We can keep our economy humming, our supply chains open, AND treat workers with dignity.”
• Yes we can.
• Nikki Haley, the former U.N. ambassador under President Donald Trump and person who has the potential to be decent but chooses not to, said earlier this week that she would mull a 2024 Republican presidential bid over the holiday.
• This contradicts her previous statement that she wouldn’t enter the race if Trump opted to run again. But then, she didn’t know how awful things would be going for the Donald by now.
• Marco Rubio is now allegedly considering a POTUS run, again based on Trump quickly becoming a non-entity.
• Oh yeah. The FPOTUS’s taxes were turned over to the House Ways and Means Committee yesterday. That’ll be some fascinating shit.
• Dozens of tornadoes ripped through the South in the last couple of days. 34 tornadoes have touched down in Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama, according to the National Weather Service.
• Stay safe, friends.
• And now, The Weather: “Julia” by Vox Rea
• This is kinda wacky.
• A complaint filed with the Georgia Bureau of Investigations and the state attorney general is calling for an investigation into whether Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker committed a felony by voting in Georgia elections while claiming a tax exemption for a home he owns in Texas.
• What seems to be coming out is that Walker never resided at the house he owns in Georgia, (which would be a problem for his Senate run), but registered and voted there anyway, which is a felony.
• I doubt anything will happen, but it is pretty amazing how deeply people like this disregard the law, or some it doesn’t apply to them as it does to others.
• In Asshole News, Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita is insisting on punishing Dr. Caitlin Bernard, who provided an abortion to a 10-year-old rape victim who had to travel from Ohio to end her pregnancy. 
• Notably, this evil AG isn’t claiming she violated the law by providing the child an abortion; he’s just trying to punish her in any other way possible because she publicly discussed a case in which abortion was obviously, inarguably a net good and necessary to protect the girl’s life.
• Fucking asshole. I hope he meets a terrible end.
• From the Sports Desk… RIP to Gaylord Perry, who passed away today at age 84. Perry is a hall of fame pitcher who openly cheated to great success. His own autobiography from 1974 was called "Me and the Spitter”, in reference to his doctoring of baseballs.
• I’ll leave you with a remarkable thing that happened to me less than an hour ago.
• The sun was just coming up and I was on my patio while my coffee was brewing, as is typical for me. It was very quiet.
• Suddenly I heard a loud CRUNCH sound and looked up. Standing on my wood fence, not three feet from my head, was a massive red-tailed hawk. The sound was his huge talons digging into my fence where he’d perched.
• I looked at him. He looked at me. I said, “Hi,” and he flew off immediately. The whole thing lasted maybe three seconds.
• I’m not a spiritual person nor one to find meaning in random events, but it was a thrill, and a very interesting way to start a new month. 
• Today in history… Diarist John Evelyn records skating on the frozen lake in St James's Park, London, watched by Charles II and Queen Catherine (1662). Since no candidate received a majority of the total electoral college votes in the 1824 presidential election, the United States House of Representatives is given the task of deciding the winner in accordance with the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution (1824). In his State of the Union Address President Abraham Lincoln reaffirms the necessity of ending slavery as ordered ten weeks earlier in the Emancipation Proclamation (1862). President Rutherford B. Hayes gets the first telephone installed in the White House (1878). Iceland becomes a sovereign state, yet remains a part of the Danish kingdom (1918). The National Hockey League's first United States-based franchise, the Boston Bruins, plays their first game in league play at home (1924). The New York Daily News reports the news of Christine Jorgensen, the first notable case of sex reassignment surgery (1952). In Montgomery, Alabama, seamstress Rosa Parks refuses to give up her bus seat to a white man and is arrested for violating the city's racial segregation laws (1955). World AIDS Day is proclaimed worldwide by the UN member states (1988). Channel Tunnel sections started from the United Kingdom and France meet beneath the seabed (1990). Ukrainian voters overwhelmingly approve a referendum for independence from the Soviet Union (1991). 
• December 1 is the birthday of sculptor Marie Tussaud (1761), general/politician Georgy Zhukov (1896), actress/singer Mary Martin (1913), actor David Doyle (1929), saxophonist Jimmy Lyons (1931), singer Lou Rawls (1933), comedian Richard Pryor (1940), drummer John Densmore (1944), singer Bette Midler (1945), drug lord/terrorist Pablo Escobar (1949), bassist Jaco Pastorius (1951), guitarist Brad Delson (1977), NFL player DeSean Jackson (1986), and actress Zoë Kravitz (1988).

Welp, it’s time to do the things that I do. Thursdays are usually pretty busy. I have meetings and deliverables. It’s what adult humans tend to do. Not all of them. Some are working construction sites. Some are doing jobs in food service, education, the arts, engineering, and so on. I’m just a business guy so this is my perspective. There are many others, none of which are more or less valid than anyone else’s. We’re all just here on this little planet, being alive while we are. Enjoy your day.