Random News: April 25, 2023

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 April 25, 2023, and it’s a Tuesday. Lots and lots of things going on; let’s explore them together…

• About two minutes after I posted my news bullets yesterday morning, something magical happened.
• Tucker Carlson, the heir to the Swanson frozen foods fortune and a terrible human being in every measurable aspect, was fired from Fox News.
• How do we know he was fired, as opposed to having resigned?
• His show on Friday signed off by telling his viewers they’d see him Monday. In other words, he’d not planned on leaving over the weekend.
• A few minutes after the announcement on Carlson’s firing, CNN announced that Don Lemon had been fired from CNN. Many MAGA folks were feeling like this was some balancing event to compensate for Tucker’s firing in the universe of mainstream news media.
• Nope!
• Don Lemon put his foot in his mouth not long ago when he was talking about presidential candidate Nikki Haley, age 51.
• “She says people, politicians are not in their prime. Nikki Haley is not in her prime, sorry. A woman is considered to be in her prime in her 20s, 30s and maybe her 40s.”
• Yikes! I’m happy to see him go, frankly, for a whole bunch of reasons.
• Anyway, back to Tucky.
• News sources are saying that Fox chairman Rupert Murdoch personally ordered Tucker Carlson’s firing over a discrimination lawsuit filed by Abby Grossberg, a former producer on his show. Her suit alleges lawyers for Fox News “coached” and “intimidated” her into giving misleading testimony in the lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems.
• Murdoch also didn’t like Tucker’s conspiracy theory that undercover government agents were involved in the January 6 insurrection. Like much of Tucker’s “news”, this has no factual basis nor evidence.
• But mostly Murdoch’s decision was about the money that personalities like Tucker are causing to rapidly drain from Fox’s coffers.
• Here’s how it went down: yesterday morning, Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott called Carlson and informed him he was being taken off the air, and his Fox News email account was shut off.
• Carlson was stunned. He was in the midst of negotiating the renewal of his Fox News contract through 2029, and as of last week, Carlson had told people he expected the contract to be renewed.
• Delicious.
• Anyway, some good news for Tucker: he lost his job while the U.S. currently has its lowest rate of unemployment in more than five decades, so he should be just fine.
• In other news…
• Yesterday, President Biden and Vice President Harris met with the "Tennessee Three," Democratic Reps. Gloria Johnson, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, in the Oval Office.
• Those are the people who TN Republicans tried to throw out of office for supporting gun control measures. Biden called the Tennessee Republican legislature's move to expel them “shocking” and “undemocratic”.
• President Biden announced his reelection bid today. Why now?
• A formal reelection announcement means the president is now allowed to raise money directly for his campaign. Biden will spend campaign funds on salaries and logistics building out a 2024 staff and holding events outside his official presidential business.
• Makes sense.
• Will I support Biden for president in 2024? Absolutely yes. Is he my all-time favorite person? No, but we’re not in middle school. Under the circumstances handed to him as president, he’s done a remarkably good job.
• He has my vote.
• Also, despite all the doom and gloom, I find it very likely Biden will beat presumptive opponent Trump in the general election rather easily, or at least with a larger margin of victory than in 2020.
• Moving on…
• It was announced yesterday that Fulton County, GA district attorney Fani Willis will announce potential indictments of Trump or others between July 11 and September 1.
• In case you need a program to keep track of all the Orange Menace’s crimes, this is in regard to crimes related to interference in Georgia’s 2020 election.
• “What we have here is a conspiracy to acquire and improperly distribute (unauthorized) data. There is probably a crime of interfering with the rights of the people of Georgia to have a free and fair election. And this is a series of crimes, a pattern of criminal activity, then it could possibly violate the Georgia RICO statute.” - Former prosecutor Michael Zeldin
• Fani Willis has been investigating the breach of voting systems in Coffee County, GA, coordinated by members of Trump’s legal team including Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell. 
• Yikes. Sucks to be them!
• Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota has signed into law a near-total ban on abortion, becoming the latest Republican governor to adopt stringent antiabortion measures after the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
• While I never paid much value to “red states” or “blue states”, the dividing line of states where women have bodily autonomy versus being forced to give birth is very tangible to me.
• I would never send a child to college in one of those states. I would never plan a business event or a vacation there. I would never do anything that was going to help those states in their war against women.
• Moving on…
• Myles Cosgrove, the cop who was fired by the police department in Louisville, KY after he shot and killed Breonna Taylor in March 2020, has now been hired by a small county sheriff’s office in the same state.
• Ms. Taylor’s mother Tamika Palmer said she was disgusted to learn that Mr. Cosgrove would again be working as a police officer. “When are these cops going to stop protecting bad cops? The people in that county have now got a killer with a badge they’ve got to deal with.”
• Yup.
• Some good news from the SCOTUS.
• Yesterday the Supreme Court allowed lawsuits brought by municipalities seeking to hold energy companies accountable for climate change to move forward in a loss for business interests.
• Oil companies are mad. The court turned away their appeals in five cases involving claims brought by cities and municipalities in Colorado, Maryland, California, Hawaii and Rhode Island as part of efforts to hold businesses accountable for the effects of climate change.
• Get their asses.
• Recreational marijuana is likely going to be legalized and regulated in Minnesota very soon.
• The state’s Democrat-controlled House is expected to pass it today after green-lighting similar legislation in 2021. The Senate, where Democrats hold only a one-seat majority, is scheduled to vote Friday on its own version.
• Across the country, Black and Hispanic Americans have been disproportionately burdened by state convictions for marijuana-related offenses.
• I don’t know why I’m mentioning the train wreck that is Twitter, but the insanely incompetent rollout of their premium Twitter Blue service (that sells checkmark “verification” with membership) has been a laughingstock.
• First Elmo stated that no one who didn’t pay $8/month would get a verification badge as of April 20, 2023.
• At first almost all of the blue checks disappeared. But then magically on Saturday, they were back. It seems that Elon decided that anyone with over 1M followers would keep the badge for free.
• Still, the information on the account states that the people have paid and have verified their phone number, which was universally denied by the people whose checkmarks were handed back without explanation.
• But that led to another embarrassment for Elmo, which was that they were claiming they’d received payment and verification from celebrities who were DEAD, but still had large followings.
• When contacted by media for comment on the debacle, Twitter responded with a poop emoji, thereby showing the maturity of its owner.
• And now, The Weather: “From Me to You” by PWNT
• RIP to Harry Belafonte, who died today at age 96. He singlehandedly popularized the Trinbagonian Calypso musical style with an international audience in the 1950s. His breakthrough album ‘Calypso’ was the first million-selling LP by a single artist.
• Belafonte was also a political activist who was a huge supporter of the civil rights movements of the ‘50s and ‘60s, and literally bankrolled Martin Luther King Jr., supporting him and his family financially and bailing MLK out of jail.
• Rest in pece to a good man. Day-O!
• From the Sports Desk… the Green Bay Packers have finally traded quarterback Aaron Rodgers to the New York Jets. The deal was announced yesterday.
• The Packers agreed to deal Rodgers and their 2023 first round pick (No. 15) and a 2023 fifth-round pick (No. 170) to the Jets for New York's 2023 first-round pick (No. 13), a 2023 second round pick (No. 42), a 2023 sixth-round pick (No. 207) and a conditional 2024 second-round pick that becomes a first if Rodgers plays 65% of the plays this season.
• Shrug. I don’t think it’s going out on a limb to postulate that Rodgers’ best years, football-wise, are behind him.
• Rodgers, 39, is a four-time NFL MVP, and led the Packers to 11 playoff appearances but only one Super Bowl championship in 15 years as the starting quarterback.
• In other sports-related news, retired NFL quarterback Brett Favre will remain as a defendant in a civil lawsuit that seeks to recover millions of dollars of misspent welfare money that was supposed to help some of the neediest people in the U.S.
• Circuit Judge Faye Peterson wrote that Favre's attorneys made "unpersuasive and inapplicable" arguments in seeking to have him removed as one of more than three dozen people or businesses being sued by the Mississippi Department of Human Services.
• Fuck you, Favre.
• Today in history… The Dutch fleet destroys the anchored Spanish fleet at Gibraltar (1607). Highwayman Nicolas J. Pelletier becomes the first person executed by guillotine (1792). Open conflict begins over the disputed border of Texas, triggering the Mexican–American War (1846). Forces under U.S. Admiral David Farragut demand the surrender of the Confederate city of New Orleans, LA (1862). New York becomes the first U.S. state to require automobile license plates (1901). The United Negro College Fund is incorporated (1944). Assaulting Chinese forces in the Korean War are forced to withdraw after heavy fighting with UN forces, primarily made up of Australian and Canadian troops, at the Battle of Kapyong (1951). Francis Crick and James Watson publish "Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid" describing the double helix structure of DNA (1953). Robert Noyce is granted a patent for an integrated circuit (1961). President George W. Bush pledges U.S. military support in the event of a Chinese attack on Taiwan (2001). The March for Women's Lives brings between 500,000 and 800,000 protesters, mostly pro-choice, to Washington D.C. (2004). 
• April 25 is the birthday of French king Louis IX (1214), politician Oliver Cromwell (1599), astronomer James Ferguson (1710), inventor/businessman Guglielmo Marconi (1874), physicist Wolfgang Pauli (1900), journalist Edward R. Murrow (1908), singer Ella Fitzgerald (1917), singer-songwriter/guitarist Albert King (1923), actor/director Paul Mazursky (1930), basketball player/actor Meadowlark Lemon (1932), songwriter/music producer Jerry Leiber (1933), actor Al Pacino (1940), bass player Stu Cook (1945), drummer Steve Ferrone (1950), singer Paul Baloff (1960), actor Hank Azaria (1964), bass player Eric Avery (1965), sportscaster Joe Buck (1969), actress Renée Zellweger (1969), and NBA player Tim Duncan (1976).

Wow. Well, that’s a lot. I plan on having a rather normal Tuesday today. Work, meetings, grocery shopping. Typical shit. Enjoy your day.