Random News: April 7, 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 7, 2023, and if you can believe it, it’s a Friday once again! I have seen things you people wouldn't believe… attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion- wait, that wasn’t me, never mind. What’s happening?

• Yesterday was a dark day in democracy when two Democrat lawmakers were ousted from the Republican-controlled Tennessee state House of Representatives and one was allowed to stay in what marks the first partisan expulsion in the state's modern history.
• The State Reps. Justin Jones and Justin J. Pearson, who were expelled, are Black. Rep. Gloria Johnson, who is White and participated in the same gun violence protest as the others, was not expelled.
• That legislative body has taken it upon itself to disenfranchise the voters of the districts who elected the expelled lawmakers.
• The effort to expel the three Tennessee lawmakers is one of several recent moves by state legislatures to penalize lawmakers of underrepresented backgrounds taking a stand on progressive causes.
• Hate to say it, but this is going to affect many in Tennessee whether they agree with the ousting of those lawmakers or not. Much more to come on this story.
• Oklahoma Republicans recently removed the state’s only nonbinary legislator from House committees after the lawmaker provided refuge to a transgender rights activist.
• This will not stand, man. Actions will be taken.
• After her fun visit to New York City, Marjorie Taylor Greene went on Fox and described the city as follows: “It was repulsive, it smells bad. And I just, I think it’s a terrible place,” which is ironic because repulsive, smelly and terrible is how most people describe Marjorie Taylor Greene.
• Imagine if a progressive Democrat said those things about a conservative Southern city.
• Israel has been nailing Lebanon with airstrikes following a rocket barrage. It’s being described as the most serious cross-border violence since Israel’s 2006 war with Lebanon’s Hezbollah militants.
• Some things never change.
• Here’s a super weird story. On Tuesday night, members of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, working with the FBI, did a training exercise where they invaded a hotel room in Boston and appended a criminal, handcuffed him, and interrogated him for 45 minutes.
• One problem: they went to the wrong fucking room and did this to a totally innocent civilian.
• The hotel guest was a Delta airlines pilot in his 30s who’d been asleep in his room at the Revere Hotel after midnight when agents began banging on his door and demanding to be let in, handcuffed him, and put him in the shower for interrogation.
• The military has apologized to the man. You know what’s even better than an apology? A whole lot of money. That’s the best way to say sorry to a person who has been terrorized physically abused and falsely arrested. Like, lots and lots of money. An unbelievable amount of money.
• The very next night, police in New Mexico fatally shot a man after responding to the wrong house during a domestic violence call.
• Officers mistakenly approached the wrong address and knocked on the door. The homeowner opened the screen door armed with a handgun. Cops fired at least one round, striking the homeowner, who police identified as 52-year-old Robert Dotson.
• He’s dead.
• “I extend nothing but my deepest condolences to the Dotson family. There’s nothing I can say that will make this better. It's a terrible event, and I'm heartbroken by it.” - Farmington Police Chief Steve Hebbe
• He’s right, it is indeed terrible. Now pay his family tens of millions of dollars and fire the incompetent officers who killed him because they can’t read an address.
• Moving on.
• Some… good news, maybe? 
• Yesterday the Supreme Court allowed a 12-year-old transgender girl in West Virginia to continue competing on her middle school’s girls sports teams while a lawsuit over a state ban continues.
• The justices refused to disturb an appeals court order that made it possible for the girl, Becky Pepper-Jackson, to continue competing on her school’s track and cross-country teams, where she regularly finishes near the back of the pack.
• Here’s the big question: what if she was coming in first place? Would that have changed the ruling?
• Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas would have allowed West Virginia to enforce its law against Pepper-Jackson, because of course they would.
• Speaking of Clarence Thomas, whoo boy… accepting over a half million dollars worth of favors from a Republican mega-donor? That’s the definition of the worst type of ethics violation, and it’s insane that he remains on the bench.
• Resign today, Clarence, you piece of human shit.
• And now, The Weather: “Tandang” by Sego
• Houston, be ready for more severe weather and flooding through this afternoon.
• One-year heads-up for a total solar eclipse in April 2024. I like those.
• From the Sports Desk… things are super tight in the NBA’s Western Conference as we approach the last couple of games of the regular season. Four teams have playoff slots: Denver, Memphis, Sacramento, and Phoenix. Four have been eliminated: Utah, Portland, San Antonio, and Houston. That leaves six teams still scrambling to make it in: LA Clippers, Golden State, LA Lakers, New Orleans, Minnesota, OK City, and Dallas.
• The playoff picture will be final after this weekend.
• Today in history… Attila the Hun captures Metz in France, killing most of its inhabitants and burning the town (451). Ferdinand Magellan arrives at Cebu (1521). Premiere performance of Johann Sebastian Bach's ‘St John Passion’, BWV 245, at St. Nicholas Church, Leipzig (1724). The French First Republic adopts the kilogram and gram as its primary unit of mass (1795). The Mississippi Territory is organized from disputed territory claimed by both the United States and the Spanish Empire (1798). Ludwig van Beethoven premieres his Third Symphony at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna (1805). The Union's Army of the Tennessee and the Army of the Ohio defeat the Confederate Army of Mississippi near Shiloh, TN (1862). Mount Vesuvius erupts and devastates Naples (1906). AT&T transmits the first long-distance public television broadcast, from Washington, D.C., to New York City, displaying the image of Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover (1927). Nazi Germany issues the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service banning Jews and political dissidents from civil service posts (1933). Booker T. Washington becomes the first African American to be depicted on a United States postage stamp (1940). The National Football League makes helmets mandatory (1943). The World Health Organization is established by the United Nations (1948). IBM announces the System/360 (1964). The Internet's symbolic birth date: Publication of RFC 1 (1969). During STS-6, astronauts Story Musgrave and Don Peterson perform the first Space Shuttle spacewalk (1983). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announces that the SARS-CoV-2 Alpha variant has become the dominant strain of COVID-19 in the United States (2021). Ketanji Brown Jackson is confirmed for the Supreme Court of the United States, becoming the first black female justice (2022).
• April 7 is the birthday of poet William Wordsworth (1770), businessman Will Keith Kellogg (1860), journalist/activist Marjory Stoneman Douglas (1890), journalist Walter Winchell (1897), composer/bandleader Percy Faith (1908), singer-songwriter Billie Holiday (1915), sitar player Ravi Shankar (1920), actor James Garner (1928), actor Wayne Rogers (1933), politician Jerry Brown (1938), trumpet player Freddie Hubbard (1938), film director/producer Francis Ford Coppola (1939), singer-songwriter John Oates (1948), singer-songwriter Janis Ian (1951), martial artist/actor Jackie Chan (1954), NFL player Tony Dorsett (1954), actor Russell Crowe (1964), NFL player Ronde Barber (1975), NFL player Tiki Barber (1975), and MLB player Adrián Beltré (1979).

I’ve remained extraordinarily busy, working 12-hour days getting my clients ready for a couple of upcoming trade shows that seem super important but in the grand scheme of things, actually are not. Not at all. The level of priority is based more on nostalgic memories of years past rather than the current world where nearly all of what’s done there can be done online. That being said, it’s still a fuck-ton of work, and I’m glad it’s nearing the finish line. Enjoy your day.