Random News: June 11, 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 June 11, 2023, and it’s a Sunday. I'm in my robe, things have happened, let's discuss...

• In today’s Pride info, I want to talk about Harvey Milk, one of the first openly gay men to be elected to public office.
• Milk was elected city supervisor in 1977 after San Francisco reorganized its election procedures to choose representatives from neighborhoods rather than through city-wide ballots.
• He served almost eleven months in office, during which he sponsored a bill banning discrimination in public accommodations, housing, and employment on the basis of sexual orientation. The Supervisors passed the bill by a vote of 11–1, and it was signed into law by Mayor George Moscone.
• Ironically, it was as a result of proposed anti-LGBT legislation, like California’s Proposition 6 that would have made firing gay teachers—and any public school employees who supported gay rights—mandatory, the gay rights movement grew exponentially, and Milk was one of its leaders.
• Addressing hundreds of thousands at San Francisco’s Pride event in 1978, Milk gave what became knowns as his “Hope Speech”…
• “On this anniversary of Stonewall, I ask my gay sisters and brothers to make the commitment to fight. For themselves, for their freedom, for their country ... We will not win our rights by staying quietly in our closets ... We are coming out to fight the lies, the myths, the distortions. We are coming out to tell the truths about gays, for I am tired of the conspiracy of silence, so I'm going to talk about it. And I want you to talk about it. You must come out. Come out to your parents, your relatives.”
• On November 27, 1978, Milk and Moscone were assassinated by Dan White, a disgruntled former city supervisor who cast the sole vote against Milk's bill. It was Dianne Feinstein, at the time another member of the SF board of supervisors, who heard gunshots and called police, and then found Milk’s lifeless body.
• In 2009, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded Milk the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his contribution to the gay rights movement stating "he fought discrimination with visionary courage and conviction".
• If you’re interested in learning more, the 2008 Gus Van Sant film ‘Milk’ starring Sean Penn in the titular role is very good. It was highly rated and got eight Oscar nominations including Best Picture.
• Okay, now for some news…
• Ted Kaczynski, the convicted terrorist known as the Unabomber, was found dead in his prison cell yesterday, reportedly via suicide. He was 81.
• Kaczynski, who went nearly 20 years without being captured until his arrest in 1996, was considered America's most prolific bomber. Between 1978 and 1995, Kaczynski placed or mailed 16 bombs that killed three people and injured two dozen others.
• He’ll not be missed, though frankly it’s concerning that he still seemed to have had a cult following based on what I see on Twitter.
• People are fucked up, man.
• Moving on…
• On Friday, many people, including myself, heard the voice of special counsel Jack Smith for the first time as he addressed the indictments he’d issued against the former president.
• Maybe you don’t know who Jack Smith is. He’d have probably preferred to keep it that way. But now that he’s the public face behind one of the most closely-watched criminal indictments of all time, I thought you’d like to know him better.
• John L. “Jack” Smith grew up near Syracuse, NY, graduating high school in 1987. He studied political science at the State University of New York at Oneonta, graduating summa cum laude, and then attended Harvard Law School, from which he graduated cum laude in 1994 with a Juris Doctor.
• Mr. Smith is a veteran career prosecutor. He began his prosecutorial career in 1994 as an assistant district attorney with the New York County D.A.'s office. In 1999, he became an assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, where over the course of nine years he prosecuted matters ranging from gang murders of police officers to civil rights violations. From 2008 to 2010, he served with the International Criminal Court, where he supervised war crimes investigations.
• In 2010, Mr. Smith returned to the Justice Department to serve as chief of the public integrity section, where he led a team of more than 30 prosecutors who handled public corruption and election crimes cases across the United States. In 2015, he agreed to serve as the first assistant attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee, later becoming the acting U.S. attorney. 
• Most recently, Mr. Smith served as a chief prosecutor for the special court in the Hague, charged with investigating and adjudicating war crimes in Kosovo. In November of 2022, he was tapped by AG Merrick Garland to oversee the criminal investigations into Donald Trump's actions regarding the January 6 United States Capitol attack, and Trump's handling and storage of government records, including classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
• He is a serious man. He and I are the same age. Side note: he is a competitive triathlete. Yeah, that thing where you swim for a mile and bike for 25 miles and then run another 6 miles. I don’t even jog across the street.
• I don’t have much to add about the indictments against Trump today that I didn’t already cover in too much depth for the past couple of days.
• The next news will happen on Tuesday when he is arraigned.
• In response to the indictments against Trump, there have been many right-wing threats of violence, bloodshed, civil war, and so on. Most of these seem to be coming from guys in their 40s who still live with their moms, so take it with a grain of salt.
• Some breaking news from this morning… a tanker truck caught fire in an underpass of the I-95 outside of Philadelphia, and the entire interstate collapsed.
• For those who don’t know, the I-95 is the main north–south Interstate Highway on the East Coast of the United States, running from the border of Canada in Maine down to Florida.
• The blaze is still being battled. That’s going to impact traffic for a long, long time. Trust me, I remember when a section of the 10 collapsed after the Northridge quake here in LA in 1994.
• In other news, former First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon was arrested in connection with the ongoing investigation into the funding and finances of the Scottish National Party.
• Sturgeon had stepped down from her position in March. She’s been under investigation for the past two years regarding what happened to more than £600,000 of donations given to the party by independence activists.
• Yikes.
• Here’s a fucked-up story. Republican delegates in North Carolina voted yesterday at their annual convention to censure their own Republican Senator, Thom Tillis, for backing LGBTQ+ rights, immigration, and gun violence policies.
• Tillis has gained influence in Congress for his willingness to work across the aisle. But that is precisely what the Republicans do not want. Tillis was particularly criticized for his work last year on the Respect For Marriage Act, which enshrined protections for same-sex and interracial marriages in federal law.
• That party always ends up turning on itself. It’s just how they are.
• Moving on.
• I cover gun violence on Sundays. I don’t like doing it. I just feel it’s important to be aware of this horrible disease that festers in the USA and nowhere else.
• I have yet to mention Susan Louise Lorincz, a 58-year-old woman in Florida, who fatally shot a neighbor during a dispute over kids playing outside.
• Lorincz was arrested on a charge of manslaughter Tuesday, four days after investigators say she fatally shot Ajike "AJ" Owens through the front door of Lorincz's home near Ocala, FL. She also admitted hurling racial slurs at the children.
• “Get away from my house, you black slave,” she told a 10-year-old child.
• Piece of shit human being.
• Were there other shootings in the USA in recent days? Of course there were. Many, many shootings. As always.
• Six shot outside a Houston nightclub. Nine wounded in a mass shooting in San Francisco. One killed at a birthday party in Birmingham. One dead at a party in San Antonio. Four shot at a block party in Syracuse. Four in Chicago. Two in Columbus. One dead after being shot in Minneapolis. One shot in Charlotte. One in Pittsburgh. And 17 shot over two days in Indianapolis. There’s more but I can’t stomach thinking about it.
• If you think this is normal and you just silently accept it… you’re wrong, it’s not, and you’re next.
• Jesus. Let’s do some good news.
• Garth Brooks is the best-selling solo artist in American history. He has a net worth of over $400 million. So I think I can safely say that Garth doesn’t give a shit if you patronize the Friends In Low Places Bar & Honky Tonk, his new bar and entertainment space set to open soon in Nashville’s South Broadway District.
• Why wouldn’t you go to Garth’s bar? Oh, because he’s going to serve Bud Light, the most woke of beers. Pffffttttt.
• “I want it to be a place you feel safe in, I want it to be a place where you feel like there are manners and people like one another,” he said. “And yes, we’re going to serve every brand of beer. We just are. Our thing is this, if you [are let] into this house, love one another. If you’re an asshole, there are plenty of other places on lower Broadway.”
• Bless that man.
• And now, The Weather: “Teacher” by Foo Fighters
• A realtor and his wife were cleaning out a crawl space in her father's old Los Angeles home when they found 1 million pennies stored in old bank bags.
• The coins have been listed for sale for $25,000, more than double its $10,000 value.
• No thanks.
• From the Sports Desk… the Vegas Golden Knights are now up 3-1 in the Stanley Cup Finals over the Florida Panthers. They won last night 3-2. Game 5, which might be the last hockey game of the season, is in Las Vegas on Tuesday night.
• In some breaking sports news, Novak Djokovic has won a record 23rd Grand Slam title after beating Casper Ruud 7-6, 6-3, 7-5 at the French Open. I think Djokovic is a fucking prick, but he’s obviously also one of the best tennis players in history.
• Today in history… Henry VII marries Catherine of Aragorn (1509). James Cook runs aground on the Great Barrier Reef (1770). The Broad Street Riot occurs in Boston, fueled by ethnic tensions between Yankees and Irish. (1837). Paris–Bordeaux–Paris, sometimes called the first automobile race in history, takes place (1895). Sir Barton wins the Belmont Stakes, becoming the first horse to win the U.S. Triple Crown (1919). Inventor Edwin Armstrong gives the first public demonstration of FM broadcasting in the United States at Alpine, NJ (1935). Frank Morris, John Anglin and Clarence Anglin allegedly become the only prisoners to escape from the prison on Alcatraz Island (1962). Governor of Alabama George Wallace defiantly stands at the door of Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama in an attempt to block two black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood, from attending that school (1963). After being appointed on May 15, Anna Mae Hays and Elizabeth P. Hoisington officially receive their ranks as U.S. Army Generals, becoming the first women to do so (1970). Timothy McVeigh is executed for his role in the Oklahoma City bombing (2001). 
• June 11 is the birthday of poet/playwright Ben Jonson (1572), astronomer Johann Georg Palitzsch (1723), painter John Constable (1776), composer Richard Strauss (1864), politician Jeannette Rankin (1880), businessman Kiichiro Toyoda (1894), NFL coach Vince Lombardi (1913), actor Gene Wilder (1933), race car driver Jackie Stewart (1939), mobster Henry Hill (1943), actress Adrienne Barbeau (1945), drummer Frank Beard (1949), NFL player Joe Montana (1956), failed political candidate Mehmet Oz (1960), actor Peter Dinklage (1969), actor Shia LaBeouf (1986), and WNBA player Brittany Boyd (1993).

It is now time for me to get out of my blue robe, into some hot water (literal, not metaphorical), to put on clothes, and do whatever I do. Enjoy your day.