Random News: July 14, 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 July 14, 2023, and if you can believe it, it’s a Friday once again! I do have another busy day on tap, but I think of the many people who would kill to have a successful business like mine where I get to be creative and talk to rock stars and so on, and I stop my whining. Let’s do some news…

• Huge news out of New York yesterday. A state appeals court ordered new congressional lines be drawn in the state, a ruling that would absolutely benefit Democrats in the 2024 fight for control of the U.S. House.
• Fuck yes! Let’s go!
• The Appellate Division of the state Supreme Court reversed a lower court and directed a state redistricting commission to start work on new proposed state congressional lines. The lawsuit seeks to scrap the unfair 2022 lines in New York under which Republicans flipped four congressional seats.
• Republicans, as they do, whined about the ruling and pledged to take the case to New York's highest court.
• Moving on…
• As mentioned earlier this week, Hollywood actors formally went on strike yesterday after negotiations between their union and motion picture studios collapsed, a serious blow for the entertainment industry that could cripple film and TV productions across the U.S.
• About 160,000 actors represented by the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists are walking off the set effective midnight Friday. It is the first industrywide work stoppage by the labor group since 1980.
• The performers join more than 11,000 TV and script writers represented by the Writers Guild of America who have been on strike since early May.
• At issue in the SAG-AFTRA negotiations is the use of artificial intelligence in movies and the impact of streaming services on actors' residual pay.
• I support both SAG-AFTRA and WGA, and I don’t give two shits if their respective strikes shut down TV and movie production for an extended period.
• Let’s do some January 6 news.
• Kyle Fitzsimons, 39, who was described by prosecutors as "one of the most violent and aggressive" participants in the Jan. 6, 2021 failed coup attempt was sentenced yesterday to more than seven years in prison.
• Good. Fuck that guy. He was literally one of the worst. Fitzsimons brawled with officers during the insurrection, committing five separate assaults in under 10 minutes. One of those assaults caused a career-ending and life-altering injury to U.S. Capitol Police Sergeant Aquilino Gonell.
• This piece of shit is one of more than 1,000 people who have been arrested for crimes related to the Capitol insurrection.
• Another guy was convicted yesterday for his participation on Jan 6.
• Alan Hostetter is a former La Habra, CA police chief. He was convicted of joining the failed coup attempt at the U.S. Capitol with a hatchet in his backpack and plotting to stop Congress from certifying President Joe Biden's 2020 electoral victory.
• Hostetter, a right-wing activist and COVID denier, made the brilliant decision to defend himself at his bench trial. He used his closing arguments to spin conspiracy theories about the insurrection. He falsely claimed the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, portrayed himself as a victim of FBI corruption and referred to the mob's attack as a “federal setup” involving “crisis actors wearing costumes.”
• Looking forward to his sentencing when it happens. Moving on…
• Special counsel Jack Smith told a federal judge yesterday that there was no reason to postpone scheduling a trial date in the classified documents case against Donald John Trump.
• The Smith team is seeking a mid-December trial date. They accused the defendants of giving a “misleading” picture of the amount of evidence that has been handed over by prosecutors to the defendants in the case.
• Trump also claims that it would not be possible to seat a fair jury before the 2024 election.
• “Our jury system relies on the Court’s authority to craft a thorough and effective jury selection process, and on prospective jurors’ ability and willingness to decide cases based on the evidence presented to them, guided by legal instructions from the Court,” the filing said.
• I agree. Moving on…
• I often try and tell you that when a SCOTUS decision happens, the fallout is larger than it would appear on the immediate surface. Reason: SCOTUS cases set precedents that are then used to determine other cases in other situations.
• Case in point: if you thought the recent affirmative action case was just about colleges, more than a dozen Republican attorneys general sent a letter to major corporations yesterday, warning them to refrain from using racial preferences in hiring and promotion decisions.
• The Republicans pointed to the SCOTUS decision undercutting the use of affirmative action in college admissions, and then said that companies would expose themselves to “serious legal consequences” for discriminating against different groups “even for benign purposes.”
• To be 100% clear: these are lawmakers telling companies to hire only white people. This is what we get when we vote for Republican candidates.
• Can you imagine being a Black or Hispanic person who supported a Republican candidate only to find out that he or she is making laws so that you are not able to get a job?
• In other news…
• Plastic surgeon Katharine Roxanne Grawe , known on TikTok as “Dr. Roxy”, has been banned from practicing medicine in Ohio after authorities determined that she injured patients while live-streaming their procedures to hundreds of thousands of viewers.
• Fucking disgusting bitch. A person in a position of extreme public trust like a doctor should be subject to all the more punishment when they abandon that trust.
• At least three patients of Grawe reported having severe complications — infections, a perforated intestine and a loss of brain function after Grawe operated on them at Roxy Plastic Surgery, her practice in Powell, Ohio.
• Sigh.
• Hey, this is neat. Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ) was in a floor debate yesterday over his proposed amendment to an annual defense policy bill and said this…
• “My amendment has nothing to do with whether or not colored people or Black people or anybody can serve. It has nothing to do with any of that stuff. The military was never intended to be, you know, inclusive. Its strength is not its diversity.”
• Colored people, huh? Can someone tell Crane that this is 2023 and not 1953?
• Asked for comment about his choice of words, Crane said he “misspoke.” I’ll bet.
• And now, The Weather: “Somewhere In The Middle” by Daneshevskaya
• I know I’ve been mentioning the heat a lot lately. I just don’t want you to die for a dumb reason.
• Around 100 heat records could fall today through the weekend as it intensifies, piling onto the more than 1,000 high temperature records broken in the US since June.
• More than 90 million people are under heat alerts after the heat dome expanded into places like California, which is now experiencing its first extreme heat wave of the year. It’s already been dangerously hot for weeks in Texas, Florida and Arizona, where Phoenix is in the middle of a likely record-breaking streak of consecutive 110-degree days.
• Vegas could hit 117 on Sunday. Death Valley could hit 130. Don’t fuck with that heat.
• I’m going to mention the obvious: these weather extremes are driven by global climate change which is being accelerated by the activities of mankind, and we’re probably past the point of being able to stop it.
• Now we just deal with it.
• I cover gun violence on Sundays, but I didn’t want to let this little tidbit pass by unnoticed…
• This year’s unrelenting bloodshed across the U.S. has led to the grimmest of milestones: it’s been the deadliest six months of mass killings recorded since at least 2006.
• From January 1 to June 30, the nation endured 28 mass killings, all but one of which involved guns. The death toll rose just about every week, a constant cycle of violence and grief. Six months. 181 days. 28 mass killings. 140 victims. One country.
• With the recent loosening of gun ownership and concealment laws in many states, this is about to get much worse. Mark my words. And stay safe.
• From the Sports Desk… Marketa Vondrousova became the first unseeded player in the Open era to reach the Wimbledon final. She had a dominant 6-3, 6-3 victory over Elina Svitolina yesterday.
• Her husband wasn't there to cheer her on. He’s been watching from their home in Prague.
• ”He has to take care of our cat," Vondrousova explained.
• Understandable.
• Today in history… Louis VIII becomes King of France upon the death of his father, Philip II (1223). Storming of the Bastille in Paris (1789). The Sedition Act of 1798 becomes law in the United States making it a federal crime to write, publish, or utter false or malicious statements about the United States government (1789). The first ascent of the Matterhorn is completed by Edward Whymper and his party, four of whom die on the descent (1865). The Chicago Fire of 1874 burns down 47 acres of the city, destroying 812 buildings, killing 20, and resulting in the fire insurance industry demanding municipal reforms from Chicago's city council (1874). American outlaw Billy the Kid is shot and killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett in the Maxwell House at Fort Sumner, NM (1881). In a decree called the Gleichschaltung, Adolf Hitler abolishes all German political parties except the Nazis (1933). Jane Goodall arrives at the Gombe Stream Reserve in present-day Tanzania to begin her study of chimpanzees in the wild (1960). Mariner 4 flyby of Mars takes the first close-up photos of another planet (1965). ‘Mario Bros.’ is released in Japan, beginning the popular ‘Super Mario Bros’ franchise (1983). NASA's New Horizons probe performs the first flyby of Pluto, and thus completes the initial survey of the Solar System (2015).
• July 14 is the birthday of Japan emperor Murakami (926), Tuscan grand duke Ferdinando II de’ Medici (1610), journalist/diplomat Mordecai Manuel Noah (1785), painter Gustav Klimt (1862), animator William Hanna (1910), singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie (1912), US president Gerald Ford (1913), film director Igmar Bergman (1918), businessman Robert Zildjian (1923), actor Harry Dean Stanton (1926), NFL player Rosie Grier (1932), activist Jerry Rubin (1938), US army general Claudia J. Kennedy (1947), music executive Tommy Mottola (1949), singer-songwriter/actor Kyle Gass (1960), actor Jackie Earle Haley (1961), MLB player Robin Ventura (1967), and martial artist Conor McGregor (1988).

Alrighty. Well, I’m going to try and stay in a reasonably good mood today, and not get pissy about having a lot to do. It can be a challenge occasionally, but I’m gonna remind myself that I’m a lucky motherfucker. Enjoy your day.