Random News: July 16, 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 16, 2023, and it’s a Sunday. I’m somewhat awake and have a cup of Peet’s, so let’s peruse the hallowed halls of what the fuck is going on…

• Concerned about Joe Biden’s level of support going into the election season? Here’s something to ease your worries.
• President Biden’s reelection campaign raised more than $72 million in the second quarter of fundraising, the campaign announced Friday. The team also reported that the campaign has $77 million in cash on hand, which is “the highest total amassed by a Democrat at any comparable point in history.”
• If you think all that cash is from superPACs, think again. In 2020, Biden’s campaign raised more than $1 billion, with over 70% of that ($700 million) coming from online-driven small-dollar donations.
• Biden more than doubled former President Trump’s second quarter fundraising.
• Oh, and DeSantis? It’s going very, very, very not well.
• Yesterday, the Republican’s presidential campaign fired roughly a dozen staffers — and more are expected in the coming weeks as he shakes up his big-money political operations less than two months on the campaign trail.
• Despite bringing in $20 million during its first six weeks, it was becoming clear DeSantis’s campaign costs needed to be brought down. He seems to be spiraling down to a hole in the ground.
• No one, conservative, liberal, or otherwise, really seems to like DeSantis. What an idiot that guy is.
• Can Democrats also be idiots? Oh lordy yes…
• Yesterday, longshot Democratic presidential candidate and conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. disputed a report that quoted him saying COVID-19 was “targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people” and that Jewish people are most immune.
• But he’s literally on video saying, “COVID-19. There is an argument that it is ethnically targeted. COVID-19 attacks certain races disproportionately. COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese. We don’t know whether it was deliberately targeted or not but there are papers out there that show the racial or ethnic differential and impact,”
• RFK also famously stated in January 2022 that Anne Frank, the Jewish teenager who hid from the Nazis and eventually died in a concentration camp, had more freedom than people living under vaccine mandates. He apologized and said he was "deeply sorry" for those remarks.
• He can fuck right off.
• Back to political fundraising for a moment on a very important race…
• Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) was outraised by her chief Democratic challenger for the second consecutive quarter — again by a nearly two-to-one margin.
• Sinema has not said whether or not she will seek a second term next year, but she raised $1.7 million from April 1 through June 30. But Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), who launched a bid for her seat in January, brought in $3.1 million in that same period.
• Gallego is a completely awesome dude and I hope he wins in 2024.
• One quick note on the Creamsicle Criminal…
• In one of his many daily unhinged rants on his social network, Trump seems to have once again disclosed some of the upcoming charges against himself.
• He wrote, “Whatever happened to the Biden Documents Case? 20 times more documents than I have, and I’m allowed under the Presidential Records Act, he’s not. What about the Classified Docs he had in Chinatown, and on his garage floor in Delaware. Is he being charged under the Insurrection Act? What about-”
• Whoa, hold up there, Sparky. Did you just mention the Insurrection Act? Why’d you bring that up?
• Apparently his lawyers felt the same thing, because he deleted the post and then reposted it identically with the term “Espionage Act” replacing the other.
• That guy is fucked. Jack Smith, keep doing what you do.
• Sunday is Gunday here at Zak’s Random News. Any shootings this weekend?
• A suspect is at large after shooting four people in Hampton, GA. A cop was killed and two others shot in Fargo, ND. Two shot and killed overnight in Rochester, NY. Two separate shootings in Columbus, OH. One dead, four injured in Memphis, TN. One dead, three injured in Hartford, CT. Two men dead in Ensley, AL. One dead, three wounded in Antioch, CA. An eight-year-old shot on the I-580 in Oakland, CA.
• Just a normal weekend of gun violence in the USA.
• I know it can feel like nothing will slow this down even when the majority of voters get sick of this shit and enact laws to try and slow it down.
• But a federal judge has ruled Oregon’s voter-approved gun control measure – one of the toughest in the nation – is constitutional.
• U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut ruled that banning large capacity magazines and requiring a permit to purchase a gun falls in line with “the nation’s history and tradition of regulating uniquely dangerous features of weapons and firearms to protect public safety.”
• Oregon voters in November narrowly passed Measure 114, which requires residents to undergo safety training and a background check to obtain a permit to buy a gun.
• You can organize and put together similar measures in your state. You can vote for candidates who support reasonable gun control measures. You can do this. It works.
• And now, The Weather: “Warm Ways” by Helenor
• Today is supposed to be the hottest day of the record-setting heat in many places. Vegas might hit 117. Please stay safe. No matter how cool you are, that heat can and will kill you.
• It’s definitely not fire season yet here in California, but we already have some going. A trio of brush fires in Riverside County burned more than 7,000 acres yesterday.
• An interesting tidbit from the Science Department: a scientist at the University of Geneva says the expansion of the universe is just a mirage. For decades, scientists have discerned that the universe is not only expanding, but accelerating.
• But this evidence doesn’t always square with models, throws flags with things like the cosmological constant, and makes explanations like dark energy necessary
• A new paper from a researcher at the University of Geneva goes back to the drawing board and proposes a new idea—that our perception of an expanding universe could be a mirage.
• Lucas Lombriser proposes that the universe is actually static. In this mathematical reformulation of the universe, a field that permeates spacetime sets the mass of the cosmological constant, but the mass of that field (along with the particles it propagates) fluctuates over time.
• These fluctuations — in Lombriser’s view — change in particle mass over time, which would also result in the apparent larger redshifts for distant galaxies.
• And like dark energy and dark matter theories, we don’t have the ability yet to prove or disprove Lombriser’s idea either.
• From the Sports Desk… the men’s final between Alcaraz and Djokovic at Wimbledon is still going on, so I won’t spoil that for you.
• Instead, here’s a fun fact: Don Mattingly played baseball for the New York Yankees from 1982 to 1995. In all those years, he never hit a single grand slam… expect for 1987, when he hit six of them and set the record that still stands (it was tied in 2006).
• Baseball. It’s weird.
• Today in history… The Hijrah of Muhammad begins, marking the beginning of the Islamic calendar (622). King Richard II of England is crowned (1377). Jacques Cartier returns home after claiming a bunch of now-Canada for France (1536). Father Junípero Serra founds California's first mission, Mission San Diego de Alcalá, which evolves into the city of San Diego, CA (1769). The District of Columbia is established as the capital of the United States (1790). The world’s first parking meter is installed in Oklahoma City, OK (1935). Joe DiMaggio gets a hit in 56 consecutive games, a record that still stands today (1941). The Atomic Age begins when the United States successfully detonates a plutonium-based test nuclear weapon near Alamogordo, NM (1945). J.D. Salinger publishes ‘Catcher in the Rye’ (1951). Apollo 11, the first mission to land astronauts on the Moon, is launched from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Kennedy, FL (1969). Saddam Hussein becomes the president of Iraq (1979). Comet Shoemaker-Levy crashes into Jupiter (1994). John F. Kennedy Jr. and several others die in a plane crash (1999). 
• July 16 is the birthday of religious leader Margaret Baker Eddy (1821), journalist/activist Ida B. Wells (1862), MLB player Shoeless Joe Jackson (1887), farmer/businessman Orville Redenbacher (1907), actress Barbara Stanwyck (1907), actress/dancer Ginger Rogers (1911), tennis player Margaret Court (1942), NFL coach Jimmy Johnson (1943), singer-songwriter/guitarist Rubén Blades (1948), musician Pinchas Zukerman (1948), drummer/composer Stewart Copeland (1952), actress Phoebe Cates (1963), actor/comedian Will Ferrell (1967), NFL player Barry Sanders (1968), actor Corey Feldman (1971), singer-songwriter Ed Kowalczyk (1971), and NBA player Zach Randolph (1981).

Okay, let’s wrap this shit up. I want to take a shower. I feel sticky and gross. Enjoy your day.