Random News: August 24, 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 August 24, 2023, and it’s a Thursday for some reason. I’m having some delicious coffee, and let’s see if there’s any tasty news to serve you…

• Sticking with the topic near and dear to our hearts, more of the accused felons in the Georgia RICO case against the FPOTUS and his gang have turned themselves in for booking. There’s a total of nine as of now.
• Yesterday, Ruby Giuliani was booked with fingerprints and a mug shot, as was Sidney Powell, the crazy kraken lady; Jenna Ellis, the hapless traffic attorney turned election fraudster; and Kenneth Chesebro, the architect of the Trump campaign’s fake electors plot.
• Five others went through the same process over the past few days: Trump campaign lawyer Ray Smith; former Georgia GOP chairman David Shafer; Cathy Latham, former chair of the Coffee County Republican Party; right-wing lawyer John Eastman; and Scott Hall, a bail bondsman.
• In addition to racketeering, they’re all charged with various felonies relating to the fake elector scheme and/or witness tampering, making false statements, and so on. Orange Meanie himself is scheduled to turn himself in later this evening.
• Speaking of That Guy, he replaced his top Georgia lawyer ahead of his surrender tonight. That’s always a good sign that things are going according to plan, said no one.
• I expect all of them to capitulate to the requirement. The two who were fighting hardest to avoid it are former chief of staff Mark Meadows and former DOJ official Jeffrey Clark.
• Both Meadows and Clark sought to block their arrest ahead the deadline to surrender. But yesterday afternoon, U.S. District Judge Steve Jones denied both men’s requests in separate six-page rulings.
• Ha ha! Surrender, bitches.
• Friday August 25 is the final deadline for all 19 defendants to turn themselves in or face active arrest warrants. And once they come get you on a warrant, it’s not that simple to just walk away.
• Trust me on that.
• Let’s do some global news. You might recall a couple of months ago when the Wagner mercenary group, led by a thug named Yevgeny Prigozhin, staged an armed insurrection where they took their military convoy north away from Ukraine and toward Moscow.
• At the time, Prigozhin agreed to a truce for his forces to "stop movement inside Russia, and to take further steps to de-escalate tensions.” he brokered some kind of deal with Putin via Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus.
• Welp.
• Yesterday, Prigozhin was killed onboard a plane that mysteriously crashed northwest of Moscow. Even Joe Biden, who is usually not a speculative kind of guy, suggested that Putin may have been behind the plane crash. "I don’t know for a fact what happened, but I’m not surprised," he said.
• No one in their right mind is surprised. Putin’s go-to way to get out of a jam is via murder, especially with someone who he views as a rival or political enemy. There’s no “good guy versus bad guy” here. They’re all bad guys.
• Going back through Russian and Soviet history, this has been pretty common. Putin’s certainly not the first Russian leader to take those tactics. From Ivan the Terrible to Joseph Stalin and his henchmen like Lavrentiy Beria, some of the most ruthless and wicked political leaders in history have made their horrifying mark there.
• Putin is just another piece of shit in a long line of shit.
• I guess we should mention last night’s Republican presidential debate?
• I didn’t watch it, but I did look through a bunch of analysis. I will say this: if Donald Trump was not in this election and these were the Republican’s only choices, they’d still not have a single soul who was capable of leading this country.
• Vivek Ramaswamy tried to run roughshod over everyone else on the stage, taking a note form the Trump playbook.
• Chris Christie had the best response to smarmy Ramaswamy: "I've had enough of a guy who sounds like chatGPT."
• Of that particular batch of assholes, Nikki Haley seemed like the adult in the room.
• And the funny thing was that Ron De Santis, while being present, was practically a non-entity there. He didn’t command the stage in any way, got little speaking time, and just faded into the background.
• De Santis did, at one point, claim to have been a Navy Seal. Fact check: lie. He was a lawyer in the Navy who represented a Seal once.
• So who won the debate? Joe Biden. All these people did was prove without a doubt that they are not qualified for the office.
• Where was Trump? Well, he did a pre-recorded interview with his pal Tucker Carlson that aired on some social media thing called X. No one seems to know what he said since no one watched it.
• I do have one quote from that piece of shit, which is about January 6, 2021, a day when law enforcement officers were killed and insurrectionists attempted a coup against our country: “People in that crowd said it was the most beautiful day they ever experienced. There was love and unity. I have never seen such spirit and such passion and such love.”
• Moving on.
• There was a mass shooting last night in Orange County, CA. The gunman, a retired cop, killed three people and wounded six others, and then was fatally shot by sheriff's deputies.
• It happened at Cook's Corner, a well-known biker bar in Trabuco Canyon.
• Sigh.
• And now, The Weather: “Trickin” by juicer
• The heat dome in the Midwest is still brutal. Please stay safe out there, friends.
• From the Sports Desk… The San Francisco 49ers have chosen their backup QB, and it’s Sam Darnold. He’ll be behind their starter Brock Purdy, leaving Trey Lance, the number 3 pick in the 2021 NFL draft, in limbo.
• Today in history… the latest known inscription in Egyptian hieroglyphs is written (367). The Visigoths pillage Rome (410). Six thousand Jews are killed in Mainz, Germany after being blamed for the bubonic plague (1349). William Penn receives a colony now known as Delaware, and adds it to Pennsylvania (1682). British troops invade Washington, D.C. and burn the White House, the Capitol and other buildings (1814). Amelie Earhart flies across the USA from Los Angeles to Newark non-stop (1932). Allied troops attack German-held Paris (1944). The treaty creating NATO goes into effect (1949). Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies disrupt the NYSE by throwing dollar bills from the viewing gallery (1967). Mark David Chapman is sentenced to 20 years to life in prison for murdering John Lennon (1981). Ukraine declares itself independent from the Soviet Union (1991). The IAU redefines the meaning of “planet” and Pluto is demoted (2006).
• August 24 is the birthday of writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899), mob boss Carlo Gambino (1902), historian Howard Zinn (1922), actor Kenny Baker (1934), guitarist Mason Williams (1938), guitarist John Cipollina (1943), businessman Vince McMahon (1945), writer Paulo Coelho (1947), politician Joe Manchin (1947), musician Jean Michel Jarre (1948), politician Mike Huckabee (1955), actor Stephen Fry (1957), MLB player Cal Ripken Jr. (1960), actress Marlee Matlin (1965), NBA player Reggie Miller (1965), comedian Dave Chappelle (1973), and actor Rupert Grint (1988).

Well, this is one of those days where there’s more news than I have time to tell you about. It happens. I have a typical Thursday planned, and hopefully it stays typical. Enjoy your day.