Random News: August 8, 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 8, 2023, and it’s a Tuesday. I had some more ants to murder this morning, but it wasn’t anything as nightmarish as what happened over the weekend, so I’m feeling okay. Let’s see what’s happened in the great big world…

• Today is the single-topic Ohio special election that seems to be about a boring procedural rule but definitely is not.
• Conservatives in the state are promoting Issue 1, a proposed rule that changes Ohio’s longstanding process of being able to change the state’s constitution from being a simple majority vote to requiring a higher, 60% majority threshold.
• What’s the big deal about that? Because in November, a separate measure will attempt to enshrine new abortion rights into the constitution. The conservatives know that the majority of voters in Ohio do support women’s reproductive rights, and they’re trying to change the rules now so that it will be harder to enact new measures to support women.
• Some apparent good news: early turnout for the vote over the past weekend was outstanding. Nearly 700,000 Ohioans have already cast their vote early in person or via absentee ballot.
• In some counties, like Franklin County, Democrats have turned out in numbers five times more than Republicans for the early voting period.
• Keep it rolling today, Ohio. VOTE NO ON ISSUE 1. We should find out soon how this goes.
• Moving on…
• We should probably talk about that crazy brawl at the Montgomery, AL riverfront.
• I watched it. A lot of you did. I know what I saw… a bunch of drunken white people attacking a Black man, with five or six people physically beating a man on his own who was just there doing his job.
• And then I saw a number of Black people rush in to save the other man and start giving out what seemed to be well-deserved ass kickings to the white folks who started it.
• Police finally intervened and arrested a number of the brawlers, both Black and white.
• Four arrest warrants (with more pending) have been issued for others who weren’t arrested at the scene.
• In other news…
• Here in Los Angeles, over 11,000 Los Angeles city workers are planning to strike today.
• City employees represented by SEIU Local 721, including those working in the sanitation department, at the city’s port and at Los Angeles International Airport, will strike for 24 hours, with picket lines forming in front of City Hall and LAX.
• SEIU 721, which represents more than 95,000 workers in Southern California, said members voted to authorize the strike after repeated labor law violations by Los Angeles city management. Trash truck operators, LAX shuttle drivers and mechanics, and port boat captains are among the workers planning to strike.
• Good for them. Speaking of the airport…
• Hope you’re not traveling this week. Thousands of flights have been delayed or canceled today following a round of severe storms that hammered the eastern United Sates.
• More than 330 flights were canceled early today, with another 1,400 delayed. That’s an improvement from yesterday when 8,200 flights were delayed and 1,600 were canceled.
• New York’s LaGuardia is the most impacted airport. Other major airports dealing with a small amount of cancellations and delays include Atlanta, Newark Liberty, and Boston Logan.
• Here’s a follow-up from three years ago, which, due to the state of the world, feels like a million years ago.
• Tou Thao, the last former Minneapolis police officer convicted in state court for his role in the killing of George Floyd, did not show any repentance or admit any wrongdoing as he was sentenced yesterday to 4 years and 9 months.
• As you almost certainly recall, Thao stopped people who were trying to help when former Officer Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck for 9 1/2 minutes, murdering him.
• In rambling remarks full of biblical references, Thao drew parallels between himself and the sufferings and false accusations endured by Job and Jesus.
• Enjoy the rest of your sentence, prick.
• John Eastman, also knowing an Unnamed Co-conspirator #2 in the latest indictment against alleged federal felon Donald John Trump, is asking a California judge to postpone disbarment proceedings against him over concerns that he could face imminent criminal charges.
• Eastman was the lawyer who created a memo falsely arguing that then-Vice President Mike Pence could overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.
• Fuck that guy.
• In other Dump News: a federal judge tossed out Donnie's countersuit against E. Jean Carroll, the writer who won a sex abuse lawsuit against him, ruling yesterday that Trump can’t claim she defamed him by continuing to say she was not only sexually abused but raped.
• And now, The Weather: “pose” by semiwestern
• RIP to film director William Friedkin. He was best known for two groundbreaking films: the Oscar-winning “The French Connection” and influential horror flick “The Exorcist.” He died yesterday in Los Angeles at age 87.
• I had a bizarre little epiphany about age over this past weekend. To give you some context, I am 54 years old.
• When ‘All in the Family’ debuted in 1971, Carroll O’ Connor (as Archie Bunker) was 47. When ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation” started in 1987, Patrick Stewart (as Captain Jean Luc Picard) was also 47. I’m not just older than those guys were; I’m substantially older.
• But wait. When Abe Vigoda began his role as Detective Phil Fish on Barney Miller in 1975, he was 54, the same age as I am now.
• I mean, have you seen me? I know I’m not a kid, but I don’t look like fucking Fish either. Jesus.
• Enough about me. Let’s talk about my impressive relatives.
• I mentioned that I’ve been doing a deep dive into my ancestry. I know this sounds like the biggest cliche in the world, but over this past weekend, I was utterly shocked to see how I was a direct descendent of a few people…
• John Howland and his wife Elizabeth Tilley are my 11th great grandparents. Elizabeth’s parents, John Tilley and Joan Hurst, are my 12th greats.
• All four of them were among the 102 passengers on the Mayflower. I had no idea about this. I stumbled on it just working my way back, generation by generation. No one in my family had ever discussed it.
• Like many Mayflower passengers, John and Joan both died within their first year in the New World. Elizabeth ended up marrying Howland some time later, and had 10 kids with him, of whom I am a descendent. Those two ended up living until they were 80, which was extraordinary at the time. Howland was the third-longest-lived male who made the journey.
• Howland was particularly famous in that during the voyage there was a turbulent storm during which he fell overboard. He managed to grab a topsail halyard that was trailing in the water and was hauled back aboard safely.
• About two million Americans were descended from John and Elizabeth Howland. In addition to me, they include presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush; actors Christopher Lloyd, Alec Baldwin, Humphrey Bogart, William H. Macy, Chevy Chase, and John Lithgow; poets Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; and Sarah Fucking Palin. All my relatives. 
• So if that random guy, who was only on the boat as a 21-year-old manservant to a bigwig, didn’t manage to grab a fucking rope, he drowns then and there in the Atlantic and I’m not here writing these bullets that you read and hopefully enjoy. Life is pretty weird.
• From the Sports Desk… according to at least one random idiot on the Internet, my Las Vegas Raiders are ranked 31st out of the 32 teams that make up the NFL going into the 2023/24 season.
• I’m only noting this now so I can laugh at him when we end up in, like, 17th place.
• Today in history… King James IV of Scotland marries Margaret Tudor, daughter of King Henry VII of England (1503). Bartolomeu de Gusmão demonstrates the lifting power of hot air in an audience before the king of Portugal (1709). Mont Blanc is climbed for the first time (1786). Following his defeat in the Battle of Gettysburg, Robert E. Lee sends a resignation letter which is turned down by Jefferson Davis (1863). Thomas Edison receives a patent for his mimeograph (1876). Wilbur Wright does the first public flight at Le Mans, France (1908). The German airship Graf Zeppelin begins an around-the-world flight (1929). First flight of the Convair B-36, the first intercontinental bomber and the first designed to deliver nuclear weapons (1946). The Beatles take the street-crossing cover pic for the album ‘Abbey Road’ (1969). President Richard Nixon, in a nationwide television address, announces his resignation from the office of the President of the United States effective noon the next day (1974). The first night baseball game in the history of Chicago's Wrigley Field was rained out in the fourth inning (1988). Space Shuttle Columbia STS-28 takes off on a 5-day secret mission (1989). Dave Matthews’ tour bus dumps 800 pounds of poop onto a boat full of passengers (2004). Opening of the 2008 summer Olympic Games in Beijing, China (2008). The Federal Bureau of Investigation executes a search warrant at former president Donald Trump's residence in Mar-a-Lago, Palm Beach, FL (2022).
• August 8 is the birthday of painter Godfrey Kneller (1646), cavalry officer/politician George Stoneman, Jr. (1822), physician/AA co-founder Bob Smith (1879), physicist Paul Dirac (1902), composer/musician Benny Carter (1907), producer Dino De Laurentiis (1919), producer/director William Asher (1921), swimmer/actress Esther Williams (1921), basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian (1930), actor Dustin Hoffman (1937), drummer Anton Fig (1952), radio host Robin Quivers (1952), actor Don Most (1953), musician The Edge (1961), politician Ron Klain (1961), rapper Kool Moe Dee (1962), singer-songwriter Scott Stapp (1973), and baseball player Anthony Rizzo (1989).

Welp, it’s time to wrap this up for now. I have exercise to do, work to do, meetings to take, grocery shopping to handle, and ants to kill. I am the worst fucking nightmare of any ants that enters my home. Outside, I will literally dance to avoid stepping on them. Inside, they’re fucked. Enjoy your day.