Random News: September 21, 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 September 21, 2023, and it’s a Thursday for some reason. And I have an 8AM meeting. I’d be super annoyed but some of the participants are in the UK where it’s 4PM, and I am trying to flexibly accommodate them, so I’m going to get these bullets done lickety-split, postpone my workout, do my meeting, and feel like I’m running behind all day. Lucky me. Let’s do this.

• Ba-dee-ya, never was a cloudy day. Happy Earth, Wind & Fire Day. if you don’t get it, you’re not funky enough.
• Okay, now news.
• Breaking… Rupert Murdoch announced this morning that he will step down as chairman of Fox Corporation and News Corp.
• His son, Lachlan Murdoch, will become sole chairman of both companies.
• Fox News launched in 1996 as a startup competitor to CNN. It eventually became the No. 1 cable news channel in America and a bastion for Republican talking points and falsehoods.
• There’s no way to know if Fox will change its course without Rupert at the helm, but Lachlan Murdoch has privately criticized Trump for years, saying that he disagrees with much of the way the former President behaves, and has told people that he believes if Trump were to run again, it would be bad for the country.
• Guess we’ll see.
• Following up on a story we spoke about recently, the hearing yesterday for three indicted fake GOP electors got pretty fiery. The defense attorneys of the fake electors were trying to argue that their clients were being targeted only for being Republicans. Pffft.
• These are the people who want their case transferred to federal court because they were pretending to be federal officials. They can all polish my knob.
• In other news…
• The Senate has finally ended the one-man crusade that’s threatened our military defense readiness for months, and overwhelmingly approved Air Force General C.Q. Brown to be the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the military’s top officer.
• Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) was told to fuck off. His actions still leave over 300 senior officers in limbo, and it will take a long time to unfuck what he’s done to our country’s military.
• Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer bypassed Tuberville’s crusade by bringing a handful of votes on military promotions to the floor. The Senate is next expected to vote to confirm General Eric Smith as commandant of the Marine Corps and General Randy George as Army chief of staff later this week.
• Before being confirmed yesterday, Brown as the first Black service chief in US military history when he was confirmed as chief of the Air Force in 2020. He is only the second Black man to serve as chairman, following General Colin Powell.
• In other news of Biden wins…
• The Biden administration is canceling nearly $37 million of federal student loan debt for more than 1,200 borrowers who attended the University of Phoenix because it found that the for-profit school misled students about job prospects.
• Similar to yesterday’s announcement about the University of Phoenix, the Department of Education canceled $72 million in federal student loan debt in August for more than 2,300 borrowers who attended the for-profit Ashford University in California.
• Altogether, the administration has canceled more than $117 billion of the nearly $1.7 trillion of outstanding federal student loan debt since 2021.
• The former University of Phoenix students are eligible for loan forgiveness under a program that’s been in place for decades that allows people to apply for debt relief if they believe their college misled or defrauded them.
• In health news, the Biden administration also announced yesterday that it is reviving a program to mail free rapid coronavirus tests to Americans. Starting September 25, people can request four free tests per household through a web site. Officials say the tests are able to detect the latest variants and are intended to be used through the end of the year.
• All good stuff. Thanks Joe!
• House Republicans and Attorney General Merrick Garland clashed yesterday at a testy hearing.
• Jim Jordan was being a prick as usual. He accused the DOJ of not prosecuting Hunter Biden over certain tax years. Yawn.
• Garland stood his ground, rejecting allegations from Republicans and an IRS whistleblower that the Hunter Biden investigation was tainted by politics, and said that he did not interfere with the probe in any way.
• Garland pointed out multiple times that the special counsel investigating Hunter Biden, David Weiss, had been appointed by Trump, and he left Weiss in charge after taking office. Garland also noted that Weiss is expected to testify before the panel next month, saying that lawmakers would have the chance to ask him questions directly.
• Enough on that mumbo jumbo.
• Some vile news out of the former Trump camp.
• Cassidy Hutchinson, the former top aid to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, claims in her new book that she was groped by Rudy Giuliani on the day of the January 6, 2021 failed coup attempt at the Capitol.
• You probably recall Cassidy’s brave testimony during last year’s January 6 Select Committee hearings. Here’s an excerpt from her description of being sexually assaulted by Giuliani while other members of the Trump team look on.
• “He put his hand under my blazer, then my skirt… I feel his frozen fingers trail up my thigh. He tilts his chin up. The whites of his eyes look jaundiced. My eyes dart to John Eastman, who flashes a leering grin. I fight against the tension in my muscles and recoil from Rudy’s grip… filled with rage, I storm through the tent, on yet another quest for Mark.”
• I will celebrate every moment of the downfall of these grotesque scumbags, from Rudy to Eastman to the Orange Shitstain himself. That’s someone’s daughter being felt up by this drunken, decrepit, disgusting turd.
• In news that you should definitely pay attention to, the same anti-affirmative action group behind the pair of cases that led the Supreme Court to strike down race-conscious admissions programs at higher-education institutions has now filed a lawsuit against West Point.
• If you need a reminder, West Point is the official United States Military Academy.
• The lawsuit claims that West Point focuses on race when admitting future cadets and engages in racial balancing to meet benchmarks for the portion of African American, Hispanic and Asian students that make up each incoming class.
• I think we all know what these people want: a US military free of any leadership other than white people. If I had to bet, I believe the current Supreme Court will side with them.
• In other news… the next time you hear someone railing about the violent drug lords in Mexico, you can let them know it was an American, Andrew Scott Pierson, of Jay, OK, who smuggled ghost gun parts and set up a gun manufacturing operation to supply two different Mexican drug cartels with weapons.
• Retired ATF Special Agent Edwin Starr helped break the case. “He was very slick. When his residence was finally searched by Mexican police, they found passports from countries as far away as Lithuania. He had multiple identities he used in Mexico, voter ID cards, birth certificates. He had multiple identities in states in the United States." 
• Solving the case of the American who sold an arsenal of weapons to the Mexican cartels took the cooperation on many law entities, including the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and a dozen other agencies including the FBI, State Department and even the U.S. Postal Service. 
• The firearms that Pierson, 48, provided are directly tied to hundreds of deaths. Pierson pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas to violating the U.S. Arms Export Control Act. He is now serving a 12-year sentence at a federal prison in Texarkana, TX.
• Moving on.
• Some of the GOP candidates have suggestions about how to handle the United Auto Workers strike.
• Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) said on Monday said striking workers should be fired, saying he would emulate President Ronald Reagan who terminated more than 11,000 striking air traffic controllers in 1981.
• Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley on Tuesday proclaimed she was a “union buster,” pointing to her record of recruiting foreign car manufacturers such as Mercedes Benz and Volvo to the Palmetto State.
• Two-thirds of Americans approve of unions, according to a recent Gallup poll. The UAW strike also enjoys solid support with 54% of U.S. adults approving the work stoppage.
• Donnie Dumplywumply wants to get in on some of that action, and he will be skipping the second GOP debate next Wednesday and instead visit Michigan to meet with striking UAW members.
• UAW union president Shawn Fain says, “Every fiber of our union is being poured into fighting the billionaire class and an economy that enriches people like Donald Trump at the expense of workers. We can’t keep electing billionaires and millionaires that don’t have any understanding what it is like to live paycheck to paycheck and struggle to get by and expecting them to solve the problems of the working class.”
• Good point.
• Hey, remember that Ron DeSantis guy?
• A new poll from CNN and the University of New Hampshire shows DeSantis in fifth place in the GOP presidential field, behind Donald Trump, Vivek Ramaswamy, Nikki Haley, and Chris Christie.
• DeSantis was doing okay until a glitch-filled campaign event with Elon Musk on his social media platform in May. Since that moment he’s been in free fall. I expect him to drop out of the race soon enough once his financial support crashes and burns.
• A reminder: the Republican front-runner by far is a man who faces 91 criminal charges for election subversion, retention of classified information and hush-money payments, and civil threats including a defamation case in which he was adjudicated a rapist.
• Slow clap.
• And now, The Weather: “Rocks of Time” by by Laura Veirs
• I have a lot of Apple shit — my main computer is a Mac that I use for music and video editing and writing and other business needs as well as Second Life, and I have an iPhone and an iPad. I like them all a lot. I do not have an Apple Watch. My lifestyle doesn’t make it seem needed or useful in any way.
• But a woman in Michigan had to be rescued on Tuesday after getting stuck in an outhouse while trying to retrieve her Apple Watch that she managed to drop inside a toilet. 
• This happened inside an outhouse bathroom at Dixon Lake, MI. “The woman was heard yelling for help and told first responders she had dropped her Apple Watch in the toilet. She then lowered herself inside the toilet to retrieve it and could not get out,” state police said.
• How valuable would something have to be for you to lower yourself into a fucking public toilet? I’m trying to think of anything I own that isn’t, say, a human child or other living creature, that would cause me to justifiably make that decision.
• Fuck that watch.
• Here’s a chart I’ve never done before. It’s… right now. The top 20 tunes from the September 2023 Billboard Hot 100. The good news is that I know most of these artists. The bad news is that I don’t think I’ve heard even one of these songs. Also, seven of these top 20 songs are all by one artist, which is probably more a reflection on how people experience music these days.
• 1. Vampire (Olivia Rodrigo). 2. Paint The Town Red (Doja Cat). 3. I Remember Everything (Zach Bryan Featuring Kacey Musgraves). 4. Fast Car (Luke Combs). 5. Cruel Summer (Taylor Swift). 6. Last Night (Morgan Wallen). 7. Bad Idea Right? (Olivia Rodrigo). 8. Snooze (SZA). 9. Fukumean (Gunna). 10. Dance The Night (Dua Lipa). 11. Get Him Back! (Olivia Rodrigo). 12. Calm Down (Rema & Selena Gomez). 13. All-American Bitch (Olivia Rodrigo). 14. Bongos (Cardi B & Megan Thee Stallion). 15. Barbie World (Nicki Minaj & Ice Spice With Aqua). 16. The Grudge (Olivia Rodrigo). 17. Flowers (Miley Cyrus). 18. All My Life (Lil Durk Featuring J. Cole). 19. Making The Bed (Olivia Rodrigo). 20. Logical (Olivia Rodrigo)
• From the Sports Desk… it’s Thursday so there’s a football game on tonight. I usually forget about Thursday Night Football and then will be sitting here and suddenly remember, “Hey, there’s a football game on,” and I go to look and there are ten seconds left in the fourth quarter.
• Tonight’s game is the New York Giants at the San Francisco 49ers. The Niners are favored by like, a million points, and it should be more. As lopsided as that game would be regardless, it’s even worse with Saquon Barkley expected to miss three weeks with an ankle injury.
• Today in history… The Kingdom of Dublin falls to Norman invaders (1170). A Hanoverian army is defeated in ten minutes by the Jacobite forces of Prince Charles Edward Stuart (1745). Benedict Arnold gives the British the plans to West Point (1780). France’s National Convention abolishes the monarchy (1792). Empress Dowager Cixi seizes power and ends the Hundred Days' Reform in China (1898). Salvador Lutteroth establishes Mexican professional wrestling (1933). In Dunaivtsi, Ukraine, Nazis murder 2,588 Jews (1942). Malta gains independence from the United Kingdom (1964). Bahrain, Bhutan and Qatar join the United Nations (1971). Sandra Day O'Connor is unanimously approved by the U.S. Senate as the first female Supreme Court justice (1981). The Defense of Marriage Act is passed by the United States Congress (1996). The Galileo spacecraft is terminated by sending it into Jupiter's atmosphere (2003). 
• September 21 is the birthday of painter Barbara Longhi (1552), actor Maurice Barrymore (1849), actor John Bunny (1863), novelist H. G. Wells (1866), US Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson (1867), composer Gustav Holst (1874), publisher Allen Lane (1902), animator Chuck Jones (1912), physicist Donald A. Glaser (1926), actor Larry Hagman (1931), singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen (1934), film producer Jerry Bruckheimer (1943), songwriter/guitarist Don Felder (1947), author Stephen King (1947), actor Bill Murray (1950), guitarist/keyboardist Dave Gregory (1952), Japan prime minister Shinzo Abe (1954), drummer Phil Taylor (1954), actor Dave Coulier (1959), actress Cheryl Hines (1965), singer-songwriter Faith Hill (1967), talk show host Ricki Lake (1968), actor Luke Wilson (1971), singer-songwriter Liam Gallagher (1972), NFL player Jon Kitna (1972), and NFL player Doug Baldwin (1988).

Gotta jump to this meeting. Ugh. Enjoy your day.