Random News: October 29, 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 October 29, 2023, and it’s a Sunday. It’s a wee bit chilly for here in Redondo Beach, CA, with temps dipping into the low 50s at night. I know that’s not actually chilly. It’s just how we recognize fall where I live. Let’s do some news.

• We normally don’t start with this section, but it’s Sunday Gunday at Zak’s Random News, where we take a quick scroll through the seemingly inevitable list of gun violence incidents over the past couple of days here in the USA.
• Before I do, there’s something I want to point out. After each shooting, I seem to hear a lot of talk about the mental health of the shooter. Conservatives often deflect the issue of the USA being filled with daily incidences of gun violence by saying that we have a mental health crisis.
• Well, that’s correct. We do have a mental health crisis… that, along with a culture that makes guns so easily accessible to everyone, is a recipe for continual disaster.
• But the not-at-all-funny thing is, we also don’t address the nation’s mental health woes, and the same people who blame it for the epidemic of gun violence also vote against prioritizing mental health services.
• A great example is gun-lover Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). She was one of 205 Republicans who voted against school-based mental health services. She was one of just 20 House Republicans who voted against a package that addresses mental health and substance abuse (which passed 402-20).
• But Marge is always the first to grab some camera time to say that guns are never the problem and the issue is crazy people. Does she support taking away guns from those crazy people? No, not at all. She wants more people to have more guns, and frankly that’s a common and publicly-stated position among most Republican politicians.
• So let’s do this.
• Two dead and 18 injured in a mass shooting at a Halloween party in Tampa, FL. Two dead and three others (including a 13-year-old girl) shot at a house party in San Antonio, TX. Three dead and three more shot at a business party in Texarkana, TX. A woman dead and nine others shot during a large house party in Indianapolis, IN. One dead, two others in critical condition in a shooting at a nightclub in Wichita, KS. One dead, one wounded in a shooting on the campus of Worcester State University in Worcester, MA. A woman dead and a man in critical condition after a shooting in Kent, WA. A woman shot dead in a broad daylight shooting in southside Tallahassee, FL. One shot dead in Springfield, MO. One shot dead in Charlotte, NC. One shot dead in Kakaako, HI. One shot dead in Memphis, TN. One shot dead in Mankato, MN. One shot dead at a party in Magnolia, AR. 15 people shot, two critically, at a Halloween party in the North Lawndale neighborhood of Chicago, IL. Four shot (one critically) during a shooting at a gas station in Atlanta, GA. Four shot (on critically) in the Carrick neighborhood of Pittsburgh, PA. Three wounded in a shooting at a shopping mall in Chula Vista, CA. Two shot near a Denny’s in Nashua, NH. Two shot at a Kum & Go in Colorado Springs, CO. One shot critically in Norfolk, VA. One shot in Lansing, MI. One shot in Andrews, SC. One shot in Oakland, CA. A female juvenile shot in Montgomery, AL. A juvenile in critical condition after a shooting in Washington, D.C. 
• Are these all the shootings? Nah, just a few of them from Friday and Saturday. There were many more.
• What about the mass shooting in Maine? Nah, that happened all the way back on Wednesday. Everyone’s forgotten about that by now, right? That’s how the ammosexuals want you to think, anyway.
• If you say something at the moment, you’re “politicizing a tragedy”. If you bring it up a week later, everyone has “moved on from it."
• Let’s move on.
• Thousands of people broke into aid warehouses in Gaza to take flour and basic hygiene products as Israeli tanks and infantry pushed into Gaza over the weekend.
• Gaza’s Health Ministry said the death toll among Palestinians has passed 8,000 — mostly women and minors. Over 1,400 people have died on the Israeli side, mainly civilians killed during the initial Hamas onslaught.
• There’s never any redeeming factor to war. Wealthy people profit and innocents die horrible deaths. No justification is possible for either terrorism or war. Never ever.
• Back here in the USA, let’s talk some more about abortion and Ohio’s upcoming election.
• Three months ago, Ohio tried to make it impossible for their own citizens to make changes to their state’s constitution. This was done in a failed attempt by abortion opponents to prevent Issue 1 being placed on the ballot to enshrine reproductive rights in the Buckeye state.
• That August proposal aimed at derailing amendments failed even in 15 counties that had voted for Trump. This isn’t a red-versus-blue situation. It’s about people who don’t feel the government should control your reproductive decisions.
• Ohio’s Issue 1 is being carefully watched as an indicator for the entire nation. Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade’s federal abortion standard, voters have sided with abortion rights advocates in six other states, even in conservative Kansas and Kentucky. 
• Advocates in nine states are pushing for ballot campaigns next year and beyond. Conservative leaders know this is going to be a big problem for them in 2024. A July poll from USA Today and Suffolk University found that 58 percent of Ohioans backed the proposed amendment, and just 32 percent opposed.
• Ohioans will vote on Tuesday November 7, and if they vote Yes on Issue 1, it will help pave the way for the rest of the nation to return in a direction of sanity and fairness.
• Let’s move on.
• Some slightly surprising news out of the GOP race for president. Although Donnie Dump, aka Combover Caligula, obviously leads the pack by a mile, Nikki Haley is making an unexpected ascent.
• Take this with a grain of salt. El Dumpo is far ahead of any of the undercard opponents, Haley still only has a handful of points nationally, and we’ve been hit by media reports at various times of Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott, and Vivek Ramaswamy as potential Trump killers. All bullshit.
• But Haley had two widely-praised debate performances, is the only one of the bunch with expertise in international affairs, and in recent weeks, Republican politicians, pundits and at least one newspaper editorial board have called for most of the remaining candidates to drop out and consolidate around Haley.
• She’s not a good person, and I don’t like her at all, but I do like having at least one person in the race to make Dumpelstiltskin nervous.
• Speaking of not good people…
• Conservatives are totally excited about the House GOP’s election of Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) as Speaker. They now plan to press him on bringing anti-abortion and anti-transgender policies up for a vote.
• To be clear, these people don’t just want to do things like limit things like abortion and same-sex marriage. They want to make abortion 100% illegal in all cases across the nation, and they want to make it punishable by law to be gay, or to be transgendered.
• That’s what they do in fundamentalist Muslim states. They want to Make American Iran Again.
• Johnson’s entire political career has been based on these values. He has worked to close abortion clinics in Louisiana and twice defended the state’s same-sex marriage ban.
• Keep it in mind as we approach 2024, when we’ll have a strong opportunity to flip the House to blue and remove this dangerous person’s Christofascist ideology from a top spot in the US government.
• And now, The Weather: “Heaven Turning Navy Blue” by LOMELI
• Rest in peace to actor Matthew Perry, who was about exactly two months younger than me. He died yesterday at age 54 in an apparent drowning in a hot tub at his home, though details remained under investigation. No drugs or foul play were suspected.
• As just about everyone around the world is aware, Perry played Chandler Bing on the NBC comedy ‘Friends’ for ten seasons. Equally well known was Perry’s decades-long struggle with addiction, something covered in depth in his memoir ‘Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing’ that he released last year in which he said his alcoholism began at age 14.
• He was in and out of rehabs dozens of times. As far as people were aware, he seemed to be sober in recent times before his passing. Awful.
• Not only were Perry and I born at the same time, but my own use of drugs and alcohol could have easily spiraled in a similar fashion as his had I not made, in hindsight, some really good decisions in my early 20s, and again in my early 30s.
• I’m far from perfect — like, super far, can’t even see it in the distance far — but removing my propensity to turn to intoxicants to solve my problems is probably the only reason I’m alive and generally well today.
• Let’s move on. We’ve just hit 663,000 words in this silly list of bullets I’ve done almost every morning since May 2022.
• That’s a lot of words. I’m far past the entire J.R.R. Tolkien ‘Lord of the Rings’ series including ‘The Hobbit’ (576,459 words). I blew past Stephen King’s uncut version of ‘The Stand’ (471,485) months back. There are more words in these bullets than even huge-ass monster novels like ‘Atlas Shrugged’ (561,996), ‘War and Peace’ (561,304), or ‘Les Miserables’ (530,982).
• And, of course, the longer something is, the better it is. Wait. No. Strike that.
• Anyway, I enjoy doing this, and it’s for me as much as it is for you, I promise. Probably more so.
• From the Sports Desk… the Diamondbacks came roaring back in Game 2 of the World Series, beating the Rangers 9-1. The series is now tied 1-1. Game 3 is Monday in Arizona.
• Also in sports, a fucking horrific story about former Pittsburgh Penguin Adam Johnson, who died following a freak accident on the ice as he played for the English team Nottingham Panthers.
• In the second period of the team’s Challenge Cup match against the Sheffield Steelers yesterday, Johnson got slashed in the neck by a skate. He was 29 years old. Ugh.
• Today in history… First trial for witchcraft in Paris leading to the death of three people (1390). Sir Walter Raleigh is beheaded for allegedly conspiring against James I of England (1618). Mount Hood in Oregon is named after Samuel Hood by Lt. William E. Broughton (1792). Eighteen countries meet in Geneva and agree to form the International Red Cross (1863). Second trial of Sacco and Vanzetti in Boston, MA (1921). The New York Stock Exchange crashes in what will be called the Crash of '29 or "Black Tuesday", beginning the Great Depression (1929). The first-ever computer-to-computer link is established on ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet (1969). Space Shuttle Discovery blasts off on STS-95 with 77-year-old John Glenn on board, making him the oldest person to go into space at that time (1998). Delta Air Lines merges with Northwest Airlines, creating the world's largest airline and reducing the number of US legacy carriers to five (2008). Hurricane Sandy hits the east coast of the United States, killing 148 directly and 138 indirectly, while leaving nearly $70 billion in damages and causing major power outages (2012). 
• October 29 is the birthday of author Jean Giraudoux (1882), Nazi piece of shit Joseph Goebbels (1897), writer Dominick Dunne (1925), animator Ralph Bakshi (1938), painter Bob Ross (1942), film producer Don Simpson (1943), actor Richard Dreyfuss (1947), singer-songwriter Kevin DuBrow (1955), actor Dan Castellaneta (1957), actress Joely Fisher (1967), actress Wynona Ryder (1971), actress Gabrielle Union (1972), swimmer Amanda Beard (1981), and singer-songwriter Tove Lo (1987).

Okay. I’m gonna shower and do things. Enjoy your day.