Random News: November 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 November 16, 2023, and it’s a Thursday for some reason. As usual, there’s a lot going on, so let’s look at some of the things that are happening and figure out what they mean.

• A Georgia judge said yesterday that he will issue a protective order barring the public release of sensitive evidence exchanged between prosecutors and lawyers representing former president and current accused felon Donald John Trump and his co-defendants in their election interference criminal cases in that state.
• The order was sought by prosecutors, and agreed to by most of the defense teams on yesterday, after the leak this week to media outlets of videos containing confidential interviews that co-defendants including Jenna Ellis, Sidney Powell, and Kenneth Chesebro gave prosecutors as part of their agreements to plead guilty.
• At yesterday’s hearing, attorney Jonathan Miller, who is representing defendant Misty Hampton, confessed to Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee that he gave the videos to one media outlet. He did not say which one.
• As a reminder, Donald John Trump and his co-defendants are accused of criminal racketeering in their bid to reverse Dump’s 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden in Georgia. 
• Four of the co-defendants — lawyers Elis, Powell, Chesebro, and bail bondsman Scott Hall, have already pleaded guilty and will be testifying against Dump at his trial.
• Let’s move on to something more important.
• Cristina Nuñez and multiple other women are suing Texas over their dangerous abortion laws. The plaintiffs allege the exception for when a patient's life is in danger is too narrow and vague, and endangered them during complicated pregnancies.
• Nuñez has diabetes, end-stage renal disease, and other health conditions. When she unexpectedly became pregnant, it made her deathly ill. Abortion laws in Texas delayed her care and endangered her life.
• At a hearing in July, a district court judge agreed with the plaintiffs that the law needed to change, but the state immediately appealed the ruling directly to the Texas Supreme Court. That move allows Texas' three overlapping abortion bans to stand.
• The Texas Attorney General's office argued that Nuñez and the other women had not been harmed by the state's laws and suggested that their doctors were responsible for any harms they claimed.
• This is how Republicans want women’s lives to be across our entire country. Trump has promised a nationwide abortion ban in all states if he is elected. Voting for any Republican at any level endangers the lives of the women you care about.
• DO NOT VOTE FOR THEM. Ever. Thank you.
• I’ll make one more mention of El Dumpo for now. It’s about his purposeful quoting of Adolf Hitler the other day while speaking of “vermin” and about “the blood of America has been poisoned. Those are identical phrases used in Nazi Germany.
• That wasn’t an effort to win over new or undecided voters. He already knows he can’t win lawfully. Instead, that was a specific and purposeful call to white supremacist extremists.
• He wants to build a Dump army to take the White House by force after he loses in 2024. Think of it like January 6, 2021 when he told them to “stand back and stand by,” but much larger and more widespread. He’s planning a genuine hostile takeover of the USA.
• The good news? We already know what he’s doing. So do our intelligence community, our law enforcement community, and our military. And this time they’ll be a lot more ready for any kind of insurrectionist bullshit. In fact, they’ll already know who’s coming before the party even starts.
• They may try again, but they’ll fail again, and the repercussions will be much more serious.
• Moving on to some breaking news from this morning.
• The bi-partisan House Ethics Committee released its highly anticipated report on Rep. George Santos (R-NY) today, referring its findings of “potential violations of federal criminal law” to the Department of Justice.
• The chairman and ranking member of the panel said there is substantial evidence to show that Santos knowingly caused his campaign committee to file false or incomplete reports with the Federal Election Commission; used campaign funds for personal purposes; engaged in fraudulent conduct in connection with RedStone Strategies LLC; and engaged in knowing and willful violations of the Ethics in Government Act as it relates to his Financial Disclosure (FD) Statements filed with the House.
• As I opined previously, they were just waiting to use Santos’s vote through the rigamarole of the House Speaker vote. Now he’s fucked. Santos is facing 23 federal criminal counts and has already endured two expulsion efforts, with a third coming soon.
• In other news…
• Elon Musk, the owner of the social media platform X as well as Tesla and SpaceX, has finally opened up about his hatred of Jews.
• A post on X yesterday said that “Jewish communties (sic) have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.” The post also referenced “hordes of minorities” flooding Western countries, a popular antisemitic conspiracy theory.
• In response to the antisemitic post, Musk, who was born in South Africa, wrote: “You have said the actual truth.”
• I have stopped using X (formerly known as Twitter), and unless you want to be part of this kind of hatred, I suggest you do as well.
• I also recommend that you not purchase the products or services of any company who continues to advertise on the platform.
• Speaking of social media…
• Republican presidential candidate and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley has called for name verification on all social media profiles, saying anonymous accounts and bots spreading misinformation are a national security threat.
• Haley, who was also the former U.N. ambassador, blamed Russia, China, Iran and North Korea for spreading misinformation on social media that divides Americans. 
• I don’t have to tell most of you people the inherent problems with forcing name verification on social media accounts. Ask me if Zak Claxton is my legal name, just for an example.
• But band names, brand names, transgender people dead names, and a million other kinds of names used for reasons of privacy and personal security and desire for anonymity have been part of the Internet since the get-go.
• Her GOP opponents like Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy jumped on the chance to bash Haley for this suggestion, which doesn’t seem like a popular idea.
• Let’s move on.
• The mother of a 6-year-old boy who shot his teacher in Virginia was sentenced Wednesday to 21 months in prison for using marijuana while owning a firearm, which is illegal under U.S. law.
• A lot of people don’t seem to know that, but it’s true. It’s the same statute they used to go after Hunter Biden, who purchased a gun while still abusing cocaine.
• While marijuana is legal in most states, including Virginia, the law for unlawful use of a controlled substance in possession of a firearm and making a false statement during the purchase of a firearm remains in effect.
• As you likely recall, Deja Taylor's son took her handgun to school and shot Abby Zwerner in her first-grade classroom in January, seriously wounding the educator. Investigators later found nearly an ounce of marijuana in Taylor's bedroom and evidence of frequent drug use in her text messages and paraphernalia.
• Zwerner is suing the school system for $40 million, alleging that administrators ignored multiple warnings that the boy had a gun. Zwerner spent nearly two weeks in the hospital and has had four surgeries since the shooting.
• Moving on.
• Eugene Vindman, a retired Army colonel who raised alarms about Dump’s actions toward Ukraine, plans to announce that he will run for Congress in Virginia’s 7th District, where Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D) has declined to seek another term to run for governor instead.
• Cool.
• Vindman, 48, is the first Democrat to announce a campaign to succeed Spanberger, whose seat is likely to be eyed by Republicans as a pickup opportunity. He’s a career military officer who went from fighting in Iraq to serving in the White House as a national security adviser.
• Moving on…
• As you know, the House passed a CR to continue funding the government through part of January this week. But a bloc of far-right House Republicans torpedoed a major spending bill pushed by their own leaders yesterday, protesting Speaker Mike Johnson’s move a day earlier to rely on Democrats to push through legislation staving off a government shutdown.
• The mutiny in the House, which forced the chamber to adjourn abruptly for the Thanksgiving holiday without completing its work, underscored the difficulties ahead on reaching a spending deal early next year. 
• There really is no Republican party anymore. They will continue this childlike infighting the entire remainder of time they hold a majority in Congress, with nothing getting done for Americans in the meantime.
• Vote blue in 2024 to end this mess.
• Moving on.
• Chinese President Xi Jinping signaled that China will send new pandas to the United States, calling them "envoys of friendship between the Chinese and American peoples."
• The gesture came at the end of a day in which Xi and President Biden held their first face to face meeting in a year and pledged to try to reduce tensions. Xi did not share additional details on when or where pandas might be provided but appeared to suggest the next pair of pandas are most likely to come to California, probably San Diego.
• I like pandas. Who doesn’t like pandas?
• And now, The Weather: “One More Job” by Shuttle
• Here’s a chart. It’s November 1984, I’m a junior in high school, and I’m in a band. We’re not bad, but we’re not great because we’re undisciplined kids in a garage. We play rock covers, ranging from The Doors to Van Halen to Led Zeppelin to Pink Floyd and much more. We play a lot of backyard parties and school events, since we’re too young to get into the clubs I’d eventually be playing.
• 1. Purple Rain (Soundtrack) (Prince And The Revolution). 2. Born In The U.S.A. (Bruce Springsteen). 3. Private Dancer (Tina Turner). 4. The Woman In Red (Soundtrack) (Stevie Wonder). 5. Volume One (The Honeydrippers). 6. Big Bam Boom (Daryl Hall John Oates). 7. Sports (Huey Lewis & The News). 8. Can't Slow Down (Lionel Richie). 9. Suddenly (Billy Ocean). 10. She's So Unusual (Cyndi Lauper). 11. Tonight (David Bowie. 12. The Unforgettable Fire (U2). 13. Break Out (The Pointer Sisters). 14. Chicago 17 (Chicago). 15. 1100 Bel Air Place (Julio Iglesias). 16. I Feel For You (Chaka Khan). 17. Heartbeat City (The Cars). 18. Eddie & The Cruisers (Soundtrack) (John Cafferty & The Beaver Brown Band). 19. Emotion (Barbra Streisand). 20. Animalize (KISS).
• From the Sports Desk… Rory McIlroy was playing the 13th hole at the World Tour Championship in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, when his tee shot landed in the crotch of a female spectator who was to the right of the green.
• Amid much laughter, the rest of the spectators retreated, but the woman remained in place, with her feet crossed and the ball lodged between her legs. McIlroy went up to her, scratched his head, then stood back and said: "Right, ermm. Referee!"
• They allowed the golfer to take a drop rather than… uh, I don’t know what the other option was.
• Today in history… While traveling during the Ninth Crusade, Prince Edward — my 23rd great-grandfather — becomes King of England upon the death of Henry III — my 24th great-grandfather — but he will not return to England for nearly two years to assume the throne (1272). Missouri trader William Becknell arrives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, over a route that became known as the Santa Fe Trail (1822). A Russian court sentences writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky to death for anti-government activities linked to a radical intellectual group (1849). The National Rifle Association of America receives its charter from New York State (1871). English engineer John Ambrose Fleming receives a patent for the thermionic valve, aka vacuum tube (1904). Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory join to form Oklahoma, which is admitted as the 46th U.S. state (1907). The United States and the Soviet Union establish formal diplomatic relations (1933). The Arecibo message is broadcast from Puerto Rico (1974). Pop group Milli Vanilli are stripped of their Grammy Award (1990). 
• November 16 is the birthday of Roman emperor Tiberius (42 BC), organist/composer Paul Sartorius (1569), Hawaiian king Kalākaua (1836), trumpeter/composer W. C. Handy (1873), actor Burgess Meredith (1907), singer/guitarist Hubert Sumlin (1931), guitarist/songwriter Teenie Hodges (1945), actress Marg Helgenberger (1958), MLB player Dwight Gooden (1964), singer-songwriter/pianist Diana Krall (1964), actress Lisa Bonet (1967), actress Maggie Gyllenhaal (1977), NBA player Amar'e Stoudemire (1982), actor/comedian Pete Davidson (1993), and NBA player Bol Bol (1999).

Okay. That’s enough for now. I have more for you tomorrow. Do good things in the meantime. Enjoy your day.