Random News: November 2, 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 2, 2023, and it’s a Thursday for some reason. This morning’s coffee is Peet’s Luminosa Breakfast Blend, and it’s exquisite. Fun fact: the better coffees are often light roasted. Anyway, let’s do some news.

• President Joe Biden and his top aides have a conundrum, and its name is Bibi Netanyahu.
• Israel, while fighting back against horrifying Hamas attacks, has shown little commitment to minimizing civilian deaths. The scenes of civilian devastation in Gaza are beginning to impact Biden’s domestic political standing.
• There is also a high likelihood that Netanyahu’s political days are numbered. Biden has gone so far as to suggest to Netanyahu that he should think about lessons he would share with his eventual successor.
• At the same time, Israeli politics is notoriously unpredictable, so take it with a grain of salt. 
• But bloody images of destruction from the massive blast that ripped through Jabalya refugee camp on Tuesday doesn’t help maintain the public perception that Israel is trying to contain Palestinian civilian casualties.
• And yesterday, Israel bombed the densely-populated area again, prompting warnings of war crimes. Israeli airstrikes also hit the vicinity of the Al Quds hospital in Gaza City where doctors say up to 14,000 displaced people are sheltering.
• Making matters worse, Amnesty International said this week that civilians in southern Lebanon were injured when Israeli forces hit a border village with shells containing white phosphorus, a substance said to be illegal under international law.
• White phosphorus can set buildings on fire and burn human flesh down to the bone. Survivors are at risk of infections and organ or respiratory failure, even if their burns are small.
• President Biden called for a pause in the war, though that’s likely easier said than done.
• Sigh. Moving on.
• Yesterday, attorneys representing Tennessee transgender teens and their families asked the U.S. Supreme Court to block a ban on gender-affirming care for minors that a lower court allowed to go into effect.
• Should the SCOTUS agree to take the case, it would mark the first time the justices could weigh in on restrictions on puberty blockers and hormone therapy for transgender people under 18.
• In the past two years, more than 20 states have enacted laws restricting or banning such treatments, even though they have been available in the United States for more than a decade and are endorsed by major medical associations.
• Here’s hoping.
• Want some Trials of Dump news? Sure.
• Yesterday, the New York attorney general’s office began the questioning of Dumpy Dump Jr. in the civil fraud trial by asking if he was familiar with accounting standards, such as the generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP).
• Junior responded that his knowledge of GAAP was limited to what he learned in “Accounting 101” during college in the 1990s.  
• The $250 million lawsuit accuses Dumpy Jr. and his brother L’il Eric Dump of knowingly participating in a scheme to inflate their father’s net worth to obtain financial benefits like better loan and insurance policy terms.
• Is Dump Jr.’s knowledge of accounting principles relevant? 100% yes,  because of the financial statements related to Trump’s net worth at the heart of the case. In a deposition taken last year, Junior said he had no real involvement in the preparation of the statements of financial condition at the heart of the case, and that he didn’t recall working on them.
• Most of his testimony yesterday therefore involved “I don’t know” and “I don’t recall” answers. His time on the witness stand continues today.
• Moving on.
• You should be neither surprised nor disheartened by this next bit of news.
• An effort to expel indicted GOP Rep. George Santos failed in the House last night as a Republican-led resolution fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to pass. The final vote was 179 to 213 with 19 members voting present.
• The breakdown of votes crossed the aisle. 24 House Republicans and 155 Democrats voted to expel Santos; 182 Republicans and 31 Democrats voted against ousting him from Congress; 15 Democrats and four Republicans voted present.
• Fun Fact: Only five people have been expelled from the House in the history of the United States, with three of those for fighting against the U.S. government in the Civil War.
• Expelling the first-term lawmaker would have further imperiled Republicans' narrow 221-212 majority, as a replacement would be selected in a special election, and a Democrat could very well recapture the seat. Santos’s district voted for Biden in 2020.
• Isn’t this bad news? Nah. First, you don’t want to set up a pattern of lawmakers routinely ejecting other members who are people voted in by the residents of their respective districts. That’s not good democracy.
• Second, Santos is going to a) be convicted and b) voted out of office after his term anyway.
• Third, as Santos himself vigorously pointed out, while he’s been indicted for a series of major crimes, he has yet to be convicted, and due process in the US means you’re innocent until proven guilty in court.
• So is he an evil, lying, untrustworthy, piece-of-shit criminal that remains in Congress despite a million good reasons for him to be out? Yes, definitely yes (and he’s certainly not the only one in Congress who fits that description). But is there a valid reason for not removing him? Also yes.
• Moving on.
• Sort of.
• The House had some other internal issues to handle yesterday. Lawmakers also voted against moving forward on censuring Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib for her comments on Israel. Tlaib is the House's only Palestinian American.
• Twenty-three Republicans joined all Democrats in voting to kill the measure against Tlaib, which was introduced by Marjorie Taylor Green (R-GA) and would have required a majority to pass.
• In retaliation for the resolution against Tlaib, Rep. Becca Balint D-VT) filed a resolution of her own to censure Greene. Balint's measure accuses Greene of making repeated racist, antisemitic and xenophobic statements and stoking conspiracy theories. 
• The measure against Greene was dropped after her own attack on Tlaib failed.
• Don’t you people have work to do?
• And while we’re up on Capitol Hill, let’s talk about the amazing piece of shit Tommy Tuberville (R-AL). Now it’s not just Democrats and the U.S. military who are angry at this man; his fellow Republicans jumped up his ass last night too.
• If you need a reminder, Tuberville is the former college football coach turned Senator who is personally blocking all military personnel actions because the military will allow people to get abortions.
• Hundreds of senior military advancements have been stalled as a result, going all the way back to February.
• So last night, a remarkable scene unfolded on the Senate floor as several Republicans, including Sens. Dan Sullivan (R-AK), Joni Ernst (R-IA) Todd C. Young (R-IN) and Lindsey O. Graham (R-SC) confronted Tuberville, imploring him to lift his hold for the sake of national security.
• He didn’t budge. I think something’s going to happen with this guy soon. It remains unclear if there is enough GOP support for a Democratic plan to temporarily change Senate rules to neutralize Tuberville's blockade. That proposal is set to come to a vote in the next few weeks, and would need nine Republicans to support it.
• Moving on.
• Teachers in Portland, OR walked off the job yesterday for the first day of a strike that shuttered schools for some 45,000 students in Oregon's largest city.
• They have the same valid concerns as teachers across the country: overly-large class sizes, salaries that haven't kept up with inflation, and a lack of resources.
• Up there with nurses and first responders, teachers are perhaps our most crucial resources. Fix the fucking budget and pay them!
• And here’s my daily reminder to voters in Ohio: VOTE YES ON ISSUE 1 on Tuesday. Thank you.
• Oh, and residents of Kentucky, vote for Andy Beshear. And residents of Mississippi, vote for Brandon Presley. Thank you very much (Elvis voice).
• And now, The Weather: “Push and Pull” by Mini Trees
• A somewhat early reminder: this weekend is the end of Daylight Saving Time in the USA and elsewhere (but not everywhere, and not even everywhere in the USA, confusingly enough). You get that hour back that they stole from you in the spring.
• I know, I know… you all hate DST ending, you want it to stay on DST year-round, blah blah blah. But I have always been firmly in the camp of leaving it as Standard Time.
• I get up early. It’s fucking dark for the first hour and a half of my day this time of year. Give me that sweet morning light, my friends. And yeah, it gets dark early. You don’t need to be outside until all hours in the winter anyway.
• Moving on.
• It’s a rare thing that I laugh out loud before I’ve had my first sip of coffee in the morning, but that happened today when a social media post from Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) responding to Chip Roy (R-TX) read, “You voted to kick me out of the freedom caucus, but keep CNN wannabe Ken Buck and vaping groping Lauren Boebert.”
• She was BIGLY mad that she didn’t get support to censure Rashida Tlaib, per above. Ha ha!
• In Florida Man news, a Florida man was cited this week for driving a truck that was painted similar to the look of Border Patrol vehicles but read “Booty Patrol” on the back.
• Okay, that’s actually pretty funny.
• From the Sports Desk… congrats to the Texas Rangers, who won the World Series over the Arizona Diamondbacks, four games to one. After being locked up for seven innings at 0-0, Texas took the lead in last night’s game and never looked back, shutting out the D-backs 5-0.
• It’s the franchises’s first World Series title. Happy for them. Corey Seager won the series MVP, his second (his first being with the Dodgers in 2020).
• Also in sports, rest in peace to Bobby Knight. The iconic college basketball coach died yesterday at 83.
• He’s the sixth-winningest coach in Division I men's college basketball history whose Hall of Fame career was highlighted by three national titles at Indiana (including an undefeated season not since matched), an Olympic gold medal as coach of U.S. men's basketball team in 1984, and countless on-court outbursts.
• Like a lot of people, I can respect Knight’s undeniably legendary coaching ability and also dislike the fact that he was a temperamental and occasionally violent asshole. RIP regardless, Coach.
• Today in history… North Dakota and South Dakota are admitted as the 39th and 40th U.S. states (1889). The Russian Empire declares war on the Ottoman Empire (1914). KDKA of Pittsburgh starts broadcasting as the first commercial radio station (1920). The British Broadcasting Corporation initiates the BBC Television Service, the world's first regular, "high-definition" - then defined as at least 200 lines - service (1936). Howard Hughes performs the only flight of the Hughes H-4 Hercules, also known as the "Spruce Goose” (1947). Game show contestant Charles Van Doren admits to a Congressional committee that he had been given questions and answers in advance (1959). Penguin Books is found not guilty of obscenity in the trial 'R v Penguin Books Ltd’, the ‘Lady Chatterley's Lover’ case (1960). Ronald Reagan signs a bill creating Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (1983). The Chicago Cubs defeat the Cleveland Indians in the World Series, ending the longest Major League Baseball championship drought at 108 years (2016).
• November 2 is the birthday of English king Edward V (1470), hunter/explorer Daniel Boone (1734), French queen consort Marie Antoinette (1755), US president James K. Polk (1795), physician John Light Atlee (1795), inventor John J. Loud (1844), US president Warren G. Harding (1865), actor Burt Lancaster (1913), actor Ray Walston (1914), music producer Rudy Van Gelder (1924), engineer/businessman Amar Bose (1929), saxophonist/composer Phil Woods (1931), sexologist Shere Hite (1942), keyboardist/composer Keith Emerson (1944), singer-songwriter/guitarist J. D. Souther (1945), drummer/composer Carter Beauford (1957), singer-songwriter k. d. lang (1961), politician Brian Kemp (1963), actor David Schwimmer (1966), singer-songwriter Kurt Elling (1967), rapper Nelly (1974), and NFL player Jimmy Garoppolo (1991).

Welp. That’s plenty of news. I’m going to finish this coffee and go work out. Enjoy your day.