Random News: November 25, 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 25, 2023, and it’s a Saturday. I’m slowly getting my day rolling, but am enjoying the quiet time in my robe with my coffee. If it wasn’t for that whole “need to be a responsible person and work for a living” aspect of life, I could get used to this. Anyway, let’s look at the news.

• Former Minneapolis police officer and convicted murdered Derek Chauvin has been stabbed in an Arizona prison.
• If your memory isn’t helping here, allow me to assist: Chauvin is the cop who killed George Floyd in 2020 by kneeling on his neck for over nine minutes, which became the springboard for the riots of that summer and the launch of the BLM movement.
• Chauvin, 47, was seriously injured in the attack by another inmate. There are no other details available, but I’m just going to guess that wherever he goes, he’s not going to be very loved by other inmates (as a former cop) or especially by Black inmates (as a racist killer).
• No word either on how bad the stabbing was, but it was reported that Chauvin required life-saving measures after the incident. Chauvin did survive the attack, but it might not be the last as he serves his 22-year sentence.
• Do I want that guy to get killed in prison? No, no I don’t. It’s not justice. He’s been tried by a jury and given punishment that they saw fit his crime. He’s put in his appeals and they’ve failed. Now he has to serve the time. They did not sentence him to death whether we feel like it’s merited or not.
• Moving on.
• While the Israel-Hamas war is in the midst of their brief break, I wanted to once again mention something I hope you all can understand.
• You can support Israel while condemning their actions against the people of Palestine.
• You can be critical of Hamas and other terrorist organizations without hating Palestine or other Muslim-dominant countries.
• Above all, you can express your opinions without spewing hatred on those who don’t. Acts of antisemitism and Islamophobia are equally repugnant. I don’t care how you consider yourself from a political or religious standpoint. Hatred and violence are wrong. End of story.
• And that brings me to…
• If you’re like me, you can merely hope that the entire world comes to the realization that violence and armed conflict of any sort is never a real solution. It only postpones the inevitable revenge that leads to more violence and misery and death.
• There are only two factors to overcome that would end all wars on this planet: fear and greed.
• Granted, they’re among humanities biggest and most longterm weaknesses. It may never be possible to get past them. But I think it’s good to point out that it might be possible someday.
• That being said, the brief period of peace has already hit a snag. Today was supposed to be the second day of hostage release, but Hamas is delaying their end of the bargain, saying Israel had not allowed an agreed-upon amount of aid into Gaza.
• So as is typical in this and many wars, you have a “he said, she said” situation, and it’s impossible to know who’s the actual asshole entity here.
• Moving on.
• Complete douchebag Dean Phillips (D-MN), who is the only person challenging Joe Biden for the Democrat presidential primary, announced yesterday he will not seek reelection to Congress in 2024.
• Good. Because we want that guy out of office completely. His hot take on how “Biden is great but we need a younger guy” reeks of agism and self-serving bullshit.
• Side note on Phillips: he is one of the wealthiest members (among many very wealthy members) of Congress, and heir to his stepdaddy’s Phillips Distilling Company empire.
• I haven’t mentioned Phillips before now and I really don’t intend to any more than he warrants, which is not at all. Fuck that rich centrist moderate fuck and his entire political future.
• Let’s move on.
• President Joe Biden is expected to be in Atlanta next week to honor Rosalynn Carter. Biden is scheduled to arrive with first lady Dr. Jill Biden on Tuesday to attend the former first lady's memorial service.
• Vice President Kamala Harris and husband second gentleman Douglas Emhoff will attend, too. Carter, the wife of former president Jimmy Carter, died Sunday, November 19, at age 96.
• In other news, the world’s biggest iceberg is on the move after decades of being grounded on the seafloor in Antarctica.
• The huge mass of ice broke away from an ice shelf in 1986, calved, and grounded on the Antarctic’s Weddell Sea floor almost immediately.
• Named A23a, the iceberg is about 1,312 feet thick and over 1,500 square miles in area. That’s over twice the size of London, for comparison’s sake.
• Let’s talk about voting. We’ll be doing that a lot over the next 11 months.
• Voters in the swing county of Northampton, PA, had some issues when their new touchscreen voting machines glitched during a down-ballot judge’s race in 2019. But then a similar issue cropped up earlier this month, and it left state and local election officials in this key swing state racing to restore voter confidence ahead of what very likely will be another contentious presidential election.
• Pennsylvania boasts 19 electoral votes, and is expected to be a top battleground next year as it’s been the past couple of major elections. Dump won the state by just 44,000 votes in 2016. He lost it by roughly 80,000 votes four years later.
• In 2019, a programming glitch caused the ES&S touchscreen machines to significantly undercount the votes for the Democratic candidate in a local judges’ race. This year, Northampton residents who showed up at their local polling station found that printouts from the same devices didn’t match the votes they had submitted digitally for two down-ballot judges contests.
• They have to get that shit fixed and restore public trust in this process ASAP.
• Now let’s talk about abortion.
• Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, an increase of over 32,000 births happened in states that now force pregnant women to give birth via restricting their reproductive rights.
• It adds up to a 2.3% increase in births, relative to what we would have expected if those states weren't enforcing bans. That is about 30,000 additional births on an annual basis since the Dobbs ruling.
• I think it’s only fair that those states’ residents have increased taxes to help pay for the additional strain on public resources. I actually think that is a really good idea.
• And now, The Weather: “Rover” by Nightshifts
• We can do a sort-of chart today. This is an amalgamation of the best-of year-end lists from Los Angeles’ KROQ and San Diego’s 91X, both alternative music stations, for the year 1984.
• 1. Pride (In The Name Of Love) (U2). 2. Relax (Frankie Goes To Hollywood). 3. Two Tribes (Frankie Goes To Hollywood). 4. Wild Boys (Duran Duran). 5. People Are People (Depeche Mode). 6. Hold Me Now (Thompson Twins). 7. I Send A Message (INXS). 8. Blue Jean (David Bowie). 9. Flesh For Fantasy (Billy Idol). 10. Ghost In You (Psychedelic Furs). 11. Let's Go Crazy (Prince). 12. What Is Love? (Howard Jones). 13. The Gap (Thompson Twins). 14. It's My Life (Talk Talk). 15. My Ever Changing Moods (Style Council). 16. Cruel Summer (Bananarama). 17. Girl In Trouble (Is A Temporary Thing) (Romeo Void). 18. If It Happens Again (UB40). 19. Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go (Wham!). 20. Killing Moon (Echo & The Bunnymen).
• From the Sports Desk… a very rare Friday game happened yesterday in the NFL. I figured out why.
• Amazon Prime now owns the “Thursday Night Football” broadcast rights, but this particular Thursday was Thanksgiving, which has its own broadcast rights split between Fox, CBS, and NBC. So to give Amazon their viewership, they had to schedule a weird-ass game day.
• In that game, the Dolphins (8-3) beat the Jets (4-7) as expected.
• Some thoughts for tomorrow’s NFL games: nearly every matchup is super close, with nearly all of them having a spread of a field goal or so. the only exception, is the Chiefs (7-3) facing my Raiders (5-6) in Las Vegas. Chiefs are favored by -9, but this might be a bad time to bet against the scrappy Silver and Black.
• Today in history… Union forces led by General Ulysses S. Grant break the Siege of Chattanooga by routing Confederate troops under General Braxton Bragg (1863). A group of Confederate operatives calling themselves the Confederate Army of Manhattan starts fires in more than 20 locations in an unsuccessful attempt to burn down New York City (1864). The "Hollywood Ten" are blacklisted by Hollywood movie studios (1947). Thirty-six top musicians gather in a Notting Hill studio and record Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas?" in order to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia (1984). U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese announces that profits from covert weapons sales to Iran were illegally diverted to the anti-communist Contra rebels in Nicaragua (1986). A five-year-old Cuban boy, Elian Gonzalez, is rescued by fishermen while floating in an inner tube off the Florida coast (1999). 
• November 25 is the birthday of violin maker Giuseppe Giovanni Battista Guarneri (1666), author/activist Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck (1778), businessman/philanthropist Andrew Carnegie (1835), engineer/businessman Karl Benz (1844), engineer/businesswoman/philanthropist Kate Gleason (1865), MLB player Joe DiMaggio (1914), singer Percy Sledge (1940), NFL coach Joe Gibbs (1940), actor John Larroquette (1947), businessman/convicted felon Jeffrey Skilling (1953), singer songwriter Amy Grant (1960), lawyer John F. Kennedy Jr. (1960), singer-songwriter Mark Lanegan (1964), singer-songwriter/guitarist Tim Armstrong (1965), actress Christina Applegate (1971), NFL player Donovan McNabb (1976), and activist Barbara Pierce Bush (1981).

Time to do more things. Enjoy your day.