Random News: November 30, 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 30, 2023, and it’s a Thursday for some reason. I’m getting my day rolling much like the Tin Man in ‘The Wizard of Oz’, previous to his getting oiled. Such is life for a person who is no longer young, but I’ll make it through. Someone oil me, please.

• I don’t often open these bullets with a note on the recently departed, but Henry A. Kissinger has died at age 100.
• He actually seemed to be 100 or so to me when I first became aware of him as a child. It amazes me he was still around in late 2023.
• Kissinger served as secretary of state and national security adviser under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, but then remained a prominent voice on foreign policy issues even into the current era.
• He was both celebrated and reviled. Kissinger was credited with many positive acts of diplomacy in the Cold War era, like thawing U.S. relations with China, but he was also accused of war crimes for the bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War, backing Pakistan's genocide in Bangladesh, and green-lighting the Argentine dictatorship's dirty war against dissidents.
• Many feel he should have spent the latter part of his life imprisoned in the Hague rather than galavanting about as a foreign policy wonk for another 40+ years, but that’s the way it goes sometimes.
• Moving on.
• Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of a social network called X, had a message for the brands who have halted advertising on the platform formerly known as Twitter due to Musk’s open endorsement of antisemitic conspiracy theories.
• His words to advertisers on X while appearing Wednesday at the New York Times' Dealbook Summit? To go fuck themselves.
• Musk is aware of what he’s doing. In his convoluted thought process, he hopes that the advertiser exodus will kill the company, and then somehow the advertisers will be blamed for the loss of Twitter, when they simply don’t want to funnel money into a platform that has their ads displayed next to swastikas and words of racial and ethnic hatred.
• "And the whole world will know that those advertisers killed the company," he said. But the hilarious part of the interview was when Elon said to the interviewer, "Jonathan, the only reason I'm here is because you're a friend."
• And then the interviewer, Andrew Ross Sorkin, responded, “… I'm Andrew."
• Let’s move on.
• Ryan Fournier, co-founder of the group Students for Trump, was arrested in North Carolina and charged with one count of assault with a deadly weapon and one count of assault on a female.
• Fournier, 27, grabbed a woman by her right arm and struck her with a pistol. The incident occurred on November 21.
• Fournier, who co-founded Students for Trump in 2015, s the chair of the group and also serves as the executive director of Red Alert, a conservative activist group. And, true to form as a young Republican, he uses physical violence to subjugate women.
• Moving on.
• Today or tomorrow, Congress will vote whether or not to expel one of the most openly terrible House reps in history, George Santos (R-NY). You’d think it would be pretty simple after the charges against him, but Republican leaders are not pressuring their members to vote one way or the other.
• The deadline for the lower chamber to act on two measures calling for his ouster is technically today, but Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said he thought a vote might slip to Friday. The speaker can postpone some votes for up to two legislative days under the House rules. 
• In other news…
• Democrats are fired up about putting Republicans on the spot over health care after 2024 GOP presidential frontrunner Donald “El Dumpo” Trump said recently he was “seriously looking at alternatives” to the Affordable Care Act and urged his party to “never give up” on terminating it.
• Reminder: terminating the ACA means that your pre-existing conditions would no longer be covered under your insurance.
• In Florida alone, where the populace is rife with senior citizens, nearly all of the 3.2 million people who bought private health insurance plans under Obamacare get some of their coverage paid for by the federal government.
• Wait until they find out the GOP’s plan to kill Social Security and Medicare as well.
• Are they going to vote for the guy who is openly stating he’s going to take away their health care? Only time will tell. I’d say that when these politicians say something, believe them.
• Speaking of the criminal who once called himself President…
• A court-appointed monitor caught Dumpy quietly moving $40 million without disclosing the transfers as required by Judge Arthur Engoron.
• Engoron had put the Trump Organization under court monitoring after the New York attorney general raised concerns that he may try to move money out of the company before it is potentially sanctioned.
• Engoron appointed former U.S. District Judge Barbara Jones to oversee the finances and required Trump to report any transfers larger than $5 million. Jones notified the court yesterday that she discovered that the Trump family failed to report $40 million in transfers despite the order.
• Why would he do that? Because he’s broke and needed the cash to pay taxes.
• Let’s move over to Pueblo, Colorado, where yesterday, President Joe Biden contrasted his economic vision with that of MAGA Republicans, including GOP Rep. and hand job expert Lauren Boebert during a visit to her Colorado district.
• “She, along with every single Republican colleague, voted against the law that made these investments in jobs possible. And then she voted to repeal key parts of this law, and she called this law a massive failure. You all know you’re part of a massive failure? Tell that to the 850 Coloradans who got new jobs.”
• Earlier this year, Democrat Adam Frisch – who just barely lost to the incumbent Boebert in 2022’s midterm elections – announced he would again mount a campaign to unseat her in 2024.
• I highly endorse him.
• In other political news, officials in a rural Arizona county who delayed canvassing the 2022 general election results have been criminally charged. A grand jury has indicted Cochise County supervisors Peggy Judd and Tom Crosby on one count each of conspiracy and interference of an election officer.
• “I don’t feel like I broke a law. But, obviously the courts had different feelings,” Judd said.
• Fuck them both. Do your jobs.
• If you can stomach watching Fox tonight, there’s a 2028 presidential debate being aired.
• It’s Florida governor Ron DeSantis (R) facing off against California governor, Gavin Newsom (D).
• The 90-minute debate, which starts at 9pm ET and will be moderated by Fox News asshole extraordinaire Sean Hannity, is being billed by the network as “DeSantis vs. Newsom: The Great Red vs. Blue State Debate.”
• It will be interesting, and it’s particularly impressive that Newsom feels confident going up against DeSantis on the conservative world’s home turf.
• Moving over to Vatican City, where Pope Francis is evicting US Cardinal Raymond Burke, an outspoken critic, from his Vatican apartment and revoking his salary.
• Cardinal Burke is part of a group of American conservatives who have long opposed the Pope's plans for reforming the Catholic Church with a greater acceptance of LGBT people. 
• Earlier this month, Francis fired Joseph Strickland, a conservative Texas bishop who had blasted his attempts to move the church to more liberal positions on abortion, transgender rights and same-sex marriage. 
• It’s good to see.
• In our continuing coverage of the assholes who tried and failed to enact a coup against the USA on January 6, 2021, meet Nathan Pelham.
• Pelham, a member of the Proud Boys who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 and shot at law enforcement this year after he was asked to surrender, was sentenced yesterday to two years in federal prison.
• FA, FO.
• And now, The Weather: “The Slang Word P(*)ssy Rolls Off The Tongue With Far Better Ease Than The Proper Word Vagina . Do You Agree?” by André 3000
• Rest in peace to singer-songwriter Shane McGowan of the Pogues, who died aged 65 today following a recent hospital stay after being diagnosed with encephalitis.
• He’d been unwell for some time, and had well-documented problems with drugs and alcohol. If you know him from anything, it’s his songs “Fairytale of New York” and “A Pair of Brown Eyes.”
• From the Sports Desk… tonight’s NFL action has the Seattle Seahawks (6-5) visiting the Dallas Cowboys (8-3). Dallas is a -9 point favorite.
• Today in history… The Democratic-Republican-controlled United States Senate begins an impeachment trial of Federalist Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase (1804). The Confederate Army of Tennessee suffers heavy losses in an attack on the Union Army of the Ohio in the Battle of Franklin (1864). The first-ever international football match takes place at Hamilton Crescent, Glasgow, between Scotland and England (1872). A German engineer patents front-wheel drive for automobiles (1900). The Soviet Red Army crosses the Finnish border in several places and bomb Helsinki and several other Finnish cities, starting the Winter War (1939). The SS-Einsatzgruppen round up 11,000 Jews from the Riga Ghetto and kill them in the Rumbula massacre (1941). In Sylacauga, AL, the Hodges meteorite crashes through a roof and hits a woman taking an afternoon nap (1954). Michael Jackson's sixth solo studio album, ‘Thriller’, is released worldwide, ultimately becoming the best-selling record album in history (1982). Exxon and Mobil sign a US$73.7 billion agreement to merge, thus creating ExxonMobil, the world's largest company (1999). In Seattle, WA, demonstrations against a World Trade Organization meeting by anti-globalization protesters catch police unprepared and force the cancellation of opening ceremonies (1999). NASA launches STS-97, the 101st Space Shuttle mission (2000).
• November 30 is the birthday of admiral Andrea Doria (1486), satirist Jonathan Swift (1667), novelist Mark Twain (1835), physician/activist Martha Ripley (1843), actor Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. (1918), police officer/activist Elliott Blackstone (1924), actor Richard Crenna (1926), actor Robert Guillaume (1927), TV host/producer Dick Clark (1929), lawyer/criminal G. Gordon Liddy (1930), NFL coach Bill Walsh (1931), actor/director Woody Allen (1935), activist Abbie Hoffman (1936), film director Ridley Scott (1937), bass player/songwriter Roger Glover (1945), playwright/director David Mamet (1947), actor Mandy Patinkin (1952), singer-songwriter Billy Idol (1955), singer-songwriter Stacey Q (1958), singer-songwriter Cherie Currie (1959), NFL/MLB player Bo Jackson (1962), actor Ben Stiller (1965), DJ/music producer Steve Aoki (1977), singer Clay Aiken (1978), and model Chrissy Teigen (1985).

In personal news, I finally made a dental appointment yesterday to resolve these ongoing issues with an accent wisdom tooth that is finally demanding to be removed, and is causing a plethora of issues in the meantime. I’m glad it’s going to finally get handled. Enjoy your day.