Random News: December 17, 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 December 17, 2023, and it’s a Sunday. Once again, I’m here in the peaceful quiet of an early Sunday morning, in my bathrobe of blue and bringing news to you.

• Israel’s government is facing more and more calls for a cease-fire from some of its closest allies and from protesters at home today after a series of shootings, including of three hostages who waved a white flag.
• The protesters urge the government to renew hostage negotiations with Gaza’s Hamas rulers, whom it has vowed to destroy. Israel could also face pressure to scale back major combat operations when U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin visits this week.
• The air and ground war has flattened large parts of northern Gaza, killed thousands of civilians, and driven most of the population to the southern part of the besieged territory, where many are packed into crowded shelters and tent camps. Some 1.9 million Palestinians — nearly 85% of Gaza’s population — have fled their homes.
• I will once again state that you can support Israel’s right to defend itself against terrorist attacks, and also be critical of the result of their response that is indiscriminately causing death and destruction on a huge percentage of people who are not terrorists by any definition.
• Think of it like this: a good portion of US citizens align themselves with the MAGA ideologies of racism and xenophobia and bigotry in regard to gender and sexual orientation. Should every American be judged by their statements and actions?
• Hopefully not. But it’s also easy to see how people could make that assumption.
• Back in the USA…
• Jeff Roe, the chief strategist of Ron De Santis’s super PAC, has resigned in yet another high-profile blow to Ron’s bid to become president.
• Roe stepped down due to statements made in a Washington Post story about turmoil at the group, in which Never Back Down’s chairman and interim CEO Scott Wagner was quoted attributing the recent departures of senior officials to “numerous unauthorized leaks containing false information.”
• Not sure what that means, but I am sure that De Santis has little or no chance of becoming President, now or ever.
• In other news of people getting fucked, I enjoyed some laughs yesterday about the guy who made the bad decision to have sex in a Senate hearing room, and is now out of a job.
• I wasn’t laughing at the guy. Instead, I was laughing at the visitors to a right-wing site where the video was publicized, thinking of a good percentage of conservative men in middle America who found themselves uncomfortably and confusingly aroused by unexpectedly seeing hardcore gay porn.
• Moving on.
• Donnie Dump did one of his speeches yesterday. If you were thinking he was going to become a better person any time son, you couldn’t be more mistaken.
• Echoing the words of Adolph Hitler, Dump stated that immigrants were "poisoning the blood of our country.”
• ”They've poisoned mental institutions and prisons all over the world, not just in South America, not just the three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world they're coming into our country, from Africa from Asia, all over the world they're pouring into our country," said the sad fat racist.
• Dumpy has promised to finish the wall he never completed, bring back travel bans, and launch the largest deportation efforts in history if re-elected in 2024. he has said those words, over and over.
• Shrug. Look, we’ve been able to be a pretty great country despite the influx of Irish and Italians. At the time, it was said by many that these were people of a lower class who would dilute the greatness of our Anglo-Saxon purity.
• This is the same sentiment. There’s no difference between saying that about those groups as Dump says today about people of Muslim, Asian, and Latin descent. If that’s what MAGA people want, well… don’t know what to tell you. Odd that four out of Dump’s five children were born to non-American immigrants, but I digress.
• One other piece of Dumpy news. Back in the 2020 election cycle, Dump repeatedly and very firmly stated that if Joe Biden were to be elected, the stock market would crash.
• This week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit an all-time high, surpassing 37,000 for the first time in history.
• That’s the opposite of what Dump said. How else has he lied to you?
• It’s Sunday Gunday at Zak’s Random News, where we look at just some of the gun violence of the past couple of days in the USA.
• Twin brothers shot and killed, and two others wounded in a shooting at a bar in Jasper County, SC. A man and a woman shot dead in two shooting incidents in Jackson, MS. A man shot dead and four others injured in a shooting at a strip mall in Willowbrook, CA. A woman shot dead and two other injured in West Baltimore, MD. A woman shot dead and a man injured in Dania Beach, FL. A 19-year-old woman shot dead and a 20-year-old man wounded in a drive-by shooting in Sun Valley, CA. A father shot dead and his four-year-old son injured following a shooting outside a housing complex in Belleville, NJ. A man shot dead and a female child injured in a shooting in Lauderhill, FL. A four-year-old boy shot and killed in a road rage incident in Lancaster, CA. One shot dead at his home in Kansas City, MO. One shot dead at his apartment in Kerrville, TX. One shot dead on a street in Antioch, CA. One shot dead in southwest Albuquerque, NM. One shot dead outside of a Wendy’s in Sunbury, OH. One shot dead in the parking lot of a store in the Centerpoint area of Birmingham, AL. One shot dead at a nightclub in Springdale, AR. Two teenage boys in critical condition after a street shooting in Southwest Miami-Dade, FL. Two men hospitalized, one critically, after a shooting on a CTA train in Chicago, IL. A man in critical condition after a shooting in Boston, MA. One shot at Barton Creek Square Mall in Austin, TX. One shot after a bar fight in northeast Minneapolis, MN. One shot in the parking lot of an ampm in Elk Grove, CA. A woman shot in a restaurant in Henrietta, NY.
• As I remind you each week, is that ALL the shootings? No, not even close. Just a few that I see from a quick scroll, and only for Friday and Saturday of this week.
• Are Americans just giant pussies who are afraid to address this epidemic of gun-related violence? It’s hard to come to any other conclusion. 
• Moving on.
• Matt Schlapp, the influential chairman of the American Conservative Union, is facing additional allegations of sexual assault that apparently took place before the incident that launched a more than $9 million sexual misconduct lawsuit against him last year.
• Schlapp, a supposedly heterosexual married man who heads the right-wing organization that hosts the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, had already been sued by Carlton Huffman, a male Republican staffer on Herschel Walker’s US senate campaign.
• Huffman had been assigned to drive Schlapp to campaign events in the Atlanta area and said that Schlapp fondled Huffman’s penis without his consent during a car ride in October 2022.
• Per new reports, Schlapp was also accused of sexual misconduct twice before – first in 2017 and then in early 2022. The incidents were reported to his organization, but no action was taken against Schlapp.
• Side note: there’s nothing wrong with being gay. There is DEFINITELY something wrong with sexually touching people without consent, and with being a massive hypocrite who pushes anti-LGBTQIA policy while grabbing guys’ dicks.
• And now, The Weather: “Runner” by Mind Shrine
• From the Sports Desk… going into today’s round of NFL games, these 10 teams have the worst point differential (as in, the points they scored versus those scored against them)…
• Titans (-41), Chargers (-42), Broncos (-47), Jets (-56), Steelers (-57), Cardinals (-101), Patriots (-103), Giants (-131), Commanders (-134), and Panthers (-144).
• Despite that, at least before today’s games, only two teams have been officially eliminated from the playoffs this year… new England And Carolina. And only one team is officially in the playoffs… San Francisco. 
• Lots of football yet to be played over the next few weeks.
• Today in history… Assassination of William I of Normandy, my 33rd great-grandfather (942). Pope Paul III excommunicates Henry VIII of England (1538). France formally recognizes the United States (1777). General Ulysses S. Grant issues General Order No. 11, expelling Jews from parts of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky (1862). First issue of Vogue is published (1892). The Wright brothers make the first controlled powered, heavier-than-air flight in the Wright Flyer at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina (1903). The first NFL Championship Game is played at Wrigley Field in Chicago between the New York Giants and Chicago Bears, with the Bears winning 23–21 (1933). Otto Hahn discovers the nuclear fission of the heavy element uranium, the scientific and technological basis of nuclear energy (1938). All Chinese are again permitted to become citizens of the United States upon the repeal of the Act of 1882 and the introduction of the Magnuson Act (1943). Fernando Collor de Mello defeats Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the second round of the Brazilian presidential election, becoming the first democratically elected President in almost 30 years (1989). ‘The Simpsons’ premieres on television (1989). Sex work rights activists establish December 17 as International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers (2003). 
• December 17 is the birthday of chemist/physicist Humphry Davy (1778), mathematician Mary Cartwright (1900), chemist Willard Libby (1908), journalist William Safire (1929), publisher Bob Guccione (1930), singer/keyboardist Art Neville (1937), singer-songwriter Eddie Kendricks (1939), singer/harmonica player Paul Butterfield (1942), actor Bernard Hill (1944), actor Eugene Levy (1946), singer-songwriter Paul Rodgers (1949), bass player/songwriter Mike Mills (1958), actor Giovanni Ribisi (1974), actress Milla Jovovich (1975), boxer/politician Manny Pacquiao (1978), MLB player Chase Utley (1978), and soldier/criminal/activist Chelsea Manning (1987).

Well, there we have it. I need to shower and dress and eat and do various things. Enjoy your day.