Random News: December 31, 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.

---

Good morning. It’s December 31, 2023, and it’s a Sunday. I’m in a blue robe, which is standard for my weekend news gathering, and having a cup of Peet’s Brazil, which also means that it is a typical weekend day. Let’s chat and stuff.

• It’s New Year’s Eve, the final day of 2023. Was it a good year for you?
• I’ll mention something I’ve almost certainly said before: there are no completely good years or completely bad years. It’s a silly premise.
• Even in the best years of my life, I’ve had awful shit happen from time to time. During some of the presumably worst years, I’ve had moments of pure joy and fulfilling successes. A year is a long time, from the scope of a human life, to label in a purely good-versus-bad binary way.
• I had some good stuff and bad stuff happen in 2023. I am still alive and relatively well after another set of calendar pages have been ripped down.
• My mom died in February, which was terrible. It left me the last remaining member of my original immediate family.
• Right after that, after avoiding it for three full years, I got COVID, which also sucked. I also lost a few friends in 2023 to the inevitable coming of the grim reaper, all jammed together right toward the end of the year.
• But I also got through a good part of the year mostly unscathed, as did my family and most of my friends. I still live in a lovely place, and my business remained steady and good. My son, who was previously never super focused on academic greatness, made the dean’s list at his college.
• All four of my silly cats are still bouncing around my house. I discovered a whole lot of great new music. The car continues to be functional. I never spent a single day of 2023 being hungry or without shelter. I had a few minor illnesses and injuries, but nothing significant or long lasting, or that stopped me form working and being a productive person overall.
• So honestly, no complaints. I don’t think most folks have any clue about how much worse life could be.
• Scholars have suggested the year 536 as the worst year to be alive. There was a volcanic eruption early in the year, causing average temperatures in Europe and China to decline and resulting in crop failures and mass famine for well over a year.
• 536 sounds just awful, the more you look into it. Irrelevant side note: I can trace one line of my ancestry almost back that far. Arnulf of Metz, my 44th great-grandfather, lived from 582–645.
• 1349 has to be on anyone’s list of shitty years. The “Black Death” caused by bubonic plague was at its peak, killing somewhere between 25-200 million people, or around 30 - 60% of Europe’s entire population at the time.
• A little closer to the present, 1918 could have been pretty good, with WWI drawing to a close. But there were still some of the worst fighting in that war going on when the Spanish flu began to take hold. There was no vaccine or effective drugs to fight the H1N1 influenza virus, and around 50 million lost their lives to the disease over the next few years.
• If you’re waking up someplace today and you have a home, some food to eat and clean water to drink, clothing to wear, and there aren’t bombs dropping and gunfire popping in the streets, congratulations… you’re leading a pretty fortunate human life, as far as lives go from a historical perspective.
• Not every person reading these words is so lucky, I promise.
• And if you are reading this, it means you have access to the Internet and therefore can get more information with the push of a button than any generation of people previous to this one.
• So here’s to 2023. Whether you loved it or hated it, chances are you did okay. I mean, you’re still here, right?
• Let’s do some news.
• US Navy helicopters returned fire and and sank three small boats carrying Houthi militants in the Red Sea today after US warships responded to a distress call from a merchant vessel.
• A Maersk container ship, the Singapore-flagged Hangzhou, issued a distress call at about 6:30am. The merchant vessel said four small boats were attacking it. The boats fired crew-served and small-arms weapons at the Maersk Hangzhou, getting to within 20 meters of the vessel, and attempted to board the vessel.
• But then helicopters from two US ships — the USS Eisenhower and the USS Gravely — responded and issued verbal calls to the small boats.
• The little pirate/terrorists then tried to shoot at the US helicopters. Bad idea; that was the last thing that they ever did. Service members aboard the Navy helicopters returned fire and immediately sank three of the four small boats, killing the crews. The fourth boat fled the area.
• Good idea.
• In other news of cowardly assholes, supporters of Donnie Dump made a fake emergency call to police (aka “swatting”) that resulted in officers responding Friday night to the home of Maine’s secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, just a day after she removed Dumpy from the state’s presidential primary ballot under the US constitution’s insurrection clause.
• Is that all you’ve got, MAGAts?
• Bellows was not home when the swatting call was made, and responding officers found nothing suspicious. Suspects in swatting cases are being arrested and charged as states contemplate stronger penalties.
• While we’re on the disgusting and smelly topic of El Dumpo, might as well mention that Special Counsel Jack Smith urged a federal appeals court yesterday to reject Dumpy's claims that he is immune from prosecution.
• Dump is accused of working to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the run-up to the failed coup attempt at the U.S. Capitol by his supporters on January 6, 2021. He has denied any wrongdoing.
• In a new brief filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, prosecutors argued that Trump's claim that he cannot be held to account for crimes in office "threatens the democratic and constitutional foundation" of the country.
• That would be correct. Also, keep in mind that any ruling applied to Dump in this regard is precedent for future presidents. If Dump can’t be prosecuted for any crime, Joe Biden can walk up to him at a debate next summer and shoot him in the head without fear of reprisal.
• I’m not saying he should; I’m saying he could. Let’s not find out and instead have the courts rule that Presidents are not above the law.
• One final note on Mayor McSmelly… NYT senior political correspondent Maggie Haberman and political reporter Johnathan Swan are saying that Dump is privately very concerned that the Supreme Court could side with Colorado and take him off the ballot under the US Constitution's insurrection clause.
• Dumpy’s advisors are currently preparing challenges to the decisions.
• Moving on.
• I hate having to do this on the last day of 2023, but it is a Sunday, and Sunday is Gunday here at Zak’s Random News, where we take a look at the gun violence in the USA over the past two days.
• A one-year-old boy and a 44-year-old shot dead and another man wounded in Allentown, PA. Two dead, more injured after three overnight shootings in Denver, CO. A man and a woman were found shot dead at a home in Everett, WA. A woman dead and five other people wounded after a shooting at a strip mall in Hawthorne, CA. One dead, two injured after a shooting at in apartment in New Britain, CT. One dead, one critically injured in a shooting in Dallas, TX. One dead, one critically injured in a shooting in Baltimore. MD. One man dead after a shooting on the South Side of Pittsburgh, PA. A 10-year-old boy shot and killed at an apartment complex in Foothill Farms near Sacramento, CA. One shot dead at an apartment in St. Lucie County, FL. One shot dead in Dorchester, MA. Five more people shot in two other shootings in Allentown, PA. Four injured after a shooting in Gainesville, FL. Two shot at the Parks Mall at Arlington, TX. A woman shot at a Dollar Tree in the Cloverleaf neighborhood of Louisville, KY. A 9-year-old shot at a home in St. Denis near Louisville, KY. 
• Also of note: within the past couple of hours, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police are currently on the scene of a shooting on Harmon Avenue just off the Las Vegas Strip. Witnesses reported hearing 30-40 shots of gunfire. So far there have been no reports of injuries.
• Is this all the shootings in the USA? No, far from it. Just those from a quick scroll, and limited to those on Friday and Saturday, the days Americans seem to prefer to kill each other.
• Don’t like it? Do something about it; elect candidates who support common sense gun laws.
• Let’s move on.
• 50 years ago this week, President Richard M. Nixon did what may have been the most important act of his presidency, which was to enshrine the Endangered Species Act into the nation’s laws. 
• The Act would enrich the lives of countless future generations, Nixon predicted. “America will be more beautiful in the years ahead, thanks to the measure that I have the pleasure of signing into law today.”
• He was right. 
• It happened at a time when Americans could act in togetherness for our collective best interests. The Act passed 355-4 in the House of Representatives and unanimously in the Senate. Among those senators was a young man named Joe Biden.
• There’s no way in hell the Endangered Species Act or the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (both under Nixon) would have a chance in a current Republican-controlled House. They’d laugh it off.
• And now, The Weather: “Paradise” by Wishy
• Rest in peace to Shecky Greene, the legendary king of schlocky stand-up. He died today at 97. 
• Greene was known for his dozens of appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, where he served as an occasional guest host, and for being a staple in Las Vegas lounge acts.
• From the Sports Desk… hugely important games going on here in Week 17 of the NFL season. Many of the remaining question marks about this year’s playoffs will become clarified after today, and by next weekend it’ll be fully wrapped up.
• But there are still dozens of scenarios where any of like 10 teams could still make it in. Four slots are still available in the AFC from nine teams still in contention (Ravens, Dolphins, and Browns are in). Three slots are still TBA in the NFC with eight teams in contention (49ers, Eagles, Lions, and Cowboys are in).
• Today in history… Vandals, Alans and Suebians cross the Rhine, beginning an invasion of Gaul (406). The British East India Company is chartered (1600). Arthur Guinness signs a 9,000-year lease at £45 per annum and starts brewing Guinness (1759). The incorporation of Baltimore, MD (1796). Queen Victoria chooses Ottawa, then a small logging town, as the capital of the Province of Canada (1857). Abraham Lincoln signs an act that admits West Virginia to the Union, thus dividing Virginia in two (1862). Karl Benz, working in Mannheim, Germany, files for a patent on his first reliable two-stroke gas engine (1878). Thomas Edison demonstrates incandescent lighting to the public for the first time, in Menlo Park, NJ (1879). The first New Year's Eve celebration is held in Times Square in Manhattan (1907). President Harry S. Truman officially proclaims the end of hostilities in World War II (1946). General Motors becomes the first U.S. corporation to make over US$1 billion in a year (1955). The AT&T Bell System is broken up by the United States Government (1983). Czechoslovakia is peacefully dissolved in what is dubbed by media as the Velvet Divorce, resulting in the creation of the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic (1992). The first President of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, resigns from office, leaving Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as the acting President and successor (1999). Both a blue moon and a lunar eclipse occur (2009). The World Health Organization is informed of cases of pneumonia with an unknown cause, detected in Wuhan (2019). The World Health Organization issues its first emergency use validation for a COVID-19 vaccine (2020).
• December 31 is the birthday of explorer Jacques Cartier (1491), English general Charles Cornwallis (1738), painter Giovanni Boldini (1842), painter Henri Matisse (1869), businesswoman Elizabeth Arden (1878), American general/politician George Marshall, Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal (1908), singer-songwriter/activist Odetta (1930), actor Anthony Hopkins (1937), singer-songwriter/guitarist Andy Summers (1942), singer-songwriter/guitarist/actor John Denver (1943), actor Ben Kingsley (1943), fashion designer Diane von Fürstenberg (1946), singer-songwriter/keyboard player Burton Cummings (1947), singer-songwriter Donna Summer (1948), bass player/songwriter Tom Hamilton (1951), actress Bebe Neuwirth (1958), actor Val Kilmer (1959), singer-songwriter/guitarist Scott Ian (1963), musician Psy (1977), and whatever Donald Trump Jr. (1977) is.

Alrighty, that’s enough. Happy New Year to you all. May 2024 be another great year of your life. I’m going to put on some clothes. I can’t start the new year in a robe. I mean, I cold, but it wouldn’t be a good portent of things to come. Enjoy your day.