Random News: December 8, 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 8, 2023, and if you can believe it, it’s a Friday once again! I don’t want to jinx things, but I seem to have made it through this week alive and fairly unscathed, and now am here on a reasonably chilly morning to deliver you some news while sipping my Peet’s Cafe Domingo. Life could a whole lot worse.

• Yesterday, a Texas judge granted a request to allow an abortion despite the state’s strict bans, in the case of a pregnant woman whose fetus was diagnosed with a fatal condition.
• The judge, Maya Guerra Gamble of Travis County district court, sided with the woman, Kate Cox, who is 20 weeks pregnant, issuing a temporary restraining order to permit her doctor to perform an abortion without facing civil or criminal penalties under the state law.
• Cox, 31, could be seen wiping away tears from her eyes as she watched the judge issue the decision in the video proceeding with her husband, Justin.
• "The idea that Ms. Cox wants desperately to be a parent, and this law might actually cause her to lose that ability, is shocking and would be a genuine miscarriage of justice.” - Judge Guerra Gamble
• But immediately afterward, despite the judge’s decision, Texas Attorney General threatened to prosecute any doctors involved in providing an emergency abortion to Cox. He is openly using the law to force Cox to give birth to a stillborn and possibly in the process have her uterus rupture and die.
• Paxton sent a letter to three hospitals where Damla Karsan, the doctor who said she would provide the abortion to Cox, has admitting privileges. He wrote that Judge Guerra Gamble's order "will not insulate hospitals, doctors, or anyone else, from civil and criminal liability for violating Texas' abortion laws."
• That’s what Republicans across the country want. They want to control women’s reproductive health, and they do not care if women die in the process. 
• Moving on.
• In our continuing coverage of the pieces of shit who attempted and failed to enact a coup against the USA on January 6, 2021, meet Alan Hostetter.
• He’s a former La Habra, California police chief who brought a hatchet to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and has now been sentenced to more than 11 years in prison for his role in the siege.
• I won’t go into the details because he’s not worth the effort, but I promise you that Hostetter deserved every minute of that length sentence and more.
• In other news, Hunter Biden has been charged in connection with a long-running Justice Department investigation into his taxes. This is the second criminal case that special counsel David Weiss has brought against President Joe Biden’s son.
• I guess I will not be voting for Hunter Biden. Wait, what’s that? He’s not a politician and isn’t running for anything? Well then, keep on keeping on.
• Here’s some news that pisses me off both generally and personally.
• The genetic testing company 23andMe has said that nearly seven million people have been affected by a security breach that put DNA ancestry information into the hands of hackers who broke into the site in early October.
• Last week in a regulatory filing, they’d stated that the personal data of 0.1% of customers – or about 14,000 individuals – had been accessed by “threat actors”. But the filing warned that hackers were also able to access “a significant number of files containing profile information about other users’ ancestry”.
• And that’s when the company confirmed the true number of people exposed was 6.9 million – or just less than half of 23andMe’s 14 million reported customers.
• Already lists of Jewish people were being sold on the dark web via this data breach. And guess what? I’m on that fucking list. Well, this Jew says fuck you.
• Side note in case you’re confused as I once was: “Jewish” describes both a religion and an ethnicity. I am still a big atheist and happy to be so, which doesn’t mean I’m not also ethnically an Ashkenazi Jew, and proudly so.
• Oh, and Happy Hanukkah!
• Moving on.
• Congress is about to take off to their mansions and ski chalets for the holidays without delivering further aid to Ukraine. Senate Republicans are demanding that President Joe Biden insert himself forcefully into negotiations in order to salvage his top foreign policy priority.
• Those Republicans and a few Democrats say the laborious negotiations require that Biden, a 36-year Senate veteran, revive his longtime deal-maker reputation to clinch an agreement on his nearly $106 billion national security aid request.
• Going back to his decades as a Senator and Vice president, Biden is renowned as a deal-cutter, particularly given his relationship with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). However, I’m not sure that as President, it’s proper for him to insert himself into legislative actions.
• That’s why we have separate branches of government. I’m sure you remember this from fourth grade or so.
• Let’s do a little news from the many trials of El Dumpo.
• Kenneth Chesebro, the pro-Dump lawyer who helped devise the 2020 fake electors plot and already pleaded guilty to the conspiracy in Georgia, is now cooperating with Michigan and Wisconsin state investigators in hopes of avoiding more criminal charges.
• Chesebro is now helping investigators in at least four states who are looking into the scheme. His cooperation in Wisconsin is the first indication the state attorney general’s office has launched its own investigation into the false slates of pro-Dump electors. 
• Get his ass.
• In February, New York voters will select someone to replace the disgraced former Congressman George Santos (R-NY). New York Democrats have selected former Rep. Tom Suozzi to be their party’s nominee in the upcoming special election.
• Nassau County and Queens County leaders gathered yesterday and voted for Suozzi, who was widely expected to emerge as the party’s nominee. He previously represented the competitive 3rd District, which is based on Long Island.
• Moving on to some good news: the U.S. economy created 199,000 jobs in November and the unemployment rate fell to 3.7 percent.
• Health care and government created the most jobs, as consumers have continued to shift spending toward services and an aging population has intensified that demand. Health care added 77,000 jobs in November, mainly in ambulatory health-care services, hospitals and nursing-care facilities. The government sector added 49,000 jobs in November, finally catching its pre-pandemic employment levels, as wages in state and local government have caught up with the private sector.
• So much for that recession that Republicans were predicting.
• After the report, Wall Street clawed back losses today with indicators pointing to a resilient labor market, fueling optimism about a soft landing for the economy, with a rise in U.S. consumer sentiment also adding to the upbeat mood.
• Let’s go! USA! USA!
• And now, The Weather: “Big Canada” by Worthitpurchase
• Oh, and speaking of weather, if you live in the eastern half of the US this weekend, batten down those hatches this weekend.
• A wide-reaching storm is set to deliver heavy rain, severe thunderstorms, strong winds and even snow. It should start today in the Plains and the Midwest.
• From the Sports Desk… the Steelers have chosen a really bad time to suck. They have seemed like a playoff-bound team for a good chunk of the season thus far, but then lost last night to the lowly New England Patriots, who are now at 3-10.
• Typically mediocre at best, Patriots QB Bailey Zappe threw for 248 yards and three touchdowns.
• Today in history… Louis the Stammerer, son of Charles the Bald — my 37th great-grandfather — is crowned king of the West Frankish Kingdom (877). A woman — either Margaret Hughes or Anne Marshall — appears on an English public stage for the first time, in the role of Desdemona in a production of Shakespeare's play Othello (1660). A squadron of Britain's Royal Navy defeats the Imperial German East Asia Squadron in the Battle of the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic (1914). U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt declares December 7 to be "a date which will live in infamy", after which the U.S. declares war on Japan (1941). U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivers his "Atoms for Peace" speech, which leads to an American program to supply equipment and information on nuclear power to schools, hospitals, and research institutions around the world (1953). John Lennon is murdered by Mark David Chapman in front of The Dakota in New York City (1980). The leaders of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine sign an agreement dissolving the Soviet Union and establishing the Commonwealth of Independent States (1991). Nathan Gale opens fire at the Alrosa Villa nightclub in Columbus, Ohio, killing former Pantera guitarist Dimebag Darrell and three others before being shot dead by a police officer (2004). Metallica performs a show in Antarctica, making them the first band to perform on all seven continents (2013). First confirmed case of COVID-19 in China (2019).
• December 8 is the birthday of poet Horace (65 BC), Mary Queen of Scots (1542), engineer Eli Whitney (1765), businessman William C. Durant (1861), composer Jean Sibelius (1865), cartoonist E. C. Segar (1894), humorist James Thurber (1894), opera singer Zelma Watson George (1903), actor/singer Sammy Davis, Jr. (1925), organist Jimmy Smith (1925), actor Maximilian Schell (1930), actor Flip Wilson (1933), actor David Carradine (1936), singer-songwriter Jim Morrison (1943), musician Gregg Allman (1947), actress Kim Basinger (1953), comedian Sam Kinison (1953), guitarist Warren Cuccurullo (1956), guitarist Phil Collen (1957), actress Teri Hatcher (1964), singer-songwriter Sinéad O’Connor (1966), singer-songwriter Corey Taylor (1973), rapper Nicki Minaj (1982), NBA player Dwight Howard (1985), and NHL player Drew Doughty (1989).

Well, once again. I’d love to tell you more but I just don’t have the time. Do good things when you can. Enjoy your day.