Random News: February 13, 2024

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 February 13, 2024, and it’s a Tuesday. I am still dealing with leftover issues regarding my dental surgery and the Very Bad Shit that happened after, which is now a full week ago. But I am confident that eventually, I’ll be fully back to my normal, happy self. Meanwhile, I’m thankful for ibuprofen. Let’s talk about news and things.

• I mentioned over the weekend that I — along with Christina and my adult son — voted in the primaries on Saturday. Here in California, that was as simple as filling out and submitting the ballot that was sent to us. Our ballot drop box is a quarter mile away at the neighborhood park.
• I’m not going to mention much about who or what I voted for… mostly because 90% of my primary ballot was about local candidates who don’t pertain to you. I did vote for President Biden, of course, and my great congressional rep, Ted Lieu.
• I also cast my primary vote for our Senator who is replacing the late Dianne Feinstein. However, due to the unique circumstances of that particular election, I’m going to refrain from endorsing any specific Senate candidate between Adam Schiff, Katie Porter, or Barbara Lee.
• Let’s just say that my reasons went beyond my perception of their respective effectiveness as candidates.
• But if you can believe it, the general election for 2024 is less than nine months away. The only way that the will of the people can be represented is if they vote.
• Believe it or not, some people just don’t know how to vote, or think that registering is a big hassle. It’s not.
• You can go to vote.org right now and register for the first time, or re-register if you’ve moved, or your name was dropped from rolls via inactivity.
• Everything starts with voter registration. This year’s goal between now and Tuesday, November 5 is to register 8,000,000 voters. Obviously, the more people who register and vote, the more our leaders represent who we are as a people.
• If someone tries to say that registering voters is bad in any way or tries to stop you form voting or make it difficult to do so, all they are doing is trying to repress the will of the people.
• So please, register, or check your registration, and encourage others to do the same. It’s too fucking easy and there’s really no downside.
• Moving on.
• Speaking of voting, a special election happens today in New York’s 3rd congressional district where Democrat Tom Suozzi faces off against Republican Mazi Pilip in the battle to fulfill the former seat of expelled congressman George Santos.
• The race is super important with the razor-thin margin in the House, and it’s widely considered a toss-up. Making matters worse, the National Weather Service issued a Winter Storm Warning for New York City and Long Island, predicting between four and 10 inches of snow that could snarl traffic and depress Election Day turnout.
• Good people of the North Shore of Long Island and Queens, I ask that you get your vote in for Suozzi however you can. Stay safe, and thank you.
• Also in election news, I can tell you right now: Donnie Dump is going to win South Carolina by a large margin over his GOP challenger from the state, Nikki Haley.
• Recent polls have Dumpy leading Nikki by huge margins. Nearly half the party's voters in SC identify as MAGA, and they don't think Haley is part of that movement. 
• No matter what you hear elsewhere, the battle in November will be between Biden and Dump unless something happens to either of them health-wise or faces other situations where they’d be disqualified from running.
• Offer your support accordingly.
• Early this morning, the Senate approved $95 billion in aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan aid by a 70-29 vote, sending the bill to an uncertain fate in the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson seems determined to sink the legislation.
• Despite a last-ditch effort from conservative opponents of the bill, Johnson‘s cold water and former President Donnie Dump’s attempts to kill the legislation, Republican support for the deal actually grew overnight, with 22 GOP senators voting in favor of the package.
• Guess we’ll see what happens in the House. It’s really a test of what’s good for the world versus what Dumpy wants.
• Moving on to a horror story.
• I want to talk about what happened at a wilderness camp for troubled youths called Trails Carolina in Lake Toxaway, NC. A 12-year-old boy died there earlier this month less than 24 hours after arriving.
• Authorities said the child’s death “appeared to not be natural.”
• The boy had been transported by two men from New York to the camp and was assigned to a cabin with other students and four staff members. Shortly after 8AM the next morning, staff discovered he was not breathing.
• Investigators executed search warrants for two areas of Trails Carolina and are continuing their investigation, but the sheriff’s office said, “Trails Carolina Camp has not completely cooperated.”
• Note that in a completely different case, Trails Carolina is also being sued by a former camper there, alleging staff members dismissed her claims of sexual assault by another camper and denied her basic necessities when she attended in 2016.
• The suit was filed this past weekend on behalf of Gertie, a 20-year-old woman from New England who attended Trails Carolina for three months at age 12. She was assigned to live with a group of girls and was sexually assaulted by another student.
• When Gertie told her therapist at Trails Carolina, her therapist did not disclose the sexual assault to the authorities, and instead made Gertie promise not to tell anyone else about the assault, and told Gertie she was equally at fault.
• I can’t imagine sending my child to a place like that under any circumstances.
• Moving on.
• Josh Schriver, a Michigan state rep, has been stripped of his office staff and budget and committee assignment for sharing a racist population conspiracy theory on social media.
• Schriver, a first-term lawmaker, reposted a social media post about the "great replacement" theory, a crackpot racist belief that there's a coordinated global effort to diminish the influence of white people.
• When asked for comment, Schriver said in a statement, “I'm glad Tucker Carlson and Jack Posobiec are sharing links so I can continue my research on these issues."
• I didn’t make that up. He actually said that. Elect better people, Michigan.
• Let’s move on.
• For my friends in the Catholic Church, today is Fat Tuesday, or as it’s better known in French, Mardi Gras. It’s a date that reflects the practice of the final night of consuming rich, fatty foods in preparation for the fasting season of Lent.
• I’m not any kind of expert on religious practices, but I do support eating and celebrating for just about any reason. And apparently this religious event also involves the wearing of beads and the flashing of boobs in certain cities, so how can I criticize?
• And now…
• I’m really done talking about the Super Bowl… the football game. But I have a few last statements on the event itself.
• One thing we have yet to discuss is the ads that ran during Sunday’s game. Before I mention anything else about them, there’s an important point I want to make about one of this year’s biggest advertisers by far, Temu. You probably saw three or more ads by the giant Chinese retailer.
• A reminder, in case you were unaware or have chosen to ignore this fact: Temu, Shein, and Wish — and any other such company that sells endless items at prices that seem too cheap to be true — use slave labor and child labor in unsafe conditions.
• They also contribute heavily to destroying the planet with chemical manufacturing, global shipping, and mountains of plastic waste, and many of the products are shipped with toxic chemicals so that they don’t mold in transit.
• And, famously, they tend to deliver items that aren’t anything like they are represented in photos.
• I understand that we’ve all become accustomed to a number of companies offering amazingly low prices, and I am as susceptible as anyone to the desire to save some cash.
• But these companies are truly vile in every measurable way. If you can make other buying decisions, please do so. The world thanks you.
• Now, the ads. I’m a person who closely follows sports year-round, and my entire 30+ year career is in creative advertising, branding, messaging, and the like. I can actually speak with authority here, instead of out of my ass like I do on most topics.
• The NFL itself did well in advertising its own sport during the game. The silly spot about birdwatching — for the Eagles, Ravens and Seahawks — was fun and memorable.
• The spot for Dunkin’ featuring Matt Damon, his wife Jennifer Lopez, and pal Matt Damon was cute.
• It takes a lot for a “heartfelt and sincere” ad to gain my approval, but that genuinely touching spot for Google’s Pixel phone about a guy with limited vision using the product in a way that actually improves his life was very effective.
• I adore Kate McKinnon, and it was probably for that reason that I liked the Hellman’s (known out here as Best Foods) mayonnaise ad that featured her cat becoming a viral influencer.
• Same goes for the Popeye’s chicken ad… it’s hard not to like Ken Jeong, playing a man who was defrosted from 1972 and discovers all the new things life has to offer. 
• Jesus ran some ads in his “He Gets Us” campaign — rather, the guy who owns Hobby Lobby, a horrible company, ran them. They were well produced with pretty reasonable messaging. I only note these for two reasons: first if churches can afford to pay some $20 million for TV ads, they can probably pay taxes too.
• And that money would have fed and housed a bunch of people as well. Just saying.
• Second point: nevertheless, conservative critics were complaining that the ads show a “woke” Jesus. News flash: Jesus Christ was the most woke person ever documented in history. If you hate “woke” culture, you hate Jesus. Plain and simple.
• The grand majority of the ads were “meh” at best. I thought the campaign from State Farm that focused on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s accent was sort of memorable but missed the mark.
• Same with the Uber Eats ad about forgetting things, which included Jennifer Aniston and David Schwimmer among others. Coulda been great. Wasn’t.
• I thought the T-Mobile “Flashdance”-themed ad with Zach Braff and Jason Momoa was awkward at best.
• The teaser ad run in pre-game for “Deadpool 3” was funny, but the full version that’s playing on YouTube is hilarious.
• Many of the ads — the aforementioned Temu campaign, the Homes dot com ads with Dan Levy, the Snapchat ad, the Bass Pro Shops ad that looked like it was made for a local cable station, the stupid FanDuel ad with Gronkowski missing a field goal — just sucked.
• Finally, perhaps the worst of the worst was an ad for politician Robert F. Kennedy. It was so bad that Kennedy himself claimed no awareness of it, and it gave the Kennedy family another opportunity to publicly announce that they do not support this man and instead are behind Joe Biden for president in 2024.
• I’ll also make mention of the halftime show, which I thought was fine. I’m not a huge Usher fan (I mean, I liked “Yeah!” 20 years ago, when it was the number-one song for there straight months), but I thought the performances and production were great.
• I would say that Super Bowl halftime shows have been fairly good at representing the tastes of their audience, which spans a wide range of people and cultures in the USA and abroad.
• To that end, here’s a list of every main halftime performer at every Super Bowl of this century.
• 2001: Aerosmith/NSYNC, 2002: U2, 2003: Shania Twain/No Doubt, 2004: Janet Jackson, 2005: Paul McCartney, 2006: The Rolling Stones, 2007: Prince, 2008: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, 2009: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, 2010: The Who, 2011: The Black Eyed Peas, 2012: Madonna, 2013: Beyoncé, 2014: Bruno Mars, 2015: Katy Perry, 2016: Coldplay, 2017: Lady Gaga, 2018: Justin Timberlake, 2019: Maroon 5, 2020: Shakira/Jennifer Lopez, 2021: The Weeknd, 2022: Dr. Dre, 2023: Rihanna, 2024: Usher.
• So, it seems to me that they’ve made sure to represent pop first and foremost, and then split that between rock, country, R&B, and hip hop pretty evenly.
• Frankly — in my humble opinion — the classic rock bands like Springsteen and Petty and the Stones had some of the least inspired Super Bowl halftime performances. My top three all time, in no specific order, would be Prince, U2, and Dr. Dre & Friends.
• Okay. No more talk about that game or that sport until circumstances dictate otherwise.
• And now, The Weather: “Discount” by Agent blå
• I don’t have to tell you that there’s a big-ass weather system pounding the Northeast. Places like New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and elsewhere could get anywhere from 6” to 12” of snow.
• Stay safe and warm, friends.
• From the Sports Desk… I lied. I have one last NFL note. I promise, we’re almost done talking about NFL football for months, so allow me hang on to my favorite thing for a moment longer.
• Do you know the reason the Chiefs won the Super Bowl? According to KC coach Andy Reid, it was because of the Las Vegas Raiders.
• On Christmas Day, the Chiefs got a beat down by the surging Raiders, who scored two defensive touchdowns within seven seconds in the second quarter. The Chiefs lost 20-14 and fell to 9-6 with two regular-season games remaining.
• Reid said, ”That was a good wake-up call for us. It gave our guys a nice little, for lack of a better term, a wake-up call that, 'Listen we need to step things up here. Things aren't just going to fall in our lap.'"
• Happy to have helped, I guess. Raider Nation 4 Life!
• Today in history… Catherine Howard, the fifth wife of Henry VIII of England, is executed for adultery (1542). Galileo Galilei arrives in Rome for his trial before the Inquisition (1633). William and Mary are proclaimed co-rulers of England (1689). The 13th Dalai Lama proclaims Tibetan independence following a period of domination by Manchu Qing dynasty and initiated a period of almost four decades of independence (1913). In New York City the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers — ASCAP — is established to protect the copyrighted musical compositions of its members (1914). With the success of a nuclear test codenamed "Gerboise Bleue", France becomes the fourth country to possess nuclear weapons (1960). Black college students stage the first of the Nashville sit-ins at three lunch counters in Nashville, TN (1960). Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd makes a historic apology to the Indigenous Australians and the Stolen Generations (2008).
• February 13 is the birthday of economist Thomas Robert Malthus (1766), French president Paul Deschanel (1855), painter Grant Wood (1891), philosopher Agostinho da Silva (1906), singer/actor Tennessee Ernie Ford (1919), pilot Chuck Yeager (1923), actress Kim Novak (1933),  actor Oliver Reed (1938), actor/musician Peter Tork (1942), actress Stockard Channing (1944), TV host/politician Jerry Springer (1944), politician Richard Blumenthal (1946), basketball player/coach Mike Krzyzewski (1947), singer-songwriter Peter Gabriel (1950), musician Peter Hook (1956), singer-songwriter/actor/DJ Henry Rollins (1961), NFL player Randy Moss (1977), actress Mena Suvari (1979), and NFL player Aqib Talib (1986).

Well, holy fuck, that’s a lot of stuff. I’m doing to try and be positive today; I’d rather hoped that by now, I wouldn’t still be reliant on ibuprofen to get through my day. But ya know, there are many people who are worse off than me in myriad ways. I’ll make it through. Enjoy your day.