Random News: February 16, 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.

---

Good morning. It’s February 16, 2024, and if you can believe it, it’s a Friday once again! Slowly but surely, I seem to be feeling more myself. I missed me, and I’m glad I’m coming back. Meanwhile…

• My goodness, do we have many things to report. So many things.
• But first, a little follow-up to yesterday’s complaints by me about my mouth.
• Per expert medical opinion, I’m perfectly fine. My dentist was happy to note that my mouth is recovering as well as could possibly be expected from the previous week’s surgery.
• He saw no sign of infection beyond what’s normal in a mouth. I go back in next Thursday morning to wrap up some more work.
• So… yes. I am a fine specimen of a man, healthy in most aspects, and now I have the reassurance that the unpleasant aspects of what I’ve been feeling are just part of the healing process.
• And I’m glad I went in. It’s better to err on the side of caution, and now I have some peace of mind. All of this will get resolved soon enough.
• Okay, let’s go.
• Yesterday, the special counsel who is investigating Hunter Biden charged a one-time FBI informant with lying to investigators about the business dealings of the first son and President Joe Biden. 
• So much for that pointless impeachment investigation. Calls have already been made to House GOP leaders to drop the baseless investigation immediately.
• Special counsel David Weiss charged Alexander Smirnov, 43, with making a false statement and creating a fictitious record in what's known as an FBI 1023 report based on the false information he provided to investigators. 
• Smirnov was arrested yesterday at a Nevada airport. All of the main statements he made in his report to the FBI that tried to tie Joe and Hunter Biden to a Ukrainian energy company were provable lies.
• If you need a reminder, Weiss was appointed U.S. attorney for Delaware by Dump, and then named special counsel by Merrick Garland.
• Speaking of the former presidumb…
• As mentioned yesterday, Dumpy’s first criminal trial will start March 25, the date set after justice Juan Merchan denied Dump’s attempt to throw out the charges stemming from hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels.
• The trial is expected to last about six weeks. El Dumpo faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records connected to the hush money payments.
• According to the criminal indictment, Dumpy falsified the payments in the Dump Organization’s corporate records and never reported the money on campaign finance documents as required.
• That’s against the law, kids.
• As a reminder, the hush money case is one of four criminal trials Dump is facing. The schedules for the other three cases — two for attempting to overturn the 2020 election results and one for hoarding classified documents — remain unclear.
• In regard to that documents case, yesterday, judge Aileen Cannon shot down Dump’s latest effort to postpone pretrial deadlines. With her denial, the date is set on February 22.
• Before you get too excited, note that this is still a pretrial deadlines as she, Dump, and special counsel Jack Smith debate about how trial materials should be shared with the public.
• If Dump is able to postpone this criminal trial long enough and then win the presidency in November, he will direct the Department of Justice to shut it down immediately and will face no repercussions whatsoever.
• As it stands, Dump faces 40 felony charges in the case: 32 charges for violating the Espionage Act by retaining at least 102 documents with classified documents, six charges for obstruction, and two for making false statements regarding his possession of the documents.
• No one is above the law. Remember that when you vote this fall.
• Back to the present: a verdict is expected today in Dumpy’s New York civil fraud trial.
• Judge Arthur Engoron has already ruled that the former president inflated his wealth on financial statements that were given to banks, insurers and others to make deals and secure loans.
• New York Attorney General Letitia James is seeking $370 million and a ban on Trump and other defendants from doing business in the state. I will be keeping an eye on the news today in order to celebrate that moment when it happens.
• Moving on.
• Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader to Vladimir Putin, has died in prison. He was 47.
• Navalny was poisoned by Putin with a military nerve agent while on a business trip in Russia in 2020, in then spent his final years in a high-security penal colony in a remote town above the Arctic Circle.
• Donnie Dump admires Putin and would very much like to run the US in the same way Putin runs Russia… as a criminal thug who simply has his opposition murdered.
• Let’s move on.
• How about that Florida Man, Matt Gaetz?
• When it was reported on Wednesday that the House Ethics Committee had acquired text messages between a young woman involved in the sex trafficking investigation and Gaetz (R-FL), his spokesperson said that the congressman “does not know anything about the woman you’re referencing.”
• Welp.
• The woman’s attorney stated yesterday that the woman, in fact, received payments in connection with multiple sex parties with people in Gaetz’s circle. In response to a subpoena, she testified about her experiences to U.S. attorneys investigating Gaetz.
• She also turned over text messages, photos, and other evidence to the Justice Department as part of its child sex trafficking inquiry into the Florida congressman.
• The Ethics Committee met yesterday afternoon behind closed doors to discuss the Gaetz case, which also involves allegations of public corruption, solicitation of prostitution, habitual use of hard drugs, bribes or impermissible gifts, campaign finance violations, and exhibiting nude photos of sexual partners on the House floor.
• It’s all going to come crashing down for all the grifters and shitheads eventually, and I’ll be enjoying every moment of it.
• Moving on to another shitty human being.
• Utah’s Board of Education voted to censure one of its members and called for her resignation after she appeared to falsely suggest a teenage girl was transgender on social media.
• Natalie Cline posted a flyer for a Salt Lake City high school basketball team on Facebook last week, suggestively writing: “Girls’ basketball...”
• But the girl she was trying to humiliate for being transgender… isn’t.
• In addition to being censured, Cline will be stripped of her committee assignments, prohibited from attending the board’s advisory committee meetings and forbidden from placing items on the board’s agenda.
• Did Cline accept her punishment like a mature person? Of course not. She criticized the board before its unanimous vote was made public and described the process to oust her as “election interference.”
• Sound familiar? Here’s an idea: how about Cline be required to submit to a genitalia inspection before each job assignment? I mean, that’s what she’d like done to the kids in her district, so why not her as well?
• And now, The Weather: “Band Like That” by fanclubwallet
• From the Sports Desk… huge congrats to Caitlin Clark of the Iowa Hawkeyes women’s basketball team. She broke the NCAA women's basketball scoring record yesterday in spectacular fashion.
• She got the ball off the opening tip and drove in for a layup. Then she hit a deep 3-pointer. And then she hit an even deeper 3-pointer from the logo, and the crowd went wild.
• Clark not only set the NCAA record but also broke the Hawkeyes' single-game scoring record. Clark now has 3,569 career points, 49 of them coming in yesterday’s game.
• Today in history… Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington, becomes British Prime Minister (1742). Howard Carter unseals the burial chamber of Pharaoh Tutankhamun (1923). Wallace H. Carothers receives a United States patent for nylon (1937). The Alaska Equal Rights Act of 1945, the first anti-discrimination law in the United States, was signed into law (1945). Fidel Castro becomes Premier of Cuba after dictator Fulgencio Batista was overthrown (1959). In Haleyville, Alabama, the first 9-1-1 emergency telephone system goes into service (1968). The first computer bulletin board system is created — CBBS in Chicago (1978). The National Hockey League cancels the entire 2004–05 regular season and playoffs (2005). The last Mobile army surgical hospital — aka MASH — is decommissioned by the United States Army (2006).
• February 16 is the birthday of US vice president Henry Wilson (1812), journalist Henry Adams (1838), engineer/businessman Henry M. Leland (1843), ventriloquist/actor Edgar Bergen (1903), actor/musician/politician Sonny Bono (1935), politician Kim Jong-il (1941), singer-songwriter James Ingram (1952), model/actress Margaux Hemingway (1954), actor/producer LeVar Burton (1957), rapper/actor Ice-T (1958), tennis player John McEnroe (1959), guitarist/songwriter Andy Taylor (1961), NFL player Jerome Bettis (1972), politician Jon Ossoff (1987), actress Elizabeth Olsen (1989), and singer-songwriter The Weeknd (1990).

I am glad it’s Friday. I’m going to try and have a happy and peaceful day. I’m going to not get impatient about remaining aspects of my recovery. Everything will work out eventually, and I can’t complain, but sometimes I still do. Enjoy your day.