Random News: March 22, 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 March 22, 2024, and if you can believe it, it’s a Friday once again! I woke up with “In a Big Country” by Big Country stuck in my head for some reason, so I’m gonna take that as a sign to come up screaming and ready to kick ass for justice. Let’s do the news!

• I never know exactly where to start when bonkers news items are flying by, as they have been in recent days.
• Let’s start with some good shit.
• President Joe Biden has forgiven roughly $6 billion in student loans for nearly 80,000 public service workers — including teachers, nurses, and firefighters.
• Joe said, ”These public service workers have dedicated their careers to serving their communities, but because of past administrative failures, never got the relief they were entitled to under the law."
• I can’t think of anyone I’d rather be provided this relief than teachers, nurses, or first responders.
• In news from the dark side…
• Effective yesterday, Donnie Dump's family real estate company has a full-time babysitter.
• Judge Arthur Engoron imposed a monitor over the Dump Organization as part of a judgment that also required Dumpy to pay a nearly-half billion dollar penalty.
• Barbara Jones, a retired federal judge, has been overseeing Dump Org's finances since November 2022 as part of a preliminary injunction. She is now installed for the next three years.
• As part of the arrangement, the Dump Org must open its books to Jones, who has also been given the ability to suggest court-ordered changes in how the company operates.
• She must be notified about any large cash transfers (!), the creation or dissolution of assets, the restructuring of debt and any efforts to secure surety bonds.
• That means if Big Smelly suddenly gets an influx of cash to pay his appeal bond by Monday, Barbara Jones will need to know from whence it came.
• Hahahahahahaha… this is… chef’s kiss.
• So about that…
• Yesterday, the $454 million judgment against the Tangerine Twat was formally registered in Westchester County just outside Manhattan, a sign that his properties in the area may be at risk of being seized if the former president fails to post an appeal bond.
• What properties would those be? Oh, only some of his most valuable ones of all: Trump National Golf Club Westchester and the mostly undeveloped 212-acre Seven Springs estate.
• The judgment is already entered in New York City where Dumples’ properties including Trump Tower, his penthouse at Trump Tower, 40 Wall Street, his hotel abutting Central Park, and numerous apartment buildings.
• Interesting fact…
• Dump is sending out fundraising emails and posts saying, "KEEP YOUR FILTHY HANDS OFF OF TRUMP TOWER!"
• I’m not making that up, by the way. That’s copy/pasted.
• But campaigns are barred from spending money on anything that isn't a specific, election-related expenditure, and paying off a personal legal judgment doesn't fall into that category.
• Dump would not hesitate to do it anyway, but I just wanted to make that clear. Regardless, it could only be enforced by the Federal Election Commission, whose Republican staff have blocked every investigation into Dump and his campaign over the years.
• Don the Con spent more than $52 million on legal fees in 2023 using funds from two political action committees that he controls. 
• Nearly $40 million of the $52.4 million in donor money was spent on law firms working on cases that had nothing to do with Dump's candidacy for the 2024 presidential election.
• Let’s talk about that too.
• Diaper Don’s new joint fundraising agreement with the Republican National Committee directs donations to his campaign and a political action committee that pays the former president’s legal bills before the RNC even gets a cut.
• Again, for those who are in denial: Republican donor funds are being diverted straight to the Save America PAC. That money goes to Dump’s lawyers, who have received at least $76 million over the last two years to defend him against four felony indictments and multiple civil cases.
• And now they’re painted into a corner, because the RNC is run by his daughter-in-law Lara Trump and Chris LaCivita, who is one of two campaign managers for the Dump campaign.
• There’s no money in the RNC for any candidate other than Dump.
• He’s fucked your entire political party, likely for years if not generations to come.
• And just this morning, that Orange Idiot made a huge mistake.
• He posted in all caps on his stupid social network, "Through hard work, talent, and luck, I currently have almost five hundred million dollars in cash, a substantial amount of which I intended to use in my campaign for president.”
• But his own lawyers have argued in court that Don the Con does not have the money to pay his legal judgements. But if he truly has $500 million in cash, he can’t claim hardship to get a stay.
• So either he’s lying, or his lawyers are lying, but either way, the judge is going to be interested in which.
• One other quick hit: yesterday, New York prosecutors insisted that Dump’s hush money criminal trial will start on April 15 without further delay.
• The U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan finished giving evidence to Trump’s lawyers on March 15, and allowed for another month for review… hence the April 15 trial date.
• Judge Juan M. Merchan ruled against Dump in virtually all of his motions to exclude evidence in this case. By contrast, the judge largely granted Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s motions to exclude evidence for trial that Dump believed might be exculpatory.
• None of that bodes well for Dumpy’s chances to avoid conviction when the case goes to trial.
• Okay, enough on him. We have other assholes to shame.
• Continuing our coverage of the Mississippi "Goon Squad” — the cops who raped, tortured, and nearly killed two black men for the crime of hanging out with a white woman.
• The first four members — Hunter Elward, Jeffrey Middleton, Daniel Opdyke, and Christian Dedmon — received their sentences on Tuesday and Wednesday.
• Yesterday, former Rankin County deputy Brett McAlpin was sentenced to more than 27 years in prison by U.S. District Judge Tom Lee. 
• It was McAlpin who, in January 2023, took the call from a white person who complained that Jenkins and Parker were residing with a white woman at a house in Braxton, MI. He took charge of assembling the Goon Squad of cops to go rape, torture, and shoot the Black men.
• Later in the day yesterday, the sixth and final officer, former Richland police officer Joshua Hartfield, was ordered to serve just over 10 years.
• Moving on to yet more continuing coverage of assholes… the ones who tried to overthrow our country on January 6, 2021.
• Jeffrey Sabol was sentenced yesterday to more than five years in prison for his role in the insurrection. Sabol ripped a baton from an officer’s hands before pulling another officer into the crowd outside the Capitol, allowing other rioters to assault the officer with weapons.
• Sabol tried to flee the country after the failed coup attempt. He microwaved laptops and hard drives, dropped his cell phone out a car window, and booked a flight to Zurich, Switzerland, but he didn’t make it. He was arrested on January 22, 2021.
• Other insurrectionists who were charged with Sabol and convicted of attacking the injured officers include former Tennessee sheriff’s deputy Ronald Colton McAbee (five years and 10 months), Florida resident Mason Courson (four years and nine months), Arkansas truck driver Peter Francis Stager (four years and four months), Michigan resident Justin Jersey (four years and three months), Michigan construction worker Logan Barnhart (three years), and Kentucky business owner Clayton Ray Mullins (two years and six months).
• More than 1,300 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the Capitol insurrection. Over 800 of them have been sentenced, with roughly two-thirds receiving a term of imprisonment.
• Fuck around, find out.
• Oh, speaking of which…
• Pro-Dump lawyer Stefanie Lambert surrendered yesterday to Michigan authorities in connection with her 2020 election tampering indictment.
• The surrender came days after Lambert’s arrest at the federal courthouse in DC. She was taken into custody Monday by US marshals immediately after she participated in a two-hour hearing in Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation case against her client, ex-Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, regarding his false claims about the 2020 election.
• Lambert was indicted last year in connection with an attempted election system breach in Michigan… one of several incidents in battleground states where Dump supporters tried to prove their voter-fraud theories after he lost the 2020 election.
• Dipshits. All of you MAGA folks will eventually wake up and realize you got conned and you ruined your fucking lives over some guy who never gave a single shit about you.
• Okay, this is weird.
• Multiple states reported disrupted services at department of motor vehicles offices yesterday in a national outage that halted license-related transactions due to a loss in cloud connectivity.
• I mean, yeah, that’d do it.
• The outage lasted from 9:50AM to 12:30PM EDT. They say they’re working internally and with cloud providers to determine the root cause of the outage.
• Disruptions were noted in states including Illinois, Colorado, Massachusetts, Virginia, and elsewhere.
• Alright, we need some good news.
• Yesterday, after many years of lobbying, the World War II Ghost Army finally got the recognition they deserve. But their contributions remained classified for decades, with many veterans taking the secret to their graves.
• This unit used inflatable tanks, phony uniforms, fake rumors, and special effects to deceive German forces, diverting attention from larger units and saving hundreds of thousands of American lives in the process.
• Three Ghost Army veterans came to the U.S. Capitol on Thursday to accept the Congressional Gold Medal, surrounded by military and congressional leaders, lawmakers from both parties, and relatives of Ghost Army members.
• Cool. Salute!
• And now, The Weather: “Malcolm” by Meagre Martin
• Spring came this week, but we have rain and cooler temps returning to Southern California, and New England will have flooding and snow this weekend as well. Mother Nature doesn’t use our calendar, apparently.
• From the Sports Desk… huge upset in the NCAA Men’s basketball tournament (aka March Madness) last night when the 14-seed Oakland Golden Grizzlies beat the 3-seed Kentucky Wildcats 80-76. Oakland guard Jack Gohlke nailed 10 3-pointers in the victory.
• In another upset, 11-seed Duquesne beat 6-seed BYU, 71-67.
• So well over 99% of people’s brackets are ruined. Hope it was fun making your picks. In fact, as of this morning, exactly 0.00038% of men’s NCAA brackets are still active. I’m serious. Snort.
• Today in history… Roman emperor Severus Alexander is murdered, marking the start of the Crisis of the Third Century (235). The Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony sign a peace treaty with Massasoit of the Wampanoags (1621). The Massachusetts Bay Colony outlaws the possession of cards, dice, and gaming tables (1631). The British Parliament passes the Stamp Act that introduces a tax to be levied directly on its American colonies (1765). The Slave Trade Act of 1794 bans the export of slaves from the United States, and prohibits American citizens from outfitting a ship for the purpose of importing slaves (1794). In North Carolina, William Woods Holden becomes the first governor of a U.S. state to be removed from office by impeachment (1871). The Stanley Cup ice hockey competition is held for the first time, in Montreal, Canada (1894). The first Masters Tournament is held at Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia (1934). Arthur Leonard Schawlow and Charles Hard Townes receive the first patent for a laser (1960). The Beatles release their debut album ‘Please Please Me’ (1963). In Eisenstadt v. Baird, the United States Supreme Court decides that unmarried persons have the right to possess contraceptives (1972). NASA's Space Shuttle Columbia is launched from the Kennedy Space Center on its third mission, STS-3 (1982). The Intel Corporation ships the first Pentium chips (80586), featuring a 60 MHz clock speed, 100+ MIPS, and a 64 bit data path (1993). Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announces the country's largest ever self-imposed curfew, in an effort to fight the spread of COVID-19 (2020). Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announces a national lockdown and the country's first ever self-imposed curfew, in an effort to fight the spread of COVID-19 (2020).
• March 22 is the birthday of astronomer/mathematician Ulugh Beg (1394), Holy Roman emperor Maximilian I (1459), actor Chico Marx (1887), novelist Louis L’Amour (1908), actor Karl Malden (1912), talent agent Lew Wasserman (1913), mime Marcel Marceau (1923), composer Stephen Sondheim (1930), actor William Shatner (1931), drag queen Foo Foo Lammar (1937), International Olympic Committee member Dick Pound (1942), singer-songwriter/guitarist George Benson (1943), singer-songwriter Keith Relf (1943), journalist Wolf Blitzer (1948), composer Andrew Lloyd Webber (1948), sportscaster Bob Costas (1952), figure skater Elvis Stojko (1972), actress Reese Witherspoon (1976), NFL player J. J. Watt (1989), and MLB player Edwin Díaz (1994).

Once again, yeah, that’s a lot of stuff, and there is more news breaking that will have to wait for tomorrow. We live in interesting times, and that’s not a compliment toward the current era. But keep doing what you do. We’ll make it through. Enjoy your day.