Random News: March 5, 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 March 5, 2024, and it’s a Tuesday. It’s also Super Tuesday, the date where the most states have their primary elections. We’ll get to that shortly, but I will say that no matter who and what you support, you should be voting every chance you get. Use it or lose it. Okay, let’s go.

• Before I do, let me state that a good chunk of the Internet seems to be down at this very moment, including all Meta properties (Facebook, Instagram, Threads) and many other important Internet locations.
• Not sure when I’ll be able to post this collection of news as a result.
• I don’t know why just yet, but it seems to be a large-scale situation. Interesting that it’s happening today. More on that later, I suppose.
• Let’s talk Super Tuesday.
• I actually don’t have a lot to tell you about Super Tuesday. By now, I have to assume you have either already voted or know who you’re voting for.
• Some of the down-ballot choices having nothing to do with the presidential election are probably more important to your lives than the other stuff. Races for office like governor, senator, congressional rep, and various propositions are often vitally important to your day-to-day lives.
• Want some predictions? They’re very easy. In the GOP, Donnie Dump will win every state by a considerable margin. Nikki Haley may be planning on dropping out later this evening or tomorrow.
• Joe Biden will win by even larger margins despite any “protest vote” against him due to the perception that he can unilaterally control conflict in the Middle East.
• It’s probably a good thing we’ll be getting this part done and moving to a point that the formal nominees of each party are set in stone.
• And again, above all… VOTE! It’s one of the only real powers you have as an American.
• I got some help early this morning from another person who is encouraging people to vote. Her name is Taylor Swift.
• In the midst of her tour, she wrote on Instagram, “Today, March 5, is the presidential primary in Tennessee and 16 other states and territories. I wanted to remind you guys to vote the people who most represent YOU into power. If you haven’t already, make a plan to vote today. Whether you’re in Tennessee or somewhere else in the US, check your polling place and times at Vote.org.”
• Note that like me, Taylor didn’t tel you who to vote for. She just said to vote. if anyone gets threatened by that, maybe they should ask themselves why.
• Let’s move on.
• Or, in this case, move back… to November 2020, just five days after Joe Biden won the presidential election.
• That’s the day that a conservative lawyer named Kenneth Chesebro emailed a former judge who was working for the Dump campaign in Wisconsin, James R. Troupis, pitching an idea for how to overturn the results.
• Chesebro’s idea was that the Dump campaign could allege various systemic abuses and, with court proceedings pending, encourage legislatures to appoint alternative pro-Dump electors that could be certified instead of the Biden electors chosen by the voters.
• Troupis loved the idea and brought Chesebro into the Trump legal team. That email he sent is the earliest known evidence in what would become known as the false elector plot. It was released yesterday along with a trove of more than 1,400 pages of text messages and emails belonging to Troupis and Chesebro as they settled a lawsuit against them filed in Wisconsin.
• I am going to have celebrations each time one of these pieces of shit face consequences for their actions. Every single person who tried to dance around the legal and fair election process in the country and got caught needs to be brought to justice and pay a hefty price to discourage it from happening again.
• Moving on.
• This morning, the Biden administration announced it would sharply limit the fees that credit card companies can charge customers who fall behind on their bills, aiming to cap the penalties at $8 in a move that immediately drew fierce resistance from financial giants.
• Under the new regulations, credit card issuers including Bank of America, Capital One, Citibank and JPMorgan Chase cannot charge more than $8 for a late payment unless they can explicitly point to data showing they must impose higher fees to make up for losses.
• In issuing the restrictions, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said the government intends to close a legal loophole that had allowed some financial giants to charge an average of $32 per month for a missed or late payment.
• Those late fees reaped more than $14 billion in revenue for credit companies in 2022.
• Fuck them and their greed.
• In other news…
• Massachusetts Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira agreed yesterday that he caused one of the most extraordinary leaks of national defense secrets in years and accepted a prison sentence of 16 years.
• Teixeira, 22, agreed to plead guilty to all six counts charging him with willful retention and transmission of national defense information. In exchange, prosecutors agreed not to charge him with additional counts under the Espionage Act.
• This dumbass kid accessed and printed hundreds of classified documents and posted images of them on Discord prior to his arrest last April.
• We need to do a better job of screening people who have access to this kind of information.
• I want to move on to some confirmation of disturbing information in regard to the Israel-Hamas war that involves sexual violence.
• Please skip the next set of bullets if this is too sensitive a topic for you.
• Okay, here we go.
• Confirming something we already knew, a United Nations report released yesterday found signs that sexual violence was committed in multiple locations during the Hamas-led October 7 attack on Israel, and said that some hostages being held in the Gaza Strip had also been subjected to rape and sexual torture.
• We’ve covered this topic before, and certainly not just in regard to the current conflict. I wish we hadn’t had to have covered it.
• But sexual violence his extremely commonplace in war situations, and that has been true for thousands of years. And I hate to break it to you, but every country who has invaded another territory has been guilty of it.
• Yes, including the United States.
• Back in the present situation, experts said they had found reasonable grounds to believe that sexual violence occurred during the Hamas-led incursion into Israel, including rape and gang rape in at least three locations: the Nova music festival site and the area around it, as well as Road 232 and Kibbutz Re’im.
• Sexual violence and rape are not acceptable in any situation, ever, and in military conflict, it is specifically outlawed by the Geneva Convention and other rules governing war.
• Okay, let’s move on from that.
• Former Twitter executives including CEO Parag Agrawal, Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal, head of legal Vijaya Gadde and General Counsel Sean Edgett filed a new lawsuit against Elon Musk and X Corp yesterday in federal court, arguing that they are owed $128 million in unpaid severance.
• In their complaint, the ex-Twitter executives say that after Musk backed himself into a deal to buy Twitter, now X Corp., for $44 billion, he took revenge against these executives personally, and tried to recover some of his expenses by repeatedly refusing to honor other clear contractual commitments.
• I’m not at all shocked. Elon is an asshole, and assholes simply don’t pay people per their agreements. That should remind you of another asshole who happens to be running for president.
• And now, The Weather: “Shamble” by Curling
• From the Sports Desk… the Denver Broncos have informed nine-time Pro Bowl quarterback Russell Wilson they plan to release him, a move that ends a tumultuous two-season run with the team.
• Wilson will be formally released on March 13, the official start of the new NFL year. Will he just retire or will another team pick him (and his massive contract) up? We do not know.
• Today in history… King Henry VII of England issues letters patent to John Cabot and his sons, authorizing them to explore unknown lands (1496). Nicolaus Copernicus's book On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres is added to the Index of Forbidden Books 73 years after it was first published (1616). Five Americans, including Crispus Attucks, are fatally shot by British troops in an event that would contribute to the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War five years later (1770). Samuel Colt patents the first production-model revolver, the .34-caliber (1836). George Westinghouse patents the air brake (1872). Winston Churchill coins the phrase "Iron Curtain" in his speech at Westminster College, MO (1946). Country music stars Patsy Cline, Hawkshaw Hawkins, Cowboy Copas and their pilot Randy Hughes are killed in a plane crash in Camden, TN (1963).
• March 5 is the birthday of guitarist/composer Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887), Chinese premier Zhou Enlai (1898), actor Rex Harrison (1908), businessman Laurence Tisch (1923), actor Jack Cassidy (1927), actor Dean Stockwell (1936), actor/singer Murray Head (1946), singer-songwriter Eddy Grant (1948), singer Elaine Paige (1948), magician Penn Jillette (1955), singer-songwriter Teena Marie (1956), singer-songwriter Andy Gibb (1958), NFL player Michael Irvin (1966), guitarist John Frusciante (1970), and NFL player Justin Fields (1999).

Well, seems like it’s going to be an interesting day in several ways. I’m going back to the dentist for some small stuff this afternoon, so try and be nice to each other in the meantime. Enjoy your day.