Random News: March 9, 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- uh, good afternoon. It’s March 9, 2024, and it’s a Saturday. As usual, I’m in a blue bathrobe and drinking coffee as I race down the information superhighway, stopping here and there when something piques my interest. then I note it and share it with you. That’s the way we do it.

• Welp, here we go again with the Daylight Saving Time in the USA and many other places. It starts tomorrow (aka tonight at midnight).
• I know, I know… you all love DST. I do not. I’ve explained why many times.
• I own a business and I get up early in the morning. Especially on Monday, it will be all kinds of fucked up, being basically pitch black dark for the first entire hour of my day.
• And then getting to sleep at night will be a bitch for a good week or so while I adjust to the clock change. I don’t need it to be light until late in the evening. It does nothing for me.
• Anyway, set your clocks tonight for an hour ahead. 
• Now, some news.
• Just because Super Tuesday was last week doesn’t meant he primary voting season is over… far from it.
• Next week on March 12, there are Democratic and/or Republican primaries in Georgia, Hawaii, Mississippi, Northern Mariana Islands, Washington, and for Democrats Abroad.
• Following in the week thereafter, primaries are in Guam, Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, and Ohio. Any time you have an opportunity to vote, please do so.
• There are likely other candidates and ballot measures to help choose, and your vote for president is going to influence the perceived support of your preferred candidate as the race continues.
• VOTE! Thank you.
• Moving on.
• U.S. District Judge Drew Tipton, who was appointed by Donnie Dump, sided with one of President Joe Biden's immigration policies in a surprise ruling yesterday.
• He ruled against Texas and 20 other Republican-led states challenging a Biden administration program that allows up to 30,000 migrants who are seeking asylum from four countries to enter the U.S. on an emergency basis each month.
• The program applies to approved migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Applicants are required to be sponsored by a person in the United States and must arrange their own travel to the country by air to participate.
• Tipton ruled that Texas lacked standing to bring the lawsuit and had not demonstrated that it was "injured" by the program. He also noted (and the DHS and the Republican states agreed) that the number of migrants entering the country under the program has dramatically decreased by as much as 44 percent.
• Good. Fuck those states.
• Speaking of President Biden, he just launched a new ad campaign on the heels of his very well-received State of the Union speech on Thursday night.
• The ad directly addresses Biden’s age, which I think is smart.
• He says, "Look I'm not a young guy. That's no secret. But here's the deal, I understand how to get things done for the American people."
• The spot then ticks through his record on the recovery from the pandemic, climate change, lowering prescription drug prices and the economy. 
• Biden then notes how Dumpy failed to pass an infrastructure law, and reminds people that Dump "took away the freedom of women to choose."
• The ad is part of a recently announced $30 million battleground state ad buy and will air in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and North Carolina.
• More than a few of you hit me up to ask why I didn’t mention anything about the GOP rebuttal to the State of the Union the other night by Senator Katie Britt (R-AL).
• I didn’t say anything about it because it was so incredibly pathetic that I almost felt badly about even bringing it up. It was obvious that the GOP did not anticipate the fire and energy that Dark Brandon brought to the stage.
• Her fellow Senator in the state, Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) said this about her performance, which was filmed in a kitchen. “She was picked as a housewife, not just a senator, somebody who sees it from a different perspective. I mean, she did what she was asked to do. I thought she did a good job. And it’s hard when you’ve never done anything like that.”
• Fucking Jesus. But I do need to call out Britt’s speech now for reasons of truth.
• She told a graphic sex-trafficking story about a woman who was sexually abused “over and over” by members of Mexican drug cartels on the United States side of the Rio Grande.
• Britt implied also that the woman had confided the story to her, and that the events had occurred during President Biden’s administration.
• Except none of that is true.
• The victim Britt referenced was Karla Jacinto Romero, who has told her story many times publicly, including to Congress; the events didn’t occur in the United States; and they happened during George W. Bush’s presidency.
• How can you vote for people who lie to you at every opportunity? They take you for fools, and they laugh at you behind your back. Hell, they laugh in your face.
• So that’s how the Trump party plays their game. Little side note: if you’re worried Biden is old (which he is), what’s the difference between him and the other guy, who went to high school at the same fucking time?
• Biden graduated in the class of ’61; Dump was ’63. if you’re going to use age as your big fucking factor in choosing, then acknowledge there’s almost no difference there.
• Choose the guy who is going to do the right thing and who stands for all Americans. Don’t choose the one who’s under 91 felony costs across four criminal investigations. This isn’t a difficult choice, people.
• Okay, let’s move on.
• Looks like TikTok is going bye-bye in USA.
• House Republican leaders huddled yesterday morning and will move forward with a vote next Wednesday on a bipartisan bill that would force ByteDance to sell TikTok — or face a ban in the USA.
• Interestingly, they’re doing this despite Donnie Dump being against it.
• The legislation from Reps. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL), the leaders of the House Select Committee on China, would force Beijing-based ByteDance to sell off TikTok within 180 days or they’ll penalize app stores that host it.
• El Dumpo is angry because he says a TikTok ban would help his enemy Mark Zuckerberg. he said in his fucking moronic Hitleresque way, “I don’t want Facebook, who cheated in the last Election, doing better. They are a true Enemy of the People!”
• But the bill has broad bipartisan support in Congress, and on Friday President Biden said he would sign the bill into law if it passes. House Speaker Mike Johnson also endorsed the bill earlier this week.
• Moving on.
• With the possibility of a Trump presidency and his oath to ban abortion nationwide, many states are now reexamining laws that help shore up (or, in many cases, weaken) women’s reproductive rights in regard to abortion and in vitro fertilization (IVF).
• As it stands today, more than a third of states consider fetuses to be people at some point during pregnancy. Any one of them could be the next Alabama. So lawmakers and organizations on both sides of the political spectrum are scrambling to understand state statutes, some of which are nearly four decades old.
• Alabama passed a bill to reassure fertility clinics that had halted operations in the wake of the state’s Supreme Court ruling in February that deemed embryos legally children.
• But legal experts said the hastily-written bill also carries the unintended consequence of preventing patients whose embryos are destroyed due to clinic negligence or product malfunction from suing for damages.
• And the law notably sidesteps the legal issue of whether or not embryos are legally minor children.
• Want to know the states where blastocysts and embryos and fetuses are people?
• Every stage of the pregnancy: Arizona, South Dakota, Kansas, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and of course Alabama. Every stage while carried in the womb: Alaska, Wyoming, and Georgia. At viability: Montana, Ohio, and South Carolina.
• Look… you said we were being alarmists when we told you they were going after Roe v. Wade. Now they’ve straight up said they want to ban the choice of women across the country.
• BELIEVE THEM.
• Side note: making contraception illegal and reversing legality of same-sex marriage are the next goals coming up for the Republicans. Then killing Social Security and Medicare that you already paid for.
• Do not say you weren’t warned. I’m here. I’m wanting you now. You can stop them if you want with your vote.
• Moving on to some international news.
• Yesterday, former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández has been found guilty on charges relating to drug trafficking and weapons possession.
• But I thoughts presidents were immune from criminal punishment? Oh wait, that’s just Dump. Never mind.
• A New York Federal District Court convicted the 55-year-old ex-president of three counts including conspiring to import cocaine into the United States and to use machine guns and destructive devices.
• Side note that will surprise no one: Hernández was lauded by Donnie Dump as a man who helped the U.S. stop "drugs at a level that has never happened."
• Snort. Moving on.
• We’ve covered the burgeoning issue of AL and its use in deep fakes, especially in porn.
• This week, five eighth-grade students have been expelled from their Beverly Hills school for their involvement in using artificial intelligence to generate nude images of classmates and sharing them with others.
• The kids grabbed pics of the faces of fellow students at Beverly Vista Middle School and superimposed them on AI-generated nude bodies. The victims are 16 eighth-grade students.
• I can tell you from memory: kids that age can have very few morals, and if there’s tech out there that allows this to be easily accomplished, I promise there are many more middle- and high-school kids doing it, and it probably happens a lot.
• And now, The Weather: “CCS” by veronicavon
• Speaking of weather, the lower 48 states just had the warmest winter in 130 years of record-keeping, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Temperatures were more than 5 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than average.
• Winters are warming faster than any other season in most of the U.S. As humans add heat-trapping gasses to the atmosphere, the coldest places and coldest temperatures are being affected the most, having profound implications for food and water supplies.
• Keep laughing at climate change, folks. I’m hoping the next intelligent species to evolve here may learn from your mistakes.
• Because we are toast.
• I thought a fun chart today would be the bottom of the Billboard 200 album chart for this day in 1974, 50 years ago on March 9.
• Some of these are on their way up; most are on their way down, and a good number of them barely made it on the chart in the first place.
• 181. Mott (Mott The Hoople). 182. His California Album (Bobby Bland). 183. Here Comes Inspiration (Paul Williams). 184. Now & Then (Carpenters). 185. Stomp Your Hands, Clap Your Feet (Slade). 186. All-Time Greatest Hits (The Lettermen). 187. Half-Breed (Cher). 188. Takin My Time (Bonnie Raitt). 189. Living And Dying In 3/4 Time (Jimmy Buffett). 190. Windfall (Rick Nelson). 191. Barbra Streisand...And Other Musical Instruments (Barbra Streisand). 192. Godspell (Original Cast Recording). 193. Loud 'N' Proud (Nazareth). 194. Creative Source (Creative Source). 195. That's A Plenty (The Pointer Sisters). 196. I Can't Stand The Rain (Ann Peebles). 197. Jonathan Livingston Seagull (Richard Harris). 198. Abandoned Luncheonette (Daryl Hall John Oates). 199. Tabernakel (Jan Akkerman). 200. Press On (David T Walker).
• A funny story from Tuesday afternoon, when I had eight shiny new crowns installed n my mouth. The dentist remarked that they’d done a good job of matching the shade to the rest of my old-ass teeth.
• I said that was good because otherwise my mouth would look that that truck in your neighbor’s yard that has one new rim.
• From the Sports Desk… former MLB MVP Joey Votto, who has been openly pleading in recent weeks for an opportunity to play ball despite being age 40, has agreed to a minor league deal with a Toronto Blue Jays.
• Glad for him. Votto is a likable dude. And he’s Canadian and gets to play for his home team, even as a minor leaguer.
• Today in history… Napoléon Bonaparte marries his first wife, Joséphine de Beauharnais (1796). Francis Ronalds describes the first battery-operated clock in the Philosophical Magazine (1815). The U.S. Supreme Court rules in the United States v. The Amistad case that captive Africans who had seized control of the ship carrying them had been taken into slavery illegally (1841). Giuseppe Verdi's third opera, ‘Nabucco’, receives its premiere performance in Milan (1842). The first documented discovery of gold in California occurs at Rancho San Francisco, six years before the California Gold Rush (1842). Pancho Villa leads nearly 500 Mexican raiders in an attack against the border town of Columbus, NM (1916). President Franklin D. Roosevelt submits the Emergency Banking Act to Congress, the first of his New Deal policies (1933). Allied forces carry out firebombing over Tokyo, destroying most of the capital and killing over 100,000 civilians (1945). The Barbie doll makes its debut at the American International Toy Fair in New York (1959). Dr. Belding Hibbard Scribner implants for the first time a shunt he invented into a patient, which allows the patient to receive hemodialysis on a regular basis (1960). Chrysler announces its acquisition of American Motors Corporation (1987). The Notorious B.I.G. is murdered in Los Angeles after attending the Soul Train Music Awards (1997).
• March 9 is the birthday of explorer Amerigo Vespucci (1451), politician/SCOTUS justice David Davis (1815), businessman/politician Amasa Leland Stanford (1824), politician/diplomat Vyacheslav Molotov (1890), actor/activist Will Geer (1902), engineer Paul Wilbur Klipsch (1904), composer Samuel Barber (1910), novelist Mickey Spillane (1918), saxophonist/composer Ornette Coleman (1930), actor Raul Julia (1940), chess player Bobby Fischer (1943), guitarist Robin Trower (1945), and actor Emmanuel Lewis (1970).

Okay, so I’ll remind you again, set your stupid clocks forward. Might as well do it now. A lot of your clocks probably do it themselves, like your computer and phone and smart appliances and all that. But I know some of you have normal fucking things that are not robots, so set those and mourn the loss of an hour of your life for no fucking good reason. Enjoy your day.