Random News: June 10, 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 June 10, 2024, and it’s a Monday. I’ll tell you, it’s tangibly different around this town during weekdays after school is out for summer. I can hear less of everything… voices walking by, engines revving, horns honking. I just had to snap my fingers next to my ear to make sure that I hadn’t gone deaf overnight. I hadn’t. Let’s do some news in the quiet of this overcast Monday.

• Let’s start on the international front once again.
• President Emmanuel Macron of France has called snap parliamentary elections later this month in the wake of a big victory for his rival, hard-right politician Marine Le Pen, in the European Parliament vote.
• The far-right party is on course to win 32% of the vote, exit polls say, more than twice that of the president's Renaissance party.
• Macron said the two rounds of voting would take place on June 30 and July 7, just a few weeks before the opening of the Paris Olympics.
• The upcoming parliamentary elections also won't affect Macron's own job. They are separate from the presidential elections and his term as president still runs for three more years.
• And — see if this sounds familiar — Le Pen, who has twice been defeated by Macron in presidential elections, immediately reacted, saying her party was "ready to exercise power, ready to put an end to mass immigration".
• To the members of the far right, no matter the problem, it’s always the fault of the immigrants.
• Macron is already dealing with the lack of a majority in the French parliament, and though this European vote has no bearing on France’s national politics, he clearly decided that continuing his mandate without a new popular consultation would place too much of a strain on the system.
• I mean, yes. I am a supporter of democracy. But it’s still disappointing to see much of Europe head down the sad road to fascism.
• Much like it is in the USA.
• Let’s move on.
• Speaking of fascists, I have to give credit to Donnie Dump for being the first US president to do a lot of things… like be charged, tried, and convicted of felonious crimes.
• Today Dumpy has another first, as he becomes the first former president to have an interview with a probation officer.
• His pre-sentencing interview with the New York probation office takes place virtually today. 
• If you’re a normal person in a place like Manhattan, this interview would typically be conducted in person, and you probably wouldn’t have your lawyer there.
• I mean, who wants to hang out with (and pay) a lawyer who could’t defend you?
• But of course, the Dumpster gets special treatment. He’ll phone in his probation interview on Zoom, and Juan Merchan issued an order Friday granting Dump attorney Todd Blanche permission to attend the interview.
• You know what they’re afraid of, right? Dump on his own will say or do literally anything, and the likelihood is high he’d somehow get himself in deeper shit without a lawyer keeping him under control.
• El Dumpo did one of his cult rallies yesterday in Las Vegas, where it was well over 100 degrees. Six people were sent to a hospital and 24 others were treated on site for heat-related issues.
• Dump was concerned… about his teleprompters.
• “I pay all this money to teleprompter people, and I’d say 20% of the time, they don’t work,” he said, adding he would not pay the vendor who provided the prompters. “It’s a mess.”
• He’s a mess.
• Let’s move on.
• In our continuing celebration of Pride Month, we’re saluting the LGBTQIA+ community with a daily Gay of the Day spotlight throughout June.
• Today it’s astronaut Sally Ride.
• In 1983, Ride became the first American woman (and the third woman ever) to fly in space. She was also the youngest American astronaut to travel to space, having done so at the age of 32.
• Like literally every astronaut, Ride was an exemplary — I’d say overachieving — student, getting her BS in physics and a BA in English literature, then a Masters degree and a Doctor of Philosophy, all from Stanford University, for research on the interaction of X-rays with the interstellar medium.
• She was also a top-ranked intercollegiate tennis player. Because of course she was.
• At NASA, Ride helped develop the Space Shuttle's robotic arm, and then flew in space on the STS-7 mission where she operated that very arm to deploy and retrieve satellites. She did a second mission the following year, and spent a total of more than 343 hours in space.
• Ride began a relationship with former Women's Tennis Association player Tam O’Shaughnessy toward the end of her previous marriage.
• But it wasn’t until after Ride died in 2012 at age 61 from pancreatic cancer that it was publicly revealed via her obituary that O’Shaughnessy had been her committed partner in a relationship for the last 27 years of her life.
• She also ensured that O'Shaughnessy would inherit her estate when she drew up her will in 1992. They had registered their domestic partnership on August 15, 2011.
• That makes Ride the first astronaut known to have been LGBT (two others — Captain Wendy Lawrence and Colonel Anne McClain — have since).
• A life well lived.
• I want to quickly revisit the fact that last Wednesday, all but two Republican senators voted against taking up a vote for the Right to Contraception Act.
• The bill would have prohibited any laws that impede access to birth control, something that was ruled on by the Supreme Court in Griswold v. Connecticut of 1965.
• Many Republicans are calling the Right to Contraception Act a political move and a “scare tactic” because, according to them, there isn’t a threat to birth control access. “Nobody’s going to overturn Griswold. No way,” said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO).
• But in the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade and took away women’s rights to reproductive freedom, Justice Clarence Thomas said specifically that Griswold should be reassessed.
• Thomas wrote then that the Supreme Court "should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell."
• Griswold protects your right to access contraception. Lawrence made it so that being gay was no longer a crime. Obergefell granted the right for same-sex couples to get married.
• Believe these fuckers when they tell you what they’re going to do. They will do it.
• Let’s move on with a Fun Fact.
• The five richest men on Earth — and yes, they’re all men — now hold a combined $869 billion in wealth. If each of them spent one million dollars every day, it would take 476 years for them to exhaust their funds.
• So when you fight against a wealth tax that would be more in line with what we had when America was the best country in the world, you’re part of the problem.
• Stop sucking rich guys’ dicks. Thank you.
• In super weird news, a rodeo bull hopped a fence surrounding an Oregon arena over the weekend and ran through a concession area into a parking lot, injuring at least three people before wranglers caught up with it.
• You don’t want a pissed-off 1,500-pound animal with horns running through crowds. Videos posted online showed the bull running through a concession area, knocking over a garbage can and sending people scrambling.
• He lifted one person off the ground, spun them end over end, and bounced them off his horns before the person hit the ground.
• Ouch.
• Let’s move our weird news across the country to Martha’s Vineyard, MA. They’re having a problem with weed.
• They’re running out. Noooooooooo!
• Although Massachusetts voters opted to legalize marijuana more than seven years ago, the state's Cannabis Control Commission has taken the position that transporting pot across the ocean — whether by boat or plane — risks running afoul of federal laws.
• Unless something changes, the island's cannabis dispensaries will sell all their remaining supplies by September at the latest, and Martha's Vineyard will run out of the sweet leaf entirely, affecting more than 230 registered medical users and thousands more recreational ones.
• They need to, once and for all, get federal law marijuana laws in line with the states.
• Side note: this has been addressed successfully elsewhere. California law, for example, expressly allows cannabis to be transported to stores on Catalina Island, while Hawaii last year dealt with its own difficulties transporting medical marijuana between islands by amending a law to allow it.
• And now, The Weather: “Control” by Retail Drugs
• From the Sports Desk… the Boston Celtics now have a 2-0 lead over the Dallas Mavericks in the NBA playoff finals. They won last night 105-98.
• Hopefully the Mavs can grab some wins during their home stretch. Game 3 is Wednesday night in Dallas.
• Today in history… Bridget Bishop is hanged at Gallows Hill near Salem, Massachusetts, for "certaine Detestable Arts called Witchcraft and Sorceries” (1692). The first Boat Race between the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge takes place on the Thames in London (1829). The United States Naval Academy graduates its first class of students (1854). In the Battle of Guantánamo Bay, U.S. Marines begin the American invasion of Spanish-held Cuba (1898). Dr. Robert Smith takes his last drink, and Alcoholics Anonymous is founded in Akron, Ohio, United States, by him and Bill Wilson (1935). In baseball, 15-year-old Joe Nuxhall of the Cincinnati Reds becomes the youngest player ever in a major-league game (1944). Saab produces its first automobile (1947). The Equal Pay Act of 1963, aimed at abolishing wage disparity based on sex, was signed into law by John F. Kennedy as part of his New Frontier Program (1963). The Spirit rover is launched, beginning NASA's Mars Exploration Rover mission (2003). Opportunity rover sends it last message back to Earth (2018).
• June 10 is the birthday of Japan emperor Uda (867), ornithologist/herpetologist Hermann Schlegel (1804), actress Hattie McDaniel (1895), singer-songwriter Howlin’ Wolf (1910), novelist Saul Bellow (1915), actress/singer Judy Garland (1922), author/illustrator Maurice Sendak (1928), singer-songwriter/guitarist João Gilberto (1931), NFL player Dan Fouts (1951), musician Kim Deal (1961), actress Gina Gershon (1962), model/actress Elizabeth Hurley (1965), comedian/actor Bill Burr (1968), politician Bobby Jindal (1971), figure skater Tara Lipinski (1982), and model/actress Kate Upton (1992).

Ugh, I’m out of time. Instead of doing this, I have to go exercise my body. Boo! Enjoy your day.