Random News: June 30, 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 30, 2024, and it’s a Sunday. It seems fairly pleasant thus far today. I slept in until the luxurious time of 7:30 and now, with my coffee and ensconced in a robe, I will try to make some sense of the world. I have no better chance of that happening now than ever, which is not at all, but I’ll try anyway.

• I’d rather not keep talking about last Thursday’s abysmal presidential debate, but the media wants to keep it on the front page, and I don’t want you all to think I’m purposefully burying it.
• I’m not. In fact, there’s some factual metrics to take into account, via a 538/Ipsos poll of likely voters. And yes, obviously, a majority of likely voters who watched the first 2024 Presidential debate felt that Dump performed the best.
• That should be no surprise to anyone who saw it.
• Even so, less than half of these debate watchers felt that Trump’s performance was good or excellent. And in spite of Biden’s low-rated performance, many likely voters report that they are still likely to consider voting for Biden.
• Separately, Ipsos also held a focus group immediately after the debate with six undecided voters. The discussion found that while Biden clearly lost the debate, Trump didn't necessarily win it.
• People are smarter than we tend to believe. 
• Per the focus group, Trump was seen as lacking on substance and avoiding questions which turned some respondents off.
• Respondents found Biden to be more prepared, surprising some, but his poor delivery overshadowed his wins on substance.
• I agree with all that.
• Here’s the deal: there are always things that aren’t in your control, and with everything that leads up to a national election, you are primarily a bystander, or a spectator.
• But much like a person in a crowd at a sporting event, your cheers can inspire your team. And that’s what I recommend you do.
• If you’re watching your football team and your quarterback is injured on a dirty play, you might get mad, but you don’t stop cheering… especially when your team has a lead.
• The game goes on. Maybe your guy returns to the game and kicks ass. Or maybe the backup QB comes in and shocks everyone.
• So keep cheering. No matter what happens moving ahead, what we root for is a better world in which we can all live in harmony.
• We don’t vote for a person; we vote for a school of thought, a philosophy, a worldview, a set of ethics. And I’m very willing to bet every penny I have that when you look at the choices, one of them will be more aligned with your own set of values than the other.
• No matter who the person is.
• Let’s move on.
• It’s the final day of June, and hence the final day of Pride Month, so it’s time to salute our last Gay of the Day honoree… and today’s Gay of the Day is… You!
• Yes, you. The person reading the words.
• Why? Because I imagine that there’s a high percentage chance that as someone who reads this silly news report, you have a higher degree of empathy than the average bear.
• And that means you probably support and encourage people to be their true selves and live their best lives, which is better for literally all of us.
• Love is love.
• And no matter who you are or whether you’re part of the LGBTQIA+ community or an ally who’s supportive of others, you’re important and you matter.
• Your small efforts to let people know that you like them exactly the way they are is a more important job than most people realize.
• It may be the most important one of all. You may be saving lives of people you care about, along with those don’t even know. You’re the Gay of the Day, and I’m proud of you too.
• Happy Pride 2024 to you all.
• Moving on.
• Beginning tomorrow, a California law that I happily voted for will require credit card networks like Visa and Mastercard to provide banks with special retail codes that can be assigned to gun stores in order to track their sales.
• Sadly, new laws will do the exact opposite in Georgia, Iowa, Tennessee, and Wyoming by banning the use of specific gun shop codes.
• Some lawmakers and gun-control activists hope the new retail tracking code will help financial institutions flag suspicious gun-related purchases for law enforcement agencies, potentially averting mass shootings and other crimes.
• Lawmakers in Colorado and New York have followed California’s lead. It’s a smart idea; it doesn’t prevent anyone from purchasing weapons. It honors the Second Amendment.
• But it also means that if some piece of shit is buying up multiple weapons and tons of ammo, we’ll be able to be aware of them before they use it to commit an atrocity.
• That’s a common sense gun law like I’ve been talking about for (checks watch) about 40 years.
• Let’s move on.
• I need to tell you about the first possibly casualty of the Supreme Court’s repeal of the Chevron doctrine on Friday: OSHA.
• The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is the agency that helps make sure your job takes steps so you won’t get sick, injured, or killed by going to work.
• OSHA allows government to regulate workplace safety, and its been effective by fining companies when they endanger their workers.
• The greedy folks don’t like that. OSHA survived challenges to its rulemaking authority in 1978 and 2011.
• And we now have a Supreme Court that has members who are beholden to the wealthiest members of society. They would love to remove any and all workplace regulations that protect the workers.
• And now they have a receptive audience in this Supreme Court's conservative supermajority, which has reined in what it views as regulatory overreach by executive branch agencies.
• And that’s just one area of fallout from Friday’s ruling in Loper v. Raimondo. All federal agencies from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to the Department of Labor (DOL) and many more will get challenges in coming months.
• All at the expense of you, the American worker. And those of you who vote Republican are the ones that helped yourself get fucked over by your employer.
• Way to stand up for “freedom,” dumbasses.
• Let’s move on to Sunday Gunday, where I look at some of the incidents of gun violence in the USA over the past two days.
• Note that I never include police shootings or suicides. This column would be way, way longer if I did that.
• Four dead in a shooting at a home in Coweta County, GA. Two people dead, one injured in a shooting in Tarboro, NC. Two men dead after a shooting at a gym in Alexandria, VA. Two employees killed in a shooting at a Chick-fil-A in Irving, TX. One dead, one wounded in a shooting in a business in Louisville, KY. One dead, one wounded in a shooting over a gambling debt in a park in Houston, TX. One dead, one wounded in a shooting in Hazlehurst, MS. One dead, one wounded in a shooting in Annandale, VA. One woman dead after a shooting in east Denver, CO. One woman dead after a shooting in the French Quarter of New Orleans, LA. One shot dead at an apartment complex in Washington, UT. One shot dead in northwest Washington, D.C. One shot dead in Ocala, FL. One shot dead in the Humboldt Park area of Chicago, IL. One shot dead in West Philadelphia, PA. One shot dead in Livingston, CA. One shot dead in Huntington, WV. One shot dead in north Portland, OR. One shot dead in Jacksonville Beach, FL. A 14-year-old shot dead in South Seattle, WA. One shot dead in Scottsville, NY. One shot dead in northeast Indianapolis, IN. One shot dead in the Chinatown International District neighborhood of Seattle, WA. Four children and three adults wounded in a shooting in Crete, NE. Two shot in the Westwood neighborhood of Cincinnati, OH. A woman and a child shot in Horry County, SC. One shot and in critical condition in Kansas City, MO. One shot and in critical condition in Goldsboro, NC. A teenager shot and in critical condition in the Nippers Corner area of Nashville, TN. A teenager shot at a shopping mall in Glendale, AZ. One shot in northeast Oklahoma City, OK. One shot in Conway, SC. A teenager shot at a park in Queens, NY. A man shot at a pizza place in Mobile, AL. A woman shot in west Phoenix, AZ.
• That’s just some. It would take all day to do them all.
• Many people support this level of death and the destruction of families by supporting organizations like the NRA and by voting for candidates who won’t support common sense gun laws.
• So this is what they want.
• And now, The Weather: “Wishing” by Human Barbie
• In actual weather news, the first hurricane of the 2024 Atlantic season, named Beryl, intensified to an extremely dangerous Category 4 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 130 mph this morning.
• Beryl is now the earliest Category 4 hurricane on record in the Atlantic Ocean, and the only Category 4 storm ever recorded in the month of June.
• The average date for the first hurricane is August 11.
• Global climate change will affect all of us for the remainder of our lives.
• From the Sports Desk… we’re not far off from the 2024 Summer Olympic Games. They start in Paris, France on July 26, and run through August 11.
• It will be, perhaps, a nice distraction from the world going insane in the meantime.
• As opposed to some analysis of the zillion different events, instead I’d like you to meet Beacon, a 4-year-old golden retriever.
• Beacon works for USA Gymnastics, and is the organization's first therapy dog, and its only part-time, four-legged staff member.
• His job? He comforts athletes and coaches, most recently calming members of the women's national team before their first night of competition at the Olympic trials.
• His handler Callahan Molnar states, "Science shows petting a dog, or even watching someone pet a dog, can lower blood pressure and anxiety, help increase the feel-good hormones serotonin and dopamine and lower cortisol levels. We all need a certain amount, but too much isn't healthy."
• I agree.
• Today in history… King Henry II of France is mortally wounded in a jousting match against Gabriel, comte de Montgomery (1559). French acrobat Charles Blondin crosses Niagara Falls on a tightrope (1859). U.S. President Abraham Lincoln grants Yosemite Valley to California for "public use, resort and recreation” (1864). Charles J. Guiteau is hanged in Washington, D.C. for the assassination of U.S. President James Garfield (1882). Albert Einstein sends the article 'On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies’, in which he introduces special relativity (1905). The United States Congress passes the Meat Inspection Act and Pure Food and Drug Act (1906). U.S. President Warren G. Harding appoints former President William Howard Taft as Chief Justice of the United States (1921). U.S. Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes and Dominican Ambassador Francisco J. Peynado sign the Hughes–Peynado agreement, which ends the United States occupation of the Dominican Republic (1922). The first Chevrolet Corvette rolls off the assembly line in Flint, MI (1953). The National Organization for Women, the United States' largest feminist organization, is founded (1966). The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Bowers v. Hardwick that states can outlaw homosexual acts between consenting adults (1986). East Germany and West Germany merge their economies (1990). Protests begin around Egypt against President Mohamed Morsi and the ruling Freedom and Justice Party, leading to their overthrow during the 2013 Egyptian coup d’état (2013). Donald Trump becomes the first sitting US President to visit North Korea (2019).
• June 30 is the birthday of author Georges Duhamel (1884), car designer/engineer Archibald Frazer-Nash (1889), businessman/philanthropist Dan Reeves (1912), singer/actress/activist Lena Horne (1917), singer-songwriter/guitarist Dave Van Ronk (1936), bass player Stanley Clarke (1951), actor/comedian David Alan Grier (1956), conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen (1958), actor Vincent D’Onofrio (1959), guitarist Yngwie Malmsteen (1963), boxer Mike Tyson (1966), MLB player Chan Ho Park (1973), NBA player Trevor Ariza (1985), and businesswoman Allegra Versace (1986).

There’s always more news, but never more time. I’m going to go make breakfast. Enjoy your day.