Random News: July 14, 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 July 14, 2024, and it’s a Sunday. It’s nice and overcast thus far this fine morning, and I’m in my robe and have a big hot cup of Peet’s Sumatra. Ahhh. Feels peaceful.

• Hmm, I wonder if anything important or newsworthy happened yesterday.
• (opens literally any web page on the Internet)
• Oh.
• Let’s get to it. 
• Yesterday at a rally in Butler, PA, there was an assassination attempt against former president and presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump.
• Trump seems to have been grazed by a bullet in the upper part of his right ear. There were conflicting reports that perhaps instead, his ear been cut by glass from his teleprompter that was hit by the bullet. Trump claims he was shot, so we’ll go with that.
• Trump is fine. His wound appeared very minor as far as most circumstances of being shot in the head go. He’s a very fortunate man to be alive. A half inch to the right, and this would be a very different news report.
• The shooter, whom we’ll get to in a moment, was killed immediately by return fire from the Secret Service.
• One attendee of the rally was shot dead on the spot. Two others were severely wounded by gunfire.
• President Biden strongly condemned the shooting, as did political leaders across the spectrum and from around the world. Biden called and spoke to Trump after the shooting. 
• The shooter, who was killed immediately by Secret Service, was positioned outside the rally on a rooftop a few hundred feet from the stage where the rally took place, a little over the length of a football field away. 
• He’s been identified as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, a resident of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, a Pittsburgh suburb about 35 miles south of Butler, where Trump was holding his rally.
• Information, both true and false, is flying around this morning about Crooks. He seems to have been a white guy with long blonde hair. One document notes that he is a registered Republican, though at age 20, he doesn’t have much of a voting record.
• But when Crooks was 17, he made a $15 donation to ActBlue, a political action committee that raises money for left-leaning and Democratic politicians.
• I have donated to them as well.
• Crooks has no military service record. He used an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, the most popular firearm in the USA. And no, one wouldn’t need some kind of sharpshooter/sniper training to target someone from that distance.
• In fact, an experienced and properly equipped sniper wouldn’t have missed.
• Crooks’ family house is being meticulously searched by the FBI, who have taken over the investigation.
• As of my writing this early on Sunday, no motive has been stated for the assassination attempt.
• So, let’s do the important stuff.
• I completely and unequivocally condemn politics violence of any sort. I don’t care who it’s focused on or why. The mere act of trying to harm or kill a politician or candidate goes against all of our democratic ideals.
• Do I believe this was staged? No. And I can tell you one simple way I knew it was legit right as it happened. It’s Dump’s reaction to being injured. He’s not nearly a good enough actor to have reacted as reflexively as he did, with the flinch and the hand going up.
• I know some of you are pointing out things like Trump’s fist pump and pausing before being pulled from the stage.
• That’s because the guy’s ego is bigger than any other part of him. He’d never squander the opportunity to get adulation, and this was a big opportunity for it.
• Why did Trump ask for his shoes? Welllll… I’ve told you many times how he wears lifts in them to make himself appear much taller than he actually is. The man is extremely image conscious, even when he’s been bloodied.
• He didn’t want to look small while leaving the stage. Fine. I get it.
• Also, with spectators being injured and killed, and the circumstances of Crooks being who he was and where he was located, it’s extremely unlikely that it was some kind of false flag operation.
• I think this absolutely, unquestionably, was a legitimate assassination attempt. I think that kid acted on his own and that he wanted to kill Trump for whatever reason he did. End of story.
• Do I believe this will be used as a justification for other violence in some manner of perceived retribution? Yes, 100%.
• Is the Trump campaign already using this to promote Trump as a candidate? Of course they did. That started within a half hour after he was shot.
• Will this impact the 2024 election? Absofuckinglutely.
• But I will ask those of you who are Trump supporters: had the situation been reversed and Biden had been shot, would that be something that would cause you to even think about switching your vote?
• I didn’t think so.
• An odd observation: the last time a candidate who was a former president got shot while campaigning, it was Teddy Roosevelt. And he lost the ensuing election.
• I’ll tell you something else: had Trump been killed yesterday, things would have gotten a whole lot worse. I mean it. The MAGA contingent would find a younger and more vibrant candidate to go up against Biden, but one who shared all of Trump’s most evil ideologies.
• Or worse. You can think about who that might have been. Marco Rubio. J.D. Vance. Donald Trump Jr. Matt Gaetz. Ted Cruz. Can you imagine? President Marjorie Taylor Greene? President Boebert?
• Jesus fucking Christ.
• Perhaps having this election cycle being left as-is, with Biden and Trump facing off, might be the better bet. This whole timeline in which we’re living was a half inch away from a drastic and very unpredictable change yesterday afternoon.
• So where are we at with this now?
• There have been calls for unity after the shooting… from Biden, from Trump, and across a wide swatch of political leaders.
• The Republican National Convention starts tomorrow. Trump isn’t slated to appear until Thursday, and it seems that he’ll be there. Again, while his injury was scary, it wasn’t life threatening in any way.
• Like it or not, he’ll be fine.
• Some ridiculous GOP leaders stupidly called for Joe Biden to be investigated for the shooting (no), and for all of Trump’s criminal charges to be dropped (again, no).
• Some people are rightfully questioning the level of type of security plans that went into the Trump rally where the assassination attempt occurred. And frankly, I think the Secret Service fucked this one up big time.
• That kid had a direct line of sight and wasn’t far away at all. That absolutely should have been taken into consideration ahead of time. And he reported got off eight fucking shots before being taken out.
• That’s not acceptable.
• A side note to all of this: presidents and former presidents don’t get shot often. Last time it happened was 1981, when I was in seventh grade and Reagan got popped. Before that was JFK, before I was even alive.
• So look… we’ll wrap this for now. Anything else I write at the moment would be very speculative.
• What I will say is this.
• I have a self-imposed responsibility to tell you about things that affect your lives. I’m not going to stop talking about those things.
• No, not even today.
• I’ve always been very clear about the call to action I want to impart to you, which is to vote. Not boo, not cry, not complain, not fight your friends and family and strangers.
• Vote.
• And I am also clear every fucking day in these reports how I abhor violence and am 100% opposed to the proliferation of high-powered, high-capacity firearms.
• So I’m not changing a goddamn thing.
• Let’s do some other stuff. Yes there is other stuff.
• Every so often, I want to make sure you’re aware of some of the specific elements of Donald Trump’s Project 2025, the set of extreme government changes that will take effect if he is elected.
• Project 2025 will get rid of the FDIC so your bank accounts are no longer insured.
• At the same time, it will deregulate banks, allowing them to take more and higher risks that make them more likely to fail. With no FDIC, your life savings will just be… gone. Too bad.
• That won’t happen under Joe Biden.
• And now, The Weather: “Open” by WORLD BRAIN
• Rest in peace to the lovable eccentric, eternally optimist fitness guru Richard Simmons, who lies yesterday, one day after his 76th birthday.
• Yes, for real this time.
• Simmons has been out of the public eye lately, though there were reports of a biopic being made about the fitness enthusiast earlier this year. He recently stated, “I just try to live a quiet life and be peaceful."
• Another sad RIP this morning going out to actress Shannen Doherty, who died yesterday at age 53 
• You likely know here from her roles on the wildly popular series “Beverly Hills, 90210” or maybe from the witchcraft fantasy “Charmed.”
• Doherty had a long battle with breast cancer after being diagnosed in 2015. She was public with her cancer battle, using her public persona to help raise awareness.
• From the Sports Desk… the best news of the day.
• A dominant Carlos Alcaraz swept Novak Djokovic 6-2, 6-2, 7-6 (4) in the men's final on Centre Court today to claim a second straight Wimbledon title.
• I like Alcaraz. I do not like Djokovic. Happy me.
• And in sad Sports Desk news, rest in peace to former NFL wide receiver Jacoby Jones. He was the guy who starred during the Baltimore Ravens' postseason run that culminated with a victory in Super Bowl XLVII.
• Jones had two touchdowns in that game. In another game, he had a 108-yard kickoff return, which stands as the longest return in NFL postseason history.
• He was 40 years old. No cause of death was announced.
• Today in history… Louis VIII becomes King of France upon the death of his father, Philip II (1223). Storming of the Bastille in Paris (1789). The Sedition Act of 1798 becomes law in the United States making it a federal crime to write, publish, or utter false or malicious statements about the United States government (1789). The first ascent of the Matterhorn is completed by Edward Whymper and his party, four of whom die on the descent (1865). The Chicago Fire of 1874 burns down 47 acres of the city, destroying 812 buildings, killing 20, and resulting in the fire insurance industry demanding municipal reforms from Chicago's city council (1874). American outlaw Billy the Kid is shot and killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett in the Maxwell House at Fort Sumner, NM (1881). In a decree called the Gleichschaltung, Adolf Hitler abolishes all German political parties except the Nazis (1933). Jane Goodall arrives at the Gombe Stream Reserve in present-day Tanzania to begin her study of chimpanzees in the wild (1960). Mariner 4 flyby of Mars takes the first close-up photos of another planet (1965). ‘Mario Bros.’ is released in Japan, beginning the popular ‘Super Mario Bros’ franchise (1983). NASA's New Horizons probe performs the first flyby of Pluto, and thus completes the initial survey of the Solar System (2015).
• July 14 is the birthday of Japan emperor Murakami (926), Tuscan grand duke Ferdinando II de’ Medici (1610), journalist/diplomat Mordecai Manuel Noah (1785), painter Gustav Klimt (1862), animator William Hanna (1910), singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie (1912), US president Gerald Ford (1913), film director Igmar Bergman (1918), businessman Robert Zildjian (1923), actor Harry Dean Stanton (1926), NFL player Rosie Grier (1932), activist Jerry Rubin (1938), US army general Claudia J. Kennedy (1947), music executive Tommy Mottola (1949), singer-songwriter/actor Kyle Gass (1960), actor Jackie Earle Haley (1961), MLB player Robin Ventura (1967), martial artist Conor McGregor (1988), and NFL player Harrison Butker (1995).

I know this is some crazy shit and a lot of opinions are flying around about the assassination attempt. Lots of misinformation too, with people trying to position things to fit their opinions and personal narrative. One thing, I hope, that you’ve noticed about me… I tell you facts, and I leave off the speculation, and I don’t change anything based on my on biases, and when I give you something that’s just my opinion, I tell you that. Anyway, we’ll all be learning more about yesterday’s events soon enough. And there are still 113 days left until the election. Many things that you’re not expecting can, and will, happen. Enjoy your day.