Random News: July 25, 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 25, 2024, and it’s a Thursday for some reason. I’ve been feeling pretty amped up ever since Sunday, when we found out that Kamala Harris was going to be the likely Democratic nominee for President. Something about it really turned around my mindset. And yes, I know that my news has become extra lengthy since then, trying to cover the information you need about the candidate while not neglecting the millions of other important news tidbits while I do. But it’s an important time in history, and I don’t mind the extra effort if that’s how I can do my part.

• I thought it might be fun to do a little Kamala fact check with points I’ve already seen brought up via the MAGA world.
• “She can’t be president because her parents weren’t born in the USA!”
• Fact check: false on many levels. First, Kamala Harris was born in Oakland, California, USA on October 20, 1964. She’s as American as baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet.
• Second, if having one or more parents that were born outside the USA disqualified one from running for President, then the same rule would have applied to the seven Presidents of similar immigrant parental backgrounds: Andrew Jackson, James Buchanan, Chester A. Arthur, Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, Barack Obama, and, yes, Donald Trump.
• Mary Anne Trump was born in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. She emigrated to the U.S. in 1930, and became a naturalized citizen in March 1942. Next!
• “She is unqualified!”
• What the actual fuck? As a former big city Attorney General, then the AG of California, then a US Senator, then a Vice President, she has far more qualifications than many of our previous Presidents.
• She has a much deeper background in government than Barack Obama when he was elected, and a million times more than Donald Trump, who’d never held office at all before becoming president in 2016. Next!
• “She’s not really Black!”
• Listen, dipshit. Like many millions of Americans, Kamala has a mixed race background. Her father, Donald J. Harris, is a Black man born in Jamaica. He emigrated to the United States from Jamaica in 1961 for graduate study at UC Berkeley, receiving a PhD in economics in 1966.
• Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was an Indian American biologist whose work on the progesterone receptor gene stimulated advances in breast cancer research. Shyamala moved to the United States from India as a 19-year-old graduate student in 1958.
• Her parents met at a college club for African-American students. She and her sister attended an African American church in Oakland. They also frequently visited a nearby African American cultural center there.
• In college at Howard University — a historically Black university in Washington, D.C.  — Kamala joined Alpha Kappa Alpha, the first intercollegiate historically African American sorority. The woman is Black, so shut the fuck up. Next!
• “She’s a socialist!”
• Hahahahahahaha… Jesus Christ, no.
• Look, I’ll tell you something. During the 2020 primary, when there seemed to be like 100 Democrats lining up to take on Dump, neither Harris nor Biden were my top choices. Why?
• BECAUSE THEY WERE TOO CONSERVATIVE FOR ME. I supported what I viewed as being more progressive politicians, like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, in the past couple of primary cycles. And due to her primary background as a prosecutor, we would refer to her as Kamala the Cop.
• Much like Joe Biden, Kamala is indeed a capitalist. She wants to support America’s business interests. She wants to keep taxes low for the middle class, and raise them for the extremely wealthy who can easily afford it. That’s not socialism, folks. Next!
• “She supports post-birth abortion!”
• Let’s start by saying THAT’S NOT A THING, and literally no one supports it, nor has it ever been legal anywhere at any time.
• Secondly, Kamala has on myriad occasions defined her stance of women’s reproductive rights, which would return the rights of women that were taken away by Dump’s Supreme Court in 2022 when Roe v. Wade was reversed. Next!
• “She’s a childless cat woman!”
• Okay so first of all, Kamala is married to Doug Emhoff, a lawyer from New York. Doug has two children now in their 20s, Cole and Ella, from a previous marriage. Kamala is their stepmother and is close to both of them. She is not childless.
• What MAGA-type folks mean by statements like that is that she didn’t push a human out of her vagina, insinuating that this is the only true definition of a woman or a mother. It’s bullshit and it's unfair to the millions upon millions of women who help raise children that are not biologically their own. Next!
• “She’s a DEI hire!”
• Let’s take a real good look at this one. DEI is an abbreviation for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion… a set of policies that business and government entities maintain with the hope that people beyond only white Christian males are provided opportunities for employment.
• But in recent times, the label refers to anyone who is not a white Christian male who is hired at a job. The term is now a substitute for the N-word, though it is often applied to white women as well.
• It infers that the person is not capable at their job specifically because they are Black, Hispanic, or female, and MAGA Republicans think that none of them should be hired for important positions as such.
• It is racist, bigoted bullshit, and you should be very careful about associating with anyone who uses “DEI” as a slur. Next!
• “Um… she laughs a lot!”
• I don’t know what to tell you, you miserable fuck. I laugh a lot too. Often at MAGA idiots and your orange-hued lord.
• I think that’s enough for now.
• I watched Joe Biden’s speech from the Oval Office last night. I thought it went very, very well.
• He hit the important points, both reminding us of what we gained during his presidency and how we can look forward to retaining our democracy with Kamala Harris as POTUS 47.
• The speech wasn't at all self-pitying like you’d expect from many other people in that position; instead it had the truth and optimism that we've always expected from Joe Biden. Well done, sir. My favorite part…
• “I believe my record, my leadership, and my vision for our future merited a second term – but nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy. That includes personal ambition. The best way forward is to pass the torch to a new generation. That's how we unite our nation.”
• I’m 100% sure that Biden’s presidency will be viewed historically as one of the very best in US history.
• This morning, about an hour ago, the Harris campaign dropped their first ad spot. It features Beyoncé’s “Freedom” as its soundtrack.
• I think the messaging hits the target. Perfect. We’re gonna win this thing, people!
• In other election 2024 news…
• I’ve been talking less and less about Dump as he becomes less relevant. But this news item was too important to leave untouched.
• A new book by his nephew Fred C. Trump III — who had previously been supportive of Uncle Dump — talks extensive about a nightmarish situation where his son William was diagnosed at three months with infantile spasms, a rare seizure disorder which in William's case altered his development physically and cognitively.
• Fred decided to be an advocate for families who were enduring the tremendous pressures in raising a disabled child. He took his message to Uncle Dump in the White House.
• Dumpy’s response? “Those people . . . ” he said, trailing off. “The shape they’re in, all the expenses, maybe those kinds of people should just die.”
• Awhile later, Fred went back to Uncle Dump because the expenses of William’s health had grown past his ability to provide. Dumpy took a second as if he was thinking about the whole situation.
• “I don’t know,” he finally said, letting out a sigh. “He doesn’t recognize you. Maybe you should just let him die and move down to Florida.”
• PLEASE BELIEVE ME ABOUT THIS MAN. He’s saying this about someone’s son, to their face. Can you imagine how you’d react?
• If he’d rather let his own nephew’s son die than help pay for his medical expenses, how can you possibly expect he’s going to help you and your family?
• An earlier memory by Fred Trump talks about Uncle Dumpy’s reaction to his car being damaged in the early 1970s.
• Showing his then-10-year-old nephew a gash in the canvas roof of his white Cadillac Eldorado convertible, Donald Trump said disgustedly, “Nig__rs. Look what the nig__rs did.”
• Fucking hell.
• Moving on.
• Have you heard about "Haley Voters for Harris” yet? Hee hee hee…
• It’s a political action committee, and yesterday they got a cease and desist letter from Nikki Haley herself. The group said they are reviewing the letter with legal counsel, and that they "do not claim to represent Ambassador Haley or her views."
• The group is made up of anti-Trump supporters and volunteers during Haley's GOP primary campaign. As we reported here, Haley had continued to receive hundreds of thousands of GOP primary votes despite leaving the race in March. 
• But since Joe Biden dropped out of the race on Sunday, the group has shifted their support to Harris. In several battleground states, Haley's raw vote total outnumbered the 2020 general election margin between Biden and Dump.
• Example: in Pennsylvania alone, where Biden won by more than 80,000 votes, Haley got 16.6% of the vote, 158,000 votes, in the GOP primary this year. 
• So shifting some of those voters over to Harris — a much better candidate than Dump, who these people detest —makes a lot of sense, whether Haley likes it or not.
• From the rumor department… many people are saying that Dump already feels he made a horrible mistake in the choice of J. D. Vance for his VP, and would love a way to get out of it, but Dumpy knows it would make him look weak and indecisive.
• And now he’s stuck with him. That’s what many people are saying, anyway. Take it as such.
• Moving on to other news for now.
• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a speech to Congress yesterday. It was his fourth time speaking to our federal legislators. The only other foreign leader who did so that many times is Winston Churchill.
• Netanyahu claimed that during his recent visit to Rafah, when he asked how many civilians were killed there, the commander told him “practically none, with the exception of a single incident where shrapnel from a bomb hit a Hamas weapons depot and unintentionally killed two dozen people.”
• That is verifiably false: multiple strikes in Rafah have resulted in many more direct civilian casualties. Even the “one” incident Netanyahu referenced occurred in May and killed at least 45 people and injured more than 200 following the strike after a fire broke out at a camp for displaced Palestinians.
• That same week, at least 29 Palestinians were killed in two separate Israeli attacks on displacement camps in Rafah. Some 70% of casualties in all of Gaza have been women and children. So Bibi was straight-up lying.
• While most people remain at least somewhat hopeful about the back-and-forth ceasefire talks, in his speech Netanyahu seemed intent on causing more death and destruction.
• And in fact, during his nearly hour-long address, Netanyahu did not once mention ceasefire negotiations. Instead, he said…
• “Give us the tools we need, and we will finish the job. We will fight until we achieve victory.”

• Those tools being bombs and drones and missile and guns, of course. Sigh.
• I am supportive of Israel and their role as a valuable US ally in the Middle East. I am in favor of taking out terrorism in all forms. But I can’t get behind genocidal action with most of the deaths being innocent civilian families.
• During Bibi’s address, thousands of pro-Palestinian supporters descended on Washington, drawing a massive police response as they marched around the city.
• Most demonstrators walked and chanted peacefully, but there were some clashes with law enforcement, and D.C. and Capitol police said they arrested 15 people in total.
• In other news…
• You know that massive global IT bug that sent the entire tech world into chaos last Friday, the one that some companies (cough, Delta Airlines) are still recovering from?
• CrowdStrike sent their appreciation to the vendors who probably were up for 72 straight hours making the world’s computer systems functional again… in the form of a $10 Uber Eats voucher.
• Yes. really. Not for each person, mind you; $10 for each vendor firm.
• Can $10 on Uber Eats even get you anything at all? Yes. A can of Coke, a package of two small Twinkies, and a Hershey’s chocolate bar were among the limited items you can buy with $10 via Uber Eats and then split with your 15 coworkers.
• Tip not included. Way to give back to the working people, CrowdStrike (slow clap).
• Relevant side note: CrowdStrike’s revenue for the current fiscal year is $3.06 billion.
• Let’s move on.
• The U.S. military intercepted several Russian and Chinese bombers in international airspace near the coast of Alaska yesterday.
• That can’t be good.
• Two Russian Tu-95s and two Chinese H-6s entered what is known as the Alaska Air Defense Identification Zone. The aircraft were detected, tracked and intercepted, per NORAD. They did not enter U.S. airspace.
• The bombers were intercepted by U.S. F-16 and F-35 fighter jets, along with Canadian CF-18s and other support aircraft. The activity from the Russian and Chinese bombers was "not seen as a threat.”
• Um… okay?
• Moving on to some shockingly good news about the US economy, which grew at a much faster than expected pace in the second quarter.
• The Bureau of Economic Analysis's advance estimate of second quarter US gross domestic product (GDP) showed the economy grew at an annualized pace of 2.8% during the period, well above the 2% growth expected by economists. The reading came in higher than first quarter GDP, which was revised down to 1.4%.
• What does all this mean? Hit means America’s economy is about to stick what’s called a “soft landing,” which is when inflation returns to the Fed’s target without a recession — a feat that’s only happened once, during the 1990s
• Thank you Joe Biden!
• And now, The Weather: “Itch” by Porches
• From the Sports Desk… like most Olympic Games, there are some events in Paris 2024 that aren’t super close to the host city. Sailing competitions are happening hundreds of miles south in Marseilles, while soccer matches will be held a two-hour train ride away, in Bordeaux.
• But one event is a bit further away from Paris than those. About 9,800 miles away.
• Forty-eight of the world’s best surfers will be competing off the coast of Teahupo’o, a small village in the French Polynesian island of Tahiti famous for its incredible waves. And yes, it’s a French territory, which is why Teahupo’o is the location for the event.
• They’ve set up the first-ever floating Olympic Village there. It’s a cruise ship packed with amenities including a 24-hour dining hall, a gift shop, a waterslide, and a tattoo parlor. Sweet!
•  Is this the longest-ever distance between a host city and an event? It’s pretty close. Back in 1956, the Melbourne Olympics had to hold equestrian events in Stockholm, Sweden, due to Australia’s equine quarantine policies.
• Today in history… Constantine I is proclaimed Roman emperor (306). Henry IV converts from Protestant to Catholic (1593). James VI and I and Anne of Denmark are crowned in Westminster Abbey (1603). The last action of the American Revolutionary War, the Siege of Cuddalore, is ended by a preliminary peace agreement (1783). Mozart completes his Symphony No. 40 in G minor (1788). An American attack on Canada in the War of 1812 is repulsed (1814). The first commercial use of an electrical telegraph is successfully demonstrated in London by William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone (1837). The United States Congress passes legislation authorizing the rank of General of the Army, and Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant becomes the first to be promoted to this rank (1866). The Wyoming Territory is established (1868). The American invasion of Spanish-held Puerto Rico begins, as United States Army troops under General Nelson A. Miles land and secure the port at Guánica (1898). Kikunae Ikeda of the Tokyo Imperial University discovers that a key ingredient in kombu soup stock is monosodium glutamate (MSG), and patents a process for manufacturing it (1908). Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS) is established (1925). In a speech John F. Kennedy emphasizes that any attack on Berlin is an attack on NATO (1961). Bob Dylan goes electric at the Newport Folk Festival, signaling a major change in folk and rock music (1965). Birth of Louise Joy Brown, the first human to have been born after conception by in vitro fertilization, or IVF (1979). WikiLeaks publishes classified documents about the War in Afghanistan, one of the largest leaks in U.S. military history (2010).
• July 25 is the birthday of humanist Jakob Wimpfeling (1450), dramatist George Peele (1556), Japanese warlord Katō Kiyomasa (1562), abolitionist Maria Weston Chapman (1806), English prime minister Arthur Balfour (1848), actress Estelle Getty (1923), actor/director Jerry Paris (1925), trumpet player/composer Don Ellis (1934), actress Barbara Harris (1935), lynching victim Emmett Till (1941), drummer Jim McCarty (1943), singer Rita Marley (1946), bass player Verdine White (1951), NFL player Walter Payton (1954), model Iman (1955), singer-songwriter/guitarist Thurston Moore (1958), NHL player/coach Tony Granato (1964), actor Matt LeBlanc (1967), and NFL player Bryce Young (2001).

I actually think we’re just beginning this new phase of optimism and excitement with the Kamala Harris campaign getting into gear. I think we’re going to elect a woman as President of the USA. I think there’s a lot of work between now and November 5 to make that happen, and I think we’ll do it. And if we do it right, I think a much larger portion of Americans will get behind this idea than anyone yet expects, and a new era of peace, prosperity, and justice will sweep the land. Say it with me: President Harris. I like the sound of that. Enjoy your day.