Random News: July 8, 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 8, 2024, and it’s a Monday. Holiday time is over, and it’s back to the grind this morning. A weird part of me — the part that is probably overly fixated on keep a routine and being on schedule — is set of happy about this. The other part of me isn’t happy at all. Let’s see what’s happening in this world of ours.

• Huge news on the international front yesterday as the 2024 French legislative election wrapped up to a shockingly wonderful conclusion.
• After weeks of polls predicting that the far-right National Rally party lead by the notorious Marine Le Pen was going to cruise to victory, France took a u-turn and instead voted in majority for the country’s leftist coaltion, the New Popular Front.
• The surprise results put President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist alliance in second place, and the far right in third.
• Ha ha, fascists!
• Current Prime Minister Gabriel Attal offered his resignation today, but Macron refused the resignation of the country’s prime minister, asking him to remain temporarily as the head of the government. It was unclear who would be the incoming Prime Minister from the NPF.
• Macron, part of France’s centrist alliance, remains in office through 2027 regardless.
• Keep in mind that all this revolutionary-level shit is happening within weeks of the opening of the Summer Olympics in Paris, which run from Friday July 26 through Sunday August 11.
• How did it happen? The New Popular Front had just days to come together. The leaders of France’s left-wing parties made compromises to unite in an effort to keep the far-right National Rally party from taking power in France.
• It includes environmentalist parties, the French Socialists and Communists and the hard-left France Unbowed party.
• Ahead of yesterday’s historic vote, the leaders of the alliance’s main parties promised unwavering support for Ukraine. They also promised to reverse a law that raised the retirement age from 62 to 64, raise the minimum wage, adjust salaries and pensions with the inflation rate, and freeze food and energy prices to boost people’s purchasing power.
• Well hot damn. Congratulations, France! The country celebrated in the streets long into after last night’s victory.
• Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk said it well: “In Paris enthusiasm, in Moscow disappointment, in Kyiv relief. Enough to be happy in Warsaw.”
• This comes within days of both Iran and the UK turning away from hardline conservative leadership in their respective elections.
• Could it be a sign of things to come for the USA in November? We sure can hope so. I think with this being the first presidential general election since the overturn of Roe v. Wade and a myriad of other reasons, this might be an exciting time to use the power of your vote.
• Moving on.
• Yesterday, Boeing agreed to plead guilty to conspiring to defraud the government in a case linked to crashes of its 737 Max jets in Indonesia and Ethiopia that killed 346 people.
• Holy shit!
• This comes after the Justice Department determined that Boeing failed to live up to terms of a 2021 deal to avoid prosecution.
• Prosecutors alleged that two Boeing pilots concealed key information from the Federal Aviation Administration about a new automated control system on the Max. The system was implicated in both crashes, causing uncontrollable dives.
• By agreeing to plead guilty to the single felony count just before a midnight deadline Sunday, Boeing will avoid going to trial in the high-profile case. The court subsequently must decide whether to accept the plea agreement.
• I’ve never been afraid of air travel and have gone around the world, but I’m suddenly not inspired to book any flights anywhere.
• Let’s move on.
• President Joe Biden sent a letter this morning to congressional Democrats, standing firm against calls for him to drop his candidacy and calling for an end to the drama that has besieged Democrats since his dismal public debate performance.
• It’s going to be a rough week for Democratic leadership. Lawmakers are returning to Washington and confronting the choice of working with Joe to revive his campaign, or to throw support behind his stepping aside.
• Biden’s letter stressed that the party has “one job,” which is to defeat presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in November. On that we all agree.
• The President wrote, “We have 42 days to the Democratic Convention and 119 days to the general election. Any weakening of resolve or lack of clarity about the task ahead only helps Trump and hurts us. It’s time to come together, move forward as a unified party, and defeat Donald Trump.”
• I sure hope it works. It’s literally impossible to know, without a crystal ball or time machine or something, how this is going to transpire. The entire situation may be different tomorrow, or next week.
• And once again, I will support Biden 100% until he tells me to support a different Dem candidate, like Vice President Harris. My vote for President is not for one person but a vote for a whole-ass administration and set of ethical ideologies.
• Meanwhile, the Republican party has their own issues… namely a dawning awakening that their commitment to stripping abortion rights for women across the nation might be their downfall.
• It’s panicking them so much that for the first time in 40 years, they may remove a vow from their party platform to completely ban abortion… at the request of Dumpy himself.
• Which is particularly funny, considering Dump has repeated over and over again that he is proud about being the man who killed Roe v. Wade and took away reproductive freedom from 168 million American women.
• The platform committee begins its meeting today, a week before the start of the Republican National Convention where Dump will accept his third straight nomination for president.
• So — knowing some stuff about how this works — what they did was run the numbers and found out that the amount of evangelical and other far-right votes they get from continuing to support a nationwide abortion ban is less that the votes they’ll lose from tens of millions of pissed-off women.
• But make no mistake… Dump will let them know, wink wink, that the plans for a national abortion ban will go right back in as soon as he’s elected.
• Don’t be a sucker. If that guy’s lips are moving, he’s lying.
• Moving on.
• Some horrible news out of Ukraine, where a major Russian missile attack today killed at least 31 people and injured 154, with one striking a large children’s hospital in the capital of Kyiv.
• Who bombs a children’s hospital? Vladimir Putin does.
• The daytime barrage targeted five Ukrainian cities with more than 40 missiles of different types hitting apartment buildings and public infrastructure. Ukraine’s air force said it intercepted 30 missiles.
• At some point here, Ukraine will need to go on the offensive against Moscow, and will need the world’s support to do so.
• Side note: Dumples the Clown wants to step aside and let Russia take over all of Ukraine, and then continue to march across Europe. Do not allow that piece of shit and his shitty friends like Putin to destroy the world.
• Let’s move on.
• President Joe Biden is hosting a NATO summit this week in Washington.
• His goal is to preserve global alliances in an era when many populist and nationalist leaders are looking inward.
• The summit should be a friendly forum for Biden, and it's happening on his home turf, so he won’t have to grapple with the overseas travel and late hours that he says left him depleted ahead of the debate.
• Sigh.
• In other news…
• Before the holiday, I predicted — pretty easily — that plenty of people would end up injured or dead as a result of their choices in how to celebrate the nation’s 248th birthday.
• But I didn’t anticipate what happened to Allen Ray McGrew, 41, of South Carolina.
• After a full day of drinking while wearing an Uncle Sam outfit at a block party, McGrew placed a large firework on his top hat and lit it. He was instantly killed from massive head injuries in the ensuing explosion.
• And here I was worried that one of you would lose a pinkie finger.
• If you think McGrew had a bad weekend, it was probably still better than that of a 36-year-old Indonesian woman named Siriati.
• She was swallowed whole by a reticulated python. So no matter what challenges you face today, I’m going to guess that being eaten by a 24-foot-long snake isn’t one of them.
• I’m always appreciative about not being in the food chain.
• And now, The Weather: “Coasting” by Kowloon
• Let’s do a chart. Here’s what’s on top of the Billboard 200 albums chart in the first week of July 1976. I’m seven years old and I loved a lot of this music. I still do, 48 years later.
• 1. At The Speed Of Sound (Wings). 2. Rock 'n' Roll Music (The Beatles). 3. Rocks (Aerosmith). 4. Breezin' (George Benson). 5. Frampton Comes Alive (Peter Frampton). 6. Fleetwood Mac (Fleetwood Mac). 7. Chicago X (Chicago). 8. Rastaman Vibration (Bob Marley & The Wailers). 9. Harvest For The World (The Isley Brothers). 10. Look Out For #1 (The Brothers Johnson). 11. Changesonebowie (David Bowie). 12. Beautiful Noise (Neil Diamond). 13. Fly Like An Eagle (The Steve Miller Band). 14. Natalie (Natalie Cole). 15. Royal Scam (Steely Dan). 16. Contradiction (Ohio Players). 17. Diana Ross (II) (Diana Ross). 18. The Dream Weaver (Gary Wright). 19. Black And Blue (The Rolling Stones). 20. Jailbreak (Thin Lizzy).
• From the Sports Desk… Coco Gauff is out at Wimbledon.
• She was beaten yesterday 6-3, 6-4 to fellow American Emma Navarro, who is through to her first Grand Slam quarterfinal.
• Three Grand Slam champions — Elena Rybakina, Barbora Krejcikova and Jelena Ostapenko — remain in the women’s tourney.
• Today in history… Vasco da Gama sets sail on the first direct European voyage to India (1497). Charles II of England grants John Clarke a Royal charter to Rhode Island (1663). The Olive Branch Petition is signed by the Continental Congress of the Thirteen Colonies of North America (1775). John Nixon delivers the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence of the United States (1776). St. John's, Newfoundland is devastated in the Great Fire of 1892 (1892). The Dow Jones Industrial Average reaches its lowest level of the Great Depression, closing at 41.22 (1932). Reports are broadcast that a UFO crash-landed in Roswell, NM in what became known as the Roswell UFO incident (1947). Francis Gary Powers is charged with espionage resulting from his flight over the Soviet Union (1960). Kim Jong Il begins to assume supreme leadership of North Korea upon the death of his father, Kim Il Sung (1994). Space Shuttle Atlantis is launched in the final mission of the U.S. Space Shuttle program (2011). Israel launches an offensive on Gaza amid rising tensions following the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers (2014).
• July 8 is the birthday of surgeon Dominique Jean Larrey (1766), chemist/pharmacist John Pemberton (1831), chemist/businessman Eli Lilly (1838), soldier/businessman Ferdinand von Zeppelin (1838), businessman/philanthropist John D. Rockefeller (1839),fashion designer Hugo Boss (1885), politician George W. Romney (1907), businessman/US vice-president Nelson Rockefeller (1908), singer Jerry Vale (1930), actor Marty Feldman (1934), drummer Jaimoe (1944), actor Jeffrey Tambor (1944), activist Ruby Sales (1948), chef Wolfgang Puck (1949), author Marianne Williamson (1952), actor Kevin Bacon (1958), singer-songwriter Toby Keith (1961), singer-songwriter Joan Osborne (1962), actor Billy Crudup (1968), and singer-songwriter/musician Beck (1970).

Okay, well… it’s time to get back on that metaphorical train and start my typical weekday routine. Actually, that started with writing these words. And before that, getting up at 6AM and showering and dressing. You know, all the normal shit. Enjoy your day.