Random News: August 1, 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 August 1, 2024, and it’s a Thursday for some reason. I awoke to find that we forgot to take out the trash last night in the kitchen, and the ants found it. Ask me how my day is going so far as a result! Gonna not be mad about that — ants happen — and instead take a look at what’s going on in the world, because it’s a lot.

• Rabbit rabbit rabbit.
• I mean, I have no indication that not invoking the rabbits for my first news post of a new month would result in anything catastrophic, but with things going well, why tempt fate?
• A big breaking news story this AM… 
• Russia and the United States have agreed to swap prisoners in an extraordinary multipart deal that was brokered by president Joe Biden.
• The swap will allow the two wrongfully detained American citizens held by Moscow — Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan — to return home.
• As you might be aware, Gershkovich was arrested by Russian authorities in March 2023 for espionage, a charge he and U.S. officials flatly deny, with President Biden saying Gershkovich was targeted for being a journalist and an American.
• He was found guilty by a bullshit court and sentenced to 16 years in a high-security penal colony.
• Whelan was arrested in December 2018 and also accused of espionage. Both the Biden and Trump administrations denied the allegation against Whelan. He was convicted on the false charges in June 2020 and sentenced to 16 years in prison, ultimately serving five.
• And now they’re coming home, thanks to Joe.
• Moving back to US politics, here’s a positive note: the United Auto Workers officially endorsed Kamala Harris yesterday.
• UAW President Shawn Fain said in a statement that the union’s job in this year’s election was to defeat Trump. The union has more than a million active and retired members with a strong base in what the Democrats call the “blue wall” states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
• Harris has already been unanimously endorsed by other unions including the AFL-CIO (composed of 60 unions and 12.5 million workers), AFSCME, ATU, AFT, CWA, Stage Employees, IBEW, IUPAT, SEIU, United Farm Workers, UFCW, and more.
• Some more great news for the future POTUS…
• Yesterday, a group of more than 200 venture capital investors, founders, and tech leaders pledged to vote for Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.
• Organized under the name VCsForKamala, they represent billions of dollars in assets and appear to be standing up as a counter to the few tech billionaires lining up behind El Dumpo.
• The group includes billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, Khosla Ventures founder Vinod Khosla, and Silicon Valley angel investor Ron Conway.
• The list is like a who's who of tech's progressive wing, and a reminder that Dumpy supporters in the industry — like Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, and David Sacks — are still a small minority of tech's wealthiest leaders and investors.
• Moving on.
• Okay, now we have to talk about the debacle that occurred when Dumples the Clown decided it was a good idea to be interviewed for the National Association of Black Journalists in Chicago.
• My God. It was like watching a train wreck in real time. Where to even begin?
• It seems that the main message from the Dump campaign is now 100% focused on Kamala Harris’s race. They had nothing else to use.
• So there he was in front of an audience of Black journalists and decided his best plan of attack was to question Kamala Harris’s identity as a Black woman.
• This is probably a good place to remind everyone that Harris is the daughter of a Jamaican father and an Indian mother. As an undergraduate, Harris attended Howard University, one of the nation’s most prominent historically Black colleges and universities, where she also pledged the historically Black sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha.
• As a U.S. senator, Harris was a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, supporting her colleagues’ legislation to strengthen voting rights and reforming policing.
• Anyway, things did not go well for Dumples. Not at all. Especially after saying stuff like…
• “I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black and now she wants to be known as Black. So, I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?”
• Again… Harris has — for her entire life — identified as Black. Over 33 million Americans — about 10% of the population — are biracial, just as Harris and former President Obama are.
• Dump also managed to denounce a woman on the panel as “rude” and “nasty,” got into shouting matches with reporters over the merits of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, and then told the group of Black people that he was “the best president for the Black population” since Abraham Lincoln.
• And the Black journalists in the audience reacted the way that hurts Dumples the most: they laughed uproariously multiple times.
• Dumpy was supposed to be onstage for an hour for the discussion; his handlers yanked him way after 35 minutes. It was, to use one of Don’s favorite terms, a bloodbath.
• Clips of Dump’s horrifying stage performance flooded social media yesterday. If I were a leader in the GOP, I’d be trying to figure out how to get him to drop out of the race.
• The Republicans do seem to have solidified on their overall messaging, though. Fox News’ Jesse Watters tried out this gem yesterday: “I heard the scientists say the other day that when a man voted for a woman, he actually transitions into a woman.”
• Noted. How about your thoughts on Harris, Jesse?
• “Now she’s considered an African-American woman. You don’t hear about that. She’s not African-American technically because she has a Jamaican dad.”
• Does anyone want to tell Jesse Watters or the other Fox & Friends where the Black people on Jamaica came from? No? Me neither.
• Quick hint: the African slaves who were stolen from Africa didn’t only end up in America. Jesus Fucking Christ.
• It’s hard to believe, but there was an upside to Dumpy’s extraordinary display of racism.
• Grassroots donors responded in a big way: by the evening, over $23,961,076 was raised for Harris through ActBlue, making yesterday the largest fundraising day in the past week.
• The big spike in Harris support happened right after Dump’s disastrous NABJ interview.
• Later yesterday, Dumpy tried to do one of his rallies in Pennsylvania.
• After arriving an hour late, he spent 90 minutes promoting the same old racist claims about the next President Kamala Harris. But most of the crowd didn’t get too far into it… they started heading for the exits about a half hour into the manic speech. 
• Fuck that guy.
• Let’s move on to news of another dumbass.
• Rudy “America’s National Joke” Giuliani agreed yesterday to a last-minute deal to end his personal bankruptcy case and pay about $400,000 to a financial adviser hired by his creditors.
• Giuliani had been criticized by Judge Sean Lane for repeated failures to disclose his income sources and to comply with court orders.
• The creditors include former Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, who won a $148 million defamation judgment against Giuliani for his false ballot fraud claims against them related to the 2020 election.
• Giuliani will now pay the creditors’ financial adviser, New York-based Global Data Risk, and pay the rest of the firm’s expenses from the proceeds of selling either his New York City apartment or Florida condominium, which are worth an estimated $5.6 million and $3.5 million, respectively.
• More importantly, Freeman and Moss are now free to seek enforcement and payment of the $148 million verdict in federal court in Washington, D.C., where they won their case.
• And Global Data Risk is putting liens on both the New York City and Florida properties to make sure Giuliani pays all its fees.
• So sad, too bad, playing my tiny violin for Bankrupt Rudy.
• Okay, back on the positive side of things.
• Today is the day that we start the process of nominating Kamala Harris for real.
• The Democratic Party began the formal vote this morning, kicking off a virtual roll call that will cement her status as the party's standard-bearer heading into November. Voting opened at 9am ET, a little over an hour ago.
• Each delegate is using a personalized and watermarked form to cast their vote. The process is expected to take several days, with the voting window open until 6pm on Tuesday August 5. 
• The outcome of the vote is not in doubt; Harris has the support and endorsement of nearly all of the pledged Democratic delegates. Around 3,900 delegates (out of 4,000) have already indicated they support Harris through their signatures to get her onto the virtual ballot in the first place.
• I find it likely that they’ll make an announcement once Harris passes the threshold needed to secure a majority of 1,976 delegates.
• And now, The Weather: “Guts” by rosetan
• This seems as good a time as any to check the word count of Zak’s Random News. I started this for no real reason on May 17, 2022.
• I’ve only very rarely missed a day, usually while traveling or being otherwise preoccupied or unavailable.
• The total word count since then is 1,180,964.
• This year, 2024, is definitely on track for the record thus far. I’ve had a lot to say in this crazy-ass year.
• So at 1,180,964, I am now past the word count of the entire ‘Harry Potter’ series by JK Rowling (1,084,625). I’m exactly twice as long as the entire ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy plus ‘The Hobbit’ (550,147). I suppose my next milestone will be surpassing all five books in the ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ series by George R. R. Martin (1,736,054).
• From the Sports Desk… the USA is now up to 31 total medals at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Coincidentally, we also just passed our 3,000th medal count total for all-rime, by far the most of any country.
• Katie Ledecky added another gold to her collection in Women's 1500m Freestyle swimming. Also getting gold medals: the Men’s rowing team of Nicholas Mead, Justin Best, Michael Grady, and Liam Corrigan.
• Torri Huske picked up a silver in Women's 100m Freestyle.
• And congratulations to Evy Leibfarth for her bronze in the Women's Canoe Single Slalom, which I had no idea was an Olympic sport until the moment I wrote this sentence.
• Today in history… Octavian enters Alexandria and Marc Antony kills himself (30 BC). Justinian I become sole ruler of the Byzantine Empire (527). Christopher Columbus “discovers” Venezuela (1498). British scientist Joseph Priestley discovers oxygen gas (1774). Slavery is abolished in the British Empire (1834). Colorado is admitted as the 38th state (1876). Henry Perky patents shredded wheat (1893). Harriet Quimby becomes the first woman with an aviator certificate (1911). Four antifascist activists are executed by the Nazis (1933). The Olympics opened in Berlin with a ceremony presided over by Adolf Hitler (1936). The Warsaw Uprising against the Nazi German occupation breaks out in Warsaw, Poland (1944). Guam is organized as an unincorporated territory of the United States as the President Harry S. Truman signs the Guam Organic Act (1950). The United States and Canada form the North American Aerospace Defense Command, aka NORAD (1957). Islamabad is declared the capital of Pakistan (1960). Frank Herbert’s book ‘Dune’ is published for the first time (1965). George Harrison’s ‘Concert for Bangladesh’ is held at Madison Square Garden (1971). Vigdís Finnbogadóttir of Iceland becomes the world’s first democratically-elected female head of state (1980). MTV begins broadcasting in the USA (1981). Former US President Donald Trump is indicted for his role in the January 6 United States Capitol attack, his third indictment in 2023 (2023).
• August 1 in the birthday of Roman emperor Claudius (10 BC), painter Sebastiano Ricci (1659), explorer/politician William Clark (1770), lawyer/poet Francis Scott Key (1779), novelist Herman Melville (1819), astronomer Helen Sawyer Hogg (1905), singer-songwriter/guitarist Ramblin' Jack Elliott (1931), actor Dom DeLuise (1933), fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent (1936), singer-songwriter/guitarist Jerry Garcia (1942), singer-songwriter/guitarist Tommy Bolin (1951), singer-songwriter/guitarist Robert Cray (1953), actor Taylor Negron (1957), singer-songwriter Joe Elliott (1959), songwriter/rapper Chuck D (1960), rapper Coolio (1963), director Sam Mendes (1965), singer-songwriter/guitarist Dhani Harrison (1978), actor Jason Momoa (1979), MLB player Madison Bumgarner (1989), and NBA player Austin Rivers (1992).

Alright, let’s wrap this up. We still have 96 days until the election, so this is a marathon, not a sprint. Keep your spirits high and your energy focused on the big picture. If we stay unified and strong, nothing can defeat us. Enjoy your day.