Random News: August 12, 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 12, 2024, and it’s a Monday. My name is Zak and I’m here to awaken you.

• One way to determine how some event is likely to proceed is to see how people are betting actual money on it. In some ways, it’s as clear an indicator as polling, since it’s not skewed by all the methodology issues I’ve mentioned.
• While it’s illegal for US bookmakers to take part in gambling on US presidential elections, it’s still a big thing in international betting markets.
• As of today, Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris stands as the slight betting favorite over Donnie Dumpster to win the White House.
• U.K. bookmaker Bet365 has Harris in the lead at -125 with Dump at even money, as of late yesterday.
• Betfair has Harris at -105 with Dumpy at +120. So does Bovada.
• Surely you can’t expect someone to make a prediction based on decrepit gamblers, right?
• Welp… the betting favorite has only lost twice since 1866.
• The two upsets came in 1948, when Harry Truman (D) beat eight-to-one odds to defeat Thomas Dewey (R), and in 2016, when Dump overcame seven-to-two odds — hmm — to beat Hillary Clinton.
• Fascinating. Let’s move on.
• America’s joyful new father figure Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), the running mate of Vice President Harris, will launch his first solo fundraising tour this week, after spending last week barnstorming with Harris through five stops in four swing states.
• Walz will start the trip through five states tomorrow with a trip to Newport Beach, CA. He’ll then travel to Denver, CO and Boston, MA on Wednesday before moving on to Newport, RI and South Hampton, NY, on Thursday.
• He’s set to headline his first solo event for the campaign with an appearance before the labor group AFSCME tomorrow at its convention in Los Angeles before he goes to Newport Beach to fundraise.
• Meanwhile, the future POTUS herself was also out there raising funds here in our home state.
• Harris addressed a crowd of major Bay Area donors and California politicians at a fundraiser last night.
• The sold-out event, the first fundraiser that Harris has attended in the Bay Area since she rose to the top of the Democratic Party ticket in July, raised more than $12 million.
• In her speech, the vice president took aim at Dump and his Project 2025, the vast set of policy proposals put together by conservative groups that would reshape the government and expand presidential powers if he were re-elected.
• Moving on.
• If I was someone in charge of the Republican party, I’d be getting DEFCON 2-level vibes from their official candidate, Donnie Dump.
• The man seems to have been driven over the edge from the realms of sanity based on something near and dear to him: crowd sizes at rallies.
• Yesterday, King Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs falsely accused Kamala Harris of using AI technology to fabricate images of the crowd sizes at her rallies, amplifying an unfounded conspiracy to explain the strong enthusiasm for the new Democratic ticket.
• He can’t actually believe what he sees and hears with his own eyes and ears. The huge swell of genuine enthusiasm and happiness about the Harris/Walz ticket. And now the man has lost it. He’s living in an alternate reality now. Over the rainbow. Surely gone fishing.
• Here’s what he wrote…
• “Has anyone noticed that Kamala CHEATED at the airport? There was nobody at the plane, and she ‘A.I.‘d’ it, and showed a massive ‘crowd’ of so-called followers, BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST!”
• He also claimed that there was nobody there, despite the personal eyewitness experience of the people in that massive crowd.
• Trump was referring to an an actual photo of a 15,000-person crowd for Harris-Walz in Michigan August 7, cheering for Harris as she stepped out of Air Force Two.
• To confirm this, media organizations licensed a Getty Images photo for the story, taken independently of the Harris campaign, that matches the photos being circulated. They are not AI. That shit is real, Donnie Boy.
• In the three weeks since President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris, donations to Democrats have poured in at record levels. Harris’ rallies have also regularly drawn thousands of attendees, far more than any that Dumples the Clown has ever had.
• And now the fear is tangible for Donnie. You have to keep in mind, if he’s not elected, he has no recourse to get out of the multitude of felony crimes for which he’s been convicted or indicted.
• He’s watching his only hope run like sands through a clenched fist. And it’s making him lose what’s left of his already-decaying mind.
• He’s going to get worse and worse in subsequent months.
• Of course, let’s face it… there’s a real purpose to what he’s doing.
• He’s getting set up for his eventual loss, trying to paint the Harris campaign as cheaters. He’s trying to rile up his violent base into similar actions as what happened after he also badly lost four years ago in 2020.
• So his assumption is that you’re not able to trust reality; that only he, the cult leader, delivers the truth. It’s an old game, but it’s still effective on the lower intelligence level members of the populace.
• But it’s difficult to tell which aspects of it are purposeful versus which ones stem from Dump’s increasing signs of age-related dementia. If he believes what he’s saying, it’s almost scarier than if he’s just lying as usual.
• Let’s move on to some international news — most of it bad.
• An Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced Palestinians killed at least 93 people in the Gaza Strip on Saturday, deepening global scrutiny of Israel’s conduct of the war more than 10 months into its campaign to eliminate Hamas.
• The al-Taba’een school in Gaza City was housing about 6,000 displaced Palestinians when the bombs struck around 4:30am. He said at least 11 children and six women were among those killed, with at least 54 injured and dozens missing.
• The strike was one of the single deadliest bombings of the war, and Bassal said the toll was expected to rise.
• Meanwhile the US is sending more and more forces to the region. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has ordered the USS Georgia guided-missile submarine to the Middle East and told the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group to speed up its voyage to the region.
• Israeli security officials anticipate imminent direct retaliation from Iran over the recent assassination of a top Hamas leader in Tehran.
• None of this is good at all. Can we not do WWIII?
• Meanwhile, Moscow and Kyiv have accused each other of starting a fire on the grounds of Europe's largest (and now Russian-occupied) Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine yesterday, with both sides reporting no sign of elevated radiation.
• Nuclear watchdogs have seen strong, dark smoke coming from the northern area of the plant in southern Ukraine following multiple explosions.
• The plant's six nuclear reactors are in cold shutdown. By early today, it was not clear what caused the fire that started at around 8:00pm on Sunday.
• Relevant side note: Dumpy’s Project 2025 manifesto calls for slashing regulations on nuclear reactors (page 369) and for privatizing nuclear waste disposal (page 371).
• In other news…
• ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ has officially crossed the $1 billion global box office milestone this weekend, with $1.029B+ through yesterday.
• It becomes only the second U.S. R-rated movie ever to get there — after 2019’s ‘Joker.’ ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ is due to surpass Joker’s $1.079B gross by the end of this week, becoming the biggest R-rated movie of all time globally.
• And now, The Weather: “Shake” by Sunflower Bean
• From the Sports Desk… oh damn, the Olympics are done! I have to go back to talking about real sports shit. Crap.
• Do I want to talk about the first full week of preseason NFL football? Actually, no, not at all.
• Anyone who knows me as a longterm football fan is aware, I put very little stock in preseason. Years that my Raiders have gone unbeaten in preseason, they end up going like 4-13 in the regular season.
• Preseason is an extended team tryout, practice, and scrimmage. You can’t base any team-level judgements whatever happens, good or bad.
• Instead, let’s revisit baseball while we can. Here are the top five teams leading their respective leagues.
• American League: Orioles (70-49), Yankees (70-49), Guardians (69-49), Twins (65-52), and Royals (65-53).
• National League: Phillies (69-49), Dodgers (59-49), Brewers (67-50), Diamondbacks (66-53), and Padres (66-53).
• Today in history… Christopher Columbus arrives at the Canary Islands (1492). Isaac Singer is granted a patent for his sewing machine (1851). Joseph Lister, British surgeon and scientist, performs 1st antiseptic surgery (1865). The US flag is raised in Hawaii to signify the transfer of sovereignty (1898). Alençon is the first French city liberated from the Germans in WWII (1944). The Soviets conduct the first thermonuclear bomb test (1953). NASA’s first communications satellite is launched (1960). South Africa is banned from the Olympics due to racist policies (1964). The first free flight of the Space Shuttle Enterprise (1977). The IBM Personal Computer is released (1981). Canada, Mexico and the USA complete negotiations for NAFTA (1992). Major League Baseball players go on strike, eventually forcing the cancellation of the 1994 World Series (1994). The Unite the Right rally occurs in Charlottesville, VA, leading to the deaths of 3 and injuring nearly 50 more (2017).
• August 12 is the birthday of UK king George IV (1762), businessman Diamond Jim Brady (1856), poet Katherine Lee Bates (1859), director Cecil B. DeMille (1881), physicist Erwin Schrödinger (1887), actress Jane Wyatt (1910), music promoter Sid Bernstein (1918), publishers/activists Norris & Ross McWhirter (1925), singer-songwriter/guitarist Porter Wagoner (1927), singer-songwriter/guitarist Buck Owens (1929), businessman/investor George Soros (1930), actor John Cazale (1935), actor George Hamilton (1939), composer/keyboardist Ron Mael (1945), singer-songwriter/guitarist Mark Knopfler (1949), singer-songwriter Kid Creole (1950), guitarist/composer Pat Metheny (1954), guitarist/composer Roy Hay (1961), rapper Sir Mix-a-Lot (1963), tennis player Pete Sampras (1971), actor Casey Affleck (1975), NFL player Plaxico Burress (1977), and MLB player Julio Urías (1996).

There’s always more news. I don’t have time to deliver it all, but hopefully the nuggets I do offer are helpful to you in some ways. Enjoy your day.