Random News: August 13, 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 13, 2024, and it’s a Tuesday. It’s the 226th day of 2024. That is really useless information, but now you know that this year is 61.7% finished. That, too, is meaningless. Time may or may not be real, but calendars are a human construct. Space and time are intertwined, so wherever and whenever it is now, there you are.

• With the excitement and enthusiasm of the Harris/Walz campaign at full speed, I want to take a step back and remind you about one of the most important reasons which it’s crucial that hatred is defeated in November.
• Hospital facilities across the country — in states where abortion rights are restricted or eliminated — continue to violate the federal law that commands them to treat pregnant patients in emergencies.
• A sad story out of Texas, where ER doctors at Ascension Seton Williamson Hospital handed Kyleigh Thurman a pamphlet on miscarriage and told her to “let nature take its course” before discharging her without treatment for her ectopic pregnancy.
• When the 25-year-old returned three days later, still bleeding severely, doctors finally agreed to help her but it was too late; the fertilized egg growing on Thurman’s fallopian tube ruptured it and destroyed part of her reproductive system.
• It’s likely she’ll never be able to become pregnant again as a result of their actions.
• More than 100 pregnant women in medical distress who sought help from emergency rooms were turned away or negligently treated since Donald Trump’s Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022.
• Two women – one in Florida and one in Texas – were left to miscarry in public restrooms. In Arkansas, a woman went into septic shock and her fetus died after an emergency room sent her home.
• Under their anti-women laws In Texas, doctors face up to 99 years of prison if convicted of performing an illegal abortion. They are understandably fearful of providing any medical attention to pregnant women.
• When you vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz this fall, you are literally saving the lives of women like Kyleigh Thurman and thousands of others.
• Harris has committed to sign a law that codifies reproductive freedom rights for women in every state in the country as soon as it crosses her desk. We need to put an end to this now.
• As Kamala says, we are not going back.
• To that end, some excellent news this morning.
• The Arizona Secretary of State's office has confirmed that an abortion rights measure has qualified for the state's November ballot.
• More than 577,000 signatures were collected — surpassing the required threshold by almost 200,000.
• They’re going to enshrine reproductive rights in their state’s constitution, and after we elect Harris, I hope it won’t be long before that’s the law of the land in all 50 states.
• Let’s move on.
• Today is Primary Day in a number of states.
• Connecticut, Minnesota, Vermont, and Wisconsin all have Senate and House members to elect. Vermont also has a governor race.
• Vote!
• Some things to watch in Minnesota in particular… 
• Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) faces a primary challenge from former Minneapolis City Council member Don Samuels in the solidly blue 5th District. Omar fended off Samuels by just 2 percentage points in 2022, and the rematch is also part of a larger intraparty conflict over the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
• Republicans in that state — already with a low shot at defeating incumbent Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) — seem to be poised on making a massive blunder in choosing Royce White as her GOP opponent.
• White is a former pro basketball player (he spent part of a year on the bench of the Kings) and onetime Black Lives Matter activist who has transformed into a populist, pro-Trump figure. Snort.
• White has embraced various conspiracy theories while using antisemitic, misogynistic, and homophobic language. Good luck with that shit, Minnesota Republicans.
• Moving on.
• In case you avoid listening to words manifested in the rotting brain of Old Man Dumpy (like I do), I thought I’d do us a service and let him have some real estate here. A quote from his recent MAGA party in Montana…
• “Kamala Harris, you know, it’s interesting, nobody really knows her last name. If you ask people, ‘Do you know what her last name is?’ nobody has any idea what it is. Harris, it’s like Harris. I don’t know, how the hell did this happen?”
• I think he may be admitting in a Freudian way that he’s having trouble remembering names and common terms. It’s probably frightening to him. I think you’ll see this increase in frequency with Ol’ Dumpy in coming months.
• More recent was last night’s unmitigated disaster of an interview between two turds: Donnie Dump and Elmo Muck.
• If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought this was some kind of assault against Dump by Musk.
• Due to technical failures of the former Twitter platform, it took more than 40 minutes before the interview could start and be heard by anyone. It was so amateurish, if it did anything, it was to diminish that already low confidence people had in Dumpy’s campaign.
• Even after they got Musk’s X social platform functioning, the next two hours were laughably bad. Dump was rambling, babbling on about crowd sizes and immigration and President Joe Biden and whatever else seemed to pass through his mind.
• He seemed utterly unprepared.
• Dump was also badly slurring his words to the point of being nearly unintelligible at times, raising questions about his health, and doing nothing to knock down rising concerns about his age and well-being.
• Want a review?
• “He sounded like a disoriented, racist Daffy Duck.” - USA Today
• The BBC fact-checked some of Dumpy’s better quotes from the event.
• Dump said bacon costs, "four or five times more than it did a few years ago”.
• Fact: the price of bacon is up… 17% since Trump left office, not 400-500%. The average price for a pound of sliced bacon was $5.83 in January 2021 when Trump left office. It now costs $6.83.
• Dump said in regard to global climate change, “the ocean is going to rise one eighth of an inch over the next 400 years.”
• Fact: global average sea levels rose by an average of nearly twice that, almost a quarter inch, EVERY SINGLE YEAR for the past decade.
• The Harris campaign jumped on this debacle of an event.
• “Trump’s entire campaign is in service of people like Elon Musk and himself — self-obsessed rich guys who will sell out the middle class and who cannot run a livestream in the year 2024.”
• Hahahahahahaha.
• I’ll report on one more Dumpy topic, even though it’s somewhat silly.
• Remember when his old 757 broke down on Friday and he had to rent another jet to get his fat ass around the country?
• Welp.
• Whether it was purposeful or just a strange act of coincidence, the private jet he chose was once owned by his late pal Jeffrey Epstein.
• The Dump campaign took several flights in a Gulfstream G550 plane, emblazoned with the code N550GP on its tail. That same Gulfstream jet also once carried the infamous Jeffrey Epstein on his exploits, and Epstein owned it up until his, ahem, suicide in 2019.
• In fact, Epstein used that very plane for the last flight of his life, from Paris to New Jersey's Teterboro airport, where the FBI arrested him on sex-trafficking charges.
• Look, I doubt that even Dumples is so stupid (or perhaps perverted) to purposefully choose that plane out of the many available. Right? He can’t be.
• Besides, Epstein owned a number of jets, including a Gulfstream II, a Gulfstream IV, and a Boeing 727 which was nicknamed "Lolita Express.”
• Seriously. Gross.
• Moving on to a little crime news that’s important.
• Yesterday, a Colorado jury found Tina Peters, a former county election official, guilty of seven charges connected to allowing a purported computer expert to copy election data from her office as Dump and his allies spread false claims that the 2020 election was stolen and searched for evidence to prove it.
• She was found guilty on seven of 10 charges, including several counts of attempting to influence a public servant and conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation. She will be sentenced on October 3 and could face prison time.
• The verdict comes three months ahead of the 2024 presidential election and as Dumples is already seeking to sow doubt about the fairness of the electoral outcome. Making an example of Peters will, perhaps, dissuade people who are making plans to commit the same crime this year.
• In follow-up to a crime story we told you in 2022, Sophia Rosing, a former University of Kentucky student, pleaded guilty yesterday to assault and other charges for a racist attack on a Black student that was captured on video.
• Rosing, 23, pleaded guilty to four counts of fourth-degree assault, one count of disorderly conduct, and public intoxication. She was captured on video attacking a Black student, hitting and kicking her multiple times while using the n-word.
• She faces up to a year in jail and 100 hours of community service. Rosing is scheduled to be sentenced October 17.
• Moving on.
• A judge ruled yesterday that independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. falsely claimed a New York residence on nominating petitions, invalidating the documents he needs to appear on the ballot in the state.
• Judge Christina Ryba’s ruling is expected to be appealed, but if upheld, it could open the door to challenges in other states where Kennedy used an address in New York City’s northern suburbs to gather signatures.
• I don’t know whether to be happy or sad for this insane idiot. I’ve already noted that each for for RFK Jr. takes away 3-4 votes from Dump for every one vote he could take from Harris.
• He lives here in Los Angeles, I should note. Kennedy argued during the trial that he has lifelong ties to New York and intends to move back.
• Suuuuure Jan.
• We had a nice little earthquake here in the Los Angeles area yesterday. It wasn’t a big deal — originally measured as a 4.7 and later downgraded to a 4.4 — but it was a good shake, lasted awhile, and was felt by over 5,000,000 people from LA down to the Mexico border.
• I sure as fuck felt it here in Redondo Beach. I had just sat down to eat lunch and nearly forked myself in the face while trying to take a bite of chicken.
• And now, The Weather: “La Noche” by Navy Blue
• I have a Fun Fact about Kamala Harris.
• In 1975, her mother Shyamala accepted a research position at the McGill University School of Medicine, and moved with her two daughters to Montreal, Quebec.
• Kamala attended the highly-regarded Westmount High School in Quebec during that time, graduating in 1981. In addition to herself, some notable alumni of that school include extraordinary poet/musician Lenard Cohen and astronomer David H. Levy, discoverer of 22 comets including Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9.
• Which leads us to a music chart. Here’s the top of the Billboard Hot 100 singles when Kamala started her freshman year of high school in September 1977.
• 1. Best Of My Love (The Emotions). 2. (Your Love Has Lifted Me) Higher And Higher (Rita Coolidge). 3. I Just Want To Be Your Everything (Andy Gibb). 4. Handy Man (James Taylor). 5. Float On (The Floaters). 6. Don't Stop (Fleetwood Mac). 7. Easy (Commodores). 8. Strawberry Letter 23 (The Brothers Johnson). 9. Telephone Line (Electric Light Orchestra). 10. Smoke From A Distant Fire (The Sanford/Townsend Band). 11. Star Wars (Main Title) (London Symphony Orchestra). 12. Just A Song Before I Go (Crosby, Stills & Nash). 13. Barracuda (Heart). 14. Cold As Ice (Foreigner). 15. Keep It Comin' Love (KC And The Sunshine Band). 16. On And On (Stephen Bishop). 17. Swayin' To The Music (slow Dancin') (Johnny Rivers). 18. Star Wars Theme/Cantina Band (Meco). 19. That's Rock 'N' Roll (Shaun Cassidy). 20. Don't Worry Baby (B.J. Thomas).
• From the Sports Desk… an example of the silliness of NFL preseason football.
• Every team in the AFC North lost their first preseason game. The Bengals, Ravens, Browns, and Steelers — all good-quality teams — are 0-1 in the preseason.
• Again, you have to understand the reason for the NFL preseason. Primarily it’s to have revenue from ticket and TV income, but also it’s to audition a team’s squad — especially the new players — and determine who gets the final roster spots and what order the depth chart will be.
• The first real game of the season happens in a few weeks on Thursday, September 5, when the Baltimore Ravens visit the Kansas City Chiefs. Can’t wait.
• Today in history… Octavian holds a triumph in Rome for the victory over Dalmatian tribes (29 BC). Maurice becomes Emperor of the Byzantine Empire (582). Cortés conquers Tenochtitlan after a long siege (1521). Buddhist monks from Kyoto burn down the temples (1536). Louis XIII appoints Richelieu as Prime Minister (1624). Louis XVI is arrested as an enemy of the people (1792). Massive 8.5-9.0 earthquake strikes Peru, killing 25,000+ and creating a massive tsunami (1868). Norway ends its union with Sweden (1905). Women enlist in the US Marine Corps, with the first female Marine being Opha May Johnson (1918). A public company is established in Germany called Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, later shortened to BMW (1918). Construction of facilities for the "Development of Substitute Materials" project, better known as the Manhattan Project, begins (1942). Apollo 11 astronauts get a ticker tape parade in NYC and are given the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Nixon that night in Los Angeles (1969). Israel–United Arab Emirates relations are formally established (2020).
• August 13 is the birthday of physicist Anders Jonas Ångström (1814), abolitionist/suffragist Lucy Stone (1818), activist Leonora Barry (1849), target shooter Annie Oakley (1860), engineer John Logie Baird (1888), actor Bert Lahr (1895), director Alfred Hitchcock (1899), engineer Felix Wankel (1902), golfer Ben Hogan (1912), politician Fidel Castro (1926), singer/ukulele player Don Ho (1930), admiral/physician Joycelyn Elders (1933), NHL player Bobby Clarke (1949), singer-songwriter/guitarist Dan Fogelberg (1951), photographer Herb Ritts (1952), actor Danny Bonaduce (1959), CIA agent Valerie Plame (1963), figure skater Midori Ito (1969), NHL player Marty Turco (1975), politician Sarah Huckabee Sanders (1982), actor Sebastian Stan (1982), and NBA player DeMarcus Cousins (1990).

I also figured out that I’m 20,156 days old today. Seems about right. I think at one point long ago I’d planned to celebrate my 20,000-day birthday, but it kinda slid on by earlier this year without me noticing, because most days are pretty damn similar. This one too, probably. Enjoy your day.