Random News: August 16, 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 16, 2024, and if you can believe it, it’s a Friday once again! I’m trying to deliver important news to you, and a cat keeps jumping on my desk. I discussed this with him and he agreed to get down, so now let’s see what’s happening in the world.

• Yesterday, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris delivered remarks from Prince George’s County, Maryland. It was the first joint public event since Biden withdrew from the 2024 race and threw his support behind Harris.
• It was touching when the crowd erupted in chants of “Thank you, Joe,” which continued long after Biden took the stage following Harris’ introduction.
• The highlights from their speech…
• Harris outlined provisions in the administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, passed two years ago this week, that led to yesterday’s announcement on drug prices. 
• Biden also took some time to slam Republicans, both in Congress and in the 2024 presidential race, for opposing his domestic agenda.
• Joe also didn’t forget about Dump’s Project 2025, the conservative blueprint for a potential second term for Dumples the Clown.
• “You may have heard about the MAGA Republican Project 2025 Plan – they want to repeal Medicare’s power to negotiate –- negotiate drug prices, put Big Pharma back to charge whatever they want,” said Joe. “Let me tell you what our Project 2025 is — beat the hell out of them.”
• Also — ahem — Joe named the opponent as, “Donald Dump.” I’m just saying, if the President took that name from my many references as such, I am more than happy to have been his inspiration.
• Today, Harris is in Raleigh, North Carolina, where she’s taken a surprising lead in some polls.
• This morning, ahead of her speech, Harris unveiled an aggressively populist economic agenda, providing the most detailed vision yet of her governing priorities since becoming the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee.
• Her campaign announced her support for more than a dozen economic policies aimed at lowering costs for American families.
• The most striking proposals were for the elimination of medical debt for millions of Americans; the first-ever ban on price gouging for groceries and food; a cap on prescription drug costs; a $25,000 subsidy for first-time home buyers; and a child tax credit that would provide $6,000 per child to families for the first year of a baby’s life.
• Will she be able to enact these plans that would inarguably improve the lives of Americans? I have a lot of hope for this lady as a leader. Time will tell.
• I attended yet another online rally for Kamala Harris last night. I wasn’t planning to, and then I scrolled by something called “Space Cadets for Harris,” and the geek in me got immediately sucked in.
• Hosted by former NASA astronaut John Grunsfeld, it featured a mix of speakers of NASA scientists and astronauts, and tons of Star Trek actors from the various series, including Jeri Ryan (Seven of Nine) and many others, science people like Bill Nye, and more.
• It was super fun. They raised some good dough for the Harris fund. I liked it.
• There are 81 days until the election on November 5.
• Moving on.
• Despite Donnie Dump’s efforts to detach himself from Project 2025, the blueprint for his own second term written by his own people, it keeps bowing back up to the public consciousness.
• Russell Vought, one of the key authors of Project 2025, was recorded discussing Dump’s plan to carry out the largest deportation in US history – which the former president has called for publicly.
• Vought said he had personally talked to Dump in recent months and received at least one personal “assignment” from him after he left office. He noted that the Dumples has “been at our organization, he’s raised money for our organization, he’s blessed it … he’s very supportive of what we do.”
• Among a long list of horrific concepts, Vought said that conservatives should push to have debates over whether to allow mosques to be built in America’s downtowns, and whether Christian immigrants should be prioritized over those of other faiths – ideas that obviously are totally contradictory to First Amendment protections.
• Keep it in mind: Project 2025 is Donald Trump’s plan. Whether you call it that or Project 47 or the Trump 180 Day Transition Plan, it’s all the same disgusting concepts and policies with different titles.
• I guess we should also discuss how Clown Boy is trying to once again wriggle out of the arms of justice.
• Yesterday Dumpy’s lawyers asked Judge Juan Merchan to push his New York sentencing — currently scheduled for September 18 — to some time after the presidential election.
• Their main excuse for the additional delay is the Supreme Court’s ruling that granted at least some presidential immunity in criminal cases.
• I’ll remind you that the immunity ruling already led the judge to push Trump’s sentencing from its originally scheduled date in July. Merchan is set to rule on September 16 on Dump’s motion to set aside his guilty verdicts on the grounds that they run afoul of the Supreme Court’s new immunity rule.
• If Merchan rejects Trump’s motion, then that would clear the way for sentencing two days later.
• But in a move that should surprise no one at all, if Merchan rules against Trump’s immunity claim, then Dumplestiltskin’s lawyers have signaled that they want to appeal that decision before Dump is sentenced.
• There will come a day when this poor excuse for a human being faces actual justice. That day, my friends, will be glorious.
• Songs will be sung. Glasses will be hoisted. Total strangers will embrace in the streets.
• One thing that’s being pointed out across a wider swath of the political spectrum: as it becomes more and more apparent to Dump that he’s not going to win this election, he’s going to do worse and worse things.
• I’m not saying to worry per se. I am saying, it shouldn’t surprise anyone for him to call for outright violence, or make attempts to use his MAGA base to stop people from voting.
• Be ready for that. I’m fairly sure that is going to happen in many ways over the next 81 days, especially as we get closer to November 5.
• Let’s move on.
• You probably heard mention this week about something that seems like it should concern you: a hack at a background check company potentially exposed pretty much everyone’s social security numbers.
• It’s still unclear how much of the data is genuine and whether it all really came from hacking a company, as opposed to scraping publicly available sources.
• A class-action lawsuit has accused the background check company National Public Data of not safeguarding personal information including names, addresses, and social security numbers.
• Is this a problem? Of course it is, but your data has probably been stolen many times already, in multiple ways by multiple entities for multiple reasons. 
• That’s probably not the comforting statement you wanted, but such is modern life. If you want to protect yourself from more targeted theft and identity theft, probably the best way to do it is to use two-factor authentication (2FA) on every online financial service you use.
• Start with your most sensitive accounts such as banking and health care. And if you think it’s too much of a pain in the ass to get a text message with a login code, imagine how much time you’ll spend when someone cleans out your bank account and opens six lines of fraudulent credit under your name.
• Turn that shit on.
• In other news, I’ve stopped mentioning Dump’s VP choice, JD Vance. A recent survey now says he’s less popular than Sarah Palin. True story.
• He’s a non-entity and barely worthy of discussion at all, but I did at least want to acknowledge his appearance on a podcast in 2020 when he agreed with Eric Weinstein, managing director of Peter Thiel’s Thiel Capital, when he said that grandparents helping raise grandchildren is “the whole purpose of the post-menopausal female.”
• That’s really how they think. Your only purpose as a “female” is to shoot babies out of your uterus until you no longer can. Then your purpose is to help other “females” with their offspring.
• Please don’t allow these pieces of shit to get into office. Thank you.
• I tend not to do much entertainment news around here; you get that flying at your from all directions.
• But it is worth noting that five people — including his personal assistant and two doctors — have been charged in connection with Matthew Perry’s death.
• The doctors preyed on Perry’s history of addiction in the final months of his life last year to provide him with ketamine in amounts they knew were dangerous, per the charges announced yesterday.
• One doctor even wrote in a text message, “I wonder how much this moron will pay” and “Lets find out,” according to the unsealed indictment. Disgusting pricks. Hopefully they never practice medicine again, at a minimum.
• As you’re sadly aware, Perry died in October 2023 due to a ketamine overdose and prosecutors said he received several injections on the day he died from his live-in personal assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, who found Perry dead later that day.
• And now, The Weather: “Joker Lips” by MJ Lenderman
• Too many RIP’s lately. This one goes out to Bay Area singer-songwriter Greg Kihn, who dies yesterday from complications of Alzheimer’s. He was 75.
• Kihn only had a couple of big pop hits — “Jeopardy” and “The Breakup Song (They Don’t Write ‘Em)” — but he was a major force in the world of early ‘80s power pop.
• And another RIP going out to the original host of the iconic game show “The Hollywood Squares,” Peter Marshall, who died yesterday at 98.
• Born with the unfortunate name of Ralph Pierre LaCock, Marshall hosted more than 5,000 episodes of the Emmy Award-winning “Hollywood Squares” from 1966-1980.
• And yet another RIP (jeez!) to my Redondo Beach neighbor Jack Russell, the singer of ‘80s hair metal band Great White, who died yesterday at 63 of multiple system atrophy and Lewy body dementia.
• I’d see Jack pretty often at the grocery store across the street, shopping with his wife Heather. He knew me through my job and we’d chat if we happened to be in line at the checkstand.
• Nice guy, but he looked 20+ years older than his actual age. You may recall that in 2003, his band was playing a club in Rhode Island where they had a pyrotechnic mishap resulting in the deaths of 100 people and another 230 injured.
• Awful shit. Anyway, RIP Jack.
• From the Sports Desk… since MLB is the only major American sport playing any kind of consequential games right now, I’ll stick with some stats.
• Here’s the current leaders in home runs.
• 1. Aaron Judge (NYY) - 43. 2. Shohei Ohtani (LAD) - 37. 3. Anthony Santander (BAL) - 36. 4. Marcell Ozuna (ATL) - 35. 5. Juan Soto (NYY) - 34. 6. Jose Ramirez (CLE) - 31. 7. Gunnar Henderson (BAL) - 31. 8. Ketel Marte (ARI) - 30. 9. Brent Rooker (OAK) - 29. 10. Kyle Schwarber (PHI) - 28.
• Please hurry, football.
• Today in history… The House of Gonzaga begins its rule over the Duchy of Mantua in Northern Italy and will rule for almost 400 years (1328). General John Stark leads the Americans in a rout over British and Brunswick troops at the Battle of Bennington (1777). President John Tyler vetoes a bill to re-establish of the Second Bank of the United States, and Whig Party members lose their shit and riot outside the White House (1841). Gold is discovered near the Klondike River in Canada, setting off the Klondike Gold Rush (1896). Tōhoku Imperial University of Japan starts admitting female students (1913). The first color sound cartoon is released (1930). Riots in Toronto pit Jewish and Italian people against local Nazis (1933). Mass riots involving Muslims and Hindus in Kolkata will over 4,000 people in three days (1946). The House Un-American Activities Committee begins investigations of Americans who have aided the Viet Cong (1966). The August Complex fire burns over one million acres of land in Northern California (2020).
• August 16 is the birthday of soldier/diplomat T. E. Lawrence (1888), cartoonist/animator Otto Messmer (1892), Israel prime minister Menachem Begin (1913), writer Charles Bukowski (1920), singer Eydie Gormé (1928), pianist/composer Bill Evans (1929), actor Robert Culp (1930), NFL player/sportscaster Frank Gifford (1930), actress Julie Newmar (1933), singer-songwriter/guitarist Kevin Ayers (1944), politician Carol Moseley Braun (1947), drummer Scott Asheton (1949), talk show host Kathie Lee Gifford (1953), singer-songwriter James “JT” Taylor (1953), director James Cameron (1954), singer-songwriter Madonna (1958), actor Timothy Hutton (1960), actor Steve Carell (1962), director Taika Waititi (1975), and MLB player Yu Darvish (1986).

That’s enough for now. Next week is the Democratic National Convention, and I already see signs that I’ll be covering a lot of news from that, both inside and outside the United Center in Chicago, IL. But between now and then, I’m hoping for a relaxing weekend once I make it through today which will be busy as usual. And that’s fine. Enjoy your day.