Random News: August 2, 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 2, 2024, and if you can believe it, it’s a Friday once again! I’m your news dude, here to tell you the things that may or may not be important to you, or someone that matters to you.

• Let’s start with some great news.
• Kamala Harris’s campaign has brought in a staggering $310 million in July, more than double the $137 million that Dump’s campaign raised last month.
• Harris’s campaign and other affiliated committees have $377 million in cash on hand, marking a $50 million advantage over Dump’s total funds of $327m.
• Since her entry into the race following Joe Biden’s re-election bid withdrawal less than two weeks ago, Harris has galvanized Democrats across the country.
• More than eight in 10 Democrats say they would be somewhat or very satisfied if she became the Democratic nominee for president. That’s as close to full unity as we get.
• Harris is now leading Dumpy in swing states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and is tied in Michigan.
• But I’ll tell you the same thing she told her audiences at recent events: Harris is still an underdog. Don’t let any polling lull you in some other way. If the election were held today, it would be very close and Dumpy still might win.
• That being said, a national poll of 3,000 registered voters from July 29-31 by RMG Research had Harris leading at 47%, followed by Dumples at 42%, with RFK Jr. getting 6%.
• Regardless, it’s going to be constant work over the next 95 days.
• And it would seem that the Trump and MAGA world are in sync with the message that Kamala Harris can’t be president for one and only one reason: that she’s not a white man.
• After Dump’s disastrous performance at the National Association of Black Journalists on Wednesday, he continued to double down on his single-minded focus on Harris’s race, the most important issue for Republicans right now.
• Not the economy. Not immigration. What they care about is the color of this woman’s skin. Oh, and the fact that she’s a woman.
• Yesterday morning, that fucking prick posted a family portrait of Harris and wrote, "Your warmth, friendship, and love of your Indian Heritage are very much appreciated."
• At the NABJ conference, his main point on Harris was that, "she was Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden she made a turn, and she went — she became a Black person."
• That’s all Dump can talk about. Not his Project 2025 plans, not any concrete plans for a second administration, nothing. Just Harris’s race.
• And other Republicans are going to pay along with Dump… everything Dumpy touches dies, as we’ve pointed out often.
• Very close ally of Dump, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) was asked if it was appropriate for Dump to question Harris' race, Graham replied: "No, I don't think so."
• Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) couched his comment more carefully. “I think it shifts away from the discussion I want to focus on, but it may very well be that we have a difference of opinions about what is going to move the voters," he said.
• Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) sidestepped the question repeatedly. Asked about Dump's apparent confusion about Harris being biracial, Cornyn suggested that, "I think we are all a combination of something, right?"
• Careful John. You’re going to offend the Aryans in your voter base.
• Other members of the Republican leadership, like Rep. Tim Burchett (T-TN) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) are going full-bore into the racist critique of Harris, calling her a "DEI Vice President" or "DEI hire."
• In a fascinating turn of events, one of the MAGA world’s heroes announced he won’t be voting for Dumpy.
• Kyle Rittenhouse, the kid who got away with murdering two people during unrest in Kenosha, WI in August 2020, announced on social media last night that he won't be voting for Dump because of his record on guns.
• ”Unfortunately, Donald Trump had bad advisors making him bad on the Second Amendment and that is my issue. If you cannot be completely uncompromisable on the Second Amendment, I will not vote for you."
• Rittenhouse will instead be writing in Ron Paul’s name. The MAGA world lost its shit immediately. Hahahahahaha!
• Enough on those pieces of shit. Let’s do some positive stuff, which America can look forward to more often after we elect Harris and she can get to work.
• Yesterday, the Utah Supreme Court upheld a block on the state’s near-total abortion ban, leaving in place a law that allows abortions up to 18 weeks of pregnancy.
• The ruling dealt a blow to Republican legislators who passed the ban restricting women’s reproductive rights two years before Roe v. Wade was overturned.
• Utah’s 2020 “trigger law” would prohibit all abortions except in cases of rape, incest or serious risk to the mother’s health, or if two maternal fetal medicine physicians determine that the fetus has a lethal defect or severe brain abnormality.
• The 4-1 ruling maintains that suspension while the ban’s constitutionality is litigated in the lower court.
• At the moment, abortion remains broadly legal throughout the American West, with the exception of Idaho, where it is prohibited in nearly all cases.
• A similar ban is on hold in Wyoming, while voters in at least half a dozen states — including Colorado and Nevada plus possibly Montana and Arizona — will vote in November on ballot measures that would strengthen abortion rights.
• Moving on to some more good news… sorta.
• A Biden administration regulation protecting transgender, gay and lesbian students from discrimination took effect yesterday in 24 states — but it remains on hold in the rest of the country amid pending litigation.
• Lawsuits have been filed by Republican-led states who want discrimination against LGBTQ kids to be legal and encouraged.
• In a half-dozen separate cases, federal courts granted injunctions blocking enforcement of the regulation in 26 states, including Texas, Florida, and Ohio, while the cases are litigated. But those rulings do not affect the regulation’s status in the rest of the country — generally Democratic-leaning states such as California, New York, and Illinois.
• But on the positive side, almost half our our states have these protections in place.
• Here’s hoping that the courts eventually agree that discrimination towards anyone based on their orientation is as wrong as doing it based on gender or race or age, and should be that way across the country.
• Moving on.
• Here’s a rather important story on the US diplomacy front.
• Yesterday, the United States said opposition candidate Edmundo González defeated President Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela’s presidential election on July 28, and called for negotiations to ensure a peaceful transition of power.
• But Maduro claims that he won Sunday’s vote. He’s lying, as dictators tend to do. The opposition, meanwhile, says that the government’s own records, as well as independent exit polls, indicate that González won twice as many as votes.
• Important note: Secretary of State Antony Blinken did not say the United States was recognizing González as Venezuela’s president. That’s up to the country to do themselves.
• What does this matter to some generic person in the USA? More than 7 million Venezuelans — a quarter of the population — have fled the country in the past decade amid a collapsing economy and growing repression.
• And most of them end up at our southern border, creating the current round of immigration issues.
• Moving on.
• Starting this weekend, we’re going to be talking about the very important down-ballot races in 2024. Despite the focus on the Presidential battle, those are probably more important to your daily lives.
• For the moment, I’ll not that Tennessee state Rep. Gloria Johnson — who you may recall from last year as part of the “Tennessee Three" — won her primary and will face off against U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) in November.
• Does she have any chance of taking out the evil Blackburn? Almost certainly not.
• Johnson focused her campaign around abortion access, lowering prescription costs, and fighting for gun reforms. But Blackburn has cast Johnson as a "radical socialist.” Six years ago, Blackburn beat her Democratic opponent by more than 10 points.
• In this polarized environment, it’s hard to see how Blackburn loses, but you really never know.
• Let’s move on.
• Former CNN anchor Don Lemon is suing the fuck out of Elon Musk and his social media network X for $35 million, alleging fraud and breach of contract after the billionaire abruptly scrapped a content partnership between them in March. 
• The lawsuit claims that Musk and X promised that Lemon would have "full authority and control over the work he produced even if disliked" by the Tesla CEO and his executives. 
• Lemon never received any pay for his content deal, which the lawsuit states amounted to a "guaranteed" $1.5 million in the first year. 
• Honestly, Elmo Muck is the worst kind of person to do business with. If you recall, the first episode of Lemon’s show had a prickly conversation with Musk in which he defended his use ketamine. He also complained in the interview about the way Lemon was asking questions, describing it as "not cogent.”
• Lemon alleges he incurred "hundreds of thousands of dollars" to create his own media company in order to produce the X content. I believe it.
• And as long as we’re reviewing the assholes of the world…
• A Washington, D.C., disciplinary panel ruled yesterday that Jeffrey Clark, the former Justice Department attorney who became a central figure in Dumpy’s bid to seize a second term he didn’t win, should be suspended from practicing law for two years.
• Ha ha.
• The oversight panel rebuked Clark for aiding Trump’s effort to use the Justice Department’s might to undermine the results of the 2020 election.
• Clark was the guy who proposed a plan to persuade Republican-led legislatures to appoint fake electors in states that Joe Biden won. Clark’s role in the scheme violated his code of professional ethics as an attorney and even threatened to destabilize the country, the panel found.
• Their recommendation will now go before the D.C. Bar’s Board of Professional Responsibility, which will make its own recommendation to the D.C. Court of Appeals. The full process could take another year to reach its conclusion.
• But Clark has been criminally charged in Georgia for his alleged role in Trump’s effort, and he was identified as a co-conspirator in the charges special counsel Jack Smith brought against Trump in Washington, D.C., last year.
• He is seen as a strong candidate to be the United States attorney general in a second Dump administration.
• Yes, of course I’m serious. Dump only wants the worst possible people around him to do his illegal and un-American bidding.
• And now, The Weather: “Never Arriving” by Allegra Krieger
• Before we get to the actual sports desk, I need to address the controversy over Algeria boxer Imane Khelif.
• I’ll make this quick and crude: Khelif is a woman. She has a vagina. She has a uterus. She has ovaries. She was assigned female at birth per her birth certificate, and is listed as female on her passport.
• She has a genetic condition that causes her body to create more testosterone and androgen than most females. She does not have an X chromosome despite reports to the contrary.
• She’s not new to the sport. She also fought at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, where she was beaten in the quarterfinals by Irish boxer Kellie Harrington, who is also female.
• But she had lost five of her first six elite-level bouts before training harder and improving. This isn’t some man pretending to be a woman. She’s just a strong fucking woman.
• Regardless, she is not transgendered. She was not born male. She was tested in the same way that all Olympic athletes are and passed. And in her country of Algeria, gender-based medical care is illegal.
• If you think that a person with some genetic advantage shouldn’t be allowed to compete, you should plan to take away the medals of the greatest swimmer of all time, Michael Phelps of the USA.
• Phelps has a genetic condition where his body produces half of the lactic acid of a typical man. It gives him a huge advantage over those who would tire more easily.
• This wave of ill-informed and unjustified hatred aimed at Khelif is fucking disgusting and vile, and those who spout it are mostly victims of right-wing disinformation.
• Imagine if that were your daughter. How would you feel?
• Okay, enough.
• From the Sports Desk… Team USA’s medal count is now up to 40 for the Paris Olympics.
• Three more golds, perhaps most notably by Simone Biles in Women's Individual All-Around Artistic gymnastics. More golds to Kate Douglass for swimming in Women's 200m Breaststroke, and Team USA for fencing in Women's Team Foil.
• More silver medals went to Regan Smith in swimming - Women's 200m Butterfly, and the Women's 4x200m Freestyle Relay (Katie Ledecky, Claire Weinstein, Paige Madden, and Erin Gemmell). Silver medals also went to Sagen Maddalena for shooting in the Women's 50m Rifle 3 Position, and to the USA equestrian team for Team Jumping (Laura Kraut, Karl Cook, McLain Ward).
• Plus a bronze for Sunisa Lee in Women's Individual All-Around Artistic gymnastics, and to Ian Barrows and Hans Henken for sailing in the Men's Skiff.
• USA! USA!
• Oh, also… there was a real-ass preseason NFL football game on last night. It ended early, but it was a game.
• While the starters watched from the sidelines, veteran Brett Rypien threw three touchdown passes, leading the Chicago Bears to a 21-17 victory over the Houston Texans last night in the Hall of Fame game.
• But a storm stoped the game with 3:31 left in the third quarter and was called off after a 36-minute delay. Shrug.
• Most people wanted to be the first to check out the NFL’s radical new kickoffs rule, but nothing exciting happened in this rain-soaked game.
• Today in history… The Carthaginian army led by Hannibal defeats a numerically superior Roman army at the Battle of Cannae (216 BC). Edward I of England returns from the Ninth Crusade and is crowned King seventeen days later (1274). During Henry Hudson's search for the Northwest Passage, he sails into what is now known as Hudson Bay (1610). The signing of the United States Declaration of Independence took place (1776). The first United States Census is conducted (1790). Jaoan’s Edo society class system its abolished (1869). General strike in Vancouver, BC (1918). Calvin Coolidge becomes president upon the death of Warren G. Harding (1923). The positron is discovered by Carl D. Anderson (1932). Adolf Hitler becomes Führer of Germany following the death of President Paul von Hindenburg (1934). The Marihuana Tax Act makes cannabis illegal in the USA (1937). Iraq invades Kuwait, leading to the Gulf War (1990). 
• August 2 is the birthday of architect/engineer Pierre Charles L’Enfant (1754), physicist John Tyndall (1820), electrical engineer/businessman Elisha Gray (1835), actress Myrna Loy (1905), Israel president Shimon Peres (1923), writer/activist James Baldwin (1924), actor Carroll O’Connor (1924), NFL executive Lamar Hunt (1932), singer-songwriter/keyboardist Garth Hudson (1937), director Wes Craven (1939), singer-songwriter/drummer Jim Capaldi (1944), songwriter/guitarist Andy Fairweather Low (1948), singer-songwriter/guitarist Andrew Gold (1951), songwriter/producer Butch Vig (1955), singer Apollonia Kotero (1959), actress Mary-Louise Parker (1964), actor/director Kevin Smith (1970, politician JD Vance (1984), NFL player Golden Tate (1988), singer-songwriter Charli XCX (1992), and NBA player Kristaps Porziņģis (1995).

I never have enough time to write about all the important shit, but hopefully you’re left a little more aware after reading this than you were before. I don’t ask for more than that. Enjoy your day.