Random News: August 28, 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 28, 2024, and it’s a Wednesday. It’s super overcast here this morning; I’m sitting in a basically dark room at 7am, since I (thus far) refuse to turn on the light in the morning. That won’t last as the Earth tilts more towards its pole versus the angle of the sun, but I’m still hanging on to summer for awhile. Let’s do some news… there’s a lot of it.

• I know I’ve discussed this before — probably in depth during the 2022 midterm elections.
• But if the whole country had the voting flexibility and security we have in California, things would be a whole lot better for everyone.
• Here’s how it works: as a registered voter, I get mailed a ballot a good month or so out from the election.
• It also includes a full booklet and sample ballot so I can research and plan ahead.
• Then I have multiple options. I can use the included postage-paid envelope and submit my ballot that way. Or — and this is what I always do now — there are authorized ballot dropbox locations that are all over the place.
• The nearest one to me is at the park that’s a block east of me. I stroll over there, usually with my son and Kat, and drop my sealed ballot in the secure box. I usually send mine in a good 2-3 weeks ahead of the election.
• And I always have the option — not sure why I’d do this but the option is there — to go submit my ballot on election day in person at a polling place.
• But wait. If you sign up for a free program called BallotTrax, I then get text or email verification that my ballot has been received and counted. That’s it. It’s so easy.
• Again, I wish it was that easy and secure for everyone in the USA. Some states go out of their way to make it more difficult, most likely in the attempt to purposefully disenfranchise a certain segment of the populace.
• Let’s do some news.
• Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz will sit for their first joint interview on Thursday as Democrats work to sustain the high level of excitement from last week’s Democratic National Convention.
• The interview, somewhat alarmingly conducted by CNN’s chief political correspondent and anchor Dana Bash, will air at 9pm EDT on Thursday. It occurs as the candidates embark on a bus tour through the battleground state of Georgia.
• It’s also the first time Harris has sat with a journalist for an in-depth, on-the-record conversation since Biden dropped his bid for a second term and endorsed her on July 21, a fact that has been a talking point for MAGAs.
• I’d hypothesize that maybe they’ll shut the fuck up now, not we all know they won’t.
• Of not: Harris sat for three interviews with content creators and influencers during the DNC last week – an example of her campaign’s belief that voters, especially young voters, are getting their news from less traditional sources.
• I believe that’s correct. The world has changed and a big percentage of us do not immediately turn to the big names in mainstream media for all of our information.
• I mean, look at you, reading this right now.
• Let’s move on.
• El Dumpo has some new legal woes to worry about.
• Yesterday, special counsel Jack Smith filed a superseding indictment against Dumpy in which he again accused Dump of resisting the peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 presidential election. Smith narrowed the allegations after a landmark Supreme Court ruling on presidential power earlier this year.
• The new charging document is based on a more refined set of criminal acts that happened AFTER the Supreme Court ruled Trump was immune from prosecution for some of the conduct included in Smith's original 2023 indictment. 
• Smith and his team said a federal grand jury in Washington returned the superseding indictment yesterday. Prosecutors said they did not oppose waiving Dump's appearance at an arraignment on the new charging document.
• Again detailing alleged acts like organizing fake slates of presidential electors or working with his private attorneys on a legal strategy to subvert the transfer of power, Smith accused the Dumpster of using his role as a candidate for office — not as president of the United States — to overturn the election results. 
• Dump was hysterical after the indictment was announced. That man knows he has to say and do literally anything to get himself elected, because the alternative is facing dozens of serious felonies.
• Will he go to jail? I’ve always said that no, he won’t. I maintain my opinion. The legal systems in the USA — and most of the world, frankly — extend protections to wealthy and powerful people that ordinary citizens never enjoy.
• Let’s move on to someone who is actually facing justice.
• Michael Sparks was the very first insurrectionist to breach the U.S. Capitol during the January 6 attack. He was sentenced yesterday to more than four years in federal prison after telling a judge that he still believes Donald Trump's lies about the 2020 election "to this day."
• Sparks spent the weeks leading up to the failed coup attempt consuming and regurgitating right-wing lies about the last presidential election.
• His case was complicated by the Supreme Court’s shitty decision in June which impacted the obstruction of an official proceeding charge, which had been used against hundreds of January 6 defendants. Prosecutors dropped that charge before sentencing.
• However, like many MAGAs, Sparks fucked himself. The judge said he was able to take the conduct presented at trial into consideration, and said it was clear that Sparks wanted to obstruct the counting of the electoral college votes.
• Just before the attack, Sparks said that he wanted "civil war" and that he was willing to die for his lord Dumpy. Even long after January 6, Sparks continued to believe that the proof of a massive election-stealing scheme was just around the corner.
• More than 1,400 defendants have been charged in connection with the January 6 insurrection, and more than 1,000 have been convicted. Sadly, most of them say they expect Dumples to win in November and free them from prison, including violent rioter David Dempsey, who was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison earlier this month.
• Let’s move on.
• I’d really prefer not spending time in this column talking about that Orange Weirdo, but unfortunately he keeps doing things that require me to make you aware. There will come a day — a glorious day — when I will have no reason to speak of him again.
• But for now…
• Members of Dump's campaign staff had a verbal and physical altercation Monday with an official at Arlington National Cemetery, where the former president participated in a tasteless photo op, giving a happy smile and a thumbs-up over the buried body of a U.S. soldier.
• The cemetery official tried to prevent Dump staffers from filming and photographing in a section where recent U.S. casualties are buried. Arlington officials had made clear that only cemetery staff members are authorized to take photographs or film in the area, known as Section 60.
• When the cemetery official tried to prevent Dump campaign staff from entering Section 60, campaign staff verbally abused and pushed the official aside.
• Arlington National Cemetery said in a statement that it "can confirm there was an incident, and a report was filed."
• ”Federal law prohibits political campaign or election-related activities within Army National Military Cemeteries, to include photographers, content creators or any other persons attending for purposes, or in direct support of a partisan political candidate's campaign. Arlington National Cemetery reinforced and widely shared this law and its prohibitions with all participants."
• How low can he go? In a huge list of disrespectful, tasteless, and downright anti-American actions that Dump has done in his entire disgusting life, this is one of the worst.
• Can you imagine being the family of that soldier who was buried there, seeing Dump smiling and waving over his grave?
• Fucking vile. Let’s move on.
• One of the main reasons — if not the only reason — Dump wanted to get aligned with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was to get his name off the ballot in swing states, where RFK Jr. would pull votes away from the Dumpster.
• And they failed even at that task.
• RFK Jr. will be unable to remove himself from the ballots in the key swing states of Michigan and Wisconsin, even after he ended his independent presidential campaign and endorsed former El Dumpo.
• He’s on the ballot in Michigan as a candidate for the Natural Law Party, which nominated him at its convention this year. In Wisconsin, the statute literally says, “Any person who files nomination papers and qualifies to appear on the ballot may not decline nomination. The name of that person shall appear upon the ballot except in case of death of the person.”
• Ha ha!
• Side note: RFK Jr. had only officially been qualified to appear on eight states’ ballots. This changes nothing.
• Also, RFK Jr. cut off the head of a dead whale and took it home. I’m just gonna leave that there.
• In other news…
• Texas does not want brown people voting in 2024.
• The nation's oldest Latino civil rights organization, LULAC, is one of several entities in Texas targeted in “voter fraud: raids led by state Attorney General Ken Paxton.
• LULAC has now requested that the Justice Department investigate Paxton's office for Voting Rights Act violations. The organization is accusing Paxton's office of carrying out illegal searches premised on voter fraud. 
• One of those targeted was Lidia Martinez, an 87-year-old who lives in San Antonio. Martinez has been a LULAC member for over 35 years and works to expand voter registration among seniors and veterans in South Texas.
• She said that last Tuesday, there was a knock on her door in the morning, and she was greeted by nine officers in tactical gear and firearms who said they were executing a search warrant. Martinez was questioned for over three hours about her voter registration efforts in Texas.
• Fucking vile Gestapo pieces of shit.
• Let’s move on before I get any angrier.
• Here’s something good, or at least just.
• Yesterday, a judge denied bond for former Okaloosa County deputy Eddie Duran, who shot and killed of a Black U.S. Air Force senior airman for (checks notes) answering his apartment door.
• Duran, 38, was charged with manslaughter with a firearm in the May 3 shooting death of 23-year-old Roger Fortson. The rare charge against a Florida law enforcement officer is a first-degree felony punishable by up to 30 years in prison.
• And now, The Weather: “I'VE BEEN EVIL” by SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE
• From the Sports Desk… NFL teams have until 4PM EDT today to pare down to their final 53-man rosters for the 2024-25 season.
• Most teams have already submitted their rosters. I took a look at the Raiders’ final cuts and they seem well thought out. My only complaint is that they waived a cornerback named Woo Governor.
• I couldn’t tell you anything about his ability to play. I just liked his name.
• Today in history… Fatimah, daughter of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, dies (632). Pedro Menéndez de Avilés founds the oldest continuously European-occupied city in the continental United States near St. Augustine, Florida (1565). William Herschel discovers Saturn’s moon Enceladus (1789). The US takes possession of then-unoccupied Midway Atoll (1867). Caleb Bradham's beverage "Brad's Drink" gets a better brand name, being changed to “Pepsi-Cola" (1898). Italy declares war on Germany in WWI (1914). Nazi Germany begins its mass arrests of Jehovah's Witnesses, who are interned in concentration camps (1936). Toyota Motors becomes an independent company spun off from Toyota Industries (1937). Black teenager Emmett Till is brutally murdered in Mississippi, kicking off the civil rights movement (1955). Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gives his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech (1963). Cops and protestors clash at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago (1968). 
• August 28 is the birthday of writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749), physician George Whipple (1878), conductor Karl Böhm (1894), writer/illustrator Jack Kirby (1917), actor Donald O’Connor (1925), actress Roxie Roker (1929), MLB player/manager Lou Piniella (1943), drummer Danny Seraphine (1948), MLB player Ron Guidry (1950), actor Luis Guzmán (1956), actor Daniel Stern (1957), singer-songwriter Shania Twain (1965), actor Billy Boyd (1968), actor/singer-songwriter Jack Black (1969), actor Jason Priestly (1969), NHL player Pierre Turgeon (1969), singer LeAnn Rimes (1982), singer-songwriter Florence Welch (1986), and singer-songwriter Cassadee Pope (1989).

Okay then. Time to do things. Enjoy your day.