Random News: August 5, 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 5, 2024, and it’s a Monday. We’re still in the midst of this time poetically known as the dog days of summer, and I’m kinda over it. I haven’t worn anything other than a pair of shorts in months now… and we have yet to even hot our hot season here where I live, which is usually in September for some reason. Anyway, let’s make sure we start informed during this crucial point in history.

• In the 15 days since Joe Biden dropped out and Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee, Democrats’ poll numbers — and their chances of holding the White House — have rebounded. 
• The path to victory for Harris once again runs through seven key swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
• I’ve told you the reasons I dislike and mistrust polls. It’s the methodology.
• Almost all legitimate polls are conducted via telephone, and never online due to the extreme possibility of the results being manipulated and skewed.
• But who answers calls that are from unknown numbers or “potential spam” numbers like polls often are? Not anyone below the age of 40, or at least very few of them.
• Nevertheless, Don the Con and Vice President Harris are currently tied in key battleground states, according to a new CBS News/YouGov poll published yesterday. The poll surveyed about 3,100 registered voters between July 30 and August 2.
• The poll found Harris leading Trump by 1 point nationally, a much better position for Democrats than we were in with President Biden at the top of the ticket.
• Overall, 85 percent of Democrats and 88 percent of Republicans say they will vote, compared to 81 percent of Democrats and 90 percent of Republicans just last month.
• Among Black voters, 74 percent said they would “definitely” vote compared to 58 percent when Biden was the nominee.
• Per another poll among Latino voters in the seven swing states, Harris is blowing Dumpy out of the water by 55% to 37%.
• Harris has also widened the gender gap between the candidates, with the vice president winning 54 percent of women’s votes. Dumpy, meanwhile, is winning 54 percent of men.
• C’mon my dudes. Vote for a candidate who’s not a weak-ass pussy like Dumples, or I’m gonna assume you are equally weak.
• Harris and Dump are tied in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Arizona. Dump has a 1-point lead in Wisconsin, and a 3-point lead in Georgia and North Carolina, while Harris has a 2-point lead in Nevada.
• When third-party candidates are included, Harris extends to a 2-point lead over the Orange Guy.
• Hey, how is the campaign going for the Independent candidate whose brain was partially eaten by a parasite worm, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.?
• Well, in news that’s about to break wide open, about ten years ago, he saw a dead bear cub on the road. 
• “I pulled over and I picked up the bear and put him in the back of my van because I was gonna skin the bear,” said RFK. “It was in very good condition and I was gonna put the meat in my refrigerator.”
• But instead, he drove the cub’s carcass from upstate New York and placed it in New York’s Central Park, per a video he posted to his X account while talking to Rosanne Barr.
• Yes, I’m 100% serious. No, this is no joke or urban myth. Not parody. Not satire. I’m not making this up.
• Fucking weirdo. Anyway, for the next 92 days, we united Democrats will need to keep the pedal to the metal. There’s no holding back and no assuming someone else will do this job for you.
• In fact, there are people right this moment figuring out ways to make it difficult or impossible for you to vote.
• Case in point…
• Ohio has removed 155,000 so-called inactive and out-of-date voter registrations from the state’s voter rolls ahead of the November election, the state elections chief announced Friday.
• Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose said in a statement Friday. “Diligent list maintenance helps prevent voter fraud and ensures the voice of the voters is heard on Election Day.
• But what was this truly based on?
• The effort targeted people who have moved and are no longer eligible to vote at their former address, those with four consecutive years of voter inactivity, and people whose registrations don’t match certain details they provided to the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles, such as their name, birth date, or driver’s license number.
• In Ohio and every state, I highly recommend you vitas vote.org to confirm your current voter registration TODAY. If you’ve moved or if you didn’t vote in 2020, you’re almost certainly purged from the voter rolls.
• LaRose said residents can fill out or update their voter registration by October 7 online.
• Speaking of voting… tomorrow (August 6) is a primary day for a number of states.
• Kansas has their House election. Michigan has Senate and House. Missouri and Washington have Governor, Senate, and House races.
• If you people don’t vote this fall, you’re screwing us all.
• Moving on.
• I’m sure a lot of people are awaiting the announcement of Kamala Harris’s running mate, which should become public sometime today.
• I’ve said it many times before: I’m fine with whoever she chooses. Nothing about her selection of a VP influences my enthusiasm to put her into the White House as our first woman President.
• We anticipate the VP announcement today, the official acceptance of her nomination tonight, and then tomorrow, the departure on a swing-state campaign blitz.
• Her campaign schedule is far heavier than her opponent, a 78-year-old man in poor health. Starting tomorrow, Harris will campaign across seven swing states over five days, one of the heaviest weeks of campaign-related travel in the general election.
• Her team has vetted six contenders to be her running mate: Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
• Walz, Shapiro, and Kelly each met separately with Harris yesterday. Tomorrow, she will appear aside her running mate for the first time Tuesday in Philadelphia, where the pair will kick off the cross-country tour.
• Her travel swing is a stark contrast to the pace of Donnie Dump or that of President Joe Biden. Dumples the Clown has delivered remarks in 10 states since the June 27 debate, while Biden traveled to campaign stops in eight states during the final 24 days of his candidacy. 
• Harris’ travel this week will take her to seven states in less than a fourth of the time.
• She’ll visit five states that she and Biden flipped blue in 2020: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, and Arizona. She will also make stops in North Carolina, which Biden lost by a slim margin, and Nevada, where Democrats won narrowly.
• Good plan. I can’t wait for more of you to see the energy and intelligence she’ll bring to the role of president.
• Moving on to some more nefarious election news.
• Elon Musk’s political action committee is in trouble. It’s being investigated by the Michigan secretary of state’s office amid efforts to collect voter data.
• Fucking figures. What an asshole. If you people are smart, you’ll avoid his shitty X (aka Twitter) social media platform like the plague.
• Musk’s committee, created to back Dumpy, has been acquiring detailed voter information from those living in Michigan and other battleground states after people submit their personal data through a section on the PAC’s website that says “register to vote.”
• After clicking on the “register to vote” tab on America PAC’s website, users in states like Michigan can submit a ZIP code, address, and phone number. People with a Michigan address are brought to a page that says “thank you” and asks users to “complete the form below” to help wrap up the voter registration process.
• They quickly pulled the form down yesterday afternoon after the investigation became public.
• And interestingly, the site does not directly register people to vote for those with an address in a swing state.
• It’s unclear if any laws in Michigan have been broken by the America PAC, but Musk refused to comment.
• We’ll keep an eye on that. For now, let’s move on.
• Dumpy was finally forced to talk about something other than Kamala Harris’s race. Unfortunately but typically (for him), he picked the wrong thing.
• Dump luridly claimed with no evidence that Venezuelan gang members were “plotting to conduct ambush attacks” on American cops, then added: “All the while Harris and Biden sit in the White House and try to figure out who is dumber.”
• Then the Dumpster proceeded to blame “Border Czar Harris” for a series of crimes by migrants. Note: Harris was addressing the root causes of Central American migration, but the Department of Homeland Security, not Harris, secures the border.
• But Dumpy picked the wrong thing at the wrong time. DHS data shows that border encounters between ports of entry plummeted again to approximately 57,000 in July. The data, which is preliminary until its official release in the coming days, shows the fifth straight month of declining border crossings and the lowest monthly figure of the Biden administration. 
• Nine separate months during the Trump administration saw more border crossings than July under Biden did.
• These numbers badly undermine Trump’s primary attack line on Harris, and prove that the truly “dumb” approach is Trump’s.
• The dropping border numbers are attributed to Biden’s new executive actions, announced in June, that effectively suspend asylum-seeking when border encounters rise above certain thresholds.
• So, despite Dump having told the Republicans in Congress not to pass the border patrol bill, Biden’s sharp-thinking executive action has accomplished much of the goal without their help.
• As soon as Harris is in office and there’s a Democratic majority in both chambers, we’ll also pass that comprehensive border legislation.
• Blue wave, baby. Let’s do it.
• Let’s head over to Oklahoma for some news about church and state.
• Educators in Oklahoma are refusing a state order to incorporate the Bible into their lesson plans, setting up an inevitable showdown with the start of the school year just weeks away.
• Ryan Walters, the state superintendent of public instruction, last week released guidelines to schools for how they should be integrating the Bible into classrooms, saying educators who are against the initiative “will comply, and I will use every means to make sure of it.”
• Fuck you, you fucking prick.
• Walters’s orders, which follows a June announcement of mandatory biblical curricula for grades five through 12 in the state, says that lessons on the Christian text should emphasize its historical context, literary significance and artistic and musical influence.
• In public schools! This is incredibly anti-American and against the First Amendment of our Constitution.
• Moving over to Arizona, where Democrat Ruben Gallego is promoting Republican backing for his Senate campaign as the congressman works to assemble a winning coalition in the swing state.
• Smart.
• A list released yesterday of 39 Republican and independent supporters of his campaign includes moderate Republicans and some former Republicans who held elected office or other roles in business or politics.
• Gallego’s Republican opponent, Kari Lake, has criticized McCain in the past and once called McCain a “loser.”
• While Republicans have more registered voters in the state, President Joe Biden, Sen. Mark Kelly, Gov. Katie Hobbs and other Democrats have cobbled together narrow victories by holding their party together, dominating among independents and getting support from an outsize share of Republicans who dislike the direction of the GOP under Donald Trump.
• Again, smart.
• And now, The Weather: “Net” by Retail Drugs
• In real weather news, Hurricane Debby has reached the Big Bend coast of Florida, bringing with it the potential for catastrophic flooding and life-threatening storm surge as it slowly passes over the northern part of the state.
• Record-setting rain could pummel coastal Georgia and South Carolina as the storm heads east.
• Stay safe, peoples.
• Something I’d meant to cover over the weekend and forgot.
• Aerosmith has essentially retired as a band. Officially they’ve just stopped touring, but I can’t imagine any circumstances that would allow them to create more music in any aspect.
• They announced it on Friday, which was nearly one year after singer/co-founder Steven Tyler fractured his larynx (aaaaaaa) during a September 2023 show. Tyler is 76 and the rest of the band are septuagenarians as well.
• I never liked Aerosmith in their later, more well-known ‘80s era, but they had a few albums in the mid/late ‘70s that ranked among the best straight-up hard rock records in history.
• Let’s do a chart. It’s the top of the Billboard Hot 100 singles in early August 1984. At that time, I was 15 and Kamala Harris was 19. She was at Howard University, interning as a mailroom clerk for California senator Alan Cranston, chairing the economics society, and leading the debate team.
• I was doing none of those things.
• 1. When Doves Cry (Prince). 2. Ghostbusters (Ray Parker Jr.). 3. State of Shock (The Jacksons). 4. Dancing In The Dark (Bruce Springsteen). 5. What's Love Got To Do With It (Tina Turner). 6. Infatuation (Rod Stewart). 7. Sad Songs (say So Much) (Elton John). 8. Stuck On You (Lionel Richie). 9. Breakin'...there's No Stopping Us (Ollie And Jerry). 10. I Can Dream About You (Dan Hartman). 11. Eyes Without A Face (Billy Idol). 12. Legs (ZZ Top). 13. Jump (for My Love) (The Pointer Sisters). 14. Doctor! Doctor! (Thompson Twins). 15. If Ever You're In My Arms Again (Peabo Bryson). 16. Panama (Van Halen). 17. Sunglasses At Night (Corey Hart). 18. Almost Paradise… Love Theme From Footloose (Mike Reno And Ann Wilson). 19. Round And Round (Ratt). 20. Magic (The Cars).
• From the not-Sports Desk… a story of an athlete who never should have been allowed to participate in the Olympics.
• I’m of course referring to Dutch beach volleyball player Steven van de Velde, who was convicted of raping a 12-year-old British girl in 2016. He was eliminated from the Paris Olympics on Sunday night when he and partner Matthew Immers lost to Brazil in straight sets.
• Van de Velde served 13 months in prison after his 2016 rape conviction in England. Although victims advocates, lawmakers and fans had called for him to be banned from the Olympics, the IOC has said it was powerless to stop the Netherlands from sending an athlete who qualified in the usual way.
• It’s funny, but I don’t recall seeing conservatives getting too worked up about this guy. It’s almost like to them, raping 12-year-olds isn’t worth getting upset about. Huh.
• Related side-fact: about 1 in 10 women have a condition called polycystic ovary syndrome, or PCOS for short. One of its effects high levels of androgens like testosterone, which causes excess hair growth, weight gain, and related issues.
• According to the definition of most MAGA types, the excess hormones would define those women as men.
• From the Sports Desk… the total medal count for Team USA at the Paris Olympics is now 75. Recent additions include…
• Gold medals for Bobby Finke in swimming - Men's 1500m Freestyle, gold for the Women's 4x100m Medley swimming (Regan Smith, Lilly King, Gretchen Walsh, and Torri Huske), and gold for the current fastest man on Earth, Noah Lyles, who won the Men's 100m.
• The silver medal count got additions via the Men's 4x100m Medley swimming team (Ryan Murphy, Nic Fink, Caeleb Dressel, and Hunter Armstrong). Silver medals also went to the US Mixed Relay Triathlon team (Seth Rider, Taylor Spivey, Morgan Pearson, and Taylor Knibb), to Simone Biles for her Women's Floor Exercise gymnastics, and to Austen Jewell Smith and Vincent Hancock in Mixed Skeet shooting.
• We also picked up a bronze via Fred Kerley in the Men's 100m, and another for Jordan Chiles in Women's Floor Exercise gymnastics.
• Side note: the USA is currently leading all countries with 75 medals. China has 52, and France, the host country, has 44.
• Great Britain (38), Australia (31), South Korea (26), Japan (26), Italy (25), Canada (17), and Netherlands (15) round out the current top 10.
• USA! USA!
• Today in history… Guangwu claims the throne of China and restores the Han Dynasty (25). Henry I is crowned King of England (1100). Sir Humphrey Gilbert established the first English colony in North America in what is now St. John’s, NL (1583). The Mayflower departs England on its first attempt to go to North America; it fails (1620). Journalist John Peter Zenger is acquitted of seditious libel since what he published about the royal governor of New York was true (1735). The British Navy calls the electric telegraph a “totally unnecessary” invention when they could wave flags to communicate instead (1816). The US government levies the first income tax to pay for the Civil War (1861). Standard Oil Company — today known as ExxonMobil — is established in New Jersey (1882). Bertha Benz takes the first road trip in a car (1888). The first electric traffic light is installed in Cleveland, OH (1914). Harry Houdini spends 91 minutes underwater before escaping (1926). Nazis massacre 50,000 civilians in Wola, Poland (1944). American Bandstand debuts on ABC (1957). Nelson Mandela is jailed in South Africa and won’t be released until 1990 (1962). Marilyn Monroe is found dead in her home from an alleged drug overdose (1962). Richard Nixon is ordered by the Supreme Court to release the “smoking gun” tape and loses all political support (1974). Ronald Reagan fires 11,359 striking air traffic controllers (1981). 
• August 5 is the birthday of novelist Guy de Maupassant (1850), “elephant man” Joseph Merrick (1862), lawyer and judge Gertrude Rush (1880), actor John Huston (1906), astronaut Neil Armstrong (1930), record producer Joe Boyd (1942), actress Loni Anderson (1945), physicist Shirley Ann Jackson (1946), singer-songwriter/guitarist Rick Derringer (1947), guitarist/songwriter Pat Smear (1959), NBA player Patrick Ewing (1962), rapper Adam Yauch, aka MCA (1964), politician Marine Le Pen (1968), director James Gunn (1970), and NBA player Anthony Edwards (2001).

That’s plenty of news. I have a busy work day planned, and I’m staying tuned for the Harris VP announcement which could be any moment. Enjoy your day.