Random News: September 24, 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 September 24, 2024, and it’s a Tuesday. It’s always nice to wake up in the morning and be alive. Well, not always nice, per se, but I believe it beats the alternative. Then again, I have no proof of this, so let’s just look at the news.

• Our endorsement of the day for Kamala Harris comes from more than 400 economists and former high-ranking US policymakers. They are endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris and her vision for the American economy.
• The group includes top Biden economist Brian Deese; Obama administration officials Jason Furman, Bill Daley and Penny Pritzker; Clinton-era policymakers Robert Reich and Alan Blinder, who also served as vice chairman of the Federal Reserve; and University of Michigan economists Justin Wolfers and Claudia Goldin, who won the Nobel Prize last year for tracking women’s labor participation and the evolving wage gap.
• “With Kamala Harris in the White House, workers, families, and businesses can be confident that they have a president who will work relentlessly to build a strong, pro-growth economy for all Americans,” they wrote.
• I agree.
• And the 2024 General Election is six weeks from today. Act accordingly.
• Moving on…
• We don’t talk about polls here. And I’m about to tell you why.
• Senate Democrats are worried pollsters are once again undercounting the Dump vote and say Vice President Harris’s slim lead in battleground states, especially Pennsylvania, is cause for serious concern.
• And I agree. Remember, in both 2016 and 2020, Dump’s performance in the election was stronger than any of the polls at the time predicted.
• Look, Harris is doing great. If anything, she’s the one who is seeming to overperform the polls herself, driving young voters and Black and Latino voters to the polls in huge numbers.
• Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) said it well in regard to his state. “Polling has really been seriously damaged since 2016. And that’s one of the truths, is that Trump is going to be tough in Pennsylvania, and that’s absolutely the truth.”
• I’m fine that you may be feeling joyful and positive about Harris’s chance of being our next President. I’m feeling it too.
• But being lulled into a false sense of optimism can result in your not doing all you can to ensure that Harris gets the actual votes. That’s the only poll that matters… the one on November 5.
• Most trustworthy polls Harris and Dump running neck and neck, and nearly all are within the margin of error.
• So consider this a reminder that your bubble, as comfortable as it may be, is not doing you any favors.
• Surrounding yourself only with like-minded people and going out of your way to mute/block those who don’t share your positions may lead to horrendous results.
• And yes, of course… I support your right to not be exposed to targeted abuse. But don’t allow that to expand to, “I will not listen to any Republican.” You’re setting yourself up for a huge shock if you put on blinders.
• Let’s move on with some great election news that has a tangible impact.
• Nebraska’s Blue Dot seems safe for now.
• We mentioned the other day how just two states — Nebraska and Maine — award electoral votes by congressional district rather than statewide winner-take-all.
• There had been a big push from the Dump campaign to suddenly change that in the Cornhusker State, but it met a significant setback yesterday when a pivotal Omaha state senator said he would not support Dump’s last-ditch effort to overturn the 30-year law.
• State Sen. Mike McDonnell, a former Democrat who joined the GOP earlier this year, said in a statement yesterday that he would not vote to change the law in Nebraska before the November election.
• Brave man.
• He said, “After deep consideration, it is clear to me that right now, 43 days from Election Day, is not the moment to make this change. I have notified Governor Pillen that I will not change my long-held position and will oppose any attempted changes to our electoral college system before the 2024 election.”
• McDonnell had been seen as the last best hope from Republicans to change the law before November. The “Blue Dot” in Nebraska represents the more urban and liberal Omaha area.
• In 2016, all five of the state’s electoral votes went to Dump. But in 2020, the Omaha-area Blue Dot flexed its power, delivering a single electoral vote for Joe Biden in a sea of red.
• And per above, in an election that could be super close, every electoral vote matters. There is a scenario where the two candidates could end up at 269-269, but we won’t discuss that potential nightmare just yet. 
• Moving on.
• Israeli strikes on Lebanon yesterday killed more than 500 people, including more than 90 women and children in the deadliest barrage since the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war.
• Thousands of Lebanese fled the south, and the main highway out of the southern port city of Sidon was jammed with cars heading toward Beirut.
• And as I warned you would likely happen, the U.S. is sending a small number of additional troops to the Middle East in response to this sharp spike in violence between Israel and Hezbollah forces in Lebanon.
• The Pentagon would not say how many more forces would be deployed or what they would be tasked to do. The U.S. currently has about 40,000 troops in the region.
• Yesterday, the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman, two Navy destroyers, and a cruiser set sail from Norfolk, VA. The ships’ departure opens up the possibility that the U.S. could keep both the Truman and the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, which is in the Arabian Gulf, in the region in case more violence breaks out.
• Ugh. Can we not do the war thing?
• Let’s move on to the state of Ohio, where the GOP candidate for Senate had some things to say about women at a recent town hall.
• Bernie Moreno, who is trying to unseat respected Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), stated, “You know, the left has a lot of single issue voters. Sadly, by the way, there’s a lot of suburban women, a lot of suburban women that are like, ‘Listen, abortion is it. If I can’t have an abortion in this country whenever I want, I will vote for anybody else.’ … OK. It’s a little crazy by the way, but — especially for women that are like past 50 — I’m thinking to myself, ‘I don’t think that’s an issue for you.'”
• Holy fuck. So, women are crazy, and post-menopausal women don’t matter. Good job, Bernie.
• This would be a good place to note that 57% of Ohioans voted to protect their reproductive freedom last year. I don’t think that’s crazy… and I do think that women in post-childbearing years still have a voice.
• Vote for Sherrod Brown, Ohioans. Current polling has them neck and neck, so get ready to kick ass for him. Encourage others not to vote for that piece of shit Moreno.
• Donnie Dump also had some thoughts to share about women and abortion at his rally yesterday.
• “All they can talk about is abortion. That’s all they talk about, and it really no longer pertains, because we’ve done something on abortion that nobody thought was possible,” he said in reference to his role in having the Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022.
• Dumpy also said some supremely creepy shit about women in general.
• “Because I am your protector. I want to be your protector. As president, I have to be your protector. I hope you don’t make too much of it. I hope the fake news doesn’t go, ‘Oh he wants to be their protector.’ Well, I am. As president, I have to be your protector.”
• What the fuck?
• Let’s move on, this time to California.
• Yesterday, CA attorney general Rob Bonta announced a lawsuit against ExxonMobil, alleging it engaged in a decades-long deception about whether the plastics it manufactured can be recycled.
• Bonta said, ”For decades, ExxonMobil has been deceiving the public to convince us that plastic recycling could solve the plastic waste and pollution crisis when they clearly knew this wasn't possible. ExxonMobil lied to further its recording-breaking profits at the expense of our planet and possibly jeopardizing our health."
• Plastics are difficult to recycle. Bonta pointed out,"92% of plastics in advanced recycling become transportation fuel — only a very small amount is recycled. Exxon can only recycle about 1% of its own plastic."
• Get their asses.
• Let’s keep our political focus once again on North Carolina, where top Republican leaders have called on Mark Robinson to provide proof that he wasn’t behind weird and sleazy posts on a porn site.
• New info keeps coming up that dig Robinson’s hole deeper and deeper. Turns out they tracked the location of the IP address of the posts to near Robinson’s home, and found his email address is also registered with other previously unreported dating websites.
• In addition to the previously-mentioned Ashley Madison, the account registered to Robinson’s email address was also on the dating website Fling, Adult Friend Finder, and Mate 1, as well as the now-defunct website Lords Of Porno.
• Meanwhile, the Republican Governors Association has abruptly stopped placing ads on Robinson’s behalf. The organization and its super PAC had already spent roughly $16 million on ads in the race.
• That leaves Robinson without any more TV ads scheduled. Democrat Josh Stein’s campaign has booked $13 million worth of ads for the coming weeks.
• Womp womp.
• And then yesterday, another big blow to Robinson the Black Nazi by way of Georgia GOP Gov. Brian Kemp, who officially withdrew his support. 
• The Georgia governor’s statement came after The Atlanta Journal-Constitution obtained photographs of Kemp speaking at an August fundraiser in North Carolina for Robinson.
• No one wants any association with that guy.
• In other news…
• I did not realize until just now it is Banned Books Week, an observance that was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in libraries, bookstores, and schools.
• The good news: the American Library Association found a substantial drop in 2024 so far in complaints about books stocked in public, school and academic libraries, and in the number of books receiving objections.
• But PEN America is documenting an explosion in books actually being removed from school shelves in 2023-24, tripling to more than 10,000 over the previous year. More than 8,000 of those were pulled in Florida and Iowa alone, where laws restricting the content of books have been passed.
• The book bans have overwhelmingly featured stories that are by or about people of color and the LGBTQ community, and book-banning efforts have increasingly restricted stories by and about women and girls.
• I’d love to recommend a banned book to you. Read ‘Slaughterhouse-Five’ by Kurt Vonnegut (1969), one of the most enduring anti-war novels of all time. I was probably 15 when I first read it.
• From the Weird Science Desk… scientists in the United Kingdom have stored the entire human genome on a “5D memory crystal,” in the hope that it could be used in the future as a blueprint to bring humanity back from extinction.
• I mean, cool idea, but that’s not terrifying or anything, right?
• The crystal can hold up to 360 terabytes of information for billions of years and can withstand extreme conditions, including freezing, fires, direct impact force, cosmic radiation and temperatures of up to 1,000 degrees Celsius.
• They describe the data storage on the crystal as 5D because the information is translated into five different dimensions of its nanostructures — their height, length, width, orientation and position.
• And now, The Weather: “Boiler Room” by Callahan & Witscher
• It’s been awhile since we did a word count.
• I started Zak’s Random News in May 2022. I believe that its purpose on that day was that I had a bunch of observations on current events, and didn’t want to bombard Facebook with like 10 different posts.
• So I shoved them all into a single post, delimited them via bullet points, and now here we are.
• Our current word count since then is 1,099,746 words. Is that a lot of words? Um, yeah.
• The King James Authorized Bible has 783,137 words. If you’re a Jew, you may know that the Hebrew Bible has 306,757 words. In the five books of the Torah, there are just 79,980. I have them all beat by a lot.
• How about really meaty novels?
• Les Miserables by Victor Hugo has 568,751. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy has 567,246. Ulysses by James Joyce has just 268,170 words. 
• However, I can put things in perspective but comparing my Random News to writing of the world’s biggest word whore, the beloved Stephen King. I believe the current count of all of his works is now at 6,641,958.
• It would take me another four years at my current rate to catch up with ol’ Steve.
• From the Sports Desk… yet another NFL upset last night when the Washington Commanders (a -7.5 point underdog) beat the Cincinnati Bengals, who were predicted to be good again this year but are now 0-3.
• No one knows anything about football this year. I’m going to start making my pool picks via dart throws. I can’t do any worse than I’m doing by using actual logic to pick winners.
• Today in history… The Battle of Rowton Heath in England is a Parliamentarian victory over a Royalist army commanded in person by King Charles (1645). The United States Congress passes the Judiciary Act, creating the office of the Attorney General and federal judiciary system and ordering the composition of the Supreme Court (1789). General (and future President) Zachary Taylor captures Monterrey in the Mexican-American War (1846). Gold prices plummet after President Grant orders the Treasury to sell large quantities of gold after Jay Gould and James Fisk plot to control the market (1869). Teddy Roosevelt proclaims Devils Tower in Wyoming as the nation's first National Monument (1906). Jimmy Doolittle performs the first flight without a window, proving that full instrument flying from take off to landing is possible (1929). Cathay Pacific Airways is founded in Hong Kong (1946). The Honda Motor Company is founded (1948). President Eisenhower sends the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock, Arkansas, to enforce desegregation (1957). USS Enterprise, the world's first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, is launched (1960). Representatives of 71 nations sign the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty at the United Nations (1996). 
• September 24 is the birthday of Roman emperor Vitellius (15), Guru Ram Das (1534), historian/politician Horace Walpole (1717), SCOTUS Chief Justice John Marshall (1755), athlete Lottie Dodd (1871), third oldest person ever Sarah Knauss (1880), singer-songwriter/guitarist Blind Lemon Jefferson (1893), novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896), soldier/pilot Dick Bong (1920), sportscaster Jim McKay (1921), puppeteer/director/producer Jim Henson (1936), singer/activist Linda McCartney (1941), guitarist Jerry Donahue (1946), actor Phil Hartman (1948), MLB player Rafael Palmiero (1964), and drummer Janet Weiss (1965).

That’s plenty of news. Time for me to do other things. Enjoy your day.