Random News: October 21, 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 October 21, 2024, and it’s a Monday. My alarm was strident at 6am after four lovely vacation days, but here we are. I really do appreciate my coffee at the moment.

• Anyway, hello everyone. I arrived back from Joshua Tree yesterday afternoon in record time… 2-1/2 hours door to door, back to Redondo Beach.
• We were just fortunate that the small traffic pockets we hit on the 10 and near Riverside were brief.
• I’ll write more about the trip in a separate post. I have plenty of stories to relate to you. Meanwhile… the news.
• Yes, a ton of stuff happened while I was gone. Dump opening his speech in Pennsylvania with a long and drawn out story about Arnold Palmer’s giant penis.
• Kamala Harris’s birthday celebration with Stevie Wonder leading a choir of churchgoers to sing to her.
• Dump pretending to serve fries at a closed McDonald’s.
• So yes, let’s assume you know things have happened in the past few days.
• But your focus should be on one thing: the 2024 general election is two weeks from tomorrow.
• Do not panic. I mean, let me be real with you… I have no idea who’s going to win. Neither do you. I don’t trust polls, and there are plenty of discrepancies even in the legitimate ones out there.
• Harris could win. Dump could win. Either could win by a tiny fraction. One of them could win by a lot. We do not know. The only thing I ask of you, as I’ve done from the start: vote. And encourage those around you to vote.
• That’s it.
• I will say those to anyone who supports any candidate: if you think your person will win in a landslide, and you don’t need to vote as a result, you’re in for a very sad surprise come November 5.
• No one will save you but yourself. You got this. Vote.
• Many people are voting early… more than ever, it wold seem. I did, but then, I always do.
• Over a million North Carolinians have already voted in the November general election. 
• The North Carolina State Election Board said 1,008,123 ballots have already been cast in the 2024 election, including 916,433 ballots cast via in-person early voting, 77,831 ballots via civilian absentee voting, and nearly 14,000 cast via military or overseas absentee voting.
• That’s already 13 percent of the state’s 7.8 million registered voters.
• And per a new USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll, the early voters are choosing Kamala Harris. The vice president leading the demented douchebag by 63%-34%, close to 2-1, among those who have already voted.
• But for people who say they’re waiting to vote on election day? That preference turns around among those who plan to wait until Election Day to vote, with Trump ahead 52%-35%.
• But overall, in that same poll, Harris was favored by 45%, Trump by 44% − a coin-toss contest.
• So again, I’ll tell you: the election is two weeks from tomorrow. You have to vote. Sitting on the sidelines and letting everyone else control your destiny is simply not an option.
• Let’s move on.
• Israel’s latest target in Lebanon? Banks.
• Their military hit a string of branches belonging to the Al-Qard Al-Hassan bank in a volley of airstrikes. They were targeting Hezbollah‘s finances, expanding its offensive in an assault that sparked panic.
• The U.S. and Israel have linked the bank to the Iran-backed militant and political group.
• The United States launched a new push for a diplomatic solution to the intensifying regional conflict. 
• Back in the USA…
• For the third time in a week, Dumples the Clown repeated his charge that Democrats allied against him are “the enemy from within.”
• When he says it, he means it. Stop making excuses for him. He was asked, “Are you prepared to say now that you will not use law enforcement to punish or prosecute your political opponents?”
• And Dump replied, “Excuse me, that’s what they’re using on me.”
• In a separate Fox News interview that aired on Oct. 13, Trump said that his foes could be “very easily handled” by the National Guard, or, “if really necessary, by the military.”
• So keep in mind, this guy says that if you elected him President, he will use our military on our own citizens. Many of them your family and friends.
• Believe him.
• I’ve got a hilarious side note about that fat old orange fool.
• When he did his stunt at McDonald’s over the weekend, Dump did not wear gloves or a hairnet during his visit, stating that his hands were "nice and clean."
• But the McDonald's restaurant where Dementia Don pretended to work on Sunday had failed its last health inspection, documents show. Why?
• One of the reasons: employees not washing their hands.
• Oh mighty irony.
• Moving on.
• Let’s talk about someone who matters: Kamala Harris.
• She’s out to win over suburban voters uneasy about the Dumpster as she touches down in three Midwestern battleground states today to hold moderated conversations along with Republican Liz Cheney.
• The Veep will make appearances in three suburban counties won by Republican Nikki Haley before she dropped out of the race for the GOP nomination: Chester County, PA; Oakland County, MI; and Waukesha County, WI.
• Smart move.
• The Democratic nominee is looking for support from every possible voter. Her campaign is hoping to persuade those who haven’t made up their minds, mobilize any Democrats considering sitting this one out, and pick off voters in areas where support for Dump may be fading.
• Let’s move on.
• One thing that’s really hurting Republicans’ chances of winning: themselves.
• Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said yesterday that claims about vote integrity from his fellow Republicans will “really hurt” turnout for his party.
• Raffensperger had already pushed back on a claim from another Georgia Republican — Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene — about a Northern Georgia “voter’s printed ballot” being “changed from their selections made on” a Dominion Voting Systems machine.
• As a smart person can see, what they’re doing is setting up a plan to falsely claim that the election is rigged if Harris wins.
• In other news…
• A hack this month on the world’s largest archive of the internet — whose mission is to provide “universal access to all knowledge” — has compromised millions of users’ information and forced a temporary shutdown of its services.
• The attack on the Internet Archive leaked identifying information from more than 31 million user accounts, including patron email addresses and encrypted passwords. The organization said its vast cache of archival material “is safe” following the breach.
• The nonprofit has yet to share further updates on the breach of sensitive information.
• It’s a shame because the Internet Archive really is a valuable tool. being able to look back over the course of time at the ever-changing information on web sites is cool in many ways.
• And now, The Weather: “Masc” by Chat Pile
• From the Sports Desk… congrats to the New York Liberty. They are WNBA champions following a 67-62 overtime victory yesterday over the Minnesota Lynx.
• The win gave the Liberty their first championship in their 27-year history. It was the final game in a hard-fought 3-2 series victory.
• In MLB, the Dodgers beat the Mets 10-5 last night, thereby winning the NLCS 4-2 and punching their ticket to the World Series.
• The Dodgers and Yankees — both 1-seed teams in their respective leagues this year — have played each other more than any other World Series matchup.
• This will be their 12th battle going back to when they were the Brooklyn Dodgers — but it’s the first New York vs. Los Angeles World Series in 43 years, since 1981.
• In that 1981 matchup, the Yankees broke out early to take a 2-0 series lead before the Dodgers stormed back to win the next four games.
• Exciting! 
• The Yankees have won eight of the previous matchups, and the Dodgers have won three. The WS starts on Friday.
• Today in history… Ferdinand Magellan discovers a strait now known as the Strait of Magellan (1520). In Boston Harbor, the 44-gun United States Navy frigate USS Constitution is launched (1797). The Medicine Lodge Treaty is signed by southern Great Plains Indian leaders (1867). Thomas Edison applies for a patent for his design for an incandescent light bulb (1879). President Warren G. Harding delivers the first speech by a sitting U.S. president against lynching in the Deep South (1921). The first edition of the Ernest Hemingway novel For Whom the Bell Tolls is published (1940). The city of Aachen falls to American forces after three weeks of fighting, the first German city to fall to the Allies in WWII (1944). In New York City, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum opens to the public (1959). The meter is defined as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second (1983). Images of the dwarf planet Eris are taken and subsequently used in documenting its discovery (2005). A shooting occurs on the set of the film Rust, in which actor Alec Baldwin discharged a prop weapon which had been loaded, killing the director of photography, Halyna Hutchins, and injuring director Joel Souza (2021).
• October 21 is the birthday of poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772), chemist/dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel (1833), music producer Owen Bradley (1915), trumpeter/composer Dizzy Gillespie (1917), MLB player/manager Whitey Ford (1928), author Ursula K. Le Guin (1929), keyboardist/producer Manfred Mann (1940), guitarist/songwriter Steve Cropper (1941), singer-songwriter/guitarist Elvin Bishop (1942), judge Judy Sheindlin (1942), singer-songwriter Lux Interior (1946), astronaut Ronald McNair (1950), singer-songwriter/keyboardist Brent Mydland (1952), guitarist/songwriter Charlotte Caffey (1953), actress Carrie Fisher (1956), singer-songwriter/guitarist Steve Lukather (1957), singer-songwriter/bass player Nick Oliveri (1971), ummm… Kim Kardashian (1980), MLB player Zack Greinke (1983), NBA player Ricky Rubio (1990), and rapper/singer/songwriter Doja Cat (1995).

That’s enough for the moment. I have a busy work day ahead, but at some point, I’ll find the time to write a post about my trip back to the desert. I’m both glad I went, and glad to be back, and overall just pretty damn glad. Enjoy your day.