Random News: October 31, 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.

---

Ghoul morning (evil cackle, lightning flashes). It’s October 31, 2024, and it’s a Thursday for some reason. It’s also Halloween.

• What the fuck is Halloween, anyway?
• As we know, Halloween has become a celebration of horror, being associated with the macabre and supernatural.
• One theory holds that many Halloween traditions were influenced by Celtic harvest festivals, particularly the Gaelic festival Samhain, which are believed to have pagan roots.
• Some suggest that Samhain itself was Christianized as All Hallow's Day, along with its eve, by the early Church.
• Celebrated in Scotland and Ireland for centuries, Scottish and Irish immigrants took many Halloween customs to North America in the 19th century, and then through American influence various Halloween customs spread to other countries by the late 20th and early 21st century.
• A lot of the current traditions — putting on costumes, going trick-or-treating, playing pranks — stem from celebrations that go back many centuries.
• What’s with the carving of pumpkins and making jack-o’-lanterns, though?
• Well, in Ireland, Scotland, and Northern England, the turnip has traditionally been carved during Halloween, but immigrants to North America used the native pumpkin, which is both much softer and much larger, making it easier to carve than a turnip.
• Even seen a carved turnip? Way more horrifying.
• Anyway, the American tradition of carving pumpkins is recorded in 1837, and was originally associated with harvest time in general, not becoming specifically associated with Halloween until the mid-to-late 19th century.
• I’ll end this by saying that first, I’m not doing shit for Halloween (I very rarely do), and I also never know if we’re going to get three trick-or-treaters, or 300 of them.
• Nevertheless, I am prepared. The candy selections at my home include Snickers, Milky Way, 3 Musketeers, and Twix. they were all in one variety pack, you see.
• None of those, somewhat surprisingly, are in this year’s top selections of Halloween candies, per a report from a candy web site. In order, the popular treats for 2024…
• 1. M&M’s 2. Reese's Cups 3. Sour Patch Kids 4. Skittles 5. Starburst 6. Hot Tamales 7. Candy Corn 8. Hershey's Kisses 9. Hershey's Mini Bars 10. Butterfinger
• A different report lists them as such…
• 1. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups 2. M&Ms 3. Snickers 4. Peanut M&M’s 5. Twix 6. Kit Kat 7. Hershey's Milk Chocolate 8. Milky Way 9. Sour Patch Kids 10. Skittles
• Okay, let’s do some actual news.
• The election is in five days.
• Are you ready for “hardship” under a second Dump presidency?
• Dump surrogate Elon Musk said that’s what will happen and it’s what you deserve.
• At a recent virtual town hall event held on Musk’s social media platform, the multibillionaire said he was “praying for a victory” for Trump, so he could begin working in a high-level Cabinet role to axe federal spending.
• “We have to reduce spending to live within our means,” Musk said. “And, you know, that necessarily involves some temporary hardship, but it will ensure long-term prosperity.”
• A huge majority of economists agree that Dump’s economic and fiscal proposals will spark an economic calamity. 
• In a joint letter released last week, 23 Nobel Prize-winning economists warned that Dump’s terrible plans for tariffs, tax cuts for the wealthy, and an immigration crackdown — including detaining and deporting millions of people — would “lead to higher prices, larger deficits, and greater inequality.”
• More than anything, they wrote, electing Dump would undermine the rule of law and political certainty, “the most important determinants of economic success.”
• At this moment, under the leadership of Biden and Harris, the U.S. economy heads toward Election Day on firm footing, with consumer confidence rising, employers still adding hundreds of thousands of jobs, wages handily outpacing inflation, and overall economic output in great shape.
• And now the Dump Team says you will have to endure hardship under his regime, while the super-rich get even more wealthy and there’s less and less money for a shrinking middle class.
• Please vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.
• And while you’re at it, vote for Democratic candidates up and down the ballot.
• Speaking of voting, I have the latest statistics for people like me — and many of you — who have already voted.
• As of yesterday afternoon, more than 55 million people have already cast their ballots — either in person or by mail during early voting.
• Of those, more than 29 million early votes have been cast at polling places in-person, and another 25.9 million mail ballots have been returned. There were more than 65.6 million mail ballots requested.
• A slightly higher number of registered Democrats, just under 11 million, have already voted, compared to nearly 10 million registered Republicans, according to data from 25 states that report party registration.
• Of those who have submitted ballots in-person during early voting, 3.8 million are registered Republicans and 3.1 million are registered Democrats.
• For people voting by mail, more Democrats, 7.3 million, have returned ballots, compared to just over 5.6 million registered GOP voters.
• So what does that mean for Election Day? Well, using the battleground state of Georgia as an example, more than 3 million people have voted so far, which is 45% of registered voters in the state.
• GA Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said that the figures mark the best turnout during the early voting period that the state has seen.
• And what it might mean — depending on where you live — is that lines are shorter than usual on Election Day, and that perhaps votes can be tallied more quickly.
• Unless some set of circumstances means that we have to wait for Maricopa County, AZ to count their votes.
• The county, which includes Phoenix, is one of the most consequential battlegrounds in the country. Their election workers on November 5 will begin a grindingly slow tally of every ballot cast in the vast expanse.
• And this year, election officials warn it could take as long as 13 days to tabulate all of the ballots in Maricopa.
• The reason it takes so long there is simple. With its 4.5 million residents, Maricopa has more residents than nearly half of the states in the country and is home to 60% of Arizona’s voters.
• But the real slowdown comes from election workers following their voting laws — which were put in place and approved by Arizona’s Republican-controlled Legislatures.
• And since Maricopa is one of the few counties in the U.S. that is so evenly divided politically that races are often close, it takes even longer to know who has won.
• Jesus Fucking Christ. Let’s hope it doesn’t come down to Arizona. Let’s say, if Harris wins Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia, it might not matter how long Arizona takes to do their tally.
• In any case, no matter how long it ends up taking, you don’t have the option of sitting this out. I like the way that one guy said it: “Tell your friends who don’t want to vote because they’re ‘not into politics’ that it’s too late. Politics are into them.”
• Let’s move on with some predictably shitty election-related news from the Supreme Court.
• Yesterday, they allowed Virginia to move forward with its removal of roughly 1,600 alleged noncitizens from its voter rolls just days before the 2024 election.
• A provision of the National Voter Registration Act requires states to complete programs aimed at purging ineligible voters from registration lists up to 90 days before federal elections.
• But they’re purging those votes anyway. Hey, maybe they’re a bunch of Republicans. All I know if that removing eligible people’s right to vote is not the American way.
• Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson said they would have denied the request from Virginia officials.
• Back to the horror show that Donnie Dump wants for the USA if elected.
• House Speaker Mike Johnson told a group of supporters this week that Republicans will seek “massive reform” to the Affordable Care Act if Dumpy is reelected — previewing a major piece of the GOP’s legislative plans for next year.
• During a campaign swing in Pennsylvania, the GOP speaker vowed that overhauling the 14-year-old health care law would be part of a “very aggressive” first 100-days agenda if Republicans win back control of the White House.
• At one point, an attendee asked Johnson directly: “No Obamacare?” And the speaker, wearing a personalized Trump-Vance jacket, responded: “No Obamacare.”
• That means you will no longer have access to affordable insurance, that you won’t be able to even get insurance if you have preexisting conditions, and that private insurance companies will charge anything they want.
• Electing Dump places you and your family in immediate danger.
• Let’s move on to a positive note and talk about another Republican who has endorsed Kamala Harris: it’s former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
• In a lengthy post on social media yesterday, Schwarzenegger wrote, “A candidate who won’t respect your vote unless it is for him, a candidate who will send his followers to storm the Capitol while he watches with a Diet Coke, a candidate who has shown no ability to work to pass any policy besides a tax cut that helped his donors and other rich people like me but helped no one else, a candidate who thinks Americans who disagree with him are the bigger enemies than China, Russia, or North Korea - that won’t solve our problems. It will just be four more years of bitching with no results that makes us angrier and angrier, more divided, and more hateful.”
• The Governator continued, “We need to close the door on this chapter of American history, and I know that former President Trump won’t do that. He will divide, he will insult, he will find new ways to be more un-American than he already has been, and we, the people, will get nothing but more anger. That’s enough reason for me to share my vote with all of you. I want to move forward as a country, and even though I have plenty of disagreements with their platform, I think the only way to do that is with Harris and Walz. Vote this week. Turn the page and put this junk behind us.”
• Fuck yes, Arnold. Thank you.
• Side note from me: Dump supporters are weak pansy-ass punks. Real men (and women) support Kamala Harris.
• As long as we’re mentioning endorsements…
• Remember at that Las Vegas rally in September when Dumpy the Ignorant Ass announced the very male reggaeton star Nicky Jam by saying, “Do You Know Nicky? She’s Hot!”
• Welp.
• Nicky apparently forgave Dump for misgendering him, but couldn’t accept it when Dump’s handpicked speaker called Puerto Rico "a floating island of garbage" at a Madison Square Garden rally last weekend.
• Yesterday, Jam — who is Puerto Rican — rescinded his endorsement of Dumpy via an announcement to his 42 million social media followers.
• “I never thought in my life that a month later a comedian would come along and criticize my country, speak poorly of my country, therefore I renounce any support for Donald Trump,” he said in Spanish in an Instagram post.
• Good for him. No one should just let this guy shit on them. And Dump shits on literally everyone. Keep it in mind when you vote on Tuesday.
• By the way…
• Dump tried a stunt where he rode around in a garbage truck, perhaps as a reference to his speaker calling Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage.
• But while trying to get into the vehicle, he had some issue with his depth perception, grabbing the air instead of the door handle and nearly falling on his ass.
• Jimmy Kimmel had this to say…
• “He went out and rented a garbage truck and put his name on the side. Shouldn’t they have put him in the back of that? The garbage goes in the back of the truck.”
• Good point.
• A final note for today about that Bloated Bloviating Blimp…
• Dumpy said at his rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, that his people previously told him they did not think he should say that he wanted to "protect the women of our country.”
• And then he added, "I said, 'Well, I’m going to do it, whether the women like it or not.’"
• Vice President Kamala Harris quickly highlighted his comments, saying, "Donald Trump thinks he should get to make decisions about what you do with your body. Whether you like it or not."
• There’s a name for men who impose their wills and desires on women whether they like it or not.
• Moving on to the Little Punk-Ass Bitch Desk…
• An 18-year-old man remained in Duval County jail yesterday after Neptune Beach, FL police said he was antagonizing voters. Caleb Williams is charged with aggravated assault on persons 65 years or older and improper exhibition of firearm or dangerous weapon.
• On Tuesday afternoon, Williams who was standing with a group of males near a truck in the parking lot near an early voting location, displaying Dump signs.
• Williams approached a 71-year-old woman with a machete raised above his head in an intimidating manner. A 54-year-old woman standing next to her told police she also feared for her safety and snapped a photo of Williams using her phone.
• Neptune Beach police Chief Michael Key said he believed the men were there to intimidate voters, which is a federal crime.
• “I’m extremely angry at this,” he said. “It’s is one thing to exercise your First Amendment right which we so dearly take as a sacred right, but the moment you move to violence, that goes out the window. To say I’m disturb is an understatement. I’m mad.”
• I am too, Chief. I’m also interested in what kind of parents this young adult has. I have to assume that his actions of terror start at home. 
• And now, The Weather: “Anchor” by Soccer Mommy
• Let’s do a chart.
• It’s November 1992. Republican George W. Bush is running for reelection to the presidency against Democrat Bill Clinton, governor of Arkansas.
• It’s the first national election in which I voted. I was 23 at the time.
• Election Day was November 3, and it wasn’t even close. The election was called for Clinton that night, receiving 43% of the popular vote against Bush's 37.4% and independent candidate Ross Perot's 18.9%.
• Clinton got 370 electoral votes to Bush’s 168. And Clinton was the first Democrat since 1964 to win a majority of states.
• Believe it or not, I could see a similar victory, both in the popular and electoral vote, for Kamala Harris next Tuesday. Assuming you vote. Yes, you.
• 1. How Do You Talk To An Angel (The Heights). 2. End Of The Road (Boyz II Men). 3. I'd Die Without You (P.M. Dawn). 4. If I Ever Fall In Love (Shai). 5. Sometimes Love Just Ain't Enough (Patty Smyth). 6. Rump Shaker (Wreckx-N-Effect). 7. Rhythm Is A Dancer (Snap!). 8. What About Your Friends (TLC). 9. Erotica (Madonna). 10. Jump Around (House Of Pain). 11. Real Love (Mary J. Blige). 12. Good Enough (Bobby Brown). 13. Free Your Mind (En Vogue). 14. Walking On Broken Glass (Annie Lennox). 15. Would I Lie To You? (Charles & Eddie). 16. Layla (Eric Clapton). 17. Love Is On The Way (Saigon Kick). 18. Have You Ever Needed Someone So Bad (Def Leppard). 19. People Everyday (Arrested Development). 20. She's Playing Hard To Get (Hi-Five).
• From the Sports Desk… congratulations to my Los Angeles Dodgers, champions of Major League Baseball in 2024. Game 5 of the World Series was one for the record books… literally.
• Down 5-0 to the Yankees through four innings, the Dodgers made the largest comeback in a clinching game in MLB history, winning 7-6 in a nailbiter and winning the series 4-1.
• Freddie Freeman, the nicest man in baseball, was well-deservedly awarded World Series MVP.
• This is the eighth championship in Dodgers franchise history, the others coming in 1955, 1959, 1963, 1965, 1981, 1988, and 2020.
• I am a lifelong Dodger fan and I enjoyed the playoffs this year a lot… but I’m still kinda glad baseball is over. I have enough shit fighting for my poor brain’s attention.
• Today in history… Byzantine Empress Irene is deposed and banished to Lesbos (802). Nevada is admitted as the 36th U.S. state (1864). Dedication of the Lincoln Highway, the first automobile highway across United States (1913). Benito Mussolini is made Prime Minister of Italy (1922). After 14 years of work, Mount Rushmore is completed (1941). Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is assassinated by two security guards (1984). Iraq announces it would no longer cooperate with United Nations weapons inspectors (1998). Soyuz TM-31 launches, carrying the first resident crew to the International Space Station (2000). A federal grand jury in Houston, Texas indicts former Enron chief financial officer Andrew Fastow on 78 counts of wire fraud, money laundering, conspiracy and obstruction of justice (2002). The global population of humans reaches seven billion (2011). 
• October 31 is the birthday of Portugal king Ferdinand I (1345), Portugal king Edward (1391), painter Johannes Vermeer (1632), physicist Laura Bassi (1711), Portugal king Luis I (1838), Girl Scout founder Juliette Gordon Low (1860), photographer Helmut Newton (1920), astronaut Michael Collins (1930), journalist Dan Rather (1931), actor Michael Landon (1936), actress Sally Kirkland (1941), actor David Ogden Stiers (1942), NFL player Brian Piccolo (1943), songwriter Russ Ballard (1945), actor John Candy (1950), journalist Jane Pauley (1950), bass player Bernard Edwards (1952), author Neal Stephenson (1959), director Peter Jackson (1961), drummer Larry Mullen, Jr. (1961), guitarist Johnny Marr (1963), rapper Ad-Rock (1966), rapper Vanilla Ice (1967), bass player/songwriter Adam Schlesinger (1967), songwriter Adam Schlesinger (1967), and singer Willow Smith (2000).

That seems like plenty of news. I am — as usual — busy today. I am feeling pretty optimistic about things overall while remaining almost nauseously nervous about the election next week. Please vote and encourage those around you to vote. Enjoy your day.