Random News: November 1, 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 November 1, 2024, and if you can believe it, it’s a Friday once again! It’s also the last weekday morning for me waking up long before the sun for awhile; by Monday, daylight savings will have ended and it will be a bit lighter at 6am. I am nevertheless appreciating my coffee a lot today.

• Rabbit rabbit rabbit.
• Of all the months where I could use some good luck, this one feels… extra required.
• So, the election is in four more days, counting today.
• AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
• Okay, let’s all calm down. Deep breaths.
• Another big — although rather late — endorsement for Kamala Harris came in yesterday. It was from NBA superstar LeBron James, who posted that the “choice is clear” in the election.
• Yesterday afternoon, James posted a video of Donald Trump using extreme and violent rhetoric. The video also included a clip of comedian Tony Hinchcliffe from Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally earlier this week, making a racist joke about he and a Black friend carving “watermelons together.” The video ended with the message, “Hate Takes Us Back.”
• James wrote, “What are we even talking about here?? When I think about my kids and my family and how they will grow up, the choice is clear to me. VOTE KAMALA HARRIS!!!”
• With 159 million followers on Instagram, James’s influence is undeniable.
• And then, as if to live up to every accusation of using violent rhetoric, yesterday Dumpy said that Republican former congresswoman Liz Cheney should be subjected to a firing squad during a live event with Tucker Carlson.
• “Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, okay? Let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face.”
• That’s the guy that MAGAs want to lead the country. An elderly, unhinged, and sad man who is desperate for power. I promise, he’ll also have you in front of a firing squad if he chooses.
• Tonight, Harris and the Fat Fascist will host dueling rallies in the Milwaukee area as part of a final push for votes in swing-state Wisconsin.
• The candidates will appear at events just miles apart from each other on Friday.
• Both sides say the race is once again razor tight for the state’s 10 electoral votes. Four of the past six presidential elections in Wisconsin have been decided by less than a point, or fewer than 23,000 votes.
• Let’s step away from the presidential race for a moment and mention the equally important U.S Senate battles.
• In three races alone — Ohio, Pennsylvania and Montana — more than $1 billion will have been spent by Election Day on November 5.
• And, late in the game, Democrats are sending millions more dollars to Texas, a GOP stronghold where the party has new hopes of knocking off two-term conservative stalwart Sen. Ted Cruz, an upset that could help them protect their majority.
• Republicans need to pick up two seats to capture a surefire majority, and one of those — West Virginia — is all but in the bag for the GOP. Other races are more volatile and less predictable.
• Democrats are facing some brutal math that is forcing them to defend eight seats in tough states. The election also will test the down-ballot strength of both parties in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, the premier presidential battleground states known as the Blue Wall for their relatively reliable Democratic voting history.
• Republicans are most confident about flipping the seat in deep-red Montana, where Republican Tim Sheehy is challenging third-term Democratic Sen. Jon Tester. They are also optimistic about reliably red Ohio, where Republican Bernie Moreno is challenging third-term Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown.
• Even Pennsylvania is a danger zone, with Republican David McCormick trying to knock off three-term Democratic Sen. Bob Casey in a battleground undercard that both sides say is close.
• All I can tell you folks in those places is to please vote, and encourage everyone around you to vote. The more people that vote, the more they tend to vote for the real interests of the people.
• And that’s why Republicans are always trying to suppress — rather than encourage — the vote.
• Your votes will determine much more than who the President is; Congress (both House and Senate), and local officials and ballot measures are crucial to your daily life as well.
• In other news…
• You know those 1,600 voters in Virginia who were removed form voter rolls because they were suspected of being noncitizens?
• A whole bunch of them were shocked by the news… and are very much U.S. citizens.
• Case in point: Phoebe Taylor was all ready to vote in Tuesday’s election. She even knew her precinct number in the city of Richmond off the top of her head.
• She had to hear from a reporter that she — a naturalized U.S. citizen, originally from Great Britain — had been purged from Virginia’s rolls for no reason.
• Another Richmond voter, 66-year-old Eric Terrell, said he had his voter registration mistakenly canceled. He said he learned about the issue because he called the elections office to inquire about the status of his absentee ballot request, and after a couple of calls they informed him he’d been purged from the rolls.
• He was told that he can go to the polls on Tuesday and cast a ballot through Virginia’s same-day registration process. The ballot will be a provisional ballot.
• These people are Americans who are getting their right to vote taken away by Republican state leaders. That is unforgivable.
• Speaking of people who aren’t being forgiven, a brief word about Rudy Giuliani.
• The former mayor, former lawyer, and continual national joke had to give access to a moving company representative and lawyers to his Manhattan apartment yesterday after he failed to turn over belongings to two former Georgia election workers who won a $148 million defamation judgment against him.
• Among the prized possessions Rudy had to turn over to Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss are his $5 million Upper East Side apartment, a 1980 Mercedes once owned by movie star Lauren Bacall, and a variety of other belongings, from his television to a shirt signed by New York Yankees legend Joe DiMaggio to 26 luxury watches.
• Rudy Tootie said he didn’t get a chance to defend himself in the Georgia election workers case. That is a lie; he was given every opportunity to turn over information requested by lawyers for Freeman and Moss last year, but didn’t do so.
• While we’re on the topic of fucking round and finding out…
• Kenneth Chesebro, an architect of Dump’s bid to subvert the 2020 election, had his law license suspended in New York yesterday.
• Chesebro is just the latest lawyer involved in Dumpy’s 2020 scheme to face professional sanctions. The list also includes John Eastman, Jenna Ellis, and the aforementioned Giuliani. All have been suspended or disbarred from practicing law.
• And now, The Weather: “City Is Taken” by BODEGA
• From the Sports Desk… week 9 of the NFL seasons started last night with the underdog Jets surprisingly beating the Texans 21-13.
• Today in history… Philip II is crowned as 'King of France’ (1179). The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, painted by Michelangelo, is exhibited to the public for the first time (1512). The Strait of Magellan, the passage immediately south of mainland South America connecting the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans, is first discovered and navigated by European explorer Ferdinand Magellan during the first recorded circumnavigation voyage (1520). French Huguenots establish the France Antarctique colony in present-day Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (1555). William Shakespeare's tragedy ‘Othello’ is performed for the first time (1604). Shakespeare's play ‘The Tempest’ is performed for the first time (1611). The British Crown colony of New York is subdivided into 12 counties (1683). John Adams becomes the first President of the United States to live in the Executive Mansion, later renamed the White House (1800). President Abraham Lincoln appoints George B. McClellan as the commander of the Union Army (1861). A picture showing the bare breasts of a woman appears in National Geographic magazine for the first time (1896). Photographer Ansel Adams takes a picture of a moonrise over the town of Hernandez, New Mexico that would become one of the most famous images in the history of photography (1941). 6,500 United States Army soldiers are involuntarily exposed to 'Desert Rock' atomic explosions for training purposes (1951). Leon Jaworski is appointed as the new Watergate Special Prosecutor (1973). Honda becomes the first Asian automobile company to produce cars in the United States with the opening of its factory in Marysville, OH (1982). The Republic of Serbia and Montenegro joins the United Nations (2000).
• November 1 is the birthday of polymath Jan Brożek (1585), UK prime minister Spencer Perceval (1762), UK prime minister F. J. Robinson (1782), doctor/abolitionist Caroline Still Anderson (1848), painter William Merritt Chase (1849), novelist Stephen Crane (1871), sportswriter Grantland Rice (1880), race car driver Ken Miles (1918), golfer Gary Player (1935), publisher Larry Flynt (1942), bass player Ric Grech (1946), NFL player Ted Hendricks (1947), songwriter Jim Steinman (1947), music producer David Foster (1949), computer programmer Mitch Kapor (1950), singer-songwriter Lyle Lovett (1957), businessman Tim Cook (1960), singer-songwriter Anthony Kiedis (1962), drummer Rick Allen (1963), singer-songwriter Sophie B. Hawkins (1964), NHL player Tie Domi (1969), actress/anti-vaxxer Jenny McCarthy (1972), and MLB player Coco Crisp (1979).

For the first year in a long while, I got ZERO trick-or-treaters last night. I was worried that I didn’t have enough candy; now I’m sitting on a pile of it and I’m going to have to lock it away as opposed to giving myself diabetes. In more important news, PLEASE make sure you have a plan to vote on Tuesday if you haven’t done so already. Thank you. Enjoy your day.