Random News: November 20, 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 20, 2024, and it’s a Wednesday. I’ve decided that I have a cold. It’s literally the first time in five years, since November 2019, since I had a cold. It had been so long that I was sort of panicking about this cough and related symptoms. Anyway, I’ll be better in a day or two.

• How have I gone five years without a cold? Because of COVID prevention protocols. I still mask up in public settings to this day and still wash my hands more often than I did previously.
• But these things are bound to get you eventually. I don’t like it but I’ll live.
• Let’s do some news, starting with some weather woes.
• A major storm swept across the Pacific Northwest yesterday, battering the region with strong winds and rain, causing widespread power outages and downing trees that killed at least one person.
• Excessive rainfall risks ae predicted through Friday, and hurricane-force wind warnings were in effect as the strongest atmospheric river — a large plume of moisture — that California and the Northwest has seen this season overwhelmed the region.
• The storm system that hit starting Tuesday is considered a bomb cyclone, which occurs when a cyclone intensifies rapidly. Rainfall of 12 to 16 inches was expected over far northern California and far southwest Oregon into Friday.
• The intensity is expected to peak tomorrow, with flash flooding, rock slides and debris flows likely.
• Be safe, my friends.
• Moving on.
• Dumpy's six-year New York criminal odyssey will probably need to continue for at least another four, per prosecutors yesterday.
• Lawyers for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg wrote in a letter to Justice Juan Merchan that the Creamsicle Criminal should not be sentenced for his crimes until after he completes his second term in office.
• So that would be the year 2029, more than a decade after the investigation into Dump's coverup of a hush money payment began. And let’’s face it, he’ll never live that long.
• Merchan had been slated to rule on November 12 on whether presidential immunity should have prevented jurors from seeing certain evidence at Trump's trial this spring, but he postponed his decision.
• The judge said he wanted to hear from prosecutors about how to proceed with the case, which entered uncharted terrain when that piece of shit was reelected president.
• There is no bright side to this miscarriage of justice, but at least prosecutors said in their filings that they intend to oppose any effort by Dump to dismiss his case outright.
• Don’t be surprised if that happens anyway. I’m done being mad about this fucking guy. Why bother?
• Let’s move on.
• I’m not going to bother reporting every fucking detail of the disgusting behavior of Dump’s Attorney General nominee Matt Gaetz.
• A quick update for now: the House Ethics Committee obtained records, including a check and records of Venmo payments, that show that then-Rep. Matt Gaetz paid more than $10,000 to two women who were later witnesses in sexual misconduct probes conducted by both the House and the Justice Department.
• Between July 2017 and late January 2019, Gaetz — who’d been elected in 2016 — made 27 Venmo payments totaling $10,224.02 to the two witnesses.
• The witnesses testified that the payments were from Gaetz and were for sex.
• Whatever. That’s the kind of person you’re supposed to have your children admire in the universe of Donnie Dump.
• The Dumpiverse.
• A quick election note for people who wonder if their vote matters. I can show you a number of still-undecided races where it becomes blatantly apparent that every vote is crucial.
• Example: a the moment, with approximately 95% of the votes counted in California’s 45th congressional district, Democratic House candidate Derek Tran is ahead of Republican incumbent Michelle Steel by about 300 votes… out of over 300,000.
• At last check this morning, Tran has 155,090 to Steel’s 154,776.
• You might not always have the right to vote, with the fascist leadership our country is about to commence. You’ll wish you had.
• Let’s move on.
• Which is the latest state to abandon America’s core value of keeping a wall between church and state? Shocking no one, it’s Texas.
• Yesterday, Texas’ education board advanced a new Bible-infused curriculum that would be optional for schools to incorporate in kindergarten through fifth grades, one of the latest Republican-led efforts in the U.S. to incorporate more religious teaching into classrooms.
• The curriculum — designed by the state’s public education agency — would allow teachings from the Bible into classrooms in public schools. Schools who adopt the curriculum would receive additional funding.
• Make sure to not live in Texas if you’re anything other than a Christian nationalist.
• Moving on.
• A little local news: yesterday, the Los Angeles City Council got proactive against Dump and approved a sanctuary city ordinance that bars city resources from being used for immigration enforcement and city departments from sharing information on people without legal status with federal immigration authorities.
• In other words, we’re not assisting Dump with his bullshit. This is the Resistance.
• Councilmembers voted unanimously on the measure, joining more than a dozen cities across the United States with similar provisions. Sanctuary cities or states are not legal terms but have come to symbolize a pledge to protect and support immigrant communities and decline to voluntarily supply information to immigration enforcement officials.
• Mayor Karen Bass, who has the power to veto it, has said she supports the ordinance.
• Good. I hope he get super bigly mad.
• I guess we’ll mention some more of the assholes in the coming Dump administration.Dumpy announced yesterday that he has selected Dr. Mehmet Oz — a daytime television show host — to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
• He’d be working under Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nominee for secretary of Health and Human Services. Both positions require Senate confirmation.
• As we told you before the election, Dump confirmed there will be cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, writing that Oz "will also cut waste and fraud within our country's most expensive government agency."
• More than 100 million Americans participate in the major programs that CMS oversees — Medicare, Medicaid and CHIP. Now you’re fucked, whether it’s you or your parents who rely on these services.
• The Dumpster also announced he will nominate Linda McMahon to lead the U.S. Department of Education.
• She’s a professional wrestling magnate who ran two unsuccessful campaigns for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut. Along with her husband Vince McMahon, she helped build World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) into a powerhouse.
• She also donated more than $7 million to two super-PACs that supported Dump in his first campaign for president. So there you go.
• You may be wondering about the status of the DOE that she’d run. Dump once told his boss, Elon Musk, that, if elected, “I want to close up the Department of Education, move education back to the states.”
• Could McMahon make good on Dump’s promise? Not on her own. The U.S. Department of Education was created by Congress. To formally abolish it, they’d need 60 votes in the Senate.
• Guess we’ll see.
• And now, The Weather: “Brainiac” by Jaeger
• From the Sports Desk… the 2024-25 NBA season is still pretty young. Let’s see who’s leading it.
• Eastern Conference: Cavaliers (15-1), Celtics (12-3), Magic (9-6), Knicks (8-6), Hawks (7-8).
• Western Conference: Warriors (10-3), Thunder (11-4), Lakers (10-4), Rockets (10-5), Nuggets (8-5).
• Today in history… Diocletian is chosen as Roman emperor (284). New Jersey becomes the first U.S. state to ratify the Bill of Rights (1789). An 80-ton sperm whale attacks and sinks the Essex 2,000 miles from the western coast of South America (1820). Francisco I. Madero issues the Plan de San Luis Potosí, denouncing Mexican President Porfirio Díaz, calling for a revolution to overthrow the government of Mexico, effectively starting the Mexican Revolution (1910). Trials against 24 Nazi war criminals start at the Palace of Justice at Nuremberg (1945). In response to the Soviet Union agreeing to remove its missiles from Cuba, John F. Kennedy ends the quarantine of the Caribbean nation (1962). Native American activists seize control of Alcatraz Island for a year and a half until being ousted by the U.S. Government (1969). The United States Department of Justice files its final anti-trust suit against AT&T Corporation, leading to the breakup of AT&T and its Bell System (1974). Lake Peigneur in Louisiana drains into an underlying salt deposit (1980). Microsoft Windows 1.0, the first graphical personal computer operating environment developed by Microsoft, is released (1985). The 2022 FIFA World Cup begins in Qatar, the first time the tournament is held in the Middle East (2022).
• November 20 is the birthday of Roman emperor Maximinus II (270), inventor Mungo Ponton (1801), astronomer Edwin Hubble (1889), linguist Charles Berlitz (1913), pianist Yakov Zak (1913), senator/racist Robert Byrd (1917), lawyer/politician Robert F. Kennedy (1925), actor/host Richard Dawson (1932), actor/comedian Dick Smothers (1939), singer-songwriter/pianist Dr. John (1941), US President Joe Biden (1942), actor Bob Einstein (1942), singer-songwriter/guitarist Norman Greenbaum (1942), guitarist/songwriter Duane Allman (1946), singer-songwriter/guitarist Joe Walsh (1947), activist Jeff Dowd (1949), actor Rodger Bumpass (1951), singer-songwriter/guitarist Frank Marino (1954), actress Bo Derek (1956), actress Sean Young (1959), rapper Mike D (1965), singer-songwriter/musician Kevin Gilbert (1966), actor Joel McHale (1971), and rapper Future (1983).

I need to get over this cold in the next 48 hours; I have a video shoot for work on Saturday and it is not optional to sit it out. I’ll be hydrating a lot and eating oranges. Enjoy your day.