Random News: November 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 November 21, 2024, and it’s a Thursday for some reason. This shitty cold I have is awful, but I’m doing all the right stuff to get past it. Rather than swell on that, let’s jump right in.

• A number of Trump voters — not a large number but at least some — are slowly becoming aware of how they’ve hurt themselves personally via their vote.
• A man posted a video about how when he voted for the Dumpster, he was aware that they were going to take away what he called “Obamacare”… not realizing that it was just another name for the Affordable Care Act that allowed his mother to continue receiving treatment for her stage 4 cancer.
• Millions upon millions of Americans are only able to get insured via the Affordable Care Act and its requirement that people receive health insurance despite having pre-existing conditions.
• Many of these are the same people who will be terrified once federal programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) are slashed or removed altogether.
• Some won’t know what they’ve done until the moment their health coverage claims are denied.
• I am able to say that I told people this over and over. They chose not to listen to me and thousands of people like me who raised the warning flags of the incoming Dump presidency.
• And once again, while these policies will hurt all Americans, the ones who will feel it the hardest and fastest will be residents of red states, who rely on it more than the others.
• Oh well. We did try.
• And now some news.
• Yesterday, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) announced that transgender women are not permitted to use bathrooms in the Capitol that match their gender identity.
• Fucking piece of shit.
• The policy will also apply to bathrooms in House office buildings, changing rooms, and locker rooms. It is unclear when he plans to publish the comments.
• Under House rules, the Speaker has general control of facilities in the chamber, giving Johnson the authority to issue the policy surrounding bathrooms.
• Before you run out to burn the building down, Johnson did correctly state, “It is important to note that each Member office has its own private restroom, and unisex restrooms are available throughout the Capitol.”
• So yes, Rep-elect Sarah McBride (D-DE), the first openly transgender member of Congress, will have a place to pee. How magnanimous of Johnson to make this clear.
• It’s all the more pathetic that Johnson delivered his statement yesterday, November 20, which was Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day recognized annually to memorialize trans people who died due to anti-trans violence.
• In a statement following the policy announcement, McBride — showing nothing but poise and class compared to her bigoted colleagues like Nancy Mace (R-SC) — said she disagreed with the new rule but would abide by it.
• “I’m not here to fight about bathrooms, I’m here to fight for Delawareans and to bring down costs facing families,” McBride said. “Like all members, I will follow the rules as outlined by Speaker Johnson, even if I disagree with them.”
• Let’s move on with some big business news — and by “big,” I mean that in several ways.
• U.S. regulators want a federal judge to break up Google to prevent the company from continuing to squash competition through its dominant search engine after a court found it had maintained an abusive monopoly over the past decade.
• The proposed breakup filed yesterday evening by the U.S. Justice Department calls for Google to sell its industry-leading Chrome web browser and impose restrictions designed to prevent its Android smartphone software from favoring its search engine.
• It’s unknown as of yet whether the Justice Department decision-makers after Dumpy takes office next year will be as focused on this. Court hearings on Google's punishment are scheduled to begin in April, with a final decision before Labor Day.
• Either way, nothing will happen quickly; Google will almost certainly appeal any possible punishments, prolonging a legal tussle that has dragged on for more than four years.
• Besides seeking a Chrome spinoff and corralling of the Android software, the Justice Department wants to ban Google from forging multibillion-dollar deals to lock in its dominant search engine as the default option on Apple's iPhone and other devices.
• Pretty interesting. Those of us of a. certain age here on the Internet can recall the period in the previous millennium where Google was but one of several search engines.
• And frankly, it won because it was by far the best. Few have bothered trying to compete with the giant in the past 20 years or so.
• Moving on.
• We all know that Dumpy has vowed to start the largest deportation effort in American history as soon as he takes office. This week, he signaled that he would enlist the help of the U.S. military for the massive operation to deport undocumented immigrants.
• He shared a social media post confirming that he'd declare a national emergency and deploy military assets to carry out deportations.
• Keep in mind, the power of a president to act in such an “emergency” is usually reserved for when the USA is under military attack by a foreign nation.
• How exactly the military would be tapped to carry out this promise of mass deportations is unclear. And there are untested legal questions about involving service members in immigration enforcement operations.
• I should note that under both Republican and Democratic presidents, the Department of Defense has provided operational support to immigration and border authorities for decades.
• Currently, about 4,000 service members – primarily from the National Guard – are authorized to support the U.S. Customs and Border Protection security mission along the southwest border.
• But longstanding federal law prohibits the use of the military for domestic law enforcement, which includes immigration arrests and deportations.
• However, when they’re ready to start rounding up brown people, they now have a place to send them.
• Texas is offering a parcel of rural ranchland along the U.S.-Mexico border to use as a staging area for these potential mass deportations.
• They’ll build some kind of camp there where these poor people can be concentrated before being sent away. The property is located in rural Starr County in the Rio Grande Valley. Republican Dawn Buckingham, the Texas Land Commissioner, sent a letter to Dump extending the offer to have his camps built there.
• The property has no paved roads and sits in a county with one public hospital and limited local resources. Seems like the kind of place where it will be difficult for the treatment of the people held there to be monitored.
• Let’s move on.
• A police report released last night reveals new details from sexual assault allegation against Pete Hegseth, Dump’s defense secretary nominee.
• A California woman told police that Hegseth physically blocked her from leaving a hotel room, took her phone, and then sexually assaulted her.
• Hegseth told police that their encounter was consensual, and that he had repeatedly made sure the woman “was comfortable with what was going on between the two of them.”
• I’m pretty sure at this point that Donald Trump actually admires rapists and is going out of his way to put them in positions of power as a slap across the face of women across the nation.
• Let’s just move on for now.
• Here’s some good news you didn’t know: Democratic-backed judicial nominees are being greenlighted at a fast pace as part of a final push to fill the bench with lifetime appointees before Dumples the Clown takes office.
• How are they getting these nominations through? Because JD Vance and other party members skipped votes this week.
• Republicans attempted to slow down an effort by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to advance more than a dozen judicial nominees, hoping to prevent Democrats from completing one of their priorities before they cede power at year’s end.
• However, they were unable to stop them, as a handful of GOP members did not show up to the Capitol for votes. Hahahahaha! 
• Headlining that group of no-shows were Vance, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), President-elect Trump’s choice to lead the State Department. 
• “If we don’t show up, we lose,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC).
• Indeed.
• In other news, I mention this next item only out of spite.
• Dumpy went to Texas this week to watch a spaceship launch tower catch a moving rocket booster with the tenderness of a parent cradling their newborn baby. Instead, he got to see 33 rocket engines crashing into the ocean.
• Dumples joined his boss, Elon Musk, to watch Musk’s private rocket company SpaceX’s latest test flight of the Starship vehicle system. But just four minutes into Tuesday’s launch, the mission director called off the catch and ordered the booster to crash into the Gulf of Mexico.
• Ha ha!
• And now, The Weather: “The Laugh Is in the Eyes” by Julia Holter
• From the Sports Desk… let’s take a look at the top of the NHL standings thus far.
• Eastern Conference: Hurricanes (14-4-0), Capitals (13-4-1), Maple Leafs (12-6-2), Devils (12-7-2), Rangers (12-4-1).
• Western Conference: Jets (16-3-0), Wild (12-3-3), Stars (12-6-0), Golden Knights (11-6-2), Flames (10-6-3).
• Today in history… Judas Maccabeus restores the Temple in Jerusalem, and this event is commemorated each year by the festival of Hanukkah (164 BCE). Danish astronomer Ole Rømer presents the first quantitative measurements of the speed of light (1676). North Carolina ratifies the United States Constitution and is admitted as the 12th U.S. state (1789). Thomas Edison announces his invention of the phonograph, a machine that can record and play sound (1877). Claude Monet's paintings shown at Gallery Durand-Ruel in Paris (1900). The Philadelphia Football Athletics defeat the Kanaweola Athletic Club of Elmira, New York, 39–0, in the first-ever professional American football night game (1902). Albert Einstein's paper that leads to the mass–energy equivalence formula, E = mc², is published in the journal Annalen der Physik (1905). Rebecca Latimer Felton of Georgia takes the oath of office, becoming the first female United States Senator (1922). American disc jockey Alan Freed, who had popularized the term "rock and roll" and music of that style, is fired from WABC radio over allegations he had participated in the payola scandal (1959). The first permanent ARPANET link is established between UCLA and SRI (1969). National Security Council member Oliver North and his secretary start to shred documents allegedly implicating them in the Iran–Contra affair (1986). 2002 – NATO invites Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia to become members (2002). Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is indicted on charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust (2019).
• November 21 is the birthday of writer/philosopher Voltaire (1694), businessman Samuel Cunard (1787), painter René Magritte (1898), songwriter/producer Buck Ram (1907), NFL player Sid Luckman (1916), MLB player Stan Musial (1920), author Christopher Tolkien (1924), actor Laurence Luckinbill (1934), actress/activist Marlo Thomas (1937), politician Dick Durbin (1944), NBA player Earl Monroe (1944), actor/writer Harold Ramis (1944), actress Goldie Hawn (1945), singer-songwriter Björk (1965), NFL player Troy Aikman (1966), MLB player Ken Griffey Jr. (1969), NFL player/TV host Michael Strahan (1971), singer-songwriter Carly Rae Jepsen (1985), and NFL player Justin Tucker (1989).

Okay, that’s enough for now. I’m fighting this godforsaken cold in the midst of one of my busiest times of year for work, because of course I fucking am. Ah well. I am planning to survive. Aren’t we all? Enjoy your day.