Random News: November 24, 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 24, 2024, and it’s a Sunday. Much more of a normal weekend day today than yesterday; instead of rushing out the door, I’m relaxing in a blue bathrobe and drinking coffee. It’s something you appreciate even more when it’s not an option.

• Throughout a good portion of the election cycle, I (and many others) talked about something called Project 2025, which is a blueprint for a authoritarian government run by Christian Nationalist ideologies.
• It’s a 900+ page document created by members of the far-right Heritage Foundation.
• And yes, Donnie Dump disavowed any connection to the plan, and claimed at multiple points that he didn’t know anyone who was behind it or what it was all about.
• And — very predictably — as soon as the election was done, Dumpy began stocking his second administration with key players in the detailed effort he pretended to shun.
• Some of them include Russell Vought, who’s been tapped as director of the Office of Management and Budget; Tom Homan as “border czar;” and immigration hardliner Stephen Miller as deputy chief of policy.
• John Ratcliffe, Dump’s pick to lead the CIA, is a Project 2025 contributor. Brendan Carr, who Dump wants to chair the Federal Communications Commission, wrote Project 2025’s FCC chapter.
• And so on. All of Dump’s appointees either worked directly on Project 2025 itself or wholeheartedly supported it, and will now be implementing its policies that will drastically change America and the world.
• You can boil down their plans to a couple of simple concepts: a big concentration of power in the executive branch (taking away power from the people of the country), and a starkly rightward shift across the U.S. government and society.
• And as I’ve said before, the ones who be affected the most harshly and the fastest will be the ones who voted for Dump a few weeks ago.
• Anyway, good luck to all of us.
• Let’s move on.
• A lot of the people being appointed by the Dumpster have terrible events in their backgrounds that would ordinarily not allow them to pass a background check for most jobs, let alone a high-level government position.
• To that end, Dump wants to remove the process that would root out information on these people, taking away the job of conducting background checks for high-level nominees away from the FBI and giving it to private investigators that he would control.
• Even Senate Republicans — usually lining up to kiss Dump’s fat ass — are rejecting that proposal. GOP senators say the FBI should retain its leading role in conducting background checks. They argue its agents have access to criminal information that private investigators simply can’t match.
• Fact check: true.
• The FBI also leads the nation’s domestic counterespionage efforts, serving as the lead agency for investigating and preventing foreign intelligence gathering activities in the United States. Republican senators think that role puts it in a good position to vet nominees who would have access to the nation’s most sensitive secrets.
• “The FBI should do the background checks, in my judgement,” said Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), who serves as the ranking Republican on the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense and as a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
• Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, argued that the FBI has access to information gathered by law enforcement on the federal, state and local levels that private firms don’t.
• “If you wanted to supplement it with a private firm, I’d say OK. But the FBI does have access to information that probably a private firm wouldn’t have, even a really good savvy one,” he said.
• There are already a number of situations where an FBI background check would eliminate some of Dump’s picks from contention. We already know about Matt Gaetz, who dropped out of the running for Attorney General after testimony that he paid underage girls for sex.
• Pete Hegseth, whom Dump picked as secretary of Defense, paid a woman who accused him of sexual assault as part of a nondisclosure agreement.
• Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Dump’s nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services, sold cocaine when he was a  student at Harvard.
• These people couldn’t get hired at Walmart with their backgrounds. Why should they be allowed to lead our government?
• Let’s move on.
• How about something more immediate: plans for Thanksgiving?
• As soon as I finish this news (and yes, take a shower and dress myself), I’m heading over to the store for round one of my shopping for the event. I pick up nearly everything but the bird, which I will get on Tuesday.
• I prefer a fresh — as in, not frozen — turkey.
• So while I’m cooking our feast here, and therefore not going anywhere for the holiday, may of you are… and you should be aware that weather may well complicate travel leading up to turkey time.
• My fellow West Coast people — especially in Northern California and the Pacific Northwest — have been dealing with the effects of a bomb cyclone. Many are just now getting power restored after days without.
• There’s a winter storm warning for California’s Sierra Nevada mountains through Tuesday, with heavy snow expected at higher elevations and wind gusts potentially reaching 55 mph. Total snowfall of roughly 4 feet (1.2 meters) was forecast, with the heaviest accumulations expected tomorrow and Tuesday.
• The Midwest and Great Lakes regions will see rain and snow tomorrow, and the East Coast will be the most impacted on Thanksgiving and Black Friday.
• Anyway, plan on giving yourself extra time to get wherever you’re going, and be extra careful on long drives through affected areas.
• Moving on.
• Let’s briefly talk about the resistance to Dump’s attempts at dictatorship. Doesn’t seem very noisy yet, huh?
• Yeah, that’s on purpose.
• Granted, there are still a lot of people stunned and grieving over the sweep of governmental control by the far right. But that’s to be expected.
• And now, coming into a few weeks after the election, there are signs of a renewed interest in progressive activism. Since Election Day, thousands of Americans have newly joined the loose coalition of online and in-person groups aimed at challenging Dump's policies in court and in Congress.
• I’m one of them.
• The good news: we built this infrastructure back in 2016/2017. We already have these groups organized to continue the fight when our members are ready to re-engage.
• Strategy calls have attendance levels that rival what we saw in 2017, and volunteers are rushing to offer to run for office or back expected lawsuits. People are taking action to push back on Drump's second-term agenda, such as mass deportations of people in the country illegally or abolishing the Department of Education.
• 11,000 people showed up to an election result debriefing call that resistance group Indivisible held the day after the election. More than 40,000 were on a call announcing a new version of the Indivisible Guide a week later.
• I’ve already been taking part in actions such as these, and there will be many more.
• And I think people will take this holiday season to regather their energy and get past their sorrows, and then come out swinging in January.
• And that’s fine. There are many things going on behind the scenes and under the radar in the meantime, and that is purposeful.
• Stay strong. We’re going to need everyone’s help when the time comes.
• And now, The Weather: “Deeper Understanding (feat. Bill Callahan)” by Hand Habits
• From the Sports Desk… as should be clear, I lost a ton of respect for NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers over the past 4-5 years.
• And now, with Jets sources leaking news that owner Woody Johnson suggested benching Rodgers, and that the Jets don’t want Rodgers back next year, a report yesterday said that the feeling is mutual; Rodgers wants to play in 2025, but he doesn’t want to play for the Jets.
• Rumors say that Rodgers, who turns 41 in about a week, is more injured than anyone realizes. As to whether or not he can return to his old form, at his age, is highly doubtful.
• Today is Sunday, and there are a lot of mismatches in today’s NFL games…
• Cowboys at Commanders (-11). Chiefs (-10.5) at Panthers. Titans at Texans (-8). 
• That’s some ugly football there. Guess we’ll see how it goes.
• Today in history… Genghis Khan defeats the renegade Khwarazmian prince Jalal al-Din at the Battle of the Indus, completing the Mongol conquest of Central Asia (1221). Abel Tasman becomes the first European to discover the island Van Diemen's Land, later renamed Tasmania (1642). The Texas Provincial Government authorizes the creation of a horse-mounted police force called the Texas Rangers (1835). Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species (1859). Anna Sewell's animal welfare novel ‘Black Beauty’ is published (1877). In Washington, D.C., the FBI Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory officially opens (1932). Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin of President John F. Kennedy, is killed by Jack Ruby (1963). Donald Johanson and Tom Gray discover the 40% complete Australopithecus afarensis skeleton, nicknamed "Lucy" after The Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” (1974). Iran signs an interim agreement with the P5+1 countries, limiting its nuclear program in exchange for reduced sanctions (2013). 
• November 24 is the birthday of composer Charles Theodore Pachelbel (1690), missionary Junípero Serra (1713), US president Zachary Taylor (1784), painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864), pianist/composer Scott Joplin (1868), educator Dale Carnegie (1888), mob boss Lucky Luciano (1897), author/publisher William F. Buckley, Jr. (1925), politician George Moscone (1929), NBA player Oscar Robertson (1938), NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue (1940), drummer Pete Best (1941), bass player Donald “Duck” Dunn (1941), comedian Billy Connolly (1942), keyboardist/composer Richard Tee (1943), serial killer Ted Bundy (1946), actor Dwight Schultz (1947), NBA player/coach Rudy Tomjanovich (1948), drummer Clem Burke (1954), musician/producer Terry Lewis (1956), actress Denise Crosby (1957), actor/writer Stephen Merchant (1974), and actor Colin Hanks (1977). 

Time to get my ass moving. I’ll write elsewhere about the video shoot I did yesterday… it was actually really cool and I’m glad to have been part of it, despite having to work on an alleged day off. Enjoy your day.