Random News: November 25, 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 25, 2024, and it’s a Monday. It’s also that weird week of Thanksgiving, where despite Thursday being the official holiday, people take extra time off for travel beforehand, and most places don’t bother opening on Friday. Anyway, point being, I haven idea how this week will go work-wise, so I’m just gonna be flexible and do what I can with whomever happens to be around.

• I’m having trouble giving a shit about what Dumpy is doing during this transition time. Obviously it does matter, but with little ability to control his poor decision making, I don’t have a lot to say about it.
• He’s done making his cabinet picks now after a flurry of announcements on Friday night and Saturday afternoon. 
• Now comes the conformation process for those cabinet positions as mandated by law.
• And, while I don’t believe for a second that most GOP lawmakers have the balls to stand up to the Dumpster in the long term, some of them are indeed pushing back against Dump’s attempt to control Congress,
• This includes his apparent attempt to go around Congress' constitutionally guaranteed power to control federal spending and, in the Senate, confirm presidential nominees.
• To that end, his final picks include hedge fund manager Scott Bessent to be Treasury secretary. Of note: if confirmed, Bessent would be the first openly gay person to hold this position.
• Brooke Rollins was tapped to be Agriculture secretary. The pick came as a surprise to some who  witnessed infighting over the role between Trump advisers, family members, and agriculture groups.
• Hmm.
• Former Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-OR) was chosen as Labor secretary. She lost her Oregon House seat this year to Democratic Janelle Bynum, and is seen as another surprising choice. She’s seen as a staunchly pro-union voice in an administration expected by many to favor business interests over those of organized labor.
• Former NFL player Scott Turner was picked by Dump to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development. If confirmed, he is expected to attempt to cut HUD funding and reverse Biden’s fair housing policies.
• So, there you go. It is what it is.
• Back to the idea that not all GOP leaders are lining to to kiss Dumpy’s ass…
• Yesterday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) firmly stated his stance against both tariffs and the potential of the military being involved in mass deportations.
• He went as far as to call Dump’s proposal to involve the military illegal and a terrible image.
• I mean, he called it that because it is.
• He said, “You don’t do it with the army because it’s illegal. We’ve had a distrust of putting the army into our streets because the police have a difficult job, but the police understand the Fourth Amendment. They have go to judges, they have to get warrants, it has to be specific. So I am for removing these people but I would do it through the normal process of domestic policing.”
• He also said, “I don’t like tariffs, but then again I don’t like the president promoting tariffs. I think tariffs are a tax on the consumer. I will be vocal in saying that I think tariffs are bad and that international trade actually saves every consumer about $7,000 a year. So everybody in our country is $7,000 richer because of international trade.”
• That is all… correct. Great, now I’m on the side of Rand fucking Paul.
• Moving on.
• I’ve worked in the business world for a long time and I thought I’d seen most things pop up a few times. But I’ve never seen a person hide $154 million of expenses.
• Macy’s, the department store chain which also operates Bloomingdale’s and other brands in addition to its namesakes stores, reported weaker-than-expected sales for the third quarter and said it’s delaying the release of its full quarterly results after it discovered what happened.
• An independent investigation and forensic analysis found that a single employee with responsibility for small package delivery expense accounting intentionally made erroneous accounting accrual entries to hide somewhere between $132 million to $154 million of expenses from the fourth quarter of 2021 through the fiscal quarter ended November 2.
• Wow. That’s… did they think it was just going to go away? People trip me out, man. I’ve been off on a spreadsheet by a few bucks here and there.
• Never $154 million.
• Let’s move back to some politics for a moment…
• You’re heard about the unofficial “Department of Government Efficiency” being led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. How much will these two geeks actually control Dumpy and the government despite not having been elected to do so, and being under no control of our laws?
• Right now they are interviewing job candidates and seeking advice from experts in Washington and Silicon Valley to find drastic cuts to the federal government.
• Both of those weirdos lobbied for Project 2025 writer Russell Vought, Dump’s pick to run the White House budget office.
• Who else are they talking to for their plans on destroying our government? There’s Palantir co-founder and investor Joe Lonsdale, who funds a libertarian-leaning nonprofit dedicated to government efficiency; investor Marc Andreessen; hedge fund manager Bill Ackman; and former Uber chief executive Travis Kalanick.
• Despite the flurry of activity, the effort is regarded as far-fetched by many budget and legal experts who for decades have seen similar efforts fail.
• In an op-ed they wrote last week, Musk and Ramaswamy said they plan to have Trump rescind “thousands” of government regulations, gut the federal workforce, and slash hundreds of billions of dollars in federal spending, with or without congressional consent.
• And yes, it remains unclear how much the DOGE panel will cost or what its source of funding will be.
• Guess we’ll see!
• From the Crime Desk, a white Florida woman who fatally shot a Black neighbor through her front door during an ongoing dispute over the neighbor’s boisterous children faces sentencing today for her manslaughter conviction.
• Susan Lorincz, 60, was convicted in August of killing 35-year-old Ajike “A.J.” Owens by firing a single shot from her .380-caliber handgun in June 2023. Lorincz faces a maximum sentence of 30 years in state prison because a firearm was used.
• What was the beef about? The shooting was the culmination of a long-running argument between the two neighbors over Owens’ children playing in a grassy area at both of their houses in Ocala, FL.
• Fuck that lady. I hope the sentence is appropriate — while doubting it will be.
• Back in politics for one more story.
• Dumples the Demented Clown is planning to reintroduce his ban on transgender people serving in the US military “on day one”.
• That could mean as many as 15,000 people being discharged immediately after Dump takes office on January 20, 2025, and being labelled “unfit” for their roles.
• Dumpy’s first transgender military ban was imposed in 2019 before being overturned by President Joe Biden in 2021. It prevented transgender people serving in the military, a policy which was described as “harmful” and “backwards”.
• Retired British army major-general Jonathan Shaw, who commanded NATO troops in Kosovo and British army personnel in Iraq, has responded to the impending new ban, saying, “It’s very simple, there’s only one test that makes sense and that’s whether they are good at their job: are they good at combat efficiency? If you are in a foxhole, you want the person next to you to be good at their job. If they are good at their job, that’s good enough for me.”
• Same here.
• And now, The Weather: “Feel Better” by Adrianne Lenker
• From the Sports Desk… the NFL season is 11 weeks in. What if the playoffs were being held today? Here would be the seeding…
• AFC: Chiefs (1), Bills (2), Steelers (3), Texans (4), Chargers (5), Ravens (6).
• NFC: Lions (1), Eagles (2), Seahawks (3), Falcons (4), Vikings (5), Packers (6).
• Today in history… The last British troops leave New York City three months after the signing of the Treaty of Paris (1783). Union forces led by General Ulysses S. Grant break the Siege of Chattanooga by routing Confederate troops under General Braxton Bragg (1863). A group of Confederate operatives calling themselves the Confederate Army of Manhattan starts fires in more than 20 locations in an unsuccessful attempt to burn down New York City (1864). Albert Einstein presents the field equations of general relativity to the Prussian Academy of Sciences (1915). The "Hollywood Ten" are blacklisted by Hollywood movie studios (1947). Suriname gains independence from the Netherlands (1975). Thirty-six top musicians gather in a Notting Hill studio and record Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas?" in order to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia (1984). U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese announces that profits from covert weapons sales to Iran were illegally diverted to the anti-communist Contra rebels in Nicaragua (1986). A five-year-old Cuban boy, Elian Gonzalez, is rescued by fishermen while floating in an inner tube off the Florida coast (1999). 
• November 25 is the birthday of violin maker Giuseppe Giovanni Battista Guarneri (1666), author/activist Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck (1778), businessman/philanthropist Andrew Carnegie (1835), engineer/businessman Karl Benz (1844), engineer/businesswoman/philanthropist Kate Gleason (1865), MLB player Joe DiMaggio (1914), singer Percy Sledge (1940), NFL coach Joe Gibbs (1940), actor John Larroquette (1947), businessman/convicted felon Jeffrey Skilling (1953), singer songwriter Amy Grant (1960), lawyer John F. Kennedy Jr. (1960), singer-songwriter Mark Lanegan (1964), singer-songwriter/guitarist Tim Armstrong (1965), actress Christina Applegate (1971), NFL player Donovan McNabb (1976), and activist Barbara Pierce Bush (1981).

That’s all I’ve got for now. Time to go to work. Enjoy your day.