Random News: November 3, 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 3, 2024, and it’s a Sunday. The clocks may have changed, but both my brain and the timing of the sun rising have me up and about before 7am on a Sunday. As long as I’m here — with my delicious coffee and in my comfy robe — let’s chat about things.

• Zakstrodomus here to give you some predictions with two days remaining until the election.
• No, not about who will win the election. Nobody knows that.
• Instead, about one thing that will happen on election night. Donnie Dump is going to claim victory very early in the process, most likely before the polls have closed. Twice in 2020 on Election Day, he falsely claimed victory. He will 100% do this again.
• Here’s why.
• He’s setting up his base to believe that if Kamala Harris wins, it was done via some kind of cheating, or rigged system.
• It’s a continuation of Dumpy’s Big Lie. He’ll be telling people that he’d already won and the evil Democrats stole the election away from him.
• This is in a direct attempt to foment civil unrest and violence between families and neighbors. That’s his plan.
• Don’t fall for it on either side. Here’s how the election will be called… and it’s not via either candidate.
• As each state has its polls close, results will come in at varying times. Larger population counties and states have more voters and it takes longer to deliver official results.
• At some point — maybe late on Tuesday, maybe days or weeks from now — the math will be apparent that one candidate will be able to surpass the 270 electoral vote threshold.
• At first, one of the large mainstream news outlets will call the election for one or the other Presidential candidates. It might be Fox, CNN, MSNBC, or any of them.
• Now, that’s still not an official call, but at that point, there has never been a case where they made that announcement incorrectly.
• In 2020, it was CNN who felt strongly enough about the voting data to call the race for Joe Biden at 11:24am EST on Saturday November 7, four days after election day. They were quickly followed in the next couple of minutes by NBC, CBS, MSNBC, ABC, and the Associated Press — and later Fox at 11:40am.
• But the actual official declaration of victory in a US presidential election happens when the vote is certified by Congress. I’ll bet you know that date.
• Yes! It’s January 6, 2025. Cue fits of insane laughter.
• Before then, the electors vote in their states on December 17, and the votes must arrive at the  Senate by December 25.
• So then on January 6, Congress meets in joint session to count the electoral votes. 
• Here’s a weird thing you probably haven’t considered. Remember how it was Mike Pence that certified the results of the Electoral College vote in 2021?
• That’s because it’s an official duty of the Vice President, as President of the Senate
• An who’s the Vice President? Why, it’s Kamala Harris!
• Harris wouldn’t be the first VP to certify themselves; obviously every vice president who won the subsequent election — like George H.W. Bush and others — were the people who certified the electoral vote count for their own election.
• And now, one absolute nightmare scenario that have a very low, yet still statistically possible, chance of happening.
• What if the electoral votes are tallied and there is no winner? There is at least one thankfully unlikely route to this circumstance that is still feasible for this election.
• If Harris wins the solid blue states plus MN, WI, MI, PA, and VA… and Dump wins the predictably red states plus NV, NC, and GA (and the blue dot in Nebraska), then the electoral vote tally is 269-269.
• In that situation under the 12th Amendment, the House of Representatives then decides the Presidential election. Yeah. Can you imagine?
• The vote would be taken by state, with each state regardless of size having one vote. And even, it would seem to be very close. Jesus.
• So… let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that. A Kamala Harris landslide win on election night would negate all of those headaches.
• And now, some news.
• In a move that seemed to take everyone by surprise, the cold open to last night’s episode of NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” featured the one and only Vice President Kamala Harris.
• The skit was adorable. It had Maya Rudolph in her usual role as Kamala, sitting backstage at a rally and wishing she had someone to give her advice. Someone… "who's been in my shoes, a Black, South Asian woman running for president, preferably from the Bay Area.”
• And the camera panned to show the opposite side of a vanity mirror to show the actual Harris. The audience went fucking psycho. The cheers and screams lasted for nearly 30 seconds — an eternity in live TV time — making it hard to hear the next line.
• Eventually, she got it out. “It is nice to see you, Kamala, and I'm just here to remind you, ‘You got this,’ because you can do something your opponent cannot do. You can open doors,” Harris told Rudolph, referencing Donnie Dump nearly face-planting while trying to get into a garbage truck.
• They spent a few lines riffing on the VP’s name, with Rudolph saying, “Take my palm-ala,” while holding Harris’s hand. “The American people want to stop the chaos and end the dram-ala with a cool new step-mamala. Kick back in our pajam-alas and watch a rom-com-ala.”
• They ended up the section by saying in unison, “Keep Calm-ala and Carry On-ala,” before getting to the end and shouting the classic wrap-up line together, “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!"
• It was fun. It was something that The Other Guy would never have been able to do. Harris is warm and kind, and not so self-absorbed that she can’t poke fun at herself from time to time.
• Moving on.
• With only 48 hours remaining in the race for the White House, Kamala Harris is campaigning in Michigan today. The veep will attend a service and deliver remarks at a Black church in Detroit, visit a local barbershop in Pontiac, and hold a rally at Michigan State University in East Lansing.
• Tomorrow, the last day before the election, Harris will wrap up the campaign in Pennsylvania by holding rallies in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, followed by a concert in Allentown featuring rapper Fat Joe and a performance by Frankie Negron, both of whom have Puerto Rican heritage.
• Dumpy is also busy, holding events in Lititz, PA, Kinston, NC, and Macon, GA.
• What about election night?
• On Tuesday, the Harris-Walz campaign will host its election night event at Howard University in Washington, D.C., Harris’s alma mater.
• Dumples the Clown will spend election night in Florida, but has not announced specific election night plans.
• Hmm.
• A couple of other notes o the campaigns.
• For much of the past five decades, North Carolina has landed on the Republican side of the ledger in presidential elections. This year, the state is a true toss-up.
• So yesterday, both Harris and Dumples the Clown held rallies there.
• After a Saturday afternoon rally in Atlanta, Harris traveled to Charlotte for an event alongside North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper and musicians Jon Bon Jovi and Khalid.
• Dumpy held a rally in Gastonia, and then another in the evening in Greensboro.
• A note about NC: when Obama won it in 2008, it was the first time a Democratic presidential candidate had done so since 1976. But he narrowly lost the state in 2012.
• Dump carried the state in 2020 by just a point and a half — but changing demographics could boost Harris's chances here.
• It sure would be nice for Harris to get those 16 electoral votes.
• Let’s move on.
• The last time I voted in a ballot booth in a general election was literally in 2012, when I helped Obama beat Mitt Romney. Every year since, I’ve voted early — initially by mail, and then by drop off at a ballot drop box location.
• Why would I wait and then stand in a long line? That sounds awful.
• Well, a huge number of Americans have now seen the advantages of early voting, and more than 74 million people had already cast their ballots as of yesterday, which is almost half of the total number cast in the 2020 presidential election.
• That’s awesome.
• It includes 4 million voters in Georgia — or 80 percent of the total that voted there in 2020. In the battlegrounds of Arizona and North Carolina, roughly half of eligible voters have already shown up. And in three states — Connecticut, Delaware and South Carolina — early voting has surpassed 2020 levels.
• Most analysts are correctly saying that the pandemic that impacted the 2020 election — with many doing early voting for the first time — led to a lasting change in voting habits, with Election Day increasingly subsumed by Election Season.
• While nationwide rates of early voting aren’t quite as high as they were at this time in 2020, they’re significantly higher than in 2016 or any previous election year.
• Let’s move away from the Presidential race for a moment and look down-ballot to the House, something we haven’t spent a lot of time discussing.
• As you know, the House has 435 members who have to get re-elected every two years. The Republicans are currently defending a slim majority there, and Democrats need a net gain of four seats to flip control of the chamber.
• If the GOP remains in control, Mike Johnson (R-LA) remains the Speaker of the House. But if the Democrats pick up those few seats, that role shifts over to Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), who would make history as the first Black speaker.
• There’s more than that. If Dumpy wins, a Republican House could help advance his agenda, while a Democratic-controlled chamber would serve as a big ol’ roadblock.
• While every House seat is important, here 10 races that may have the biggest impacts. Watch them carefully on Tuesday.
• VA-7: Democrat Eugene Vindman vs. Republican Derrick Anderson (no incumbent, with Dem. Rep. Abigail Spanberger launching a campaign for governor in 2025).
• NE-2: Republican incumbent Rep. Don Bacon vs. Democrat Tony Vargas.

• ME-2: Democrat incumbent Rep. Jared Golden vs. Republican Austin Theriault.
• MI-7: Democrat Curtis Hertel vs. Republican Tom Barrett (no incumbent, with Dem.Rep. Elissa Slotkin running for the US Senate).
• CO-8: Democratic incumbent Rep. Yadira Caraveo vs. Republican Gabe Evans,
• PA-10: Republican incumbent Rep. Scott Perry vs. Democrat Janelle Stelson.

• NY-19: Republican incumbent Rep. Marc Molinaro vs. Democrat Josh Riley.
• CA-45: Republican incumbent Rep. Michelle Steel vs. Democrat Derek Tran.
• NC-1: Democratic incumbent Don Davis vs. Republican Laurie Buckhout.
• IA-3: Republican incumbent Rep. Zach Nunn vs. Democrat Lanon Baccam.
• Please vote blue up and down the whole ballot. It’s more important now than ever.
• Back to presidential election thoughts.
• A reminder that Donald J. Trump was born in June 1946 and is now 78 years old. If he won on Tuesday and managed to stay alive for four years, he would be 82 during his last year in office.
• Dump currently seems to be experiencing a rapid deterioration of both his physical and mental fitness.
• One should make the assumption that statistically, it’s nearly certain that JD Vance would serve a good portion of Dump’s term if Dump is elected.
• As long as we’re talking about age, here’s a list of dudes who were younger than I am when they became President of the USA. It’s shockingly how many there are, in order of youngest to oldest.
• Theodore Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton, Ulysses S. Grant, Barack Obama, Grover Cleveland, Franklin Pierce, James A. Garfield, James K. Polk, Millard Fillmore, John Tyler, Calvin Coolidge, Franklin D. Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Chester A. Arthur, Abraham Lincoln, Jimmy Carter, William McKinley, Martin Van Buren, Rutherford B. Hayes, George W. Bush, Herbert Hoover, Lyndon B. Johnson, Warren G. Harding, and Benjamin Harrison.
• All 25 of them were under the 55 years and 228 days that I’ll be on January 20, 2025.
• Seriously, I refuse to believe this shit. I can’t be older than most presidents. Let’s look at the old dudes — who were older than me when they got into office — in order of oldness.
• Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Ronald Reagan, William Henry Harrison, James Buchanan, George H. W. Bush, Zachary Taylor, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Andrew Jackson, John Adams, Gerald Ford, Harry S. Truman, James Monroe, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, George Washington, Andrew Johnson, Woodrow Wilson, Richard Nixon, and Grover Cleveland.
• Oh lovely. Only 21 of them. I am older than most people when they start their presidency. That’s fucking great.
• And now, The Weather: “you’re like me” by shower curtain
• Let’s do a chart.
• It’s this date in 1964. Kamala Harris is a newborn; I won’t be born for another 4-1/2 years. Dumpy is 18.
• In the election that week, the former vice president of John F. Kennedy was running for election. Lyndon B. Johnson continued the great path that JFK had set for the nation, and then ended up with an even stronger focus on civil rights during his presidency.
• He beat his Republican opponent by the largest popular vote margin since the advent of widespread popular elections in 1824.
• The tally was 43,129,040 (61.1%) for Johnson versus 27,175,754 (38.5%) for Barry Goldwater. The electoral vote was similarly lopsided, with LBJ winning 486-52.
• Here was the top of the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart at the time…
• 1. Baby Love (The Supremes). 2. Last Kiss (J. Frank Wilson and The Cavaliers). 3. Do Wah Diddy Diddy (Manfred Mann). 4. Leader Of The Pack (The Shangri-Las). 5. Let It Be Me (Betty Everett & Jerry Butler). 6. Have I The Right? (The Honeycombs). 7. Come A Little Bit Closer (Jay & The Americans). 8. The Door Is Still Open To My Heart (Dean Martin). 9. Chug-A-Lug (Roger Miller). 10. We'll Sing In The Sunshine (Gale Garnett). 11. Oh, Pretty Woman (Roy Orbison And The Candy Men). 12. Dancing In The Street (Martha & The Vandellas). 13. Little Honda (The Hondells). 14. Tobacco Road (The Nashville Teens). 15. Everybody Knows (I Still Love You) (The Dave Clark Five). 16. I Don't Want To See You Again (Peter And Gordon). 17. I Like It (Gerry And The Pacemakers). 18. Ain't That Loving You Baby (Elvis Presley). 19. I'm Crying (The Animals). 20. You Really Got Me (The Kinks).
• From the Sports Desk… I got nothing. I’ll be watching some football today, but my mind is too preoccupied with more important stuff than to focus on sports for the moment.
• I’m sure you understand.
• Today in history… The River Arno floods causing massive damage in Florence (1333). Christopher Columbus first sights the island of Dominica in the Caribbean Sea (1493). English Parliament passes the first Act of Supremacy, making King Henry VIII head of the Anglican Church, supplanting the pope and the Roman Catholic Church (1534). French playwright, journalist and feminist Olympe de Gouges is guillotined (1793). The Times of India, the world's largest circulated English language daily broadsheet newspaper is founded (1838). John Willis Menard (R-LA) was the first African American elected to the United States Congress, but because of some racist shit, he was never seated (1868). Panama separates from Colombia (1903). William Howard Taft is elected the 27th President of the United States (1908). Chevrolet officially enters the automobile market in competition with the Ford Model T (1911). Franklin D. Roosevelt is elected President of the United States (1936). Lyndon B. Johnson is elected to a full term as U.S. president (1964). Democratic Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton defeats Republican President George H. W. Bush and Independent candidate Ross Perot in the 1992 United States presidential election (1992). The 2020 United States presidential election takes place between Democratic Joe Biden and Republican incumbent President Donald Trump (2020).
• November 3 is the birthday of painter Annibale Carracci (1560), chemist Daniel Rutherford (1749), businessman Stephen F. Austin (1793), SCOTUS chief justice Edward Douglass White (1845), MLB player Bob Feller (1918), actor Charles Bronson (1921), actor Ken Berry (1933), politician Michael Dukakis (1933), singer-songwriter/guitarist Bert Jansch (1943), singer-songwriter Lulu (1948), actress Roseanne Barr (1952), comedian Dennis Miller (1953), singer-songwriter Adam Ant (1954), NFL player Phil Simms (1955), actor Dolph Lundgren (1957), singer-songwriter/guitarist/producer Steven Wilson (1967), guitarist/composer Mick Thomson (1973), NFL player Colin Kaepernick (1987), singer-songwriter/guitarist Courtney Barnett (1987), and model Kendall Jenner (1995).

That’s enough for now. We have a lot to talk about over the next couple of days. Keep Calm-ala and Carry On-ala. Enjoy your day.