Random News: March 5, 2025

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 March 5, 2025, and it’s a Wednesday. This morning’s coffee is — gasp — not Peet’s but Seattle’s Best Post Alley. It’s a French roast that’s a little on the strong side for my tastes, but I took a gamble (and the fact that it was on sale and about half the price of my usual coffee helped).

• Do we have to talk about Li’l Donnie Dumpster’s speech? I suppose I am forced to do so.
• Side note: I didn’t watch it. I had a live music show last night which was quite fun, and the last thing I wanted to do after that was listen to that rambling moron.
• If I never heard his voice again, I’d be very, very happy.
• However, thanks to the efforts of others, I can tell you all the fucking lies he told in a specific way.
• Dumpy said, “Illegal border crossings last month were by far the lowest ever recorded. Ever.”
• No. U.S. government data show that Border Patrol routinely averaged below the current number in the 1960s. And by the way: if your metric is the lowest arrest total, doesn’t that just mean that you’re catching less people with your shitty border patrol?
• Dumpy said,“Over the past four years, 21 million people poured into the United States. Many of them were murderers, human traffickers, gang members.”
• Wrong on every point. U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported 10.8 million arrests for illegal crossings from Mexico from January 2021 through December 2024. The huge majority are just working people with families seeking a better life. There is no evidence other countries are sending criminals or people with mental illness across the border, despite this frequent line from Smelly Dump.
• Dumpy said,“Tariffs are about making America rich again and making America great again. And it’s happening. And it will happen rather quickly. There’ll be a little disturbance, but we’re OK with that. It won’t be much.”
• Ridiculously wrong. Nearly all economists say Dump’s tariffs are going to hurt the country. They are tax increases that will raise the costs of goods in ways that will also harm economic growth. Dump’s tariff taxes will increase inflation, slow growth, and the average household will lose about $1,600 in disposable income. Many will lose much more than that.
• Dumpy said, “Believe it or not, government databases list 3.5 million people from ages 140 to 149. And money is being paid to many of them, and we are searching right now.”
• No, you fucking moron. The programming of the database means that some entries with missing or incomplete birthdates will default to a reference point of more than 150 years ago.
• Dumpy said,“We ended the last administration’s insane electric vehicle mandate, saving our auto workers and companies from economic destruction.”
• Um, guess what? There was never a federal mandate to force the purchase of EVs, as Dumples the Clown has falsely claimed many times before. It literally never happened.
• Obviously, there’s a lot more, but I’m not doing this shit all day.
• I do need to mention a moment of intended hilarity during Big Smelly’s speech.
• Dumpy said, “The days of rule by unelected bureaucrats are over.”
• Um… hello? Elon Musk?
• The audience of congresspeople and Senators burst into open laughter at the gaffe.
• Let’s do some real news.
• This morning, the Supreme Court rejected Dump’s request to keep billions of dollars in foreign aid approved by Congress frozen.
• Ha ha. The ruling was 5-4.
• The order was unsigned but unsurprisingly, four conservative justices dissented — Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh. That put five justices in the majority: Chief Justice John Roberts, Amy Coney Barrett, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
• The majority noted that given a court-ordered deadline to spend the money last week had already passed, the lower courts should “clarify what obligations the government must fulfill to ensure compliance with the temporary restraining order.”
• Alito was apoplectically mad in his dissent. Good. Fuck him. Get more mad and die of a stroke, you evil piece of shit.
• So that was good news, but let’s balance it with more expected shitty news from the SCOTUS.
• Yesterday, they made it harder for environmental regulators to limit water pollution, ruling for San Francisco in a case about the discharge of raw sewage that sometimes occurs during heavy rains.
• By a 5-4 vote, the court's conservative majority ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency overstepped its authority under the Clean Water Act with water pollution permits that contain vague requirements for maintaining water quality.
• That decision is just the latest in which conservative justices have reined in pollution control efforts. They hate it when we try and make our planet habitable, for ourselves and future generations.
• I should note that one conservative justice, Amy Coney Barrett, joined the court's three liberals in dissent. She wrote that limits on discharges sometimes still don't insure water quality standards are met.
• She’s right.
• Moving on.
• I have one more note about that Fat Orange Prick. I really don’t like mentioning him more than necessary.
• But this one was a doozy.
• Yesterday he wrote, “All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests. Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on on the crime, arrested. NO MASKS! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
• It’s really no surprise that this guy has never looked at the Constitution of the United States. Allow me to give you the text of the First Amendment…
• “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
• We literally have the right to assemble. If Dump wants to repeal the First Amendment, he should try and do that instead of spouting gibberish.
• Let’s move on.
• Congressional Republicans are again being advised against holding in-person town halls after several instances of lawmakers being berated by attendees went viral.
• Giant pussies.
• House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said, “They’re professional protesters,” with no evidence to back up the claim.
• If enough of us protest, they’re going to have a hard time claiming that we’re all being paid to do so. Fucking assholes.
• Moving on.
• Here’s a quote from Dumpy’s counselor Alina Habba about veterans.
• When a reporter pointed out that some Democrats were bringing ousted federal workers to Dump’s address to Congress last night, including veterans who were let go from their jobs. 
• Habba said about those veterans, “Perhaps they're not fit to have a job at this moment or are not willing to come to work. And we can't — you know, I wouldn't take money from you and pay somebody and say, 'Sorry, you know, they're not gonna come to work.' It's just not acceptable."
• About 30% of civil service employees were veterans, according to the Office of Personnel Management.
• James Diaz, a disabled veteran who was laid off in February, said, “I've given my life to this country, and to be laid off without warning or respect is disheartening. My notice of termination cited performance, and I know my performance was documented as excellent, yet we were treated like garbage. I understand the need to trim the fat, but you can't treat people this way."
• That’s fully accurate.
• In other news… Dumpy is selling the federal buildings that we all paid for.
• He announced yesterday that he’s considering selling off hundreds of “non-core” federal properties. 
• A list of 440 “non-core” properties initially posted to the GSA website included the headquarters of the FBI; the departments of Justice, Veterans Affairs, Labor, and Housing and Urban Development; Federal Trade Commission, GSA’s own headquarters, and the Old Post Office — where Dumpy himself had a 60-year lease until it sold it to the Waldorf Astoria hotel in 2022.
• Several of the buildings listed include staff from multiple agencies, such as the Sam Nunn Atlanta Federal Center, the biggest federal government building in the Southeast.
• I guess the new catchphrase is “Make America Small Again.”
• A note from the Health Desk…
• People who have higher levels of strong, agile sperm may live years longer than those with poor swimmers incapable of making it to their destination, according to new research. The large-scale study followed more than 78,000 men for 50 years.
• “In absolute terms, men with a total motile count of more than 120 million (per milliliter of semen) lived 2.7 years longer than men with a total motile count of between 0 and 5 million,” said lead study author Lærke Priskorn.
• To translate that into ages, a man with extremely poor sperm motility might be expected to live up to 77.6 years, while a man with extremely high motility might survive to 80.3 years.
• I’m not sure there’s anything you can do about that. Just thought you should know.
• And now, The Weather: “Sat in the Heat” by bdrmm
• From the Sports Desk… let’s check NHL standings. Each team listed by points.
• Atlantic Division: 1. Maple Leafs (79). 2. Panthers (79). 3. Lightning (76)
• Metropolitan Division: 1. Capitals (86). 2. Hurricanes (76). 3. Devils (72).
• Central Division: 1. Jets (88). 2. Stars (82). 3. Wild (76).]
• Pacific Division: 1. Golden Knights (78). 2. Oilers (74). Kings (70).
• Today in history… King Henry VII of England issues letters patent to John Cabot and his sons, authorizing them to explore unknown lands (1496). Nicolaus Copernicus's book On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres is added to the Index of Forbidden Books 73 years after it was first published (1616). Five Americans, including Crispus Attucks, are fatally shot by British troops in an event that would contribute to the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War five years later (1770). Samuel Colt patents the first production-model revolver, the .34-caliber (1836). George Westinghouse patents the air brake (1872). Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party receives 43.9% at the Reichstag elections, which allows the Nazis to later pass the Enabling Act and establish a dictatorship (1933). Winston Churchill coins the phrase "Iron Curtain" in his speech at Westminster College, MO (1946). Joseph Stalin, the longest serving leader of the Soviet Union, dies at his Volynskoe dacha in Moscow after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage four days earlier (1953). Country music stars Patsy Cline, Hawkshaw Hawkins, Cowboy Copas and their pilot Randy Hughes are killed in a plane crash in Camden, TN (1963). The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons goes into effect after ratification by 43 nations (1970). Soviet probe Venera 14 lands on Venus (1982). 
• March 5 is the birthday of king Henry II of England (1133), explorer/politician Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac (1658), mathematician Pauline Sperry (1883), guitarist/composer Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887), Chinese premier Zhou Enlai (1898), actor Rex Harrison (1908), businessman Laurence Tisch (1923), actor Jack Cassidy (1927), actor Dean Stockwell (1936), actor/singer Murray Head (1946), singer-songwriter Eddy Grant (1948), singer Elaine Paige (1948), magician Penn Jillette (1955), singer-songwriter Teena Marie (1956), singer-songwriter Andy Gibb (1958), NFL player Michael Irvin (1966), guitarist John Frusciante (1970), and NFL player Justin Fields (1999).

I guess that’s enough for now. Always more to come. Enjoy your day.