Random News: December 21, 2023

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 December 21, 2023, and it’s a Thursday for some reason. I’m up and about, bright and early, and ready to deliver your news, kind of like a paper boy, except I also write all this shit.

• Today is the winter solstice. It’s the shortest day of 2023 here in the northern hemisphere where some 90% of humans live.
• The 2023 winter solstice scientifically happens at 10:27pm Eastern time. At that moment, the planet will start tilting back the other direction, and days will grow longer.
• People have this propensity to say days grow shorter in the winter. Nope. It’s the exact opposite.
• Here in the northern hemisphere, the sun will take its lowest and shortest path across the southern sky. The low sun angle means you will cast your longest midday shadow of the year today, assuming skies are clear and there’s enough sun to give you a shadow.
• Anyway, happy solstice. Let’s do some happy news.
• A federal judge ruled yesterday that Rudy Giuliani must immediately pay the $148 million he owes two Georgia women he falsely accused of helping steal the 2020 election.
• Yes. Immediately. As in right now.
• Judge Beryl A. Howell wrote that there is a strong danger Giuliani is likely to hide his assets from plaintiffs Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss and is unlikely to succeed in having last week’s jury verdict overturned or cut down on appeal.
• Ruby and Shaye do not have to wait the standard 30 days to begin trying to seize his assets. If I was one of them, I’d just walk into Rudy’s house and be like, “Get the fuck out. This is mine now.”
• In a somewhat related story, I am grateful for the fact that some folks are finding out that lies and deceitfulness have actual consequences. Kari Lake is about to be Giulianied.
• During her failed gubernatorial race in Arizona, she continuously defamed and lied about an elections official on social media, at rallies, and on TV. Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer sued Lake last year for defamation for her accusations against him alleging that he intentionally committed fraud in her election.
• Lake filed a motion to dismiss the case, and that motion was denied by the court on Tuesday, so the case will now proceed to trial.
• Lake made hundreds of false claims about Richer, but the court cited two particularly shitty examples: one where she claimed that Richer intentionally printed wrong images on ballots, and another that she had whistleblowers with proof of 300,000 illegal ballots.
• Both statements were total lies and provably false. Lake's attorneys argued that her statements were not intentional lies made with malice, just "examples of imaginative expression or rhetorical hyperbole.” Pfffffft.
• The court said that’s bullshit, and ordered the parties to agree on a trial date and inform the court of that trial schedule by January 19, 2024.
• This is going to cost her a lot. If you or someone you know ever donated to Kari Lake’s campaign, that money is now going to Stephen Richer. Remember that next time she begs you for more money.
• Let’s move on with something I want to clarify regarding the Colorado Supreme Court having barred Dump from the state’s ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment on Tuesday.
• As you’re already aware, Colorado’s ruling went immediately to the SCOTUS to get their take. While I do believe that a ) Dump is 100% guilty of insurrection against the USA and b ) the 14th amendment is being accurately applied here, it still seems like a massive long shot that this far-right conservative Court will agree.
• But that being said, if they do, it’s the end of Dump’s campaign because a Supreme Court decision would apply not just in Colorado, but to all states.
• To be clear, each state would have to individually bring cases, but once the SCOTUS ruling was in place, there’d be no way NOT to apply it, and enough states would immediately take this emergency action to the point where Dump would have no chance of even being the GOP nominee.
• Can you imagine the chaos of MAGA folks refusing to support any other Republican candidate? Writing in Dump’s name on ballots? Not being able to choose a candidate in the primaries? Jesus. 2024 is gonna be wild, yo.
• Again, I want to be absolutely clear: my prediction is a 6-3 ruling against Colorado (and the country and the world, for that matter). But you never know.
• You never know.
• Here in my great state of California, Rep. Adam Schiff holds a clear lead in the race to take the senate seat formerly held by the late Dianne Feinstein, per a new POLITICO | Morning Consult poll, leaving him well-positioned to advance after the upcoming March primary.
• The big fight is for the number two spot in the general election. In our state, the two top candidates in a primary will face off in the general election in November. It doesn’t have to be one Republican and one Democrat.
• So, the second spot is a fight between Republican Steve Garvey — yes, the former first baseman for the Dodgers — and Democratic Reps. Katie Porter and Barbara Lee. Polling says all three are in a dead heat. Garvey has positioned himself as a moderate, while Porter and Lee are more closely associated than Schiff with their party’s progressive wing.
• I have yet to decide who gets my vote (other than, obviously, not Steve fucking Garvey).
• Moving on.
• Following up from my previous news on this topic, the removal of a century-old Confederate memorial at Arlington National Cemetery began yesterday after a federal judge lifted a temporary injunction that halted the removal process earlier.
• U.S. District Judge Rossie Alston had granted a temporary injunction Monday after the group Defend Arlington filed a lawsuit Sunday. The group had argued that the removal of the monument was disturbing gravesites.
• But after touring the site Tuesday, Alston ruled that the groups' allegations about the removal process “were, at best, ill-informed and, at worst, inaccurate.”
• Sounds about right. Tear that shit down. Build your own memorial elsewhere, traitors.
• And speaking of assholes, Greg Abbott’s shiny new anti-Latino law called SB4 has been deemed as being impossible to enforce for obvious reasons.
• Tom Schmerber, sheriff of Maverick County, which includes Eagle Pass, says his border community does not have the staff to enforce SB4. "It's taken away manpower from the security that we're supposed to be doing here in the county. We don't want to do it. And it's going to be impossible."
• Several civil rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the state of Texas in an effort to block SB4, arguing that immigration enforcement is a federal responsibility, not that of the state.
• They’re right. And meanwhile, what is Texas law enforcement supposed to do… walk up to every Latino person in the state and ask to see a birth certificate?
• SB4 should just read, “Don’t be brown-skinned in our state.”
• And in case you think shitty laws don’t happen in blue states, a federal judge yesterday blocked a California law that would have banned carrying firearms in most public places, ruling that it violates the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and deprives people of their ability to defend themselves and their loved ones.
• The law, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September, was set to take effect January 1. It would have prohibited people from carrying concealed guns in 26 places including public parks and playgrounds, churches, banks and zoos. One exception would be for privately owned businesses that put up signs saying people are allowed to bring guns on their premises.
• So, here we are again, with the ammosexuals celebrating the legal carrying of guns into playgrounds and churches. I’d pretend to be shocked, but I promise I’m not.
• One more news item about awful human beings.
• The FBI is investigating a white South Carolina couple for racial discrimination after they set a cross on fire in their yard last month facing toward their Black neighbors’ home.
• The retired Black couple also recorded video of the cross being burned on Thanksgiving weekend and described days of repeated threats from their neighbors. The next week, Worden Evander Butler, 28, and Alexis Paige Hartnett, 27, were arrested on state charges of harassment and later released on bond.
• Can you imagine being an elderly family and having these punk-ass bitches burning crosses to intimidate you? I think I’d be tempted to use my own Second Amendment rights if that were the case.
• And now, The Weather: “No Eye” by Oca PineGot another chart for you. This is once again December 1982, but this time it’s the dance charts. Not bad. Some shit, some good stuff.
• 1. The Look Of Love (ABC). 2. Lies (Thompson wins). 3. It’s Raining Men (The Weather Girls). 4. 1999 (Prince). 5.. Everybody (Madonna). 6. Nipple To The Bottle (Grace Jones). 7. Mickey (Toni Basil(. 8. Mind Warp (Patrick Cowley). 9. Work Me Over (Claudja Berry). 10. Play At Your Own Risk (Planet Patrol). 11. Magic Wand (Whodini). 12. Playing For Time (Madleen Kane). 13. Peek-A-Boo (Devo). 14. Sexual Healing (Marvin Gaye). 15. Moment Of My Life (Inner Life). 16. Nasty Girl (Vanity 6). 17. Nunk (Warp 9). 18. Die Hard Lover (Loverde). 19. Jammers (The Jammers). 20. Maneater (Daryl Hall & John Oates).
• From the Sports Desk… here’s a heartening story for us old athletes.
• Jaromir Jagr made his ice hockey season debut last night at age 51 for his hometown Kladno Knights in the Czech league. It’s Jagr’s 36th professional hockey season.
• Today in history… The city of Ryazan is sacked by the Mongol army of Batu Khan (1237). William Bradford and the Mayflower Pilgrims — including my 12th great-grandfather John Howland — land on what is now known as Plymouth Rock in Plymouth, MA (1620). Public Resolution 82, containing a provision for a Navy Medal of Valor, is signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln (1861). The Chilean Army commits a massacre of at least 2,000 striking saltpeter miners in Iquique, Chile (1907). American anarchist Emma Goldman is deported to Russia (1919). ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’, the world's first full-length animated feature, premieres at the Carthay Circle Theatre (1937). Apollo 8 is launched from the Kennedy Space Center, placing its crew on a lunar trajectory for the first visit to another celestial body by humans (1968). First flight of F-14 multi-role combat aircraft (1970). A bomb explodes on board Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, killing 270 (1988). The city of Bethlehem passes from Israeli to Palestinian control (1995). A great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn occurs, with the two planets separated in the sky by 0.1 degrees, the closest conjunction between the two planets since 1623 (2020).
• December 21 is the birthday of painter Masaccio (1401), theologian/politician and my 13th great-grandfather Roger Williams (1603), hunter/dog breeder Jack Russell (1795), UK prime minister Benjamin Disraeli (1804), chemist/engineer George W. Fuller (1868), baseball player Josh Gibson (1911), singer Werner von Trapp (1915), talk show host Phil Donahue (1935), actress/activist Jane Fonda (1937), singer-songwriter/guitarist/composer Frank Zappa (1940), guitarist/songwriter Albert Lee (1943), guitarist/songwriter Paco de Lucía (1947), actor Samuel L. Jackson (1948), producer Jeffrey Katzenberg (1950), actress Jane Kaczmarek (1955), sprinter Florence Griffith Joyner (1959), actor Andy Dick (1965), actress Michelle Hurd (1966), actor Kiefer Sutherland (1966), French president Emmanuel Macron (1977), and NFL player Ha Ha Clinton-Dix (1992).

That seems like enough news. Again, happy solstice to you all. Maybe stand up at 10:37pm EST tonight and see if you can feel the Earth change direction. You probably won’t but it’s fun to imagine. Enjoy your day.