Random News: December 13, 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 December 13, 2024, and if you can believe it, it’s a Friday once again! Despite the fact that I’m cranking out work at a pace that most people would think is insane, I’m still behind the ol’ 8-ball, and I expect today to be super busy once again. Let’s check the news so I can jump back into hell.

• Donnie Dump campaigned with a vow to reduce the cost of food and energy as he blamed price hikes on Vice President Kamala Harris, who had promised to push for a federal ban on price gouging.
• Until, of course, he got elected. Now he says that bringing down grocery prices will be “very hard.”
• This wasn’t a nebulous promise. It was very specific. 
• At a rally in North Carolina, Dumpy told the crowd, “From the day I take the oath of office, we’ll rapidly drive prices down and make America affordable again.”
• He vowed, doubling down that, “Prices will come down. You just watch. They’ll come down fast.”
• However, In the new interview, Dump offered no idea on how he would cuts costs. He said he would address energy costs and the supply chain, which he said would bring down food prices.
• And the tariffs he’s promised to impose on all imported goods from China, Mexico and Canada will absolutely trigger retaliation and higher prices for Americans.
• Interestingly, Dump also distanced himself from the conservative culture war issue of barring transgender people from certain bathrooms, saying he did not believe that transgender people using the bathroom corresponding with their gender identity was a major issue.
• It's funny — not ha-ha funny — because he and other Republicans had made anti-transgender policies a central point of their closing arguments.
• Republicans spent $215 million on network TV ads that painted transgender people as a threat. But now? “I don’t want to get into the bathroom issue. Because it’s a very small number of people we’re talking about, and it’s ripped apart our country, so they’ll have to settle whatever the law finally agrees.”
• And then he also said he agreed with incoming congresswoman Sarah McBride (D-DE), who is transgender and has said there are more important issues to focus on after Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) proposed a resolution barring the Democrat from using women’s restrooms in the Capitol.
• As many of you recall from the last Dump admin, there’s no way to know what he’s going to do or not do because he, himself, has no idea.
• Moving on with another short story about the asshole who is the incoming president.
• Daniel Penny, the guy who choked a Blackman to death on a New York subway but was acquitted of homicide this week, has been invited by Dump and JD Vance to enjoy the Army-Navy football game tomorrow in Dumpy’s suite.
• Vance said Penny, 26, accepted the invitation.
• They’re laughing at the Black folks who voted for Dump in November.
• Let’s just move on.
• An American citizen who disappeared seven months ago into former Syrian President Bashar Assad’s notorious prison system was suddenly discovered yesterday outside Damascus after being released and handed over to rebel forces.
• Hayat Tahrir al-Sham — the Islamist rebel group that led the lightning offensive to topple Assad’s government — said they secured the release of U.S. citizen Travis Timmerman.
• Timmerman was among the thousands of people released from Syria’s sprawling military prisons this week after rebels reached Damascus, overthrowing Assad and ending his family’s 54-year rule.
• Hayat Tahrir al-Sham appears eager to score some points with the USA, issuing a statement that, “We affirm our readiness to cooperate directly with the U.S. administration to complete the search for American citizens disappeared by the former Assad regime.”
• They added that a search was underway for Austin Tice, an American journalist who went missing in Syria 12 years ago.
• Let’s move on.
• Still from the International Desk, France’s President Emmanuel Macron has named centrist leader François Bayrou as the country’s next prime minister.
• Bayrou, a 73-year-old mayor from France’s southwest who leads the MoDem party, said everyone realizes the difficulty of the task ahead, saying, “I think reconciliation is necessary."
• Macron is halfway through his second term as president, and Bayrou will be his fourth prime minister this year. Yikes.
• In other news…
• Following up on our story yesterday about Meta throwing a million bucks to Dumples the Clown’s inauguration fund, another wealthy company is doing the same.
• Amazon is also kicking in $1 million to the Dump inauguration. Founder Jeff Bezos is expected to visit with Dumpy in person in the coming days.
• Most American business entities have already figured out how topmost easily use Dump by now. None of this is surprising.
• Moving on.
• As evidenced by the response to the brutal murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, the fury over the state of U.S. health care isn't going away.
• The United States has the most expensive health care in the world by far. It’s not even close. And Thompson led the largest U.S. health insurer… part of a massive, for-profit conglomerate that touches almost every part of how Americans access health care.
• His company has been widely criticized for making health care more expensive and more difficult to access. And those frustrations have boiled over in the response to his death, ranging from widespread jokes to outright celebrations.
• Here’s a tip: try and live your life in a way that doesn’t have people celebrating when you’re shot down on a dirty street.
• Some comparisons are being made to  the last time that consumers broadly mobilized to protest against powerful corporations and their wealthy executives: the Occupy Wall Street movement in late 2011 that swept the country after the financial crisis.
• I can’t say anything ever really came out of the Occupy movement, of which I was a supporter. No Wall Street chief executives ever went to jail for the business decisions that led to the subprime mortgage crisis or the resulting waves of foreclosures.
• However, those protests did articulate an overwhelming populist anger with the United States' stark income inequality, and I believe they led to some of the political and ideological conflicts that continue in the country today.
• People don’t like having the health care they receive governed by huge and opaque companies. Most people don’t have actual choices as consumers; for about 154 million Americans, employers select and provide health insurance coverage.
• And for people like me who are self-employed? Health insurance is a luxury that most of us can’t afford at all.
• So why now? UnitedHealth is the fourth-largest U.S. company by revenues overall. They have divisions that employ doctors, provide pharmacy benefits, and process patients' medical claims.
• They — along with the other big insurance companies — are the subject of antitrust scrutiny, consumer lawsuits over widespread denials of claims, and bipartisan criticism.
• Just this week, an unlikely duo — Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) — introduced legislation that would break up large healthcare conglomerates, including UnitedHealth.
• So, for now, let’s move on.
• With some happy news.
• The next members of the California Hall of Fame have been announced – and this time, all of the inductees are women.
• California Gov. Gavin Newsom and his wife Jennifer Siebel Newsom announced the 18th class inductees yesterday.
• The list includes cooking legend Julia Child, California's first poet laureate Ina Donna Coolbrith, Olympian Vicki Manalo Draves, civil rights pioneer Mitsuye Endo, civil rights activist Alice Piper, gorilla conservationist Dian Fossey, and singer Tina Turner.
• All of the inductees have since passed. Still, honoring the contributions of these great woman is important, and I’m glad my state is giving them the recognition they each deserve.
• And now, The Weather: “I Won't Come to Your Opening” by HONEYMOAN
• From the Sports Desk… the NFC West remains crazily tight after last night, when the Los Angeles Rams enjoyed a 12-6 victory over the San Francisco 49ers.
• At this moment, all four teams in the division — the Rams and Niners plus the Seahawks and Cardinals — are within two games of each other.
• Today in history… Saint Celestine V resigns the papacy after only five months to return to his previous life as an ascetic hermit (1294). Sir Francis Drake sets sail from Plymouth, England, on his round-the-world voyage (1577). The Plymouth Colony establishes the system of trial by 12-men jury in the American colonies (1623). The Massachusetts Bay Colony organizes three militia regiments to defend the colony against the Pequot Indians, a date now considered the founding of the National Guard of the United States (1636). Dartmouth College is founded by the Reverend Eleazar Wheelock (1769). The start of the Nanking Massacre, in which Japanese troops rape and slaughter hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians (1937). The Knesset votes to move the capital of Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem (1949). While Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia visits Brazil, his Imperial Bodyguard seizes the capital and proclaims him deposed and his son, Crown Prince Asfa Wossen, Emperor (1960). PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat gives a speech at a UN General Assembly meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, after United States authorities refused to grant him a visa to visit UN headquarters in New York (1988). Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is captured near his home town of Tikrit (2003). 
• December 13 is the birthday of nurse Ana Néri (1814), engineer/businessman Werner von Siemens (1816), first lady Mary Todd Lincoln (1818), journalist Drew Pearson (1897), activist Ella Baker (1903), geologist/physicist Elizabeth Alexander (1908), politician George P. Shultz (1920), actor Dick Van Dyke (1925), actor Christopher Plummer (1929), guitarist/songwriter Jeff Baxter (1948), guitarist/asshole Ted Nugent (1948), actor Steve Buscemi (1957), musician Morris Day (1957), NFL player Richard Dent (1960), NFL coach Rex Ryan (1962), actor Jamie Foxx (1967), singer-songwriter/guitarist Tom DeLonge (1975), singer-songwriter Amy Lee (1981), singer-songwriter/guitarist Taylor Swift (1989), and actor Emma Corrin (1995).

There’s always more news than what I have time to include here in an hour of flurried writing each morning. But you know that. Stay informed and be a better person. Enjoy your day.