Random News: December 21, 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 21, 2024, and it’s a Saturday. I’m up on a very foggy morning, drinking my coffee in my bathrobe, which is exactly how I prefer my Saturday mornings to start. We have plenty of news to discuss, but first…

• Happy Winter.
• The solstice occurred at 1:21AM PST this morning. That makes today the shortest day of the year.
• My sunrise here in Redondo Beach, CA was at 7:20am; sunset will happen at 4:55pm. The entire period of sunlight here today is nine hours, 34 minutes, and 47 seconds.
• Your times will be different because we live on a ball and physics are weird.
• Anyway, the days get longer from here on out. Which is silly, because there’s always 24 hours in every single day, right?
• No.
• A day — the time it takes for Earth to rotate once on its axis — is actually 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4 seconds. And that’s what it is now.
• 340 million years ago, a day was 22 hours. 900 million years ago, the day was just 18 hours long. And in a few hundred million years, days will be 26 hours long.
• It’s true. That’s why we need — and have — more accurate measurement systems than the arbitrary time derived from this rock revolving.
• A solstice describes the point when either of Earth's poles reaches its maximum tilt away from the Sun. If our little planet wasn’t tilted as it is, we wouldn’t have any seasons at all.
• And if you look at the statistics from places on or near the equator, you’ll see that they basically have the same temperature all year long. The tilt of the planet doesn’t really affect them.
• Let’s do some news.
• With mere hours remaining before a midnight government shutdown, the House approved a new plan late yesterday from Speaker Mike Johnson that would temporarily fund federal operations and disaster aid.
• But wait, it gets better: the approved bill drops Dumpy’s demands for a debt limit increase into the new year. The bill was approved 366-34, and now goes to the Senate, for expected quick passage.
• It took three attempts by Johnson, the beleaguered House speaker, to achieve one of the basic requirements of the federal government — keeping it open.
• And due to this fuckery led by President Musk and his lackey Dump, government workers had been told to prepare for a federal shutdown which would send millions of employees — including members of the military — into the holiday season without paychecks.
• This whole episode ended up looking like a Democratic victory. More Dems ended up voting for the spending resolution than Republicans.
• And it raised stark questions about whether Johnson will be able to keep his job. He has the far right MAGA crowd super mad at him, the Democrats don’t care about him one way or the other, and he’s now being forced to take orders from an unelected foreigner, Elon Musk.
• After being passed by the House, the funding package was sent to the Senate, who approved it with a vote of 85-11 in the wee hours. It then went to Biden’s desk to be signed. Shutdown averted.
• In related news, the US Senate passed a bipartisan bill early today to increase Social Security benefits for about three million federal, state, and local public sector workers. These include firemen, policemen, and teachers.
• All worthy people.
• 76 senators voted in favor of the bill, and 20 senators voted against it. After President Biden signs it into law, it will apply to all benefits payable after December 2023.
• The Social Security Fairness Act — which already passed the House with overwhelming bipartisan support in November — eliminates two policies that have reduced Social Security benefits for public service employees.
• The workers affected are those who are eligible for government pensions from jobs where they didn’t pay into Social Security but who did pay into the program through other jobs or whose spouses did so.
• Good stuff. 
• The 20 Senators who voted against it were all Republicans, led by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) who argued the bill was expensive.
• Tough shit.
• Oh, and speaking of Rand Paul, this is worthy to include purely for comedy reasons.
• Paul sponsored an amendment to raise the Social Security retirement age from 67 to 70. What an asshole that guy is. The vote tally?
• It failed by a lopsided margin of 3 to 93.
• “Came close,” quipped Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY).
• In other news…
• At least five people were killed and more than 200 wounded yesterday after a man plowed a car into a Christmas market in the central German city of Magdeburg.
• A lot of people made assumptions when they heard the driver was named Taleb al-Abdulmohsen. But the 50-year-old Saudi doctor who’s lived in Germany for almost 20 years had expressed anti-Islamic views.
• Whatever his reasons were, the death toll will rise. Almost 40 of the casualties are very serious.
• Police who searched the suspect’s home believe he may have been under the influence of drugs at the time of the attack. Abdulmohsen, who lives about 30 miles away in Bernburg, was arrested at the scene.
• Sad. You know, every day of your life, you’re at the mercy of people you’ve never met and hoping they don’t lose their mind.
• It is what it is. Let’s move on.
• A lawsuit has been filed by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau against three major banks and Zelle, alleging that they rushed to bring a peer-to-peer payment network to market without first ensuring users would be protected against widespread fraud.
• Yikes!
• Per the suit, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo ignored customer complaints related to Zelle, with users losing hundreds of millions of dollars in scams.
• Zelle is literally owned by those banks. A huge number of people use Zelle all the time for legitimate cash transfer purposes. 
• According to the CFPB, bank customers have lost more than $870 million over the seven years Zells has been in operation. The lawsuit claims that the banks hastily created the payments network to head off rival payment apps including Venmo and CashApp without adequately protecting end users.
• Fascinating. My advice to all of you: it sounds obvious, but I’ve seen a lot of people be very careless about clicking email/messaging links, or paying what look like legitimate bills without checking tome sure they’re coming from the actual source.
• Moving on.
• A huge victory for Joe Biden and the good people of the world happened yesterday when the Senate confirmed two more his nominees to the federal judiciary, giving him a total of 235 since he took office.
• That means Joe has now surpassed the number of judges approved for lifetime appointment during Dump's first term.
• As he nears the end of his presidency, Biden will close out his four years in office having appointed one Supreme Court justice, 45 judges to the federal appeals courts, 187 to the district courts, and two to the Court of International Trade.
• And his selection of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson made history, since she is the first Black woman to serve on the nation's highest court.
• Well done, sir.
• Moving on with yet more news about Dumpy’s shockingly stupid plan that will end up costing Americans a lot more money for things they purchase.
• Yesterday Dumples the Clown added the 27 countries that make up the European Union to the list of trade partners he’s threatening with tariffs — unless the group takes steps to import more U.S. goods.
• So at this point, anything that we purchase from China, Canada, Mexico, and all of Europe will come with a much higher price tag.
• Again, for those of you who haven’t been paying attention: a tariff is a tax on imported goods or materials. The tax is paid by the company in the USA who imports the product, and then is added to the retail price so the company can still make a profit.
• And then it is paid by you, the consumer.
• Be ready for everything to get very expensive, very quickly, under Dumpy and Elon’s presidency.
• And now, The Weather: “Crooked” by Terra Twin
• From the Sports Desk… let’s take a look at NBA standings.
• Eastern Conference: Cavaliers (24-4), Celtics (21-6), Knicks (17-10), Magic (17-12), Bucks (14-12).
• Western Conference: Thunder (22-5), Grizzlies (19-9), Rockets (18-9), Mavericks (17-10), Clippers (16-12).
• 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). Gym teacher James Naismith publishes the first rules for the game now known as basketball and brings it to his class, which then plays the first game of basketball (1891). 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), politician John William McCormack (1891), 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), tennis player Chris Evert (1954), 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).

Time for me to take a shower and get dressed. I want to pop over to the grocery store at some point and get the ingredients for my Christmas dinner. Most of them, anyway. Enjoy your day.