Random News: December 6, 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 6, 2024, and if you can believe it, it’s a Friday once again! It is so foggy here this morning as the sun comes up, I literally cannot see the houses across my suburban street. This is what life would look like if I lived in an actual cloud, or perhaps in the Silent Hill video game franchise. Let’s do some news.

• Starting with a breaking story.
• This morning, a Washington appeals court has turned away a challenge to a fast-approaching nationwide ban of TikTok unless it divests from Chinese ownership by January 19, affirming the law as constitutional.
• The D.C. Court of Appeals sided with the Justice Department, which argued that the U.S. government has the authority to ban TikTok based on the national security risk that the wildly popular social media platform could be pressured by the Chinese government to expose Americans’ data or influence what they see.
• TikTok had argued that the ban must be struck down for infringement on the free speech rights of the app’s users and owners under the First Amendment of the Constitution.
• They lost. Next comes a showdown with Dumpy, who said on the campaign trail that he would try to “save TikTok,” though many of his choices for key posts in his administration are China hawks who have supported outlawing U.S. access to the platform.
• Guess we’ll see soon enough.
• In other news…
• Did any of you really think the House was going to release the details about Matt Gaetz fucking teenagers and plying them with drugs?
• I didn’t either.
• Yesterday, the House voted 206-198 to block the release of the ethics committee’s long-awaited report investigating allegations of sexual misconduct and potential illegal activities involving the former Florida Republican representative.
• The report in question details how Gaetz engaged in illicit drug use, misused campaign funds, and committed statutory rape with a 17-year-old girl, along with trying to obstruct the House investigation. Gaetz has consistently denied the claims.
• Democrats, led by Reps Sean Casten and Steve Cohen, had attempted to force the report’s release through privileged resolutions, arguing that transparency was crucial.
• Oh well. By the way, the reason they’re holding this back is that Gaetz will soon be running for (or be appointed to) another political office, obviously.
• Let’s move on.
• A 7.0 magnitude earthquake was reported off the coast of Northern California yesterday morning. That’s a really fucking big quake.
• The epicenter was off the coast near Petrolia, in Humboldt County. That’s about halfway between San Francisco and Oregon, aka about 700 miles north of us in the Los Angeles area.
• As you’d expect with a shaker of that size, they initially issued a tsunami warning for coastal areas in California and Oregon, but it was canceled an hour later.
• As is typical of earthquake that size, there was a sequence of ore than 30 aftershocks, some of them good sized.
• While there was some superficial effects — items falling from shelves, cracks in roads and so on — there down’t seem to be any major damage nor injuries or deaths.
• Moving on.
• After getting lambasted by the public and anesthesiologists alike, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield said yesterday it would no longer move forward with a plan to limit the amount of time it would cover anesthesia used in surgeries and procedures.
• I mean, what the fuck were they thinking? You run out of time and wake up in the middle of surgery? Disgusting greedy scumbags.
• Relevant side note: as part of my job, I write PR and occasionally have to do damage control, and this statement just reeks of bullshit…
• “There has been significant widespread misinformation about an update to our anesthesia policy. As a result, we have decided to not proceed with this policy change. To be clear, it never was and never will be the policy of Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield to not pay for medically necessary anesthesia services.”
• Which is the exact opposite of what the company had previously said when they announced that, starting in February, it would deny any claims for anesthesia services that exceeded specific time limits set for surgeries and procedures.
• Assholes.
• I have other items in the Asshole News column.
• Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, spent over a quarter of a billion dollars in the final months of this year’s election to help Dump win the presidency, federal filings revealed yesterday.
• Yes, a quarter billion, with a b. Over $250,000,000.
• It turns out it was Elon behind things like spending $20 million to prop up a fake super PAC that was named after Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but that sought to help Dump by softening his anti-abortion positions.
• So now we know why Dumpy is so deeply indebted to this weird-ass South African piece of shit. I can guarantee that Elon will be collecting on his investment in many ways.
• Speaking of which…
• Musk and his rich buddy Vivek Ramaswamy are in way over their heads, which became apparent yesterday while trying to answers how their new “Department of Government Efficiency” will meet its lofty goals of slashing $2 trillion in spending during a meeting with GOP lawmakers.
• In a session that included both House and Senate Republicans, the two businessmen heard plenty of suggestions on how to cut spending and government waste — but most were ideas that have circulated among conservatives for years.
• Rep. Max Miller (R-OH) said, “Probably half of them in there are really excited, and the other half know reality,” alluding to doubts among Capitol Hill Republicans about the unofficial DOGE agency’s ability to cut spending and radically reshape government.
• “These guys are going to get their eyes open,” said another Republican lawmaker, pointing to the razor-thin majority in the House and the problem of the filibuster in the Senate.
• Elon and Vivek don’t have a grasp of how government works. Republicans will have just a 219-215 majority at the beginning of the new House session. That majority will then go down to 217-215 when two other Republicans leave for Trump administration posts.
• I’ll mention that first, the congress controls government spending, not the president or some wacky unelected outside agency who answers to no one.
• And second that to be successful, they’d eliminate every single government program that allows many Americans to continue living, including Social Security and Medicare.
• In other news…
• A screaming match broke out yesterday between the Secret Service’s acting director Ronald Rowe and Rep. Pat Fallon (R-TX) during a hearing on the assassination attempts against Dumples the Clown.
• Fallon showed a photo from a commemoration of the September 11 attacks in New York, which both Joe Biden and Trump attended earlier this year, then accused Rowe of endangering the president’s security for the sake of a photo op.
• Which was insane bullshit, since Rowe wasn’t there to protect Dump.
• Rowe replied that the special agent in charge had been just out of the picture’s view, and he attacked Fallon for politicizing the September 11 attacks.
• And then the two man-babies started screaming at each other. That’s lovely.
• Let’s move on.
• The Memphis Police Department uses excessive force and discriminates against Black people, according to the findings of a U.S. Department of Justice investigation launched after the beating death of Tyre Nichols after a traffic stop in 2023.
• Shocking (not)!
• A report released this week marked the conclusion of the investigation that began six months after Nichols was kicked, punched, and hit with a police baton as five officers tried to arrest him after he fled a traffic stop.
• The report says that "Memphis police officers regularly violate the rights of the people they are sworn to serve."
• Ask any Black person in Memphis to see how surprised they are.
• Moving on.
• You may have noticed that I haven’t made any mention of the fatal shooting of UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson while walking alone on a New York City sidewalk.
• That’s because people get killed by gun violence every single day across the USA. I’m not singling out this guy for any reason.
• How many other people got shot and killed in the street of a downtown area on the same day? Where are their headlines?
• And now, The Weather: “Space Limo” by Bistro Plate
• From the Sports Desk… there was an exciting end to the NFL game last night between the Lions (12-1) and Packers (9-4). Detroit won 34-31 after they went for it on fourth down — for a fifth time — to set up Jake Bates' 35-yard field goal as time expired.
• The Lions broke a franchise record with their 11th straight win.
• Today in history… Kyiv falls to the Mongols under Batu Khan (1240). The city of Quito in Ecuador is founded by Spanish settlers led by Sebastián de Belalcázar (1534). The U.S. Congress moves from New York City to Philadelphia (1790). Georgia ratifies the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (1865). The Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., is completed (1884). London becomes the world's first city to host licensed taxicabs (1897). Finland declares independence from the Russian Empire (1917). The Anglo-Irish Treaty is signed in London by British and Irish representatives (1921). U.S. federal judge John M. Woolsey rules that James Joyce's novel Ulysses is not obscene (1933). At a free concert performed by the Rolling Stones at Altamont Speedway, eighteen-year old Meredith Hunter is stabbed to death by Hells Angels security guards (1969). The United States House of Representatives votes 387–35 to confirm Gerald Ford as Vice President of the United States (1973). In Venezuela, Hugo Chávez is victorious in presidential elections (1998). In ‘A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc.’, the Recording Industry Association of America sues the peer-to-peer file-sharing service Napster, alleging copyright infringement (1999). 
• December 6 is the birthday of English king Henry VI (1421), chemist/engineer Charles Martin Hall (1863), businessman Fred Duesenberg (1876), actress Agnes Moorhead (1900), gangster Baby Face Nelson (1908), pianist/composer Dave Brubeck (1920), NFL player Otto Graham (1921), actress JoBeth Williams (1948), actor Tom Hulce (1953), comedian Steven Wright (1955), guitarist/songwriter Peter Buck (1956), guitarist/songwriter Randy Rhoads (1956), drummer David Lovering (1961), director/producer Judd Apetow (1967), NFL player Johnny Manziel (1992), and NBA player Giannis Antetokounmpo (1994).

That seems like enough news for now. Enjoy your day.