The Shipping News: In an effort resolve a shipping logjam, the Port of Los Angeles will operate 24 hours a day, President Biden announced. Ports around the country are clogged with shipping containers while ships wait offshore to unload.

  But Biden also said, “In order to be globally competitive, we need to improve our capacity to make things here in America while also moving finished products across the country and around the world.” 

  The backlog is causing a rise in prices and shortage of goods heading into the Christmas season. 

  Factories all  over the world have shut down or slowed production during the pandemic. Port closures have  and shortages of workers have contributed to the mess. 

  Biden is under pressure to solve this. Asked yesterday by a reporter whether the  administration can guarantee that holiday packages will arrive on time, Press Secretary Jen Psaki rightly answered, “They are not the postal service or UPS or FedEx. We cannot guarantee.” 

Spaced Out: Actor William Shatner was at a loss for words and nearly overcome with emotion after returning from his 15-minute joyride in space aboard the Blue Origin capsule.

  The 90-year-old famous for playing Captain Kirk in the Star Trek series was hardly able to complete a thought, rambling, “That’s the thing, the color of blue, this comforter of blue that we have around us.”

  Unscripted, Shatner went on, “You look at the blue down there and the black up there and it’s just. There is mother earth and comfort and there is … is there death? Is that what death is? Whoop ! And it’s gone.”    

  Shatner became the oldest passenger in the effort by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to make space tourism a common thing. Shatner was comped, but a ticket costs so many millions Amazon isn’t revealing the price.

Windy City: The Biden administration yesterday announced plans for the development of wind farms in the oceans off both the east and west coasts in the most ambitious effort yet to start supplementing or replacing electricity generated by fossil fuels.

  President Biden has pledged to cut fossil fuel emissions in half by  2030.

   Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced yesterday that her agency will begin identifying federal waters to lease to wind developers by 2025. It won’t be instant. The wind farms would be subject to federal and state permitting and regulation, and there’s no guarantee investors will want to build them.

Considering Death: The Supreme Court is weighing a Justice Department petition to reinstate the death penalty for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev even though the Biden administration opposes the death penalty.

  Tsarnaev was found guilty and sentenced to death, but an appeals court overturned that decision. He was 19 at the time of the bombing and 28 now.

  What the Justice Department seems to want is the sentence but not actual execution. Justice lawyer Eric Feigin told the court, “What we are asking here is that the sound judgment of 12 of [Tsarnaev’s] peers that he warrants capital punishment for his personal acts in murdering and maiming scores of innocents, and along with his brother, hundreds of innocents at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, should be respected.” 

The Spin Rack: Fire ripped through a 13-story building in Taiwan occupied by squatters, killing 46 people. — Three US postal workers are dead after a shooting at a Memphis postal facility. The shooter was a postal employee who killed himself. — A murder spree with a bow and arrow 50 miles south of Oslo, Norway ended with five people dead and two wounded. The attacker was a Norwegian man reported to have become a radicalized Muslim. — US senate candidate Herschel Walker canceled a fundraiser after its host was exposed for using a swastika fashioned with hypodermic needles in her Twitter profile. The former NFL great is a Republican endorsed by Donald Trump. — Social Security payments will rise 5.9 percent in 2022 for about 70 million Americans. — A meteorite streaked through the sky in Canada and one woman woke up to a crash, finding a 2.8 pound rock near her pillow. 

Comically Incorrect: In a snowballing controversy over the latest Dave Chapelle comedy special on Netflix in which he takes shots as gays and transexuals, the transexual employees at the entertainment service say they’re planning a walkout. Their statement says, “Netflix has continually failed to show deep care in our mission to Entertain the World by repeatedly releasing content that harms the Trans community and continually failing to create content that represents and uplifts Trans content.”

  As Chapelle says in his show, The Closer, “they aren’t listening.”

  In a monologue in which he casually refers to people as “niggas” and “bitches” regardless of what race and sex they are, what he’s joking about is the human condition, which includes people who are transexual.  He says, “I have never had a problem with transgender people. If you listen to what I’m saying, clearly my problem has always been with White people.” 

  In particular he compares the experience of transsexuality with being black. “I ask you why is it easier for Bruce Jenner to change his gender than it is for Cassius Clay to change his name?”

  Chapelle says, “Empathy is not gay. Empathy is not black. Empathy is bi-sexual. It must go both ways.”

  He tells the story of a transgender comedian he invited to open for his show who bombs for 45 minutes and then has everyone laughing in the break room. He liked her and said “She wasn’t their tribe, she was mine. She was a comedian.”

  Six days later the trans comedian committed suicide leaving behind a child. Chapelle said he looked forward to one day being able to tell that grownup child, “I knew your father and he was a wonderful woman.”

  That’s not hate, that’s empathy with humor.

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