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Yucca brevifolia is a plant species belonging to the genus Yucca. It is tree-like in habit, which is reflected in its common names: Joshua tree, yucca palm, tree yucca, and palm tree yucca.This monocotyledonous tree is native to the arid southwestern United States, specifically California, Arizona, Utah, and Nevada, where it is confined mostly to the Mojave Desert between 400 and 1,800 m (1,300 and 5,900 ft) elevation. It thrives in the open grasslands of Queen Valley and Lost Horse Valley in Joshua Tree National Park. A dense Joshua tree forest also exists on the Cima Dome (Cima, California) in the Mojave National Preserve; northeast of Kingman, Arizona, in Mohave County, Arizona; as well as along U.S. 93 between the towns of Wickenburg and Wikieup, and designated as the Joshua Tree Parkway of Arizona. Wikipedia

The Golden Globe Awards are accolades bestowed by the 93 members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association beginning in January 1944, recognizing excellence in film and television, both domestic and foreign. The annual ceremony at which the awards are presented is a major part of the film industry's awards season, which culminates each year in the Academy Awards. The eligibility period for the Golden Globes corresponds to the calendar year (i.e. January 1 through December 31). The most recent ceremony, the 75th Golden Globe Awards, honoring the best in film and television in 2017, was held on January 7, 2018. The next ceremony, the 76th Golden Globe Awards, honoring the best in film and television in 2018, will be held on January 6, 2019. Wikipedia

Harry Mason Reid (; born December 2, 1939) is a retired American politician who served as a United States Senator from Nevada from 1987 to 2017. He led of the Senate's Democratic Conference from 2005 to 2017 and was the Senate Majority Leader from 2007 to 2015. Reid began his public career as the city attorney for Henderson, Nevada, before winning election to the Nevada Assembly in 1968. Reid's former boxing coach, Mike O'Callaghan, chose Reid as his running mate in the 1970 Nevada gubernatorial election, and Reid served as Lieutenant Governor of Nevada from 1971 to 1975. After being defeated in races for the United States Senate and the position of Mayor of Las Vegas, Reid served as chairman of the Nevada Gaming Commission from 1977 to 1981. From 1983 to 1987, Reid represented Nevada's 1st district in the United States House of Representatives. Reid won election to the United States Senate in 1986 and served in the Senate from 1987 to 2017. He served as the Senate Democratic Whip from 1999 to 2005 before succeeding Tom Daschle as Senate Minority Leader. The Democrats won control of the Senate after the 2006 Senate elections and Reid became the Senate Majority Leader in 2007. He held that position for the last two years of George W. Bush's presidency and the first six years of Barack Obama's presidency. As Majority Leader, he helped pass major legislation such as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Dodd-Frank Act, and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Republicans took control of the Senate following the 2014 Senate elections, and Reid served as Senate Minority Leader from 2015 to his retirement in 2017. Reid was succeeded as the Senate Democratic leader by Chuck Schumer, whose leadership bid had been endorsed by Reid. Along with Alben W. Barkley and Mike Mansfield, Reid is one of only three Senators to serve at least eight years as Majority Leader. Wikipedia

New Year is the time or day at which a new calendar year begins and the calendar's year count increments by one. Many cultures celebrate the event in some manner and the 1st day of January is often marked as a national holiday. In the Gregorian calendar, the most widely used calendar system today, New Year occurs on January 1 (New Year's Day). This was also the case both in the Roman calendar (at least after about 713 BC) and in the Julian calendar that succeeded it. Other calendars have been used historically in different parts of the world; some calendars count years numerically, while others do not. During the Middle Ages in western Europe, while the Julian calendar was still in use, authorities moved New Year's Day, depending upon locale, to one of several other days, including March 1, March 25, Easter, September 1, and December 25. Beginning in 1582, the adoptions of the Gregorian calendar and changes to the Old Style and New Style dates meant the various local dates for New Year's Day changed to using one fixed date, January 1. The widespread official adoption of the Gregorian calendar and marking January 1 as the beginning of a new year is almost global now. Regional or local use of other calendars continues, along with the cultural and religious practices that accompany them. In Latin America, various native cultures continue the observation of traditions according to their own calendars. Israel, China, India, and other countries continue to celebrate New Year on different dates. Wikipedia

A grocery store or grocer's shop is a retail shop that primarily sells food. A grocer is a bulk seller of food. Grocery stores also offer non-perishable foods that are packaged in bottles, boxes, and cans; some also have bakeries, butchers, delis, and fresh produce. Large grocery stores that stock significant amounts of non-food products, such as clothing and household items, are called supermarkets. Some large supermarkets also include a pharmacy, and customer service, redemption, and electronics sections. In Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States, supermarkets and convenience shops are sometimes described as grocery businesses, groceries or simply grocers. Small grocery stores that mainly sell fruits and vegetables are known as greengrocers (Britain) or produce markets (U.S.), and small grocery stores that predominantly sell prepared food, such as candy and snacks, are known as convenience shops or delicatessens. Some grocery stores (especially large ones) form the centerpiece of a larger complex that includes other facilities, such as gas stations, which will often operate under the store's name. Some groceries specialize in the foods of a certain nationality or culture, such as Chinese, Italian, Middle-Eastern, or Polish. These stores are known as ethnic markets and may also serve as gathering places for immigrants. In many cases, the wide range of products carried by larger supermarkets has reduced the need for such specialty stores. The variety and availability of food is no longer restricted by the diversity of locally grown food or the limitations of the local growing season. Wikipedia

Waffle House, Inc. is an American restaurant chain with 2,100 locations in 25 states in the United States. Most of the locations are in the South and Midwest, where the chain is a regional cultural icon. Waffle House is headquartered in an unincorporated part of Gwinnett County, Georgia, near Norcross. Wikipedia

Patrick Shanahan may refer to: Patrick M. Shanahan, American businessman and government official Patrick Shanahan (politician) (1908–2000), Irish Fianna Fáil politician Patrick Shanahan (Medal of Honor) (1867–1937), United States Navy sailor Wikipedia

The Christmas season, also called the festive season, or the holiday season (mainly in the U.S. and Canada; often simply called the holidays), is an annually recurring period recognized in many Western and Western-influenced countries that is generally considered to run from late November to early January. It is defined as incorporating at least Christmas, and usually New Year, and sometimes various other holidays and festivals. It also is associated with a period of shopping which comprises a peak season for the retail sector (the "Christmas (or holiday) shopping season"), and a period of sales at the end of the season (the "January sales"). Christmas window displays and Christmas tree lighting ceremonies when trees decorated with ornaments and light bulbs are illuminated, are traditions in many areas. In the denominations of Western Christianity, the term "Christmas season" is considered synonymous with Christmastide, which runs from December 25 (Christmas Day) to January 5 (Epiphany Eve), popularly known as the 12 Days of Christmas. However, as the economic impact involving the anticipatory lead-up to Christmas Day grew in America and Europe into the 19th and 20th centuries, the term "Christmas season" began to become synonymous instead with the traditional Christian Advent season, the period observed in Western Christianity from the fourth Sunday before Christmas Day until Christmas Day itself. The term "Advent calendar" continues to be widely known in Western parlance as a term referring to a countdown to Christmas Day from the beginning of December. Beginning in the mid-20th century, as the Christian-associated Christmas holiday and liturgical season, in some circles, became increasingly commercialized and central to American economics and culture while religio-multicultural sensitivity rose, generic references to the season that omitted the word "Christmas" became more common in the corporate and public sphere of the United States, which has caused a semantics controversy that continues to the present. By the late 20th century, the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah and the new African American cultural holiday of Kwanzaa began to be considered in the U.S. as being part of the "holiday season", a term that as of 2013 has become equally or more prevalent than "Christmas season" in U.S. sources to refer to the end-of-the-year festive period. "Holiday season" has also spread in varying degrees to Canada; however, in the United Kingdom and Ireland, the phrase "holiday season" is not widely synonymous with the Christmas–New Year period, and is often instead associated with summer holidays. Wikipedia

Brett H. McGurk (born April 20, 1973) is an American diplomat who was appointed by President Barack Obama on October 23, 2015 as Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL and was retained in that role by the Trump administration. He replaced General John R. Allen to whom he had been a deputy since September 16, 2014. He also served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Iraq and Iran, at the U.S. Department of State, and from October 2014 through January 2016 led 14 months of secret negotiations with Iran that led to a prisoner swap and release of four Americans from Evin Prison in Tehran, including Washington Post journalist, Jason Rezaian. This assignment, among others, reinforced McGurk's "reputation as a doer", according to the New York Times. He earlier served under President George W. Bush as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Iraq and Afghanistan, and under President Obama as Special Advisor to the U.S. National Security Council and Senior Advisor to the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq. McGurk served as a law clerk to Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist on the U.S. Supreme Court during the Court's 2001 October Term. On December 22, 2018, in the wake of President Trump's decision to withdraw troops from Syria, McGurk announced his resignation from his post effective December 31, 2018. He had been slated to leave the post in mid-February 2019. Wikipedia

National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation is a 1989 American Christmas comedy film directed by Jeremiah S. Chechik. It is the third installment in National Lampoon's Vacation film series, and was written by John Hughes, based on his short story in National Lampoon magazine, "Christmas '59". The film stars Chevy Chase, Beverly D'Angelo and Randy Quaid, with Juliette Lewis and Johnny Galecki as the Griswold children Audrey and Rusty, respectively.Since its release in 1989, Christmas Vacation has often been labeled as a modern Christmas classic. It is widely regarded as the best sequel of the Vacation series and the only sequel to have spawned its own direct sequel: a 2003 made-for-TV release entitled National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation 2: Cousin Eddie's Island Adventure. The film has achieved six home video releases: VHS and Laserdisc in early 1990, a bare bones DVD in 1997, and a "Special Edition" DVD in 2003. A Blu-ray edition was first released in 2006. In 2009, the film was released as an "Ultimate Collector's Edition." At the same time of this release, it was also released on a simple Blu-ray/DVD combo. A steelbook Blu-ray was released in 2015. Wikipedia

The Donald J. Trump Foundation was a New York-based private foundation founded and chaired by Donald Trump, 45th President of the United States. Trump originally created the foundation to donate his proceeds from his book Trump: The Art of the Deal to charitable causes. However Trump stopped contributing personal funds to the foundation in 2008 and instead solicited donations from outsiders.During the 2016 presidential election campaign the foundation's activities came under intense media scrutiny, initially by the Washington Post's David Fahrenthold, who went on to win the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for his investigatory work. Investigations subsequently revealed various ethical and legal violations, including failure to register in New York, self-dealing, and illegal campaign contributions. In December 2016, Trump attempted to dissolve the foundation, but the office of the New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman immediately blocked the dissolution pending completion of its then ongoing investigation.On June 14, 2018, New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood filed a lawsuit against the foundation, Trump himself, and Trump's three adult children, Ivanka, Eric, and Donald Jr., alleging "persistently illegal conduct" with respect to the foundation's money. She asked the court for an order dissolving the charity and imposing $2.8 million in restitution and penalties. She also made referrals to the Federal Election Commission and the IRS.On June 18 New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's office announced that the governor would refer the civil case to New York's Department of Taxation and Finance if it is requested to do so by the Attorney General's office Given the violations alleged in the civil case, some experts believe a tax investigation could lead to state criminal charges filed against Trump.On December 18, 2018, Attorney General Underwood announced that the foundation had agreed to shut down under court supervision and distribute its remaining assets to court-approved charities, although she did not end investigations of the foundation and its directors. Wikipedia