Random News: December 21, 2022

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, 2022, and it’s a Wednesday. Not sure what’s next, so let’s find out together…

• Today is the first day of winter, and the shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere. The solstice occurs at 9:48PM UTC, which is 1:48PM here in PST and 4:48 in EST.
• Happy solstice, you pagans. Go dance naked… somewhere in your warm house, preferably. It’s fucking chilly out.
• The House Ways and Means Committee voted 24 to 16 yesterday to release former president Donald Trump’s tax returns.
• Remember going back to 2016 during his run for president, Trump claimed he couldn’t do what every presidential candidate before him had, which was to make his taxes public?
• He said it was because his taxes were under audit.
• They were never under audit. In fact, the first entity who’s going to face trouble is the IRS, who did not perform the mandatory audits during the first two years of his presidency.
• I’m not sure how much you pay in federal income taxes, but Trump paid $750 in 2017 and $0 in 2020.
• Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) of the Ways and Means Committee, said that the returns showed there were “tens of millions of dollars in these returns that were claimed without adequate substantiation.”
• FPOTUS’s full tax returns may be released as soon as Thursday, pending the committee’s work to remove personal information, such as Social Security numbers. 
• Moving on.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is in Washington today. It’s his first trip outside his homeland since it was invaded 300 days ago.
• He’ll meet with President Biden in the Oval Office and then address Congress tonight.
• A day after the House sent criminal referrals to the DOJ in regard to the FPOTUS’s role in the January 6 insurrection, the Senate unveiled a $1.7 trillion omnibus government funding package that includes the Electoral Count Reform Act (ECRA).
• It’s an update to the Electoral Count Act of 1887, and it’s a big deal.
• It raises the threshold for objections to Electoral College votes from one member in each chamber to one-fifth of members in both chambers. It will prevent future Trump-like leaders from trying to subvert elections like Trump did on January 6, 2021.
• In short, it protects the popular vote from being negated by any legal loopholes.
• Good.
• And now, The Weather: “Bull Believer” by Wednesday
• Once again, speaking of the weather… travel is going to be very dangerous over the next few days and a lot of you are planning to pile in the car and head to Grandma’s for the holiday.
• Travel conditions due to snow and cold are indeed life-threatening. This is the case from the West Coast to the Mountain states to the Midwest to the Northeast. Be careful and be prepared.
• From the Sports Desk… rest in peace to Franco Harris. The Hall of Fame running back for the Steelers has died at age 72.
• Ironically, this weekend is the 50th anniversary of perhaps the most iconic play in NFL history: the "Immaculate Reception”, where Harris caught (?) a deflected ball on 4th down and scored a game-winning touchdown over the Raiders with 22 seconds left in the game.
• And Saturday is the 50th anniversary of that game, and… the Steelers are playing the Raiders.
• RIP Franco. He was indeed great in every sense of the word.
• Today in history… The city of Ryazan is sacked by the Mongol army of Batu Khan (1237). William Bradford and the Mayflower Pilgrims 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). 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), hunter/dog breeder Jack Russell (1795), UK prime minister Benjamin Disraeli (1804), chemist/engineer George W. Fuller (1868), baseball player Josh Gibson (1911), singer Werner von Trapp (1915), talk show host Phil Donahue (1935), actress/activist Jane Fonda (1937), singer-songwriter Frank Zappa (1940), guitarist Albert Lee (1943), guitarist Paco de Lucía )1947), actor Samuel L. Jackson (1948), producer Jeffrey Katzenberg (1950), actress Jane Kaczmarek (1955), sprinter Florence Griffith Joyner (1959), actor Andy Dick (1965), actor Kiefer Sutherland (1066), and French president Emmanuel Macron (1977).

So, I don’t keep heat on here overnight, because I’m cheap and our electric heat sucks anyway. So now I have to change into sweats and go downstairs and workout, and it’s like 45 degrees both outside and inside my home. This… sucks. Enjoy your day.