07/19/23

Good morning! It’s Wednesday, July 19th.

National Hot Dog Day.

I love a hot dog. Do I eat them? No, but I eat the veggie ones and I’m convinced, to my core, that they taste the same. Because like… what’s in a hot dog anyway?

I put mayonnaise on them… and mustard but duh – mustard all day every day.

And now, the news.

Hot Hot Heat

-via NY Times

Let’s start with Phoenix, which has broken a heat record that was set in 1974, with 19 days of over 110* heat with the forecast calling for 117*!

They also set a second record on Monday, with eight consecutive days where the temp never dropped below 90*. That’s more than a week of never even getting below 90 at night.

Absolute misery.

Taco Tuesday

-via CNN

Here’s something interesting…

A regional chain called Taco John’s, who coined the phrase Taco Tuesday, has dropped their copyright suit against Taco Bell who, last May, filed a petition with the US Patent and Trademark office to cancel the trademark because Taco Bell claims the commonly used phrase “should be freely available to all who make, sell, eat and celebrate tacos.”

Taco Bell, always out there fighting for the little guy, ya know?

North Korea Detains US Soldier

-via NY Times

A U.S. service member has become the first American in five years to be held in North Korean custody after he crossed the border without authorization on Tuesday.

The service member entered during a tour of the Joint Security Area, with is in between North and South Korea. He has been identified as Pvt. Travis T. King and was recently released from a South Korean prison after being arrested on assault charges. U.S. military officials had planned to send him to Fort Bliss, Texas, to face additional disciplinary actions.

But instead of boarding his flight, he joined the tour before he broke away from the group and be bop booped his way into North Korea.

That’s right… instead of going to Texas, he chose North Korea.

And that’s… on Greg Abbott.

No no, that’s on this guy.

But you know… it’s always important to remind people that Greg Abbott is terrible.

Trump Crime Update Time

-via AP News & NBC News (Michigan Fake Electors) and CNN & Rolling Stone (January 6th)

And now, the reason we’re all here. The reason we find joy and light and laughter…

Trump Crime Update Time

(The world is all connected baybee, edition)

First, we’ve got an update on crimes that weren’t directly related to Trump, though I’m certain he knew about it, but he’s not being charged (yet…) but it was done in his honor…

I’m talking about the case of the fake electors.

So, as a reminder, when you cast your ballot for the president, your vote is called the popular vote. However, the person with the most popular votes doesn’t always win. It usually happens with Republicans (Democrats have never lost the popular and electoral. We are very popular.). In fact, the last Republican that won the electoral and popular was W Bush in 2004. After he’d already been president for a few years on just the electoral college win.

So here’s what happens – you cast your vote for the president, and then whoever wins that state’s popular vote wins the number of electoral college votes the state is allotted (which is mathed out on two senators and however many congressional districts they have).

Then those electors, which are elected and their whole job is to basically sign off on who won their state’s electors.

It’s… very silly and outdated and racist and uh… I don’t love it. But we dance with the democracy we’ve got, and so that’s what we do.

But in 2020, Trump big time lost the election. Electoral, popular, tie-length… dude’s a loser who lost.

But some people got together and decided… eh. We’re done with democracy, we’d rather do crimes. And in seven battleground states, fake elector certificates were officially filed with Congress to try and trick people into thinking Trump won. They were ignored, as they were obviously fake.

And now it turns out – that’s officially illegal! Because in Michigan, on Tuesday, 16 people had charges filed against them for attempting to falsify official paperwork and overturn the election.

This is the first set of charges against the fake electors.

Consequences for actions. Excellent. We love it.

And speaking of…

So obviously their dumb fake electors didn’t work, and then Trump had to figure something else out. And what Trump figure out was… he’d never been super into democracy to begin with. Couldn’t spell it. Couldn’t define it. Wasn’t for him. So instead, since he lost the election but didn’t want to leave the nice house and go to Florida, he’d do a coup instead.

And they called that coup… January 6th.

And also on Tuesday, Trump took to his ironically named Truth Social to tell the world that he may soon be charged in the January 6th case. He found out on Sunday night but probably just needed to sit with his big feelings for a little bit. No, no. I’m kidding. He doesn’t sit with feelings. But he did say he found out on Sunday and didn’t announce until Tuesday.

As with all things when it comes to Trump’s indictments, of which there have been many at this point, there’s not much more information than that. We don’t know when he’ll be indicted (though I am taking the first week of August off from the news, so if I had to guess…) and we don’t yet know what the charges will be.

But here’s hoping for sedition! Because of how that’s what he for real did!

Let me tell you something… if sedition is a charge, I’m poppin a bottle again.

And that’s it. That’s the news.

I’m proud of Coach Beard aka Jack Smith. But also Coach Beard.

Oh! Speaking of Coach Beard… the World Cup is happening soon and just a warning… I am going to be so annoying about it. The boys World Cup I paid attention to, but this World Cup? With the best athletes? You’re gonna hate how much I love it.

But more than that… more than Coach Beard enjoying a nice hot dog on a beautiful summer day… I’m proud of you.