09/25/24

Good morning! It’s Wednesday, September 25th.

National Daughters Day.

Finally – a day for Kim!

And now, the news.

Nebraska Electoral College Fight

-via CNN

Let’s start in Nebraska, where a story has been brewing that kind of went under the radar if you had literally any kind of like at all, outside of the 2024 election. So naturally, I’ve been paying very close attention to it.

So here’s some background:

The way we vote for president in this country is that you cast your ballot for the presidential candidate you want (or against the candidate you don’t want, because there is no such thing as a perfect candidate but there is such thing as candidate with multiple criminal indictments including for trying to do insurrection and so sometimes the move is to vote against him instead of for anyone else because if that person is ever elected again he will, factually not figuratively, abolish democracy and all of your rights).

That vote is called the popular vote.

We also have an electoral college. The popular vote gets added up in each state and whoever wins that state wins that state’s number of electoral college votes in a winner­-take-all system.

That’s how it works in all 48 states.

However, in Maine and Nebraska they run things a little differently. They use something called the Congressional District Method. The idea is that, since electors are awarded to each state based on the number of House seats plus the two Senate seats, this method allocated one electoral vote to each congressional district. The winner of each district is awarded one electoral vote, and the winner of the state-wide vote is then awarded the state’s remaining two electoral votes.

For the most people, people actually like this because the winner-take-all all system in the other 48 states is… not great. Not great at all. Which makes sense – the Electoral College wasn’t designed to be fair. It was designed to favor white enslavers.

Okay so that’s how the states run their elections. Let’s look at Nebraska specifically -  Trump won all five of Nebraska’s electoral votes in 2016, but won only four in 2020, with Joe Biden carrying the Omaha-area seat.

In order to win the Electoral College, and therefore the presidency, a candidate needs to get at least 270 electoral college votes. Right now, Kamala’s path to 270 runs through Nebraska. In every single map, she gets one Electoral College vote in Nebraska.

That one little tiny vote is actually vital because it means that if she doesn’t get it, as it is currently presumed she will, she would need to win an entire swing state to make up for it.

Does that make sense? For example, with this one vote in Nebraska, for swing states, if she wins Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, she can lose Nevada, Arizona, North Carolina, and Georgia and still win. But if she lost that one vote, she’d need to pick up one of those four states.

Given how important that one vote is, and then fact that the rest of the state will go to Trump, it makes sense then that chief Trump lackey, Senator Lindsey Graham, would miss votes in the Senate to make his way on up to Nebraska in hopes of convincing them that they should switch to a winner-take-all system. Putting that one vote at risk.

Fear not! Nebraska’s Governor has said he will not be calling a special session in to vote on this. And, even if he did, one of the Republican state senators has already said he will vote against it. Because, as they note, it’s too close to the election to make changes.

So we have narrowly escaped it here, but it’s important to know that this MAGA Trump GOP is going to try and cheat their way through the next 41 days (yes, 41!) simply because they know this one thing that we also know… they cannot win without cheating. There are more of us than there are of them.

This whole thing turns on turnout.

Are you, and is everyone you know, registered to vote?

Biden at the UN

-via AP News

In his final address to the United Nations on Tuesday, President Biden spoke about the need to end the conflict in the Middle East, as well as the 17-month-old civil war in Sudan. He also highlighted the need for continued support of Ukraine and raised concerns over AI.

And then he ended it with: wowzers. Big list. Good thing I’m getting out of here! Good luck Kamala!

No no. But like… I wonder if he ever has that thought.

Diddy Lawsuit

-via NBC Chicago and ABC News

Okay, unfortunately, we do have to talk about this P Diddy lawsuit.

If you haven’t heard, Sean Combs, aka Diddy, was arrested last week on charges of racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking in a list of allegations that currently go back to 2008.

Before I go on, a note – This story is awful. Awful! So I’m going to spare some of the details because you should not need the horrific and brutal details of what happened to a woman before she can be believed.

But Diddy has been arrested. He is in federal prison and a conviction on each of the charges against him could bring up to 15 years, with a possibility of life in prison on an indictment that describes him as the head of a criminal enterprise that engaged or attempted to engage in sex trafficking, forced labor, interstate transportation for purposes of prostitution, drug offenses, kidnapping, arson, bribery and obstruction of justice.

He also filmed these crimes and, in a new suit that was filed on Tuesday, allegedly share and sell a video of at least one of these rapes, marketing it as porn.

In the week since all of this broke, there has been an 18% increase in streams of his music, which shocked me, to be honest, but I felt marginally better to hear Berklee College of Music professor of music business management George Howard say  that when things like this happen, “Music just becomes another piece of information as people try to comprehend the atrocities. It’s like, ‘What would someone whose brain works like that, allegedly, what would their music sound like?’”

But still, I would say… hey, there are a lot of other artists to stream that didn’t do awful awful crimes. For example, when is the last time you streamed Kelly Clarkson? For me, it was this morning. I have never regretted streaming Kelly Clarkson.

You know what, the next time you want to stream the music of a horrible (alleged) criminal, instead, trying streaming Kelly Clarkson.

She doesn’t listen to this show but I can’t imagine she’d like that. Sorry Kelly!

Joe Manchin

-via CNN

And after that heavy story, let’s end on a laugh.

Joe Manchin!

See, we’re laughing already.

Joey Manchy, lover of houseboats and hater of common sense, announced on Tuesday that he will not endorse Kamala Harris because she announced that she is in favor of getting rid of the filibuster in order to restore Roe.

Joey… what is up with you and the filibuster? This dude has tanked so many pieces of helpful and good legislation because his precious filibuster would go away.

What happened? What’d you do Joey? Did you and the filibuster kiss once under the fireworks and you couldn’t see the fireworks but you felt them and that feeling has never gone away and although time and distance have separated you, you’ve never felt closer in your heart and if only you could just make it through this one last bit of work you’ll finally be together and your love with be so magical that it will have made up for all it took to get there?

Joey, the filibuster will never love you like you love it. Let it go.

What a dork!

Imagine thinking this carries any weight at all.

Honestly, there are a million reasons to vote for Kamala. A million more to vote against Trump.

But at the bottom of all of that is this… Kamala will win, and if she gets rid of the filibuster, Joey will be so sad and that is hilarious to me.

That alone is worth voting for Kamala.

And that’s it. That’s the news.

I’m proud of daughters. You’re welcome world.

Also Kelly Clarkson. Thank you world.

But more than… lobsters. It’s also national lobster day. Because you also make me feel fancy…. I’m proud of you.