Happy talk

Pete Buttigieg was asked to comment on the death of Kobe Bryant.  He came up with, "They were inspired by what he did on the field, what he meant off the field."  Whereupon his campaign for president ended, and possibly his career.  Backpedal all you want -- "I thought he said Bear Bryant!" -- but make plans to leave Indiana, Pete.

Asked by The New York Times, for some bizarre reason, to name his "celebrity crushes," Mike Bloomberg blurted out Laura Dern and William H. Macy.  For some bizarre reason.  This is what the newspaper of record decided was the tie-breaker on the eve of the Iowa carcasses.  What on earth could be wrong with our political discourse here in the People's Undemocratic Republic?

I don't know if John Bolton ("slightly to the right of any South American junta you can name") is even capable of laughter, but he must have smirked under his shag-carpet mustache when Foxnik Dan Bongino implied that he was a Deep State liberal sleeper planted by the Obama Administration (boo! hiss!) to bring down the Greatest President Imaginable.  All he intended, I'm pretty sure, was to sell some books.

Stephanie Grisham punched in at Fox State News and offered this:  "Quite frankly it seems like [Adam Schiff]'s having a little bit of a mental issue when you sit on the floor for hours and hours and hours.  He's obsessed with this president and trying to take him down."  Grisham know what the world looks like when you sit on the floor for hours and hours and hours, hoping there's another bottle of scotch under the sink or maybe up in the ceiling light...

Now that the number of American troops who suffered traumatic brain injury in the Iranian missile attack has risen to 34, Tom Cotton reminds us that you can't make an omelet without breaking a few brains.  Cotton is still best known for getting other treason-minded Republicans to sign a letter to the Iranian government in 2015 undermining the administration's nuclear weapons deal.  Still putting America first.

After the death of Kobe Bryant, Felicia Sonmez tweeted a link to a story about sexual abuse allegations against him.  She also tweeted that women who report such abuse are often bullied and silenced.  First she was bullied (by heroic but mostly anonymous tweeters) and now she has been silenced -- by the Washington Post where, apparently, democracy dies in darkness and free speech isn't far behind.  I love it when my cynicism pays off so decisively.

Jerry Nadler will miss part of the impeachment trial to be with his wife Joyce Miller.  They will meet her doctors to determine a plan for treatment of her cancer.   This is seen as a plot to confuse Trump by implying that not all wives are silicone-enhanced humptoys to be discarded when they are no longer physically perfect.   

The coronavirus in Wuhan, China, has killed 41 people to date.  On the lighter side, Wuhan has a shot at the Guinness Book if they can complete a thousand-bed hospital in one week.  I'm betting they can.

I had a dream that John Roberts was hit by a car and replaced by the senior justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  On her first day, she confiscated Rand Paul's crossword puzzle and locked him up for contempt.  After that, the giggling and the napping and the hour-long bathroom breaks came to a sudden halt.   Then Moscow Mitch was hospitalized with chest pains.

As the lunar Year of the Rat begins, you probably thought I would say something about Lev Parnas and his remarkable collection of videos.  Not I.