A lighthearted look at news of the day:

Why is it that the thicker the air gets in Utah the livelier the protesters become? Shouldn’t they stay indoors like the rest of us?

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Elsewhere in the country, people talk metaphorically about “running ideas up the flagpole to see if someone salutes.” In Utah, people run ideas up the flagpole to see if anyone can still see them.

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Meanwhile, reports say some of the pollution may be drifting here from China. Must be linked to that new trade agreement President Obama is pushing.

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Utah lawmakers are scheduled to start their annual session today, but it’s unlikely even their blast of hot air can move an inversion.

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Utah Democrats say they are entering the session united. It’s easy to be united when your entire group can fit in a phone booth.

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People in South Africa were surprised to discover that the sculptors of a 30-foot statue of Nelson Mandela had secretly inserted a bronze rabbit inside one of the late leader’s ears. Apparently, no one thought it was funny to give a national hero rabbit ears.

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Officials now face the challenge of removing the rabbit without damaging the sculpture. Taking a rabbit out of an ear apparently is not the same as pulling one out of a hat.

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The artists apparently said the rabbit is their trademark. It also could be a symbol of how hard it will be for them to find work in the future — or in other words, hare today, gone tomorrow.

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Justin Bieber decided last week he would like to see what life would be like as a cliché.

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The world hasn’t seen a young celebrity acting badly since Miley Cyrus last stepped out of her house.

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Bieber’s recent movie is titled, “Believe.” Ironically, that’s what he’s trying to tell his high-paid attorneys right now.

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Neiman Marcus now says 1.1 million debit and credit cards used at its stores may have been stolen by hackers. That’s embarrassing — not so much because of the theft but because the chain apparently has so few customers compared to Target.

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This may go without saying, but nobody ever stole someone’s identity off a dollar bill.

A lighthearted look at news of the day:
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Congress finally passed a $1.1 trillion spending bill last week. It will keep the government going until September. Finally, we can stop criticizing lawmakers for not funding the government and go back to criticizing them for overspending.
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A Senate report last week laid blame for the deadly Benghazi attacks on the State Department, the military and intelligence agencies. That was a blow to Democrats who wanted to blame it on delays at the George Washington Bridge.
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Pizza Hut has announced it will begin including deliberate imperfections in its crusts, such as air bubbles, stray cheese and the like. It’s called being more “authentic.” If this catches on, think of the possibilities. Politicians would no longer have to say, “mistakes were made.” They could just say, “I displayed authentic leadership.”
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Pizza Hut is just the latest in a corporate trend away from producing products that look as if they were made by machines on an assembly line. Imperfections provide character. The Yugo was way ahead of its time.
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Remember this for your next employee evaluation: “I was authentic in all my work.”
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The NSA apparently collects millions of texts daily — and that’s just from one high school.
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Next time you complain about your job, just think about the guy who has to wade through all those texts.
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It’s worse than you think. Apparently, the NSA forgot to sign up for unlimited texting.
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President Obama gave a speech last week in which he said he was giving the NSA’s massive database of information to a yet-to-be-chosen third party. I hope it’s not Target.
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The president said from now on the government would zero in only on phone numbers that are, at the most, two connections away from numbers belonging to terrorists. Wait, we know the terrorists’ telephone numbers? Why don’t we just call them direct?
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Why don’t we mess with them and, say, order 50 pizzas delivered to their door every hour forever?
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I wouldn’t say the administration is being accommodating to Iran in discussions over nuclear capabilities, but rumor has it Secretary of State John Kerry’s nameplate at upcoming talks will identify him as from “The Great Satan.”

A lighthearted look at news of the day:

You remember the bridge to nowhere? New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie may have just driven the bridge to oblivion.

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Gov. Christie is proof that people may be apathetic about politics until you start messing with commuter traffic. Even Mussolini knew enough to keep the trains running on time.

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Christie’s staff apparently orchestrated needless lane closures on the New Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge as political payback for a mayor who refused to endorse Christie’s re-election. Actually, this sounds pretty tame by New Jersey standards. Nobody actually ended up in the water, if you know what I mean.

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This is what’s known as trafficking, New Jersey style.

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This does, however, make it harder for Christie to convince voters he wants to end gridlock in Washington, seeing as how his staff caused it in New Jersey.

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Just imagine if Christie were to become president. He could order the Army to attack Harry Reid’s home state of Nevada. That’s one way to end a filibuster.

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Won’t pass his budget recommendations? We’ll see how Congress feels when all the airports shut down.

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Christie may not end up in the White House, but his claims that he didn’t know what his administration was doing sound pretty presidential right now.

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For his birthday way back when, JFK was serenaded by Marilyn Monroe. For his birthday last week, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un was serenaded by Dennis Rodman. Yeah, that sounds about right.

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Before playing an exhibition game involving former NBA players and the North Korean national team, Rodman engaged in a profanity-laced tirade against a CNN interviewer. Later he apologized, saying, among other things, he had been drinking. Apparently, he stayed sober enough in North Korea to realize his team had better lose the game.

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You can’t really blame Rodman for liking Kim. He may be a murderous dictator presiding over widespread poverty and death camps, but Kim is just about the only person on the planet these days who wants to put Rodman back in the news.

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Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ new book should have been titled, “Why no future president will ever again appoint a cabinet member from the opposite party.”

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Gates’ new book says Vice President Joe Biden has been wrong on virtually every issue over the last four decades. This is news?