A lighthearted look at the news of the day:


I don’t know which is more entertaining: Watching the numbers tick away on the Internet’s national debt clock, or watching the numbers tick away in the field of Democratic presidential candidates.
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With New York Mayor Bill de Blasio entering the race last week, the total number of Democrats now is officially higher than all the Democrats in the Utah Legislature, and it’s approaching the state’s average public school class size, which we are consistently told is unwieldy.
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De Blasio started his campaign with a three-minute video called, “Working people first.” Unfortunately, most people were at work and didn’t see have time to see it.
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A recent poll found that 76% of New Yorkers did not want de Blasio to run for president. I’m guessing it’s not because they don’t want to lose him as mayor.
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In his defense, however, de Blasio would need only 24% or so in order to beat out the other 22 candidates.
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Meanwhile, Beto O’Rourke is doing his best to stand out against the competition. Last week he live streamed himself getting a haircut, talking about how important it is to get rid of nasty ear hair. There’s a slogan. Vote for me and I’ll cut the nasty ear hair out of Washington.
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President Trump’s trade war with China already is paying dividends. Some companies are moving operations away from China to places where trade is easier. That’s good news, except they’re not all coming here. Let’s just say the White House is helping to make Mexico great again.
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China, meanwhile, has reduced its holdings of U.S. debt by $20.5 billion. That’s like being at college and having mom and dad cut off your access to their credit cards.
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President Trump last week said he was having a “little squabble” with China. President Xi heard that wrong and immediately sat down with advisers to strategize on ways to get the most triple word scores.
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Taco Bell announced it soon will open a hotel in Florida. I’m hoping guests will have the choice of sleeping on soft sheets or ones made out of crispy Doritos chips.

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A lighthearted look at the news of the day:


Ah, spring! The sound of birds chirping, the tiny green buds struggling up from brown earth, the gurgling of contaminated water in Sandy.
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It’s time for March Madness — trying to guess who the president will insult next, and whether that person will be dead or alive.
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We’ve already seen some dramatic plays. President Trump committed an offensive foul when he called the husband of his counselor, Kellyanne Conway, a “stone cold loser and husband from (down under — and I don’t mean Australia). But then Conway dribbled off her foot on the next play when she said, “[The president] is protective of me, that’s what people really should take from this.”
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Meanwhile, Senate staffers confirmed last week that, contrary to insults and rumors, John McCain is unable to carry the ball, or cast any more votes, from where he currently resides.
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March Madness is also a good time to ponder how some wealthy parents apparently have been paying lots of money to have their children admitted to prestigious universities, when all those kids had to do was be really good at basketball.
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Meanwhile, a lot of people are picking Duke to win it all this year, while others are concerned about star player Zion Willamson, wondering when the other shoe is going to drop.
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Levi's CEO Chip Bergh told CNN last week he has yet to wash a 10-year-old pair of 501 jeans he owns. His strategy may be to keep stockholders at bay, but millions of viewers were just glad no one has yet invented smell-a-vision.
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Bergh also debunked the idea that you can clean a pair of jeans by putting them in the freezer. This, apparently, does not kill germs. It does, however, make getting dressed in the morning an eye-opening experience.

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A lighthearted look at news of the day:


The most reassuring sign of spring? It’s when you say something at the Utah State Capitol and your voice echoes through an empty building.
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State lawmakers ended their annual 45-day session last week. I love the traditions this time of year. I get goosebumps when the final gavel is struck and the mayor of Salt Lake City files her first lawsuit of the spring against the Legislature.
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Mayor Jackie Biskupski has sued over the Legislature’s creation of an inland port within city limits, saying, “We want to go to battle and get our rights back.” Supporters of Medicaid expansion and a host of other issues responded by saying, “Take a number and get in line.”
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Actually, Utah lawmakers had a fairly quiet session. They did respond to three recently successful voter initiatives by passing a few new common-sense rules. From now on, you have to prove an initiative can pay for itself, the initiative can’t take effect until 60 days after the next legislative session and supporters have to conduct public hearings entirely in iambic pentameter.
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If people had celebrated Pi Day with real pies when I was a kid, I might have pursued a career in math.
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This is that great time of year when we go from the Super Bowl to Pi Day to St. Patrick’s Day to Star Wars Day on May 4 to Cinco de Mayo and straight on to National Obesity Awareness Week.
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Actually, Obesity Week comes early in January, under the mistaken premise that Americans overeat only during the holidays.
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If Americans only could think of a way to associate Memorial Day with food, the calendar would be perfected.
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It’s a bit confusing to have the final days of the Utah Legislature and March Madness selection Sunday so close together. I filled out my bracket and accidently picked tax reform to be in the Final Four.


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A lighthearted look at news of the day:


North Korea just released a documentary that characterizes Kim Jong Un’s performance at the recent summit with President Trump as "yet another meaningful incident on the issue of world peace." That’s pretty much true, except for the part about it being a total failure that resulted in no agreement whatsoever.
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The summit was so successful that Kim apparently has begun ramping up North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs again. Maybe a future documentary could describe how Kim’s tough negotiating skills won him the right to do this in exchange for keeping sanctions in place against his country.
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While we’re on the subject of films, a new Chinese movie, “The wandering earth,” has Chinese astronauts and truckers saving the earth from a fading sun. Apparently, the Chinese are tired of movies showing Americans always saving the planet. Meanwhile, the actual planet could use fewer movies and more actual negotiating, but no one would buy overpriced popcorn to watch that.
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A man in Georgia is accused of locking his family in a house and setting it on fire after an argument over a box of Cheez-Its. The family made it out OK, although mom had to be lifted down from a second-story window. This gives new meaning to Cheez-Its’ new “Snap’d” variety.
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Last month, a woman in Kentucky told her husband she wished he would give her something for Valentine’s Day that would last, such as tulips that would come back each year. So her husband, desperately trying to remember what she had said, surprised her on the big day with turnips, stacked in a bucket that said, “I love you.” The fact that this became a news story tells you all you need to know about how that turned out.
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That’s one husband who no longer can say he didn’t fall off the turnip truck yesterday.
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Meanwhile, millions of American husbands are grateful to the “turnip guy” for making their mistakes on Valentine’s Day look minor.   
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With only three days left in their 2019 session, Utah’s lawmakers have turned their attention to regulating e-cigarettes. That’s fitting, seeing as how their efforts at tax reform went up in smoke.



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​A lighthearted look at news of the day:
 
In honor of that controversial, classic song, “Baby it’s cold outside,” which seems to be dividing the nation right now like a Supreme Court pick, here’s a non-controversial rewrite celebrating Utah’s annual holiday weather inversion. Yes, sometimes it really is safer to stay inside.
 
Baby, You’ll Choke Outside
 
I really can’t stay
(But baby you’ll choke outside)
I’ve got to go away
(No, really, you’ll die outside)
This evening has been …
(Just don’t breathe in)
… So very nice
(A designer mask might look nice)
My mother will start to worry
(The streetlights all look so blurry)
My father will be pacing the floor
(You wanna breathe? Don’t open the door!)
So really I’d better scurry
(The air tastes like slurry)
Well maybe just a half a drink more
(Put your mask on while I pour)
 
The neighbors might think …
(You couldn’t withstand the stink)
Say what's in this drink?
(It’s polluted ice, I think)
I wish I knew how …
(The PM-2.5’s! Holy Cow!)
… to break this spell
(Asthma attacks are not swell)
I ought to say, no, no, no sir
(You can borrow my inhaler)
At least I'm gonna say that I tried
(How’re you gonna save your insides?)
I really can't stay
(A storm may come Monday)
[Together:] But tonight we’ll choke outside!
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A tense televised White House encounter last week between President Trump and Democratic congressional leaders proved that sometimes, baby, it can be cold inside, too.
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After Trump, House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer traded accusations and disagreements over the budget, Trump characterized it as a “friendly meeting.” Presumably, that means everyone had to check weapons at the front door.
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Judging by how everyone was digging in their heels, one thing is apparent: You don’t need $5 billion to erect walls.
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A recent factory accident in Westönnen, Germany, sent a ton of melted chocolate flowing into the street, where it quickly hardened in the cold winter air to look as if the road was paved with the stuff. Quickly — if you died right now and had to choose between a heaven paved with gold or Westönnen, Germany, which would it be?

​A lighthearted look at news of the day:
 
Forget about incumbents thrown out of office or Republicans losing the House. The biggest loser last Tuesday was Lesia Romanov, a Nevada Democrat who ran for the state assembly. She lost to a man who had died nearly a month earlier.
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For Republicans, this may not answer the question, “What would it take for you to vote for a Democrat?” But it pushes the answer into new territory.
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Even in Chicago, it’s only the voters who sometimes lack a pulse, not the candidates.
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Actually, given the way many politicians have been acting lately, Nevada voters may have made a logical choice.
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Officials in Nevada will go through a process to pick a Republican to assume office in place of the deceased candidate. That may take a while — maybe even so long that people in Utah County will finish voting first.
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You know incivility is becoming a big issue in society when the Girl Scouts sue the Boy Scouts, and it has nothing to do with stealing too many thin mints.
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The lawsuit challenges BSA for changing its name to Scouts BSA, which makes it easier to accept girls, who now are eligible to become Eagles. Apparently, the Girl Scouts are not willing to concede that this is how the cookie crumbles.
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To calm concerns among customers that MoviePass is about to go bankrupt, the company decided to send an email last week purporting to be from a cute little dog named “Chloe, the Director of Barketing.” Chloe basically says she has no idea what’s happening, but she sees a lot of humans working hard to make things better. If this gig doesn’t work out, she might try running for the state assembly in Nevada.
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I suppose if anyone could dig up much-needed money for the beleaguered MoviePass, it would be a canine, but I doubt a real director of either barketing or marketing would want to instill a visual image that suggests the company is going to the dogs.
 

​A lighthearted look at news of the day:
 
Researchers at the University of Utah are making progress toward being able to produce usable human organs on 3D printers. As usual, the printers will be cheap, but the stem cell-filled printer cartridges will be outrageously expensive and always running out of colored ink.
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“Could you email me that pancreas again? I think something was garbled. Ow!”
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Nikki Haley resigned last week as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. I’m sure she was a good ambassador, but her biggest accomplishment may have been to throw off news outlets that are not used to a resignation that doesn’t involve scandal, a tell-all book or at least a nasty tweet.
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No sooner had Nikki Haley resigned than Dennis Rodman tweeted that he would like to replace her. He attached a video of himself asking two horses what they thought about whether he should “try to save the world.” One of them can be heard giving an appropriate answer: “Nay.”
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Rodman’s tweet received some serious feedback, with one thoughtful person noting, “Nikki don’t even have an action figure!”
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Remember the old bumper stickers urging the U.S. to get out of the U.N.? Put Rodman in there and see how quickly those begin to sell in other countries around the world.
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Sears may be filing for bankruptcy. I could have told them, when they started catalog sales in the 19th century, that the whole idea of ordering stuff from home would never catch on.
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Sears apparently hasn’t turned a profit since 2010. But then, the federal government hasn’t turned one yet in this century, and no one is trying to stop it from making pennies for nearly 2.5 cents each.
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Oh sure, economists will tell you that the great penny deficit isn’t such a big deal because each penny will be used for at least two or three transactions before ending up in that glass jar on your bookshelf.
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Disney has announced that it will begin filming a new 10-part series here based on the High School Musical franchise. What an honor for the state of Utah to once again serve as the fictional backdrop for Albuquerque, New Mexico.
 

​A lighthearted look at news of the day:
 
Last Saturday was the autumnal equinox. That’s the day when the wildfires in Utah change to a more amber and yellow glow.
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I wouldn’t say it’s been a bad year for fires in Utah, but word has it Smokey Bear is looking for a new career as a backup mascot for the Jazz.
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Utah’s kindergartners started school this month. They’re so cute as they enter classrooms for the first time, all ready to learn words they may never have heard before, like, “rain” and “cloud.”
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In Florida, giant bundles containing 5-kilo bricks of marijuana have been washing ashore on sandy beaches. Tourists were heard to remark, “When they said to be careful with high tides, we never imagined this.”
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The Washington Post said when sheriff’s deputies arrived at the Florida beach where marijuana had appeared, they found one man standing with 11 pounds of the stuff in his hand. He told them he was just holding it in safekeeping for their arrival. They thanked him with a criminal charge of possession and failure to think of an intelligent excuse.
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Last week, Republican Sen. John Kennedy said Democrats had turned the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings into an “intergalactic freak show.” Democratic Sen. Cory Booker took offense to that. “I am Spartacus!” he said.
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Aliens all across the universe, meanwhile, are thinking of suing for defamation.
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Kennedy said he’s “fairly confident” the Founding Fathers didn’t intend for confirmation hearings to work this way. Actually, I’m fairly confident if the Founding Fathers could see Washington today, they might be tempted to say, “Maybe King George wasn’t so bad, after all.”
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A flight from Mumbai to Jaipur in India had to make an emergency landing after crewmembers forgot to turn on cabin pressure. Wouldn’t you expect that to be first on the checklist, right before reminders to arrange little bags of peanuts and pretzels on a cart that’s one millimeter narrower than the width of the aisle?
 

​A lighthearted look at news of the day:
 
Who needs the NFL, with its watered-down tackling rules? Thanks to cable TV, we can watch Supreme Court nomination hearings. No rules, and they don’t even wear helmets!
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Anyone who really misses the old Barnum and Bailey Circus should come to Washington. Elephants and donkeys perform daily. P.T Barnum lives! It’s up to you to decide who are the suckers.
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Each day of hearings last week began with the ceremonial tossing out of the first protester. This was followed by several repeats, using a series of different protesters every 10 minutes or so, just to break the monotony. The only thing missing was a scroll at the bottom of the screen telling people what number to call to vote for their favorite performance.
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In the grand finale, Democratic presidential aspirant Cory Booker declared himself Spartacus. You remember Spartacus, right? He led an uprising against the Roman Empire by releasing confidential documents the Romans already had made public … or something like that.
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One good thing is that no one decided to play the national anthem and take a knee. Then the president would have tried to shut the whole thing down.
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After several days of exhaustive hearings, Americans finally learned the truth about Judge Brett Kavanaugh. He’s a “pro-law” judge, as opposed to all those judges who hate the law.
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The late British journalist Claud Clockburn said, “Believe nothing until it has been officially denied.” In other words, you better believe a lot of crazy stuff happened in Washington last week.
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A day after the New York Times published an anonymous op-ed from “a senior official in the Trump administration,” the list of denials from prominent people in the White House began to grow. Curiously, President Trump wasn’t among them.
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Even former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., had to deny he was secretly flying from Moscow (otherwise known as U.S. election headquarters) to Washington so he could frustrate the president’s agenda.
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The op-ed writer called the president, “impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.” Not so, said the president, as he dashed off several hastily written tweets, including one that called the author gutless and accused him or her of treason, and another that ineffectively demanded the Times hand the writer over to the government.
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All of this has me confused. Am I supposed to be more afraid of the deep state or the shallow state?
 

​A lighthearted look at news of the day:
 
Summers in Northern Utah are beautiful! And I’m not just blowing smoke. I’m also breathing it in.
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People here are never satisfied with the weather. Sure, you’re complaining right now about the smoke, but in a just few months I bet you’ll be complaining just as loud about the smog.
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Last week, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul hand-delivered a note from President Donald Trump to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Some people will do anything to save $1.15 in postage.
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Members of Congress wonder why the U.S. Postal Service can’t turn a profit. Maybe if they stopped hand-delivering letters all over the world that would change.
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The Trump administration presses forward with its plans to organize a military “space force” just as Patrick Stewart announces he is returning to the star ship Enterprise. Coincidence?
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So Patrick Stewart is going to reprise his role as Captain Jean-Luc Picard on Star Trek. Admittedly, things will be a little different with a 78-year-old Picard in charge. For one thing, the Enterprise will have to stop at Denny’s every morning so he can get a senior discount on the Grand Slam breakfast. For another, the ship’s mission will be changed to “boldly go … frequently.”
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The first episode of the new Star Trek will find the Enterprise in peril as alien forces launch an attack on the ship and Picard dangerously delays responding until a Millennial can be found to “help me turn on this stupid computer.”
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In the next episode, the crew of the Enterprise is sent into panic after realizing Captain Picard unwittingly sold the ship to a telemarketer.
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Maybe they can bring back William Shatner as Captain Kirk, as well. Then the Enterprise could boldly go negotiate the cheapest price for a hotel stay.