I’m back from five days in the hospital trying to beat back a whole leg infection stemming from, I swear, a single bump on my shin two weeks ago. I didn’t have a laptop and my phone isn’t set up to post (or even get email), so I was cut off from Ethics Alarms as well as other essentials. I talked my way out of the place when they made it sound like I would be stuck there for another few days. Now I’m trying to master a new laptop with my still unwell foot elevated and my brain addled from painkillers, antibiotics, and a lack of sleep. (It is impossible to sleep in this hospital.) I’m sorry; a real post is beyond me right now. But here are some scattered thoughts, since all of my thoughts are scattered.

1. Thanks to all of you who expressed concern regarding my welfare.

2. I haven’t read the comments I’ve messed yet: I will.

3. Congratulations to A Friend, who managed to sneak on a banned comment exactly as I was on the way to the ER. I’ll leave this one up after all this time has passed, especially as it is so self-evidently lame. That Bill Maher has always been supportive of Israel is irrelevant to the point of the post, which was that Maher never gave Trump credit for doing anything right—including his unflagging support of Israel—-until Bill calculated that it was in his own best interests to do so.

4. Today one of the otherwise astute and perceptive lawyer friends who have been blinded by Trump Derangement wrote a brief note on Facebook pointing readers to a trenchant comment from—-wait for it!—Lawrence O’Donnell. This is a tell. First it means this individual gets a substantial amount of his public affairs information from MSNBC, which is on par with relying on Media Matters (or Weekly Reader). He compounds the felony by using O’Donnell as an authority, which is the equivalent of a conservative citing the shrewd, objective analysis of Sean Hannity or Tucker Carlson. Hey, why stop with O’Donnell? Why not Robert DiNiro or Joy Behar?

5. How I wanted to write a post about Kamala Harris’s infuriating appearance on Colbert’s lame duck show. She said she didn’t want to be in politics now because “the system is broken,” then, incoherent as always, said she would still be “fighting,” But not in “the system”? What, is she going to become a folk singer? A terrorist? Every Democrat, but especially Harris, is ethically estopped from complaining about a “broken system” when they worked so hard to break it. What gall: the puppet Presidency, lawfare against Trump, the J-6 Star Chamber, a Presidential candidate who went though none of the democratic selection process, efforts to keep Trump off state ballots, partisan capture of the media…and Harris decides the system she conspired to remake doesn’t work any more.

Then Colbert responds that the fact that Harris—the worst Presidential candidate of a major party since Horace Greeley—lost is proof that the system is broken. No, it’s proof that the system works despite everything the Axis threw in its way. How can anyone bemoan the demise of a pompous, smug ass who could say something that stupid on national TV?

OK, time for a nap. Treat this as an Open Forum.