Dixville Notch: Billionaire and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg won the vote at midnight in New Hampshire’s tiny Dixville Notch.  He wasn’t even on the ballot.

  Bloomberg got two write-in votes to be the Democratic nominee for president. Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders each got one vote. Oddly, Bloomberg got one write-in vote to be the Republican nominee.

 On the eve of New Hampshire’s primary, Bloomberg moved into third place in a national preference poll for who Democratic voters would like to see become the next president.

  Bloomberg hasn’t even qualified for a debate yet.

  Bernie Sanders slipped into first place with 25 percent, according to the latest Quinnipiac poll. Former Vice President Joe Biden, who’s in trouble in second at 17 percent, slid from 26 percent just last month. To add to his troubles, Bloomberg is breathing on his neck at 15 percent.

  Biden has been so busy attacking Pete Buttigieg in the last few days that he didn’t see Bloomberg coming. The former vice president calls himself an “underdog” today but “We’re going to do just fine heading south and across this country.” 

Money Talks: President Trump’s $4.8 trillion budget proposal for next year reveals that he wants to take a whack at the social safety net, cutting

student loan assistance, affordable housing, food stamps, and Medicaid. 

  Of course, he has to get that past Congress, so it’s really a wish list, but it tells you who he is and what he wants to do. Trump said yesterday that his budget would bolster the military and nuclear arsenal and bring the deficit close to zero in “not that long a period of time.” His estimate is 2035, if you consider that not a long time.

  The propagandists of the Trump administration labelled the budget document as something to “Restrain spending to protect and respect American taxpayers.” The budget is based on a rosy projection of economic health and doesn’t figure in the next tax cut Trump would like to make to win votes.

   Most entertaining is the line in the index that says the budget is intended to “Advance the President’s health reform vision.” He doesn’t have one.

Super Spreader: The  single day death toll from the coronavirus hit 100. Deaths in China’s coronavirus crisis have topped 1,000, hitting 1018 with 43,138 infected.

  Health authorities now say they suspect a British traveler they describe as a “super spreader” infected at least 11 people during his travels from Singapore to France to Switzerland, and England.

  Meanwhile, in Tianjin, a city of more than 15 million about 70 miles from Beijing, a third of the confirmed cases, 33 of them, have been linked to one department store. An estimated 12,000 people shopped at the store in January.

 In survival mode, an Australian couple trapped on the Diamond Princess cruise ship quarantined in Yokohama harbor ordered wine that was delivered by drone.

Headaches: After the Iranian missile strikes on Al Asad Air Base in Iraq in January, the Pentagon originally said no US service members were injured. Then they said a few had brain injuries and President Trump said they had headaches.

  Now, the Defense Department says 109 troops have been diagnosed with brain injuries. Seventy-six have returned to duty, they say. 

Fruit of the Poison Tree: In what appears to be further evidence that President Trump has been unleashed by his impeachment acquittal, Attorney General William Barr says the Justice Department will consider information developed by Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, in particular about former Vice President Joseph Biden and his son, Hunter.

  The Justice Department “has the obligation to have an open door to anybody who wishes to provide us information that they think is relevant,” Barr said at a news conference.

  Giuliani’s efforts to dig up incriminating evidence about the Bidens’ dealings with Ukraine was at the heart of the impeachment case.

The Bulletin Board: Amazon wants to depose President Trump and Defense Secretary Mark Esper to find out why the internet behemoth was not awarded a lucrative computing contract for the Pentagon. Amazon was the prime contender, but the company’s founder Jeff Bezos suspects President Trump diverted the contract to Microsoft because he hates The Washington Post and Bezos owns it. — The US has charged four members of the Chinese military with hacking into Equifax, one of the nation’s largest credit agencies, and stealing trade secrets and the personal data of about 145 million Americans in 2017. It’s unlikely that any of the accused will ever appear for trial in the US. — Federal prosecutors asked a judge to sentence former Trump associate Roger Stone Jr. to prison for up to nine years for lying to Congress and tampering with a witness during the investigation of how the 2016 Trump campaign tried to use stolen Democratic documents. He’s 67.

Virginia is for Lovers: The Virginia legislature has voted to remove a law that prohibits sex between unmarried people. The law was declared unconstitutional 15 years ago but never taken off the books.

  The legislature also has voted  to abolish a holiday celebrating Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. 

  In other news, the South lost the Civil War.

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