Instead of watching basketball as I promised, I spent most of my weekend spare time reading Tiziano Terzani’s “Goodnight, Mr. Lenin,” a travelogue of the end of the Soviet Union.

But I did see Georgia beat LSU on Saturday, giving the Dawgs third-place in the SEC.

Here are some midday snacks of various temperature:

* 28 Senate Democrats planning all-night “talkathon” on climate change tonight. Nite Owls should check in on CSPAN and provide some moral support.

* Gallup finding that number of uninsured continuing to decline not slam dunk talking point for Obamacare, but certainly doesn’t hurt.

* Des Moines Register poll shows enthusiasm among Iowa Republicans for 2016 campaigns by Huck and Paul Ryan; not so much for Rick Perry and Rick Santorum. But Cruz, Paul, Walker and others not tested.

* McConnell gloats that conservative challenges to incumbent GOP senators (including one to his own self) will be “crushed.”

* Kim Jong Un squeaks through to re-election to North Korean Supreme People’s Assembly with 100% of the vote.

And in non-political news:

* Malaysian commercial airliner disappearance a big-time mystery.

As we break for lunch, here’s Charley Patton with his great song on the 1927 Mississippi River flood: “High Water Everywhere.”

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Ed Kilgore is a political columnist for New York and managing editor at the Democratic Strategist website. He was a contributing writer at the Washington Monthly from January 2012 until November 2015, and was the principal contributor to the Political Animal blog.