• Missed the GOP debate since it went off in the middle of the night over here in central Europe, but I have caught a couple of highlights on Twitter that have me amused. First, this from Vivek Ramaswamy:

Zero-based budgeting? Where have I heard this idea before? Oh that’s right—it was a centerpiece of Jimmy Carter’s 1976 campaign. And he got nowhere with it once in the White House. Why would anyone think this gimmick will work any better today?

Now if he’d said “zero-out budgeting,” as in let’s zero-out appropriations for entire agencies and programs, I’d get more impressed.

• On the other hand, it appears Ramaswamy drove the New York Times fact checkers out of their minds on a different topic:

Score this a W for Vivek.

• This item from ABC News on the X-Files (formerly Twitter) caught my eye. Is it getting any play in the mainstream media (beyond ABC) in the U.S.?

Is this another part of the gathering plot to make Joe drop out?