"I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits."

"I believe that what self-centered men have torn down men other-centered can build up. I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive good will proclaim the rule of the land."

Another debate... "It's going to be a doozy."

According to Chuck Todd. Are you watching? It's kind of late, and maybe you've been watching football games all day. Well, say what you like in the comments. I'll try to stay awake, and maybe I won't say anything more until tomorrow.

ADDED:  Quite chaotic, with lots of interrupting and taunting. Harsh voices. Red-faced anger.

AND: Are they being annoying and rude in an effort to appeal to the young? I notice all the YouTube things featuring youthful characters, so I'm thinking maybe they're deliberately repelling me.

Did Hillary make "a mistake to muddy up Chelsea" — "using Chelsea that way"? — Jake Tapper asks.

On "State of the Union" this morning:

TAPPER: For years, you have been very protective of your daughter, Chelsea Clinton, especially when she was a child, of course, and now she's a grown woman. This week, she surprised a lot of people when she unleashed one of the most scathing attacks of the cycle, accusing Bernie Sanders of wanting to empower Republican governors who might then cut people's health care. PolitiFact called Chelsea's remarks mostly false. Former Obama adviser David Axelrod said it was not an honest attack. And liberal columnist Mark Shields said the attack turned your daughter into a -- quote -- "political hack." Do you think it was a mistake to muddy up Chelsea like that?

CLINTON: Look, she was asked a question. I love my daughter. And she answered a question. And all I can say, Jake, is that the only health plan we know of from Senator Sanders is what's described in the legislation that he has introduced nine times in the Congress, in the Senate.....

TAPPER: So, no regrets about using Chelsea that way?

CLINTON: Oh, I didn't use her. She answered a question. And, you know, she gave a factual answer, based on the legislation that is the only way we know what Senator Sanders is actually proposing, because he introduced it nine times in the Congress.

TAPPER: OK. PolitiFact said it was mostly false, but let's move on. 

"Look, the truth is, he's a nasty guy... He's a nasty guy. Nobody likes him."

"Nobody in Congress likes him. Nobody likes him anywhere once they get to know him... He's got an edge that's not good. You can't make deals with people like that, and it's not a good thing. It's not a good thing for the country. Very nasty guy."

Donald Trump, talking about Ted Cruz this morning on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos." My transcription.

"It's a sad commentary that Hilary Clinton's campaign sees her mistake as a failure to 'undercut' Bernie Sanders..."

"... rather than a failure to realize just how desperately many people are seeking what Bernie has to offer. She had a lot of time to get out in front of that parade."

The second-highest rated comment — with 1230 recommendations — at a NYT article by Patrick Healy titled "Clinton Campaign Underestimated Sanders Strengths, Allies Say." Excerpt:

Most Clinton advisers and allies would speak only on the condition of anonymity to candidly assess her vulnerabilities and the Clintons’ outlook on the race.... Several Clinton advisers are also regretting that they did not push for more debates.... Several Democratic leaders...  argued that Mrs. Clinton and her advisers should have competed against [Sanders] more aggressively, in debates and on the campaign trail, rather than appear so sharply negative with their recent attacks, which have given the campaign a jumbled feeling heading into the first voting states. Even Chelsea Clinton jabbed at Mr. Sanders, an unusual move given that relatives are traditionally used in campaigns to soften a politician’s image....

Some Democrats also believe Mrs. Clinton may have benefited from a more competitive primary season with big-name rivals, like Vice President Joseph R. Biden, Jr., who might have brought out the fighter in her. Only this month has she started to engage Mr. Sanders, and some of her jabs have looked sudden and anxious....

Jumbled... sudden... anxious....

Why did Democrats stand back and allow Clinton to run unopposed? She lost in 2008, so why was she entitled to this clear path they gave her? One guy, not even a Democrat, stepped into the path with her. That he's caused her so much trouble makes it obvious that she didn't deserve that deference.

I know there's another guy. I'm sure his utter irrelevance has some meaning. What gets me is the cession of the party to the Clintons. How can a party be so inert, so uninspiring? Why did Obama leave it in such a condition that it should offer up only the elderly woman who lost to him 8 years ago, offer her up as if she's so decidedly right that no one else should even compete? What deadness! Such deadness that a significantly more elderly man drops in and feels like the future. How could a party lapse into this predicament?

ADDED: The post title is a quote that I cut and pasted. The misspelling of "Hillary" appeared in the NYT. Just a commenter, though, so no reason to look down on the NYT.

Hillary "should have run as a woman in 2008, when she was beating back a feminized antiwar candidate."

"And she should have run as a man this time, when Americans feel beleaguered and scared and yearn for something 'big and masculine and strong,'" writes Maureen Dowd, paraphrasing and quoting Matthew Dowd (the former George W. Bush strategist).

Dowd continues:

Since we cannot know if a woman is going to overcompensate on machismo — as Hillary did on the unjustified Iraq invasion — we may want to look at it a different way. It may be more relevant to ask if someone is a cat or a dog....

Ugh. I don't need cutesy animal stand-ins for masculine and feminine stereotypes. You've already made it clear that you think and want to write in terms of these stereotypes (with the understanding that a man can be "feminized" and a woman masculinized).


Farther down in the column, female/cat becomes head and masculine/dog becomes gut.

W. was all about the gut and Obama is all about the head and now Donald Trump is soaring by being the opposite of Obama, all about the gut again. Both Hillary and Trump have been emphasizing that they will do a lot more schmoozing with lawmakers and others who disagree with them, vowing to be dogs with a bone, eager canines offering paws, and not a cool cat stalking away at the first sign of difficulty or when affection is most desired....

Hillary is like Trump? If that's where your framework gets you, you need to question the framework. Those two are so different! Hillary is planned, programmed, and controlled. That doesn't seem Trump-like... or dog-like.

ADDED: Speaking of dogs, remember "Wally meets the press"? "What? My position? (Uh oh, here it comes) On what? — my position on CATS ??? Uh... well, cats are... uh, cats are... wait, hold on a sec... (must check with advisor).... My position is that cats are people too and that cats are equally deserving of living their lives with dignity, care, and happiness."



"There. I think I handled that well....."

Is everything about Trump?

Here's a headline at Politico: "Patriots Super Bowl victory could be a problem for Trump."

What's the theory?

The Super Bowl is set for Feb. 7, and past Patriots victory parades have traditionally been set for the Tuesday immediately following the game — in this case Feb. 9, the day of the [New Hampshire] primary. The Pats, already reigning Super Bowl champions, held their parade on a Wednesday last year, but only because a Tuesday procession was snuffed out by a snowstorm. So far, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh — a supporter of Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton — isn’t prepared to publicly discuss the possibility....

“When a million people show up in Boston, you can figure 30 percent of them or 25 percent of them are from New Hampshire," said Joel Maiola, a New Hampshire adviser to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's campaign.... Maiola joked that if Brady chokes, he just might be throwing the game to keep turnout high for Trump. “The fix is in,” he said with a laugh. “If we start seeing Brady flopping on the field, we know he’s taking a flop for Donald Trump.”

Why is Christie's guy drawing attention to the close relationship between Trump and Tom Brady?!

"I don’t fix things. I don’t build things. I don’t get us where we’re going."

"Without meaning to, I began to embody the stereotype of the helpless female. A stereotype I hate.... I wonder if I’m still capable of doing all the things I did when I was single, or if, leaving them to Steve, I’ve forgotten how. The journey from acting helpless to being helpless is a short one...."

From "I know how to use a hammer. So why do I let my husband do everything around the house?/Before marriage, I could rebuild a toilet. Now I don't know where the trash bags are." in The Washington Post.

The Supreme Court took a case about shredded tire playground mulch and religion.

The case is Trinity Lutheran Church v. Pauley:

The church involved in the case was denied access to a state program in Missouri that provides playground surface rubber made from old tires.  The refusal was based on a state constitutional provision barring any public funds going to religious groups.   The new case has the potential for a major interpretation of what neutrality involving religion means for public benefits.

"He had it on heads, he was showing heads, so I called tails, and it didn't flip. He just tossed it up in the air and it did not turn over at all and it landed on the ground."

"So we obviously thought that was not right. He picked the coin up, flipped it to tails and then he flipped it without giving me a chance to make a recall there. So it was confusing.... I think he was trying to avoid the embarrassment of what just happened. He flipped it quickly.... It's unfortunate it comes down to that."

[Aaron Rodgers is] right, or he's at least tapped into a debate that will rage on over the next few weeks. Coin toss or not, the NFL's overtime rules have been challenged for decades, especially by college football fans used to a more wide open format. This was an epic slugfest that deserved one more drive. Palmer and Rodgers made up a classic heavyweight bout and because of the rules in place, we were deprived of more magic.

For the annals of famous coin flips — along with the naming of Portland, Oregon and the death of Ritchie Valens.

How else could you decide who gets the ball first?

The XFL, a short-lived American football league, attempted to avoid coin tosses by implementing a face-off style "opening scramble," in which one player from each team tried to recover a loose football; the team whose player recovered the ball got first choice. Because of the high rate of injury in these events, it has not achieved mainstream popularity in any football league....

"I don’t consciously avoid any genres, but it is unlikely you would find me lingering in the section where they keep books like 'Eat, Pray, Love' or memoirs of life with a pet."

Says Bill Bryson — who has a new book "The Road to Little Dribbling/Adventures of an American in Britain" — in an interview in the NYT.

I'm an immense Bill Bryson fan, primarily because I love his audiobook voice. It's my go-to read-me-to-sleep voice. I've listened to all of his audiobooks hundreds of times over the past 20 years. You can't imagine the extent of my attachment to his voice. I'm always so happy when he puts out another book so I'll have a bigger choice of audiobooks. Unfortunately, "The Road to Little Dribbling" has somebody else reading it!

"Because of the impact she should have had severe injuries. She had a tyre mark on her chest."

"But her only injuries were she had no skin on her toe or her hip. The doctors think what saved her from injury was she didn't tense up."

Waterbears, frozen 30 years, alive again...

... and looking like they're wearing some puffy Gore-Tex coveralls. Microscopic things are freaky. Some of them, we've gotten used to, but seeing this waterbear makes me want to think about how Leeuwenhoek felt when he saw his "animalcules" for the first time:

He was delighted by his “little animals.” He wrote that “among all the marvels that I have discovered in nature, [these are] the most marvelous of all.” Later on he would declare: “From all these observations, we discern most plainly the incomprehensible perfection, the exact order, and the inscrutable providential care with which the most wise Creator and Lord of the Universe had formed the bodies of these animalcules, which are so minute as to escape our sight….”

Jimmy as Bob as Drake.

Here's the Drake version, for reference...



.... but you shouldn't need it, because even if you don't follow current pop music, you must have gotten up to speed to appreciate the SNL parody that had Donald Trump (the real Donald Trump) dancing in it:

A boy mishears a question asking who does not pray, raises his hand, and is accused of blasphemy, so he cuts off that hand...

... and presents it on a plate to the cleric whose question he misunderstood.

The poor boy is Mohammad Anwar, 15, of the Hujra Shah Muqeem district in Pakistan. We're told the villagers celebrated him and his parents expressed pride, but they are the ones who made him feel that he needed to make an even bigger gesture with his hand than the impulsive, mistaken indication that he did not pray. Their celebration and expression of pride cloaks what should be shame. They terrorized him into doing that violence to himself.

Blasphemy is a hugely sensitive issue in Pakistan, an Islamic republic of some 200 million, where even unproven allegations frequently stir mob violence and lynchings.

Accused of blasphemy, how was he supposed to save himself? He only did what was rational under the circumstances.

ADDED: I pictured this:



A young man is caught in a predicament where he figures out that he must cut off his hand to save his life.

For the annals of nonapologies — Ted Cruz.

Ted said:

So, today, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton and Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City all demanded I apologize....Who am I say to no? I will apologize. I apologize to the millions of New Yorkers who have been abandoned for years by liberal politicians. I apologize to all the hard-working men and women in New York who like to have jobs, but Governor Cuomo banned fracking, so they don't get the jobs the people of Pennsylvania have. I apologize to all the New Yorkers who are pro-life, pro-marriage and pro-Second Amendment, who were told by their governor — Governor Cuomo — that there is no place for them in state of New York because that's not what New Yorkers believe. I apologize to all the small businesses that are fleeing New York City because of the crushing taxes and regulations that are making it impossible to survive. I apologize to all African American and Hispanic school children that Mayor de Blasio tried to throw out of their charter schools that were giving them a lifeline and a chance at the American dream. And I apologize to all the cops and all the firefighters and all the 9/11 heroes who were forced to stand up and turn their backs on Mayor de Blasio because over and over again, he sides with the looters and criminals instead of the brave men and women.

He ends with the sarcastic "Now I hope that was the apology they were looking for."