1. It’s Tuesday, February 16, 2016.

2. I haven’t given up the blog. I’ve been away. At some point, I’ll write some observations about my almost-a-week at Walt Disney World. But for the time being, let me weigh in on some things that have happened in the past couple of weeks.

3. Let’s say, heaven forbid, there’s some sort of natural disaster in Kentucky in the next 11 months. The Ohio or Mississippi rivers flood, or something like that.

Under the logic of the senior senator from the state, who’s also the majority leader of the Senate, President Obama should just sit on his hands and not lift a finger to help. After all, he’s only in office until January 20, 2017. And any relief he would provide to the beleaguered people of Kentucky would help them rebuild structures that would last past the day Obama walks out the White House door.

The Republican claim that the President shouldn’t appoint a successor to Antonin Scalia is nonsense. But then again, it’s not surprising. The Republicans have been working since before January 20, 2009 to delegitimize Barack Obama. Why should they stop now?

4. After three days of thinking about it, I have the following question: Who the hell would want to be the Supreme Court nominee?

You are going to be vetted like no other Supreme Court nominee in recent history. You are going to be the target of every special interest group that hates the President, the Democrats and anything resembling liberal democracy.

And you’re not going to be a Supreme Court justice.

In fact, there’s a good chance you have no chance in the world of ever becoming a Supreme Court justice. The Republicans are wrong to say the President can’t nominee someone, but they are well within their rights to reject any choice he makes – no matter how reasonable or moderate. If Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders win the White House, they’re going to want their own person on the court. If a Republican wins, fuggedaboutit.

It’s a thankless task to be this nominee. Any jurist who seriously dreams of being on the court will not want to be tarnished by what’s about to happen.

5. It’s why I think Attorney General Loretta Lynch is going to be the nominee. She’s been through the review process recently. And I don’t know if she ever thought of herself as SCOTUS material, so not getting there might not seem so awful. Plus, she’s tough. She can handle herself.

1. It’s Wednesday, February 3, 2016.

2. Do Marie Osmond and Dan Marino keep gaining and losing weight so they can do those NutriSystem commercials that flood the airwaves this time of year?

3. Is it me or is the presidential election hype blotting out the Super Bowl hype?

4. Democrats are supposedly worried about facing Marco Rubio in the general election. And with signs that Rubio might be emerging as the non-crazy Republican in the field, it might not be a bad idea to debunk those fears.

Rubio’s big advantage in a general election against Hillary Clinton is the optics. Young guy, four young kids, into electronic dance music versus grandmother, major public figure for a quarter century, into Barbra Streisand and Carole King.

Rubio points out his youth a lot. But what is he for? He wants to roll back Obamacare. He wants to halt any rapprochement with Cuba or Iran. He appears open to the idea of sending troops back to Iraq for the fight against ISIS.

Frank Bruni’s terrific column in yesterday’s New York Times explained Hillary Clinton’s problem with young voters. She doesn’t talk about the future so much as she talks about what she has accomplished. Accomplishing things is fine, but that didn’t do much when she ran against the less experienced Barack Obama.

She needs to tackle this head on if Rubio is the GOP nominee. You can be young, but if your vision for the future is to roll back to the past, you might as well be 90. That needs to be Clinton’s plan of attack.

Rubio would be a more formidable opponent than demagogues such as Cruz or Trump. But he is in no way invincible. She should use the primary campaign against Bernie Sanders to hone her message to millennials and others under 40: a Hillary Clinton future is far more in their interest than a Marco Rubio future.

5. You know why Donald Trump shouldn’t have had coffee yesterday? Because coffee is for closers. And Trump didn’t close the deal in Iowa. He lost.

Writing that might get tired. But not yet.

1. It’s Tuesday, February 2, 2016.

2. It’s Groundhog Day. Fortunately, it looks like we got rid of the groundhog that burrowed a tunnel under our house. So if the miserable creature saw his shadow, he saw it somewhere other than here.

3. Some observations after Iowa:

— Here’s what’s unfair about the Iowa caucuses – how do maybe 400,000 people get to shape a race in which, eventually, about 120 million people will vote? It’s ridiculous. Even in Iowa itself, a quarter of the state’s voters determined who the other three-quarters will pick in November.

— Don’t go trashing the pollsters who didn’t quite get the GOP race right. With a relatively small voting base, any number of things could skew an event that requires people to commit an hour or more on a weeknight. The kids have to go to school the next morning. There was an order at the plant that required working overtime. Someone called in sick. Those things weigh more heavily on a time suck like a caucus.

— All that said, you have to think New Hampshire voters will take a new look at the three front runners in the GOP race. Cruz and Rubio should get a boost. And we’ll find out if Trump’s poll numbers have been inflated everywhere, not just Iowa.

— And you have to wonder about the other so-called moderates in the field. Combined, Kasich, Bush or Christie didn’t even get 7% of the caucus raw vote in Iowa. Unless one of them pulls a shocker and finishes second in New Hampshire, they’re doomed. Rubio’s strong showing puts him clearly into the fore as the candidate of the less crazy.

— On the Democratic side, there’s a lot of hand-wringing about both candidates. Clinton lost because she didn’t put Sanders away. Sanders lost because he couldn’t beat Clinton in a state with incredible favorables for his viewpoint (about two-thirds of the caucus participants considered themselves very or somewhat liberal).

Here’s the truth: It’s a tie, and a tie is a wash. It’s as if Iowa didn’t happen. Sanders remains strong in New Hampshire, and nothing about Iowa will change that. Clinton remains strong in South Carolina, a week and a-half after New Hampshire.

— And who is this good for? Democrats – other than poor Martin O’Malley, who’s gone now.

If Clinton is the inevitable nominee, she needs to be tested. Sanders will give her that test. And if her people – including her husband – are as smart as everyone thinks they are, they will find a way to beat Sanders, and then they will find a way to embrace him and his supporters.

Hillary Clinton’s best shot against the Republican, especially if it’s Rubio, is standing on the podium at the convention in Philadelphia holding the arms of her solid running mate on one side and Bernie Sanders on the other. That’s the picture Democrats want to see.

— Trump lost. He lost. He’s a loser. Loser Trump. Trump: 0 wins, 1 loss. Winning percentage: .000.

Obama won Iowa. Hillary Clinton won Iowa. Cruz won Iowa. Hell, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum won Iowa. They’re not losers.

Trump is. In fact, he almost came in third.

Concession. Also-ran. Underperformer. All can be used in a discussion of Donald J. Trump.

Even I didn’t realize how good it would feel to type all that. I’d love to be able to do that again after New Hampshire.

1. It’s Monday, February 1, 2016. The longest month of the year is history.

2. Sometime today, some meatball will become the first person ever to exercise his or her sacred right of franchise for Donald Trump. What a freakin’ waste.

3. Because Iowa is a caucus and not a primary, it’s a lot easier for the polls to be wrong.

It’s not just that people have to go to a school or community center, mark a ballot and leave. They have to stick around and organize into support groups.

So if you’re, say, a parent with child care issues, it’s a lot harder to attend a caucus than to vote in a primary. If you participate in a caucus, you’re going to miss your favorite TV show, or Monday wings night at the local restaurant. If there’s going to be a snowstorm, you’re going to be leery of hanging at somebody’s house.

Therefore, if the polls are wrong, don’t wag fingers at the pollsters or Nate Silver and his great fivethirtyeight.com. Something could happen in the course of the day that keeps people away.

4. Glad to see the recognition for the cast of “Spotlight” at the Screen Actors Guild awards. Moviegoers have been fortunate in the past year to have this terrific film and “The Big Short.” I’ve been fortunate in that both films deal with areas of interest to me – high-quality journalism and the financial crisis of 2008.

One reason “Spotlight” is so good is that it captures how the almost mundane teamwork of professional journalists can make a big difference in the world.

The film’s DVD and iTunes release is Feb. 23 if you can’t see it in a theater before then.

It’s January 29, 2016 and time for a belated edition of Friday Yes or No. I ask some questions that are answerable simply. The trick, my friends, is in clever question phrasing, but I probably shouldn’t tell you that.

Q1: Wouldn’t it be great if this were the last presidential cycle in which the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary got so much attention?

A1: Yes

Q2: Is that because Iowa and New Hampshire are inherently bad places with bad people?

A2: No

Q3: OK, is that because there’s something blatantly distorting about those two states shaping the entire election process every single quadrennial?

A3: Yes

Q4: Do you think this latest Hillary Clinton e-mail revelation will deal a big blow to her presidential hopes?

A4: No

Q5: But is it an enthusiasm kill for her supporters, even if it doesn’t pan out to be that damaging?

A5: Yes

Q6: I’m not a violent person, but is there something about Ted Cruz that makes you want to smack him?

A6: Yes

Q7: With the arrest of the wildlife refuge terrorists in Oregon and the indictment of the anti-Planned Parenthood video fabricators, has this been a good week for karma?

A7: Yes

Q8: Is this a good time to bring up the fact that Tuesday’s “American Experience” on PBS will be based on Candice Millard’s fantastic book about the assassination of President James Garfield?

A8: Yes

Q9: Does it sicken you that the state of Michigan sent bottled water to its Flint employees long before it responded to residents complaining about the brown ooze coming from their taps?

A9: Yes

Q10: Does today’s big Wall Street rally make you feel better about the state of the stock market as the year’s first month ends?

A10: No

Q11: Are you going to miss January 2016?

A11: No

1. It’s Wednesday, January 27, 2016.

2. Today is the 30th anniversary of the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger. It still makes me sad to think about it.

I imagine this is a tough day for the families of the crew, which included New Hampshire teacher Christa McAuliffe, as well as the people who work at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral. I hope you will keep them in your thoughts.

3. I guess we’ll see whether the individuals remaining at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon are as rugged as they’d like you to believe. Their leaders are now in the local jail, with one of them dead, after a road stop turned violent.

Having met with hostility from people in the area around the wildlife refuge, as well as anyone else in the country with a brain, they were supposedly trying to get to a part of the state thought to be more friendly.

The New York Times story on the incident sort of hints at a little psychological ploy on the part of law enforcement, which must have been sick of this nearly month-long travesty.

Whatever happened, let’s hope this stupidity comes to a quick end and these people can move on to go support their buddy Donald Trump or some other Republican pineapple.

4. Speaking of Trump, Fox News is holding its ground on tomorrow’s debate. Megyn Kelly will be a moderator, so Donald Trump won’t show up.

Supposedly, the ratings won’t be as good as they would be with America’s biggest boor. But look at this way: when these debates were scheduled way back when, did anybody think they would be ratings winners?

And, although I can’t imagine how to prove it, I think tomorrow’s debate will do better than originally expected because people will tune in to see what Megyn Kelly and the other Republicans have to say about the missing oaf.

5. Trump, when he wants to appear morally superior to those opposed to him, loves to hide behind military veterans. The reason he says he’s not going to the debate tonight – besides the fact that the icky Megyn Kelly is there –  is that he’s doing a benefit for wounded vets.

I’m sure any event that gives these folks a night of entertainment is worthwhile. But for guys as brave as these, being a prop for someone hiding from a Fox News journalist must be somewhat distasteful.

6. Just when you thought this election couldn’t involve any more despicable characters, look who might show up. Michael Bloomberg is thinking about running for president.

And the person who loves this idea best has to be Donald Trump. That’s why you heard Trump trashing Mike’s raison d’être, the financial data and news company that made him one of the world’s wealthiest people. Trump told Wolf Blitzer that the company is fragile, and could go out of business if someone comes up with a better data terminal.

That had to have Bloomberg see red. His company is everything. He went back to it after 12 years as mayor of New York because he never left it. If he thinks he can sell more terminals by becoming the 45th President of the United States, he’ll try to do it.

And that’s Trump’s opening. Whether it’s Hillary Clinton or, as Bloomberg fears, Bernie Sanders, Mike will take more votes from the Democratic nominee than from Trump, who can win the presidency with about 35% of the vote.

I’m not sure how it happens other than through positive thinking, because his ego is a big honking factor. But Mike Bloomberg running for president would be a disaster.

1. It’s Tuesday, January 26, 2016. A week from today, it will be February. Finally.

2. It snowed a lot this past weekend here in the northern suburbs. But on Long Island, they got real snow. Two feet in some of the places I saw. And heavily traveled roads, including the Long Island Expressway, remained partly unplowed two days after the storm.

The good news is that it’s above freezing throughout much of the snowbound area. The bad news is that, at night, it gets below freezing and all those stupid wet puddles turn into ice slicks.

Moral of the story: Be careful out there!

3. It’s this simple: If Donald Trump cowers at the sight of Megyn Kelly, what the hell will he do when he shares a room with Vladimir Putin? Hassan Rouhani? Hillary Clinton?

I’m not a Fox News fan and the Ailewives who work there could care less what I think. But they’ve got to stand up to him. If Megyn Kelly is Fox’s go-to for a Republican debate, the network has to show its support. If not, why does she work there?

4. The best news story of 2016 so far has to be the fact that a grand jury in Houston, ostensibly sicced on Planned Parenthood by Republicans looking for political gain, instead indicted the jackasses who made videos attempting to frame the organization. The two face a charge of tampering with a governmental record and another related to purchasing human organs.

These two used fake licenses in a meeting with Planned Parenthood in which they tried to entrap the organization into illegally selling body parts from aborted fetuses. That’s not according to me. That’s according to the indictment from a grand jury convened by Republicans in Texas.

These so-called anti-abortion activists now face 20 years in prison. Planned Parenthood, which does all kinds of wonderful work to protect people’s health, faces nothing – at least until Republicans in Texas find something else they can try to trump up.

The worthless sack of feathers and dust known as Mike Huckabee was incensed by the indictment – how could these patriots face jail time, he asked, while people who perform abortions walk free? Because he’s a worthless sack of feathers and dust, it’s probably hard for him to understand that abortion remains legal in the United States and, with continued diligence, will remain so.

And if it doesn’t remain legal, abortion will continue unabated and become far more dangerous because women who don’t want to carry to full term for whatever reason will find a way to end a pregnancy.

Good job by the grand jury and by the lawyers for Planned Parenthood.

1. It’s Wednesday, January 20, 2016.

2. In 366 days – remember, this is a leap year – there will be a new president.

3. If Sarah Palin gets her way, taking the oath of office on this day in 2017 will be Donald J. Trump. It would be mind boggling but, alas, minds are not something in abundance when people say that Sarah Palin will convince them to vote for Donald J. Trump.

At first, I wondered why. That didn’t last long. He’s the biggest show in the Republican Party, so she gets a chance to amplify her shrill voice on a big stage. It’s the glory days of 2008 again, without any tempering whatsoever from John McCain – in fact, her chosen candidate of 2016 believes the man who picked her to run for vice president is a loser because he spent more than five years as a prisoner of war.

For him, she gives him more immunity with the extremists – I’m reluctant to dignify these people with the word “conservative” because there’s nothing restrained about them – who might still be worried that Trump actually spoke to Hillary Clinton once without pushing her down. In a close race in Iowa, that might give him a little something extra to combat the organization Ted Cruz appears to have.

How will the Palin embrace of Trump affect the campaign? That, as my mentor Charlie Morey would say, is why they run the horse race. No one knows for sure. But we’ll certainly find out within the next 366 days.

4. The two go back a few years. Jon Stewart went to town one night in 2011 by showing Trump escorting Palin and her family for pizza in Times Square.

Here, according to Stewart – and, by the way, God – is what Trump did wrong:

a) He took the Palins to a chain pizzeria with locations in airports nationwide instead of an iconic or typical NYC place;

b) he stacked his slices. Nobody – I mean nobody – does that. That’s ridiculous;

and c) he ate the pizza with a fork! Whatever side you are on in the New York-Chicago pizza battle (I’m with NYC, but confess to having liked the pizza when visiting my second hometown), you agree that the New York type is eaten by hand or else you look like an idiot.

Prediction: The laughs will just keep coming.

5. Some thoughts about the snowstorm we’re expecting in my part of the nation:

— Phooey.

— My boycott of The Weather Channel means I will not know until it shows up on social media what stupid name it has given this storm. My boycott stems from the fact that WINTER STORMS DON’T HAVE NAMES! This is just a marketing ploy. Calling a storm Odin or Elektra doesn’t make it more memorable.

— If you want to know about the snowstorm without Weather Channel or any channel hype, I’m a huge fan of the National Weather Service’s social media outreach.

I woke up at 7 a.m. to see a thorough, honest forecast from the NWS New York office that gives me a fair idea of what the people who follow this expect. I follow on both Twitter and Facebook, and you can follow whatever branch of the service is near you, or even follow the entire region where you live.

It’s what I’ll use the next few days as I try to coax this dopey storm to sea – something the NWS says remains a small possibility.

1. It’s Tuesday, January 19, 2016.

2. At my age, time usually passes quickly. But no matter how old I get, January drags. In 62 Januaries, I have never said “Gee, that went fast.” It never does.

Why am I so cranky? It could be that it’s 19 degrees on the 19th. It could be that we’re looking at 10 inches of snow this weekend. It could be the untimely death of my garage door opener. It could be that I woke up to discover Donald Trump is still running for president.

3. I get why Americans dislike Iran. If you’re not old enough to remember the hostage crisis that began in November 1979, you’ve gotten a good feel for it from “Argo.” And there have been plenty of reminders in the 36-plus years since that Iranians hate us, including the year and a-half imprisonment of Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian. The Iranians’ grudge holding is even deeper than ours – they’re still blaming us for thwarting the overthrow of the Shah in the 1950s, even though Eisenhower and Dulles have long since died.

But this weekend was good. The United Nations affirmed that Iran is abiding by the terms of the nuclear agreement it signed last year, and the West lifted economic sanctions. And there was a swap of prisoners, with Rezaian and three other Americans getting out and seven Iranians going home in return.

And yet, there are those in both countries who would like nothing better than a war to settle things once and for all. They complain about the prisoner swap, with American killjoys saying we gave up too much and Iranian jerks doing everything they could to foul things up at the last minute. 

The whole incident involving the American sailors who might have strayed into Iranian waters captures this problem in a nutshell.

The fact that they were captured at all, and that the Iranians made a video of the sailors with their hands behind their heads and on their knees, shows that there are factions in Iran eager for a fight with the U.S.

The fact that a relatively quick release was negotiated, that no harm was done to the sailors, is seen by the Ted Cruzes of the world as a sign of weakness instead of the maturity to negotiate and tamp down the tension.

I suspect Cruz and others would be more than happy to send American troops, none of whom are his children, to rescue the sailors. I suspect there are Iranians who would have derived satisfaction from a show trial of hapless young Americans with a faulty navigation system.

Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif are trying to be the grownups, while a lot of petulant children clamor to rassle. Anybody who thinks peace is a better alternative to bloodshed and shouting should be on their side.

4. Glenn Frey is the second rock icon to pass this month. The Eagles’ singer and guitarist fought a whole bunch of afflictions as hard as he could before succumbing yesterday.

We should have been tipped off when the Eagles, who were slated to receive a Kennedy Center honor last month, asked out of the ceremony because of Frey’s illness. That’s one of those things you usually don’t skip.

“Take It Easy” was the first big Eagles hit, in 1972. It’s not one of my all-time favorite songs – or even my favorite Eagles song.

But I remember it fondly because one of the times I heard it on the radio was while my family was passing through Winslow, Ariz. Alas, I did not see a girl in a flatbed Ford, and even I did, there was little I would have been able to do with my parents and younger siblings with me.

The other song I’m associating with Glenn Frey this morning is “The Heat Is On,” one of his solo efforts during the 14-year estrangement with the rest of the Eagles. One reason is that the heat is not on this morning. Which makes sense. Rest in peace.

1. It’s Monday, January 18, 2016.

2. It’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day. It’s a great day to celebrate this country’s best attribute – the ability to recognize shortcomings in the way we treat each other and make changes for the better. But we are a better country than we were before Martin Luther King led the Montgomery bus boycott and the march from Selma to Birmingham.

And not just for African-Americans, but for all ethnicities, for all genders, for all sexual orientations and for all religions. The changes triggered by Dr. King have made life better for everyone, and the only reason you might not see it is that the change has been subtle, but thorough.

No, we’re not perfect. Not close. The shooting of unarmed African-American boys and men by police is heartbreaking and infuriating. The attempted intimidation of immigrants from Mexico and Central America, and the bigotry against American Muslims are both unacceptable.

But if there’s anything we learn from Dr. King, it’s that, in America, change for the better is inevitable as long as people with a strong moral compass make themselves heard. We’ve come a long way in the half-century since Martin Luther King’s heyday.

Can we go further? You bet. That’s the promise of this national holiday. It’s a great day to be an American.

3. Unlike the most recent Republican debate, I was more than able to stay with the entire Democratic Presidential debate last night. As a Democrat, I felt really good after it was over, because I watched would-be leaders rather than people who want to win a pissing match.

Some of my observations:

— Anyone who declared a winner between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton is off the mark. They both came off as thoughtful and issue-oriented, even when they disagreed sharply and made accusations about the other’s positions. I don’t think anyone who supported one switched to the other, and I think people undecided between the two could have come down on the side of either one depending on what issue moves them the most.

— Anyone who did the Rip Van Winkle thing during the 2008 Democratic campaign and woke up last night would have been most shocked by Clinton’s embrace of the Barack Obama presidency. Part of the reason was the audience – the Congressional Black Caucus, which sponsored the debate, is one of the President’s loyalist support groups. But it still was jarring to hear her sing the praises of the guy she went against full boar eight years ago.

— Sanders might have kicked away any chance he had of stunning Clinton with his new health care proposal. And it’s not because hard-core Democrats, deep in their soul, don’t agree with the idea of a single-payer system, a Medicare for all – we love that idea!

It’s just that Clinton is right – there’s no way we’re getting that anytime soon and it’s a waste of time and energy to try. The best thing to do is to work toward making Obamacare better. It’s a great start and great accomplishment. But the country isn’t ready for another big change until this one is absorbed. And that will take some time.

Plus this: you understand and I understand what Sanders means when he says that middle-class Americans would get a good bargain if they traded a modest tax hike for the end of private health insurance. But most middle-class Americans only heard that tax hike part. And you can bet good money that whoever would run against Sanders in the fall would not make a single speech without mentioning it.

It would be deadly and I think the one thing Democrats want more than either of the candidates is to make sure that Donald Trump and the Trumpettes on the Republican side don’t get close to winning.

— Generally speaking, the NBC debate was better than the others I’ve seen. There were still too many questions that were irrelevant – the way Sanders batted away the Bill Clinton comment question was brilliant and a real credit to him. And all these debates seem to let the one moderator dominate, leaving Andrea Mitchell sitting there for long stretches. But the real subject questions were good, Lester Holt seemed pretty fair minded, and the debate moved briskly.

— If there’s a moment when you see why anyone would want Hillary Clinton to be president, it was on that final question about the issue that didn’t come up during the debate.

Martin O’Malley got the question first and buried his best answer, the Puerto Rico debt crisis, in a laundry list of topics he felt he needed to get out.

Then Clinton launched a scathing tirade about the disgrace involving the drinking water in Flint, Mich. You could see her lift off as she ripped the officials who let the city’s supply become so contaminated and said how she reached out to people in the city to see if there was any way she could help.

That moment was the promise of Hillary Clinton. It was the moment when the ‘60s idealist broke through five decades of being so prominent a political figure. Her indignation reflected ours, on any number of levels, and it was encouraging to see.

It is little wonder why Republicans don’t want to run against her. She’s actually better at getting fired up than even Donald Trump, and the big difference is she doesn’t sound like an idiot when she does. If something like that Flint question comes up in a fall debate – the water disaster hopefully will be resolved by then – watch out.