I don’t think I’ll watch much, if any, of the Super Bowl today. If I do it will only do so to look forward to seeing that smarmy, smug Peyton Manning (it seems everyone around here hates Tom Brady and adores Manning) and the Broncos get ground up like Italian sausage by the Carolina Panthers. I’m predicting a blowout – 34-12.

And with the end of the NFL season comes the start of Spring Training. I’m not sure I’m prepared to say the Red Sox are destined for the playoffs – I want to first see how they stabilize their outfield and starting pitching, and see what Sandoval at 3B and Hanley Ramirez at 1B – but it will be great to have baseball back.

Enjoyed the GOP debate last night. Here’s how I see it: Trump won, not just in chiding the GOP establishment audience who booed him after The Donald (rightfully) schooled their boy Jeb! on the Keystone pipeline and eminent domain, but for that awesome zinger at Ted Cruz after he boasted of his Iowa caucus win during his closing. Ben Carson was nowhere to be found, but I could see Trump choosing him as his running mate. Christie did well as well. Cruz was OK, but kind of off his game, I thought. Jeb Bush is awful, period, though not nearly as obnoxious as John Kasich, who I kept on praying would just shut up. Marco Rubio got his lunch handed to him by Christie at a time when he least needed it. So Trump and Christie get the nod.

One note about Trump: a lot of people think he’s a buffoon, but during this debate he distinguished himself from start to finish from all the politicians on stage by his (at least for him) restraint and keeping his answers short and to the point. He showed a lot of class by not leaving Ben Carson’s side at the debate’s outset after Carson hadn’t heard his name called, even while the others sailed by them, amused. He continues to show a great knack for thinking what the average blue-collar Joe sitting at a bar with friends thinks – witness his support for the police and (more than) waterboarding of terrorists. His chiding of the GOP establishment audience during the Jeb! interaction secured his image as the true outsider in the race. And the timing of that zing at Cruz during his closing was lethal. I have to give the guy credit, he’s come a long way since that very first debate.

How about that YUGE crowd at Saturday’s Waste Management Open? The folks here in the Valley love themselves their professional golf.

Hey all you “blue state” residents, take a look at your future.

…along those same lines see here and here. At some point, there’s only so much money you can confiscate from the people before your own graft, greed, and patronage systems at all levels of government (federal, state, and local) hit critical mass.

…and speaking of resurrections, the new edition of the X Files is awful. The acting by David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson is bad to the point of caricature, the writing is lousy, and the number and length of the commercial breaks makes it virtually unwatchable. Fortunately we’ve got all the old series on DVD to enjoy.

Funny how just when the whole terrorism thing starts to fade in people’s memories you get another story like this. But that’s OK, I sleep soundly knowing our own Department od Homeland Security has our back.