PASS THE POPCORN: “Accused Rapist Bill Clinton Complains That ‘Bernie Bros’ Are ‘Profane’ And ‘Sexist.’”

Ultimately, one hopes, to paraphrase Henry Kissinger’s famous quip on the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, this time both sides will eventually lose.

POLITICO: HILLARY’S CAMPAIGN ON VERGE OF A SHAKEUP: It sounds like a disorganized mess. Write Glenn Thrush and Annie Karni, “Ultimately, the disorganization is the candidate’s own decision-making, which lurches from hands-off delegation in times of success to hands-around-the-throat micromanagement when things go south.” Also:

from the beginning, there have been deeper issues simmering within the cheerfully-decorated Brooklyn headquarters — and much of that had to do with a disconnect between the candidate and her campaign. Over the summer while her campaign was bogged down in the email controversy, Clinton was deeply frustrated with her own staff, and vice versa. The candidate blamed her team for not getting her out of the mess quickly, and her team blamed Clinton for being stubbornly unwilling to take the advice of campaign chairman John Podesta and others to apologize, turn over her server, and move on. The entire experience made her a deeply vulnerable frontrunner out of the gate, and underscored a lack of trust between Clinton and her operatives, many of whom were former Obama staffers that she didn’t consider part of her inner circle of trust.

Read the whole thing.

DEPENDS. DO YOU WANT HER AS NANNY-IN-CHIEF? Can We Forgive Hillary Clinton For Her Past War On Video Games?

It was one of the hallmark proposals of Clinton’s Senate era, that selling violent games to the underage should be criminalized. Together with Senator Joe Lieberman, the two crafted the Family Entertainment Protection Act.

There were five major proposals to the bill, including:

A prohibition on selling games to minors, where retailers could be heavily fined for selling M or AO games to those under 17
An independent analysis of the ESRB’s ratings system to figure out if it was actually accurate
Authority for the FTC to investigate misleading game ratings
Authority for consumers to register complaints with the FTC for misleading game ratings
An audit of retailers including possible “secret shoppers” to see if underage kids can buy M or AO games from stores

While this bill was being proposed, Hillary Clinton went on the warpath about violent games. This was after Columbine and before Virginia Tech, but right in the middle of the great “Grand Theft Auto” panic, where that series was constantly coming under fire as essentially the sum of all fears for those concerned about violent games. . . .

And here’s what she said when she was asked the famous “are video games art?” question:

“Art is subjective; it’s in the eye of the beholder. I think video games can be fun. They can teach eye-hand coordination and strategy and they can introduce children to computer technology. And there is no doubt they are intricate and sophisticated technologically. I’m not in any way trying to do away with video games. I’m strictly concerned with a small subset of games that are harmful to children — those that are excessively violent and sexually explicit. I want to make sure children can’t obtain these games without their parents’ consent.”

And here, just laying it bare:

“We need to treat violent video games the way we treat tobacco, alcohol, and pornography.”

Which I guess means that she’d crusade against those, too, given the chance.

CHANGE: Growing Support Among Experts for Zika Advice to Delay Pregnancy. But delay until when, exactly? What makes it likely that Zika will be less of a threat in a couple of years than it is now?

ACTUALLY, IT’S EASY TO MAKE MEXICO PAY FOR A WALL. Just put a 25% excise tax on remittances.

THE DECEIVING OF MADELEINE ALBRIGHT. At NewsBusters, Tom Blumer writes:

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin referred to Madeleine Albright’s somewhat well-known saying, found on a Starbucks coffee cup, that “There’s a special place in Hell for women who don’t help other women.” At the time, Albright, who served as Secretary of State under Bill Clinton, huffed: “Though I am flattered that Governor Palin has chosen to cite me as a source of wisdom, what I said had nothing to do with politics.” She naturally followed that statement with an intense political attack on Palin and GOP presidential nominee John McCain.

Now that Democrat Hillary Clinton is running for president and is in danger of losing the New Hampshire primary by a substantial margin, Albright has decided that her statement has everything to do with politics, and that women who don’t support Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy and vote for her deserve that “special place in Hell.”

This morning Larry Klayman’s Freedom Watch linked to Jeff Jacoby’s 1997 Boston Globe article, “The Deceiving of Madeleine Albright:”

I have much esteem for Albright as a public official. She is assertive and principled, a welcome contrast to the timid Warren Christopher and the arrogant James Baker. A loathing of appeasement is her foreign policy rudder. “The mindset of most of my contemporaries is Vietnam,” she has said. “My mindset is Munich.” Those are the words of a potentially great secretary of state.

But something rings false in her reaction to the news that her family was Jewish. Was this really a bolt from the blue? Did she honestly have no inkling until this month that the Nazis murdered three of her grandparents, her aunt, her uncle, and her 11-year-old cousin Milena?

“A major surprise for me,” says Albright. Yet for years, it turns out, people had been sending her letters with information about her family. Four times the mayor of her father’s hometown in Bohemia had written to her, enclosing detailed material about her parents and grandparents. Albright never replied; her aides say she was too busy to see the letters. Perhaps she was.

Read the whole thing.

And Zero Hedge asks if “There’s a special place in Hell for women who don’t help other women,” then why didn’t Hillary support Zephyr Teachout in 2014 “also a ‘progressive,’ as ‘first woman governor’ of New York? Seems appropriate for someone asking for support on the basis of “first woman president.” Perhaps Clinton thought Teachout was the wrong woman to be the first woman governor of NY.”

Say, I wonder if CNN will ask Hillary about that — nahh, actually, I don’t.

UPDATE: “Time for Team Hillary to break out the gender card for young liberal women who prefer Sanders,” just as Team Obama played the race card against her in 2008.

WELL, THIS SHOULD PUT AN END TO DEMOCRATIC ATTACKS ON THAT EVIL “FOR PROFIT” EDUCATION: Apollo Sold to Investors With Obama Ties. “Apollo Education Group, Inc., which owns the University of Phoenix and is a major player in for-profit higher education, this morning announced a deal to be sold to a consortium of investors, including the Vistria Group, funds affiliated with Apollo Global Management and Najafi Companies, for $9.50 per share. The deal is a $1.1 billion transaction. When the deal closes, Tony Miller, chief operating officer and partner of the Vistria Group and former deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Education, will become chairman of the Apollo Education Group board.”

FLASHBACK: Penalties For Politicians: We entrust an inordinate amount of power to people who don’t feel any pain when we fall down.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN, OCCASIONED BY THE 1000th DAY OF THE IRS SCANDAL: Washington’s culture of corruption rots on: When bureaucrats are above the law, ordinary Americans may want to follow suit.

FEAR AND LOATHING AT THE SUPER BOWL HALFTIME SHOW:

● Giuliani blasts Beyoncé for ‘attack’ on cops.

● America’s sheriffs turn back on Beyonce Super Bowl ‘Formation’ performance.

● Michelle Malkin tweets: “A bloody history lesson for Beyoncé and her Black Panther-glorifying dancers.”

● Monday’s CBS Good Morning Uses Beyonce Super Bowl Performance to Cheer Her Black Lives Matter Activism.

So, why did the NFL think that politicizing the halftime show in an election year would be a good thing – second look at “Up With People?”

BRR: Cosmic icebergs bob atop frozen nitrogen sea in Pluto’s heart.

JUDITH CURRY: Violating The Norms And Ethos Of Science. Well, when the opportunities for graft are sufficient, the temptation is nigh-irresistible.

ARMY OF DAVIDS, STATISTICS DIVISION: My latest Bloomberg View column looks at a startup using more than 30,000 smart-phone-wielding contractors to collect economic data, “peering into hard-to-reach places, identifying emerging trends and providing a check on official numbers. Particularly useful in developing countries, this grassroots data collection may, like the phones themselves, allow formerly lagging countries to leapfrog 20th-century approaches and establish flexible, nuanced and decentralized ways of answering economic questions.” Read the whole thing here.

NANNY STATERS GOTTA NANNY: 2016 “may be the sweet spot” for sugar taxes.

Scandinavian countries have had such taxes, with varying degrees of success, for many years, and in 2012, France and Hungary joined the list, followed by Mexico in 2014.

But some public policy experts see them becoming more widespread, as nations seek to bolster their finances in an uncertain global economy and a new generation of savvy consumers is more concerned about health and less trusting of big corporations.

“This puts political leaders in a stronger position to enact policies such as taxes because the companies aren’t considered unbreakable,” said Kelly Brownell, dean of Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy in North Carolina.

Now India, the Philippines and Indonesia have said they are studying similar levies while Britain debated the issue in parliament late last year and Prime Minister David Cameron said in January that he would not rule out a sugar tax.

How about a tax on all new tax proposals, to be paid for by their proponents? Such a tax might work as a disincentive to bad taxation, and give legislators an incentive to spend their limited energies and incomes on only the good taxes.

KEEPING AMERICA SAFE, OBAMA EDITION: Pentagon Orders Commanders to Prioritize Climate Change in All Military Actions.

The Pentagon is ordering the top brass to incorporate climate change into virtually everything they do, from testing weapons to training troops to war planning to joint exercises with allies. . . .

The directive, “Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience,” is in line with President Obama’s view that global warming is the country’s foremost national security threat, or close to it.

. . .

Climate change must be integrated in:

• Weapons buying and testing “across the life cycle of weapons systems, platforms and equipment.”

• Training ranges and capabilities.

• Defense intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance.

• Defense education and training.

• Combatant commander joint training with allies to “assess the risks to U.S. security interests posed by climate change.”

• Joint Chiefs of Staff collaboration “with allies and partners to optimize joint exercises and war games including factors contributing to geopolitical and socioeconomic instability.”

Yes, this makes sense. I can see why the President of the United States would direct our military to prioritize climate change, since all those military exercises, training, weapons tests, humvees and other military vehicles–not to mention actual weapons use–add to our carbon footprint, maybe as much as Air Force One or Obama’s limousine-and-SUV motorcade.

I mean, really, since climate change is a bigger threat than radical Islamic terrorism, we probably ought to just eliminate the military entirely. And the President should use a bicycle or sailboat to travel. The safety of the planet depends on it!

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1005.

THE ABOLITION OF BRITAIN: If these really are “The 10 greatest living Englishmen,” as chosen by the London Telegraph, no wonder England seems so culturally exhausted.

We know the once-conservative Telegraph certainly is.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Vassar faculty-sponsored anti-Israel event erupts in controversy: Invited speaker accuses Israel of scientific experiment in “stunting” growth of Palestinian bodies.

Two observations: (1) The most observable stunting of Palestinians is moral, not physical, and their supporters are more to blame for this than their enemies. (2) Whenever you hear someone, usually an academic or hanger-on, invoke the “bodies” trope — e.g., “black bodies,” “brown bodies,” “Palestinian bodies,” that’s a strong indicator that the speaker is an idiot.

KEVIN WILLIAMSON: Mrs. Clinton’s Ode To Serfdom.

Hillary Rodham Clinton is not qualified to be president of the United States of America, because she doesn’t know what the United States of America are.

Terry Shumaker, former U.S. ambassador to Trinidad (I wonder what that gig cost him) and current abject minion in the service of Mrs. Clinton, quotes Herself telling an audience in New Hampshire: “Service is the rent we pay for living in this great country.”

There is a very old English word for people who are required to perform service as a rent for their existence, and that word is serf. Serfdom is a form of bondage. Americans are not serfs. We are not sharecroppers on Herself’s farm or in vassalage to that smear of thieving nincompoopery in Washington that purports to rule us. We don’t owe you any damned rent.

The American proposition is precisely the opposite of what Herself imagines: The U.S. government exists at our sufferance, not the other way around.

Analysis: True. But our erstwhile ruling class needs to be reminded of this rather forcefully. Plus:

Herself’s invocation of serfdom is the logical extension of “You Didn’t Build That”-ism, the backward philosophy under which the free citizen is obliged to justify his life and his prosperity to the state, in order to satisfy the economic self-interest, status-seeking, and power-lust of such lamentable specimens as Elizabeth Warren, a ridiculous little scold who has never done a single useful thing in her entire public life.

The American model is precisely the opposite: Government has to justify itself to us. . . . They owe us service: services they routinely fail to perform.

We’ve got jihadis shooting up California while the government doesn’t even bother to track visa overstays or properly scan entrants from Pakistan by way of Saudi Arabia (because what could possibly go wrong in that scenario?) in spite of being legally obliged to do so. Instead, the powers that be in Washington are literally masturbating the day away when they aren’t busy poisoning veterans to death with dope. These people—these people—are going to lecture us on citizenship? How about you skip the homilies and do your damned jobs?

Or just go home, and trouble us no more.

THE CAM WHO FELL TO EARTH.

Shot:

Cam Newton may be the best player in football, but as a man he has a lot of learning to do. He needs to study the virtue called humility.

Newton is a braggart, a showboat and a clown. He says things like, “Hear me out. I’m just saying that so much of my talents have not been seen in one person.” (“Just”!) He does elaborate end-zone dances right in the faces of opposing players. (“If you don’t like it, keep me out of the end zone,” he later said.) Even getting a simple first down inspires him to strike a pose. He named his son “Chosen,” he says, because he didn’t want the kid to carry the awful burden of being known as Cam Newton Jr. Apparently those were the only two options. “Saint” was already taken.

After Sunday’s game, win or lose, a remarkable event will occur in the vicinity of Peyton Manning: Opposing players will line up to shake hands with him. That’s the respect that comes with not only being a legendary player but a good man. Manning never humiliated his opponents, never trash-talked them, never forgot the value of sportsmanship. He is the only player ever to win five MVP awards and the only one to beat Tom Brady three times in the postseason. Yet he never acts like he is The Man because he never forgets that he is a man. No one calls him arrogant.

Manning knows the importance of humility.

Humility is good sportsmanship. It increases your value as a celebrity endorser, and it is simply a smart move in the rough-justice subculture of the NFL, in which a respected player simply gets pushed out of bounds but one who has angered the other team can find his knees being taken out instead. Ex-Chicago Bears defensive end Richard Dent, a Hall of Famer and MVP of Super Bowl XX, said if he was playing against Newton today, “I’m going to knock your ass out of the game. That would’ve been my approach.”

—“Cam Newton, Donald Trump and the lost virtue of humility,” Kyle Smith, the New York Post, Saturday, February 6th.

Chaser:

 THIS IS HOW IT ENDS, NOT WITH A BANG, BUT A WHIMPER: CAM NEWTON’S PRESS CONFERENCE IN FULL

[On losing the Super Bowl]: They just played better than us. I don’t know what you want me to say. They made more plays than us, and that’s what it came down to. We had our opportunities.

There wasn’t nothing special that they did. We dropped balls. We turned the ball over, gave up sacks, threw errant passes. That’s it. They scored more points than we did.

[His message to fans]: We’ll be back.

[On the difference in Panther’s playing style]: They outplayed us.

[On the halftime talk from Coach Rivera]: He told us a lot of things.

[Asked if Denver did anything different defensively]: Nothing different.

[Asked if he can put his disappointment into words]: We lost.

[Asked if the Panthers did anything different to stop Denver running the ball]: No.

—“‘Sore loser’ Cam Newton comes under fire for STORMING OUT of press conference after losing the Super Bowl and throwing on-field tantrums once he realized he would lose,”  the London Daily Mail, today.

Related: “An MVP coaching performance: Wade Phillips finally kicks down that door.”

CHANGE: Frauke Petry: smiling face of Germany’s resurgent right. “Her youthful looks have helped her stand out among German politicians, as has her talk of shooting refugees trying to enter the country illegally.”

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SO IN CASE YOU’RE WONDERING, here in Knoxville I’ve already heard (1) a proposal for a statue of Peyton Manning on the UT campus; (2) a proposal to make him the new UT football coach; (3) a suggestion that he should run for Senate.

ANSWER TO QUESTION NO ONE IS ASKING: Why Jewish Socialism Is So Damned Hot.

Related: Bernie’s Adventures on a Stalinist Kibbutz –It’s time for an explanation.