Saturday coffee.

If there are such things as the dog days of winter, we are in them.

The excitement of the NFC conference game is now gone and only a few of my Packer and Steeler friends give a damn about next weekend.

Every day is gray and cold. Even today when we might get near 40 degrees, there will be no sun. The snow cover is old and dirty, with just a part of a beer bottle or coke can sticking up an inch or two.

But 40 degrees means I can take Ulysses to the dog park this afternoon and let him run with the other dogs for a while. He’s as stir crazy as we are.

Spring break is still six weeks away.

The bridge in Cairo.

I have been so moved by the sight of young Egyptians fighting in the streets for democracy.

Some dumb-ass reporter on NPR this morning said he was surprised by the events in Egypt because “Egyptians are not a naturally  revolutionary people.” What on earth can that mean?

The good news is that the NY Times is actually printing the writing of reporters with names like Kareem Fahim. He does an amazing piece of reporting this morning.

That moment came quickly. Police officers watched the assault from boats. Hundreds of riot officers stormed the bridge, throwing benches and a police hut into the Nile and beating anyone who did not run. By late afternoon, they had retaken Kasr al-Nil and penned in a group of protesters next to a park.

Officers fired tear gas toward an opera house as the young men ran away, and for the protesters, everything seemed to be lost. Nadine Sherif walked among badly wounded comrades, despondent. “I hope he gets the message,” she said of Mr. Mubarak. “He’s not wanted.”

A few officers lit cigarettes, relaxed and chatted with the protesters, thinking they were done.

They were not. Night fell, and the protesters finally took the bridge.

Robert Fisk on Egypt. “Twenty percent of Egyptians are under 20 and they are no longer afraid.”

Robert Fisk writes with great knowledge about the Arab world for the British Independent.

Amr Moussa, the head of the Arab League, spotted something important at the recent summit of Arab leaders at the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. “Tunisia is not far from us,” he said. “The Arab men are broken.” But are they? One old friend told me a frightening story about a poor Egyptian who said he had no interest in moving the corrupt leadership from their desert gated communities. “At least we now know where they live,” he said. There are more than 80 million people in Egypt, 30 per cent of them under 20. And they are no longer afraid.

And a kind of Egyptian nationalism – rather than Islamism – is making itself felt at the demonstrations. January 25 is National Police Day – to honour the police force who died fighting British troops in Ishmaelia – and the government clucked its tongue at the crowds, telling them they were disgracing their martyrs. No, shouted the crowds, those policemen who died at Ishmaelia were brave men, not represented by their descendants in uniform today.

There are no poor folks in the State of the Union.

Charles Blow reports that Obama made history the other night during his Sputnik moment. It was only the second time since Harry Truman in 1948 that a Democrat didn’t mention poverty in their state of the union speech.

The closest Obama got to a mention was his confirmation for “Americans who’ve seen their paychecks dwindle or their jobs disappear” that, indeed, “the world has changed. The competition for jobs is real.” I’m sure they appreciated that.