1. It’s Monday, July 4, 2016.

2. Happy Independence Day!

3. Two thoughts about Trump’s idiotic weekend tweet:

I. When I say or do something that’s can be perceived to be wrong or offensive in any way, I’m blessed with people around me who without hesitation will say “Mark (or Dad), that’s not cool.” After a moment, I’ll say “Oh, OK, let me think of something else.”

And I don’t have hundreds of people traveling with me or hanging on to my every word.

Was there no one in Trump’s retinue of sycophants with a speck of awareness who could go to him and say, “Hey, your worship, that looks like a Star of David – it might distract people from your message”?

II. The tweet was Saturday. It’s Monday. It’s a holiday weekend. If he had just shut up, if he could have just resisted the impulse to recycle an anti-Semitic hit on Hillary Clinton, he could have made no news for three days. That would have helped rather than hurt him.

The impulsiveness doesn’t seem to be an attractive trait for someone who could possibly take this country to war.

4. Any moron who believes “radical Islam” is at war with the West should look at the past few days.

There was the airport attack in Istanbul that killed 41 people and the attack on a Dhaka, Bangladesh, restaurant that killed 22 people. And, the latest and worst, the attack on a Baghdad market that killed 200 people.

All but a few of the victims of these attacks were Muslims. Two of the three countries where the attacks took place have vast Sunni majorities, the other – Iraq – is more divided between Sunni and Shiite.

The victims were probably all looking forward to the end of Ramadan and the celebration of Eid al-Fatr, which is expected to take place tomorrow. Instead, they were killed wantonly, and they leave hundreds of families in unspeakable grief.

The scum that committed these attacks don’t worship Allah. They worship death. They worship pain. They worship thuggery. They worship subjugation of others.

And any time a politician in the West pays them the compliment of calling them a representative of Islam, by saying that they are “radical Islam,” they are adding to the pain of thousands of Muslims killed by people hiding behind their faith.

5. There is a tendency here to dismiss an attack such as the one in Baghdad as just one of those things that happens in that part of the world.

But 200 people dying for going shopping should offend us, whatever their nationality, race, gender, creed or where the hell it happens. It should offend us when it happens in Baghdad or Tel Aviv or Brussels or Orlando.

That’s simple humanity, which is supposed to be what our side stands for.