1. It’s Friday, September 22, 2017.

2. It’s the first day of autumn. That stinks.

3. It shouldn’t just be up to Jimmy Kimmel to save this country from this Graham-Cassidy atrocity that looks as though it has a real good chance to pass the Senate.

But he certainly is doing heroic work, spending three of his monologues battling a bill that – for all intents and purposes – doesn’t mean much for him personally.

Kimmel has the money to pay for the care his infant son, born with a faulty heart, requires.

His point is that people who don’t have his resources should, if they were in the same circumstances, be able to get the same treatment for their baby.

Kimmel could have just kept quiet. He could have made a few snide one-liners about this bill, and maybe some of them would make one of those recaps of late night jokes you see on the morning talk shows.

But he’s gone all out – as if his baby’s life depends on it. His power is in the unselfishness of this.

Kimmel made himself the target for the bastards who think this bill is a good idea. The Internet trolls, the Trump worshippers, the people who blame the poor for standing in the way of their greed.

I don’t know if he’s going to succeed. But if he doesn’t, he hopefully will sleep better at night than the people who perpetrate this fraud – including McConnell, Graham, Cassidy, Ryan and Trump himself.

If they manage to pass this crap, this thing that will make health care an ordeal for millions of Americans, I hope they don’t get another decent night’s sleep for the rest of their hopefully short lives.

4. The events of the past month just reinforce this: Democrats seek to govern, Republicans seek to rule.

The Democrats sought the deal with Trump, the one that raised the debt ceiling and approved government spending in exchange for protecting children brought here by undocumented immigrants. They wanted solutions to problems – keeping the economy stable and taking some of the fear away from those terrified by Trump’s ending the DACA program.

That’s governing, which is what we elect people to do. I wasn’t crazy about dealing with a demon, but governing requires being a grownup sometimes, and Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi are grownups.

The Republicans don’t see that. With nothing else on the agenda, they went back to health care. They hadn’t abolished Obamacare, and that stuck in their craw.

Nothing bothers Republicans like being unable to wreak havoc simply because they can. Forget that Obamacare has given millions of Americans insurance they never had. Forget that it’s working to help make the country healthier.

They oppose it. Probably because a black guy who was popularly elected President was behind it.

So they came up with this Graham-Cassidy garbage. And because of the weird Senate rules, they only have until Sept. 30 to get it passed with a bare majority – 50 votes plus Mike “Praise God But Don’t Do Anything Godly” Pence. Otherwise it’ll take 60 votes – and the Democrats, to their credit, aren’t lending any to nihilism.

There won’t be any real hearings or debate. And despite the outcry of millions of Americans – maybe even to spite it – they’ll vote for this bill.

They’ll have ruled. Their majesties will have gotten the Obamacare repeal through.

And that’s all they can say. They won’t have done anything – not a blessed goddamned thing – to improve the health of the American people.

But that’s trivial to them. They’ll have won.

If they do, keep that in mind. And keep in mind every numbskull, every sap, every shell of a human being who calls himself or herself a Republican. Every one.

Graham-Cassidy is theirs. They own it.