1. It’s Tuesday, June 27, 2017.

2. It’s the birthday of Bob Keeshan, aka Captain Kangaroo, and Vera Wang.

3. I left CNN nearly three years ago in a mass buyout of veteran employees – they made me a sweet financial offer that was pretty close to perfect. So I left on what was on my part – and I am confident on CNN’s – good terms.

The one person in our newsroom who had trouble believing that I was doing this purely in my personal interest was Lex Haris.

He was managing editor of CNNMoney, and he thought I was reacting to some argument we had over something that I don’t even remember.

Lex couldn’t believe that I – that anyone like him, me and most of the other people in the newsroom – would leave a job like ours on their own volition. For something as pedestrian as money. His thought was that we love it too much.

So when I saw the story last night that Lex and two others resigned because of a story that wasn’t up to CNN’s standards, I wasn’t especially convinced that this was – to use a term Lex would appreciate – according to Hoyle.

I don’t know what happened with the Scaramucci story. CNN doesn’t say it’s wrong – it’s just not up to its standards and wasn’t fully cleared by its legal team. Maybe what management says is what went down.

4. But I can’t believe – I’ll never believe – Lex messed up. This is a man whose standards as an editor were among the highest I’ve seen in 40 years as a professional journalist.

Of course, being Lex, he stood up the way a grownup does. He was the head of the investigative team that produced the story. It’s his team.

“I’ve been with CNN since 2001, and am sure about one thing: This is a news organization that prizes accuracy and fairness above all else,” he said in a statement released by CNN. “I am leaving, but will carry those principles wherever I go.”

So Lex took the hit, sullying his name and reputation because it was the right thing to do. It’s what any manager with a smidgen of integrity – much less the mass that Lex Haris possesses – would do.

Integrity like that is something completely lost on the trolls cheering his downfall, including the cetriolo in the Oval Office.

5. This is a terrible time. The effort to make people doubt institutions they’ve trusted and counted on is insidious and constant.

There’s an effort to sell the ideas that the poor are taking free stuff, young women thrill at the idea of having an abortion and the rich need tax breaks to boost economic growth.

CNN and other news organizations of integrity – no matter how their editorial line slants – can shed a light on whether those things are true or not. That’s a problem for selling a narrative that might not jive with reality.

Because that siege is so intense, CNN can’t misfire. Any mistake gives the assailants something to trumpet. Maybe that explains what happened in the case of this story.

I tell my news editing students that mistakes are awful, and they get an earful – or a page full of notes – when they miss the libelous stuff I plant in their midterms and finals.

But I also tell them that mistakes are part of the job. That if you do 1,999 things in a 10-hour day, it’s really hard to do all 1,999 right – especially the last 247 of them. Be thankful you’re not doing brain surgery.

Just own up to your mistakes. That’s been the most important thing to tell young journalists. There might be mistakes in the history of journalism that have been fatal to someone, but they’re very rare. If a mistake isn’t fatal, and you can make it right, do so.

In the case involving the Scaramucci story, making it right wasn’t enough. In fact, it’s not even clear that it was wrong in the first place, and that wasn’t enough.

For CNN, it gets to hear another round of “fake news” cries, orchestrated directly from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. It has to hear criticism from organizations that don’t have 0.00000001% of its credibility. Its people – and I’m biased because I love some of them as much as my own family – have to deal with slingshots from relative invertebrates.

That’s an awful message to send to my students. That you can’t ever, ever mess up without fearing the consequences to yourself or the people around you.

So I’ll change my lesson plan. If the best editor I know takes the rap for something like this, maybe any mistake really is like botching brain surgery.

The chill on this profession is becoming a freeze. My friend Lex Haris paid a high price for it.

I wish him well.

And to anyone looking for a good man to run a first-class newsroom, I can recommend someone really great.

1. It’s Monday, June 26, 2017.

It’s the second anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision that legalized same-sex marriage in the United States.

2. There’s a temptation to say that the ruling didn’t cause the country to fall apart, as its detractors feared.

But it did. It just played out differently than we might have thought.

Because we have Trump as president. And when you think about it, when you really think about it, how much did factors such as the same-sex marriage ruling influence that election?

This is something I started thinking about yesterday while doing two things. Seeing the coverage of gay pride parades across America and the world. And rereading something I wrote exactly a year before to the day.

My post on June 25, 2016 was entitled “For Those Who Think Young,” which was the tagline for Pepsi-Cola commercials in the early ‘60s.  It followed the Brexit vote in England and noted that there was a sharp generational divide over the issue – young people voting to stay and older people voting to leave.

What I said was that the American election had the same dynamic. Younger people welcome change and openness – heck, their motto is practically “bring it on.”

An older generation, starting maybe a little younger than my 63.2 years, doesn’t feel that way at all. Change is a problem. Things were better back when.

3. That manifests itself in lots of ways.

Which brings us to the pride parades. If you’re my age, I want you to think really hard about the scenes you saw yesterday in places such as New York, Chicago and San Francisco. 

Can you imagine them 40 years ago? 50 years ago? Seriously?

They would have been the subject of some Johnny Carson’s monologue jokes. Some snickers at the office or from the kids at school the next day.

And there are a lot of folks in my generation who would share that sentiment, having not moved past those ideas. In their eyes, when America was great, all this sexual stuff didn’t exist or, more likely, remained hidden.

But there are generations after mine for whom the idea of a gay pride parade is no BFD.

They have embraced the changes in society that have transpired over the past 50 years and they’re ready to move forward. They don’t give a damn that older people haven’t quite absorbed all this.

It’s not just the idea that who you love is who you love. It applies to religion – either you don’t have one or, if you have one that isn’t mainstream, that’s fine too. That’s why young people embrace eastern cultures and don’t seem as bothered seeing a women wearing hijab on the street.

It’s harder for us – us being 60 or so and older. It seems part of the nature of getting older that you get more set in your ways, and set in your views of the world. And you tend to be nostalgic – even when that nostalgia overlooks a lot of the flaws of the past.

That’s why older Americans will say that making this country great again, the keywords of the Trump campaign, isn’t about racism. It’s about bringing back manufacturing jobs and the feeling of American superiority in the world. Forget that the past also included segregation and other forms of discrimination. The old ways were the comfortable ways, and that’s what we need to feel again.

Young people don’t want comfort. They just want to see what’s next. And what’s after that.

4. What inspired the title of this is a line uttered in the 1970 congressional campaign. Richard Nixon’s vice president at the time was Spiro T. Agnew, and he was out stumping for Republican candidates.

Except one. Charles Goodell, the senator from New York who had been appointed by Gov. Nelson Rockefeller to the seat left vacant by Robert Kennedy’s assassination in 1968.

To almost everyone’s shock, Goodell – the father of current NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell – decided to vote more like Kennedy than a Republican like Barry Goldwater. This pissed off the Nixon White House, and it campaigned for James Buckley, the Conservative Party candidate.

Agnew, in one speech, labeled Goodell the “Christine Jorgensen of the Republican Party.”

Now, Christine Jorgensen was the first really famous transgender person. Born George Jorgensen, she underwent medical procedures in Europe to become Christine. And she became a spokeswoman for transgender people.

So Agnew was trying to diminish Goodell with his line. It might have worked – Goodell finished third in the 1970 race that Buckley won.

But would that be as much as a diminutive in 2017?

With my generation, probably. Being called a Christine Jorgensen would imply a major change in stature. It would also call someone’s masculinity into question.

A younger generation would shrug off that comment. So what? They’re so used to seeing transgender people, or gay people, or whoever. It’s the subject of popular TV shows, the nightlife of the generation.

That’s no BFD. LOL.

5. There’s one other complication here.

Generational conflict isn’t new. You had it with your parents, and they had it with theirs, and so on.

But the problem with my generation is that it’s so freakin’ big. The post-World War II population boom was the largest in world history.

And because of medical advances, we’re not going to die off that fast. We routinely live into our 80s. Back when I was a teenager, 70 was thought to be pretty impressive. Forget that – that’s dying young in this era.

Because we can’t be pushed away that easily, the divide between us and the younger generation is going to grow. It’s going to get worse.

The Christine Jorgensen Line is the one that divides a generation that sees the Agnew line as an insult from one that sees it as just plain stupid. In 2016, there were just enough people on the former side of that line – especially in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin – to get Trump into the White House.

So the trick for those who find Trump offensive – my hand is raised – is to move that line just enough to the point that he disappears.

The debate over this Republican health care bill could be that point. Or it could be a huge problem.

The idea behind it is to appeal to young people. They pay less than older people, mainly because most of them don’t need health care. They’re healthy. We’re not.

That’s the calculation. Older people will squawk at this plan. But they’re not big on change, and can be persuaded that Trump is going to bring back the good old days.

If the Republicans can sway younger people into thinking that this is good for their bottom line, they can skew the divide and hold on.

If they can’t, the Christine Jorgensen line might just hit them where it hurts.

That’s what’s at stake in the next days and weeks.

1. It’s Friday, June 23, 2017.

2. It’s the 50th anniversary of the Glassboro Summit between President Lyndon Johnson and Soviet Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin – who really was a second fiddle to party leader Leonid Brezhnev, but I don’t think that was understood by the average American.

We thought this meeting at Glassboro State College in southern New Jersey was a big deal at the time. It is largely forgotten now.

3. If you want to understand the Senate health care bill, all you have to do is read Tami Luhby’s story on CNNMoney.  No one knows this issue better. There’s also this one written by Tami and Jeanne Sahadi – two of the smartest people I’ve ever worked with.

So I won’t burden this post with details about the bill. Read Tami’s story, and then see if you agree with the following:

4. Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan are betting on one thing – the selfish streak in a lot of Americans.

They’re betting on people who have enough money that health care isn’t a burden, although there are very few folks on that list. If you’re ill enough, the cost is astronomical. But that’s not catastrophic for people with worths of eight, nine, 10 or even 11 digits.

They’re also betting on healthy young people. And not just those who don’t get sick at this point in their life.

If you’re my 22-year-old son, you might wonder why you have to pay for maternity care coverage, as mandated by Obamacare. If you’re my 26-year-old daughter, you might wonder why you have to pay for wheelchairs and crutches when you’re a Crossfit fanatic.

The answer is that if everyone has to get coverage for ten categories of essential services, it makes it cheaper for all who have to use them. It’s the way insurance works.

And, at some point, we all have to use at least one of them. So maybe you’ll never need mental health care, but you might break your leg on a ski slope or get hit by a car. The essential benefits provision is there for you, too.

There’s no way to eliminate all the costs. But they can be limited, and that’s what the Affordable Care Act attempts to do.

So to say that people who don’t need certain benefits shouldn’t have to pay for them is positioned as an appeal to help Americans keep their hard-earned dollars. It’s not. It’s an appeal to selfishness – you should only spend on services that help you and not the community at large.

By allowing states to waive the essential benefits, the Republicans hope to whittle away at the good the Affordable Care Act has done. Americans generally like it now, after years of lamenting it, because – for the most part – it has delivered on its promise of getting more coverage for more people.

And for those who had employer-supported health care, it made sure they got the best possible coverage – no preconditions, no lifetime caps, kids covered until they’re 26, free annual checkups and more.

This is all before you consider what the cuts to Medicaid would do to those who rely on that program – mostly the elderly and the poor. Those cuts are just plain immoral.

5. What’s got me worried is that Democrats remain on their heels.

Yes, they’re defending Obamacare and mobilizing their constituents. They’re urging people to lobby those Republicans queasy about the Medicaid cuts – they need three to stop this from happening.

Forget Rand Paul and those conservative clowns like Ted Cruz. They’re interested in making this bill worse. They’ll fall in line like the tame seals they are.

It’s Republicans like Dean Heller of Nevada who’s got the pressure on him. He’s up for re-election next year in a state that Hillary Clinton won last year. The Republican governor, Brian Sandoval, supports the Medicaid expansion the McConnell bill ends.

Heller said today he can’t vote for this measure.

That’s too tentative.

What Democrats need to do is go after the moderate votes with a plan of their own. To work with some of them to address some of the concerns they have with Obamacare and find a way to make it better.

They have to lobby as hard as McConnell and the Republicans will lobby for their monstrosity.

In this fight, Democrats can’t just say no. They need to assert themselves as the party of ideas – this is true for issues besides health care. They need to get people to say that “Yeah, that makes sense” when coming up with ways to make health care more available and more affordable.

I’m not sure what those ideas are. But I’m sure smart Democrats in the Senate do.

Now’s as good a time as any to get going.

1. It’s Wednesday, June 21, 2017.

2. It’s summer! We slogged through the winter to get to this day and this time of year, and here it is.

3. There’s another reason today is one of my favorite days of the year. It’s my baby brother’s birthday, and he’s among the most fantastic people on this planet.

So we’ve got the summer solstice, my brother’s birthday.

And let’s throw in Rebecca Black – she’s 20 years old today, which – unfortunately for serendipity – is not a Friday.

Those are some good reasons to be happy.

4. Here’s one not to: The results in yesterday’s special election for Georgia’s 6th Congressional district.

Why did Jon Ossoff (thanks to my friends Charlie and Karen Reina for calling out yesterday’s typo) lose?

Well, for one thing, despite Trump’s 38% or so approval rating, it was still a Republican district. Tom Price won by about 24 points just seven months ago. Ossoff got Karen Handel’s margin down to less than four.

The second reason is the time between the initial balloting, in which Ossoff outpolled Handel by a 2-to-1 margin, and yesterday’s runoff. Two months is a long time – and, in this case, it gave the oodles of outside money that supported Handel a chance to reframe the election.

People in that district must be thrilled it’s over – it being the most expensive House election ever. And when fatigue replaces enthusiasm as the electorate’s prevalent feeling, it’s not good for the status quo challenger.

My guess is people in the district got tired of this race and the natural reluctance to make a change led them to the Republican.

5. The following are NOT reasons for Ossoff’s loss:

One is Ossoff’s campaign. There are some who believe he should have been more aggressive.

But if that’s not who you are, don’t do it. Ossoff believed a positive campaign would win – against the district’s history, he didn’t miss by much. A more negative campaign might not have come as close.

The other thing I reject is the idea that it’s the national Democrats – in particular, Nancy Pelosi – who’s toxic.

Now, I’m a Nancy Pelosi fan. I think she did a great job in the short time she was Speaker of the House. I wish that’s what she was now.

But the decade-long vilification of Pelosi by Republicans have more to do with her being the leader of the Democrats than in anything about her.

If Steny Hoyer or James Clyburn or some other veteran had been chosen to lead the party in the House, he would have been subject to the same mud-dragging. That Pelosi is a woman probably helps Republicans reach their target audience better.

As Democrats, we’re going to have get past this. We elected an African-American president. We have talent of all manner of person, because that’s a core belief of the party.

The way to do it is to make our case. To spell out what we’re for, rather than what we’re against.

We don’t need to talk too much about Trump any more. Everybody knows what he is.

We need to talk about what we’re going to do to make people’s lives better.

It’s why the Democrats should have developed their own Obamacare improvement plan long before the Republicans started their crusade to end it.

It’s why the Democrats should develop an infrastructure improvement plan that will help provide jobs in places where they’re needed.

It’s why Democrats should put forth their own homeland security plan that incorporates and empowers all races and religions, and rejects blanket bans that just radicalize the disaffected.

It’s why Democrats should develop an anti-crime program that gets police and communities working together to stop the lawless.

It’s developing a set of principles and programs to entice people.

It should not be about what we’re against. That will be self-evident. And with lowlifes like Trump, Ryan, McConnell and others, the contrast will be starker.

And there’s one other point. Something I said earlier this year

6. Democrats should compete everywhere. Everywhere. For every office.

Democrats didn’t put 1% of the effort into the race in South Carolina’s 5th district that they put into Georgia’s 6th. And the result was the same – in fact, Democrat Archie Parnell actually came closer to winning than Jon Ossoff did in Georgia.

Both districts were thought to be solid red. They turned out to be just a reddish shade of purple.

It’s a lesson.

Go for it. Every time. At the very least, make the Republicans sweat. Make them defend the seat. They have money. Make them spend it.

You can’t win if you don’t play. Don’t concede a single seat. Not in Alabama or Wyoming or Utah or Mississippi.

Don’t think any office is too small. Town highway supervisor. Village council.

They’re all important. Go after them. Make an effort. Put forth the party’s philosophy of inclusion and helping people.

This is the first day of summer. Show people some light when the other side is showing darkness.

That’s what Democrats are supposed to be about.

1. It’s Tuesday, June 20, 2017.

2. It’s Brian Wilson’s 75th birthday. Given the personal struggles of one of this country’s greatest composers, I’d bet he wouldn’t have bet on reaching that milestone.

3. Today is the special election in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District.

Democrats want this seat. Bad. Every third e-mail I’ve gotten in the last two weeks is a pitch from the party or the candidate, documentary producer Jon Ossoff.

I can measure the time I spend deleting solicitations for money that get more and more frantic with each passing hour.

The race shouldn’t be close. This has been a solid Republican seat for 25 years. The election is being held because Tom Price left it to try to destroy health care for millions as Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary.

Ossoff led the initial balloting, but just missed getting the 50% needed to avoid this runoff. He’s up against Karen Handel, a Republican who appears to be consolidating the non-Ostoff vote.

The race is considered a toss-up. Ossoff was thought to be ahead until last week, as a barrage of outside group ads knocked him down. We’ll find out tonight if the folks in the district that’s mostly outside Atlanta will deliver a message, or maintain the malaise that has afflicted the nation since Jan. 20.

God only knows.

4. More important, Senate Democrats have spent the past day trying to shame their Republican counterparts into revealing their health care bill.

It wasn’t likely to work – the indications are that the Republicans will introduce the bill soon and severely limit debate.

But it’s important to fight, and at least the Democrats are fighting.

Now, what I’d really like to see is a public, thought-out Democratic proposal to improve the Affordable Care Act.

The biggest concern people have is that their premiums continue to rise. It’s almost impossible to stop that, given how inflation in the health care sector appears to be sharper than it is in the overall economy.

But a proposal that would limit or cap increases might go a ways toward improving the program.

One other thing I would offer:

If you don’t have health insurance, either on your own or through your employer, you now pay a penalty. That’s an important provision for ACA, because its success hinges in large part of getting healthy people to buy in so that it alleviates the burden on those who need health care services more.

But a lot of young people think it’s better to pay the penalty than to buy insurance. And that’s what they do.

I think a proposal to reimburse a year of the penalty to anyone who buys insurance might provide a little incentive to get more healthy people to sign up.

The details would have to be worked out – would it be in the form of a tax credit or cash payment.

But giving more carrot incentive to get on board with the health care plan might be helpful.

And trumpeting improvements is an important thing for Democrats to do. It shows what they’ve claimed all along – that Obamacare is a work in progress, and that improvements over time will make it better.

That scares the crap out of Republicans. Obamacare popularity, which was missing when it was first passed, is the big reason it’s so hard for them to just dump it.

As the GOP feared when the act passed, people have gotten accustomed to the ACA and decided they like it.

But the Democrats need to be more than just obstinate. They need to keep moving forward, as hard as that is without holding power. Selling the nation on improving, not replacing, Obamacare is a way to do that.

1. It’s Monday, June 19, 2017.

2. It’s the commemoration of Juneteenth, the day in 1865 when Texas found out the Civil War was over and that the Confederates lost. It became the last place in the re-United States to abolish slavery, thus ending it everywhere in the nation.

It’s good that this gets more attention than it used to. Reaffirming the idea that this is a land of freedom seems like a slam-dunk good thing.

But, as we’re made all too aware all the time, ending slavery didn’t end racism in this country. Hardly.

3. Mitch McConnell, among the lowest forms of life on this continent, is putting together the Senate’s version of the TrumpRyan health care bill that passed the House.

Forget the fact that he’s not looking for any input from Democrats. He’s not even telling Democrats – or anyone else for that matter – what the hell he’s doing.

The idea is to get the bill passed as quickly as possible, reconcile any differences with the House, then get the reconciled measure approved and signed by Trump. This would count as an accomplishment that Republicans can try to sell to their fevered supporters – they kept their promise to get rid of Obamacare.

Forget the fact that 23 million Americans would lose their health insurance in the next decade. Or that millions of other Americans would find that the coverage they thought was pretty substantial is full of little loopholes aimed at making sure insurers pay out as little as possible.

As I mentioned last week, this measure as it stands is vastly unpopular. A New York Times survey shows unfavorable opinions about it outweigh favorable in all 50 states.

But Republicans being Republicans, they believe they are rulers. And ruling means giving people what Republicans, not people, want.

So push should be coming to shove soon.

Democrats are pretty powerless here, unless there are three GOP defections. But it would be stupid for them to just sit there and let this happen.

They plan to start tonight by slowing the world’s most deliberative body to a crawl. They also plan to press the Republicans for details about their proposal at every opportunity.

The Democrats are betting on the numbers they see – that people are frightened by this trash masquerading as legislation. The Republicans are betting on their history – people will forget this by the time they vote for Congress next year, aided by whatever distraction Trump can manage in the next 17 months.

We’ll see who prevails. But it’s good to see the Democrats put up a fight.

Because right now, nothing else matters in this country.  The prospect of millions of Americans losing their health care coverage should be front and center until it’s resolved.

4. The guy who plowed a vehicle into pedestrians near a London mosque is in the running for ISIS Employee of the Month.

But so is whoever attacked and killed a Virginia girl who was leaving her mosque after a Ramadan service.

The fact of the matter is that whoever commits these horrible acts against Muslims is not just doing ISIS’ work. They are ideological confederates, craving nothing more than violence and fear. Creating fear is their orgasm, the rush they crave.

Ideology? That’s bullshit. The Muslims who worship ISIS are as Muslim as the Christians who kill Muslims like these ghouls over the weekend are Christian. Which is not at all. They could care less about Muhammad or Jesus.

This nihilism is the scourge of the world. It is really hard to defeat, because it is a belief in nothingness, that chaos and terror are better than peace or comity.

My heart goes out to the families of those affected by these tragedies. I hope you find strength in your faith, and in the fact that the civilized world is horrified by such atrocity as those that befell you.

1. It’s Friday, June 16, 2017.

2. It’s Commencement Day at my alma mater, Northwestern University. Billie Jean King is acing the commencement speech.

Congratulations to my fellow NU alums. I’ll be back at commencement in nine years.

3. In the 2008 Pixar film “Wall-E,” the villain was a giant corporation called Buy-N-Large. It was an all-encompassing business and contributed to making Earth uninhabitable.

At the time, people thought Pixar was spoofing Walmart, which was perceived as being on the path toward total dominance of American business.

But it sure does seem this morning as though Big-N-Large might be Amazon, which announced a $13.7 billion deal for Whole Foods Market.

Amazon has slowly added to its portfolio, which, of course, started out as an online book store. You’d be hard pressed to think of something it doesn’t sell – or joins with someone else to sell. It has ventured into entertainment. Its founder, Jeff Bezos, now owns The Washington Post.

By buying Whole Foods, it’s looking to get further entrenched in groceries, a difficult part of the retail industry. Whole Foods has succeeded by being perceived as a healthier place to shop than one of the regional chains.

So what can these two do together? It will be interesting to see. Turning Earth into a wasteland a la Buy-N-Large seems contradictory to Whole Foods’ mission. But that hugeness isn’t something to look at lightly.

4. It’s funny to watch pundits and my fellow Democrats wonder why the Republicans are so hellbent on passing TrumpRyanCare, a health uninsurance plan to gut the Affordable Care Act.

In particular, they don’t understand why Republicans would pass a measure that is viewed negatively in every single state.

And so here is my periodic reminder about the difference between Democrats and Republicans.

Democrats believe that government is good. It can be used to affect positive change in people’s lives.

They believe in the idea that the best way to govern is by consensus – that it’s better to get a measure that’s watered down to gather the maximum amount of support than to force through something that narrowly, if fervently, popular.

That, in short, is what’s wrong with Obamacare. Democrats wanted something that everybody would like rather than something a few people would love. So there was disappointment on both sides – if you look at ACA approval polls, you’ll find that a part of the group opposing it did so because it didn’t do enough.

So Democrats, when they’re in charge, govern.

Republicans, on the other hand, believe government is bad. It can only interfere with people.

Not interfering with people protects the status quo, since no one is stepping in to help those who might need it – unless it’s through the largesse of those who already have what they need.

To make sure government does as little as possible, it’s important to rule. To ride herd over those seeking change, because they interfere with the natural course of things, which is that those who have keep getting.

So, even though not one in three Americans approve of what they’ve seen so far, Republicans continue their march toward this sea change in health care.

They want to bring back the way it was before Obamacare tilted things. That was the natural order – the way to best help those who support the party and its idea that government can do no good.

You can cry all you want about how Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans are writing a secret bill that no one likes, how undemocratic that idea is and how they could possibly expect to survive the fallout.

They don’t care. Ruling is their burden and their mission. You will learn to like it.

Keeping opponents and even those who just want to know what the hell is going on in the dark is an important tactic. It is a noble strategy in their eyes to get done what needs to get done to return things to the natural order.

The big problem for those of us on this side is that, more often than not, when Republicans have bet on this strategy, they’ve won.

When they fail, they fail miserably. See the financial crisis of 2008 for that one.

Their bet, because they are all in on the idea that they’re doing God’s work against the evil of government, is that they’ll be right again on health care. It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it.

What can we do?

Folks, the train left the station in November. If you sat out the election, or voted for a third-party candidate, or voted for Trump, you own this. If it’s as bad as we think it’s going to be, you’re complicit in wrecking people’s lives.

For those of us who saw this and now feel powerless to stop it, the odds are that we’re going to be picking up the pieces, most likely in 2020.

And this time, maybe we should learn from the Republicans. Maybe when it comes to the health of more than 300 million Americans, we should put our feet down.

NHS-USA, anyone? In this case, to protect ourselves and our fellow Americans, we need to rule.

1. It’s Wednesday, June 14, 2017.

2. It’s Flag Day.

3. It’s been a pretty awful morning in America.

In Alexandria. Va., a gunman opened fire on Republican Congressmen practicing for a baseball game against their Democratic colleagues. Five people, including House Majority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana, were wounded.

The gunman was apparently killed. According to reports, he was rabidly anti-Trump and had supported Bernie Sanders in 2016. He also reportedly had a history of domestic violence. 

In San Francisco, there are reports of a gunman at a UPS facility, with three people injured. The gunman is said to be a former employee. The details of this incident are still unfolding at this writing. 

These are horrible events. My thoughts are with the victims and with the law enforcement officials with the massive burden of bringing – or having brought – these moments of terror to an end.

There will be those who would decry making political statements at a time like this. That it’s wrong to use an incident to press a position.

Baloney.

Almost every day in this country, someone uses a gun to inflict terror on people. Both these incidents are terrorism as much as what those jackasses attempted in London two weeks ago, or at a Baghdad ice cream parlor last month, or in Boston in 2013.

San Bernardino and Orlando were terrorism. So were Sandy Hook and Aurora and Charleston and Virginia Tech.

4. Exactly a year ago, in the wake of the Pulse nightclub shooting that currently stands as the largest mass killing by a single shooter, I asked the question of if the deaths of 49 people were the tipping point.

Is this the incident that changes the sentiment about gun control, and gets some provisions that keep these ridiculous weapons out of the hands of people whose mental or emotional competence is in question?

My answer today is the same as it was on June 14, 2016.

Nah.

It’s possible that the National Rifle Association is sweating a little, since the victims this time are the people who have helped preserve their status quo.

But only a little. In the end, gun pimps will get these Congressmen to say that the solution is for everyone at the baseball practice to be armed. Forget the impracticality of stretching a single into a double with a revolver on your hip.

And with a little financial greasing, all will be well.

There is some heartfelt – and proper – sentiment in Congress today about wounded colleagues and staff. There is no sane person – none – wishing anything but a speedy recovery for Rep. Scalise. And both parties are joining in the sentiment that political differences are just differences – they are not justification for violence.

But in San Francisco, where we don’t know the final count, we do know that those victims didn’t deserve their fate, either. And other than the fact that the incident happened the same day as the Republican shooting, it will soon be forgotten.

Just like the idea of doing something to limit the proliferation of weapons.

1. It’s Tuesday, June 13, 2017.

2. It’s the 50th anniversary of Thurgood Marshall’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.

3. Yesterday’s Trump meeting with the lapdog members of his Cabinet seems like a scene from a James Bond film.

But here’s what happens if this is a movie: Trump acknowledges the expressions of fealty and subordination to him. Then he says, “That’s fine. But one of you isn’t as loyal as the others.”

The camera pans the panicky faces of his ministers. Then, the floor suddenly opens up under one of them — and the hapless not-sycophantic-enough secretary falls into a piranha tank.

One can only hope.

4. Much has been made in recent weeks about the fact that the Democratic Party is still very divided.

It has been so since last year’s election, in the Hillary Clinton-Bernie Sanders battle.

The split will be manifest today in Virginia, where a gubernatorial primary pits Lieutenant Gov. Ralph Northam, backed by the establishment folks who supported Clinton, against former Rep. Tom Perriello, the candidate endorsed by Sanders and his faction in the party.

It’s not so simple to say Northam, who admits to voting for George W. Bush twice, is the moderate and Perrielllo is the progressive.

Northam has taken strong positions in favor of gun control and in support of reproductive rights. Perriello has been trying to make amends on both of those issues, having won the NRA’s endorsement in the past and offered an amendment to the Affordable Care Act that would have restricted coverage of abortions.

If I lived in Virginia, I’d be hard-pressed to choose between the two. If anything would sway me, I think it’s the fact that Perriello has ever embraced the NRA – gun control is a make-or-break issue for me, and Northam is on the side of the angels with his proposal to ban assault weapons.

5. All that said, the most important thing to happen tonight is that the loser congratulate the winner and pledge complete support to him.

The likely Republican candidate is Ed Gillespie. He’s a party establishment figure – and we’ve seen what they’re about in 2017, cravenly supporting Trump to advance their own agenda. Gillespie’s got the advantage of running against a Trump wannabe – he’s going to look reasonable.

And the Democrats need to hold this statehouse. As I’ve stated before, they need to win every election they can, right down to town highway supervisor and village selectman.

It’s the party’s failure to pay attention to those details that have put it in this ridiculous predicament that it is virtually powerless to stop the Trump nightmare.

Replaying the 2016 election doesn’t solve anything. Sanders’ supporters made their case for reforming the Democratic Party, and those on the pro-Clinton side need to take some of their ideas into account. And the Sanders folks need to understand that no candidate is 100% pure, and that compromises for the common good sometime have to be made.

And the common good is getting rid of Trump and the Republicans.

In the end, I think Democrats will come together. If last year proves anything, sitting out an election is a disaster. Voting for a third party – anyone who spits up Jill Stein’s name should have someone vomit right back at them – is a disaster.

Democrats must hang together and fight. The only way to protect health care, the environment and everything else we hold dear is to be united.

Otherwise, we’re stuck here in the wilderness. And so is the rest of the world.

1. It’s Monday, June 12, 2017.

2. It’s hot in New York. Yes!

3. It’s the 93rd birthday of George H.W. Bush, the 41st President of the United States.

Couldn’t stand him at the time. Still don’t think he’s a great POTUS.

But he looks like Lincoln compared to the incumbent.

4. It’s the first anniversary of the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. The gunman killed 49 people before being slain himself in a shootout with police.

It must be a hard day for the families and friends of those killed. I wish them strength to get through it, as they’ve gotten through the pain of the past year.

5. A good friend used to talk a lot about his “dollar vote.” Yeah, you cast votes on election day, and they mean something.

But so does what you choose to spend your money on. If you don’t support something represented by a company or product, buy something from someone else.

People – even people who aren’t well to do – have power in their wallets. They need to know when to use it.

Here’s how that works.

6. Delta Air Lines and Bank of America are among the sponsors of New York’s Public Theater. Or they were until yesterday, when they withdrew support for one of the most prominent American dramatic companies over a production of “Julius Caesar.” 

The production resets Shakespeare’s classic tragedy in 21st century America, and the Caesar character looks quite a bit like the current President of the United States.

This doesn’t sit well with people who support Trump – including his son. And their complaints reached corporate offices that don’t like to piss off would-be customers.

So Delta, which says the production does not reflect its “values,” has withdrawn its support for the Public Theater. B of A didn’t go that far – it just took its support from this particular production.

The play’s producers say their production doesn’t advocate the assassination of anyone. But watching a Trump-like figure get stabbed on stage doesn’t sit well with his supporters.

Here’s the thing: Delta and Bank of America have every right not to put their money behind something they don’t believe in. And, because supporting the arts is as much a marketing tool as altruism, it defeats the purpose in their eyes if backing this kind of production costs them business.

Now, of course, if you support the Public Theater’s right to stage this production of “Julius Caesar” in Central Park this summer, you can make your feelings known through your pocketbook.

Maybe you’re thinking of opening a new bank account. In that case, maybe Bank of America’s stance is something to consider. If you’re flying, and there’s an option, maybe you’re not ready to fly Delta this time.

There are two other examples of how this can apply.

7. Next week, insultingly on Father’s Day, Megyn Kelly’s new NBC show will interview Alex Jones, the head of the right-wing infowars.com Web site. Among Jones’ abhorrent positions is that the killing of 26 elementary school students and teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 was a hoax.

This has, understandably, upset the parents who lost 5- and 6-year-olds that December day.

One of them is Nelba Márquez-Greene, whose Ana Grace was among the 20 children killed. She tweetstormed at Megyn Kelly last night after it was announced that the Jones interview would air next week.

The last of the tweets was: In @megynkelly ‘s America, cruelty gets u on national TV on Father’s Day. #SandyHook grieving dads will go to the cemetery. #thisisnotnormal.

Of course, this being social media in the 21st century, this poor woman is getting hit with trolls parroting some of Jones’ offensive line – that the kids weren’t really killed, that there’s no coroners’ reports released, that any pictures of dead children were really actors.

Here’s where you come in.

Megyn Kelly and NBC are not airing this interview purely as a public service. They expect to sell advertising to generate revenue for NBCUniversal, allowing it to report a profit to shareholders and pay the between $15 million and $20 million of Kelly’s annual salary.

So for starters, let’s find out who’s going to advertise on this program and not buy anything from them. All of us who are offended by this.

It worked with the Bill O’Reilly flap. It can work again. Don’t buy anything advertised on “Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly.”

And if that’s not enough for you, consider not buying anything advertised on NBC all of Sunday night. Hopefully somebody will come up with a list of these companies.

8. The second example is the effort by Senate Republicans to ram an Obamacare repeal down the nation’s throat.

If it’s anything like the ridiculous TrumpRyanCare plan that passed the House, more than 23 million Americans will lose health insurance coverage in the next decade. And those of us with coverage will lose a lot of it – especially if you have a pre-existing condition.

Now if you’re from a state with a Republican senator, you have some leverage. These people answer to you, and your efforts to lobby them to stop this proposal carry some weight.

But if you’re like me, with two wise senators who are Democrats, it’s a little harder. Why should a supposed fence-sitter on this issue, say Jeff Flake of Arizona, listen to anything I have to say? He doesn’t answer to me. He answers to someone in Winslow or Phoenix.

So here’s the best way for New Yorkers, Californians, Illini and others with two Democrats in the Senate.

Like Santa, we’re making a list and checking it twice. The states whose senators vote to gut health care go on the naughty list. They’re NOT where we’re going to vacation this year. Companies from the states don’t get our business if we have a choice with one whose senators vote to stop this.

Yes, we’re blacklisting them.

It’s our money. We have the right to do with it what we want.

If there’s a way to channel the anger financially, let’s do it. It’s ridiculous to have these kinds of things happen – the Alex Jones interview, the gutting of health security – and think we’re helpless.

We’re not. We can cast our dollar votes ahead of casting our ballot box votes to change this mess.