1. It’s Wednesday, April 5, 2017.

2. It’s the birthday of the founder of the Burpee Seeds company and actor Michael V. Gazzo, who played the Corleone mob captain Frank Pentangeli in “The Godfather Part II.”

3. The world always combines the beauty of flowers and the violence humans do to each other. What makes it tolerable is that you’d like to think there’s at least a balance, if not a tilt toward the peaceful and admirable.

You’d be hard pressed to feel that way today.

In Syria, children were among at least 69 people gassed to death in a rebel-held community by forces loyal to the bastard president Bashar al-Assad. The chemical attack was so bad that rescue workers fell ill from the after effects.

To be fair, the world has been at odds about Syria since this civil war began six years ago. Barack Obama couldn’t see his way through to a resolution – his refusal to attack Assad after a chemical attack in 2013, crossing the red line Obama had drawn, is seen as his biggest failure in the White House.

(For some great background about this, here’s Jeffrey Goldberg’s interview with Obama from The Atlantic.)

But at least Obama was clear about how evil Assad is. And, short of committing American forces to a conflict that both Congress and the general public didn’t want, he tried to do what he could to condemn that evil.

4. Now you have a cetriolo in office who, if he sends forces to Syria as he intends, will actually help Assad fight one of the forces opposing him. That would be ISIS – which, of course, doesn’t like us much either.

What Trump is really doing is what Russia, his patron, wants. Putin supports Assad, and he knows Trump can’t come out and say he supports Assad without looking like more of a traitor than he already is. So if the U.S. battles ISIS, Assad can focus on the more rational rebels who have challenged his authority.

That’s what he did in Idlib Province. And as Trump feels about nuclear weapons, Assad figured that if he has chemical weapons, he might as well use them.

5. So here are the options if you’re a Syrian:

You can support Assad and the idea that it’s OK to use whatever force necessary to crush people who oppose you.

You can oppose Assad and fear what happened in Idlib.
You can flee.

But if you do, you understand that few countries – and certainly not the Trumpian United States, which has abdicated its stature as the refuge of the wretched – want you. You’ll risk your life to get to the West, where you’ll be exploited or shunned.

It’s a nightmare with no end in sight. It’s cruelty, magnified.

1. It’s Wednesday, March 29, 2017.

2. It’s the birthday of English composer William Walton and American businessman Sam Walton. Yes, you can buy a recording of William Walton’s work at Sam Walton’s walmart.com.

It’s also the 122nd birthday of my grandfather, Joseph Loscocco. I think of him all the time and wish he were here to come up with some really good phrases to use against the Trumpian Intrusion.

3. You knew when this idiot was elected president and the Republicans held Congress that there would be days like yesterday.

Trump spent his day crowing about how he’s ending the war on coal. By lifting the restrictions on its use and mining, what he’s really doing is pandering to coal mining companies and people who’ve decided they’d rather work in a mine than figure out something safer to do.

In the process, he’s taking the United States out of a leadership role in combatting climate change, which Trump and morons like him deny exists. Now, the world is in the precarious position of relying on China to save it from a future environmental disaster. To their credit and against expectations, the Chinese seem determined to take this leadership seriously.

Yeah, it’s infuriating – not to mention short-sighted.

And it’s a sign that the Trumpians suffer from memory loss.

Because if you’re their – which, by the way, is my – age, you should remember what it was like to travel to big cities in this country when coal was dominant. How routine it was to smell something in the air and to have your eyes tear and itch as you got closer to the industrial center.

I remember my father driving through a yellow fog of smoke in Gary, Indiana, on our way to Chicago in 1971. You couldn’t see anything except for the open flame of the steel plants that glowed beneath the – to put it benevolently – haze.

Yesterday, Trump bragged that he was putting Americans to work. If his brain was wired normally, he would realize that the future is in developing energy sources that are sustainable – that there are real, good jobs in alternative power and fuel.

Instead, like a lot of older people, he thinks the old ways are the only ways. Positive thinking saved America once, when leaders of both parties – hell, Richard Nixon was a visionary compared to what we have now – got together to solve an obvious problem.

When this orange jackass is gone, will normal intelligence be able to save American again?

4. Then you have what the pillbugs of American politics, the Republicans in Congress, did with your Internet privacy.

The House voted to lift rules that barred Internet service providers from selling your browsing data and app usage. All that stuff is now highly marketable material for whoever you get your online service from.

What’s the advantage to consumers?

Well, you have the usual schpiel about how government regulations inhibit creativity.

But I suspect the creativity will be more along the lines of finding more ways to send you e-mail solicitations you don’t want, bug you with telemarketing calls and otherwise intrude on whatever it is you do.

And now there is a serious question about whether or not what you see online can be seen by people you don’t want to see it.

Yes, there might be prurient reasons why people wouldn’t want that. But there’s also the woman in a dangerous relationship or the guy with a mysterious ailment who’s been searching for ways to get help.

Is it a good idea to let ISPs sell your data who might be able to exploit the vulnerable?

I don’t think so. But Republicans do, because anything they can do to help someone who donated money to them make more money to donate to them, they’ll do.

Pillbugs.

1. It’s Saturday, March 25, 2017. It’s the birthday of Howard Cosell and Gloria Steinem.

Some quick thoughts about the Republican American Health Care Act Debacle of 2017:

2. For seven years, we’ve heard Republicans say they had a better idea about health care than the odious Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare.

Seven years of playing on the biggest perceived flaws in the ACA – that people weren’t able to keep their doctors, that slowing the pace of premium increases didn’t end premium increases and that forcing young people to get insurance or pay a penalty

Seven years of claiming that government overreach was infringing on people’s freedom.

Seven years of winning elections by telling people that they had a better idea. Something that preserved their choices and saved them money.

Nothing. These bastards – led by Trump and Ryan, make no mistake – had nothing. They tried to throw something together as a bandage to cover the wound they wanted to inflict.

It was never about providing people with health care solutions. It was always about capitalizing on their anxieties.

Shame on them. Shame on the American people for believing them.

3. Because here was the Republicans’ big miscalculation:

Before the ACA, even people with fairly good health plan attained through their employer had anxieties.

Remember that pre-existing conditions weren’t covered. Remember that a lot of the care special to women – pregnancy prevention comes quickly to mind – wasn’t covered. Remember that, if you’re a parent, your kids were no longer covered the day they finished college – sooner if they didn’t go.

And all those polls that showed Obamacare was unpopular were misleading.

At times, a plurality of Americans didn’t like it because it was an intrusion on their lives.

But if you added the percentage who liked Obamacare to the percentage who didn’t like it because it didn’t do enough, you usually crossed the 50% mark.

A solid majority of Americans doesn’t want to go back to the days when it was a completely free market.

When they saw a bill that would do that, they went crazy. They told the Republicans that their idea was ridiculous.

The result was yesterday.

4. What happens now?

Well, to hear Trump, he’s saying he will let Obamacare die of its faults and then Democrats will come running to him, begging for a deal.

And he can do a lot to push Obamacare down. That health.gov website can get worse. He can cajole some more insurers to pull out of the exchanges, offering fewer choices – there are already lots of areas where only one company is involved, driving premiums higher.

So the first thing supporters need to do is to cut the celebration short. Focus on what changes can be made to ACA to help sustain it.

And then they need to sell that. Big time. That should be a big focus of the next year. Go on the air and explain ACA 2.0 – how they’re going to solve the problems that have cropped up.

It’s hard in this environment to think there are people on the other side to reach out to. There’s hope – read the thoughtful Atlantic piece by David Frum, a conservative now scorned by the right, who believes there’s a way to better health care in this country through some form of government intervention.

There probably are others like him. Clearly, Mitt Romney used to be – it’s the Massachusetts health care plan that he shepherded that’s the model for Obamacare.

And I’ll bet he didn’t do it alone – there are others on the Republican side who are likely still crowing – as they can – about what a success they pulled off.

Democrats have a choice. They can see the Republican failure as a sign that it’s time to push for the real dream – a single-payer system that would put the U.S. in the same league as Canada, Britain and other Western democracies. Personally, I’m cool with that.

Or, even though they’re out of power, they can govern. They can come up with the Obamacare improvements in league with those Republicans who also believe the idea of the United States should work. That compromise and innovation still have a place in this country, despite the small-minded jackass in the White House and his counterpart in the Speaker’s chair.

The Republicans punted on health care yesterday. In football, punts are notoriously hard to field. Sometimes, the returner bobbles it, and the other side grabs the loose ball and ends up closer to its end zone.

But sometimes, the returner catches the ball, finds an opening and scores.

That’s what the Democrats need to do. It’s not easy. But it’s better for everyone if they succeed.

1. It’s Thursday, March 16, 2017.

2. It’s the birthday of Henny Youngman, Jerry Lewis and Curtis Granderson. That last name is there because he’s a great New York Met and occasionally as funny as the other two.

3. It’s the day Northwestern plays its first game ever in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. We play Vanderbilt.

If this were a contest of journalism alums, we’d blow them out. Hopefully, that translates to hardwood. Go ‘Cats.

4. Usually, when a president announces a budget proposal, like the one Trump unveiled this morning, it’s declared “dead on arrival” by somebody in Congress.

This time, it’s hard to do that. Trump’s party has control of both houses of Congress, and you still get the sense that these people are begrudgingly beholden to him.

So while there are those who might say that what Trump proposes – increased military and homeland security spending and draconian cuts for diplomacy, health care, education and the environment – are subject to drastic revision, I’m not betting big bucks on that.

If anything has held true since Nov. 8, it’s that there isn’t some hidden moderation lurking in Trump’s craven mind. And Republicans are more than happy to go along if it means realizing their long-held dream of dismantling government.

So Democrats and other people who believe the United States shouldn’t become an armed camp of unhealthy idiots are right to fight this budget proposal with all the passion they can muster.

5. Wow, Muslim Ban Lite got quite the slamming from two judges.

Here’s the bottom line from the judges in Hawaii and Maryland:  When Trump and his henchmen went around the country badmouthing Muslims, it was easily translated into the idea that a ban of people from Muslim-majority nations was religious in nature.

And that’s unconstitutional.

Trump whined about it last night at one of his gatherings of the humanity-challenged in Tennessee.

But, as The Times reports, to get anything like he’s proposed, his administration has to go to court and prove that he and his people don’t hate Muslims.

That’s going to be very hard to do. The video is everywhere.

6. Speaking of last night’s rally, like an old rock star concert, Trump decided to get the crowd going with one of his greatest hits: the “lock her up” chant.

Yes, the idea that Hillary Clinton got 2,864,974 more votes than Trump still sticks in his craw and those of the worms who support him.

And they are worms. Everybody stop trying to make the case that these are people who are hurting and felt they had no other choice.

You might see that. I see people who have seethed at the fact that people of color, women and anyone else who isn’t them made some sort of progress in the last eight years. It drives them crazy.

So when they had an opportunity to relive the good times when they thought Hillary Clinton was a criminal for having a private e-mail server – even though their vice presidential candidate did, even while people on their team were cozying up to Russian operatives – they took it.

And Trump, nostalgic for the good old days, sucked it in like the leech he is.

1. It’s Wednesday, March 15, 2017. It’s the ides of March.

It’s the birthday of Andrew Jackson and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. People who like one generally don’t like the other.

2. I haven’t done a post in a while. The last one was written the day my father passed away.

The very next day, my wife’s father – another great man – passed away.

So, yeah, there’s been a lot to deal with the past two weeks. I’m planning something more specific about the circumstances in the next few days.

3. Some folks who watched the Trump tax reveal on Rachel Maddow’s show last night feel let down. They were hoping for some shocker about how much Trump is in the Russians’ pocket, or whether he paid off some mobsters or even that he isn’t as rich as he says he is.

That only the front two pages of Trump’s 2005 return surfaced guaranteed that what was revealed was a mere sliver of the information.

I have a business (this) and I know how complicated my return is. I’m certain Trump’s 2005 return is about as long as “War and Peace.”

I’ll get to the hyping of the reveal in a sec. Here’s what I take away from the tax revelation:

— The Alternative Minimum Tax is a curse phrase for any individual or couple that reaches a modicum of success.

I’ll go to my accountant, Kathleen, and we’ll start calculating our IRS status. And we’ll reach a reasonable figure – until Kathleen says “Now we have to figure out AMT.” That’s when my checkbook twitches.

The idea behind AMT was to make certain that people who make a solid income pay a fair share of taxes.

And when you see the Trump return, you understand the logic of it.

If Trump didn’t pay $31 million in AMT, he would have paid less than 5% of the $152 million he claimed in income. And he paid less than 15% if you take into account the $103 million in business losses the supposedly great businessman claimed on his personal return.

I would take that deal in a heartbeat. I – and other people who make 2% or less of Trump’s gross income – should be able to take that kind of deal in a heartbeat.

Trump wants to abolish AMT. People like me usually cheer that idea. We shouldn’t. AMT should be reformed, not abolished, if only to hold accountable people who make more money in a year than I’ll make in 40 or more lifetimes.

I’m more than happy to pay my fair share in taxes. And I most certainly believe I should pay at a higher rate than someone making less than me.

But I should pay at a lower rate than a guy making 1,000 times my income.

— Is there any doubt in your mind that Trump is behind the reveal of this tax return?

Forget the “CLIENT COPY” stamp on the return. In the Trumpian mind, this return passes for doing civic duty. In his eyes, he paid $38 million in taxes on $49 million in income. That left him with a measly $11 million.

And it’s a distraction. Damn, I’m falling for it right now.

I’m not writing about the abomination of a Republican health care plan. I’m not writing about connections between Trump’s people and Russians. I’m not writing about how he plans to gut one of the cornerstones of America’s success in the past decade – the fuel-efficiency standards that have made U.S.-made vehicles competitive with those from other countries.

I guess I believe that other media will stay focused on the other pitches coming at them. The Times is leading with Republicans nervous about their health care debacle. The Washington Post is leading with the pending indictment of Russian government officials in the Yahoo hacking case. The WSJ is leading the Federal Reserve about to raise interest rates.

So I feel better.

4. All right, I’m biased. I’m proud of my CNN career and the folks I worked with proudly for 16 years.

So, full disclosure, you should keep that in mind as I complain about Rachel Maddow on MSNBC.

Politically, I’m in sync with Ms. Maddow – much as I’m sure her audience is. I don’t have a beef with her opinions – I share most of them.

But the way she presented that tax return last night troubles me.

I understand that her show usually features a 15-minute open of her riffing on the story of the day. That’s fine – if you’re interested in that – when she’s not breaking news.

But to hold the reveal for as long as she did, and to find out it’s only the first two pages of the 2005 return, had to disappoint the thousands – if not millions – online who were expecting some great disclosure that unmasked the idiot in the White House.

Ms. Maddow oversold a story. I understand that – TV people need viewers.

But had she just broken the news at the open, and expounded on what she revealed later in the show, she would get more credit than she’s going to get now.

Especially if Trump is behind the reveal. The more she hyped it, the more she lets Trump come off as an aggrieved citizen whose private information lay naked before the wolves of the media. That’s a bunch of crap, but she opened herself to it.

Rachel Maddow’s fans are devoted to her. Just like Sean Hannity’s on Fox. And that’s the comparison to make. Both are amen corners for their followers, and they compromise any journalism they commit when they can’t stop themselves from preaching to the choir.

I just wanted to get that off my chest. I’ll deal with more personal matters later in the week.

Until this moment, I have never seen the words Vinnyfonfonsett Street in print.

One reason is there’s no such thing.

The other is that the words themselves have only been spoken.

The speaker was my father, Jack Thomas Meinero.

The words were his invention, as far as we could tell. I or my brothers or sister would ask him where something was, and he say some number and Vinnyfonfonsett Street.

And he and we laughed it off.

Because one of my dad’s most unusual traits was his ability to conjure words. He had specific words that were unique to him and, as far as I can tell, nowhere in Webster’s.

The word that has come to mind most in the last 36 days is eaf. There’s a family disagreement on the spelling – some believe it’s eef. But there’s no disagreement on who it describes.

As in “Trump. What an eaf!”

A disgusting substance is kak, which is short for kakiolo. This might not have been completely his invention. After Trump was elected, The New Yorker used the Greek word kakistocracy to describe the government being formed. So there’s an outside chance my father derived kak from the Greek.

One of the advantages of being a creative wordsmith is that it makes you an amazing storyteller and lecturer. Especially when you combine descriptive language with an amazing ability to mimic voices and alter tones.

When my brother, Jared, was around 11 or 12, he was enamored with a fried chicken place on the main drag in our town. My father was always suspicious about the quality of meat in that kind of place, and wanted my brother to stop going there.

“They take a bunch of chickens on a long walk, “ he told my brother. “And the ones that don’t make it end up at that fried chicken place.”

He had quite an imagination. And that might only have been his third best trait.

In second place was his preternatural strength. In the early 1960s my aunt had a Fiat, a car just over from Italy. There was a tight spot in front of her apartment building. So my father decided to park the car for her. First, he dragged one end of the car into the spot and then the other.

I didn’t see that for myself – I only know that from witnesses, one of whom described it without prompting 15 years after the fact and with an awe that I wouldn’t have expected from someone I’d never met before.

But I wasn’t surprised. It wasn’t like I hadn’t seen him lift more things in one hand that I’ve ever been able with two.

First place, though, belongs to his determination.

He was a man who didn’t finish high school and who, when he married my mom 65 years ago, was mounting truck tires at a time when they didn’t use the machines they have now.

But he became a salesman and spent 45 years at Firestone. And he was determined that his kids and grandkids would go places he could only imagine. We have degrees and careers that he helped put in our hands, and I can never go a day without marveling at how hard he worked. Not so much for himself, but for the future. Our future.

After today, that future will go on without him. That’s hard to believe and hard to write. I love him, as my mom, my siblings and our spouses and kids do — and always will.

We’ll cry. But as he wished, we’ll also laugh.

We’ll make a left turn onto Vinnyfonfonsett Street, and watch out for eafs.

It’s Friday, February 17, 2017.

It was on this date in 1963 that Michael Jordan and Larry the Cable Guy were born. Go figure.

OK, so here’s why I’m not as shell-shocked as many of you from Trump’s train wreck of a news conference yesterday.

I didn’t watch it.

Yes, that seems wrong for a journalism professor. But I was in the process of heading to that job and I missed it.

I sure as hell heard about it.

I own an Apple Watch – a cherished gift from the woman I love – and it practically buzzed itself off my wrist as I held the steering wheel.

One text that came across said Trump made Sarah Palin look like a stateswoman of the world.

I, of course, have read a lot about what transpired yesterday. It sounds scary. For anchors at CNN and even Fox to use words such as “unhinged” is not something traditionally ascribed to the world’s most powerful person.

So, instead of analyzing Trump’s comments, because I didn’t see them in real time, I just have two questions:

1. Why would he do this?

People talk a lot about the jujitsu of Trump. It goes something like this: Anytime you think there’s something so amazingly negative about him, he somehow survives and maybe even flourishes.

In that way, he’s like a virus. If an antibiotic isn’t strong enough to kill it all, the virus mutates and becomes resistant.

If there’s any analogy that fits Trump, it’s that he’s a virus.

The killer antibiotic that didn’t work was the Access Hollywood tape. Trump was on the defensive for a day at most, and then went on the attack. He survived and won.

If that didn’t finish him off, what else could? Even the idea that he’s Russia’s choice and in Vladimir Putin’s pocket seem to have become another way for the virus to become more resistant.

So a news conference in which he looks certifiably insane doesn’t really faze Trump much. It’s like batting practice to keep the resistance to antibiotics strong.

And it has the added bonus of feeding his constant need for attention.

How many times have we gone two days without hearing from or about Trump since the summer of 2015 when he started running? His need for attention doesn’t even take holidays off.

What rational people saw yesterday was an ignorant, self-obsessed spoiled rich kid with way too much power was what Trump viewed as playtime.

And despite the record low approval ratings for the start of his presidency, he’s still got his loyal rooters – the 40% of this country that thinks he’s doing a good job.

2. What will it take to get his supporters to see the light?

No, it won’t be yesterday’s news conference.

The antibiotic analogy works here, too. They’ve seen so many things that would normally crush belief in a politician – and their faith just gets stronger.

So when you and I and people we think are rational see a lunatic, there are people – especially in my neighborhood – who see a guy giving it to the forces that diminish their lives.

Democrats. Immigrants. Blacks. The media. Environmentalists. Educators.

That’s a fair list – not totally inclusive, but you get the idea.

As long as Trump is seen by these people as riding roughshod over their perceived bad guys, they’re happy as hell.

Which brings me back to the question – what will it take to wrest them away?

One way is going to be economic dislocation.

There are people who believe this economy is terrible. They are dead wrong. They seem to have forgotten what a bad economy is.

It’s double-digit inflation percentages, not the current 2.5% annual rate – which itself is a spike from recent years but still reasonable. It’s double-digit unemployment percentages, not the current 4.8%. It’s a loss of confidence in our country as the worldwide driver.

It’s going to start from overseas. A decline in demand for U.S. products, in some cases just out of spite. If Europeans stop buying Coca-Cola and McDonald’s because they hate Trump, that begins the snowball running downhill.

Who with money to spend is going to visit this country if there’s all this turmoil and hassle? Is that how you want to spend your vacation?

Couple that with the impact making immigrants – legal or otherwise – too terrified to go to work, and you have more economic problems.

When Trump’s lunacy affects Americans’ wallets, that’s when his message might start to go sour.

The other way Trump could be taken down is when he finally reveals his true contempt for the masses who admire him.

This guy has sold the Brooklyn Bridge to people who believe that he’s a great businessman who help make them rich, too.

And yet, every freakin’ proposal he’s made so far is aimed at helping those who already have as opposed to those who barely have or don’t have at all.

At some point, what he and the Republicans are proposing for such things as health care, tax reform, trade and the environment are going to crush the people who voted for him.

And he will reveal that contempt. It will come at an unguarded moment. Or when he’s tired. Or when he’s pissed off enough. Or when he believes that he’s become so immune to the brickbats of his critics that he doesn’t think there’s anything he can say or do that can affect him.

That’s when vainglory will bite Trump in his ample rear end.

I still have to believe that moment is coming. Because yesterday’s news conference wasn’t quite it. Yet.

1. It’s Wednesday, February 15, 2017.

2. According to a story by my friend and former CNNMoney colleague, Chris Isidore, this date usually sees a spike in divorce lawyer referrals. 

It’s also the 119th anniversary of the bombing of the USS Maine in Havana’s harbor.

3. Given all that’s happened in the first 26 days of the Babylonian Captivity, aka the Trump administration, it’s hard to imagine 50% more of this, much less 47+ months.

But without knowing what the hell will happen between now and then, or even if there will be a Trump administration, day 39 – Feb. 28 – is one to circle on your calendar.

On that day, Trump is scheduled to deliver something akin to the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress. Technically, it’s not a State of the Union, because he won’t have been president long enough to fairly gauge the state of the union.

It’s hard to imagine what’s going to transpire.

Traditionally, everybody gives the president a standing ovation as he enters the House chamber. These legislators – and, remember, these aren’t the youngest people among us – climb over, shove and elbow each other for a chance to shake the president’s hand, a photo for the folks back home.

Will Democrats actually welcome Trump? After everything that’s happened, will they sit on their hands and attempt to embarrass him?

Although, given the past few weeks, it’s hard to know what would actually embarrass Trump.

Will Trump use the speech to tout the achievements of his month-long administration? Or will it be another in his combination self-promotion ads/rants?

Will Trump waste the nation’s time re-airing his grievances against the news media, trashing President Obama and mocking Hillary Clinton? Will he go after “Saturday Night Live,” Nordstrom’s and Rosie O’Donnell?

Will he talk about being in the famous Capitol building? Will he tell us how everyone is pleased with his administration? How great the team he’s put together is?

Does he think we will have forgotten about the Flynn flap by then? Will there be someone else whose indiscretions warrant resignation in disgrace?

Finally, and I know this is a lot of questions, will Trump back off and not show up? Will he risk being humiliated by Democrats in Congress, and by some Democrat speaking for the party in the rebuttal who is so much more eloquent that it’s plain to anyone who watches?

Getting to Feb. 28 will be a task. And Feb. 28 itself might be no picnic – for everyone involved.

1. It’s Monday, February 13, 2017.

2. It’s the birthday of Jerry Springer, a former mayor of Cincinnati who apparently also hosts a daytime TV show.

At the Pinstripe Bowl in Yankee Stadium on Dec. 28, a video of prominent Northwestern alumni featured Springer rooting on his – and my – Wildcats. The fans of the other team, Pittsburgh, were first stunned to realize that Springer was on our side, then booed almost as lustily as they did later for ESPN’s Michael Wilbon.

However, Northwestern won that football game.

3. Which segues into my sheer joy – and that of Springer, Wilbon and the rest of us in purple and white – over last night’s men’s basketball upset of No. 7-ranked Wisconsin. In Madison.

This is a big step toward the Cats’ first-ever appearance in the NCAA tournament.

4. My two classes at William Paterson University take a weekly current events quiz. It requires them to read the front page stories in The New York Times which, being 21st-century students, most of my students find online.

The big problem writing questions for this quiz is that so much of the front page of the Times has been consumed with the foibles of the new presidential administration.

Since my classes started on Jan. 19, the front page has been consumed by presidential tweets, fights over his cabinet, crazy policy decrees, concerns about conflicts of interest and questions about the integrity of the slugs drawn into this mess.

A new administration is, by definition, a change. And we knew this one was going to be quite different from the prior administration, in part because the head of the new team questioned the legitimacy of his predecessor by saying he wasn’t born in the United States.

But the time we’re spending dealing with all the turmoil of the Trump White House seems excessive.

It also seems like part of the plan. And for no reason other than he can’t stand not to be the center of attention.

Even the protests against him seem to be part of his plan. I’m sure his outsized ego is bragging that these protests are the biggest ever against a new president – none of the other 43 guys had complaining crowds this big, if at all.

And how much of this weekend’s “Saturday Night Live” was devoted to people and problems caused by Trump? Was about two-thirds of the show Trump-related? He must love that.

This is the mentality of a toddler in a supposed adult. The ultimate spoiled attention-seeking spoiled brat.

The problem with that is that there are real problems, both in the United States and around the world.

How much attention are the Trump follies sucking from the crisis in northern California concerning the Oroville Dam? Nearly 200,000 people have been evacuated from their homes in a place where, after years of drought, there’s suddenly too much water. 

How much attention is being paid to the battle for Mosul and signs that the Iraqis, with help from American forces, are slowly recapturing this key city from ISIS? 

There are political crises in Europe and an American infrastructure that needs rebuilding. North Korea wants to show off the only thing it seems to produce, nuclear weapons. 

And yet, we’re consumed with whether the head of the National Security Council is a double agent and how much the Trump Organization is profiting from the Trump reign.

And Americans are beaten over the head by it. Every day. Perhaps the idea is to wear people down.

So far, it’s not working. No incoming president has ever had as low an approval rate.

Then again, maybe that’s a sign it is working. It’s another superlative of which Trump can brag.

That, more than anything Jerry Springer can come up with, is a freak show.