1. It’s Tuesday, January 10, 2017. It’s the birthday of Donald Fagen and George Foreman.

2. Why, as a Northwestern alumnus, am I pleased by Clemson’s victory over Alabama in college football’s national championship game?

Because, not two months ago, the same Clemson team suffered its only loss of the season, a 43-42 defeat at the hands of University of Pittsburgh.

And, of course, that would be the Pittsburgh team that lost the Pinstripe Bowl to Northwestern 13 days ago.

Forget the fact that the ‘Cats lost six other games this season. By my reckoning, we’re eight points better than Clemson and 12 better than Alabama.

At least, as a Wildcat fan, I’d like to think so.

3. In a way, I’m kind of surprised Jeff Sessions is on his best behavior at today’s confirmation hearing.

Trumpsters such as Sessions haven’t previously cared much about what the people who don’t agree with them thought.

But here is the Alabama senator, looking to be Trump’s attorney general, denying he’s ever been a racist and, as my former colleague Gregory Wallace at CNN reports, pledging to recuse himself in any witch hunt investigation of Hillary Clinton.

Lots of civil rights groups staunchly oppose Sessions. But the deck is stacked. It’ll take a major faux pas for Sessions not to be confirmed – that’s the best hope of a contentious hearing. And he knows that.

4. So President Obama’s farewell speech is tonight in Chicago.

Most of his supporters find the occasion sad, and that’s understandable. Obama has, on balance, been a terrific president – despite facing a withering barrage of opposition that was often based on his race.

But what’s especially great about this man has been his empathy for the people he was elected to serve — and his ability to express that empathy better, perhaps, than anyone who ever held the office.

(Note: We don’t have a tape of Lincoln. But no one ever would have thought Obama the second best speaker at any event, unlike Lincoln; at the Gettysburg battlefield consecration, everybody went to hear Edward Everett.)

I think I’m curious to hear whether or not Obama sets himself up to be the guy Americans run to when Trump pisses them off. Will Obama leave something oratorically that makes him the shadow president after noon on Jan. 20?

He’s only 55 years ago, 15 years younger than the guy succeeding him. And their mutual contempt isn’t any secret.

Plus much of what Obama accomplished is at great peril. I’m betting the Republicans ignore the warnings of some of their own and trash this incredible accomplishment. It’s their Holy Grail. It doesn’t matter who it hurts – they perceive that their people hate it, and that’s their ticket.

So listen carefully tonight to what Barack Obama says in his last scheduled address to the nation. It will be done beautifully. It will sing. And we’ll find out if it means more than just a valedictory.

1. It’s Monday, January 9, 2017. It’s the birthday of Richard Nixon and Dave Matthews.

2. Normally, new presidents attempt to unify the country before they assume the office.

Trump’s not even pretending to do that.

The Cabinet he’s chosen is almost as despicable a bunch as any of the people Hillary Clinton called out in that now-infamous speech last September.

An attorney general nominee whose racism is a matter of record. An education secretary nominee who hates public schools. A secretary of state nominee who’s cozy with the Russians who hacked into our election process.

And now, with the confirmation process at hand, the Republicans who run the Congress – the Senate in particular – are trying to railroad these nominees through. The Office of Congressional Ethics complains that the Trump people have stalled effort to vet these nominees, many of whom are among the wealthiest in the nation.

One way to get these people through is to hold as many hearings at the same time as possible as quickly as possible. The rationale being that it’s harder to get that godawful soundbite of nominee X being challenged by Democratic Senator Y if there’s so much to choose from.

Journalists, already a diminished class in the new Trump order, face a tough task holding these people accountable. And the question becomes one of logistics: Do you focus on the higher-profile people, such as Jeff Sessions and Rex Tillerson, or cover all of them and dilute your effort somewhat?

3. I vote for full coverage, and I don’t know that there has to be any dilution.

CNN, MSNBC and CBSN are big enough to cover multiple congressional hearings, a Trump news conference if he crawls out of his cocoon long enough and whatever else happens that day.

It’s amazing, frankly, how much talent these networks have, some of it not especially famous. I know this from experience.

And if the reputable networks feel as though they need help, there are resources with which they can team. The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, which despite its Murdochian ownership still shows some reporting integrity.

But these confirmation hearings require full, thorough coverage. They also require serious challenges – from Democratic opponents and the few Republicans with the guts to get at the facts and truth.

It is understood that there is little chance any of Trump’s nominees won’t be confirmed. But the extremity of their viewpoints and, in some cases, their lack of respect for all of the American people – another reminder that 2,864,974 more people voted for Clinton than her opponent – make it imperative that they at least get their positions on record.

4. The 19th-century artists of the Hudson River School movement would cringe if they saw the Indian Power nuclear power plant in New York.

For some stupid reason, in the late 1950s, people got the idea to build a hideous nuclear power plant in an iconic place of beauty. If you drive along U.S. 9W headed for Bear Mountain State Park, the whole experience is marred by this eyesore across the river.

Not to mention that, like other nuclear plants, people have never been especially comfortable about the safety. In my kitchen drawer are the emergency evacuation plans occasionally distributed by local authorities. And I’m about 10 miles south and west of the plant across the Hudson.

So I’m really happy that Gov. Andrew Cuomo is finally putting the padlock on Indian Point. He’s announcing that the plant will close in 2021, ending decades of worry about natural disasters, mechanical problems, terrorism and inconsistent reliability.

Now, what I’d really like to see is the state and local authorities tear down the facility and restore the land to blend in with the beauty around it. The Hudson River Valley is magnificent, and sometime in the late 2020s, it might even be better without Indian Point.

It’s January 6, 2017. It’s the Twelfth Day of Christmas, the Feast of the Epiphany.

And it’s Friday, which means it’s time for the first 20 Questions Friday of the new year. The format is, however, the same: I ask questions that you might or might not choose to answer.

With 51 weeks to go in this year, here we go with this:

— Does Putin think the effort invested in helping Trump was worth it?

— What can the average American do to get the Russians back?

— Did any of the Trump critics who said don’t fall for his daily Twitter distraction heed their own advice this morning?

— To my fellow residents of New York’s northern suburbs: Don’t you love it when the bad winter weather is south of here?

— Is Octavia Spencer going to be in every movie from now on?

— Is anybody surprised that it took six days for the first mass shooting in the United States this year?

— Does the National Rifle Association have a 24/7/365 response team whenever a mass shooting occurs ready to pooh pooh the fact there are too many guns in this country?

— Are travelers just a little bit more patient with airlines on a day when they have to deal with weather problems and an airport shooting?

— Is the link in this question the first you’ve heard about the possibility that Gambia’s West African neighbors are on the verge of invading? 

— Did anybody think the Mexico wall thing was going to go exactly the way Trump promised?

— How long do you think your gym will be crowded with would-be New Year’s resolution keepers before they start to give up?

— Does anybody seriously believe Hillary Clinton wants to run for mayor of New York?

— Does it really matter if the Dow Jones industrial average reaches 20,000?

— Have you taken down your holiday decorations?

— I’m not normally a violent person, but does anybody else want to smack Julian Assange silly?

— Didn’t you know (you’d have to cry sometime)? (eighteenth in a series of song-title questions)

— Wouldn’t it be cool if a big “La La Land”-type dance production number actually broke out when you were sitting in traffic going nowhere?

— Who else couldn’t care less about the Golden Globes?

— Is drinking egg nog after New Year’s Day like wearing white after Labor Day?

— Has anybody started doing their taxes yet?

1. It’s Wednesday, January 4, 2017.

At this point in a year, it takes a good deal of effort to make sure the date is correct. Eventually, the idea that it’s 2017 will become second nature.

2. The derailment of a Long Island Rail Road train in Brooklyn this morning, injuring more than 100 people, is the second such incident in the New York area in recent months. 

Like the New Jersey Transit incident in Hoboken in September, the commuter train crashed through a barrier at its final stop. Fortunately, in today’s incident, no one was killed; one person standing on the platform died in Hoboken.

We don’t know what caused today’s incident. While the cause of what happened in Hoboken is still being determined, there was an AP report in November stating that investigators are looking into the idea that the engineer had undiagnosed sleep apnea. 

So we have two problems to consider here. One – train safety – has to be solved by government. The other – sleeping disorders – probably needs to be something society takes more seriously.

3. Let’s start with train safety.

People who live in some of the biggest metropolitan areas – New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington among them – might find this hard to believe. But most Americans have no idea what a commuter train is.

Train lines such as the Long Island Rail Road in New York, METRA in Chicago and MBTA in Boston serve thousands of people. The cities where they’re based are crippled when trains don’t run for whatever reason – system problems, labor actions or bad weather.

So we need them.

But we hate them. Most of these lines, particularly those in the East, are antiquated. The stations are often ill-equipped to handle the people who want to use them – parking is inadequate and service can be slow and uncomfortable.

If Trump is serious about infrastructure, this would be a prime target. Not only do the older lines need to be spruced up, but metropolitan areas such as Atlanta and Houston need to actually build lines. And there must be technological ways to make events like the one this morning almost impossible.

That takes money, and the people who elected Trump in places where there are no trains probably don’t care how difficult the commute is for someone in Hicksville, N.Y., or Highland Park, Ill.,  or Humble, Texas.

So here’s Trump’s dilemma. He can score points with suburbanites he needs to help him get re-elected in 2020 by making their commutes a little better. Or he can keep the outlying areas happy by not spending their money making commuter trains to Brooklyn safer.

The bonus to an overhaul of the nation’s commuter rail systems, including better trains and more safety features, is that it creates jobs. Lots of them.

In fact, that’s what President Obama had in mind with his original stimulus proposal, when the economy was in the dumps. It seems as though he got a lot of the roads he wanted – the mass transit, not so much.

This country’s infrastructure needs a lot. Not just transportation, but water and electricity are in dire need. We need to develop 21st century methods of delivery that include protection against potential terrorism. In the next few months, we’ll see how serious the self-proclaimed master builder is.

4. The other problem is sleep.

That might be the next great health crusade. We’ve gone after smoking, drugs, alcohol, sugar, soda/pop and food in general.

Again, we don’t know for sure that sleep problems caused either of the most recent train derailments in the New York area. But a sleep problem is blamed for the 2013 fatal crash of a Metro North train in the Bronx.

Sleep – or lack of it – is a special problem on the highways. The latest National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data, from 2005, shows that about 100,000 accidents are caused by drowsy driving annually. About 1,550 deaths result.

And again, this data’s more than a decade old – given the propensity of people to stay up all night playing video games and surfing social media, could those numbers be higher in 2017?

So what might be in order this year is a campaign to get people to sleep.

And that’s going to be harder than getting them to stop anything else – smoking, drinking, junk food, whatever.

There are two kinds of people. People who love to sleep, and would sleep all day if life allowed them.

And then there’s folks like me. I hate to sleep. I’m always wondering what the hell I’m missing.

When I worked at CNN, I was lucky to get four hours a night. With my job and my family obligations and the things I really wanted to do, sleep was an impediment.

And, for the most part, I functioned.

Except that if I stayed out late at a family function or a ballgame on the weekends, I would put myself and my family at risk by being drowsy as I drove. I still rarely drink alcohol when I go somewhere – not because there’s a risk of driving while intoxicated, but because even the slightest amount might push me over the sleep edge on the highway.

I don’t think I’m alone in this. There are workaholics galore out there, and our society favors those who are awake a lot. Plus there are people who can’t put down the iPhone or laptop.

And lack of sleep doesn’t only affect driving ability. It has a great deal to do with health issues such as obesity and diabetes.

So a national campaign to get people to sleep more would be a curious thing. But it might also be a necessary thing. There are organizations – such as the National Sleep Foundation – that promote it. 

As my friends and family would note, I am an unusual advocate for sleep. But, especially seeing these train accidents and wondering about how they happened, and knowing how my body functions, I think the time is right for a real push on getting people to sleep the amount they should.

1. It’s Tuesday, January 3, 2017.

2. It’s the 40th anniversary of Apple Computer Inc., whose products help make this blog possible.

3. Here’s an idea for both Trump and his North Korean alter ego, Kim Jong Un: Why don’t you guys just do what you really want – a real pissing match?

You can set the terms. Most accurate, longest, who can spell out words, whatever.

You could stage it on worldwide TV, and show everyone the endowment that you both seem determined to prove exists.

As uninterested as I would normally be in such a competition, I would gladly watch it, and recruit as many people as I know to join me.

Just as long as you both are more preoccupied with your, um, gifts than in incinerating large portions of the planet with nuclear weapons. Which both of you seem to have as unhealthy a fixation as on proving your manhood.

Otherwise, stop it.

4. Why are people surprised that House Republicans voted to be less accountable for their behavior? Especially any of the people who voted for them or for their standard bearer, Trump.

Remember when they griped about too much political correctness? You thought they meant that it should be OK to tell a little racist or sexist joke among friends. And yes, it probably meant that too.

But what these Republicans against-the-lawmakers also saw was the perception that you are tired of hearing about them being forced to behave in a certain way. You know, ethically – as if serving the public shouldn’t be seen as a license to make a fortune.

As they see it, don’t rules about taking gifts from foreign agents and companies just muck up the works? Why not just let everyone buy their way to government favors? What’s the harm?

Yesterday’s move was so bad that even Trump, who still hasn’t told us how he’s going to avoid ethical conflicts starting in 17 days, thought it was over the top.

UPDATE 12:30 p.m. ET: And, of course, to make their new master look good, the Republicans retreated.

Trump will take credit for forcing the Republicans to back down. Remember that that’s bullshit: The outcry of journalists and Democrats had a lot more to do with it.

5. Democrats worried that there’s no front-runner for 2020 seem to be the target for Andrew Cuomo.

The governor of New York has made quite a splash the past few weeks. It started with his visibility at the opening of New York City’s Second Avenue Subway, the biggest expansion of the nation’s biggest mass transit system in my lifetime.

Cuomo’s association with the Second Avenue Subway opening – underline the word opening – is fortuitous. That’s because the Second Avenue Subway has been an idea in New York – and nothing more – for nearly 100 years.

They were working on it 41 years ago when I got my first job on Second Avenue and 13th Street – and the new line might not go there until the second half of this century, if ever.

So tying yourself to success in this is certainly a good idea.

Today, the governor announced a proposal to make tuition at the state’s colleges and universities free for anyone whose family makes $125,000 a year or less.

If that sounds like a Bernie Sanders idea, it shouldn’t surprise you that Cuomo made the announcement with Sanders at his side.

Both men – who shout a lot when they speak with accents from the boroughs where they were born – insinuated that proposals like this are the way Democrats can get back in the game. As Trump helps himself and those who already have money, Cuomo sees an opening for Democrats to appeal to the people who abandoned the party to elect the charlatan.

Now here’s what’s going to happen: Republicans, and some Democrats, are going to try to stop Cuomo. They’re going to raise ethical issues, which might or might not have traction. They’re going to say he’s a heavy-handed executive.

Republicans are going to say he’s a tax-and-spend liberal. So-called progressive Democrats are going to say he’s not progressive enough.

I wouldn’t bet money on Andrew Cuomo as the 2020 nominee just yet. But as an Italian-American who still believes Mario Cuomo would have been the best POTUS of our lifetime, I hope his son takes his best shot at it.

It’s December 30, 2016. Winter is 10% over and 2016 is 99.29% over.

And it being Friday, and me being not as lazy as I’ve been the past week, it’s time for the final 2016 edition of 20 Questions Friday.

Today’s questions will reflect on the year that’s almost past. Most people not named Trump didn’t especially like it. But here are we are, at the end of it, bracing for an uncertain 2017.

If I don’t talk to you before 12:00:01 a.m. on Sunday, I wish you a happy new year.

— What was the moment in 2016 when we could have stopped Trump once and for all, and how do we go back in time to it?

— What shade of blue is anyone who held their breath waiting for Trump to release his tax returns?

— Should President Obama pardon Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning or Rod Blagojevich?

— How long after he’s inaugurated will Trump lift the sanctions President Obama imposed on Russia for screwing around with our election?

— Which will be bigger, the crowd celebrating Trump’s inauguration or the protest march the next day against it?

— What will be the thing that disillusions Trump supporters, or are those people too far gone to reason?

— Will Trump even set foot in California?

— What’s the place in the world that’s not a hot spot now but will become one in 2017?

— Is there any chance this is another mild winter, and is that a good thing?

— What are the chances that the backlash against Trump will lead to a renaissance of real American journalism?

— Is it a fringe benefit of electronic banking that it’s harder to misdate checks at the start of a new year?

— How much more of a mess can Syria be by this time next year?

— Why is the stock market going up, and can that possibly continue?

— How long will it take our soon-to-be former president, Barack Obama, to become the most influential opponent to Trumpism?

— What Democrat will emerge as the early front runner for the 2020 presidential nomination?

— What will emerge as the new trendy food in the coming year?

— At its current pace of construction, is there any chance New York’s Second Avenue Subway will be complete by 2100?

— Why does anybody in their right mind go to Times Square on New Year’s Eve to watch a ball drop with a million drunk people?

— What are you doin’ New Year’s Eve? (seventeenth in a series of song-title questions)

— Can we do our best to make sure Billy Joel’s “Miami 2017” doesn’t really happen? 

It’s December 23, 2016, it’s two days before Christmas and time for 20 Questions Friday.

This is my pre-holiday edition. I hope your prep is going well. Enjoy.

— How many times have you watched “It’s a Wonderful Life”?

— In which city would you rather spend Christmas – New York or London?

— Do you stop playing holiday music right after Dec. 25, or do you play it through New Year’s Day?

— Why would anyone want a partridge in a pear tree as a gift?

— Have you actually read “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens, or do you just know it from its cinematic versions?

— Does anybody still put tinsel on a Christmas tree?

— Who do you tip at the holidays?

— Why don’t I think the people of the upper Midwest are jumping for joy at the prospect of a big honking Christmas Day snowstorm?

— Has anyone ever really gotten a lump of coal in a stocking?

— Why is getting a lump of coal the ultimate in “gifts” for naughty children?

— War on Christmas types, a question: Would your rather have someone say “Happy Holidays!” or “Go to hell”?

— Is it just me, or are people sending out fewer Christmas cards?

— What holiday song would you not mind ever hearing again? (Other than “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer”)

— Did you know it’s been 38 years since Christmas Eve and the first night of Hanukkah both fell on Dec. 24?

— Is “Die Hard” really a holiday movie?

— Shouldn’t people who put Star Shower laser lights up as house decorations be barred from celebrating Christmas?

— Ever wonder what Wall Street looks like at midnight on Christmas Eve?

— Would you threaten bodily harm to someone who rang your doorbell, sang a simple holiday song, and then demanded figgy pudding?

— Do you hear what I hear? (sixteenth in a series of song-title questions)

— Will Santa bring me what I want for Christmas – or is Trump still going to take office on Jan. 20?

1. It’s Tuesday, December 20, 2016.

2. It’s David Wright’s birthday. Why isn’t this a national holiday?

You know what I and every other Met fan wish for the guy who so embodies the team that he even walks like Mr. Met?

That he’s healthy and happy. Healthy because we want to see him play like David Wright. Happy because that’s what he makes us.

3. I invested a lot of time earlier today in writing some comments about the tragedy in Berlin. But they seemed over the top and way too long.

So here’s the real shorthand:

The Germans don’t know yet what motivated this atrocity. They don’t even know if they have the right guy.

So it’s stupid to pounding your chest about Islamic terrorism and wiping ISIS from the face of the Earth as if we’re not trying to do that already.

In a lot of these cases, the people who do this crap are loners or imbalanced. And when they see people who are enjoying the world as it is, it’s especially infuriating.

If ISIS never existed, these people would. They’d have something to be upset about, because that’s how they view the world.

Get the facts. Use them to find out the best way to stop these things. Don’t talk. Act.

4. Terrific story at VanityFair.com from former CNNMoney colleague Emily Jane Fox about how Trump might already have committed impeachable offensives. 

The conflicts of interest this jerk is running up rival the debts he ran up as a self-proclaimed great businessman.

5. You’re going to hear us Trump haters described as fascists.

And the reason is that many people warned Italian singer Andrea Bocelli that they would stop buying his music and attending his concerts if he performs at the inauguration. So, apparently, he’s not, according to Huffington Post.

So here’s my message: Keep doing what you’re doing.

You are not a fascist for threatening to boycott anyone who performs at the inauguration.

You are exercising what a good friend calls your “dollar votes.” You are choosing to spend your money and your passion on people who share your ideals, and to not waste it on those who don’t.

Because it’s Trump and being embarrassed is the greatest sin, we’ll hear that Bocelli wasn’t really invited to sing at the inauguration.

It doesn’t matter. Whoever does won’t be getting any of my money, and hopefully none of yours.

1. It’s Monday, December 19, 2016.

2. The Electoral College meets today in the state capitals and Washington, D.C. It will formally elect Trump as president.

3. Bobby Timmons was born this day in 1935. He’s the pianist who wrote “Moanin’,” which was made famous by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, with whom Timmons played. For this time of year, his 1964 “Holiday Soul” is a wonderful addition.

4. If you aren’t moved to tears by what’s transpiring in Aleppo, you’re a freakin’ stone.

Watch this humanitarian tragedy unfold is a reminder that the human race, for all its claims of moving civilization forward, doesn’t always do that.

We’re seeing children on the brink of death from dehydration. Buses of civilians trying to escape the hellhole getting harassed by rival factions in Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s coalition of death. A city that was once Syria’s economic capital reduced to rubble and open fires in the streets as people try to stay warm. 

5. So what do we and the rest of the world do?

It’s kind of a pathetic question. The world should have done something long ago. This isn’t an all-of-a-sudden catastrophe – there wasn’t a natural disaster that led to this.

The United Nations has voted to install monitors on the escape routes from Aleppo to Lebanon and other safe places for refugees. The Russians, whose veto power has stymied some other attempts to do something about this, went along this time.

Some Americans are donating to relief efforts, which is all well and good assuming humanitarian groups – the angels of the world – can find a way to make those efforts effective.

If you want to feel a little less helpless about this, you can go to the sites of Doctors Without Borders, the UN Refugee Agency or Save the Children. 

6. As you could glean from President Obama’s end-of-the-year news conference, it’s hard to figure out what the United States could do in an official capacity.

The president doesn’t count Syria among the successes in his eight-year administration. And that’s with good reason. We did not help the crisis. There are a lot of innocent lives we didn’t save. Despite Obama’s proclamations of his illegitimacy, Assad is still in charge of Syria.

The fact is that the will to topple Assad was not strong enough to match the will of Assad to stay in power – and the will of his allies in the region, Russia and Iran, to keep him there. After having the upper hand for a short time, those opposed to Assad fell behind and now just appear to be falling altogether.

As the president said, it’s the Russians, Iranians and Assad who have the blood on their hands. And those are the people the next president seems determined aligned with in Syria, claiming that we should be focused more on the Islamic State, which is one of the forces fighting Assad.

Except that when it comes to ISIS, the Russians haven’t been a whole lot of help. They’ll certainly be around to scoop up some of the glory when the Iraqis, with our assistance, clear the ISIS cockroaches from Mosul.

It’s a mess, to say the least. And let’s face the fact that a lot of this instability is thanks to the idiotic invasion of Iraq 13 years ago – done without a clue about what impact it would have on the region as a whole, not to mention without justification.

I’m not saying Saddam Hussein would have kept the peace in the region. But it’s not as if there’s been a whole lot of stability in the area since.

7. Anyway, perhaps the best thing we can do about Syria is something we can not do – get militarily involved in this region.

There are some folks who criticize Obama for not taking a military role to help avert the crisis. But as he said Friday, we had no support in the region, we weren’t invited and we would have needed to occupy portions of Syria – a strategy that didn’t work well at all in Iraq.

Now, with a new bunch of chest-beaters about to take charge in Washington, it’s a good reminder that the most powerful military force in human history still should never be used on a whim.

That means not in Syria, and certainly not in Iran, which seems to have some attraction to the lowlifes Trump is bringing into government.

It’s December 16, 2016, the 243rd anniversary of the Boston Tea Party.

And it’s Friday, so it’s time for 20 Questions Friday, my attempt at an end-of-the-week gimmick for this blog.

I’ll just ask these questions and leave them out there for you to answer, ponder or ignore.

Have a great weekend.

— How must Republican congressmen feel knowing the Russians want them in office instead of some pesky Democrat?

— How many faithless electors – if any – will there be when the Electoral College meets Monday?

— Is there some idiot who’ll say the two-day cold snap that afflicted the U.S. is proof there’s no climate change – when it’s probably proof there is?

— Are people so numbed by the violence in the world that they’re immune to the tragedy in Aleppo?

— What’s going to make the anti-Semites who supported Trump happier than having Jewish people fight each other over his pick for ambassador to Israel?

— Who thinks Jerry Brown could become the hero the anti-Trump folks want so badly?

— Are you going to see “Rogue One” this weekend?

— Is there anything tackier or stupider than those moving laser lights people are projecting onto their homes for holiday decorations?

— Would public shaming of individual members help combat the travesty perpetrated by North Carolina’s Republican legislators?

— Why would Trump tweet out his disdain for Vanity Fair when doing so only gets more people to read Tina Nguyen’s wonderfully hysterical review of the godawful restaurant in Trump Tower? 

— What’s the best way to eliminate fruit flies in your house?

— Do you think people who leave their Trump signs up over the holidays are being hostile or just genuinely happy?

— Doesn’t it seem a little early for news organizations and others to be doing their year in review, since the year isn’t over yet?

— Is there a chance Britain really doesn’t Brexit after all?

— Do people really get pissed off if you say “Happy holidays” to them?

— Why does anybody care what happened to Lamar Odom? (Bonus question: Who is Lamar Odom?)

— Does anybody really like winter?

— What’s been your go-to store – brick-and-mortar or virtual – this holiday season?

— What child is this? (fifteenth in a series of song-title questions)

— Can you believe there’s just about two weeks left in the year?