1. It’s Wednesday, January 20, 2016.

2. In 366 days – remember, this is a leap year – there will be a new president.

3. If Sarah Palin gets her way, taking the oath of office on this day in 2017 will be Donald J. Trump. It would be mind boggling but, alas, minds are not something in abundance when people say that Sarah Palin will convince them to vote for Donald J. Trump.

At first, I wondered why. That didn’t last long. He’s the biggest show in the Republican Party, so she gets a chance to amplify her shrill voice on a big stage. It’s the glory days of 2008 again, without any tempering whatsoever from John McCain – in fact, her chosen candidate of 2016 believes the man who picked her to run for vice president is a loser because he spent more than five years as a prisoner of war.

For him, she gives him more immunity with the extremists – I’m reluctant to dignify these people with the word “conservative” because there’s nothing restrained about them – who might still be worried that Trump actually spoke to Hillary Clinton once without pushing her down. In a close race in Iowa, that might give him a little something extra to combat the organization Ted Cruz appears to have.

How will the Palin embrace of Trump affect the campaign? That, as my mentor Charlie Morey would say, is why they run the horse race. No one knows for sure. But we’ll certainly find out within the next 366 days.

4. The two go back a few years. Jon Stewart went to town one night in 2011 by showing Trump escorting Palin and her family for pizza in Times Square.

Here, according to Stewart – and, by the way, God – is what Trump did wrong:

a) He took the Palins to a chain pizzeria with locations in airports nationwide instead of an iconic or typical NYC place;

b) he stacked his slices. Nobody – I mean nobody – does that. That’s ridiculous;

and c) he ate the pizza with a fork! Whatever side you are on in the New York-Chicago pizza battle (I’m with NYC, but confess to having liked the pizza when visiting my second hometown), you agree that the New York type is eaten by hand or else you look like an idiot.

Prediction: The laughs will just keep coming.

5. Some thoughts about the snowstorm we’re expecting in my part of the nation:

— Phooey.

— My boycott of The Weather Channel means I will not know until it shows up on social media what stupid name it has given this storm. My boycott stems from the fact that WINTER STORMS DON’T HAVE NAMES! This is just a marketing ploy. Calling a storm Odin or Elektra doesn’t make it more memorable.

— If you want to know about the snowstorm without Weather Channel or any channel hype, I’m a huge fan of the National Weather Service’s social media outreach.

I woke up at 7 a.m. to see a thorough, honest forecast from the NWS New York office that gives me a fair idea of what the people who follow this expect. I follow on both Twitter and Facebook, and you can follow whatever branch of the service is near you, or even follow the entire region where you live.

It’s what I’ll use the next few days as I try to coax this dopey storm to sea – something the NWS says remains a small possibility.

1. It’s Tuesday, January 19, 2016.

2. At my age, time usually passes quickly. But no matter how old I get, January drags. In 62 Januaries, I have never said “Gee, that went fast.” It never does.

Why am I so cranky? It could be that it’s 19 degrees on the 19th. It could be that we’re looking at 10 inches of snow this weekend. It could be the untimely death of my garage door opener. It could be that I woke up to discover Donald Trump is still running for president.

3. I get why Americans dislike Iran. If you’re not old enough to remember the hostage crisis that began in November 1979, you’ve gotten a good feel for it from “Argo.” And there have been plenty of reminders in the 36-plus years since that Iranians hate us, including the year and a-half imprisonment of Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian. The Iranians’ grudge holding is even deeper than ours – they’re still blaming us for thwarting the overthrow of the Shah in the 1950s, even though Eisenhower and Dulles have long since died.

But this weekend was good. The United Nations affirmed that Iran is abiding by the terms of the nuclear agreement it signed last year, and the West lifted economic sanctions. And there was a swap of prisoners, with Rezaian and three other Americans getting out and seven Iranians going home in return.

And yet, there are those in both countries who would like nothing better than a war to settle things once and for all. They complain about the prisoner swap, with American killjoys saying we gave up too much and Iranian jerks doing everything they could to foul things up at the last minute. 

The whole incident involving the American sailors who might have strayed into Iranian waters captures this problem in a nutshell.

The fact that they were captured at all, and that the Iranians made a video of the sailors with their hands behind their heads and on their knees, shows that there are factions in Iran eager for a fight with the U.S.

The fact that a relatively quick release was negotiated, that no harm was done to the sailors, is seen by the Ted Cruzes of the world as a sign of weakness instead of the maturity to negotiate and tamp down the tension.

I suspect Cruz and others would be more than happy to send American troops, none of whom are his children, to rescue the sailors. I suspect there are Iranians who would have derived satisfaction from a show trial of hapless young Americans with a faulty navigation system.

Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif are trying to be the grownups, while a lot of petulant children clamor to rassle. Anybody who thinks peace is a better alternative to bloodshed and shouting should be on their side.

4. Glenn Frey is the second rock icon to pass this month. The Eagles’ singer and guitarist fought a whole bunch of afflictions as hard as he could before succumbing yesterday.

We should have been tipped off when the Eagles, who were slated to receive a Kennedy Center honor last month, asked out of the ceremony because of Frey’s illness. That’s one of those things you usually don’t skip.

“Take It Easy” was the first big Eagles hit, in 1972. It’s not one of my all-time favorite songs – or even my favorite Eagles song.

But I remember it fondly because one of the times I heard it on the radio was while my family was passing through Winslow, Ariz. Alas, I did not see a girl in a flatbed Ford, and even I did, there was little I would have been able to do with my parents and younger siblings with me.

The other song I’m associating with Glenn Frey this morning is “The Heat Is On,” one of his solo efforts during the 14-year estrangement with the rest of the Eagles. One reason is that the heat is not on this morning. Which makes sense. Rest in peace.

1. It’s Monday, January 18, 2016.

2. It’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day. It’s a great day to celebrate this country’s best attribute – the ability to recognize shortcomings in the way we treat each other and make changes for the better. But we are a better country than we were before Martin Luther King led the Montgomery bus boycott and the march from Selma to Birmingham.

And not just for African-Americans, but for all ethnicities, for all genders, for all sexual orientations and for all religions. The changes triggered by Dr. King have made life better for everyone, and the only reason you might not see it is that the change has been subtle, but thorough.

No, we’re not perfect. Not close. The shooting of unarmed African-American boys and men by police is heartbreaking and infuriating. The attempted intimidation of immigrants from Mexico and Central America, and the bigotry against American Muslims are both unacceptable.

But if there’s anything we learn from Dr. King, it’s that, in America, change for the better is inevitable as long as people with a strong moral compass make themselves heard. We’ve come a long way in the half-century since Martin Luther King’s heyday.

Can we go further? You bet. That’s the promise of this national holiday. It’s a great day to be an American.

3. Unlike the most recent Republican debate, I was more than able to stay with the entire Democratic Presidential debate last night. As a Democrat, I felt really good after it was over, because I watched would-be leaders rather than people who want to win a pissing match.

Some of my observations:

— Anyone who declared a winner between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton is off the mark. They both came off as thoughtful and issue-oriented, even when they disagreed sharply and made accusations about the other’s positions. I don’t think anyone who supported one switched to the other, and I think people undecided between the two could have come down on the side of either one depending on what issue moves them the most.

— Anyone who did the Rip Van Winkle thing during the 2008 Democratic campaign and woke up last night would have been most shocked by Clinton’s embrace of the Barack Obama presidency. Part of the reason was the audience – the Congressional Black Caucus, which sponsored the debate, is one of the President’s loyalist support groups. But it still was jarring to hear her sing the praises of the guy she went against full boar eight years ago.

— Sanders might have kicked away any chance he had of stunning Clinton with his new health care proposal. And it’s not because hard-core Democrats, deep in their soul, don’t agree with the idea of a single-payer system, a Medicare for all – we love that idea!

It’s just that Clinton is right – there’s no way we’re getting that anytime soon and it’s a waste of time and energy to try. The best thing to do is to work toward making Obamacare better. It’s a great start and great accomplishment. But the country isn’t ready for another big change until this one is absorbed. And that will take some time.

Plus this: you understand and I understand what Sanders means when he says that middle-class Americans would get a good bargain if they traded a modest tax hike for the end of private health insurance. But most middle-class Americans only heard that tax hike part. And you can bet good money that whoever would run against Sanders in the fall would not make a single speech without mentioning it.

It would be deadly and I think the one thing Democrats want more than either of the candidates is to make sure that Donald Trump and the Trumpettes on the Republican side don’t get close to winning.

— Generally speaking, the NBC debate was better than the others I’ve seen. There were still too many questions that were irrelevant – the way Sanders batted away the Bill Clinton comment question was brilliant and a real credit to him. And all these debates seem to let the one moderator dominate, leaving Andrea Mitchell sitting there for long stretches. But the real subject questions were good, Lester Holt seemed pretty fair minded, and the debate moved briskly.

— If there’s a moment when you see why anyone would want Hillary Clinton to be president, it was on that final question about the issue that didn’t come up during the debate.

Martin O’Malley got the question first and buried his best answer, the Puerto Rico debt crisis, in a laundry list of topics he felt he needed to get out.

Then Clinton launched a scathing tirade about the disgrace involving the drinking water in Flint, Mich. You could see her lift off as she ripped the officials who let the city’s supply become so contaminated and said how she reached out to people in the city to see if there was any way she could help.

That moment was the promise of Hillary Clinton. It was the moment when the ‘60s idealist broke through five decades of being so prominent a political figure. Her indignation reflected ours, on any number of levels, and it was encouraging to see.

It is little wonder why Republicans don’t want to run against her. She’s actually better at getting fired up than even Donald Trump, and the big difference is she doesn’t sound like an idiot when she does. If something like that Flint question comes up in a fall debate – the water disaster hopefully will be resolved by then – watch out.

It’s January 15, 2016 and time for a late afternoon edition of Friday Yes or No. I ask questions about things other people might be interested in. I give the shortest answer possible – for me.

Q1: Did you turn on last night’s Republican presidential debate?

A1: Yes

Q2: Did you watch the whole thing?

A2: No

Q3: Is that because it could shorten people’s lives to be that kind of angry for that sustained a period?

A3: Yes

Q4: Was anybody on that stage presidential material?

A4: No

Q5: Was anybody asking questions for Fox Business journalistic material?

A5: No

Q6: Is the two-week stock market tumble scary?

A6: Yes

Q7: Is this the beginning of a recession?

A7: No

Q8: Is that because the American economy is strong enough to withstand this onslaught of fear about China’s economy?

A8: Yes

Q9: And also because the drop in gasoline prices, while hurting companies in the oil industry, will help keep American consumers solvent in the months to come?

A9: Yes

Q10: Has there been ample coverage of the Flint water crisis?

A10: No

Q11: Is it a scandal that the city’s water supply has been found to be comparable to toxic waste?

A11: Yes

Q12: Has this winter been a hardship?

A12: No

Q13: But it’s not over yet, is it?

A13: No

1. It’s Wednesday, January 13, 2016. Winter is one-quarter over.

2. I don’t care who’s President, I love the State of the Union speech. It, or a text version of it, is a Constitutional requirement. The President has to tell the American people, through its Congress, how our country is doing.

Of course, those of us who are journalists do that all the time. And the President, no matter which party he and someday she represents, is going to put a shiny veneer on their accomplishments. So be it. We have all day today and probably a few days after to point out any flaws in the vision. It’s good for the country.

With that in mind, here are my thoughts after last night’s edition:

—We are going to be spoiled, I fear for decades, by Barack Obama’s ability to give a speech. He knows how to move his voice around, he can ad lib when he has to, and he brings a colloquial touch to even the most formal occasions.

Last night’s speech lasted about an hour. I never looked at my watch the entire time. I suspect most people didn’t, either. He keeps you involved, whether you like him or not.

—Obama also tends to be honest. Yes, there are times when he is tooting his own horn. But for the most part, he gave the nation a true picture of its strengths and vulnerabilities. He did what a chief executive is supposed to do for the people he represents.

The best example of that came in his discussion of the terrorism threat. Yes, nutcases who are willing to die for their cause can do terrible things. September 11 and Paris in November remind us of that.

But the United States is not weak. These people can’t attack us head on because they know they’d be annihilated. We spend more on defense than the next several nations ranked behind us combined.

I’m not sure his attempt at reassurance works in the face of the constant red-and-yellow danger graphics that people see on Fox News. But he tried.

— Kudos to both the President and, especially, the GOP responder, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. Both criticized Trump and his divisive presidential campaign — and did so without giving him his erotic thrill of hearing his name.

Again, in a cable TV news world in which the squeaky wheel gets the grease, it’s hard to know what impact they’ll have. But at least they tried.

We can’t ignore this crap any longer. Trump — and, to a similar degree, Ted Cruz — are an embarrassment. That 47% of Iowa Republicans, according to the latest poll, think either of them has any business being President is sad.

— Which is bigger, the number of dollars in the Powerball jackpot or the number of places Paul Ryan would have rather been last night? It was painful to watch him not react — positively to negatively – to the President he’s sitting behind.

— CNN, I love you, but you’re part of what the President was getting at the end of his speech. While Obama was speaking, CNN was showing its pulse polling of how Democrats, Republicans and independents were reacting.

As if it matters. As if I, as a Democrat, should care that my fellow Democrats like a certain point, or that Republicans don’t like it. Am I supposed to change my view about what he’s saying because that’s what a Democrat or Republican touching some device believes?

The President’s point was that people should – every once in a while – just listen. Listen to what he says, think about it, and then decide if it’s what you believe or not. Listen to what his opponents say, think about it, and then decide if there’s any merit to the criticism.

We don’t do that, in part because we look at charts telling us what we’re supposed to think even as we’re listening to the point.

Fortunately, CNN didn’t show the pulse polling through the entire speech, otherwise I would have turned off the network for which I worked 16 years.

Let the President and his opponents finish making their cases. Then let’s discuss it. That’s how democracy is supposed to work.

1. It’s Tuesday, January 12, 2016.

2. What’s interesting when an accomplished entertainer passes is the level of unity generated by reflection upon his or her career.

So, the famous and the not-so-famous all commented fondly yesterday about the work done by David Bowie. Almost everyone, it seems, has a favorite song of his, and you could see people mentally humming “Changes” or “Modern Love” or any of the others.

When I think of Bowie, I think of his influence on how sexual orientation is viewed. His first persona was androgynous. Was he gay or wasn’t he? And then, after listening to the music, finding the question change to “Does it really matter?”

In the end, it didn’t. The work, over more than 40 years, spoke for itself. That people of all generations, of all nations, of all types feel at least a twinge of sadness for this man’s passing says more about his success than anything else possibly could. It speaks of a life well lived, and shorter than it should have been.

3. The White House hype for tonight’s State of the Union speech compares to that for last night’s national college football championship.

On my Twitter feed this morning is a black-and-white video of the President with an almost church-like organ playing in the background. Obama talks about what the administration has accomplished in seven years, but also hints that tonight’s speech will be more about his vision for the future, well beyond the 374 days left in his term.

And why not? Usually, the State of the Union is a long list of things the President wants Congress to accomplish in the next year. But you know and I know and he knows and they know that Obama is going to get next of nothing of what he wants from a Republican Congress in an election year.

So why bother asking for a lot of legislation that only get his supporters’ hopes up?

Instead, he can talk about what the nation faces as it moves toward the middle of the 21st century.

I don’t know exactly what he’s going to say. Here are my guesses:

— He’ll talk about how to keep the American economy dominant in a changing world, and yet provide people with a sense of security – the lack of which is spurring the success of a demagogue such as Trump.

— He’ll talk about how the nation needs to stay in front of the world in technology, and how it needs to be a little in combatting the ravages of climate change – even though he’s speaking in a roomful of people who still think it’s non-existent.

— And he’ll talk about to face down the threats of a world in which losers believe their second change at glory is to mow down people in a Paris concert hall, blow up a tourist center in Istanbul or seize a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon. (Actually, I wouldn’t bet a lot of money he’ll call out the jackasses in Oregon, but I would love to see it.)

No President in my lifetime – including JFK and Reagan – has the ability to hold an audience when speaking the way Barack Obama does. The hype for the State of the Union rivals last night’s college football championship – if it delivers nearly as well, it should be quite a night.

It’s January 8, 2016 and time for Friday Yes or No. I ask the questions. I give simple answers. I get a blog post. It was designed to give me an easy one. But for some reason, despite the one-word answers, these often require as much thought as the diatribes and hosannas normally seen on this page.

Anywhere, here goes.

Q1: Did you watch President Obama’s town hall on #GunsInAmerica?

A1: Yes

Q2: Were you impressed with the way CNN presented this issue?

A2: Yes

Q3: Were you impressed with the way the President handled the pointed questions from those opposed to his executive actions?

A3: Yes

Q4: Is today’s solid jobs report a sign of good things to come in 2016?

A4: No

Q5: Is that because the market turbulence of the past week is going to make would-be employees and shoppers nervous?

A5: Yes

Q6: Does it make any sense that a state as beautiful as Maine has a governor so intellectually ugly?

A6: No

Q7: Is North Korea’s attempt to expand its nuclear arsenal solely a problem for China to solve?

A7: No

Q8: But is China a key player is crafting a response to nutcase Kim Jong-Un?

A8: Yes

Q9: It’s going to be 57 degrees Sunday. Is that any reason to complain?

A9: No

Q10: Even though it’s going to rain?

A10: No

Q11: Because if it was 27 degrees, all that rain would be snow, right?

A11: Yes

1. It’s Thursday, January 7, 2015.

2. As a Met fan, I’m thrilled about Mike Piazza’s election to the Baseball Hall of Fame. It’s especially rewarding because he was the first player my kids cheered for as I warped their minds into Met fandom.

But Piazza’s election resurrects the discussion about performance-enhancing drugs. He’s admitted to taking a steroid that was legal when he took it, but denies taking anything that was not legal. That hasn’t stopped some writers from speculating that he’s lying. They cite such things as his back acne and mood swings, which can be side effects of steroid use.

They could also be naturally occurring conditions for young men. If those kinds of things can be seen as evidence that he used steroids, the fact that he’s fathered two children since his playing days are equal evidence that he didn’t.

Piazza was denied enshrinement in Cooperstown for three years because of speculation about his PED use. But there was no evidence. There were no people talking about seeing him use steroids or providing them to him or even hearing him talk about it. It was unfair.

Piazza will go into the Hall as a Met. There is nothing clearcut or simple about being a Met or a Met fan. That’s part of the appeal, I suppose. But, until the Wilpons do something else to tick us off, we can be happy for a day.

3. In all my years as a financial journalist, I would hear about how worried retirees get when the stock market drops precipitously. Sort of the way it has so far in 2016.

I obviously was concerned about everyone in our audience, but I can’t say I worried about it.

Now, I do.

Being sort of retired means that I’ll soon be relying on my savings to pay for living. And like many other Americans, my savings are tied to the financial markets. So a 5% drop in stocks means 5% less to spend on the 4 p.m. special at Denny’s.

But as a long-time financial journalist, I also know that this is a terrible time to panic. If you believed enough in the markets to invest all that retirement money in them, you have to believe in them enough to know they’ll bounce back when there’s a setback. That happened even after the financial crisis of 2008.

What’s going on with China is hard for even the experts to grasp, so there’s no use trying to do it yourself. So just hang tight, and remember that stocks usually go up in presidential election years. Usually.

1. It’s Wednesday, January 6, 2016.

2. It’s the 12th day of Christmas. It’s the feast of the Epiphany, Three Kings Day, Dia de los Reyes. The holiday season officially ends today. For most people, it ended on New Year’s.

For the lazy ones (I’m in this camp), it won’t be over until the decorations are down, which hopefully – but not definitely – will happen sometime this month.

3. Maybe it’s a hydrogen bomb. Maybe it’s not. But anytime a crackpot government such as North Korea’s detonates a nuclear weapon, it’s a little scary. Who knows what that nut case Kim Jong Un will do?

It isn’t just the United States and South Korea who aren’t happy about this. China’s pissed. The test was conducted 50 miles from its border, and they apparently weren’t given a heads up. It appears the Russians dislike this, too.

What’s the world going to do about it? Probably not much that we’ll see. The North Koreans are probably looking for a few blackmail bucks.

But one of these days they’re going to push their limit too far. It can’t be that hard for everyone to gang up on a country that has virtually no economy and whose population doesn’t eat much.

4. President Obama is, of course, getting grief for the tears shed as he announced executive actions aimed at curbing gun violence. He was blasted in the usual quarters for overreaching, for punishing law-abiding citizens, for trampling on Americans’ Second Amendment rights.

All the usual right-wing crap.

The President shed the tears at one particular moment – as he spoke about the first graders killed in 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. Twenty of them, along with six teachers and administrators.

First graders. Shot to death. In a classroom.

It’s not that I can’t believe that the President cried about killings that occurred three years ago. It’s that the rest of us don’t cry when we think about that as well.

Nothing that has happened in my lifetime is a darker mark on this country than the fact that we let 20 children die in a classroom and did nothing – absolutely nothing – to try to make sure it didn’t happen again.

Instead, we let the idiot who runs the National Rifle Association get on TV and say, to our faces, that the only reason those kids died is that there was no one in an elementary school as armed to the teeth as the nut case who started shooting. And we let the Congress of the United States listen to the NRA and do nothing to at least try to curb the spread of high-power weapons.

It was from that debacle that the NRA jackass uttered the rallying cry of the right wing: “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun.”

The President’s executive actions can’t come nearly close to what really needs to be done to curb gun violence in this country. He can’t stop the sale of assault weapons or high-capacity magazines. He can’t require the kind of rigid licensing that’s needed for something so dangerous; it’s easier to get a gun than to get an automobile or start a business. He can’t go further in keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally ill.

But at least he’s trying. That’s more than you can say for those – I was about to say “those people,” but that gives them too much credit – on the other side of this issue. With thousands dying due to gun violence every year, their solution is to turn every place in America into a shooting range.

The President cried for those kids at Sandy Hook yesterday. He might have also cried for a country that lets Sandy Hook happen and feels powerless to change it.

1. It’s Tuesday, January 5, 2016.

2. Yes, this is the first Subjectism of 2016. Sorry for missing the past week.

3. I’m very nostalgic for last week, when it was in the 50s. It’s 16 degrees here this morning. Cold and dark. That’s how I view the whole of January. I’m not a fan.

So it shouldn’t be a surprise that I’m a little cranky this morning.

4. And nothing feeds my cranky side like right-wing nut cases. Which bring us to Burns, Oregon, and the terrorist occupation of a federal wildlife refuge. 

Correct me if I’m wrong, but nobody in Oregon or anywhere else in the United States elected these people to any position to speak for anybody. So, basically, they’re terrorist renegades who decided to seize territory they are in no justifiable position to hold.

What makes them different from the Islamic State, other than their racial makeup?

Of course, there will be a defense of these terrorists by people on the right. Fox News people have already said these people are just protesting government overreach. Here’s the thing: the wildlife refuge occupied has been federal property since 1908. More than a century. So now these cetriolo, both on the scene and in the rest of the country, have decided that the government is overreaching. 

These are worthless bastards. And terrorists. Call them exactly what they are. And deal with them in a way that does the least harm to innocent people – and the most harm to them.

5. Then there’s the Iranians and the Saudis.

As this New York Times article shows, unless you are Muslim, it’s hard to grasp why Sunnis and Shiites don’t get along. But get along, they don’t. Non-Muslim Americans tend to lump all Muslims into one, usually negative, bunch. But Sunnis, including the Saudis, dislike Iran as much as Americans with long memories of the 1979 embassy takeover. And Shiites, including the Iranians, hate the Islamic State as much as Americans with memories that don’t have to go much further back than the San Bernardino shootings.

The usual tensions boiled again when Saudi Arabia executed a cleric who advocated for Shiites’ rights. Then Iranians reverted to a nasty habit – they attacked the Saudi embassy. The Saudis and the states that rely on them for support – Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates – have withdrawn their diplomatic ties with Tehran.

Islamophobic Americans probably think this is great. Let these guys beat each other up and the world will be a better place for Christendom.

But that’s a stupid view, to say the least. We need Iran and Saudi Arabia to help us get rid of the threats posed by the Islamic State and al-Qaeda. Both terrorist organizations are Sunni in orientation, so the Saudis might be a little more reluctant to help – indeed, the Saudis are believed to be the primary funders of radical groups tied to al-Qaeda.

I’m sure the White House, 10 Downing Street and others are working overtime on keeping this situation from getting out of hand. The fact that we actually negotiated with Iran on the nuclear deal probably gives us a little more traction that we might have had otherwise.