1. It’s Monday, March 9, 2015. Spring is 12 days away. And there was melting yesterday!

2. When Rudy Giuliani mouthed his stupidity about President Obama’s love of country, the president didn’t respond right away.

But he sure as hell responded Saturday.

The president’s speech marking the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Selma, Ala., made clear — for anyone with enough of a brain to hear what he was saying — that this man articulates what love of country is better than anyone in my lifetime.

Loving this country does not mean flag-worshipping. It means understanding what an awesome opportunity those before us — from Benjamin Franklin to Franklin Roosevelt — gave the United States. And how it’s our responsibility to do what we can to form a more perfect union — even if it means getting tear-gassed and bitten by dogs on a bridge in Alabama.

In particular, I loved the way he tied Selma to other seminal moments in American history. And he put the marchers in perspective with this country’s other heroes, from the Minutemen at Lexington and Concord to the firefighters who died trying to save lives on 9/11.

One of the canards that his opponents throw at Obama is that he’s the most divisive president in our history. But he’s only divisive because his opponents can’t stand who, or what, he is. It’s not his language — certainly not in Selma, where he made no effort to demonize anyone, but instead sought to make the struggle into something that benefitted all of us.

Put it this way: Would you ever expect George W. Bush to be one of the heroes in an Obama speech? He was on Saturday.

How good was Obama in Selma? James Fallows in The Atlantic makes the ultimate American speech comparison: Lincoln at Gettysburg. That seems like sacrilege. But, in my lifetime, there’s JFK’s inaugural and Dr. King at the March on Washington. 

Does this speech compare? History will decide that. What we can say once and for all is that Barack Obama is the epitome of American patriotism, and anyone who thinks otherwise should be embarrassed. 

3.   I’ve never been a fan of fraternities — I damn sure wasn’t in one in college. But I can’t believe that all members of fraternities are as dense as these guys at Oklahoma appear to have been.

It’s not just the revolting behavior — that’s sickening enough. But the idea that, in this age of social media and iPhone videos, dumbasses would publicly go around singing of their ignorance. I guess that’s why they would be dumbasses.

4.   From the stupid to the pleasant: As a long-suffering New York Met fan, Matt Harvey’s return to the mound on Friday in an exhibition game has me excited. He looked great, with no sign of after-effect from his Tommy John surgery.

And, as if that wasn’t enough, on Saturday, we saw the Mets’ No. 1 draft pick last year, Michael Conforto, punish the baseball with his bat. If this kid is for real, he is a dream come true for a franchise with a spotty past of developing hitters.

Baseball is coming, and the developments at the Mets’ Spring Training camp make that seem more wonderful than usual.

1. It’s Friday, March 6, 2015. Spring is 15 days away.

2. I tell my news editing class that, by the end of the week, the news cycle gets filled with the sensational, the stuff that is generally unimportant to the fate of civilization. This week, it’s going to be the Harrison Ford plane crash story.

Bottom line: No one, including Mr. Ford, got hurt.

Next.

3. It’s the weekend during which Selma, Ala., will mark the 50th anniversary of the Bloody Sunday voting rights protests.

Gay Telese writes in The New York Times about his latest visit to the city of 28,000. It’s not a reminiscence of the protests — he was there on Bloody Sunday — but more like one of those postscripts you see on the screen after the movie. The Selma he finds seems defined by what happened on those momentous days in 1965.

Things have changed, but the quote that struck me came from current sheriff Harris Huffman. Huffman, who is 61 and white (both, I suppose, need to be noted), said “You’ve got some people in Selma who live in the 1960s, and you’ve got some that live in the 1860s.”

Our whole country is a little like that, I’m afraid. There are some people who are still not ready to accept racial equality — just take a look at the racist “jokes” made by Ferguson officials that are cited in the Justice Department report.

We should still be working to become better. Hopefully, that’s what the Selma weekend will remind us.

1. It’s Thursday, March 5, 2015. Today is mathematically correct (3×5=15)

2. Baseball teams are playing exhibition games in Florida and Arizona. That’s the only thing sustaining my heart on a day like this: 

3. I noticed my jaw dropping constantly as I was reading the Justice Department’s report on the Ferguson, Mo., police department. 

Actually, describing what Ferguson has as a “police department” seems like slander to police departments that actually police. Ferguson has a bunch of guys — mostly white — whose main job appears to be shaking down the city’s residents — most of whom are African-American.

Ferguson’s moneymakers did that by writing tickets and arresting people, often for no legitimate reason and in violation of their Constitutional rights.

And when those people found themselves in the maw of the Ferguson money-grubbing machine — calling it a justice system is unfair to judges who actually aspire to justice — it was like leeches attacking. Small tickets unfairly given because huge penalties because the people didn’t understand what was going on or couldn’t pay exactly what the vultures sought.

For people who saw President Obama as the punchline to a joke instead of the duly elected chief executive of this country, it was a sweet coincidence that the people they were victimizing were African-American. They needed the money anyway, so why not get it from people they didn’t particularly care for or about?

The other striking thing to me is the incredible lack of personal responsibility the people who control the system. While they scorn the people of the community for not being able to keep up with the escalating obligations they imposed, they were doing the old-boy thing for their own irresponsibility — getting officials in nearby towns to drop speeding tickets and complaints for running stop signs.

I’m fortunate to live in a place where the police do their jobs well. I know the police do their jobs well because our town consistently is among those with the lowest crime rates in the nation. Not being a person of color, I don’t know if that’s a universally held view.

But I’m willing to bet that all residents of my town appreciate the safety of the community. That’s the feeling the people of Ferguson are entitled to as well. They should not feel as though they are a cash crop to be harvested.

4. There’s a common thread running between the Justice Department’s report on Ferguson and a terrific series on government debt collection by my former CNNMoney colleagues Blake Ellis and Melanie Hicken.

In that series, Ms. Ellis and Ms. Hicken describe how government agencies are using private debt collectors to get fees and penalties. The agencies are able to charge steep premiums and make threats, and can skirt around consumer protection laws to do so. (Here’s the latest story) 

The common thread in these stories is government’s need for money. By whatever means necessary. It doesn’t matter whether rights are trampled on or lives are ruined.

Now before you think this is going to be an anti-government rant, and that I’m going all Ron Paul on you, it’s not. It’s quite the opposite.

Governments need money to do the jobs that government is supposed to do. If you don’t believe that, take a look at the picture at the top of the page. That street needs in the background needs to be plowed (and, in fact, was a few minutes after the photo was taken). The road underneath it, battered by freeze-and-thaw cycles that have rendered it a moonscape, needs paving work.

Somebody, somehow, has got to pay for that. That somebody is us. That somehow is our taxes.

Americans grumble so much about taxes that the only way you can be elected to office is to say you’re cutting them. Saying you’ll raise taxes — or not saying you won’t — is the third rail of politics in this country. And hey, my accountant is about to tell me how much of my money I have to send to Washington, Albany and Trenton (!!!).

But when tax revenue falls short, governments have to find ways to get the money to plow those streets and pave them in the spring. They have to find ways to pay the cops who patrol towns and cities.

They resort to what they do in Ferguson, or what you’ll read in the CNNMoney stories. Unless the attitude changes, we might be hearing about this kind of crap for awhile.

1. It’s Wednesday, March 4, 2015. On this day in 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt was sworn in as the nation’s 32nd President.

2. It snowed last night. It’s going to snow again tonight. Does it ever end?

3. Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington seemed a lot like when a big storm comes through. In both instances, you have to assess the damage.

In this case, the question is whether the world is more or less safe now that Netanyahu has told Congress and the American people that you can’t trust the waif who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. (That waif, for those with short memories, is the guy who put Osama bin-Laden out of business.)

Will the United States and Iran come to some sort of agreement to limit Tehran’s nuclear advancement that is better than no agreement at all? And if they do, after Netanyahu’s grandstanding for the professional Obama haters, can a deal get past the Republican eafs in Congress?

What Netanyahu says he wants is for us to negotiate a better deal with people he doesn’t trust to honor any deal. Which means he really doesn’t want any deal, which really doesn’t leave anybody anywhere.

Of course, what Netanyahu left unsaid was what the United States should do when it has walked away from making a deal with Iran. If he wants the American people to support a military adventure in that part of the world — as he did a decade ago in Iraq — he should say so clearly. Because that’s the option on the table, and I don’t know of too many Americans — other than Dick Cheney and those suffering from his affliction — who think that’s a good idea. 

1. It’s Tuesday, March 3, 2015.

2. It’s going to snow again today. That stinks.

3. Remember how John McCain held Gen. David Petraeus up as the citadel of integrity and honor. How he is a “genuine American hero.”

That hero just copped a plea. He pleaded guilty to a charge of mishandling classified material, which he gave to impress a woman who wasn’t his wife.

That eliminates the “hero” thing on two counts. Petraeus faces a possible year-long prison term, although I’m betting that doesn’t happen.

4. My guess is that, when she was Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton knew she might run for President. And given what happened when her husband had the job, she must have known that people opposed to her — and she knew there were a lot of them — would find any way they could to get at her.

So what the hell was she thinking if, as the New York Times reports, she violated government rules by using private e-mail as Secretary of State? That no one would come looking for her correspondence about whatever stupid thing?

You just have to shake your head sometimes.

I’m not sure Clinton and her people have a quick antidote. But they sure should get it out there. Fast. 

1. It’s Thursday, February 26, 2015. It is 23 days until spring.

2. I’m not used to the winning ways of the Northwestern men’s basketball team. It’s won four straight Big Ten games for the first time since 1967, before I even realized I wanted to go there. What’s amazing is that the ‘Cats had lost 10 straight before that. It’s probably too late for a first-ever NCAA tournament trip. Unless they sweep their way through the Big 10 Tournament. (What’s the emoji for fingers crossed?)

3. If you’re wondering “Who are these guys?,” a Washington Post story identifies “Jihadi John,” the masked British-sounding guy who is seen beheading Western hostages in ISIS videos. He apparently is a Kuwaiti-born Brit from an affluent family, a computer programmer in his 30s.

How does somebody go from a comfortable life to murderer? Like many of the rest of us, Mohammed Emwazi has faced roadblocks to finding his way in life. Unlike the rest of us, he added all these obstacles together and decided to become subhuman. 

4.  You paid less for stuff last month than you did a year earlier. The nation’s Consumer Price Index was down 0.1% year-over-year in January. 

OK, that doesn’t seem like much – if you paid $10 in January 2014, you paid $9.99 in January 2015. But it means that we’re nowhere near the 2% rate of inflation that’s normal for a healthy economy.

It also means this, now, right this second, is the time to double down on rebuilding our nation. There won’t be many better times — with interest rates low, or almost nonexistent, it’s a great time for the nation and the states to borrow money to rebuild. We’ve got crappy roads and bridges, and a half-assed public transportation system that hasn’t really innovated since the beginning of the last century. We have a chance to vastly expand the alternative energy programs that will get us through whatever hard times come again.

By taking advantage of the situation, we can create jobs and ensure jobs of the future. And all at a cost that we might not see again soon.

That kind of action requires vision. I believe President Obama has it. Alas, the Republicans who run Congress are more interested in dopey pipelines that help so few and contribute to environmental chaos.

History will frown on this lost opportunity. That’s a shame.

1. It’s Wednesday, February 25, 2015. Spring is 24 days away.

2. You get the sense that if the Obama administration was into rigging elections, it would be working hard to make sure that Benjamin Netanyahu comes up short in Israel next month.

Although it seems as though Netanyahu is determined to shoot himself in the foot. Picking a fight with an incumbent U.S. president who has 23 months left in office isn’t going to make the next two years so great for him.

And if he thinks he’s going to get a better shake from the American right, he’s been listening to Sheldon Adelson too long. The red states aren’t going to be quite as committed to defending Israel as the blue states have been since the country was established in 1948.

3.  I’m a fan of Keith Olbermann. He understands the current media age and communicates well with it. And I share a lot of his views of the world.

But ESPN was absolutely right to suspend him for a week.

I saw his tweets on Penn State in real time and wondered if he was OK. Olbermann loves to lash back at online trolls who complain about him and his views — “batting practice,” he calls it.     But he’s been obsessed with Penn State since the Jerry Sandusky scandal, and it’s time for him to let it go.

Penn State is a Big Ten rival of my alma mater, Northwestern, and I loved how we beat them soundly in men’s basketball last week. But it also produces students such as CNN’s Sara Ganim, who won a Pulitzer Prize for exposing the Sandusky scandal. And what Olbermann belittled to get into trouble, the fact that students raised $13 million to fight pediatric cancer, is something everyone should admire.

Penn State has paid a heavy price for what happened, and it and we should never forget the horror of what Sandusky is convicted of doing. But tarring everything about the university because of Sandusky is not right either. Olbermann, who’s a really smart guy, should leave it alone.

1. It’s Tuesday, February 24, 2015. It’s 25 days until spring. It’s a goddamn 1 degree above zero outside.

2. Here’s more proof that Fox News is like ISIS, courtesy of The New York Times and, apparently, Fox cell leader Bill O’Reilly:

“Mr. O’Reilly’s efforts to refute the claims by Mother Jones and some former CBS News colleagues occurred both on the air and off on Monday. During a phone conversation, he told a reporter for The New York Times that there would be repercussions if he felt any of the reporter’s coverage was inappropriate. ‘I am coming after you with everything I have,” Mr. O’Reilly said. “‘You can take it as a threat.’”

Like ISIS, Bill O’Reilly and Fox feel compelled to threaten and intimidate those who call out their violations of standards, as both conduct campaigns of excess in the name of righteousness.

 I’ve said that I understand President Obama’s strategy of not using terms “Islamic extremists” or “Islamists.” Using that terminology would give ISIS the mantle of Muslim legitimacy — and given how they’ve slaughtered and tortured other Muslims, much less innocent non-Muslims, they’re not entitled to it.

The same applies to Bill O’Reilly and Fox News. Calling them “journalists” gives them a level of credibility they’re not entitled to have. Not if they’re threatening real reporters trying to do their job with “everything I have.”

That’s what ISIS does, too.

3.   Giving a child peanut butter at an early age seems, to a nervous new parent, like a strange and risky way to help prevent peanut allergies.

But, according to a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine, that’s what works.

My concern when I saw this was whether the study was funded by the peanut industry. If it was, it was hidden in the material I saw on the NEJM site.

I would imagine, though, that if this research bears out, Mr. Peanut is going to find his way to pediatricians’ offices, next to the baby formula teddy bears and the spare Pampers.

P.S. I would have linked to the CNN.com story about this, rather than the L.A. Times. But, alas, the autostart video ad and the display ad in the top left corner of the CNN story are for Planters. Sigh.

1. It’s Monday, February 23, 2015. Next week at this time, it will be March.

2. If, say, last week, someone bounced the idea of Lady Gaga singing a medley from “The Sound of Music” at the Oscars, you would have chuckled at the idea. No one’s chuckling today — she was pretty good.

3. Here’s my problem with the Bill O’Reilly controversy: Fox News doesn’t give a damn what CBS, CNN or other media, or the people who read or watch those outlets, think about the integrity of one of its star performers. He could have said he covered D-Day, and as long as it resonates with the Fox audience, he’s golden.

Fox News is a lot like ISIS that way.  — They’re going to do what they want, and to hell with people who are outraged. In fact, I think there’s a better chance ISIS will repent for the evil it has committed than Fox News and Roger Ailes will.

4. Good stuff by people I know:

     Western Muslims Swipe Right to Find Their Match on Minder, by Shaheen Pasha on The Daily Beast

     Above The Law, by Blake Ellis and Melanie Hicken on CNNMoney, edited by Nicole Ridgway. This published last week, but it’s still worth your time.

FIVE THINGS I’M THINKING ABOUT TODAY

1. It’s Friday, February 20, 2015. Spring Training is underway for the Mets. It’s the new lunar year. Things have to get better, right?

2. Well, for starters, it’s 10 degrees. At noon. On a sunny day. And we expect more snow tomorrow night. So maybe not.

3. I had written a lengthy screed about Rudolph Giuliani is a miserable cetriolo. But then I thought about it.

In my family, calling someone a cetriolo is as low as it gets. In our minds, asshole and shithead are let-him-off-easy words next to cetriolo.

But here’s the thing: First, it’s hard for a cetriolo to be miserable. It is, literally, a cucumber.

And then there’s this: It’s not nice to pick on the mentally ill.

So I hope Giuliani will take this opportunity to get the help he needs.

He obviously has anger issues.

And, in particular, he seems hung up on President Obama. I think he probably figures (although, being somewhat unbalanced, “figure” might not be the appropriate word) that saying President Obama doesn’t love America is a way to get the love he’s never quite gotten from the Republican Party.

But it’s a little like the kid who drops his drawers or licks a light post on a cold day when dared by the other kids. He thinks that’ll make them like him, but it won’t really, and he just looks like a fool. Or a madman.

Craving that kind of attention — who cared what Giuliani thought about anything three days ago? — is a sign of mental imbalance.

It wasn’t always the case. Giuliani was more than happy to bask in the light when the president came to New York on May 5, 2011 — four days after the raid Obama ordered that led to the demise of Osama bin Laden. He was all over Obama like a frisky puppy that day — a chance to tap the 9/11 kudos he received (and, at the time, deserved).

But now, Obama — who got bin Laden — doesn’t love America, according to Giuliani. (BTW: If Obama doesn’t love America after getting bin Laden, what does that say about his predecessor, who decided not to? Does Giuliani think George W. Bush doesn’t love America — an equally insane notion?)

Giuliani’s friends — if he has any — should point him toward a mental health professional. Because people with his kinds of problems can become dangerous if untreated.

4.   Incidentally, while Giuliani might be mentally unbalanced, Scott Walker — who attended the dinner where the Obama comments were made — is a coward.

The Wisconsin governor refuses to say whether he agrees or disagrees with Giuliani on the question of whether the Commander in Chief of our armed forces actually loves his country.

Walker, of course, does, because that’s an easy thing to say. But to do the right thing and say that while he disagrees with Obama on everything, it’s ridiculous to question his devotion to the nation — that idea makes Walker shiver.

It’s the second time in a week that Walker has taken the chicken-out route. He was asked in London if he believes in evolution — unlike a chunk of the Republican electorate that sees science as anathema. Walker ducked the question, saying he was there to talk about trade, not other things.

This guy wants to be president. He isn’t fit to be within 10 blocks of the White House.

5.  The cold again. The last time it was this cold in February in New York was 36 years ago, according to the National Weather Service. So tonight, we’ll party like it’s 1979.