1. It’s Tuesday, June 20, 2017.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

God only knows.

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

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

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

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

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

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

One other thing I would offer:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. It’s Monday, June 19, 2017.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So push should be coming to shove soon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. It’s Friday, June 16, 2017.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What can we do?

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

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

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

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

1. It’s Wednesday, June 14, 2017.

2. It’s Flag Day.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Baloney.

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

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

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

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

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

Nah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. It’s Tuesday, June 13, 2017.

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

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

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

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

One can only hope.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. It’s Monday, June 12, 2017.

2. It’s hot in New York. Yes!

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

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

But he looks like Lincoln compared to the incumbent.

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s how that works.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There are two other examples of how this can apply.

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s where you come in.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yes, we’re blacklisting them.

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

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

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

1. It’s Friday, June 9, 2017.

2. It’s the 44th anniversary of Secretariat’s amazing Belmont Stakes victory that completed horse racing’s Triple Crown.

3. A year ago, Britain’s vote to leave the European Union – Brexit – was seen by some as a harbinger of what might happen in the US presidential election. I was in the group that ignored the sign – maybe the British were dumb enough to leave the EU, but Americans weren’t so stupid as to elect Trump president.

OK. That’s a big miss.

In addition to being utter foolishness, Brexit and Trump share two important attributes.

First, they both got by thanks to really idiotic rules. In the UK, letting a simple majority change a nation’s direction. In the US, the Electoral College that gave someone 3 million votes shy of his rival the world’s most important job.

Second, people under the age of 30 knew better. In Britain, they were overwhelmingly against leaving the EU. In this country, they supported Hillary Clinton by a nearly 20 percentage point margin.

Last night, the younger generation in the U.K. may have sent a message that things are about to change.

An election that was supposed to strengthen the Conservative majority ended up ending it. Theresa May will likely remain prime minister – the Conservatives did get the most seats in Parliament. But now they need the people in Northern Ireland who want to stay British to govern.

The Labor Party (sorry British friends, I’m American; no u), thought to be on the verge of a relevance-reducing wipeout, targeted younger voters with such issues as tackling student debt, increasing the minimum wage and minimizing the damage done by Brexit.

The party ended up gaining 29 seats, keeping May and the Conservatives from their sought-after mandate.

Turnout among younger voters, while still below that of their elders, was higher than in the past. There are indications that these folks saw what happened when they didn’t show up for the Brexit vote.

4. And that’s why this vote should be a more hopeful event for those of us who hate Trump than the Comey hearing.

Because Trumpism is absolutely not about doing anything for younger people.

From gutting public education to disregarding the student debt crisis. From denying climate change to denying easy access to birth control. From making health care unaffordable to making it harder to see the world.

Bernie Sanders, to his credit, saw this. He tapped into this sentiment last year, and the fact that Clinton really couldn’t do it quite as well cost her the election.

Maybe the parallels aren’t there. Maybe the Trumpistas are always going to turn out in bigger percentages than the sane people.

But if Brexit presaged Trump, perhaps Labor’s showing last night presaged younger voters realizing that there is a lot at stake in these elections.

Getting them to show up, starting later this month in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District and continuing through next year’s state and congressional elections, is the only way we’re going to get rid of Trump.

1. It’s Thursday, June 8, 2017.

2. It’s Jerry Stiller’s 90th birthday and Barbara Bush’s 92nd.

Two big stories – that we know of – on both sides of the Atlantic today. Real quick thoughts on both.

3. James Comey isn’t going to make anyone happy today.

I suspect my fellow Trump haters are a little disappointed with the prepared testimony. The fired FBI director says Trump wasn’t a subject of the investigation into whether members of his campaign and administration colluded with Russia to hack the 2016 election.

There was the hope that Comey’s testimony would be so ringingly condemning of Trump that all the members of the committee and anyone else in Washington would march to the White House with pitchforks. Get the tar and feathers.

That’s not gonna happen.

Trump and the Republicans are already pointing to the parts of the testimony that give Trump what he wanted all along – a public statement that he wasn’t under investigation.

But if they’re OK with that, they’ve also lost the opportunity to malign the other things to which Comey will testify. It’s a little silly to say he’s right about Trump not being investigated and wrong about Trump trying to get his crony Michael Flynn off the hook.

Trump obstructed justice. That’s a crime.

And that’s what the Democrats will pounce on all day. But, as long as the apparatus to pursue that is run by craven Republicans, it doesn’t mean a whole lot.

It will be interesting but, in the end, completely dispiriting. In other words, just another day in the Trump administration.

4. Across the Atlantic, Britain goes to the polls to elect a new Parliament.

You have to think Prime Minister Theresa May is kicking herself for calling this election three years early. She thought she might have a chance to boost the Conservative margin in the House of Commons and make it easier to get her agenda passed.

But polls show the race is close. Labor, which couldn’t get out of its own way a couple of months ago, could conceivably gain a plurality. Jeremy Corbyn, who seems to be the most unpopular party leader imaginable, could be asked to form a government.

There are a lot of complications in this election. The implementation of Brexit. The recent terror attacks in Manchester and London. The fate of the National Health Service, beloved by many Britons, particularly in light of the wrenching battle over the less-comprehensive Obamacare in the United States.

And last, but not least, Trump. May has a less contentious relationship with him than such leaders as Germany’s Angela Merkel, France’s Emmanuel Macron and Canada’s Justin Trudeau.

So, when people talk about what nations will lead the West in light of America’s apparent abdication, Britain doesn’t get mentioned.

The results might not be known until dawn tomorrow in the UK. It could be an interesting night.

1. It’s Wednesday, June 7, 2017.

It’s the 180th birthday of Adolf Hitler’s father and the 58th birthday of Mike Pence.

Facts are interesting.

2. It was hard to keep up last night with the maelstrom that is the 45th presidency of the United States.

But let’s give credit to the people trying to keep democracy functioning in this country – my former colleagues in American journalism.

This is just last night, in the order I saw them:

ABC News: The tensions between Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions are so bad that Sessions has offered to resign.

CNN – U.S. investigators believe that Russian hackers planted a fake story with Qatar’s state news agency that pissed off its neighbors in the Persian Gulf, leading to a break in diplomatic relations that Trump has applauded.

The New York Times: James Comey, who would later be fired as FBI Director, told Sessions that he didn’t want to be left alone with Trump. He didn’t tell Sessions that he thought Trump’s request that Comey drop his investigation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn was inappropriate – if not flat out illegal.

The Washington Post: Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told associates that Trump asked him to intervene with Covey to get him to drop the investigation of Flynn.

Forbes (that’s a surprise) – Trump diverted money that his son’s foundation raised to fight pediatric cancer into his own company and foundation for whatever purposes he saw fit.

Those are five stories that, if they broke over the course of a month, would be detrimental to a presidency in sane times. Except that these stories broke in one night. Not even – over the course of about four or five hours.

And this putz is still president.

3. I mean, aren’t you tired?

Is there anyone in this country with functioning brain cells who isn’t exhausted from the constant scandal and meanness that this administration perpetrates on an hour-by-hour basis?

You have idiots running amuck in the Cabinet. You have Republicans in Congress complicit in the chaos because they’ve deemed that people who aren’t wealthy don’t deserve much in the way of government.

And you have a guy elected president who isn’t as advanced as any six-year-old. He simply doesn’t know right from wrong. He has no freakin’ idea how to run anything, much less the whole country.

This night-after-night-after-night of scandal, intrigue and mean-spiritedness is wearing this country down every single day.

The worst of this is yet to come. As longer Trump and his henchmen stay in power, the more dispirited this nation will get.

4. Christopher Wray must be a big fan of “Titanic.”

After serving as an assistant attorney general for President George W. Bush and the lawyer for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, he’s found another sinking ship. He’s going to be nominated as FBI director for Trump.

I’m sure Wray is a dedicated public servant. But he seems determined to be on the wrong side of things. Big time.

5. Today’s terrorist attack on Tehran is appalling. If you’re not bothered by it, you really don’t care about terrorism.

I understand what Iran is and has done. But people have the right to walk the streets of any city in peace, and this attack is the work of cowards.

ISIS is claiming responsibility. Again. ISIS – under siege in what’s left of the land it seized in Iraq and Syria – would lay claim to milk souring if it thought people would believe them.

There apparently are skeptics in Iran about the claim. The attack, the first of its kind in the country, comes in the wake of Saudi Arabia’s move to isolate Qatar by leading four other nations to break off diplomatic relations. That move was applauded by Trump, who seems more determined to pick a fight with Iran than to, say, bring peace to the Middle East.

Because ISIS is closer to Iran than Britain, I’m a little less skeptical. Attacking Tehran could have been a diversionary tactic from the fighting in Mosul and Raqqa.

But Trump’s trip to the Mideast seems to have preceded a lot of not-so-cool things happening. It’s hard to believe this deadly attack in Tehran is the end of that.

1. It’s Tuesday, June 6, 2017.

2. It’s the 73rd anniversary of the Allied landing in Normandy, a day to think with reverence of the young men who hit those beaches and saved the world.

I first became aware of D-Day when my father took me to see the movie “The Longest Day” in 1963. I was nine and loved history, so I bugged my parents to take me to see this movie.

“The Longest Day” is probably now best remembered for its theme music. But in its day it was a big deal. The ads bragged about the large international all-star cast and the fact that it was filmed where the battle happened.

The film was released the year before. But back in those days, movies had much longer runs – this was obviously well before any of us thought we could watch a full-length film on a whim at home. That’s how the now-quaint concept of first-run movie houses came into being – most of them being in midtown Manhattan, around Times Square.

Most everything in Queens where we lived was a second or even a third run. In fact, what I seem to remember is that the theater where we saw “The Longest Day” was that it was a discount theater – I’m sure he paid less than $1 for both of us to see it.

It probably bothered him that “The Longest Day” was a one-film showing. My father was determined to only go to theaters that showed double features – another quaint concept. Most people today can’t sit through two movies in a theater – although they can watch four or five hours at a time of a TV show they’re binging at home.

3. Anyway, there’s no question that “The Longest Day” is the sanitized version of what happened 73 years ago. The more realistic version, the one with soldiers getting their heads blown off and bodies torn by bullets and shrapnel, is Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan.”

“The Longest Day” was more – and this seems like a pejorative when you think about the actual horror of the invasion – fun. There was a whole shtick with Robert Mitchum as a general who keeps the same cigar in his mouth throughout the entire invasion. There was some other thing with John Wayne getting carried off by his troops in heroic fashion. Guys in British accents said funny things.

I haven’t seen this movie since I don’t remember when. I think I found it on TV one night while dialing around and saw the conclusion, when Mitchum finally throws his cigar butt into the sand at the end of the day. I’d bet I wouldn’t find it nearly as entertaining or mesmerizing as I did watching it with my father more than a half-century ago in a Queens movie house.

“The Longest Day” probably didn’t intend to minimize or sanitize D-Day. Perhaps the wound was too raw in the early 1960s to explore what really happened – that seems to be the way with a lot of World War II. It’s the same with the Holocaust. It seems as those the first years after the war were spent minimizing the atrocity, with only the subsequent years revealing the true horror – Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List” providing quite a reminder.

No, “The Longest Day” is just a big old-fashioned war movie. It might stir some to patriotism, but it doesn’t make much of a statement about it outside of cheering for the good guys.

And that’s the thing about the real D-Day. It seems we understand better – in 2017 – the courage it took for those soldiers to brave everything they faced than we did in 1963. A sea-sickening ride across the English Channel, the concentrated force of German armaments, a shooting gallery of a beach and scaling the Normandy embankments.

All to rid the world of the evil of Nazism.

4. Keep in mind one other thing.

There was no diversity in “The Longest Day.” You might think, for example – as I did – that African-Americans took no part in the invasion.

It’s not a racist thought, per se. Most Americans know that the military was segregated, so it seems logical that might not be any people of color there.

But it’s far from accurate.

The 320th Very Low Altitude barrage balloon battalion – an all-black unit – provided important protection for invading soldiers on Omaha Beach. 

The battalion – about 700 men strong, according to the Army’s own history – set up these balloons that were designed to force German warplanes to fly higher in the sky. The balloons were rigged so that if the Germans tried to fly into them, the planes would be destroyed – the battalion was actually credited with a kill when one plane did just that.

In order to set up the balloons, the men of the battalion had to get on the same beach where other soldiers were getting blown to bits by the Germans. They also had to find a way to get their equipment across the Channel without sinking.

Of course they found a way. They are, after all, Americans.

African-Americans, as a whole, fought with valor and distinction in the Second World War. When it ended, the effort of white supremacists to go back to the prewar Jim Crow society succeeded only briefly.

A lot of the reason for the success of the civil rights movement has to do with the fact that anyone with a fair mind had to recognize the courage of African-Americans in the war, and how hypocritical it was to condemn Nazism while embracing its cousin, segregation.

When older people think of the America that they conceived of as great, the reason we got the stupid election result we got, they see the America of “The Longest Day” – white men fighting for freedom and prevailing.

It’s their ignorance of who else fought for freedom that is at the heart of what ails our nation right now. African-Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans and Native Americans all contributed to what makes America great – including bleeding and dying on battlefields around the world for the cause of freedom.

Including Normandy. The men of the 320th VLA battalion were among the brave men who saved the world on a bloody beach 73 years ago today.