1. It’s Tuesday, January 3, 2017.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Otherwise, stop it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Will Trump even set foot in California?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Does anybody still put tinsel on a Christmas tree?

— Who do you tip at the holidays?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Is “Die Hard” really a holiday movie?

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

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

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

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

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

1. It’s Tuesday, December 20, 2016.

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

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

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

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

So here’s the real shorthand:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. It’s Monday, December 19, 2016.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have a great weekend.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Does anybody really like winter?

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

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

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

1. It’s Thursday, December 15, 2016.

2. On this day 225 years ago, the Bill of Rights went into effect when Virginia’s legislature approved it.

The Bill of Rights. In the Trump era, is it about to become a museum piece?

3. There’s still a way for Trump not to become president.

It’s a hope clung to by Democrats and the straggler #NeverTrump types on the right who are still in shock that such a thing could happen.

It goes something like this: 37 of the 306 electors awarded to Trump on Nov. 8 must opt not to vote for him when the Electoral College convenes Monday. That would leave him at 269 electoral votes, one shy of the 270 needed.

What would entice those 37 to not vote for Trump?

Some might be troubled – as well they should be – by the indications that the Russians manipulated the election. In this reasoning, they hacked into both political parties and released damaging information about the one they wanted to lose – the Democrats.

Some might be troubled by the rampant conflict of interests that seem to lurk around this particular president-elect. There are few people who don’t seem to believe this guy is using the highest office in the land to get rich. It should be unsettling.

But 37 is a lot of electors. About one in eight.

Now, the second thing that would have to happen in the next four days is for there to appear some candidate who those electors believe would make a better president than Trump.

4. And there’s one other person who has to agree with them.

Hillary Clinton.

Yeah, remember her. The one who got 2.83 million more votes than the guy declared the winner.

What Clinton would have to sign off on is the idea that the 232 electors slated to vote for her should be freed to vote for someone else. Namely, the candidate that the 37 faithless Trump electors want.

And who would that be?

If you’re a liberal Democrat like me, or just a person who thinks there should be something noble about the USA, let me ask a question. Which would you prefer right now – Trump or either President Willard Mitt Romney or President John Sidney McCain III?

That, to me, is a no-brainer. Yes, Romney and McCain are conservative Republicans, and will probably act on the same agenda that Trump seems set to endorse. We’re going to have to fight for Medicare and Obamacare and a woman’s right to choose and who knows what else.

But at least we’d be dealing with someone proven to be above self-interest. Actual patriots who are not puppets of Vladimir Putin.

If Clinton checks off on the choice, that would give both Trump and either Romney or McCain 269 electoral votes. That would throw the election to the House.

5. In the 115th Congress, 32 state delegations are all or mostly Republican, 17 are all or mostly Democratic and one, Maine, is divided.

So the 17 Democratic delegations and, since we’re being fanciful, Maine, would have to flip eight Republican delegations from Trump to Romney or McCain.

Another tall order. But if we’re conducting this exercise, let’s take the final leap and say Utah, Arizona and six other states that would put country over party – with the help of patriotic Democrats.

On Jan. 20, Romney or McCain would take the oath of office. Trump would be apoplectic. Ditto his followers.

But a sane man would be in the Oval Office. Putin would be thwarted.

It’s a nice dream in the middle of our national nightmare.

6. Here’s why it won’t happen.

It is doubtful that one in eight electors is faithless. I know that there are reports that there might be 20 or so. I don’t believe it.

Republicans like one thing more than their principles – they like to win. And, despite putting up the least qualified candidate for president in American history, and being fully prepared to disown him had he lost as expected, the R guy won.

There’s another more principled reason why this is a fantasy.

Do we really want these electors to decide for themselves who should or shouldn’t be president when the people of their state have made their choice? Who the hell are they?

Yes, you could make the argument that we didn’t know the extent that the information upon which Americans were basing their choice was tampered by a hostile foreign power.

Perhaps the drip, drip of hacked e-mails that Putin’s tame pets, Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, released made the Democrats seem petty and untrustworthy.

But let’s face the facts.

While Hillary Clinton, as of the moment I’m writing this, got 2,838,506 more votes, 62,951,513 people actually voted for Trump. They actually looked at these two people, watched one of them campaign in hatred and pettiness, and said, “Yeah, he should be president.”

There’s no getting around that.

That more people in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania wanted the horse’s ass is something this country will wrestle with for perhaps the first half of this century. I believe I won’t live to see the damage totally undone – if it ever is.

It would be nice if Trump didn’t become the 45th President of the United States. Really, really nice.

But it’s just a dream.

On Monday, unless there is some kind of thunderbolt, the Electoral College will confirm the people’s second choice.

1. It’s Wednesday, December 14, 2016.

2. On this day four years ago, a sick guy with a semi-automatic rifle walked into an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut.

He killed 20 children, all between the ages of six and seven, as well as six adults trying to protect them.

It makes me sick to my stomach to write that last sentence.

And yet there are things that make me sicker.

It makes me sick that 20 children – children! – could be massacred in a freaking American classroom. And the United States of America, through its elected representatives, did absolutely nothing to make as certain as possible this could never happen again.

That despite the exhortation of the President of the United States, Congress shrugged this atrocity off. And we, the American people, didn’t storm the offices of these clowns and demand they do what’s right.

Instead, these people listened to a goddamn jackass representing the nation’s seemingly insatiable lust for things that go bang.

He stood before cameras and – in response to the idea that maybe some weapons are unsuitable for civilian life or that some people aren’t psychologically capable of operating these weapons – said the following:

“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

The idea being that these kids – everybody’s kids – would have been safer if there had been more guns. Not fewer. That there wasn’t one gun too many at Sandy Hook Elementary School eleven days before Christmas.

You know, in retrospect, the election of Trump shouldn’t have surprised us. We did nothing about this. Why wouldn’t someone try to find out to what depths we’d sink as a nation?

To their credit, the governors of New York and Connecticut, and the legislatures of both states, did respond. They enacted more restrictive gun legislation. With 48 other states complicit in shoot-a-mania, it’ll be hard for the legislation to have the full effect it should.

And, of course, the people who feel incomplete without lethal force at their disposal remain bothered by even the simple actions those states took.

In New York, where I live, I’ve seen yard signs demanding the repeal of the SAFE Act, which is the law passed in the wake of Sandy Hook. I’ve driven behind pickups with bumper stickers reading “Fuck Cuomo,” the F being in the shape of an automatic weapon, and Andrew Cuomo being our governor.

Now, with the election to a White House of a stooge who once said the “Second Amendment people” might have something influence on a Hillary Clinton presidency, the odds are the overarming of the United States will continue unabated.

And that’s especially true given that instead of throwing the mental midget from the roof of one of his gaudy buildings, the president-elect has embraced a guy who says what happened at Sandy Hook is a hoax.

A mental defective who has the gall to say that what happened didn’t. That it’s a tall tale aimed at taking away Americans’ right to shoot things – animate or otherwise – at will.

I feel sick writing that sentence. But I had to get it out of my system before I finish.

3. And here’s how I want to finish.

I can’t imagine being a parent of one of those 20 children. I can’t imagine the pain – especially when the holidays, the supposed happiest time of the year, roll around.

I don’t know what I would say if I met one of them. “I’m sorry” seems small. “Your child is an angel” seems cruel.

All I know is that there was a wrong committed on this day four years ago. It has never been righted. Maybe it never can be.

But forgetting is not an option. So I won’t, and I hope you’ll think of those kids and adults, and strive for something better than an armed-to-the-teeth society.

1. It’s Tuesday, December 13, 2016.

2. It’s the 380th anniversary of the Massachusetts Bay Colony founding what would eventually become the National Guard.

I have a sick feeling we’re going to hear a lot about the National Guard in the years ahead.

3. Trump could have quelled some of the unrest in American politics, including among some Republicans, about indications that the Russians may have influenced our election.

All he had to do is stand fully behind a thorough investigation by a bipartisan panel. And he could put off naming an apparent Russophile, ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, as Secretary of State.

And he could have held the news conference, the first since his election, that was scheduled for Thursday.

But that’s all too easy. Why end a potential constitutional crisis when its continuation keeps your name at the top of the news?

There are too many things bubbling. The fact that Trump refuses to turn them down to a mere simmer is a big flashing danger sign.

4. So how do people offended by a possible Russian intrusion into American politics respond?

Especially when the people you’d want to lead you don’t seem able or willing to do so.

Yesterday, I said I thought that if the Russians acted to foul our election, they did so for two reasons. One was to eliminate the influence of President Obama, whose sanctions against the Russians after their aggression in Ukraine caused problems.

The other was to jumpstart the oil market, which is a huge chunk of the Russian economy. It has been hurt by falling demand around the world, in part because the world is getting better about using alternative energy.

That’s particularly true in the United States, where more people are putting solar panels on their roofs and driving fuel-efficient or even non-gas vehicles.

So installing an American administration more friendly to the oil industry might seem to Putin and the Russians like a good way to help business.

And yet that makes the answer as to how Americans outraged by all this can respond a little bit simpler.

5. Don’t give in.

Try to use less oil and gas. Buy a more fuel-efficient vehicle. Install solar panels on your roof. Insulate your home.

Do all those energy-efficient things that you’ve been doing for the past few decades. Do them all the time.

It’s clear the country’s energy policy will favor the oil industry in the Trump years. So the American people need an energy policy of their own that’s probably at odds with the government’s.

It would help if some organization, say the Natural Resources Defense Fund or the Sierra Fund, took the lead and determined a civilian national energy policy. Come up with a plan that cuts fuel consumption without any help from the Trump administration.

It might be a tall order. I’m not an expert on energy policy.

But I’m going to drive less starting Jan. 20. I’m going to bring out my sweatshirts for colder days.

Because every time I don’t use a fossil fuel, I’m sticking it to Trump and the Russians. And if enough people do that, it’s going to thwart their get-rich-again plans.

1. It’s Monday, December 12, 2016.

2. It’s the 25th anniversary of the Russian Federation’s breakoff from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. At that point, it was a mere formality – the Soviet Union, the mortal enemy of the United States in the first half of my life, was history.

For a while.

3. Are you as shocked as I am that the CIA and other American intelligence agencies believe the Russians acted to help Trump win the presidency?

That’s a trick question. Nobody with a brain is shocked by this.

The Russians’ collective thumb on the scale was revealed every time their tame pets at WikiLeaks released something else that was hacked from Democrats.

That said, there’s a two-part question worth asking. 

4. Why would the Russians do it, and why now?

The Russians have been trying to unravel us since the days of the Soviet Union. Look at all the espionage cases of the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s. Look at the Cuban missile crisis and the Berlin Wall. The proxy wars and the “revolutions” in Latin America and Africa.

This is nothing new.

Historians have always believed the Russians’ motivation for doing anything is self-preservation. Yes, Russia is the biggest nation by size on Earth, and it possesses enormous natural resources and a good number of people.

But it has constantly fretted about enemies. In the past, those were Germany, Turkey and China, or their predecessor states.

Now, it is the United States, and the threat is more economic.

5. Because what happened here is about two o’s. Obama and oil.

President Obama might have famously pooh-poohed the threat from Russia in his debate with Mitt Romney in 2012. But Obama has been pretty clear-eyed about Russia and its latest incarnation of the tsars, Vladimir Putin.

He knew he couldn’t stop Putin from his landgrab in Ukraine when the Russians felt that changes in the Kiev government were making them insecure.

But the sanctions imposed were a slap that Putin resented. And Hillary Clinton would have been more of the same – an unacceptable option for Putin.

Then there’s oil. The Russian economy plunged into a deep recession last year after oil prices dropped worldwide, according to the CIA.

That’s because the Russians are heavily dependent on oil and other natural resources.

And you know what nation is using less oil? The United States.

One Obama administration success that doesn’t get as much notice as it should is the fact that this country is weaning itself from oil imports.

Part of that is improved fuel economy in our nation’s automotive fleet. Part of that is the surge in solar and wind power – you now can’t drive more than a mile or so without seeing solar panels somewhere.

And part of that is a little more of a mixed blessing – the rise of fracking as a way to extract oil in places that weren’t known as oil depositories, such as North Dakota and Ohio.

6. This hasn’t been good for Putin and Russia.

It also hasn’t been good for the oil industry and those dependent on it. Profits are down, hurting many of the companies, who were flush during the George W. Bush presidency when two of their own – Bush and Dick Cheney – were running things.

So look at the opportunity presented to Putin. Undermining the U.S. election could make sure his nemesis, Obama, wouldn’t have his legacy pass to his Secretary of State and, as a bonus, could help kickstart his moribund oil industry.

Especially with a stooge like Trump.

And with the selection of Rex Tillerson, the Exxon Mobil CEO and someone who has worked with Putin in the past, the deal is complete.

The effort to get oil flowing again, boosting Russia’s economy, can start. The national average for gas is $2.21 a gallon, and while that’s up about four cents since Trump’s election, it’s still well below what it was when Obama took office.

With oil-industry friendly policies and the recent OPEC decision to cut production, the slump might be coming to an end.

That helps Russia. A lot.

Tomorrow, I’ll talk about how to respond.