It’s December 9, 2016, Kirk Douglas’ 100th birthday (the title of this absolutely does not apply to him!), and time for 20 Questions Friday.

I’ll ask questions that are on my mind. Maybe you have a good answer. Maybe you don’t. It’s a good way to pass a December Friday, and a chance for me to wish you a terrific weekend.

So here goes:

— Does it make any sense to pick an Environmental Protection Agency director who doesn’t have much use for the Environmental Protection Agency?

— Does it make any sense to pick a Labor Secretary who wants to replace human workers at his fast-food chains with robots?

— After most presidential campaigns, don’t the winners usually make efforts to reconcile the country rather than continue to divide it?

— Is there any doubt Trump will end his presidency richer than when he started it?

— Why does it seem as though the head of a Steelworkers’ local in Indiana is the wrong guy for Trump to pick on? #ImWithChuck

— Who, besides me, is a fan of white pizza?

— Is there any nonvirtual store that still sells 3.5-inch floppy disks? Or the 5.25-inch ones, for that matter?

— What is it about women that makes the Ohio Legislature so contemptuous? 

— What other kinds of nog are there other than egg?

— Bruce Springsteen and U2 showed up at Obama’s inaugural concert in 2009. Who do you think Trump will cough up?

— Isn’t it amazing that they can still work on big construction projects when it’s cold?

— Do you hate snow?

— Do you wonder if when Vince Guaraldi wrote the music for “A Charlie Brown Christmas” in 1965 that he thought people 51 years later would think there couldn’t be a holiday season without it?

— What do you think we’re doing wrong that the nation’s death rate went up last year?

— Did you share that Facebook video of your year in review?

— What big city is as hard to get to from its suburbs as New York?

— What’s your favorite Kirk Douglas movie? (I would answer “Ace in the Hole,” the darkest movie made about journalism) 

— Do you miss baseball?

— What’s the use of wond’rin’? (fourteenth in a series of song-title questions)

— Has there ever been an American who lived up to this country’s image of a hero as John Glenn? 

1. It’s Thursday, December 8, 2016.

2. It’s the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, a Christian holy day.

The immaculate conception, in this case, does not apply to Jesus – it applies to his mother, Mary, who needed to be conceived without original sin so she could deliver the son of God.

That’s as much theology as I care to get into right now. In fact, it’s more.

3. With Trump’s pick to run the EPA, Oklahoma’s oil-nuts attorney general Scott Pruitt, here’s what I expect next Earth Day:

I expect a parade of Trumpophiles to march to the nearest river, preferably one that has remained pristine, and each dump a gallon of gas into it.

Good old polluted water, just like America had the last time it was great.

4. This jackass’ Cabinet picks are Orwellian in their awfulness.

So here’s a reminder: Concentrate on one thing to get upset about – AND THEN DO SOMETHING TO TRY TO STOP IT.

If what Trump is going to do to the environment bothers you most of all, focus on the environment. Let someone else focus on abortion, Medicare, Obamacare, education and all the other things they want to destroy.

Here’s why: As of this writing, there are 2,676,029 more of us than there are of them. Remind Trump and his sycophants of that every chance you get.

5. A lot of Trumpophiles were in awe of Trump’s Carrier deal last week.

He had saved all those jobs from going to Mexico. What a hero! Working like a President even before he takes the oath.

But there’s always fine print.

And that’s what the head of the United Steelworkers Union local found out. Of the 1,100 jobs Trump claimed to be saving from heading south, 300 were administrative positions that were never Mexico-bound in the first place.

Furthermore, Carrier is still taking 600 jobs to Mexico.

The union official, Chuck Jones, dared to complain about this arrangement on CNN last night. 

Shortly thereafter, the world’s most dangerous Twitter account sprang into action.

Trump took to the phone to blast Jones, saying he’s done a terrible job representing the people who voted him to run their local. A while later, Trump – who pundits call the voice for American workers who feel disenfranchised – told the union to spend more time working and less time talking.

That’s hardly a populist message. That, by definition, is oligarchy.

That also is not surprising. Trump is out for Trump. The business elite are his kind of people. What else do you expect?

Someday, Trump will shove the wrong person. Maybe it’ll be Chuck Jones. Maybe it’ll be someone else.

I was waiting for Trump’s Lonesome Rhodes moment to come during the campaign. Perhaps it’ll come in his administration.

1. It’s Wednesday, December 7, 2016.

2. It’s the 75th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Until September 11, 2001, it was the most fatal attack on American territory by an outside force.

And perhaps this Pearl Harbor Day is a reminder that as horrible and despicable what happened that day was, the bloodiest day in American history remains the Battle of Antietam in Maryland. On that day, more than 3,500 Americans were killed by other Americans.

Which just goes to show that it seems the worst thing that can happen to us is what we do to ourselves. That’s what makes 30 days ago so scary.

3. Movies that you think about five days after you’ve seen them are the best.

Into that category falls “Loving,” a film about the interracial couple whose marriage was held as constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court – thereby ensuring that my marriage and the marriages of many friends and family members are legit as well.

For those not familiar with the case, Loving is actually the family name involved – Richard and Mildred Loving of rural Virginia. He was white, she was black. They grew up in a part of Virginia where the segregation of society in the Jim Crow days wasn’t quite as enforced.

And the point this movie subtly but surely made was that these people were in love. Which is the most important reason to get married.

But the laws of Virginia and several other states barred interracial marriage – what they called “miscegenation” – for the usual reasons of that era. Hatred. Prejudice. Stupidity. Racism. The laws rendered the normal benefits of marriage useless – women couldn’t inherit property from their late mate, and any children of such a union were considered illegitimate.

The Lovings were married in D.C., but were arrested when they returned home to Virginia. Faced with the possibility of imprisonment, they accepted exile in the nation’s capital – a place where two country folks felt out of place.

So they clandestinely lived in Virginia while the American Civil Liberties Union took up their case. After eight years, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in their favor.

That’s the recap. The acting, the camera work, the pacing of the film are impeccable. Having seen the HBO documentary about the Lovings, the resemblance of the cast to the real people and the use of their actual words give this film its enormous power.

4. What also gives the film enormous power, inadvertently, is the time of its release.

I tend to notice interracial couples. I think of them, no matter what the combination, as kindred spirits – people who overlooked, ignored or just didn’t even think about the fact that the person they love is of a wholly different race.

In the 30-plus years since we became – as my daughter puts it – a Chitalian family, the number of mixed-race couples has grown sharply. You notice that especially in places where there are a lot of tourists – Times Square, Walt Disney World, the Mall in Washington.

What has made me smile, up to now, is the idea that America is becoming even more of a melting pot than it’s traditionally been. We are combining cultures and ways of life, and the results should be greater tolerance, awesome art and funky interesting food.

And I guess I thought that other Americans were accepting this idea, maybe even embracing it.

But then again, maybe not.

You watch “Loving” as it depicts the Virginia sheriff and judge as the racists they are, and casts them as the villains that you believe they are.

And then you think about the election and what’s happened in the 29 days since, and you wonder whether there’s been a backlash brewing all this time.

That the people who want to make America great again see the “again” part as the time when everybody knew their place. The time before Obergefell v. Hodges, which gave same-sex couples the right to marry. And the time before Loving v. Virginia.

To those people, the sheriff and the judge were upholding standards and defending the American way. To those people, mixed-race couples are a threat, not a virtue. To those people, tolerance is weakness, mixture dilutes what they know.

5. My wife and I have been fortunate – to a point.

We don’t encounter a lot of overt prejudice. Our friends have remained our friends, our families have shown their love throughout our entire marriage.

But – and my kids made me more aware of this – this isn’t true with everyone. The people in the community where we live have always seemed wary of us. And there have been times when I sensed that people were treating us differently because we were a Caucasian-Asian couple.

I have to think, though, that prejudice is far worse for couples in which one partner is African-American – just because African-Americans encounter enormous prejudice even without a white person at their side.

I’ve been hoping this has been changing. That the fact that the people of the United States chose a mixed-race President twice showed that acceptance had arrived.

Maybe it hasn’t. Maybe this change in our demographics has overwhelmed people who fear all the other changes in their lives, such as technology.

And maybe that fear that they are living in a world that embraces mixing things up may have led them to the worst possible decision – the chance to stop it in its tracks with a demagogue in the White House.

6. I highly recommend “Loving.”

It’s a wonderful movie. It’s a reminder that love is the ultimate power, and that true love is standing there and taking the awful with the good next to someone you can’t be without. 

What hangs in the balance is whether the film is a light into the American future or a reminder about what some of us want to go back to.

I’m on the side of the Lovings.

1. It’s Tuesday, December 6, 2016.

2. Today is the feast of St. Nicholas aka Santa Claus. In many places around the world, this – and not Christmas Day – is when kids get the gifts.

3. Juries don’t videotape their deliberations. Efforts to get that to happen have fallen flat.

And that’s a shame, because it might help bring some understanding to the mistrial of the police officer who shot Walter Scott in cold blood.

Michael Slater, the now-former North Charleston, South Carolina, officer who was on trial, shot Scott in April of last year. Scott, who was unarmed, was fleeing a traffic stop.

Slater, who claimed Scott had threatened, wasn’t that far away from Scott when he shot him in the back and then tried to plant his weapon near Scott’s dead body.

We know all this because someone was secretly videotaping it. We see the whole thing unfold – Scott running, Slater shooting him, Slater planting the gun on the ground and calling his fellow officers.

But even with what seems like overwhelming evidence, one juror couldn’t bring him or herself to convict a police officer.

4. So far, no one’s giving up.

The state says it intends to prosecute Slater again. The governor, Nikki Haley, issued a statement advising that justice will come – an indication she still believes in the tightness of this case.

Even so, you have to wonder what in the world it’s going to take for a police officer in this country to be held accountable for killing an unarmed black man.

And, as a corollary, how are you going to get African-Americans and other minorities to buy into the idea that police officers are on their side?

Situations such as this can’t reasonably be expected to inspire confidence in the system. Why trust or respect a cop when any mistake you make could be your last?

This is not something, contrary to Trump and all the folks trashing Black Lives Matter, that’s going to be solved with giving police more power and demanding respect. And yet, that’s what we’re going to see for the next four years.

If the jury in the Slater trial had been videotaped, at least people would understand that it was one obstinate person blocking the way. The other 11 understand.

Yes, it would still be vexing, but at least those who believe justice was denied in the mistrial would understand that it’s not everyone – it’s not even the overwhelming majority.

It’s one person who couldn’t see his or her way to what seems to the rest of us to be the truth.

5. After their meeting two days after the election, Trump indicated a new-found respect for President Obama.

He has spent the 26 days since showing his disdain for his soon-to-be predecessor.

Every pick he has made for his Cabinet reeks with antipathy for the policies of the past eight years. In fact, not only do these picks diss Obama, they seem to diss what the departments these people are going to head stand for.

Yesterday, it was Ben Carson, a guy who early in the process was said to have refused a Cabinet position because he didn’t know enough to run a government department.

Now, a guy who’s not a fan of public housing gets to run it. He’ll be Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

That goes along with an Education Secretary pick who seems to hate public schools; a Defense Secretary pick who compromises the idea that civilians – and not generals or former generals – should run the military; and an Attorney General pick whose idea of justice doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the people the department is created to protect.

Because of the way this election turned out, there’s little Democrats can do to stop this 180-degree turn on the course of the Obama years. They can hope there are some reasonable Republicans in the Senate – you keep thinking about Susan Collins of Maine – but that’s about all they’ve got.

6. But here’s a thought: Democrats can’t just lie down and roll over. And they have the folks to do that.

When Jeff Sessions has his confirmation hearing to be attorney general, among the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee who will question him will be Al Franken of Minnesota.

All I want is Al Franken to be Al Franken. And let the cameras roll.

Hold Sessions’ and Betsy DeVos’ and James Mattis’ and Ben Carson’s feet to the fire. Make them commit to what they’ll do. Show America what it’s really getting.

It’s not a lot. But it’s a start to a comeback.

Gee whiz, a lot went on the past few days. Two quick thoughts before this day gets away:

7. If Sunday’s incident at a Washington pizza place doesn’t scare you, you’re probably in numb-enough shape for the next few years.

A man entered the place with assault-style rifle looking to rescue kids from a child sex ring.

Except that the ring was non-existent, the plant of somebody trying to ratfuck Hillary Clinton’s campaign by planting a fake story online. The story said she and her campaign manager were involved in the ring.

The guy was arrested; he didn’t shoot anybody, but he sure as hell wrecked the peace of a lot of innocent people for who knows how long.

How many of these fake-story booby traps are out there, being read by less-than-developed minds and taken as gospel?

This isn’t just political chicanery. It’s an act of war. It’s potentially more devastating than anything the Russian Army could have tried to do during the Cold War. And somebody better figure it out. Quickly.

8. If you haven’t seen the absolutely chilling new video put out by Sandy Hook Promise, which is led by parents whose children were killed nearly four years ago in perhaps the most heinous shooting incident ever. (Here’s a link to the home page: http://www.sandyhookpromise.org/)

The video is so powerful that I won’t describe it. You need to see it to get the impact. It allows the message – that there are kids out there who pose a threat – to resonate loud and clear.

And it’s a reminder that despite what some of the deplorables who support Trump say, Sandy Hook is a real American tragedy.

I’ll have more to say a week from tomorrow – the fourth anniversary of this nightmare.

It’s December 2, 2016, the 15th anniversary of Enron’s bankruptcy filing, and time again for 20 Questions Friday.

I’m not so much interested in the answers to these as I am thinking about what’s going on that makes me want to ask them.

Enjoy the weekend.

— Should we make as though we’re at some sort of perverse commencement and wait until all the names are announced before we go into full-scale terror mode about Trump’s cabinet?

— Did you buy an extra box of Carr’s crackers or Pop Tarts in order to make up for some dolt who’s boycotting Kellogg’s because it stopped advertising on white-nationalist rally site Breitbart?

— Why is the National Christmas Tree outside the White House so weird looking?

— Does picking a former general to run the Pentagon compromise the principle of civilian control of the military?

— Do Americans really want to go to war with Iran?

— When you heard Trump had picked someone named “Mad Dog” as Defense Secretary, were you relieved for a moment that a screaming sports broadcaster couldn’t do that much damage to our military?

— How happy is the guy who runs Carrier, having just fleeced Trump, Pence, the people of Indiana and about 1,000 people who are still going to see their jobs go to Mexico?

— Should the Democrats go all-in on trying to capture the Senate seat from Louisiana next week or, as the Atlantic’s Clare Foran points out, should they squirrel their resources for races more winnable over the next two years? 

— Have you seen a lot of holiday shoppers so far this season?

— Is Starbucks’ retiring CEO, Howard Schultz, the greatest marketer of all time for getting us to drink vastly overpriced coffee and tea?

— Who knew there was a world chess championship going on?

— Three weeks after the election, why does Trump continue to overshadow important news such as the ongoing tragedy of the fire that killed 11 people in Gatlinburg, Tenn.? 

— Did you read the story in the Times about why 21 people were killed in 1919 when an explosion released a wave of molasses through the streets of Boston? 

— Are you swamped with holiday catalogs that feature gifts you can only imagine buying someone because you just need to buy someone a gift?

— Who or what determined what people eat for breakfast as opposed to the rest of the day?

— Is Trevor Noah’s evisceration of The Blaze’s Tomi Lahren his breakthrough moment, or was it so overpowering that he elicited sympathy for her? 

— When can I get tickets for “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” on Broadway in 2018?

— How many Americans are aware that South Korea is about to force its president out of office?

— When will I see you smile again? (thirteenth in a series of song-title questions)

— Will the green lights Trump gives Wall Street and big business lead to another Enron?

1. It’s Thursday, December 1, 2016.

2. Miserable November 2016 is finally over.

3. Today is the first day you can open an advent calendar.

I used to love them – forget the “used to,” I still do. When you’re young, you’re so excited that Christmas is coming – and the opening of a little door to reveal some little picture of a toy helps build and harness that thrill.

One of my goals for next Christmas is to put together an interactive advent calendar for grownups. Not sure if it will have coupons or links to cool stuff or just really good things I’ve read in the year that will have passed.

Definitely working on it.

4. Kellogg’s unlikely evolution from kid-targeted marketer of sugar-coated cereal to conservative bête-noire is complete.

Sensing that maybe being linked to a hot bed of racism and anti-semitism doesn’t help sell Pop Tarts, Kellogg announced this week it was pulling its ads from the right-wing Breitbart site.

This, of course, is the latest outrage for people who aren’t satisfied with winning an election despite getting 2.5 million fewer votes than their opponent.

Breitbart and the dolts who read it now want a boycott of Kellogg, calling a company’s decision to embrace a broader audience than them “bigotry.” 

Here’s hoping this goes as well as the boycott of “Hamilton” they sought after the cast urged VP-elect Mike Pence to take the play’s open-minded message to heart. Last week, “Hamilton” posted the biggest weekly gross in Broadway history, more than $3.3 million. 

The white nationalism espoused by Breitbart and embraced by Trump supporters is ascendant. So, to be sure, Kellogg deserves some credit for doing the right thing – even if it is probably good business in the long run.

5. So, as a service to those of us fighting the good fight, here are Kellogg’s brands in case you want to add them to your shopping cart in the next few days.

Because why shouldn’t Snap, Crackle and Pop get the same kind of love as Alexander Hamilton?

— Kellogg’s cereals include Rice Krispies, Corn Flakes, Special K, Frosted Flakes and Froot Loops

— Special K also has brands of frozen breakfast sandwiches and snack bars

— Keebler cookies

— Pringles snack foods

— Cheez-It crackers

— Austin snack foods

— Mother’s cookies

— MorningStar Farms meat substitutes

— Carr’s crackers

— Gardenburger veggie burgers

— Murray Sugar Free cookies

— Famous Amos cookies

— Pop Tarts

— Eggo frozen waffles

All brands: http://www.kelloggcompany.com/en_US/brandportfolio.html

6. The founder of the liberal blog Daily Kos is, understandably, irritated these days.

Markos Moulitsas decided last night to let it all out. He raged at all the people and organizations he’s holding responsible for the debacle of the Trump election. 

He blamed Hillary Clinton. He blamed the Clinton campaign. He blamed Democratic consultants. He blamed Bernie Sanders. He blamed Sanders’ supporters. He blamed the news media. He blamed President Obama. He blamed himself. He blamed Trump supporters. And he blamed Trump and the Republicans.

Moulitsas didn’t really leave anybody out. And that was his point. It seems as though he wants to get the anger out now, because the future is about fighting the horror show we’re about to endure.

Twenty-three days on, it remains very hard to swallow what happened. You and me and Moulitsas and anyone with a brain are justified in worrying if the future of civilization hangs in the balance. This election is proof that time travel will never be invented – no one from the future has come back to save us.

But 23 days is enough. It’s now December, the final full month of what now seems like the halcyon days of the Obama administration. We should relish the good that’s been done over the past eight years and gird for the fights ahead.

7. And there are fights.

It is time to square up on Medicare. People have planned their lives (my hand is raised!) around the idea that, at age 65, their health care will become less of a concern thanks to one of the greatest federal programs ever.

Now, with this ignoramus Tom Price ticketed for Health and Human Services, that guarantee faces the gravest risk since the inception of Medicare in 1965.

Medicare is worth fighting for. The people who voted for Trump were told he wasn’t going to take it away from them. Imagine their surprise when he, Price and Paul Ryan do exactly that.

Don’t get mad. Get even. There’s no tactic too dirty, no stratagem too over the top. It has to seem to the people in favor of this that changing Medicare in any way will come at a heavy price.

I’m game. The election is over. The fight for the future is on.

1. It’s Tuesday, November 29, 2016.

2. A lot of smart journalists point out that Trump likes the distraction method of dodging controversies.

Today’s case in point: When The Wall Street Journal put out a story about the massive loans from foreign and domestic banks given to son-in-law Jared Kushner, Trump’s misdirection play was flag burning. 

This morning, he not only tweeted how terrible burning the flag is, but suggested that the penalty for doing so could be loss of citizenship.

Up until now, the Constitution of the United States has banned the loss of citizenship for native citizens; unlike the Russia of Trump’s buddy, Putin, we don’t do exiling here. Yet. 

Now, whenever this furor rises on the right, you have to ask the question: Is there some sort of hidden epidemic of flag burning across the land? Is there anything stupider to protest something than burning the American flag?

But instead of discussing something off-topic like flag burning when we get bored -something unlikely between now and 2020 – Trump tries to distract us with a phony flag-burning crisis.

3. Why would Trump bring up flag burning today?

Well, it could be because there’s another big story about the financial entanglements of this pillbug, his spawn and anyone who embraces them. And how better to take attention from the real story with a agita-inducing discussion of something else inflammatory – literally and figuratively.

This is what he did with the “Hamilton” flap a couple of weeks back. The fact that he paid $25 million to settle the fraud claims against his Trump University got short shrift next to the president-elect’s irritation with the booing and lecturing of his running mate at the theater.

4. It’s how he rolls. It shouldn’t be how we roll.

According to the Journal, Jared Kushner’s real estate company has hundreds of millions of dollars in loans from financial institutions, sells condominiums to buyers in the United States and  abroad, and is part of a program that helps wealthy overseas investors get green cards to emigrate to this country.

The paper quotes a Kushner spokeswoman as saying he’ll resolve all conflicts if, as expected, he’s given a position of responsibility in the new administration.

But shouldn’t he have done that by now? Trump is making decisions about government positions and policies, and he and his family are doing so knowing full well that they could stand to benefit financially from those decisions.

That’s what the flag burning’s about. Let’s keep our eye on the prize.

5. It’s hard for any reasonable American to get choked up about the death of Fidel Castro.

But Cuba’s a complicated issue, which makes it hard to get as excited about it as those who celebrated in the streets of Miami early Sunday.

Here’s why those people in Miami were happy: Castro was vicious. He killed his enemies. He destroyed families. He repressed his people.

His policies were to the benefit, the enrichment of his family. In that way, he was no better than his corrupt predecessor, Fulgencio Batista, who Castro overthrew in the revolution of 1959.

And, because the United States wasn’t on his side, he did everything he could to screw us over. The Mariel boatlift in 1980 was aimed at dumping more than 100,000 people – some of them criminals and the mentally ill – in the U.S. And, before that, he helped bring the world the closest it’s been – until now – to nuclear war when he let the Soviets put missiles just 90 miles from Key West.

The reason many of those celebrating were in Miami in the first place was to flee Castro’s dictatorship. So their joy is understandable.

6. Here’s the problem: Castro died at age 90.

He survived numerous attempts to kill him launched by the United States government, organized crime and whoever else. He managed to keep power despite the U.S. economic embargo, partly because he kept people happy with free health care and improvements in the nation’s literacy.

He was going to die someday. Making it to 90 is pretty good. He wasn’t around to see all the celebrations, partly because – like him or not – he had the last laugh.

Now, his brother and the current Cuban president, Raul, is stuck. Not only did his brother leave him with this somewhat troubled country. But now, the guy who might have been able to help him untangle the mess – President Obama – is headed out of the White House.

And the jerk who’s taking over is listening, for now, to the bitter-enders who think the economic embargo – the most unsuccessful U.S. nonmilitary foreign policy ever! – should continue.

Obama’s logic was that if something doesn’t work for more than 50 years, maybe you should try something else. But Trump is indicating he’ll go a different way unless there’s some kind of deal ( the world might have spared the coming debacle if only Trump had gotten picked from the audience by Monty Hall on “Let’s Make a Deal”).

That deal could very well be the one he wanted to make when it was illegal to do so – build a Trump property in Havana. Raul Castro might want to think about that. Right now, he’s got to ride herd on a deprived country that might just want to join the rest of the world’s consumers.

But Castro’s death is a reminder that good doesn’t always triumph over evil. Yes, he’s dead. But he died undefeated and peacefully in his own bed. Unfortunately, there are tyrants who get to say that.

It’s November 25, 2016. It’s the day after Thanksgiving, aka Black Friday, and time for this week’s edition of 20 Questions Friday.

All I do is put 20 questions out there. All you do is read them, answer them if you wish, and hopefully both of us feel better after it’s over.

Enjoy the rest of your holiday weekend.

— Are you holiday shopping today? Why?

— If people stopped showing up at stores on Thanksgiving night, would stores that open on Thanksgiving night still open on Thanksgiving night?

— Are you as surprised as I am that stores haven’t started opening on Christmas Day yet?

— Just askin’ – did Mike Pence actually pay for those “Hamilton” tickets? Or, if they were freebies, isn’t the cast expressing itself a small price to pay for seeing the show?

— How’s that “Hamilton” boycott the Trump dolts called after last Friday going?

— I understand that there’s strong feeling about Common Core. But wouldn’t it have been nice if the subject came up during one of the presidential debates instead of, say, one more question about Hillary Clinton’s e-mails?

— Is it possible that Education Secretary-designate Betsy DeVos wants to teach the nation’s kids English literature by having them see what Oliver Twist’s life was really like?

— Do you find it hard to figure out how warmly to dress this time of year?

— Is it me, or are people driving worse since the election?

— Why do you think Jill Stein is the force behind the proposed review of paper ballots in Michigan, Wisconsin and, maybe, Pennsylvania?

— When do you think Jill Stein realized that she might go down in history as the Ralph Nader of 2016?

— Does anybody make mince pies anymore?

— Would Democrats be better off spending their money trying to elect Foster Campbell to the U.S. Senate from Louisiana instead of donating to a long-shot effort to reverse the presidential election? 

— Why is a dog show such a big thing to watch on Thanksgiving Day?

— Are supermarkets crowded the day after Thanksgiving?

— Will the Colombia-FARC deal stick this time?

— Do you think all the billionaires Trump seems to be employing for his cabinet secretly needed the jobs?

— Have you read Bruce Springsteen’s terrific autobiography, “Born to Run”?

— Is that all there is? (twelfth in a series of song-title questions)

— Have you started playing holiday music yet?

1. It’s Thursday, November 24, 2016. It’s Thanksgiving.

2. I just wrote a 935-word blog post that I put aside. I put it aside because I wanted you to be thankful that you didn’t have to try to read a 935-word blog post on Thanksgiving Day.

So I’ll keep it short.

I’ve struggled to think about thankfulness the last 16 days. The election has shattered my sense that justice always prevails, that good always triumphs over evil, that the arc of the moral universe is long and bends toward justice.

But I know too many good people to believe that the whole world is shattering. My wife and my children. My parents – who today celebrate 65 years of marriage. My wife’s parents. The rest of my family and all my friends. My former colleagues in journalism, under siege in this world gone bonkers. The people on the front lines of helping those in need.

Together, we’re going to make a big honking stink about stuff we’re not crazy about. We’re going to fight for what we believe – and that can never be wrong.

Yes, this is going to be a rough few years. But I’m thankful to be on this team – the side of the angels. I like our chances.

Happy Thanksgiving!

1. It’s Wednesday, November 23, 2016. It’s the day before Thanksgiving.

2. On this date 212 years ago, our 14th president, Franklin Pierce, was born.

As bad a president as he was – to give you a hint, he was a Northerner whose secretary of war was his friend, Jefferson Davis, and who sought appeasement with the South – even he has to be offended in his grave at the thought of Trump in the White House.

3. Hillary Clinton’s popular vote lead surpassed 2 million overnight.

Some of her prominent supporters were aflutter last night after a New York magazine article. The article quotes a group of prominent computer scientists and lawyers as saying that results in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin might have been manipulated or hacked. Those three states swung the outcome of the election in favor of Trump.

Among the supporters who got revved up by this were Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist, and Keith Olbermann, who has been breathing fire against Trump in videos for GQ magazine. 

I am among those who would love to believe that this election was stacked against Hillary Clinton. It already had Russian hacking, selective WikiLeaks leaking, media focus on her e-mails and the FBI director’s thumb on the scale. So why wouldn’t it be plausible that somebody cooked the books on the vote totals in three Rust Belt states?

Well, first, there’s the math. Clinton trails Trump by 68,965 votes in Pennsylvania. That seems like a lot. The other two states have smaller margins, and maybe there’s a possibility. But without Pennsylvania, it doesn’t really matter – there aren’t enough electoral votes in Wisconsin and Michigan to sway the outcome.

Secondly, there’s the trend. If you looks at the numbers and the states in a line from Virginia through to Minnesota, you can see a regular streak of Clinton doing much worse than she expected and below what President Obama did when he ran in 2008 and 2012. There’s got to be some political reason for that.

And then there’s the third thing. Hillary Clinton is a patriot. She conceded defeat on Nov. 9, when there was no indication that anything about the election was going to change.

And because she’s a patriot, she knows it would be disruptive – almost to the point of civil war – to make the same kind of accusations of a rigged election that Trump and his supporters were preparing to make. Not unless she had overwhelming evidence – something like Putin, the governors of Michigan and Wisconsin, and some Republican operative in Pennsylvania all confessing at a news conference that yeah, they did it.

Because Hillary Clinton is a better human than Trump, this talk of a hacked election will likely remain that – talk.

4. But that doesn’t mean the 2-million vote margin is trivial.

It is something Clinton supporters need to remind folks every chance they get. The more votes in that margin, the less Trump can claim he has a national mandate to do the kind of damage he seems intent to wreaking.

(This is a point Ezra Klein makes really well on the Vox site this morning.)

The Democrats first need to get out of in-shock mode. They need to organize their sides of Congress – they’ve already picked Chuck Schumer as their Senate leader.

And as much as I think Nancy Pelosi is one of the greatest congressional leaders the Democratic Party has ever had, it might just be time to put somebody else in the leadership role in the House.

I’m not sure it’s Tim Ryan, the Ohio congressman who’s challenging Pelosi for the role. But he is younger and comes from one of the places that turned on Hillary Clinton on Election Day.

I frankly would rather see another woman take this spot – I just don’t know who she is. But the Democrats need to reaffirm that they believe some women are born to lead. That while Clinton didn’t break through to the White House, there’s some other woman out there who can.

The congressional changes would be coupled with the new DNC chairman. The Democrats need a fresh face, and I think either Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota or Labor Secretary Thomas Perez fits that bill – although I could see Perez as a potential Senate or presidential candidate. 

With a new team, they need to challenge Trump and the congressional Republicans when they need to be challenged. Especially on things that are core Democratic: Medicare, Social Security, immigration and health care.

Don’t pick fights without a purpose. The demonstrations against Trump and the hand-wringing about the election are already being reflected in a backlash against Democrats.

The guy to follow is the guy we’ve been following: President Obama. There’s a reason his approval is up while the party’s is down, according to a CNN poll out today. It’s what I articulated yesterday: People want this election to be over. It’s clear the president can’t stand Trump, but he’s not whining about it openly.

That’s what Democrats have to do. Act assertively on what they believe. Fight Trump when they must.

And remember which side got the most votes on Nov. 8.

5. Few have suffered as public a defeat as Ralph Branca.

He’s the former Brooklyn Dodger who threw the pitch that Bobby Thomson of the New York Giants socked for the most famous home run in baseball history – the one that gave the Giants the 1951 National League pennant.

But Branca handled that devastating setback with a grace that set an example for everyone in every field.

So much so that today, it’s the other things of his life – his eventual friendship with Thomson, his support of Jackie Robinson during the integration of the Major Leagues and his success off the field – that people are choosing to remember on the day of his passing. 

He was 90 years old, and he’s to be congratulated for living a life well led.

6. The day before Thanksgiving is often referred to as the worst travel day of the year.

In fact, it’s not yet noon and it’s already been tough for me. I scraped up against an SUV in a parking lot for the local cake baker that draws crazy crowds at holidays.

Fortunately, the guy didn’t want to exchange insurance cards or phone numbers. The scrape is minor.

But it was a reminder to me, and now from me to you, to be careful out there. There are a lot of people on the road and their concentration isn’t nearly as focused as mine actually was trying to avoid this guy.

It’s a holiday. You’re supposed to enjoy it. Please do.