1. It’s Tuesday, November 17, 2015.

2. Who do you think will be the first Republican presidential candidate to propose internment camps for Moslems? My money’s on Ted Cruz.

3. As of now, 27 governors say they won’t let Syrian refugees into their state. The 26 idiot Republicans and one idiot Democrat who are an embarrassment to themselves and their states think that stopping these refugees will foil terrorism on U.S. soil.

As if.

The only they accomplish is give the pillbugs behind Friday’s horror in Paris a propaganda victory. You see, they can see, America is at war with Islam. You can flee, but they hate you, is what these bastards can say. For the weakest, it’s an easy excuse to align with evil.

The truth is that the vetting of refugees has been intense and slow-going. It takes more than a year for someone fleeing the Syrian nightmare to find sanctuary in the United States. Stopping those who want to come here is a heartbreaking and horrible renunciation of all that this country has stood for.

All these governors are doing is giving comfort to the enemy. It is “shameful,” as President Obama said yesterday.

On the other hand, I’m not sure anyone trying to get away from a nation run by Bashar al-Assad would feel a rush of freedom in a state run by Greg Abbott or Scott Walker.

4. Yesterday, I made the analogy that the Paris terrorists are to Islam what bank robbers wearing Yankee caps are to Yankee fans.

The more I think about this, the more I think ISIS and its dupes around the world are like SPECTRE, the evil enterprise that James Bond is constantly trying to foil. While ISIS tries to hide behind selected parts of Islam, it is really just a band of boobs trying to terrorize the planet. Like SPECTRE, I suspect its ultimate goal is some sort of world control; Islam is a convenient cover.

Alas, it will probably take more than one James Bond to wipe out these jerks. But if the world looks at it that way – and understands that ISIS has harmed Muslims the most – it might be easier to coalesce and get rid of them.

1. It’s Monday, November 16, 2015.

2. November is now more than half over. Thanksgiving is next week. Christmas is 39 days away.

3. Republican presidential candidates and media types seem bothered by President Obama’s refusal to use the term “radical Islam” in describing the losers behind the Paris terror attacks.

So let me explain it to them.

There are guys who rob banks wearing New York Yankee hats. You see the interlocking NY in the mug shots.

Are they “criminal Yankee fans?” Does being a Yankee fan inherently make you prone to supporting criminal activity? Should the “good” Yankee fans have to reiterate that they’re not looking to rob every bank in America?

The fact is that the guys wearing the hats have nothing to do with liking or disliking the New York Yankees. They have everything to do with being losers.

More seriously, there are groups and individuals in this country that promote hate and horror. The Ku Klux Klan. Westboro Baptist Church. Warren Jeffs.

We do not call that “radical Christianity.” We do not believe all Christians need to stand up as Christians and make clear that they do not support such hatred and miscreant behavior. We don’t see any need to restrict the building of churches or the wearing of crucifix medals or even putting one of those fish things on the back of their car.

The same applies to Islam. The creatures who brought fear and death to Paris may have claimed to have done so in the religion’s name.

But here’s the thing. The jackasses and those in the Middle East who support them are not the least bit interested in promoting the word of the prophet Muhammad or anything else in support of Islam.

Instead, they’re the losers of society. They felt some slight at some point in their life and decided the world would pay for it, and now they’ve joined others who feel the same way. Instead of respecting woman, as Muslims do, they justify rape. Instead of co-existing with the religions that formed Islam’s foundation, Judaism and Christianity, they seek to obliterate them.

Worst of all, as horrific as the atrocities committed in Paris were, they still pale in comparison to what these pillbugs do to people who worship Allah and adhere to Muhammad’s teachings.

Their trail of bloodshed has killed thousands of devout Muslims through the Middle East and Africa. In Beirut, Nairobi, Baghdad, Cairo, or wherever. They didn’t give a damn who they were killing.

It’s convenient for the losers to hide behind Islam because of the frictions of the world. And it certainly would help if there was some real effort to resolve differences, particularly in the Middle East, that would allow all people of goodwill and different faiths to live in peace.

But calling what these losers practice Islam, even with the descriptive “radical,” is an insult to people who are Moslems. And those Moslems don’t need to take some kind of special role in the fight against this crap. They and we just need to understand that we are brothers and sisters. That people who worship differently still share humanity, and an appreciation of what’s good and beautiful in the world. We just need to work together, and try to understand and respect our differences.

The people who committed the Paris attacks, who inspire other fellow losers around the world, seek a world of nothing. Hate and rejection, perceived or otherwise, has made them lash at everyone and everything.

That’s really not that much different from those who preach hatred in the United States. Hatred toward people of color, women, people of different languages and nationalities and religions and sexual orientation.

All of them fall under the same title. And it has nothing to do with Christianity or Islam.

It’s about being a loser.

1. It’s Saturday, November 14, 2015.

2. The problem is that humans don’t know what awaits them after they die.

My guess is that the pillbugs who inflicted the misery on Parisians last night probably thought there was something better on the other side of living. They were miserable in their current existence for whatever reason, and decided that they wanted one moment of warped glory before moving on. They couldn’t figure out a way to save the world, so they thought they capture some notoriety in trying to destroy it.

They were wretched losers, and they wanted to take others down before their own exit from a life of slights, perceived or real.

Humans don’t know what awaits them after they die. So you can do one of two things. You can actively find out. Or you can live your life in a way that, once the inevitable happens, gives something to the people who remain.

For most of the species, the choice is obvious.

I think we all want to try to make sense of the deaths of 127 people, at last report, whose only offense seemed to be celebrating their lives in one of the world’s most beautiful cities. A lot of them attended a show by an American metal band.

But there is no sense to it. It’s random and maddening, and makes you wonder about the capacity for evil in the world.

Humans don’t know what awaits them after they die. But here’s what they should know: As long as you love in return, your life never ends. You are remembered and revered and mourned. When you blow yourself up in pursuit of some nihilistic aim, you’re just splattered pieces of tissue to get hosed off the floor.

I and you and the people of every race, faith, gender and nationality will think today and in the days to come of those who died. We can’t imagine the pain of parents, friends, lovers and children who are staggered by their loss.

Maybe there’s some paradise the murderers expected as they pulled the trigger on their explosive devices. Maybe they’re right. Humans don’t know what awaits them after they die.

But I hope they rot in Hell.

It’s November 13, 2015, or 11/13/15, the last time the date can be three consecutive odd numbers this century. Next time it happens is January 3, 2105. I won’t be here.

Anyway, it’s time again for Friday Yes or No. I devise questions that I can answer simply and without equivocation. It’s that simple.

Q1: When Donny Trump went on his rant about Dr. Ben Carson being pathological, do you suspect he was off his meds?

A1: Yes

Q2: After questioning the intelligence of Iowans, does a Trump Plaza Des Moines have much chance of succeeding?

A2: No

Q3: Of course it’s not nice to wish death on someone, but don’t you really, really hope the U.S. got ISIS’ “Jihadi John,” the bastard on those videos beheading American journalists and aid workers.

A3: Yes

Q4: And that he rots in hell?

A4: Yes

Q5: In a game I normally don’t care that much about, will I be pulling for Missouri against BYU tomorrow night?

A5: Yes

Q6: Will the success the Missouri football team had in ousting the university’s president for inaction against racist incidents translate to other constructive developments for students?

A6: No

Q7: That’s because this was a push-comes-to-shove moment, and the only times something like a possible strike by a major college team would work is when so much is at stake?

A7: Yes

Q8: Was the cardboard VR device the Times put out last week cool?

A8: Yes

Q9: Will it change journalism?

A9: No

Q10: Is this a good time to go get a Starbucks Oprah Chai in a red holiday season cup, in part to give the middle finger to the war on Christmas putzes?

A10: Yes

1. It’s Thursday, November 12, 2015.

2. It’s two weeks until Thanksgiving.

3. It’s three weeks until Black Friday, the day whose meaning keeps changing.

For the longest time, it was referred to as the kickoff to the holiday season. (Yes, HOLIDAY, you putzes obsessed with “wars” on Christmas.) Stores would open early on Friday morning, say 7 a.m.

Then it became 6 a.m. Then 4 a.m. Then midnight.

Now it’s completely encroaching on Thanksgiving. Walmart and Target plan to open at 6 p.m. that night. Other chain stores follow an hour or so later. And some stores won’t close for the holiday at all.

Does it matter? I wonder.

Macy’s CEO Terry Lundgren warned yesterday that there’s too much stuff in his company’s stores. As a result, there will be lots of markdowns. That’s great news if you’re a shopper, not so great news if you’re a shareholder of Macy’s — or any of those other stores that share malls with Macy’s and will have to cut prices themselves to compete.

Here’s the thing: I’m not sure people want to go out to buy stuff. They have a lot of things already. And they don’t want to brave crazy crowds — either during normal sleeping hours or the time when families normally eat Thanksgiving dinner — to buy fodder for a 2017 garage sale.

People have instantaneous ways of satisfying their few must-haves. It’s called Amazon, or one of its online brethren. Why drive to the mall, hassle over parking, try to find a sales clerk and probably get sick from all the germs being spread in a crowded area? The UPS guy will deliver the same thing to you in your pajamas.

It’s not the economy. People are working, for the most part, and they’re willing to spend money. One stroll through the special World Series shop at Citi Field before Game Five is proof that there are folks willing to spend crazy money for the right thing, especially when it’s Mets fans looking for a Wright thing.

It’s just that most things you can buy in a store are not worth the hassle. I don’t know how Macy’s and other merchants solve this problem.

But it’s not going to be by a 40% markdown on acrylic scarfs at 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving.

1. It’s Tuesday, November 10, 2015

2. It sometimes seems as though Missouri aspires to surpass Texas in the dopey department.

There was Ferguson, of course, an incident waiting to happen. A place where African-Americans were systematically put at financial and penal risk by stupid ticket-writing incentives for police. The death of Michael Brown seems almost preordained in that kind of atmosphere.

It’s the home state of Todd Akin, the Republican who believes women’s bodies shut down to prevent pregnancy after a “legitimate rape.” It cost him a Senate seat, but only barely.

And then there was the situation at the state’s largest educational institution, the University of Missouri. Incidents of racial taunts and slurs, of anti-Semitism, of callous administrative disregard for students went unaddressed for months.

What unites states such as Missouri is sports. Especially football. The whole state roots for the Tigers against their foes in the Southeastern Conference, one of the two biggest collegiate sports leagues in the nation.

Thus the stance of the football team to say enough is enough is heroic. But it’s easily understood and definitely requires a modicum of courage. The athletes recognized that, away from the football field, there are those who would just as soon label them as losers and treat them with the same disrespect.

So they took a stance. And the president who ignored these problems is out the door.

A lot of folks, including the respected Times columnist Joe Nocera, say this could be a sign that college athletes are ready to correct some of the ways they are exploited by the system. I don’t know that that’s true – I’m sure a lot of these athletes love their special status at their schools and in their states, and would do nothing to jeopardize it.

What the Missouri football players should be a lesson to the rest of us. We have clout, too. Where we spend our money. What we do with our time. Who we cheer and who we jeer. If we’re willing to stand firm, we can affect change.

There’s an epidemic of stupid in our land. The Missouri football team took a goal-line stand against it, and held.

3. On that note, I wasn’t planning to go to Starbucks today. I have a class to teach at William Paterson University in New Jersey, and I’m preparing for that now. (It’s about writing opinion pieces!)

But because Donny Trump, the disgrace to humanity, is backing the moronic boycott of Starbucks for taking designs off its holiday season cups, I am determined to buy something there.

It’s my stand against stupid, and I get an Oprah Chai in the process.

1. It’s Monday, November 9, 2015

2. I’ve been up since 4:30 a.m. lamenting the stupidity in our lives. I know, being awake at 4:30 because of the world’s stupidity is, in itself, stupid. So maybe this is a case of “Physician, heal thyself.”

But then I think about the Starbucks’ holiday cup “controversy.” And the agitation over the alleged “War on Christmas.” And I think why, oh why, was I born into a world of such overwhelming, overpowering, monumental stupidity.

There are no designs on Starbucks’ 2015 holiday cups. It’s just red with the Starbucks logo. I think I noticed when I stopped at Starbucks on my way home from my parents’ house for the Oprah Chai Latte. But I didn’t spend much more than 5 seconds thinking about it.

Apparently, there are people who did.

There are people who believe that Starbucks, in removing any designs from this cup, are making an anti-Christmas statement. That this coffeehouse chain is throwing down the gauntlet. By not putting a snowflake, or a snowman, or whatever the hell it put on the cups in years past, Starbucks is smacking the faces of Christmas-celebrating people everywhere. Yet one more incursion into the sanctity that is the Christmas season.

BOOM!

That was the sound of my head exploding.

Christmas is not threatened by the lack of a design on a Starbucks cup. Christmas is not threatened by my wishing you a “Happy Holiday” instead of a “Merry Christmas.” Christmas is not threatened by Wal-Mart talking about holiday sales instead of Christmas sales. Christmas is not threatened if a shopping mall doesn’t put up a tree, if a community doesn’t put up a creche, if a public high school choir doesn’t sing “Silent Night,” if preschool kids light menorahs.

There is no one stopping anyone from celebrating Christmas in the United States in 2015. There is no war on Christmas. There is, however, an understanding that there are people who do not celebrate Christmas, and those of us who do want to share the season somehow with those people. These are our neighbors, friends and colleagues. Along with family, these are who we care about.

The holidays are a time for all to celebrate. If you want to be irritated about something as inconsequential as the design on a Starbucks coffee cup, you sure as hell are going to miss out on the real fun and joy that the season brings.

It’s November 6, 2015 and time for Friday Yes or No, the thing I do on Friday in which I ask myself questions that I myself answer. Seems a little loaded, I know, but it’s a good shtick. Anyway, here we go:

Q1: With the strong October jobs report, should the Federal Reserve raise interest rates for the first time since before the financial crisis began?

A1: Yes

Q2: Is that because it would be a sign that the U.S. economy did it – it recovered from the worst financial setback since the Great Depression?

A2: Yes

Q3: Is there any way in the world that Donny Trump should be hosting “Saturday Night Live”?

A3: No

Q4: If Ben Carson wants to be President of the United States, shouldn’t he expect the kind of scrutiny that has led to people questioning the sanity of his past statements?

A4: Yes

Q5: Do you get the sense that George W. Bush’s presidency was a way to get back at his father for something that happened when W. was a tyke?

A5: Yes

Q6: Do you think that’s why he brought in guys like Cheney and Rumsfeld who his father wasn’t crazy about?

A6: Yes

Q7: Speaking of legacies, is there any chance the mess that W. created in Iraq will be cleaned up anytime in the next decade?

A7: No

Q8: Is it long freakin’ about time that oil companies are being investigated for what they know and haven’t done about climate change?

A8: Yes

Q9: And it’s a great day now that President Obama is killing the Keystone XL pipeline?

A9: Yes

Q10: Even though it’s been five days, I’m not over the Mets’ loss to Kansas City, am I?

A10: No

1. It’s Wednesday, November 4, 2015.

2. It was 75 degrees and gorgeous here yesterday. When did suburban New York become San Diego?

3. Yesterday was Election Day. Today, the winners recover from overcelebrating, the losers lick their wounds, and life goes on.

I’m unhappy with the results where I live. A Democratic incumbent, who twice ran unopposed before this year, lost in a campaign of ugly charges and countercharges.

I sensed his desperation the night before when, in an official town e-mail that announces what’s going on in the new month, he announced there would be no property tax increase next year. That’s kind of weird to see in a newsletter that normally tells about leaf collection schedules and the pre-Thanksgiving parade.

In this town, the population is aging. There’s little patience for higher taxes that come from families with fixed incomes. They don’t like it when the school district builds new things that their kids — grown and gone away — can’t use. They don’t like it when they see strange surnames and different face shades that are nothing like the old ones. And they’re frightened by what they see in the next town over, where they sense that Hasidic Jews have conspired to change the nature of the community and gut the public schools, and don’t want anything like that happening here.

In elections, people either vote their hopes or vote their fears. Usually, voting hope feels better – that is why Barack Obama is President. But sometimes fear gets the upper hand. If you think the things you value in life are at risk, there’s a good chance you’re going to vote fear.

That’s what happened here yesterday. As much as I dislike it, I have to accept it, because this is a democracy. But the idea of leaving the house we’ve lived in for 22 years and going to a more welcoming place is more palatable today than it has ever been. Because life is no fun being around fearful people.

For my side, for the Democrats, the dilemma posed yesterday is daunting: How do you get people to see a brighter future instead of a scary present?

On that is what the 2016 Presidential election will turn.

1. It’s Tuesday, November 3, 2015

2. Vote! (if it’s Election Day where you are) If you don’t, you get the government you deserve.

3. I’m trying to remember what people argued about ten years ago, before there was Twitter.

Today, of course, they’re arguing about Twitter itself. But not about whether it’s a reliable source of information, or whether people spend too much time on it.

They’re arguing about the change from clicking on a star to say a tweet is a favorite to clicking on a heart to say you like a tweet.

By switching from “Favorite” to “Like,” Twitter is using the same nomenclature as Facebook. But Facebook uses the thumbs-up icon to indicate you like something (I’m still waiting for that “Unlike” icon for people who can’t stand someone’s goofy picture of a dog).

Some people are bothered by the change in terminology. Some people are bothered by the change in icon – so much so that Lucky Charms is trending on Twitter because both stars and hearts are the shapes of marshmallows in the cereal, indicating that half-moons might be next.

Anyway, the fact that I’ve wasted all these electrons on this subject indicates why it’s a topic for discussion. Twitter has changed our world in its nearly 10 years of existence, and maybe not always in ways that make the world a more enlightened place.

4. The Times’ lead story underscores what a freakin’ mess Syria is.

It points out that a coalition the U.S. backs to battle the Islamic State hardly exists in reality. In facts, the Kurds who are supposedly part of the coalition look down at the Arabs who are supposedly part of it. There’s no unity of purpose, no coordination and suspicion galore.

When critics suggest the U.S. needs to take a more forceful position in the region, they need to consider who we’re dealing with here. The only alternative that could override this factionalism is a massive American force. And while that might light Dick Cheney’s fire, the American people are understandably not the least bit interested.