1. It’s Tuesday, September 5, 2017.

2. It’s the 226th birthday of Anton Diabelli, an Austrian composer who probably would have been forgotten had it not been for the 33 variations of his waltz that Ludwig von Beethoven came up with.

3. In some ways, today is a lot like January 2.

The day after Labor Day seems like the working start of a new year. Vacations are done. The kids are back in school. The town pool closes. The museum’s winter hours kick in.

It’s always a little sad when summer ends. But the world goes on, and I suppose the darker months have their charms. Leaves turn, and apples and pumpkins are pretty OK. Thanksgiving and Christmas are coming into sight. There might finally be a decent movie in a theater.

So it’s not all gloom. It’s just going to take a few days to shake it off.

4. I understand that not very many people got into “Twin Peaks: The Return” on Showtime this summer.

And that might be fortunate for the nation’s productivity. Because those of us who got into it have spent the day and a-half since the final two parts aired trying to figure it all out.

Explaining it only makes things more complicated.

So let me celebrate the most important thing about the show: The idea that some work of entertainment can make its viewers think about life itself and how we look at the world we live in.

You don’t have to agree with it. You don’t have to completely comprehend it. You just have to think a little bit about the vision of the creators, David Lynch and Mark Frost, and admire the craft involved in immersing viewers in this altered reality.

And to understand that the altered reality doesn’t forsake the one we share. It’s a world of real problems, but it’s also a world of real love and caring. Not to mention cherry pie (sorry, I’m not into the coffee fanaticism of the show).

It’s 18 hours long, and it helps to have watched the original 1990-91 series and its 1992 prequel. But it’s a worthwhile investment in art. I feel all the richer for it – if still a little befuddled.

5. Does anybody know what the crisis is that is precipitating Trump and his dolts to push this thing with the Dreamers?

Is there some havoc that these children are wreaking on society? It sounds like most of them are going to school, or working and paying taxes. Some of them serve in the military.

They came into this country, some fairly soon after birth, with their parents. So, no, they didn’t apply for immigrant status.

But they were kids. And, to be fair, this country has seemed perfectly happy for a long time letting their parents do jobs others don’t want – landscape work, field hands, elder care and so on.

That so many of these Dreamer kids have achieved or are on the path to achieving success should, for anyone who believes in this country’s promise, validate those beliefs.

We’re supposed to be a meritocracy, a place where those who work hard can get ahead. That is our national mantra, how we sell ourselves to the rest of the world as the greatest nation on earth.

The people who voted for Trump, who wrap themselves in the American flag and get upset when some quarterback kneels during the National Anthem, betrayed this country profoundly. You have to hand it to Putin that he understood this better than we did ourselves when he did everything he could to rig the 2016 election.

If Trump supporters want to throw these Dreamers out, their place in the annals of American treason is secure. Even Trump seems to have some inkling of that – he’s so afraid to actually do end DACA that he wants to stick Congress with the blame.

Showing, again, that he’s a coward as well as a demagogue.

The majority of people in this country will fight this. Or at least it should. This gets to our moral core.

If we don’t have the guts to stand for what’s right – and give these kids the freedom they deserve – we have given up on what made our country great. Shame on us if we let that happen.

1. It’s Friday, September 1, 2017. Two-thirds of this year is over.

2. It’s the 364th birthday of Johann Pachabel and the 73rd birthday of Archie Bell. Go figure.

3. I donated money to help Houston hurricane victims at globalgiving.org.

It wasn’t much – I’m retired and watching my expenses. But like you and just about everyone else I know, I can’t watch the scenes on TV without feeling the need to do something to help.

Notice I used the word “donated.” That’s because I did it. I put my credit card number into a Web form and got an e-mail thanking me for my contribution.

I hope to do it again – but notice that’s a “to do.” I haven’t made a second donation yet. But if time stopped right now, I’d only have made one donation.

4. This is to point out that Trump and the news media made a big deal about how he was going to donate $1 million of his own money to Harvey relief.

To donate.

Why didn’t he just donate the money – and then say he donated $1 million? Why not just do it and report it after the fact? Why not just do it because, you know, it’s the right thing to do and then tell people what you did in an effort to influence them to help.

Wouldn’t having done it already given people you’re trying to inspire a little more impetus to act?

One of the problems here is that Trump has tried to make a reputation for himself as a philanthropist. But, as David Fahrenthold’s Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting in The Washington Post makes clear, he has rarely put up his own money. His foundation has sometimes made contributions in Trump’s name using money from other people. And sometimes those contributions have benefitted his businesses.

So one reason Trump didn’t say he donated $1 million is that there would have been records – some charitable agency or agencies would have said it or they got $1 million from him.

But if he said he did – and he didn’t – there would be a question as to whether he was just looking for approval without doing anything to deserve it.

The simple answer, of course, is to do it. Then say you did it, and let whoever gets it say, hey, we got some money from the president to help with rescue costs or rebuilding homes or feeding people or any of the other gazillion tasks that need to be done.

This is one of those rare times, as a journalism professor, that past sense seems preferable to present or future. Donated money is available to help. Money to be donated isn’t real yet.

But it also fits another rule of good writing – the active voice is better than the passive one. You donated money – active. Trump is going to donate money – passive.

Let’s see if he puts his money down. For real.

1. It’s Thursday, August 31, 2017.

2. It’s the 20th anniversary of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in an automobile crash in Paris.

3. Quick! Think of a movie about each of the nation’s five largest cities: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Philadelphia.

It’s hard not to think of 100 for New York – I have the “Dog Day Afternoon” DVD on my desk. I just showed “La La Land” to my Mom. There’s the “The Sting” and “The Untouchables” from Chicago and, of course, “Rocky” from Philadelphia.

But Houston’s hard. The first thing that came to my mind was “Local Hero,” an early 80s film that has scenes in Houston but takes place mostly in Scotland.

When I looked it up, there was “Terms of Endearment,” “Apollo 13” and “Rollerball,” which was set in a futuristic Houston but was filmed in Germany.

The point is that Houston, unlike other mega American cities, doesn’t resonate quite the same way as others. It is not glamorous or touristy. No one impresses you when they say they spent a week in Houston – it sounds more like a sentence than a brag.

Because there’s no emotional attachment to Houston, it’s easy to dismiss it. Yeah, it’s a big city – there are 2 million people within its limits, not counting the folks in its suburbs. But it’s not one that inspires awe – in its own state, it pales in recognition to Dallas, Austin and maybe even San Antonio.

4. That’s gonna change. Thanks to an almost unimaginable volume of water.

It’s hard to imagine that Houston won’t be under water for weeks, maybe months. And there will be more misery as the death toll climbs and people tried to rebuild their lives.

So Houston is going to get its reputation, its moment of note. I don’t think it’s the one folks down there – who, as everyone else, love their home – seek.

And while a lot of it is going to be depressingly awful, there is something else that Houston might be known for.

Having a big heart.

It seems as though you can’t go more than 30 seconds on social media without seeing a video of people in the area doing what they can to help those in even more dire need.

I just watched this one on The Washington Post site. How can you help but admire people like these, wading though disgusting brown water – one guy puts his head in it! – to desperately put out a fire when it’s just as easy to let it burn and get everybody out of there.

I never thought much about Houston. It’s not a place I’ve ever wanted to visit or from which I even know anybody. At most, I would want to check off Minute Maid Park as a place I saw a ballgame.

The image of the floodwaters won’t make the city any more appealing. But the image of the people, extending themselves to help their neighbors and friends in a time of need will make me rethink Houstonians.

And if the flooding is cause for despair, I hope the fact that their fellow Americans – from the elitists in Brooklyn to the rancher in Montana – now see them as men and women of character and compassion will ease some of that pain.

If you’re from Houston, you have a lot to be proud of. And the rest of us now know it.

1. It’s Tuesday, August 29, 2017.

2. It’s the 100th birthday of Isabel Sanford, who played Louise Jefferson on “The Jeffersons” and the 25th birthday of New York Mets pitching ace – although, alas, not this season – Noah Syndergaard.

3. I know I said yesterday that giving to local charities might be the best way to help the folks in such dire need in the Houston area.

But when you look at the charities’ Web sites, you can tell that they’re struggling just like everyone else – that makes sense, given the magnitude of the catastrophe.

So I gave money to globalgiving.org. It’s a crowdfunding site founded by two World Bank veterans aimed at directing funds to worthwhile organizations. It has pretty high ratings as far as I can research, and seems to have some semblance of a plan to aid vetted local charities in the area affected by Harvey.

The organization is looking to raise $2 million to help storm victims. It’s about a third of the way there.

I’ll also repeat this from yesterday: Your wanting to make sure the money is spent well is based on the fact that you’re spending it with your heart. That’s why it’s important to feel as though you get it right.

Take the time to research who gets your charity.

4. It is the measure of Trump’s evil that he made a point of pardoning the bag of pus named Joe Arpaio while the nation was focused on a horrific storm.

He says he did it then because he thought ratings would be higher. So he not only wanted to perpetrate this travesty of justice, he wanted you to know it and then have its heinousness play second fiddle to tragedy.

Think about it. It was a moment when the people of this country needed to come together to help those in desperate need. A chance to bring the nation together. A slam-dunk opportunity to show leadership.

And instead, there was a weekend in which 100% of the attention couldn’t be focused on where it should be, because a racist torturer and convicted criminal got the kiss of respectability.

This scum pool – I’m talking about Arpaio now – defied a court ruling that he should stop abusing people. Instead of respecting the rule of law pending appeal, which is what you would imagine a sheriff would do, he flouted it.

What kind of respect does the other scum pool – I’m talking about Trump now – expect? What moral leadership can he offer in crisis without showing respect for the people he’s supposed to lead?

And here’s the problem. There are people in this country who think this is OK.

There are still pundits who believe we should be respectful of Trump voters. They voted because of economic insecurity or some other crap they made up.

The fact is they voted for Trump because they hate people who aren’t them. Simple. They can’t accept that people speak Spanish or Korean in the neighborhood Walmart and challenge their legitimacy.

And that’s how you get the Arpaios of this country. There’s probably more garbage like him out there. But he’s a pretty special class of trash.

1. It’s Monday, August 28, 2017.

2. On this day 12 years ago, Katrina became a Category 5 Hurricane, hours before it would strike land near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.

Folks who live along the Gulf Coast can’t be too crazy about the last week of August.

3. After seeing the images from the Houston area this weekend, it’s hard to think about much else.

Those of us in safe, dry areas can’t imagine the horror playing out along the Texas Gulf Coast. There are places that have recorded more than 33 inches of rain this weekend, with more on the way.

So here are some quick thoughts about this tragedy playing out in Texas.

4. First, there’s a natural tendency to want to help. And the easiest way for someone who’s not in Texas is to send money someplace.

The instinctive reaction is to send money to the American Red Cross. It’s the first name you think of when there’s a disaster. It’s the organization former President Obama linked to in expressing his concern about the crisis.

But as the public interest journalism site ProPublica points out, the American Red Cross has, at best, a checkered history in dealing with relief efforts. Going all the way back to the relief effort following 9/11, there have been questions about how the organization is spending the millions it receives in times of need.

And, because it has a lot to do with your heart, where the money you donate in a crisis goes means a lot to you. You’ve just watched an elderly couple rescued from their home on CNN and you wish there was a way you could personally place those people in a dry Holiday Inn 300 miles away.

But you can’t. So you rely on agencies equipped to help and send your heartfelt donations to them.

If they waste it, as the Red Cross appears to have done in several instances, it makes helping harder. I want to give what I can, but I don’t want it spent on an ad campaign or an executive VP’s 401(k).

So my tendency is to look for established local charities. These are organizations that were helping folks in Houston years before the rain came, and expect to be around when the city emerges from this nightmare.

One list that I will likely work from comes from Texas Monthly magazine’s Web site. It breaks down area charities by such categories as children, the homeless, the hungry and pets.

It’s perhaps the best bet that the money you donate does what you agonizingly want it to do – help these people in what has to be the worst hours of their lives.

5. Second, there are those who believe this is an inappropriate time to talk about the impact of climate change. They are fools.

This is a storm without precedent. As was Katrina in 2005. As was Sandy in 2012. That’s three never-before-seen storms in 12 years, in places where people have been living since the 1600s, just off the top of my head.

Anyone who can’t see that or, worse, sees the virtue of that, as some of the climate change skeptics have, is an idiot. And they need to be ignored.

So two things have to happen here. One is that local and state governments need stronger contingency plans. Houston clearly wasn’t ready for 33 inches of rain. Is Miami? Is New York?

Every city should be upping their worst-case scenarios by 50%. What places should be evacuated? What places are best for shelter? Are the communications systems in place? Are first responders – people whose courage in these situations have been on continuous display all weekend – adequately trained?

But the other thing that has to happen is the work to stop this deterioration of our environment.

Yes, that means abiding by the Paris Agreement. Yes, that means expanding on it.

Yes, that also means continuing the weaning of the world from fossil fuels.

That’s going to hit home very soon. The Houston area includes oil refineries. That means we ain’t getting a lot of gas from there in the next few weeks, and that means prices – which have been remarkably low for about two years – are about to skyrocket.

We’re paying around $2.50 a gallon here. I’ll bet we’re around $3 by Labor Day or soon after.

We can’t do anything about Harvey. We can’t do much about storms coming in the next 10 years. But we must try to prevent even worse storms in the 2030s and beyond.

Climate change is real. That’s what people in Houston are finding out.

6. Third is the government response. In particular, the aid the Congress is going to approve to help in this disaster.

Perversely, this is the moment many in the New York metro area have been waiting for. Texas politicians, hat in hand, begging for aid to rebuild their flooded-out communities.

The same politicians who, just five years ago, turned their backs on the devastation inflicted by Sandy. An aid package for the area barely passed the Congress, with many Texas Republicans tut-tutting the particulars.

Now they need help. A lot more help than we needed. A lot.

And, of course, they’re going to vote for it. They’d be idiots not to. How do you go to your constituents who’ve either lost their homes or seen their livelihoods jeopardized by closed businesses and say you were just trying to keep government off their backs? When these people need to jump whole-heartedly onto the government’s back?

Is this the moment New Yorkers and New Jerseyans return the gesture?

No freakin’ way!

We are better than that. We should approve every penny these people ask for and then ask if it’s enough. We should open our wallets and extend our hands because we know better.

But we should also remind them, continually, of their hypocrisy. We’re helping them because we know what need is, and because we might need it again someday.

Let’s see how many of the 180 House members who voted against helping New York and New Jersey feel the same way about not helping Texas.

7. Finally this:

We’ve spent the better part of 2017 watching Trump and his sycophants malign news organizations. “Fake news” is their cry as they trash the reporting of The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and others.

But in the last few days, while Trump hid at Camp David and tweeted nonsense, reporters from newspapers, TV and radio stations, networks and Web sites went out in the flood waters. They reported on the efforts to save people. They even saved people themselves.

Because that’s their job.

Among its best practitioners, many of whom I’ve worked with, journalism is a way of doing good in the world. By showing the world as it is, and helping to make it better.

The courage and compassion we’ve seen from journalists of all persona this weekend should remind all of us about the nobility of their profession. I was proud to be one, and now I’m proud of the people who do the work – both in the field and in the office.

Ladies and gentlemen, keep plugging.

1. It’s Friday, August 18, 2017.

2. It’s the 83rd birthday of Roberto Clemente. A baseball player so revered for his goodness that things are named for him outside Pittsburgh, where he played, and Puerto Rico, his home.

Roberto Clemente is an antidote for what ails the world this week.

Of course, he was a great player, helping the Pirates win two World Series and batting .300 or better just about every year of his career. He is the standard for playing right field well, even 45 years after his death.

But he used his baseball success to help others. Indeed, he died while trying to make sure that aid he had collected to help victims of a Nicaraguan earthquake got to whom it was intended.

One of baseball’s coveted postseason honors is the Roberto Clemente Award, going to a player whose work off the field benefits communities in need.

In a week that has seen Charlottesville and Barcelona, maybe it helps to remember that this is a world that once saw a Roberto Clemente – and hope that there’s others like him.

3. At this moment, social media and the political world are agog with the departure – not clear if it’s a firing or a resignation, but that’s no big deal – of Steve Bannon from the White House.

Will Bannon turn on Trump and launch brickbats from confines of Breitbart? Will Bannon be a mouthpiece for Trump? Who emerges as the new White House power figure?

And my question: Who cares?

In the past week, Trump has defended racists and Nazis after their actions led to the death of a woman in a terrorist attack.

In the past two weeks, he has put this nation at risk of nuclear war with North Korea.

In the past three months, he has embarrassed this country in his trips overseas, tried mightily to strip millions of their health care and attempted to harass an investigation into whether his campaign colluded with Russia to swing the election his way.

Steve Bannon can spew whatever the hell he wants from Breitbart world headquarters in one of Dante’s circles of hell.

The fact of the matter that this meatball, Trump, remains president. He’s still using the office to enrich himself, still trying to undo any government activity that helps people in need and dividing this nation in ways not seen since the Civil War.

Steve Bannon is out. Great. It’s just too bad he can’t take out the orange trash with him.

Stay focused on Trump and what he’s trying to do to this country. All this White House churn – from Spicer to Scaramucci to Bannon – is a shiny object meant to distract you and everyone else from the real stuff.

1. It’s Thursday, August 17, 2017.

2. It’s the 103rd birthday of Franklin D. Roosevelt Junior, the son of the 32nd President of the United States and Eleanor Roosevelt.

It’s also the 29th anniversary of the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt Junior.

I guess there’s a 1-in-365 chance that this sort of thing happens. It’s still a little weird.

3. Republicans are becoming more and more uncomfortable with their Frankenstinian creation in the White House.

This morning’s tweets lamented the damage being done to our urban landscapes by the idea that monuments to traitors are getting taken down. With that, Trump continues his embrace of creatures who his victory empowered to emerge from under their rocks.

4. Despite all this, impeachment seems highly unlikely.

I know that there are people chanting it and hashtagging it and what have you. But Trump was right the first time – if he shot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue, the idiots who support him and the party officials who have hung on would be unfazed.

And as much as I hate Trump, I don’t think impeachment is a great solution. It might, in fact, make matters worse.

Mike Pence is just about as horrendous a human being as Trump. This is a guy who once wrote a piece that was pro-smoking! This is a guy who looks at “The Handmaid’s Tale” as utopian.

But he’s not going to tweet nonsense at 3 in the morning, so people would be able to sleep through the night again. Thus, he’d put more of a smiling face on the horrid things this administration has tried to do – particularly in matters such as health care and civil rights.

So let’s say the Republicans – who, because of their majorities in the House and Senate, have to be on board for any impeachment to succeed – decide Trump’s longterm impact on the party is to smash it to pieces.

And they think, we can be heroes. Get rid of Trump, and his mid 30s approval ratings, and get Pence, who’s right in line with how we think about the world anyway.

5. If this happens, here is what I want Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to say:

No.

The Republicans cannot get rid of Trump unless they also get rid of Pence.

I mean, let’s face it, there isn’t anyone in the current line of succession that I want to be president. But I’d rather take my chances with President Paul Ryan, the House Speaker being next in line, or even President Orrin Hatch, the president pro tempore of the Senate who’s after Ryan.

If Trump is thrown out of office, it will be a trauma, as loathed as he is. Unless Robert Mueller’s case is even stronger than we think, Trump was duly elected under the existing rules. He received a majority of the electoral college votes, if not the popular vote.

Even people who want Trump dumped would be saddened by it.

OK, maybe just some of them. But enough of them to create a vacuum of leadership that his successor will automatically step into.

That’s true even if that successor is Pence. There will be a tendency for the country to unify somewhat behind him as he steers America through this constitutional crisis.

And that would be unfortunate. Because Pence has been a Trump apologist, sucking up to him to get on the ticket when other Republican politicians shunned the idea.

Pence is on board with all of the horrendous Trump policies. And he has been a staunch defender – even in the past week, when Trump pretty much gave his blessing to Nazis and secessionists.

Pence is complicit with everything Trump has done. He should not get to play the role of hero.

The problem for Republicans is that while as much as a majority of them might get to the point when impeachment is a political expedient, not all of them will. Can you imagine a Neanderthal such as Steve King of Iowa or one of those Texas knuckleheads voting for impeachment when Trump is supporting the same crap they always have?

Impeachment would need Democratic votes.

And that’s why Pelosi says no way – not unless we get Pence along with Trump. A President Pence gets a honeymoon in which he gets to pass some of his godawful legislation. And Democrats shouldn’t live with that.

It’s a tough spot. It’s hard to imagine three and a-half more years of this crap every single day.

And yet, as hard as it is to believe, there are worse things. Mike Pence as president is one of them.

I’m no Paul Ryan fan, but I like our chances of survival better. Without a twofer, it should be no go.

1. It’s Wednesday, August 16, 2017.

2. It’s the 176th anniversary of what is considered the most violent demonstration in the history of the White House (if you don’t count the British burning it in 1814).

On August 16, 1841, President John Tyler vetoed Congress’ effort to re-establish the Bank of the United States, a national bank that Andrew Jackson dismantled years before.

Tyler, who succeeded William Henry Harrison four months earlier, in name belonged to the Whig party, which controlled Congress and passed the bank law. But Tyler was kind of a hard-headed jerk, and he really didn’t give a damn what Congress or anyone else thought.

The Whig politicians reacted by marching with supporters from Capitol Hill to the White House. They stormed the ground, burning Tyler in effigy.

In later years, the Whigs made noises about impeaching Tyler, to no avail. But his independence cost him – neither the Whigs nor the Democrats wanted him as their standard bearer in 1844. In 1861, Tyler voted in a special convention for Virginia’s secession from the Union and he was elected to the Confederate House but died before he could take his seat.

Tyler had been a Democrat before the 1840 election, but joined Harrison – a hero at the Battle of Tippecanoe against the Shawnee tribe – on the Whig ticket. The most famous thing about both men is their campaign slogan, “Tippecanoe and Tyler, Too.”

3. John Tyler might resemble Trump more than any other of Trump’s 43 predecessors – counting Grover Cleveland only once.

He thought that once he became president, he could just run the country. Forget that Congress had other ideas. He managed to piss off both Whigs and Democrats.

But somehow, Tyler staved off impeachment. The Whigs tried, but just couldn’t muster the articles of impeachment needed for a vote in the House.

Republicans are in a different place in 2017.

Unlike the Whigs, who claimed they were double-crossed by Tyler, the Republicans knew what they were getting with Trump. The party leaders backed him once he got the nomination, and were on board with his agenda when he won.

The only reason Obamacare remains on life support is that three Republicans had the integrity to say that what was being done to the American people – ramming through a bill that would take insurance away from millions of them – wasn’t right.

But still, they remain teammates. Democrats can scream all they want – they can’t do anything to Trump.

Even if Robert Mueller finds out that Trump collaborated with the Russians in an attempt to tilt the 2016 election in his favor, Republicans will have to be the ones to see the crime as high enough to warrant action.

So I’m skeptical that, even with yesterday’s sheer debacle of a news conference, even with the condemnation of every politician and other national figure with a shred of decency, even with the outcry on every major TV channel and news organization, that Trump is going anywhere soon.

And even if congressional Republicans have had enough, do you really want Mike Pence in the White House? He’s been complicit with all of this, and all he would do is put a more respectable face on the same crap.

It might give people some sense of relief to type #ImpeachTrump in their Twitter feed. But the reality is that impeachment might not be the solution. It will be just as hard to do that as it was to get rid of Tyler in the 1840s.

Which reminds me that there’s one other thing Tyler and Trump have in common.

They’re both traitors.

1. It’s Tuesday, August 15, 2017

2. It’s the 70th anniversary of the independence of India and Pakistan.

It’s the 48th anniversary of the opening of the Woodstock music festival in Bethel Woods, New York. And it’s Napoleon Bonaparte’s 248th birthday.

3. Admittedly I’m biased. I worked at CNN for nearly 16 years.

But a lot of people I care a great deal about inhabit the halls of its offices in New York, Atlanta, Washington, London and other places.

So I mean it when I say this:

Cowards tweet pictures like the one that went out on Twitter earlier today.

People who aren’t fit to be in the same room with the people who work at CNN tweet pictures like the one that went out on Twitter earlier today.

Lowlifes whose integrity doesn’t register in comparison to the men and women I know and worked with at CNN tweet pictures like the one that went out on Twitter earlier today.

Scum whose sole contribution to the planet is what they flush down a toilet tweet pictures like the one that went out on Twitter earlier today.

And all of that goes double for Nazi-sympathizing retweeters.

The people I worked with at CNN do and did their jobs with integrity, courage, perseverance and adherence to the highest standards of their profession. They did their jobs without fear or favor, without bias and with fairness as their guiding star.

They’ll own up to a mistake. They’ll stand by their work. And they’ll do it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 or 366 days a year, for more than 37 years.

Their record of accomplishment is difficult to top. It certainly hasn’t been approached by the meatball occupying the Oval Office – who seems more accustomed to bankruptcy than success.

I might not work at CNN any more. But I’m proud to have done so.

If you think a miserable hate train is enough to stop the people of CNN, you’re as stupid as you are wrong.

1. It’s Monday, August 14, 2017.

2. It’s the 82nd anniversary of Social Security.

President Franklin Roosevelt signed the legislation that is now the lifeblood for millions of elderly Americans.

One of the tack-on benefits of having stalled the Trump-Ryan-McConnell effort to gut Americans’ health care is that they haven’t had a chance to act on gutting Americans’ Social Security – or Medicare, for that matter.

That’s going to be trickier. It’s not that they don’t want to – Republicans are on a mission to gut the legacies of every Democratic president from FDR to Obama, and especially those two.

But the older white people who are the core of the GOP support rely a great deal on Social Security and Medicare. And until the Republicans, in their usual serpentine way, figure out how to sell seniors on the idea that taking away those programs makes them more secure, it’s something they might avoid for a while.

3. Trump’s Charlottesville comments pissed off anyone with a brain who heard them.

The fact that he couldn’t condemn Nazis or white supremacists or traitors carrying Confederate flags by name. The fact that he thought that there were “many sides” in the wrong.

That’s all been rehashed the past few days, and there’s really little to add. Like Putin, Nazis and white supremacists seemed to be on Trump’s side in his crusade against Hillary Clinton, so they warrant his protection. It shouldn’t come as a surprise.

But I was curious about something in his rambling, insipid remarks.

What prompted him to talk about children playing?

“What is vital now is the swift restoration of law and order, and the protection of innocent lives. No citizen should ever fear for their safety and security in our society,” Trump said.

“And no child should ever be afraid to go outside and play, or be with their parents, and have a good time.”

What does Trump know about going outside and playing?

Can you imagine little Donnie traipsing through the streets of Jamaica in the 1950s? Would daddy Fred, who might have been arrested at a KKK rally before his son was born, let his son out among the unwashed?

Playing stickball with the other kids and crying because one of the bigger kids struck him out? Spending a day in the neighborhood ring-a-levio “jail”?

Can you imagine that any of Trump kids ever wandered off the gaudy estate to meet up with the neighborhood kids? Donnie Junior shooting hoops in a playground?

Does he think that little waifs wander the streets of Charlottesville on a Saturday afternoon, getting ice cream and spending a quarter on one of those devices that look like a car or horse and rocks around for about a minute.

A 32-year-old woman died because somebody rammed a car into her and other counter-protestors. But instead of condemning the people who sparked this, this idiot is talking about kids as if they would be running through sprinklers and flipping baseball cards if she and everyone else weren’t around.

So forget the fact that, in real 21st century America, parents just don’t send their kids outside to play the way they did when I was little. That, for better or worse, most kids interact in organized settings like playgroups or community programs, with the older ones playing video games and connecting on social media.

Perhaps Trump believes making America great again means going back to those times when parents sent their kids outside at 10 a.m. and didn’t expect to see them until dinner, except maybe for lunch.

But if that’s the case, maybe it would behoove Trump to tell his little Nazi buddies and Confederate sympathizers that America would be great if they stayed off the streets so that kids can play. Maybe urge them to crawl back under the rock with their fellow pillbugs.

Because that scum is out on the streets. And that’s not a fit sight for any child.