November 5, 2024: Donald Trump Is Returned to the Presidency

NOTE: While these entries are dated 2022, I decided to backdate the posting dates of events from 2023 onward to the same date in 2022.

November 5, 2024: On his 3rd try, Donald Trump finally gets what he really wants: The Presidential election, winning the popular vote, an actual majority of it, and, thanks to a ruling of the Supreme Court of the United States, immunity from criminal prosecution for the next 4 years.

I had hoped that women would come through and save us. But, as is so often the case, "It's the economy, stupid." Too many women put the price of supermarket eggs over the price of their own "eggs." The Democrats did very little to point out that Trump has a record on the economy, and it was horrible.

The Hispanic men who decided they couldn't vote for a woman? Wait until they discover that the Republicans don't consider them "white."

The young, first-time-voting Arab-Americans who couldn't vote for Harris because she was a part of the Biden Administration that supported Israel over Gaza? Many of them were too young to have paid attention to the news in 2016 and 2017, and don't remember the Muslim ban, and haven't considered that Trump is a lot closer in policy to Netanyahu than Biden is. If they expected me to have sympathy for their people and their plight before, they can forget it now. Because of their votes, or non-votes as the case may be, more Americans will die than Gazans who have already died.

Trump and his Vice Presidential nominee, Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, won 31 States for 312 Electoral Votes. The Democratic Party nominees, Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, won 19 States, plus the District of Columbia, for 229 Electoral Votes.

But that popular vote? Trump got 77.3 million votes, for 49.74 percent. It's his best performance, but, for the 3rd time, he did not get a majority of the popular vote. Harris had 75.0 million, for 48.27 percent. Harris' total was 6.2 million short of Joe Biden's total in 2020. Trump's total was 3.1 million more than 4 years earlier.

The Green Party candidate, Jill Stein, got 861,000, for 0.55 percent, a gain of 452,000 over her 2020 total. The Libertarian candidate, Chase Oliver, got 650,000, for 0.42 percent, a loss of 1.3 million for his party. (In 2016, Stein got 1,457,000, for 1.07 percent; and Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson got 4,489,000, for 3.3 percent. This was enough to cost Hillary Clinton some States.)

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., still on the ballot despite dropping out and endorsing Trump, got 756,000, for 0.49 percent. Other candidates got 834,000, for 0.54 percent.

Put it all together, and about 155.1 million people voted, compared to about 158.4 million in the COVID-affected election of 2020. That's about 3.3 million people who voted last time, but not this time. Where did they go? Why haven't we heard from them?

Something isn't right here. Above and beyond the result. If anything, population growth, alone, should have given both Parties more votes than they got in 2020. It's happened many times before, including a few times where the nominee of the party finishing 2nd got more votes than any previous winning nominee.

Where was this "record turnout" we kept hearing about, all year long? Where are all these "newly registered voters" we kept hearing about? Where are all these "people who've never voted for a Democrat before"?

Where were all these millions of young women that Taylor Swift supposedly registered to vote at her concerts? Did they decide that their false perception that the economy was bad -- or their equally false perception of their white privilege being enough to overcome their status as women, and thus as second-class citizens in a Trump society -- was more important than any of the many reasons not to vote for Trump? Did they betray their beloved Tay-Tay, who was very open about her feelings about Trump, and her endorsement of Harris?

Maybe a lot of them went to Trump. If he did get them, it wasn't a big chunk of them, which might well have been too suspicious.

Did they register, or maintain their registration, and simply not vote, because they didn't like either candidate? If that was the case, they should have sucked it up and voted for Harris, anyway, because she's not a Fascist, a rapist, a felon, and an idiot, who sent terrorists to try to sabotage the last election, while Trump is all five of those.

Harris conceded at 4:22 PM the next day. In a speech lasting 12 minutes, outside Frederick Douglass Hall at her Alma Mater, Howard University in Washington, she told her supporters to accept the result, but to not give up the fight.

In the Congressional elections, the Democrats gained 2 seats in the House of Representatives, not quite enough to take control. The Republicans gained a net 3 seats in the Senate, to take control. Trump now controls all 3 branches of the federal government.

Three Democratic incumbents fell: Jon Tester lost to Tim Sheehy in Montana, Sherrod Brown lost to Bernie Moreno in Ohio, and Bob Casey Jr. lost to David McCormick in Pennsylvania. The Democrats got a little good news in the Senate, as promoted from the House were Adam Schiff of California, Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware, Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Andy Kim of New Jersey. Blunt Rochester and Angela Alsobrooks of adjoining Maryland, defeating former Governor Larry Hogan, gave the Senate 2 black women for the 1st time.

Small gains for the Democrats aside, Trump and his fans got what they wanted. They own it all now. Whatever happens over the next four years, it is all on them.

They have bet their lives, and they have bet everybody else's lives, on Trump having a successful second term. Even though his first term was, by any rational measure, a complete disaster. The day he left office the first time, the country's economy was in tatters, it was causing the inflation you blamed on Joe Biden. Over 1 million people died from COVID, when he could have saved the vast majority of those had he taken it seriously. The crime problem had gotten worse. And he hadn't come close to solving the border problem you care so damned much about.

They decided that his first term, his various failures, his various crimes including impeachable offenses, his various bigotries, and the other evidence of his low character don't matter. They also decided that, whatever virtues Harris has, they don't matter, either. Whatever I might think of such an attitude, it is their right.

But he is now 78 years old, older than Biden was when he was elected, and he is morbidly obese. And even though that they also know that, if, for whatever reason, he can't complete this term, the Presidency will fall to J.D. Vance. I'm sure that not one of them was undecided, heard that Vance was the choice, and chose Trump on that basis. They're so ignorant that, aside from those actually from Ohio, most of them had probably never even heard of Vance before that.

But it's all on him Trump, and it's all on his voters. Whatever happens over the next four years, it's because they chose this guy.

If it works out in their favor, they are well within their rights to gloat.

If it doesn't -- if Trump crashes the economy a second time, if crime gets worse, if the immigration problem is not fixed, if there is a foreign-policy disaster, if there is another pandemic -- I am well within my rights to tell you that I told them so.

Given history, we know that a President needs to avoid a "Depression," a "Vietnam," a "Watergate," an "Iran Hostage Crisis," and a "COVID." Trump already had a "Depression," a "Watergate," and introduced "a COVID" into the discussion, all in his first term. Now, he has to avoid all of them in his second term. He could, if he had learned things.

Donald Trump is not the kind of person who learns things. Did you choose him?

Whatever happens, as was said in the first Joker film, you get what you fucking deserve.

Right before the election, the YouTube series Epic Rap Battles of History featured "Epic" Lloyd Ahlquist playing Trump, and actress Kimberly Michelle Vaughn playing Harris.

As they usually do with the winner of the Presidential election, Time magazine named Trump its Person of the Year for 2024, as they had for 2016. They had named Swift Person of the Year for 2023, largely for her voter registration efforts. If those efforts had been successful, she would have been a legitimate candidate for Person of the Year, although it still should have been Harris. But Trump's win makes her selection for 2023 look dubious.

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November 5, 2024 was a Tuesday. Baseball season was over. Football was in midweek. The NBA purposely scheduled no games for the day, to promote voting. There were 11 games in the NHL:

* The New York Islanders beat the Pittsburgh Penguins, 4-3 in a shootout at the UBS Arena in Elmont, Long Island, New York.

* The Calgary Flames beat the Montreal Canadiens, 3-2 in overtime at the Bell Centre in Montreal. Matthew Coronato scored the winning goal, just 7 seconds into overtime.

* The Carolina Hurricanes beat the Philadelphia Flyers, 6-4 at the Lenovo Center in Raleigh, North Carolina.

* In an "Original Six" matchup, the Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Boston Bruins, 4-0 at the Scotiabank Arena in Toronto.

* The Buffalo Sabres beat the Ottawa Senators, 5-1 at the KeyBank Center in Buffalo.

* The Los Angeles Kings beat the Minnesota Wild, 5-1 at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minnesota.

* The St. Louis Blues beat the Tampa Bay Lightning, 3-2 at the Enterprise Center in St. Louis.

* The Winnipeg Jets beat the Utah Hockey Club, 3-0 at the Canada Life Centre in Winnipeg.

* The Colorado Avalanche, 6-4 at the Ball Arena in Denver.

* The Vancouver Canucks beat the Anaheim Ducks, 5-1 at the Honda Center in Anaheim.

* And the San Jose Sharks beat the Columbus Blue Jackets, 2-1 in overtime a the SAP Center in San Jose. Alexander Wenberg scored the winning goal, 1:49 into overtime.

November 3, 2020: Joe Biden Is Elected President

November 3, 2020: On that day, in my usual blog, Uncle Mike's Musings, I wrote, "This may turn out to be the most important day in American history. Vote like the whole world depends on it. Because it might."

Joe Biden was elected the 46th President of the United States, defeating Donald Trump. It wasn't called for 4 days, because several key States were close. It wasn't certified by Congress until January 7, 2021. It was supposed to happen the day before, but this was one of the few times that it was ever in doubt. And there was an unprecedented attempt to prevent it. That attempt failed. It was finally made official on January 20, Inauguration Day, when Biden was sworn in as President.

Biden won 81,268,924 votes, to Trump's 74,216,154. Biden won 51.3 percent of the popular vote, to Trump's 46.9, and 1.8 for scattered other candidates. Each major-party candidate won 25 States, with Biden also winning the District of Columbia and 1 Electoral Vote in Nebraska; while Trump also won 1 Electoral Vote in Maine. (Maine and Nebraska allow their Congressional Districts to vote separately from the State as a whole.) Biden won 306 Electoral Votes, to Trump's 232.

Biden won nearly all the close States: Arizona by 10,457 votes, Georgia by 11,779, Wisconsin by 20,682, Nevada by 33,596, New Hampshire by 59,277, and Pennsylvania by 80,555. However, if Trump had won all of those States except Pennsylvania, with its 20 Electoral Votes, Biden still would have won.

Trump won the white vote, 58 percent to 41; but lost the black vote, 87-12; lost the Latino vote, 65-33; and lost the Asian vote, 63-36. He won Protestants, 60-39; but lost Catholics, 52-47, despite his opposition to abortion; lost Jews, 76-22; and lost people who professed no religion, 65-31. He lost gay people, 67-30; and straight people, 50-48.

Voting by age was interesting. People old enough to remember the police bashing antiwar demonstrators in the 1960s and 1970s, and old enough to need Social Security and Medicare, would seem to lean Democratic. But many people get more conservative as they get older, and prefer to see police beating up protestors.

So Trump won people age 65 and up, born 1955 or earlier, by 52-47; and people 50-64, born between 1956 and 1970, by the same margin. These were people for whom the defining Republican President was Ronald Reagan. Trump lost people 40-49, born between 1971 and 1980, by 54-44; 30-39, born between 1981 and 1990, by 51-46; and 25-29, born between 1991 and 1995, by 54-43. These were people for whom the defining Republican President was the failed George W. Bush.

Trump lost people 18-24, born between 1996 and 2002, for whom he was the defining Republican President, the only Republican to be in charge of the economy since they were first eligible to go to work, by 65-31.

Kamala Harris became the 1st female, the 1st African-American, and the 1st Asian-American to be elected, and later the 1st of each of those to serve, as Vice President of the United States. The Democrats kept control of the U.S. House of Representatives, and gained a 50-50 split in the U.S. Senate, which becomes a 51-50 majority in the Democrats' favor -- except that 2 Democratic Senators, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kirsten Sinema of Arizona, have often stood in President Biden's way when it came to his agenda.

Among the new Senators elected were Democrats John Hickenlooper of Colorado, and Georgia's Raphael Warnock (the pastor at Martin Luther King's church in Atlanta) and Jon Ossoff; and Republican Tommy Tuberville of Alabama.

Tuberville beat Democrat Doug Jones, a civil rights lawyer. Tuberville had been the head football coach at the University of Mississippi, and then at Auburn University. I had figured that he had no chance, because Auburn fans would vote against him because he was a lousy coach, and University of Alabama fans would vote against him because he'd coached Auburn. But Tuberville appealed to religion, guns, and white supremacy, and won.

In the end, Biden didn't win because 250,000 Americans had died from COVID-19 -- a total since quadrupled, though Biden's efforts have held it down to less than it would have been if Trump had stayed in office. He won due to the get-out-the-vote effort in the key States, whose apparatus was already in place before COVID.

Biden won because he was the opposite of Trump. Because, while Trump appealed to bigotry and anger, Biden appealed to what Abraham Lincoln called "the better angels of our nature." Because he wanted to bring America healing, which is what America wanted. Because he spoke to "the soul of America." As he, a Catholic, is a student of St. Francis of Assisi, who is believed to have said:

Where there is hatred, let me sow love.

Where there is injury, pardon.

Where there is discord, union.

Where there is doubt, faith.

Where there is despair, hope.

Where there is darkness, light.

And where there is sadness, joy.

In contrast, as a man named Anthony Citrano wrote of Trump, 2 months before the election, "It's almost impossible to believe he exists. It's as if we took everything that was bad about America, scraped it up off the floor, wrapped it all up in an old hot dog skin, and then taught it to make noises with its face."

Conservatism, still led by Trump, is a darkness. Liberalism, currently led by Biden, is a light. And, for now, America wants light.

The editors of Time magazine usually name the winner of the Presidential election as their Person of the Year. For 2020, they named both Biden and Harris.

Having only James Buchanan before him, Biden is easily the greatest President born in Pennsylvania. He is the only one with a connection to Delaware.

Due to his long political career, actors have played Biden since well before he became President. In 2016, Greg Kinnear -- who has also played the only other Catholic to become President, John F. Kennedy -- played Biden in Confirmation, about the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill conflict. On Saturday Night Live, he has been played by Kevin Nealon in 1991, as the Thomas-Hill conflict was ongoing; Jason Sudeikis from 2007 to 2017, Woody Harrelson in 2019, John Mulaney in 2020, Jim Carrey in 2020, Alex Moffat in 2021; and, in the 2021-22 season, James Austin Johnson has played both Biden and Trump.

Shortly before the election, an episode of the YouTube series Epic Rap Battles of History featured "Nice" Peter Shukoff playing Biden, and "Epic" Lloyd Ahlquist playing Trump.

UPDATE: On September 6, 2025, Biden announced that his Presidential Library would be built in his home State of Delaware, although he got no more specific than that. The State's largest city, Wilmington, has offered the Daniel L. Herrmann Courthouse as a potential location. From 1916 to 2002, it served as Wilmington City Hall, and New Castle County's Administration Building and Courthouse. It is currently used as offices by a law firm.

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November 3, 2020, like all modern American Election Days, was a Tuesday. The baseball season had ended. Football was in midweek. And, due to COVID pushing things back, both the NBA and the NHL were still closer to the finish of their 2019-20 seasons than they were to the start of their 2020-21 seasons. So there were no scores on that historic day.

October 27, 2024: Donald Trump's Fascist Rally at Madison Square Garden

NOTE: While these entries are dated 2022, I decided to backdate the posting dates of events from 2023 onward to the same date in 2022.

October 27, 2024: Donald Trump, running for President so he can carry out his vendetta against America -- and so he can stay out of prison -- held a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

New York City, where he was born, was given a fortune, and lost it. Where he built ugly buildings, and got fined by the federal government for racist hiring practices. Where he got 18 percent of the vote in 2016 (56 percent in majority-white Staten Island, 22 percent in his home Borough of Queens, 17 percent in Brooklyn, and 9 percent each in Manhattan and The Bronx), and where he got 22 percent in 2020 (57 in Staten Island, 27 in Queens, 22 in Brooklyn, 16 in The Bronx, and 12 in Manhattan). Where he got 36 percent of the Statewide vote in 2016, and 37 percent in 2020.

New York, the City that knows him the best, and hates him the most. That is not a coincidence.

Donald Trump, owned by Russia, turning Madison Square Garden into Red Square Garden. And bringing back memories of the pro-Nazi German-American Bund rally in 1939, 17 blocks uptown at the previous building with the Garden name.

He was supposed to take the stage at 5:00. He did so at 7:11. The bum was 2 hours and 11 minutes late. In between, he made his idiot fans watch Melania, Beavis and Butt-head (his sons, Eric and Donald Jr.), Speaker Mike Johnson, Rudy Giuliani, Stephen Miller, Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, Tony Hinchcliffe, Hulk Hogan, Vivek Ramaswamy, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Dr. Phil McGraw, Dana White, and, for all I know, Mike "My Pillow" Lindell.

At the time, I wrote, "And now, he'll talk for who knows how long, slurring his words, lying with every sentence, to people too damned stupid to know it's lies. I hope James Dolan thoroughly fumigates the place tonight."

David Rothkopf summarized the rally in this article for The Daily Beast:

To all those Republicans who shed crocodile tears because their feelings were so hurt that people were calling Donald Trump a fascist: Stop.

To all the MAGA defenders who said it was over-the-top to compare Trump's Madison Square Garden rally to that held by the German-American Bund in an earlier incarnation of Madison Square Garden: Shush.

To all those who were falling once again for the bought and paid for narrative that Trump somehow had the momentum going into the final week of campaign 2024: Nope.

On Sunday at MSG, Donald Trump engineered what will be seen by political analysts and later by historians as the coup de grâce that killed forever his prospects of being President, and may well have set him on a post-election course on which he finally may be held accountable for his actions.

The interminable rally concluded by an interminable, disjointed, incoherent and yet clearly vile speech by the former president, might have been touted by Trump's son Don Jr., one of the former President's warm-up acts, as the "king of New York returning to reclaim his crown." But Trump was never the king of New York. (Sorry, Lara, your father-in-law did not "build" New York. Immigrants did. But we’ll get to that in a minute.)

Trump has always been loathed in New York City, especially in his former home borough of Manhattan where the vote against him was and will be dependably over 80 percent. But if he was hated before, rest assured, he will be more despised after tonight.

That was clear early on when Tony Hinchcliffe, a man invited by Trump to give one of the introductory speeches -- who, in true MAGA fashion, alleged without providing a shred of evidence that he was a comedian -- offered a KKK buffet of nauseating slurs. He called Puerto Rico "an island of floating garbage."

But this loser did not stop there. He offered unfunny commentary about his view that Latinos "love making babies," and a reference to how his Black friends liked carving watermelons. (Edit: He also made bigoted comments about Jews. What year did the man Rothkopf correctly called "this loser" think this was, 1924?)

You might think that a few super-racist comments from one speaker might not warrant comments that compared the Trump rally to the Nazi meeting 85 years ago. But his comments were hardly the worst. And the racism and the hate and incitement to violence and the promise of an increasingly authoritarian state continued from the very beginning of the event to the very end.

One speaker said that Harris was managed by "pimp handlers," and said of Democrats that "we need to slaughter these other people." (Edit: That speaker was Grant Cardone, a real estate investor.) Disgraced and destitute former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said, as did several others, that Democrats were behind attempts to kill Donald Trump. Another speaker called Harris "the devil" and "the antichrist." (Edit: That speaker was David Rem, an old friend of Trump's who ran against Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in The Bronx, and lost badly.)

Former Trump aide Stephen Miller as is his habit went directly for the Nazi playbook, saying, "America is for Americans, and Americans only." Tucker Carlson came out to offer more racist slurs about Harris. Hulk Hogan ripped his shirt off while declaring he saw no Nazis in the audience (thus proving that steroids abuse can not only shrivel up your junk but that it’s not really good for your eyesight either).

Elon Musk was there, acting strangely and promising to slash the size of the government (except presumably the parts that are subsidizing his businesses).

As an aside, it is worth noting the irony of Musk appearing at a rally condemning illegal immigration when recent revelations seem to confirm that he himself was an illegal immigrant. That's not just hypocrisy. If he lied about any aspect of his citizenship status or journey when filling out the forms required to get the Top Secret clearance that this phone pal of Vladimir Putin has, it's a felony, and could not only cause his clearances to be revoked it could be bad news for his businesses and frankly his ability to stay in the United States. No wonder he is all in for the only "politician" in America who would pardon his crimes in a heartbeat.

Trump attacked the media, and egged the crowd on to boo journalists in the crowd. He said migrants had taken over Times Square (which is 9 blocks uptown from where the rally was held). He called the U.S. an occupied country which, while bad, may be better than his reference to it as a garbage can the other day. He called Harris a "low IQ individual." He offered so many lies that cable networks tuned him out because it was impossible to keep up with fact-checking him. He returned to old themes like the bizarre notion that Harris would reinstate the draft and start World War III.

Most importantly from the perspective of confirming his fascism he reiterated at length his assertion that his opponents were "enemies of the people." (You know, the ones against whom he promised to unleash the U.S. military.) He called them "the most sinister and corrupt forces on earth."...

From a political perspective, the strategy is pure suicide. The rally will almost certainly alienate more voters who might have voted for Trump, and it is hard to imagine it has earned him one single new vote. (Unless there is a Franz Liebkind somewhere who has been too busy writing "Springtime for Hitler" to have paid attention to the campaign until now.) It was a play to the base when the biggest problem Trump has in this election is breaking through his rock solid ceiling of around 47 percent of the electorate...

Trump may be thinking the rally will help him mobilize thugs to violence when he contests his loss and we should be wary of that. But he has provided on the eve of the election the best case why he must be defeated that has ever been presented. In the end, because what unfolded was so foul and so offensive and threatening to so many of us, I believe that is why we will someday conclude that for all intents and purposes Trump's final political act occurred on the biggest stage in America’s biggest city, a couple of blocks from Broadway.

It later got out that one of Hinchcliffe's "jokes" was supposedly removed by somebody working for Trump. What that means is, this as-yet-unknown somebody decided that everything else in his speech was fit for public consumption.

Two nights later, Harris spoke before 75,000 people on the Ellipse, between the White House and the Washington Monument in Washington. Her podium was at the exact same spot as the one Trump used to launch his insurrection on January 6, 2021.

An exorcism? Maybe she should have done one at The Garden.

On November 5, enough people showed up at the polls, and enough others stayed home, to render the predictions made by me, by David Rothkopf, and by many others wrong. Trump got back in, and his policies became more Fascist than ever.

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October 27, 2024 was a Sunday. It was an off-day in the World Series. These NFL games were played:

* The New York Jets lost to their arch-rivals, the New England Patriots, 25-22 at Gillette Stadium in the Boston suburb of Foxborough, Massachusetts. Rhamondre Stevenson scored on a 1-yard run with 22 seconds left.

* The Washington Redskins beat the Chicago Bears, 18-15 at Northwest Stadium in the Washington suburb of Landover, Maryland.

* The Green Bay Packers beat the Jacksonville Jaguars, 30-27 at EverBank Stadium in Jacksonville.

* The Atlanta Falcons beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 31-26 at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa.

* The Arizona Cardinals beat the Miami Dolphins, 28-27 at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida. Chad Ryland kicked a 34-yard field goal on the last play of the game.

* The Houston Texans beat the Indianapolis Colts, 23-20 at NRG Stadium (as Reliant Stadium was then known) in Houston.

* The Cleveland Browns beat the Baltimore Ravens, the franchise that used to be the Browns, 29-24 at Huntington Bank Field in Cleveland.

* The Philadelphia Eagles beat the Cincinnati Bengals, 37-17 at Paycor Stadium in Cincinnati.

* The Detroit Lions beat the Tennessee Titans, 52-14 at Ford Field in Detroit.

* The Denver Broncos beat the Carolina Panthers, 28-14 at Empower Field at Mile High in Denver.

* The Kansas City Chiefs beat their arch-rivals, the Las Vegas Raiders, 27-20 at Allegiant Stadium in the Las Vegas suburb of Paradise, Nevada.

* The Los Angeles Chargers beat the New Orleans Saints, 26-8 at at SoFi Stadium outside Los Angeles in Inglewood, California.

* The San Francisco 49ers beat the Dallas Cowboys, 30-24 at Levi's Stadium in the San Francisco suburb of Santa Clara, California.

* The Buffalo Bills beat the Seattle Seahawks, 31-10 at Lumen Field in Seattle.

* The preceding Thursday night, the Los Angeles Rams beat the Minnesota Vikings, 30-20 at SoFi Stadium.

* And the next night, on ESPN Monday Night Football, the Pittsburg Steelers beat the New York Giants, 26-18 at Acrisure Stadium in Pittsburgh.

There were 5 games in the NBA:

* The Brooklyn Nets beat the Milwaukee Bucks, 115-102 at the Barclays Center.

* The Philadelphia 76ers beat the Atlanta Pacers, 118-114 at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. Tyrese Maxey scored 45 points.

* The Oklahoma City Thunder beat the Atlanta Hawks, 128-104 at the Paycom Center in Oklahoma City. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored 35 points.

* The Los Angeles Clippers beat the Golden State Warriors, 112-104 at the Chase Center in San Francisco.

* And the Portland Trail Blazers beat the New Orleans Pelicans, 125-103 at the Moda Center in Portland.

And there were 4 games in the NHL:

* The New Jersey Devils beat the Anaheim Ducks, 6-2 at the Prudential Center in Newark. Stefan Noesen scored 2 goals.

* The Montreal Canadiens beat the Philadelphia Flyers, 4-3 at the Wells Fargo Center (now the Xfinity Mobile Arena) in Philadelphia.

* The Edmonton Oilers beat the Detroit Red Wings, 3-2 at the Little Caesars Arena in Detroit. Leon Draisaitl scored the winning goal, just 18 seconds into overtime.

* And the Colorado Avalanche beat the Ottawa Senators, 5-4 at the Ball Arena in Denver.

January 20, 2021: Joe Biden Is Inaugurated as President

January 20, 2021: Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. is inaugurated as the 46th President of United States, ending the 4-year tyranny of Donald Trump.

There really was some question as to whether Trump and his family would refuse to accept the Inauguration, and have to be escorted out of the White House by the Secret Service at 12:01 PM. They eliminated that possibility by getting out of Washington early. Trump became the 1st outgoing President since 1869, and only the 5th overall, to refuse to welcome his successor to the White House, ride with him to the ceremony, and then attend the President-elect's Inauguration.

The others:

* 1801: Despite their former, and eventually restored, friendship, John Adams left town before Thomas Jefferson could be sworn in.

* 1829: John Quincy Adams followed his father's example, and left town before Andrew Jackson could be sworn in.

* 1841: Martin Van Buren refused to welcome William Henry Harrison.

* 1869: Andrew Johnson refused to welcome Ulysses S. Grant.

This, of course, does not count Presidents who didn't attend their successors' swearing-in because they died in office: Harrison for John Tyler in 1841, Zachary Taylor for Millard Fillmore in 1850, Abraham Lincoln for Johnson in 1865, James Garfield for Chester Arthur in 1881, William McKinley for Theodore Roosevelt in 1901, Warren Harding for Calvin Coolidge in 1923, Franklin Roosevelt for Harry Truman in 1945, and John F. Kennedy for Lyndon Johnson in 1963.

Nor does it count Richard Nixon for Gerald Ford upon his resignation in 1974. Gerald and Betty Ford did escort Richard and Pat Nixon to the waiting helicopter before Gerald's swearing-in.

Outgoing Vice President Mike Pence did attend the ceremony. So did former Presidents Barack Obama (Democratic, to whom Biden had been Vice President), George W. Bush (Republican), and Bill Clinton (Democratic). The only former President still living who did not attend was Jimmy Carter (Democratic), who was 96 years old and, given the continued COVID situation and security concerns, thought it best to decline the invitation.

Those "security concerns" were about a possible 2nd attempt by Trump supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol Building, after the insurrection 2 weeks earlier delayed, but did not prevent, the certification of the Electoral Votes that confirmed Biden as President-elect.

Lady Gaga (Stefani Germanotta) sang the National Anthem. Her fellow New Yorker, Jennifer Lopez, sang Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land" and "America the Beautiful." Garth Brooks sang "Amazing Grace." Amanda Gorman, just short of turning 23 years old and looking even younger, recited her poem "The Hill We Climb."

At 11:40 AM, outgoing Senator Kamala Harris of California was sworn in as Vice President, the 1st woman and the 1st nonwhite person to hold the post, by U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor. And at 11:48 -- 12 minutes before the official start of his term -- Biden was sworn into office by the Supreme Court's Chief Justice, John Roberts.

Biden's Inaugural Address lasted 21 minutes, about average. He pledged to "fight as hard for those who did not support me as for those who did."

At the end of the Inaugural Ceremonies, Biden, the 3 former Presidents in attendance, their wives, the new Vice President, and her husband, Douglas Emhoff, were driven across the Potomac River, to Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, to participate in a gesture of unity, a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

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January 20, 2021 was a Wednesday. Baseball was out of season. The NFL was in the middle of its Playoffs. There were 9 games played in the NBA:

* The Brooklyn Nets lost to the Cleveland Cavaliers, 147-135 in double overtime at the Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse (now the Rocket Arena) in Cleveland. Kevin Durant scored 38 points for the Nets, and Kyrie Irving added 37. But Collin Sexton scored 42 for the Cavs, and Cedi Osman 25.

* The Philadelphia 76ers beat their arch-rivals, the Boston Celtics, 117-109 at the Wells Fargo Center (now the Xfinity Mobile Arena) in Philadelphia. Joel Embiid scored 42 points.

* The Atlanta Hawks beat the Detroit Pistons, 123-115 in overtime at the State Farm Arena in Atlanta. Trae Young scored 38 points.

* The Miami Heat beat the Toronto Raptors, 111-102 at the Amalie Arena in Tampa. The Raptors played all their 2020-21 season "home games" there because COVID restrictions prevented the league's only Canada-based team from entering Canada.

* The Phoenix Suns beat the Houston Rockets, 109-103 at the Toyota Center in Houston.

* The Dallas Mavericks beat the Indiana Pacers, 124-112 at the Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.

* The Orlando Magic beat the Minnesota Timberwolves, 97-96 at the Target Center in Minneapolis.

* The Los Angeles Clippers beat the Sacramento Kings, 115-96 at the Staples Center (now the Crypto.com Arena) in Los Angeles. Kawhi Leonard scored 32.

* And the Golden State Warriors beat the San Antonio Spurs, 121-99 at the Chase Center in San Francisco.

There were 5 games played in the NHL:

* The Edmonton Oilers beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 3-1 at the Scotiabank Arena. Under the League's COVID restrictions, all 7 Canada-based teams were placed in the same Division, and all 31 teams played regular season games only within the Division assigned to them for this one season. Oddly, this was the easternmost game played in the NHL that day.

* The San Jose Sharks beat the St. Louis Blues, 2-1 in a shootout at the Enterprise Center in St. Louis.

* The Vegas Golden Knights beat the Arizona Coyotes, 5-2 at the T-Mobile Center in the Las Vegas suburb of Paradise, Nevada. Is this going to become a geographic rivalry? Maybe, but it depends on the Coyotes staying put. I suppose it could still be a rivalry, if the Coyotes move to Salt Lake City or San Diego.

* The Minnesota Twins beat the Anaheim Ducks, 3-2 at the Honda Center in Anaheim.

* And the Vancouver Canucks beat the Montreal Canadiens, 6-5 at the Rogers Arena in Vancouver.

January 19, 2025: The Economy When Joe Biden Left the Presidency

NOTE: While these entries are dated 2022, I decided to backdate the posting dates of events from 2023 onward to the same date in 2022.

January 19, 2025: These were the economic conditions on the last full day in office for President Joe Biden:

* The previous Friday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had closed at 43,487.83. That was an all-time high. (It didn't change on Monday, January 19: Due to the federal Martin Luther King Day holiday, the stock market is closed.) The day he was inaugurated to take over from Donald Trump, it was 30,930.52.

On March 23, 2020, early in the COVID lockdown, it bottomed out at 18,591.93. It could be argued that such a thing might have happened even if the President at the time had done everything right in regard to the pandemic.

* The unemployment rate is 4.1 percent. Biden became the 1st President ever to leave office having created jobs in every full month in office. Trump left it as the 2nd President ever to leave office having a net loss of jobs. The 1st was Herbert Hoover (1929-33). As bad as both George Bushes were (the father, 1989-93; the son, 2001-09), they managed to squeak through with slight gains at the end.

* Inflation, the very thing Trump campaigned on and won in 2024 (along with the allegedly connected fears of immigration and crime), is at 2.9 percent. When Trump left office, it was 1.7 percent -- but that was after COVID had artificially held prices down, because purchasing had gone down. Because of the return to buying in late 2020, and especially in mid-2021 after the last of the COVID restrictions were lifted, It hit 9.0 percent in June 2022, its highest rate in 41 years.

On August 16, 2022, Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, having gotten it through a very closely divided Congress, and it worked. The rise in inflation was only slightly his fault, largely the fault of COVID and Trump's stupid response to it; the drop inflation was all him. But he and Vice President Kamala Harris did a lousy job of showing people that in 2024.

* As for the 2 items most often cited by 2024 voters as being too expensive: The average price of a gallon of gas in the United States is around $3.12; while the average price of a dozen eggs is, oddly, about the same.

Trump's idea to raise tariffs isn't going to lower prices. That usually does the exact opposite: It raises prices. And, in his interview with Time magazine after being named its Person of the Year, the dumb schmuck admitted that he wasn't so great and powerful when it came to prices: "I'd like to bring them down. It's hard to bring things down once they’re up. You know, it's very hard." He spoke like a child. That's because he has the understanding of a child, when it comes to the economy and pretty much anything else.

And I have barely even touched on any other issue: Crime, immigration, the environment, foreign policy, the corruption of Trump and his flunkies, etc.

These are the bases for which Trump's handling of the economy should be measured. Will the media hold him to account if he handles it badly? Or if he handles any other issue badly? They have shown no indication that they will.

But to it's all on him now. He has effective control of all 3 branches of government, and the media. And, for those of you who voted for him, it's also all on you. Whatever happens over the next four years, it's because you chose this guy.

If it works out in your favor, you are well within your rights to gloat.

If it doesn't -- if Trump crashes the economy a second time, if crime gets worse, if the immigration problem is not fixed, if there is a foreign-policy disaster, if there is another pandemic -- I am well within my rights to tell you that I told you so.

Because, in spite of whatever dictatorial ambitions he has, I do have that right.

As for Joe Biden, who, today, says goodbye after spending 50 of the last 54 years in elective office...

Thank you, Mr. President. You, too, Dr. Jill Biden. You, too, Vice President Kamala Harris. You, too, everyone who worked for them. (Except you, Merrick Garland and Robert Mueller, who turned out to be as useful as a one-legged man in a butt-kicking contest.)

Godspeed, folks.

*

January 19, 2025 was a Sunday. In the NFL Playoffs, the NFC saw the Philadelphia Eagles beat the Los Angeles Rams, 28-22 at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia; while the AFC saw the Buffalo Bills beat the Baltimore Ravens, 27-25 at Highmark Stadium in the Buffalo suburb of Orchard Park, New York. Both games were played in snowfall and on slick fields, and both went back and forth before a winner could be established.

The day before, in the AFC, the Kansas City Chiefs beat the Houston Texans, 23-14 at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City; and the Washington Commanders beat the Detroit Lions, 45-31 at Ford Field in Detroit. For the Lions, it was a stunning defeat, following a season that saw them go a franchise-best 15-2, win the NFC North Division, and achieve the Number 1 seed in the NFC Playoffs.

For the team formerly known as the Washington Redskins, it was their 1st advancement to the NFC Championship Game in 33 years. For over 10 years, they had been a great team, reaching 4 Super Bowls and winning 3. For the next 30 years, they had battled mediocrity.

For about 25 years, under the ownership of Dan Snyder, they had become just about irrelevant, and even embarrassing, on the field and in the boardroom, before Snyder sold the team to a group led by Josh Harris, which had also bought the NBA's Philadelphia 76ers and the NHL's New Jersey Devils, in each case with little success, and little reason to believe the renamed Commanders would get any better -- but anything would have been better than Snyder's regime.

Baseball was out of season. There were 7 games in the NBA:

* The Brooklyn Nets lost to the Oklahoma City Thunder, 127-101 at the Paycom Center in Oklahoma City.

* The Denver Nuggets beat the Orlando Magic, 113-100 at the Kia Center in Orlando.

* The Miami Heat beat the San Antonio Spurs, 113-100 at the Kaseya Center in Miami.

* The Milwaukee Bucks beat the Philadelphia 76ers, 123-109 at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee.

* The Los Angeles Clippers beat their arch-rivals, the Los Angeles Lakers, 116-102. This was the 1st time the teams had played each other at the Clippers' new home, the Intuit Dome in Inglewood, California -- a mile south of the Lakers' former home, The Forum.

* The Sacramento Kings beat the Washington Wizards, 123-100 at the Golden 1 Center in Sacramento.

* And the Portland Trail Blazers beat the Chicago Bulls, 113-102 at the Moda Center in Portland.

And there were 3 games in the NHL:

* In an "Original Six" matchup, the New York Rangers lost to the Montreal Canadiens, 5-4 at Madison Square Garden. Patrick Laine scored the winning goal with 1:40 left in overtime.

* The New Jersey Devils lost to the Ottawa Senators, 2-1 at the Prudential Center in Newark.

* And the Dallas Stars beat the Detroit Red Wings, 4-1 at the American Airlines Center in Dallas.