By Matthew E. Milliken MEMwrites.wordpress.com Jan. 27, 2023
I’m going to throw out some political predictions for next year.
• Donald Trump will likely be the Republican nominee for president. If corrupt, whiny Donald Trump wants the job, voters will give it to him. The only viable rival for the position at this moment appears to be Florida’s hard-right governor. Ron DeSantis has more discipline than the former president and would likely be more adept at implementing cruel policies punishing liberals, homosexuals, transsexuals, African-Americans and other opposition, minority and/or marginalized groups. But DeSantis may lack Trump’s personal charisma, and he wouldn’t be the first presidential hopeful whose public image dropped like a stone once voters in places other than his home state got to know him.
Yes, Trump’s candidacy might be derailed by severe illness, death, prosecution or a major scandal. But none of those events are guaranteed, and if Trump feels sufficiently motivated, all potential obstacles save death might be overcome.
• Joe Biden will likely be the Democratic nominee for president. Some people on the left love Joe Biden; others loathe him. I would characterize myself as mildly approving of his actions during his first two year in office. Biden has certainly offered little leadership on Covid-19 beyond straightening out the initial vaccine distribution mess that he inherited from the Trump administration, a choice that has led to thousands of deaths and immense immiseration due to long Covid. There’s certainly room to criticize Biden on immigration — a low-priority issue for many Americans — and on labor. But is Biden 1,000 percent better than any potential Republican opponent? Of that I have no doubt.
By Matthew E. Milliken MEMwrites.wordpress.com June 29, 2022
The House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the Capitol has held six public hearings to date, with more expected in the coming weeks. I have listened to nearly every minute of the live hearings, and it’s been an interesting experience.
Even as the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrectionist riot at the Capitol unfolded, it was clear to nearly every rational, fair-minded person that then-President Donald Trump had deliberately incited a mob to interrupt Congress’s receipt of Electoral College votes — essentially the final step in ratifying Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election. But Trump is an undisciplined man who prefers seat-of-the-pants improvisation. It was hard to be sure to what degree Trump had encouraged supporters to attend that morning’s so-called Stop the Steal rally and then directed them at the Capitol, as opposed to simply capitalizing on a toxic situation set up by others without his advance knowledge.
The House Select Committee hearings have revealed beyond the shadow of a reasonable doubt that all of Trump’s actions between Election Night in November and the day of the riot were part of a coordinated effort. Allies, including Trump’s hand-picked attorney general, Bill Barr, and campaign manager, Bill Stepien, repeatedly told the president that no fraud of a scope significant enough to affect the election’s outcome had been detected, despite multiple investigations.
By Matthew E. Milliken MEMwrites.wordpress.com Jan. 6, 2022
Today marks the first anniversary of the 2021 Capitol insurrection, one of the darkest days in American history. The Capitol riot is the worst attack to have taken place on American soil since the Civil War, despite claiming only five lives and causing a relatively small amount of property damage.
Over the last century and a half, only two attacks on U.S. territory were nearly as grievous to the nation as last year’s riot: The bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack.
The 2001 terror attacks perpetrated by al Qaeda claimed even more lives than the Pearl Harbor bombing, 2,977. Repairing and replacing buildings and infrastructure damaged in Lower Manhattan and at the Pentagon and compensating families and businesses directly affected by the attacks cost more than $77 billion, according to a 2011 tally by CBS News.
By Matthew E. Milliken MEMwrites.wordpress.com July 30, 2021
Although the world is still beset by Covid-19, even in nations where wide swaths of the population have been vaccinated, the publishing world began to produce volumes on the pandemic last year. One of the first to appear, in October, was Apollo’s Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live. Its author, Nicholas A. Christakis, is a physician and sociologist. He has appointments to five different departments in addition to other positions that he holds at Yale University.
Christakis approaches the pandemic like the polymath he is. The book begins with a passage from Homer’s Iliad in which Apollo unleashes a plague that spreads from mules and dogs to the army of Greeks besieging Troy. The text then walks readers through China’s discovery of a cluster of severe acute respiratory syndrome cases in Wuhan. Officials initially attempted to suppress or ignore information on the illness before acknowledging, at the end of December 2019, that they were facing a serious problem.
To their credit, China responded with what Christakis calls “the largest imposition of public health measures in human history,” including the placement of toothpick dispensers in elevators so passengers could push buttons without exchanging germs. By April, the nation seemed to have successfully suppressed the disease:
[T]he enormous reduction in cases once China mobilized to control the epidemic was an astonishing achievement from a public health point of view, even if some of the Chinese numbers were fuzzy.
To be clear, China, and other countries that subsequently implemented their own lockdowns, had not eradicated the virus; it had merely temporarily stopped its spread. When the lockdowns were lifted, the virus would come back.
Lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin looks at the lunar lander during the historic Apollo 11 moonwalk. Aldrin had just deployed the Early Apollo Scientific Experiments Package. In the foreground is the Passive Seismic Experiment Package; beyond it is the Laser Ranging Retro-Reflector (LR-3). The photograph was taken by the mission commander, Neil Armstrong.
By Matthew E. Milliken MEMwrites.wordpress.com July 22, 2021
This week, the Milwaukee Bucks won the National Basketball Association championship. It was the team’s second, having won the title in 1971.
The Bucks swept the Baltimore Bullets — now the Washington Wizards — in a four-game series at the end of April that year. As it happens, the games took place roughly halfway between the third and fourth Apollo moon landings. Apollo 14 touched down on Feb. 5, while Apollo 15 descended to the surface on July 30. The sixth and final successful mission, Apollo 17, would land in December 1972.
When I grew up, Apollo represented humanity’s pinnacle of technological achievement, the most daring exploration in history. It never would have occurred to me that nearly five decades would pass without any further crewed missions to the moon or Mars.
By Matthew E. Milliken MEMwrites.wordpress.com Jan. 22, 2021
Donald Trump departed Washington early on the morning of Wednesday, Jan. 20. In doing so, the disgraced businessman became only the fourth living outgoing president to skip his successor’s inauguration, and the first since Andrew Johnson in 1869.
All four leaders were single-term presidents, but Trump has a notable commonality with Johnson. The 17th president was the first to be impeached, while the 45th was the first to be impeached twice.
It’s safe to say that most of official Washington wasn’t sorry to see Trump go early, and not just because the native New Yorker cum Florida man used lies about the 2020 election to incite rally goers to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6. One police officers was killed by the mob, and four others died, but the rioters came within seconds of getting their hands on Vice President Mike Pence and members of Congress. This coup attempt occurred during a joint session in which the legislature voted to finalize election results in what is usually a little-noticed formality.
By Matthew E. Milliken MEMwrites.wordpress.com Jan. 6, 2021
Let’s start with the facts.
Joseph Robinette Biden won both the popular vote and the electoral college in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. In doing so, he defeated incumbent President Donald John Trump Sr., who sustained his second popular-vote defeat in his only two campaigns for public office.
Violent seditionists stormed the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday afternoon in an attempt to disrupt what would normally be a routine event: Congressional certification of the electoral college results. These seditionists were Trump supporters egged on by the president himself, by Trump allies, and by a right-wing media ecosystem that is designed to spread propaganda.
“[A]fter this, we’re going to walk down there, and I’ll be there with you, we’re going to walk down … to the Capitol and we are going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women,” Trump told a group of supporters in Washington, D.C., in the hours before the Capitol was stormed. “And we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them. Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong.”
— Matt Milliken | masks on for safety | mostly @HOME (@memomoment) November 16, 2020
You’re an idiot, and you’re encouraging behavior that will sicken and kill many people.
— Matt Milliken | masks on for safety | mostly @HOME (@memomoment) November 16, 2020
It takes Covid-19 around 72 hours to kill as many people as died as a result of the Sept. 11 attacks. In the first seven days of November, Covid-19 killed 7,074 Americans — more than Pearl Harbor, Sept. 11 and Hurricane Katrina put together.https://t.co/kGEURrDAsgpic.twitter.com/BpELOiYKL0
— Matt Milliken | masks on for safety | mostly @HOME (@memomoment) November 17, 2020
By Matthew E. Milliken MEMwrites.wordpress.com Nov. 30, 2020
Looks like we’re only 31 days away from the end of this wild plague-ridden year. Here are some tweets to help you reflect on the recent past — namely, Nov. 1 through 15 — and prepare for what may come.
• Election lead-up
House Democrats passed TWO versions of a second Covid-19 relief bill. The Republican-controlled Senate hasn’t been able to pass any version, and Trump’s been against the idea of pandemic relief except for the times he’s for it.
But yeah, sure, go ahead and blame the Democrats.
— Matt Milliken | masks on for safety | mostly @HOME (@memomoment) November 1, 2020
When a major component of your party’s electoral strategy is voter suppression, you’re guaranteed to be on the wrong side of history.
By Matthew E. Milliken MEMwrites.wordpress.com Nov. 9, 2020
It took until Saturday morning, roughly three and a half seemingly endless days after the polls closed, for the numbers to resolve beyond any reasonable doubt. But finally, the election returns showed that Americans had chosen Joe Biden, Democratic former U.S. senator and vice president from Delaware, to be the next president of the United States. When multiple news organizations made the call late Saturday morning, impromptu celebrations broke out across the nation.
The incumbent, Republican Donald Trump, would need to overturn the results in multiple states in order to retain power. So far, no court or group of independent experts feel that the president has identified electoral malfeasance that could have tainted the outcome to any significant degree. That hasn’t stopped Trump and his most ardent defenders from grousing about imaginary fraud.
This tactic that will almost surely fail. If the election hinged on a few hundred votes in a single state, as was the case in Florida in 2000, the threat to American democracy would be much higher. This isn’t the case. The president’s conspiracy theories have faced some — not a lot, but some — pushback from other Republicans, who have begun assessing a future in which their party no longer controls the White House. Some — not all, but some — Fox News television personalities quickly began referring to Biden as the president-elect.
By Matthew E. Milliken MEMwrites.wordpress.com Nov. 3, 2020
At the first presidential debate of the 2016 general election cycle, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate, criticized Republican nominee Donald Trump, a New York real-estate developer, for having generally poor judgment and a lax attitude toward the proliferation and use of nuclear weapons in particular. In one of the campaign’s most memorable statements, Clinton said: “[A] man who can be provoked by a tweet should not have his fingers anywhere near the nuclear codes.”
There are very few things I can credit President Trump for being or doing; I think that if he’s re-elected today, it will be a calamity for the nation. As I tweeted on Friday after casting my ballot, I voted for former Democratic Vice President Joe Biden and his running mate, U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris of California.
While I think that Trump’s foreign policy has been seriously misguided, I do believe that he’s done a few things right in this area. First and foremost is that Trump hasn’t engaged in any major wars or foreign entanglements.
Biden removes his mask as he walks to his podium. Trump came out without a mask.
— Matt Milliken | masks on for safety | mostly @HOME (@memomoment) October 23, 2020
Biden starts: “220,000 Americans dead. … Anyone who’s responsible for that many deaths should not remain as president of the United States of America.” Notes 1,000 deaths per day, about 70,000 new cases per day.
— Matt Milliken | masks on for safety | mostly @HOME (@memomoment) October 23, 2020
Trump trumpets his travel ban on “heavily infected” China. Trump calls Biden’s leadership of the response to H1N1 a total disaster, although he acknowledges that it’s far less lethal than Covid-19.
— Matt Milliken | masks on for safety | mostly @HOME (@memomoment) October 23, 2020
October 2020 was a hectic month even going by the standards of this extraordinary year, so you’ll have to wait for another post to sample my microblogging from the past two weeks. Although, of course, you could always seek out these pearls of wisdom right from the source.
• The first debate
Moderator Chris Wallace tries to reign in President Trump, saying there will be discussion of Covid-19 in the next segment.
Biden notes that Roe vs. Wade is jeopardized. ‘That’s not on the ballot,’ Trump objects.
— Matt Milliken | masks on for safety | mostly @HOME (@memomoment) September 30, 2020
Trump, to Wallace: ‘Well, first of all I guess I’m debating you as well as him.’
Trump highlights his moves to control drug prices. Of insulin, he boasts: ‘It’s so cheap, it’s like water.’
— Matt Milliken | masks on for safety | mostly @HOME (@memomoment) September 30, 2020
Biden: ‘Folks, do you have any idea what this clown is doing?’
Biden refers to a Trump recession, evidently alluding to the Covid-19-ndued slump.
— Matt Milliken | masks on for safety | mostly @HOME (@memomoment) September 30, 2020
This one wondrous sentence, by left-leaning blogger and political science professor Scott Lemieux, communicates the surprising amount of restraint shown by FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Bill Bar.
It really says it all about James Comey that Donald Trump’s hand-picked FBI Director and even his ludicrously unfit and partisan AG have done a better job staying out of the election than that legend in his own mind did.
By Matthew E. Milliken MEMwrites.wordpress.com Oct. 25, 2020
Thursday evening’s presidential debate was a much more civil affair than the previous meeting between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden.
The affair, moderated by NBC News anchor Kristen Welker at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., showcased a Republican incumbent who, despite his habitual scowl, was more collected than the interruption-prone man we saw at the Cleveland Clinic on Sept. 29. The Democratic challenger, Biden, seemed more at ease than he was on that occasion, although not as comfortable as he was during the solo town hall that took place on Oct. 15 in place of what was originally supposed to be a joint town tall with both of the major-party nominees.
By Matthew E. Milliken MEMwrites.wordpress.com Oct. 22, 2020
There’s no longer any novelty in catching Donald Trump in a lie. Still, the exercise is worth conducting, if only to remind ourselves that blatant, repeated mendaciousness once was considered in poor taste by general society and used to be deemed wholly disqualifying among aspirants to high political office.
Let’s take as today’s subject tax returns.
In 2016, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump broke a four-decade-long tradition. For 40 years, every major-party nominee had released at least one year’s tax return, and often more than 10. Trump’s Democratic opponent, former Secretary of State (and prior to that former First Lady) Hillary Clinton, disclosed 15 years’ worth of returns. Trump declined to release any. To this day, Trump has resisted various subpoenas for his tax records, including one issued by the Manhattan district attorney as part of a criminal probe. (Lawyers for the president have twice asked the Supreme Court to overturn unfavorable rulings in that case.)
By Matthew E. Milliken MEMwrites.wordpress.com Oct. 17, 2020
When competing town halls featuring each of the major-party presidential candidates were staged on Thursday evening, I opted to watch neither. However, I later decided to sample the first 25 minutes or so of the two events.
A few things stuck out right away. First, Savannah Guthrie, the NBC news anchor who hosted the town hall with President Donald Trump, opened her hour-long program with some pointed questions for the commander in chief. Guthrie asked why he had declined to condemn white supremacy (he said he had; she said that he hadn’t done so when Chris Wallace invited him to make a declaration during the first presidential debate). Guthrie also asked the president why he had retweeted a baseless conspiracy theory involving Seal Team 6. The president’s attitude quickly turned scrappy.
Former Vice President Joe Biden got no such grilling from George Stephanopoulos, the ABC news anchor who hosted the other town hall. (The event starts an hour into this video.) Instead, audience members began asking the Democrat questions almost immediately, although Stephanopoulos did pose a few follow-up queries as the event wore on.
By Matthew E. Milliken MEMwrites.wordpress.com Sept. 30, 2020
Last night’s debate between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden was a tawdry affair, containing lots of verbal fireworks but shedding relatively little light on the substantive policy differences between the men. The most dispiriting aspect of the event is how unlikely it is to affect the outcome of the election.
Neither candidate seemed particularly sharp. Trump was the more cantankerous of the two, interrupting Biden far more than the other way around. But the Democratic nominee intruded on the president’s speaking time enough that a supposed undecided voter might not necessarily view the former vice president as better mannered. Early on, an exasperated Biden asked, “Will you shut up, man?,” which wasn’t a very high-minded way of pointing out the Republican’s tendency to talk during his opponent’s time.
By Matthew E. Milliken MEMwrites.wordpress.com Aug. 29, 2020
“We want our sons and daughters to know the truth,” President Donald Trump said Thursday night toward the end of a 70-minute-long speech in which he formally accepted the Republican Party nomination. “America is the greatest and most exceptional nation in the history of the world! Our country wasn’t built by cancel culture, speech codes and soul-crushing conformity. We are not a nation of timid spirits. We are a nation of fierce, proud and independent American patriots.”
Trump’s story about America certainly has its appeal. America isn’t just great, he tells his followers; it’s the greatest country in the history of the world! He’s right that the United States is stocked with remarkable individuals and a people who have accomplished tremendous things. But Trump’s complete unwillingness — or is it inability? — to consider possible mistakes makes his tale ring hollow.
By Matthew E. Milliken MEMwrites.wordpress.com March 5, 2020
Joe Biden swept the South on Super Tuesday and did well in the Northeast and Midwest, taking the delegate lead and becoming the Democrats’ clear frontrunner. Bernie Sanders won Colorado, Utah and possibly California and finished a close second to Biden in Texas and other states, positioning him as the party’s most viable alternative to the former vice president.
Elizabeth Warren finished third behind Biden and Sanders in Massachusetts, her home state; her 22 percent share of the vote there was her best showing, leaving her campaign in serious jeopardy. Michael Bloomberg, who spent half a billion-with-a-B dollars, dropped out Wednesday after winning the American Samoa caucus and nothing else. The media mogul and former New York City mayor endorsed Biden.
By Matthew E. Milliken MEMwrites.wordpress.com March 3, 2020
As the rain fell this afternoon, I drove to a nearby elementary school and cast a ballot in North Carolina’s primary election.
I am not a Democrat; back in the spring of 2004, shortly after my move to the Old North State, I registered as an unaffiliated voter. But since I’ve resided in two heavily Democratic counties over the past 16 years, I’ve now voted in eight Democratic primaries. In even-numbered years, there typically aren’t enough candidates for local Republican, Libertarian or nonpartisan — meaning county and school board — offices for there to be a contested primary.
I’ve cast zero Republican or Libertarian ballots and five nonpartisan ones in primary elections; those five were all in odd-numbered Durham city races, which formally eschew political parties.
MEMwrites 
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