• Excerpted from Tom Friedman’s NYT column of March 2022, Xi, Putin and Trump: The Strongmen Follies:

“The last five years have been a master class in comparative politics, because something happened that we’d never seen before at the same time: The world’s three most powerful leaders — Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Donald Trump — each took drastic steps to hold on to power beyond their designated terms of office. One failed. Two succeeded. And therein lies a tale that says so much about our world today.

Trump failed for one very simple reason: American institutions, laws and norms forced him to cede power at the end of his four years — barely — despite both his efforts to discredit the electoral results and his unleashing of supporters to intimidate lawmakers into overturning his loss at the polls.

Putin and Xi fared better — so far. Unencumbered by institutions and democratic norms, they installed new laws to make themselves, effectively, presidents for life.

Pity their nations.

Lord knows democracies have their problems today, but they still have some things autocracies lack — the ability to change course, often by changing leaders, and the ability to publicly examine and debate alternative ideas before embarking on a course of action. Those attributes are particularly valuable in an age of accelerating technological and climate change, when the odds are low that one person in his late 60s — as both Putin and Xi are — will make better and better decisions, more and more alone, as he gets older and older.”

• If you want to know why sane people often object to the Republican agenda, read this:

It’s Rick Scott’s 11 point plan to “Rescue America” (but reads like an authoritarian manifesto).  Some excerpts:

“We will shrink the federal government, reduce the government workforce by 25% in 5 years, sell government buildings and assets, and get rid of the old, slow, closed, top-down, government-run-everything system we have today.”

“Many government agencies should be either moved out of Washington or shuttered entirely. Yesterday’s old government is fundamentally incompatible with the digital era. The permanent ruling class in Washington is bankrupting us with inflation and debt, so they must be removed. For you to have more, Washington must have less.”

“The nuclear family is crucial to civilization, it is God’s design for humanity, and it must be protected and celebrated. To say otherwise is to deny science. The fanatical left seeks to devalue and redefine the traditional family, as they undermine parents and attempt to replace them with government programs. We will not allow Socialism to place the needs of the state ahead of the family.”

“We will secure our border, finish building the wall, and name it after President Donald Trump.”

“Among the things the militant left plan to change or destroy are American history, patriotism, border security, Christianity, the nuclear family, gender, traditional morality, capitalism, fiscal responsibility, opportunity, rugged individualism, the Judeo-Christian ethic, dissent, free speech, color blindness, law enforcement, religious liberty, and private ownership of firearms.”

Wow. This is some truly scary stuff.  Be afraid of these folks.

• Jamelle Bouie has a good opinion piece in the NYT arguing that originalist claims that the founding fathers would support the filibuster, especially those invoking the words of Madison (as did Manchin), are misplaced.

A winter sunset to admire…

• Heather Cox Richardson discusses elements of the proposed Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. It’s worthwhile reading.

• From the January 11 2022 Annals of Internal Medicine. An all too familiar reminder:

• Osita Nwanevu has an excellent opinion essay in the New York Times discussing the unfortunate systemic representational inequities in the United States: Trump Isn’t the Only One to Blame for the Capitol Riot.  An excerpt:

“At no point in his political career — not a single day — has Mr. Trump enjoyed the support of the majority of the country he governed for four years. And whatever else Jan. 6 might have been, it should be understood first and foremost as an expression of disbelief in — or at least a rejection of — that reality. Rather than accepting, in defeat, that much more of their country lay outside their ken than they’d known, his supporters proclaimed themselves victors and threw a deadly and historic tantrum.”

The silos social media and the internet have made possible have enabled the creation and reinforcement of this alternative reality; it’s all too easy to avoid evidence to the contrary.

• Congratulations to everyone at NASA, the CSA, and the ESA on the successful launch of the James Webb Space Telescope.  This is a remarkable achievement that will lead to a better understanding of the fundamental nature of our universe.  Lets hope for no problems on its way to L2 and with the deployment of the mirrors and solar shade.

Merry Christmas! We got you a new telescope.

The James Webb Space Telescope launched today, beginning a one-million-mile journey to see 13.5 billion years into the past. Follow @NASAWebb and join the quest to #UnfoldTheUniverse: https://t.co/TlYpoUHdJu pic.twitter.com/ilwWPuIJun

— NASA (@NASA) December 25, 2021

• Tomas Puyeo does an excellent job discussing the early data on Omicron here. This is, I believe, quite a good assessment given the limited data available to date. Tomas authored the excellent “The Hammer and the Dance” substack post of March 19, 2020 talking about what might happen due to Covid.

His Omicron post is definitely worth a read.

Missing (due to lack of data, I presume) is a discussion of how antivirals like Paxlovid will influence outcomes.  Alas, a full production ramp-up of Paxlovid is unlikely to come before the second half of 2022.  See Scott Gottlieb’s take while being interviewed by Andy Slavitt on his In the Bubble podcast.

• An Associated Press review finds far too little voter fraud to have affected 2020 presidential election results.

An @AP review of every potential case of voter fraud in the six battleground states disputed by former President Donald Trump has found fewer than 475 cases of fraud — a number so small it would have made no difference in the 2020 presidential election. https://t.co/45F8jcUxFB

— The Associated Press (@AP) December 14, 2021