Great moments in politics

It always amazes me when politicians get caught behaving in ways that contradict what they tell others to do. During the pandemic, we have seen multiple occasions where political leaders violated the social distancing and other precautionary features that they were urging on others and going to parties, traveling, etc. Then earlier, remember how Chris Christie, when governor of New Jersey, was enjoying with his family a state beach that the state had ordered closed to the public due to a budget impasse? Surely they must realize that their actions are under a microscope and that they should act more circumspectly?
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Going big on stimulus is a no-lose proposition for Biden and the Democrats

Republicans are fighting to reduce the $1.9 trillion stimulus plan put forward by Joe Biden. I hope the Democrats do not agree. As I see it, there is nothing to lose by going big.

If they go big and the pandemic is curbed and the economy bounces back in a year or two, they will be praised for their actions. If the economy does not recover as much as expected, the stimulus cannot be blamed for being too big and instead it could be argued that it was not big enough. On the other hand, if the stimulus is trimmed back by a lot and the economy does not recover, Biden and tee Democrats will be blamed for going too small.

Republicans are saying that the large stimulus will add to the deficit and ‘overheat’ the economy and cause inflation. But we know that Republican concerns over the deficit are bogus and are always, always, just a way to oppose spending that does not benefit the wealthy. Furthermore both Fed chair Jerome Powell and treasury secretary Janet Yellen (who was Powell’s predecessor as Fed chair) have discounted the danger of inflation and said they have the tools to curb it if it does occur.

So Biden and the Democrats should go big and ignore the ‘sky is falling’ bad faith arguments of the Republicans.

The consequences of the Republican-libertarian point of view

Texas is reeling from a severe winter storm that has resulted in huge swathes of the state being without power and caused 20 deaths so far.

Anger over Texas’s power grid failing in the face of a record winter freeze is mounting, as millions of residents remained shivering, with no assurances that their electricity and heat – out for 36 hours or longer in many homes – would return.
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Between 2 and 3 million customers in Texas still had no power, nearly two full days after historic snowfall and single-digit temperatures created a surge in demand for electricity to warm up homes unaccustomed to such extreme lows, buckling the state’s power grid and causing widespread blackouts. Meanwhile, people’s water pipes are bursting and hours long lines have been wrapping around grocery stores as people search for food.

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The fight for control of the Republican party begins in earnest

It has been a relief to wake up every morning and not be confronted with some idiotic or hateful act from Trump. While his banning from Twitter and Facebook has some problematic aspects that I am planning to address at a future date, there is no question that his inability to make waves on an hourly basis has brought back some level of calm to political discourse.

But Trump is not silent and yesterday he issued a lengthy statement where he blasted Republican senator Mitch McConnell for strongly criticizing him on the senate floor and in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, even though McConnell had acquitted him at the impeachment trial.
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How the planets and moons got their names

I had not given much thought to how planets and moons were named. I just assumed that there was some scientific body that was authorized by the community of scientists to carry out this task. And while that is the case now, with the International Astronomical Union entrusted to do so, in the early days this naming process seems to have been quite ad hoc and a source of much controversy with egos, self-aggrandizement, and nationalist sentiment all playing roles.

Stephen Case, a historian of astronomy, explains how initially the planets in the Solar System got named after Roman gods but as the numbers of planets proliferated, disputes arose about who got the right to name them, with arguments being proffered for prioritizing the discoverers, starting with what we now know as Neptune. French astronomer Urbain Le Verrier, the person usually credited with that discovery, wanted to name it after himself and as part of his campaign, suggested that the planet we know as Uranus and that had been found earlier should be named Herschel after its discoverer, William Herschel. Herschel himself had named it Georgium Sidus after King George III, the king who had recently lost the British colonies in North America and is sometimes referred to as ‘Mad King George’.
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The Da Vinci Code and QAnon

Adam Lewental tries to understand how his parents became fans of the QAnon conspiracy theory and thinks that the best-selling book The Da Vinci Code may offer some clues. (I have not read the book but did see the 2006 film starring Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou and found it so absurd that any inclination that I may have had to read the book was utterly squelched.)

Lewental says that he first read it as a 13-year old and was blown away by it. But he “was shocked to find upon revisiting the book as an adult that it is absolute, unadulterated trash. Just really poor, from top to bottom.” But after explaining why it is so awful in terms of the plot and the quality of the writing, he says the damage done by the book is far more than to the world of literature. He says that its success is based on the fact that it persuades the reader to think that they themselves are able to figure out the clues and connect the dots to reveal a complex plot that is hidden from the unenlightened. This is exactly the mindset of the QAnoners.
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The need to end qualified immunity for police

The reason that police can get away with literally murder is because of a doctrine known as ‘qualified immunity’ that gives wide latitude to police actions taken during the course of their duties. Furthermore, even when they do get sued and fines are levied, the city pays the fines, giving them even more reason to not feel constrained.

Qualified immunity is a judicially created doctrine that shields government officials from being held personally liable for constitutional violations—like the right to be free from excessive police force—for money damages under federal law so long as the officials did not violate “clearly established” law.
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[Q]ualified immunity opponents contend that the Harlow Court got the balance wrong. Justice Sonia Sotomayor—who has called qualified immunity a “one-sided approach” that “transforms the doctrine into an absolute shield for law enforcement officers”—captures the core of that critique in a recent opinion, which Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined. As Sotomayor put it, qualified immunity “sends an alarming signal to law enforcement officers and the public. It tells officers that they can shoot first and think later, and it tells the public that palpably unreasonable conduct will go unpunished.”

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