 Dear Weekend Jolter, The Gospel writer takes us directly from the swaddled babe to shepherds, doing as shepherds do, "abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night." Men vigilant while others slept — why should it not have been to them, of all humanity, that good tidings of great joy were first announced? To be come upon by the Angel of the Lord in a glory seen by no man hitherto or hence? To behold the heavenly host offering anthems sweet and prayerful wishes of peace and good will? Sleepers wake! These men were already so. A night like no other, in the first moments of Anno Domini, events were set in motion. Angels rejoiced, then departed. Shepherds, sore afraid, recovered, then conspired, to "now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us." To the stable they came. How could they not have? Luke collapses time: "And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child. And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds." Like the newborn, they were of mean estate — by men's standards. But not to the Creator's. Were not shepherds His preferred agents for Israel's delivery? David! Joseph! And now these tenders of gentle flocks — their names lost to history, true, but their story not. Would you too have wondered at their account? Marveled? Helpless to embrace the amazing report told by these wandering shepherds, believed their witness of the heavenly spectacle, and of this royal newborn in the stable? Some of us, twenty centuries later, wonder anew, believe anew, and give thanks for the annual feast, so the wonderment first felt in millennia distant proves immediate and sweet and overwhelming, in excelsis. In this Year of Our Lord 2020, our weekly missive is by chance published on the Feast of the Nativity, affording a rare opportunity: To echo the angel choirs and wish you and yours peace and good will. Merry Christmas to all. And now, let us attend to the holly jolly Jolt! Links Short, Links Sweet Editorials Girls just want to have run: Tulsi Gabbard Stands Up for Women's Sports. Warts and all: A Necessary Relief Bill. Wise Men and Women Delivering an Abundance of Conservative Gifts Rich Lowry: Joe, We're Not in a Climate Crisis. Victor Davis Hanson: China Post-Trump: Beijing Eyes Return to Global Status Quo. John Fund: Trump Election-Fraud Lawsuits — Why They Failed. Richard Morrison: Biden and 'ESG': Full Steam Ahead on Politicized Investing. Shawn Regan and Tate Watson: Government Regulation Won't Keep America's Favorite Butterfly Off the Endangered Species List. Judd Berger: Chef Apologizes for Posting Food Pic without 'Cultural Context'. Horace Cooper: Vote Reparations Proposal Is Unconstitutional. Fred Lucas: Trump Impeachment Case Weakness Could Shape Political Future. Michael Brendan Dougherty: The Lonely Church This Christmas. More MBD: Endless Pandemic Creating COVID Fatigue. Rebeccah Heinrichs: Chinese Drones Are Spying on Americans. John Yoo and Ivana Stradner: Time to Go on Offense against Russian Cyberattacks. John O'Sullivan: Margaret Tebbit, R.I.P. Jack Butler: Do They Know It's Christmas? Yes — So Stop Singing. Capital Matters Andrew Stuttaford: (Another) Climate Warrior Aiming to Bypass Democracy. Andrew William Salter: Beijing's Iron Grip on Corporate China. Kevin Hassett: Five Questions for Tyler Goodspeed. Marc Joffe: Echoes of the Great Recession in Commercial Real Estate. Lights. Camera. Review! Armond White: Nolan's Tenet: Filmmaker Pursues Hollywood's New Tenets. Alvin S. Felzenberg: The Reagans: Showtime's Pathetic Exercise in Bashing the Gipper. Kyle Smith: Wonder Woman 1984 Reverts to Campy Set Pieces & Moronic Plotting. A Stocking-full of NRO Articles, with Exciting Excerpts Found from Top to Toe Editorials 1. It's a refreshing thing to find a Democrat House member call baloney on the "gender-identity" assault on women's sports. From the editorial: Now, Title IX is coming for women's sports in the name of "gender identity," that nonsensical progressive policy permitting males to compete against females if and when they claim transgender status. The wisdom of this policy has become a matter of faith for almost every Democratic legislator. The first prominent dissent came only this month from Representative Tulsi Gabbard (D., Hawaii), who has introduced the "Protect Women's Sports Act" into the U.S. House of Representatives, (the Oklahoma Republican, Representative Markwayne Mullin, is a co-sponsor). In a statement, Gabbard said the bill "protects Title IX's original intent which was based on the general biological distinction between men and women athletes based on sex." Emphatically, this means preserving "equal opportunity for women and girls in high school and college sports," as well as holding to account those "states who are misinterpreting Title IX, creating uncertainty, undue hardship and lost opportunities for female athletes" by allowing males to dominate and displace them. She's absolutely right. On account of their elevated testosterone levels and androgenized bodies, males are generally stronger and faster than females; a fact reflected in the 10 to 30 percent performance gap in elite sports. But even in non-elite sports, it only takes a handful of male athletes to completely dominate the female field; a fact clearly demonstrated in Connecticut where two high-school-aged males (mediocre athletes in comparison with their male peers) deprived female competitors of 15 state championship titles and more than 85 opportunities to participate.
2. Numerous warts and all, we found the relief bill to be necessary. From the editorial: Perhaps more notable than what's in the bill is what isn't. Democrats repeatedly attempted to launder blue-state bailouts through COVID-19 legislation, jumping on the opportunity to paper over perennial fiscal imbalances. Republicans were right to hold the line, not only because of the moral hazard of rewarding profligate governments, but also because states and cities are poor channels for swift economic aid. Research from the left-leaning Brookings Institution finds that the economic benefits of state and local aid would not materialize until 2022, because governors and mayors are slow to spend federal grants. The deal also withdraws the Treasury funds that backstopped Federal Reserve lending programs to corporations and cities, codifying Treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin's decision last month. Considering how strong financial markets are despite the limited use of Fed lending programs, it makes sense to redirect this money. But Democrats sought to retain the funds in order to provide cheap, long-term loans to cities, turning the Fed into a piggybank for New York, San Francisco, and other cities facing budget shortfalls. Senator Pat Toomey's success in ensuring the Fed's emergency-lending programs remain limited to emergencies may be the most consequential provision of the bill: A permanently politicized central bank would threaten economic stability well beyond the pandemic.
Unwrap the Myriad of Gifts under the NRO Tree 1. Rich Lowry kyboshes Basement Joe's claims about a climate crisis. From the piece: In a climate speech during the campaign a few months ago, Biden relied on the tried-and-true alarmist tack of attributing every adverse weather event to global warming. The flooding in the Midwest was an artifact of climate change, never mind that, as Bjorn Lomborg points out, the U.N. isn't sure whether flooding overall is getting more or less frequent. Somewhat counterintuitively, Biden also blamed drought in the Midwest on climate change, even though, according to Lomborg, the federal government's National Climate Assessment says that "drought has decreased over much of the continental United States in association with long-term increases in precipitation." Of course, Biden maintained that California wildfires have been caused by the upward trend in global temperatures, and it is probably a factor. Still, as Lomborg notes, the amount of land that is burning around the globe has fallen sharply since the late 19th century in response to changing human behavior (e.g., more cultivation of the land). Finally, Biden cited Hurricane Laura, the Category 4 storm that made landfall in Louisiana, as yet more climate-driven extreme weather. The studies do show more storm activity in the Atlantic, Lomborg writes, although not necessarily from climate change. Meanwhile, there's no global trend in tropical cyclones.
2. Victor Davis Hanson finds Red China happy to see Biden up ahead and Trump in the rear-view mirror. From the essay: Currently China is suffering its worst global-popularity ratings in its modern history. Most countries in Europe, the U.S., and its immediate Asian neighbors poll anywhere from 70 to 90 percent disapproval of China. Such negativity is hardly surprising when over 75 million worldwide have been sickened with Wuhan COVID-19 — and perhaps another 500 million untested have had symptoms or at least developed antibodies to it — along with 1.6 million dead. Many Western countries have vowed never again to outsource their medical equipment and pharmaceutical industries to China, given their ensuing exposure in times of a Chinese-spawned viral global pandemic. The chief rub for an awakening but recently somnolent Europe and a drowsy U.S. is not whether to reboot with China, but how — given that for decades America siphoned off its technology edge, as it trained tens of thousands of Chinese engineers and scientists, while greenlighting its own students to rack up $1.6 trillion in student loans to master the arts of green, race, class, and gender victimization. Brilliant American engineers design battery-operated cars and sophisticated solar panels; elite-glut environmental studies majors fight over how best to bankrupt the American consumer and raise prohibitive power costs for businesses. China prefers to emulate the former, not the latter. China tactically wages war against the U.S. all the time, from on-campus espionage to cyber assault to stealing technology and blueprints of institutions it can replicate. But more important, it counts on a sophisticated strategy to subordinate the United States, and thereby remake the entire international order to enhance its own agendas.
3. John Fund lays out the primary reasons the Trump campaign's post-election lawsuits went south. From the ... READ MORE | 
Comments
Post a Comment