 Dear Weekend Jolter, Joe was a moderate, so he said. Joe was no Socialist, so he said. He's a Trojan Horse, so his election foe said. And Donald Trump was right as rain about that. The pronunciamentos and actions of President Biden's first days are a testament to the draw of the Democratic Party's ever-leftward Left. For example: Deep in the bowels of President Biden's very first executive order was a revocation of President Trump's 2020 executive order establishing a 1776 Advisory Commission. Good to know we have a President who believes that associating his office with this country's Founding is a liability. Maybe even the stuff of his nightmares. Welp, so much for unity, e pluribus unum, and all such troublesome patriotic mumbo jumbo. By the way, that Commission met and issued a report that was a much-needed slap-back at the "1619 Project" ideologues. You can find the report here. Download it why don't you, and maybe even share it. It will prove a useful tool. National Review has a formal opinion on the matter. From the beginning of the editorial: Joe Biden went out of his way on his first day in office to cancel Donald Trump's 1776 Commission. Established to research and promote patriotic education, the commission was a welcome initiative — while it lasted. It sought to counterbalance the hostile view of American history advanced by the "1619 Project," which jumped almost directly from the pages of the New York Times to the curriculum in schools around the country. That project made basic historical errors that it corrected only grudgingly and under pressure from some of the foremost historians in the country, absurdly argued for 1619 — the first year that African slaves were brought to these shores — as the "true" founding of the country (before subsequently editing out this claim without explanation), and distorted the American Revolution, Abraham Lincoln, and the history of slavery, among other things. Perversely, the Times in effect revived the argument of the likes of John C. Calhoun that the Declaration of Independence was a lie, only from a woke 21st-century perspective.
There is sure to be much more of Biden Malarkey in the weeks and months up to the . . . well, let's not talk about the 25th Amendment again. But do let us get on to the Weekend Jolt. It's a big one! Links that Are Slim and Fit for You On-the-Go Conservatives A Phalanx of Fantastic Philosophical Feats Kyle Smith: Media Bootlickers Hurl Themselves at Biden's Feet Victor Davis Hanson: 1776 Commission Report Controversy: America Is Imperfect — and Also Great John McCormack: On Day One, the Biden White House Dodges on Abortion Robert VerBruggen: Biden Immigration Plan Is Left-Wing Fantasy Rich Lowry: Keystone Pipeline: Joe Biden Tells Canada to Drop Dead Jimmy Quinn: The Fight Intensifies over China's Forced-Labor System Michael Brendan Dougherty: Does Biden See America's Despair? Michael Brendan Dougherty: Trumpism After Trump: His Voters Are Not Going Away David Bahnsen: Trump Presidency: A Final Assessment, and the Path Forward Andrew C. McCarthy: Trump Presidency: Real Accomplishments vs. Reality of Trump Himself Mario Loyola: Trump's Tragic Fall David Harsanyi: John Brennan & Censorship: Threat to Democracy David Harsanyi: Democrats Will Pay a Price for Placating the Squad Tim Busch: Trump's Originalist Judges Can Start to Mend America's Cultural Rift Douglas Feith: Why I'm a Zionist Colin Dueck: Conservative Nationalism & U.S. Foreign Policy Editorials Biden's Foolish Sabotage of the Keystone Pipeline Biden's COVID Pandemic Relief Package Is a Mess Biden Paris Climate Accords Return Means Climate-Change Orthodoxy Again Runs U.S. Policy The Madness of the Arizona GOP In Defense of Liz Cheney Reform or Eliminate the Pardon Power Capital Matters Alex Muresianu explains that old lesson: Corporate Tax Rules Hurt American Manufacturers Andrew Stuttaford provides the profile: The Death Tax's Not So Little Helper (Possibly) Brad Palumbo won't take a hike: A $15 Minimum Wage Doesn't Belong in the COVID Relief Bill Casey Mulligan hears the other shoe dropping: Obamacare Taxes Did Not Generate Revenue From the New February 8, 2021 Issue of National Review Avik Roy finds a solution in the 19th Century: Restoring the Conservative Conscience Charles C. W. Cooke explores: What to Do about Social-Media Double Standards? Gerald Russello finds an important book: Conservatism's Contested Tradition Robert Kaplan scopes out the competition: How We Lose against China Lights. Camera. Review! Armond White catches a Biden Era nihilist flick: Promising Young Woman Sees Gender Divide as Comedy Kyle Smith checks out hard-Left fantasies: Critics Raise the Red Flag for a Socialist Parable Armond finds it rough on the ears, and soul: Sound of Metal Is Noisy Spiritual Vacancy And Now an Encore Presentation, with Frills and Anticipated Accoutrements Editorials 1. All set to stifle America's economy, Joe Biden threatens to shut down the Keystone pipeline. We call out the crazy. From the editorial: Fossil fuels, far from being the great villain of the climate story, have been the main source of greenhouse-gas reductions in the United States over the past several decades, as relatively clean-burning natural gas displaces relatively dirty coal in electricity generation. But that is not the kind of intelligent tradeoff that interests American environmentalists, who are moralists and romantics and committed to the notion that hydrocarbon fuels are, simply, evil — and that they must be fought on every front. Hence, the American Left's comprehensive and total war on any and all infrastructure associated with our most abundant energy sources — not only oil pipelines but natural-gas pipelines, too, along with rail-shipping facilities, refineries and other plants, and West Coast export depots intended to help U.S. producers in Asian markets. If it produces, consumes, moves, or processes oil or gas, the American Left opposes it. If Joe Biden is interested in improving the employment and wage outlook for middle-class Americans, he ought not make our industrial, chemical, manufacturing, transportation, and electricity sectors hostage to the narrow-minded concerns of a small group of fanatics. There is a worrying Hayekian lesson in this, too: It is impossible for American businesses to make big, long-term investments in a political environment in which every project is up for renegotiation — or summary economic execution — every time the White House changes hands. Why invest in building and moving physical goods, and taking on the political risk that goes along with such investments, when you could join the booming financial sector and put your money into the money business? This is not to sniff at finance or other work in the service economy, but, surely, in a continental nation as vast as ours, with an economy as complex as ours, it shouldn't be possible for one man serving a short term in a temporary elected office to undo years of work and billions of dollars in investment. This is pure foolishness, and it will cost us.
2. And then there is his COVID-Relief proposal. We say Biden's bill is a mess. From the editorial: Now that vaccines are being administered, policy-makers face a different challenge — not keeping Americans inside, but getting them back to work as quickly as possible. In this context, President-elect Biden's $1.9 trillion stimulus package misses the mark. The proposal gives a nod to public health — with $20 billion allocated to vaccine distribution, $50 billion to testing, and $40 billion to medical supplies and emergency-response teams — but fails to address the most pressing hurdles to COVID-19 immunity. Vaccines sit unused not for lack of funding but thanks to burdensome rules determining which patients can receive shots and which doctors can administer them. Additional spending to speed up vaccine distribution is welcome, but its effects will be muted if bureaucratic hurdles remain in place. Even if the public-health provisions were to succeed in reopening the economy, much of the rest of Biden's plan guarantees that it will reopen weaker. For one, an expanded unemployment-insurance top-up of $400 a week would mean more than 40 percent of those receiving unemployment benefits would make more off-the-job than on-the-job at least until September, and possibly for longer. The food-service and retail industries hit hardest by the pandemic would see the largest shortfalls in labor, exacerbating the challenges they've faced over the past year. Enhanced unemployment may have been reasonable when we wanted workers to stay home, but it's catastrophic when we want them to go back to work.
3. On Day One Biden get his disastrous promise: to return the ... READ MORE | 
Comments
Post a Comment