 Dear Weekend Jolter, It's worth noting the popular tune Happy Days Are Here Again (Yours Truly favors the 1930 version by Ben Selvin and The Crooners) was released at the outset of a Great Depression. Talk about the power of positive thinking (or, singing). It took only a decade for reality to catch up with the lyrics. Many today are shaking the muck and mire of 2020 off their shoes, confident that 2021 has brought happy days with it. Yes, it might have. Also Might: We might look back one day and wistfully daydream, Remember 2020? Oh that was a wonderful year — compared to what came after. Whoa! Bill Buckley often reminded us of the holy doctrine that despair is a sin, so this space will opt (cautiously) for this position: that the declaration "Happy New Year" is a statement of fact in addition to being a well-wishing thought. (Okay: with a Biden Presidency, a likely wishful-thinking one too.) Just 364 more to go! Here to fill up Day One is a plethora of links to NR brilliance. Do enjoy. Just the Links M'am Editorials Louie Gohmert & Josh Hawley's Election Objections Are Going Nowhere Brexit: Boris Johnson's Trade Deal Ends the Fight for Good Articles Ryan Mills: Kelly Loeffler Warns of Generational Stakes in Georgia's Elections Alexandra DeSanctis: Planned Parenthood Is Helping Staff the Biden Administration John McCormack: Will the Hyde Amendment Survive the Biden Presidency Jimmy Quinn: New E.U. Trade Deal with China Ignores Beijing's Disdain for Human Rights Jimmy Quinn: China’s Coronavirus Deception: Researcher Decodes Beijing’s Propaganda | National Review Helen Raleigh: China's Repression and Aggression Is Creating a Backlash against Xi Jinping's Policies John O'Sullivan: Life after Brexit Ellen Carmichael: Journalists' Behavior over Luke Letlow's Death Is Abhorrent — and Telling Victor Davis Hanson: A Guide to Wokespeak Madeleine Kearns: Hypocrisy of Woke Corporations: Nike, China & the Uyghurs Rich Lowry: The Surge in Online Buying and Amazon's Historic Hiring Binge David Harsanyi: Homer Simpson: Union Poster Child Michelle Minton: New Alcohol Guidelines a Victory for Science over Politics Isaac Schorr: Progressive Dominance of Campus Culture Exerts Real Costs Madeleine Kearns: Cancel Culture Is a Teenage Nightmare Michael Washburn: Walker Percy's 'The Moviegoer' Speaks to COVID Crisis and Social Isolation Stephen Sholl: How Hungary's Communist Regime Tried & Failed to Coopt Christmas Capital Matters Daniel Tenreiro: The Capital Note: Escape from Silicon Valley — to Miami Paul Gessing: Netflix and Hollywood Benefit from Energy Industry-Backed Subsidies Phillip Cross: Innovation Is Hard to Measure But Essential David Chavern: Congress Must Give Local News Publishers Fighting Chance against Tech Giants. Jordan McGillis: Biden Electric-Vehicle Plan Would Hurt U.S. Manufacturers Brian Riedl: The Case against $2,000 Coronavirus Relief Checks: On Six Arguments and Myths Lights. Camera. Review! Kyle Smith: Promising Young Woman Is a Sad Feminist Cry for Help Armond White: The New Documentary Time Is Arty Condescension on Prison-Reform Activism Kyle Smith: Best Movies of 2020: Pixar's Onward Tops List of Titles That Shone in a Dark Year Take Two: Links Galore, Supersized with Excellent Excerpts Editorials 1. We praise the outcome of Britain's trade deal and the completion of Brexit. From the beginning of the editorial: Four and a half years after the momentous vote in June 2016, Brexit is finally and fully accomplished with a U.K.–EU trade deal that sailed through Parliament 521 to 73. It's over. The economic uncertainty about the United Kingdom's "future relationship" with the nascent super-state is finished. The bottom line is that the U.K. will continue trading relatively freely with the European Union, avoiding the economic disruption that would come by falling back on WTO rules in a disorderly exit. Trade will be done through the mechanism of the new trade agreement with agreed-upon provisions for regulations and retaliatory tariffs. Like all sovereign nations, the U.K. can now go about making its own trading arrangements in the world, while keeping faith with its existing covenants. It's over.
2. We strongly condemn the legal actions of Congressman Gohmert and others to have Vice President Pence veto the Electoral College results. From the editorial: Gohmert's plan is particularly preposterous, in that it would entrench into American law the idea that the incumbent vice president is permitted — perhaps even obliged — to veto the results of any presidential election whose outcome he dislikes. Instead, as president of the Senate, the vice president has a purely ministerial role presiding over the counting of electoral votes by Congress. If Richard Nixon could serve this function after his own heartbreaking loss in 1960, surely Mike Pence can sign off on this year's results. That almost no Republican senators have shown any interest in actively pursuing these ploys is a testament to their good sense, which makes it all the more disappointing that Josh Hawley has volunteered to join Brooks in objecting. President Trump has taken aim at the majority leader, Mitch McConnell, for acknowledging that Joe Biden is the president-elect, and at the assistant majority leader, John Thune, for observing that the Mo Brooks plan is destined to "go down like a shot dog." In Trump's estimation, McConnell's statement shows that he does not know how "to fight," while Thune's shows that he is "weak." There is, indeed, a great deal to admire about politicians who give their cause their all. But there is nothing strong or admirable about seeking to overturn the result of a presidential election. Trump and his team have had ample time to produce evidence of the widespread fraud they allege changed the outcome in key states and have failed to do so. Congress should now do its job and ratify the results in good faith, no matter how much it enrages the president.
If Your New Year's Resolution Was to Read a Ton of Conservative Brilliance, Well, You're in Luck: Here Are 17 Links 1. Ryan Mills is in Georgia on the campaign trail with Kelly Loeffler. From the report: Loeffler wasn't well known to most voters when Governor Brian Kemp appointed her to the Senate last December to fill the seat vacated by Johnny Isakson, who stepped down for health reasons. In interviews, Loeffler can appear stiff and overly rehearsed. During an early December debate, she almost mechanically referred to her opponent as "radical liberal Raphael Warnock" 13 times. There are online parodies suggesting that she might be a robot. Like Collins, Loeffler has been an outspoken ally of President Trump since being appointed. And like most of her Senate Republican colleagues, she hasn't explicitly endorsed the president's repeated claim that the election was stolen — but she hasn't ruled it out either. She believes some of what Trump complains of occurred in her own state. Days after the election, she joined Senator David Perdue in calling for Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger to step down over his alleged "failure to deliver honest and transparent elections." Many of Loeffler's most devoted supporters have embraced the president's more sweeping claims of fraud. And some have even considered heeding the advice of Trump ally Lin Wood, an Atlanta-based attorney, who has urged Republicans to stay home on Election Day unless Perdue and Loeffler do more to support the president's efforts to overturn the election.
2. Alexandra DeSanctis finds that when Joe Biden is not in his basement, he's in the pocket of Planned Parenthood. From the article: According to Newsweek, Planned Parenthood is now "working closely with the Biden-Harris transition team to ensure they're 'ready to hit the ground running day one.'" "The first thing we would like to see would be an executive order on day one, within the first 100 days, that demonstrates the administration's commitment to sexual and reproductive health care," Planned Parenthood president Alexis McGill Johnson told the outlet in an interview. Jacqueline Ayers, Planned Parenthood's vice president of government relations and public policy, told Newsweek that the Biden administration should use the federal budget "to indicate how this administration would prioritize these programs that have been woefully underfunded for a long time." Ayers is referring to programs that would direct federal funding to Planned Parenthood, among other abortion providers.
3. John McCormack says the Hyde Amendment may be aborted by the Biden Administration. From the report: When Lipinski's No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act last received a vote in 2017, only three Democrats voted for it. Two of those Democrats won't be returning to Congress in the new year: Minnesota ... READ MORE
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