The EU still does not seem to get what Britain is doing

The EU still seems to think that the UK wants to be guided by pointy-headed bureaucrats in Brussels. The fact that there short-lived Teresa May era gave way to Boris Johnson becoming PM and Labor taking its worst drubbing in nearly a century doesn't appear to be sinking in:

. . . the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier . . .  in a recent essay shares his vision of the future relationship. Mr. Barnier begins by expressing regret at Britain’s determination to exit but, in a spirit of equanimity and good will, looks forward to the “opportunity to forge a new UK-EU partnership.” Taking a page from former premier Theresa May, he reiterates that though the “UK may be leaving the EU … it is not leaving Europe.”

Instead, Mr. Barnier outlines three areas of mutual interest. One such step will be “to work together and discuss joint solutions to global challenges.” Another, “to build a close security relationship.” Can anyone contend against these aspirations? Britain pursues its international agenda with myriad intergovernmental agencies, be it the United Nations, NATO, or World Trade Organization. No serious impediments exist from extending its collaborative reach to former colleagues in the EU.

Mr. Barnier’s third area for cooperation, however, sets the cat among the pigeons. “We need an economic partnership that reflects our common interests, geographical proximity, and interdependence.” Innocuous, so far as it goes. Even praise for competition in the areas of “skills, innovation, and quality” would not raise an eyebrow among Mr. Johnson’s Conservative cabinet.

Trouble emerges only when the EU’s Brexit mandarin hoists his true colors. “We know that competing on social and environmental standards … leads only to a race to the bottom,” a race that places “workers, consumers, and the planet on the losing side.” Such assertions may be common parlance among the Brussels bureaucracy, but at Westminster they’ll raise a raucous. The Labour Party took such a stand at December’s general election; its trouncing at the ballot box speaks of its limited appeal among weary Britons.

Neither will the British government be sanguine as to Mr. Barnier’s ultimatum for a future deal, “Any free-trade agreement must provide for a level playing field on standards, state aid, and tax matters.” It is as if the 2016 referendum to leave never happened, an “exit” commitment reaffirmed two short weeks ago.

Mr. Barnier’s line-in-the-sand makes a mockery of Tory reforms. Mr. Johnson went to the polls promising to cut unnecessary red tape, use state spending to source infrastructure and training schemes, and lower taxes to unleash entrepreneurial innovation, thus encouraging employment and economic prosperity. The EU’s chief negotiator would have all this at naught.

Mr. Barnier’s “poison pill” is doubtless administered to those in the City of London who aspire to turn their capital into “Singapore-on-the Thames.” (Arch Remainer Philip Hammond pooh-poohed the Singapore model when Chancellor of the Exchequer.) This Asian economic powerhouse consistently ranks in the top five of the Heritage Foundation’s “Index of Economic Freedom,” scoring high marks on rule of law, regulatory efficiency, government size, and open markets. (The UK currently ranks #7, while America scores a respectable #12. As for the EU’s major players, Germany ranks #24 with France a distant #71.)

Is there any mistaking why Mr. Barnier has singled out as “non-negotiables” those very measures essential to economic dynamism? Measures that Mr. Johnson has made the foundation of Britain’s post-EU future, measures on which most of the EU-membership fail abysmally. (Ireland is a notable exception.)

A prescient Prime Minister will see in these EU moves to frustrate Brexit the shadow of Brussels bureaucrats that use intimidation and obfuscation (for example, ignoring populist pushback in member states) to spook conformity from countries that run counter to their will. 

The horse is out of the barn, Mr. Barnier. Britain wants to move in the other direction, toward sovereignty, economic liberty and common sense. As other European nations see the results of Brexit, they, too, may opt for being in charge of their own destinies, and you may have to find some other line of work besides cajoling them into acting against their best interests.

Saturday roundup

Love me some natural gas!

The decade in energy saw the returns from the shale boom of oil and gas pay off.

The shale revolution from horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracking, which started to take off in 2006 but peaked this decade, helped get the United States to the verge of being a net energy exporter for the first time since 1953, moving off its dependence on Middle East oil and closer to “energy independence."

“The entire psychology of energy as a country shifted this decade to one of scarcity to one of adequacy and eventually abundance,” said Kevin Book, managing director for research at ClearView Energy. “What it means is Americans are not afraid of running out of energy like they used to be.”

The rise of gas has allowed the U.S. to wield energy as a geopolitical weapon. 

Before the shale boom, the U.S. was expected to become a big importer of liquified natural gas — the chilled, liquid form to which gas must be converted for shipment in giant tanker vessels across the sea. 

The U.S. now exports LNG to 36 countries, double the 18 destinations at the beginning of the Trump administration, which has sought to ship more gas to Europe to reduce its dependence on Russia.

“The geopolitical leverage of dominant pipeline suppliers like Russia has been weakened, enhancing our energy security and helping move China to less polluting fuels,” said Jason Bordoff, the founding director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University and a former White House energy adviser to President Barack Obama.

The proliferation of natural gas is also the biggest reason U.S. carbon emissions have declined this decade, defying projections from the Energy Information Administration in 2010 that emissions would continue rising, but at a slower pace. Natural gas, a fossil fuel that emits half as much carbon as coal, has mostly replaced coal in the electricity sector, generating 35% of U.S. power in 2018, the most of any source.

Scotland officially goes all in on the mass delusion of our time:

 Adults will be able to choose between 21 sexual orientation options in the next Scottish census under plans to expand the categories.

Sexual orientation will be featured for the first time in the 2021 census. The National Records of Scotland (NRS) has suggested increasing the range of categories from four: straight or heterosexual, gay or lesbian, bisexual, or other orientation.
The new choices include: androphilic, androsexual, asexual, bicurious, bisexual, demiromantic, demisexual, fluid, gay, gynephilic, gynesexual, homosexual, heterosexual, lesbian, pansexual, polysexual, queer, questioning, skoliosexual, straight, unsure.

In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

2 Timothy 3:12 

Islamic State released a video purporting to show its militants beheading 10 Christian men in Nigeria, saying it was part of a campaign to avenge the deaths of its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and its spokesman.

The militant group posted the footage on its online Telegram news channel on Thursday, the day after Christmas, with Arabic captions but no audio.

The video showed men in beige uniforms and black masks lining up behind blindfolded captives then beheading 10 of them and shooting an 11th man.

An earlier video seen by Reuters said the captives had been taken from Maiduguri and Damaturu in Nigeria's northeastern state of Borno, where militants have been fighting for years to set up a separate Islamist state.

In that video, the captives pleaded for the Christian Association of Nigeria and President Muhammadu Buhari to save them.

Reuters could not verify the authenticity of either video.

Memo to the Very Stable Genius: knock off the protectionism:

President Donald Trump’s strategy to use import tariffs to protect and boost U.S. manufacturers backfired and led to job losses and higher prices, according to a Federal Reserve study released this week.

“We find that the 2018 tariffs are associated with relative reductions in manufacturing employment and relative increases in producer prices,” concluded Fed economists Aaron Flaaen and Justin Pierce, in an academic paper.

While the tariffs did reduce competition for some industries in the domestic U.S. market, this was more than offset by the effects of rising input costs and retaliatory tariffs, the study found.

“While the longer-term effects of the tariffs may differ from those that we estimate here, the results indicate that the tariffs, thus far, have not led to increased activity in the U.S. manufacturing sector,” the study said.

Tit-for-tat trade retaliation is an idea best relegated to the past, given the presence of globally interconnected supply chains, the Fed researchers found.

The top ten manufacturing industries hit by foreign retaliatory tariffs were producers of: magnetic and optical media, leather goods, aluminum sheet, iron and steel, motor vehicles, household appliances, sawmills, audio and video equipment, pesticide, and computer equipment.

But that would probably also require him to quit winging it in everything he does:

Trump’s fancy-free scheduling approach is no mistake. In "The Art of the Deal," he explained that he thought too much planning curbed his creativity and impeded his thinking. That philosophy is alive and well in the White House, according to more than half a dozen current and former officials.

Between the lines: Trump believes to his core, one former senior White House official told Axios, that he's better off not preparing for some meetings. He thinks preparation hinders his ability to read the room and act with spontaneity, this former aide said.

• "I play it very loose," Trump wrote in 'The Art of the Deal."
• "I don't carry a briefcase. I try not to schedule too many meetings. I leave my door open. You can't be imaginative or entrepreneurial if you've got too much structure. I prefer to come to work each day and just see what develops."

One of the key challenges for his staff: He doesn't like long or complex documents.

• He'll skim newspaper articles, news summaries and bullet points, but hates anything longer. So his evening briefings look quite different from his predecessors'.
• "Trump does review briefing materials, at least if you make it a point to have him do so," said a former senior White House official who has direct knowledge of Trump's reading habits. "But only if you talk and guide him through it as he's reading."
• Trump receives national security materials and news summaries every evening. But the package is more visual than those of his predecessors, with screenshots from the Drudge Report homepage, pictures of his own tweets and snapshots of cable news chyrons from throughout the day, according to people who've seen Trump's nightly briefing packages.

Maybe the decade now in its final hours was one of big accomplishments - in terms of commonly recognized credentials and symbols of personal advancement -  for you. Then again, maybe it was your decade for inner accomplishments, which sometimes require even more character and perseverance.

 Turkey seems less interested in being a NATO member in good standing or even a Western nation by the day. Now it's seriously considering shutting down US access to the Incirlik and Kurecik military installations. Those are where we store nuclear weapons and have critical radar capability.

To assess whether these are good-and-getting-better times or the opposite, you need a meaningful gauge

One of the favorite parlor games of our age is kicking around the question of whether we are living in unprecedentedly good times or bad, or something in between. The latest entry is today's Washington Examiner piece by Michael Barone.  He comes down in the good-and-getting-better side of the ledger, and cites some pretty convincing developments.

But he does so after having framed the dichotomy in a way I find really unsatisfying:

President Trump, enjoying all-but-unanimous support from Republicans in polls, tells us that we are living at the brink of disaster, at risk of being sucked under the sludge by vicious creatures of the swamp.

Trump opponents, including almost the whole of the Democratic Party and a tattered but still loudly chirping fragment of the Republican Party, assure us that we are entering the dark night of Nazism, racism, and violent suppression of all dissenting opinion.

Now, I'm no Trump fan, as any longtime reader of this site knows, but Trump's message with regard to the swamp being a sinister force, as gleaned from his tweets, press conferences and rallies is one of confidence in counter-forces being able to prevail against it. Yes, he's delusional about his own powers of agency (witness the failure of North Korea outreach) and the extent to which the enthusiasm of his base enhances those powers, but that's how he sees it.

And Barone's lumping in of "a tattered but still loudly chirping fragment of the Republican Party" - that would be me, along with The Dispatch, The Resurgent, The Bulwark, most National Review writers and the Principles First movement - with Democrats is intellectually sloppy. Barone, who built his reputation on having his finger on the pulse of the American electorate, should have done a little sorting out here. There are three main political forces at work in 2019: Trumpists, conservatives and leftists. More on this point momentarily.

But, as I say, Barone does cite some developments that must be acknowledged:

. . . the science writer and British House of Lords voting member Matt Ridley, [writing] in the British Spectator [says,] “We are living through the greatest improvement in human living standards in history,” he writes of the decade just ending.

Olden times may look better in warm memories — think of multiepisode dramas about Edwardian noblemen or carefully curated statistics showing narrower pay gaps between 1950s CEOs and assembly-line workers. But the cold, hard numbers tell another story.

“Extreme poverty has fallen below 10 percent of the world’s population for the first time. It was 60 percent when I was born,” Ridley writes, referring to the year 1958, a time that some of us can actually remember.

Of course, you may say, the economic progress made since China and India discovered the magic of free markets has helped people over there; but over here, in advanced countries, we’re not growing. We are just gobbling up and wolfing down more of the world’s limited resources, aren't we?

Not so, replies Ridley. Consumers in advanced countries are actually consuming less stuff (biomass, metals, minerals, or fossil fuels) per capita, even while getting more nutrition and production out of it. Thank technological advancement and, yes, in some cases, government regulations.

We’re also experiencing, as a world and in advanced countries, less violence and more in the way of peace, international and domestic. That’s the argument of Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker in his book The Better Angels of Our Nature. Wars are more infrequent and less deadly than in the past.

So too has violent crime abated in the U.S. and other advanced nations. It used to be taken as given that disadvantaged young males, especially those minorities discriminated against, were hugely likely to commit violent crimes. Now, thanks to improved policing and changed attitudes, far fewer do so.

The natural tendency of most people is to ignore positive trends. They are not the lead stories on your local newscast, nor are they mentioned in the shouting matches on cable news. People usually focus on complaints and grievances. And there are indeed worrying negative countertrends, such as the opioid abuse that has cut life expectancies down for some demographic groups.

We tend to focus on negative trends, though, even after they’ve been reversed. Illegal border crossings peaked just before the 2007-08 financial crisis and are much fewer, though not zero, today. Wages for low-skilled workers for years rose little or not at all, as politicians of both parties complained. Since 2016, they’ve been rising faster than average, but only Trump’s fans seem to have noticed; Democrats probably will if the trend continues when their party has the White House.

One can even make the case that in places where we lament sluggish economic growth — Japan since 1990, continental Europe since 2001, the U.S. from 2007 up through 2017 — living standards still remain more than comfortable, judged by any historic perspective.

I'm kind of surprised he didn't include the technological-advances angle. Most of these it's-never-been-better types bringup the wonders of the cell phone, and often bring in medical advances like laser surgery.

Still, it's clear where he's coming from by the time he winds up his essay. Materially, these are time that would amaze the average citizen of the US - or, for that matter, of most nations of the world - as recently as 40 years ago.

Now, with regard to the basis on which he lumps together leftists and this "chirping fragment," it is, in Barone's formulation, trepidation about a "dark night of Nazism, racism, and violent suppression of all dissenting opinion," That is indeed what the Left wrings its hands about. But any kind of familiarity with what anti-Trump conservatism bases its argument on will make someone conclude that this group's position is based on the level of character. Most anti-Trump conservatives aren't worried about the spread of some form of Nazism, don't think racism is on the resurgence, and, while they are cognizant of Trumpism's attempts to marginalize them and their outlets of expression, don't foresee "violent suppression of all dissenting opinion" in the horizon. 

Their- our - main point of departure from what the Republican Party has become is the list of Trump's personality traits that everyone, including the most die-hard Trumpist, has to see and deal with: the pettiness, the vindictiveness, the transactional lens through which he views everything ("I've done so much for blacks / evangelical Christians / particular politicians, now it's time to get political support in return."), the utter incoherence of his economic policy (following up truly great tax cuts with protectionist measures) and his foreign policy (the utter waste of time that was the summits with Kim, the pullout from northern Syria just as Turkey was coming after the Kurds, the mess he made of his sideline meetings at the latest G-7 summit), the public vulgarity, his obvious personal ambivalence about the essence of Christianity, had sybaritic track record with women, his lack of intellectual curiosity, and his approach of eschewing preparation and just winging it in everything. 

And, of course, the Trumpist response to this is along the lines of "I wasn't voting for a pastor." 

And this speaks volumes about the larger context of the trouble post-America and Western civilization generally finds itself in. The mindset of "more and more people are getting three squares a day" provides no room for transcendent matters. 

Smiley-face pieces such as Barone's tend not to grapple with statistics regarding family formation, single-parent households, church attendance, and the post-American public's abysmal understanding of its own history and civilizational underpinnings. Even if one keeps the discussion on the level of society's material progress, there is the phenomenon of major US cities's streets being defiled with the feces, urine and needles, deposited huge numbers of people who have consciously chosen to poison themselves. 

And what's the next step beyond downward trends in marriage and family formation? Distortion of the notion of family itself, codified, as it works its way toward full mainstreaming, by such moves as Obergefell v Hodges. The above-mentioned post-American public's abysmal understanding of its own history and civilizational underpinnings feeds this. The post-American public is no longer interested in contemplating the fact that, prior to the last twenty years at the outset, no culture anywhere in the world at any tine in history included the union of two people of the same sex in its definition of marriage. 

And what's the next step beyond stretching the definition of family beyond anything recognizable? An infantile pretense that an individual's maleness or femaleness isn't integral to who that individual is. Grown adults and long-standing institutions - think universities, municipal governments, and, increasingly, corporations - with a perfectly serious demeanor speaking of people having the right to define themselves, to be deserving of the "respect" and "courtesy" of being addressed by whatever pronouns they wish to be addressed by. 

The Trump phenomenon is merely another sign of our breakdown. We don't insist on basic coherence anymore, much less human conduct that accords with eternal verities. 

Pieces like Barone's have a hint of desperation to them. He concludes with this statement"

. . . at year’s and decade’s end, our grumbling society is closer to the best than to the worst of times.

For how long, Mr. Barone? How long is our present circumstance sustainable when people can make up their basic identity and insist that others, with the backing of enforceable law, treat them as if that identity is real? How long, given the dwindling number of healthy male role models in families and society alike? How long, when there are even fractures within Christianity, between adherents of sound doctrine, former adherents of sound doctrine who have come under the sway of the Trump phenomenon, prosperity-gospel hucksters, and denominations that have completely jettisoned sound doctrine and no longer make Christ central to their raison d'être?

Even if a convincing argument can be mounted that our current state, in which more people are healthy, well-fed, safe and comfortable, can continue for a long time, the question persists: to what end?

The ominous direction China is taking

The inerrant word of God is getting a totalitarian makeover:

As the world prepares to celebrate Christmas, Chinese Communists have announced plans to rewrite the Bible so that it falls in line with the Party ideology.

The bizarre requirement was reported by respected French newspaper Le Figaro yesterday evening, quoting their correspondent in Beijing, and it apparently extends to all major religions, including Christianity, Islam and Buddhism.

Apparently, China wants all the major religions to review their holy texts and to adapt them to the "era of president Xi Jinping ". 

As well as being president, Xi Jinping is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC). 

China recognises all the major religions, but the country is known for its Big-Brother surveillance and policing religion is just one aspect of this.

The Chinese authorities, according to Le Figaro, have asked the representatives of all the main religions in the country to review the Chinese translations of their religious texts so that they conform with "the requirements of the new era." 

The report in French news stemming from Beijing highlights "Jesus Christ's parables" will have to fall "in line with the Communist Party, failing which they run the risk of being purged from the bibles available to the faithful."

The Bible and Christianity are apparently not alone in being targeted, with the authorities setting their sights on all major religions, requiring a "sinicisation" of the Quran, the holy book of the Islamic faith, and the sutras found in Buddhism. 

The bizarre requirement, which French newspaper Valeurs Actuelles noted "even the Soviets had not dared" to put forward, took place during a meeting on November 6.

The authorities apparently want "a complete reevaluation of existing translations of religious classics". If some texts are found not to confirm, they will have to be "modified and translated again." 

The representatives of the various religions practised in China were reportedly summoned to the meeting after China's 4th Plenum.

Reuters describes China's Plenum as a meeting of the country's roughly 370-person Central Committee "to discuss improving governance and 'perfecting' the country's socialist system".

The Chairman of the assembly, Wang Yang, reportedly underlined "the fundamental importance of the interpretation of the religious rules and doctrines" so as to be able to "gradually form a religious ideological system with Chinese characteristics."

This is not the behavior of a nation that is opening its society and integrating itself into a freedom-based system of norms.

Holy Spirit, give courage to China's Christians. May your word get through even in this dark time.

 

Unprecedentedly bracing candor from John Bolton

Since he resigned as national security advisor, the speculation about when John Bolton would let loose with his real views on national security and world affairs has been ratcheted up considerably. We now have the first taste of that with an interview he did with Axios. I think that with North Korea's talk about a "Christmas present," he feels the pressure of time to speak up.

In his sharpest criticism yet of his old workplace, John Bolton suggested the Trump administration is bluffing about stopping North Korea's nuclear ambitions — and soon might need to admit publicly that its policy failed badly. 

Driving the news: Bolton told me in an interview that he does not think the administration "really means it" when President Trump and top officials vow to stop North Korea from having deliverable nuclear weapons — "or it would be pursuing a different course."

Why now? The president's former national security adviser, who served until September, is speaking out ahead of an end-of-year timetable. If Kim Jong-un follows through on his threatened Christmas provocation, Bolton says the White House should do something "that would be very unusual" for this administration: admit they got it wrong on North Korea.

• "The idea that we are somehow exerting maximum pressure on North Korea is just unfortunately not true," Bolton said.
• For example, he said, the U.S. Navy could start intercepting oil that is illegally being transferred to North Korea at sea. 
• As Bolton sees it, the administration now has more of a "rhetorical policy" that it's unacceptable for North Korea to have nuclear weapons that could hit America or its allies.
• If Kim thumbs his nose at the U.S., Bolton said, he hopes the administration will say: "We've tried. The policy's failed. We're going to go back now and make it clear that in a variety of steps, together with our allies, when we say it's unacceptable, we're going to demonstrate we will not accept it."
• Bolton described his concerns about Trump's North Korea strategy in an interview with Axios late last week. He went significantly further than any of his previous remarks since leaving the administration.

Why it matters: Kim is back on his white horse, and the North Korean nuclear threat may be greater than ever, analysts say.

• North Korea has intimated it will test some kind of advanced weapons in the coming weeks — weapons it's developed as Trump has tried to woo Kim.
• Trump's top envoy to North Korea, Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun, said recently that if North Korea follows through on that threat, it would be "most unhelpful in achieving a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula."
• Bolton called Biegun's statement "a late entry but a clear winner in the Understatement of the Year Award contest."

Bolton, who has advocated for a more aggressive North Korea strategy, also criticized Trump for sayingearlier this year that Kim's short-range missile tests don't bother him.

• "When the president says, 'Well, I'm not worried about short-range missiles,' he's saying, 'I'm not worried about the potential risk to American troops deployed in the region or our treaty allies, South Korea and Japan.'"

The big picture: The imminent threats from North Korea seem a world away from June 2018, when Trump returned from his Singapore summit with Kim to boast, "There is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea."

• In reality, Kim has expanded his nuclear arsenal since then, analysts say.
• Using data from analysts and governments around the world, Japan's Nagasaki University estimatedin June that Kim now has as many as 30 nuclear warheads. That's on the lower end of estimates, and it's up from as many as 20 warheads in the same study last year.
• "Even though they're not testing right now, they're operating at full tempo," said Victor Cha, the National Security Council director for Asia under President George W. Bush and Korea chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
• The Trump administration declined to comment.

As the House portion of the impeachment proceedings were underway, there was a lot of clamor on Twitter - from my bunch, conservatives who find Trump objectionable in the extreme, those who frequently get labeled "Never Trumpers - for Bolton to testify. The elephant in the room concerning that was that he had to be subpeonaed, and that didn't happen. I guess he could have stepped forward and said, "I sure would like to come before one of these House committees; I have a lot of important information to share," but I'm guessing his attorney was involved in deciding against that course of action.

Some felt his integrity hinged on it. His track record is that of a man of impeccable integrity. I was confident that he'd be speaking up when he felt the moment was right. He'd already spoken at that Gatestone Institute luncheon a couple of days after leaving the White House. I knew more would be forthcoming soon.

And, as important as nailing down the particulars of Ukraine policy in the Trump era - to what degree, if any, was Trump motivated by trying to hobble Biden politically for the 2020 race? - this issue - North Korea - is the one that is pressing from the standpoint of trying to head off potential calamity in the short term.

Thank you, Ambassador Bolton.

And just like that, Albion reasserts its sovereignty

Now, here's a history-making development if I ever saw one:

Members of Parliament have just voted overwhelmingly to approve Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Brexit plan by a vote of 358 to 234.

Brexit's approval was widely expected following the conservative victory in the UK election last week.

Brexit has been in gridlock for over three years. Former Prime Minister Theresa May has made several failed attempts to get Brexit through Parliament since the country voted in favor of Brexit in 2016. May ultimately failed to get a deal through, and she resigned in May over her inability to broker a deal that could win a majority of Parliament.

According to the Associated Press, the departure of the UK from the EU "will open a new phase of Brexit, as Britain and the EU race to strike new relationships for trade, security and host of other areas by the end of 2020."

Boris Johnson considered the vote a moment of closure. “The sorry story of the last 3 1/2 years will be at an end and we will be able to move forward together,” Johnson said. “This is a time when we move on and discard the old labels of ‘leave’ and ‘remain.’ Now is the time to act together as one reinvigorated nation.”

Why has this occurred in such a resolute and brisk-paced manner after the ultimately failed grind that May put the nation through? There will be no shortage of analysis of the matter, but a short answer that occurs to me presently is that she was too accommodating, trying to dot everyone's i's and cross their t's. She just couldn't muster the nerve to make the clean break with Brussels. She took a simple sentiment that most of the Queen's subjects were on board with - leaving the EU - and bogged it down with complications to avoid possible ruffled feathers.

Brits like their leaders to act resolutely on decisions.

A new low for the Very Stable Genius

VSG rallies are known to be sewers of cult worship and meanness. Still, in the past four years there have been a whole lot of them, and they never reached this level of rottenness:

During his Merry Christmas rally at Kellogg Arena on Wednesday, President Donald Trump singled out U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Dearborn, after she voted for impeachment.

"You have Dingell from Michigan, have you ever heard of her?" Trump said to his charged-up crowd of supporters. "Debbie Dingell, that’s a real beauty."

Trump was upset because he said that he gave her the "A-plus treatment, not the B treatment or the C treatment" after her husband, longtime U.S. Rep. John Dingell, D-Dearborn, died in February. He called for flags to be lowered and said he offered up the Capitol Rotunda for his memorial.

Trump seemed to say the word “Rotunda,” as if he had something to do with John Dingell’s lying in state at the U.S. Capitol. But Dingell didn’t lie in state before a funeral in Washington and his burial at Arlington National Cemetery and, even if he had, control of the Rotunda belongs to the Congress, not to the president.

"She called me up and said it was the nicest thing and John would have been so pleased," Trump said, adding that Dingell said John would be happily looking down from heaven at the ceremony. 

"Maybe he's looking up," Trump said, intimating that Dingell ended up in hell, instead. "I don't know. Let's assume he's looking down."

The crowd cheered the insult.

Several aspects of what makes Trump such an unfit president and a sick person are on display. There's the transactional lens through which he views everything. "Deals." "I offered her a really nice way to commemorate her husband and then she votes to impeach me!", as if she might not have a set of principles that drive her to make a particular choice on the impeachment matter. Then there's a related VSG impulse, the expectation that his ring will be kissed.  Then there's the disinterest in how government works (the president can't offer the Capitol Rotunda). Then there's the aspect that understandably is garnering the most outrage: the hell insinuation. Finally, and most significantly, there's utter disregard for the grief experienced by family and close friends of recently deceased people.

People are expendable and everyone and everything has a price for the VSG. If there were ever the slightest cooling among his base of slavish devotees, he'd cut them loose in a New York minute.

Trump-era Republicans apparently aren't any more concerned about the financial oblivion post-America is headed for than pre-Trump Republicans

The House voted on 2,313 pages of profligacy. The spending bill(s) to cover the fiscal year that began nearly three months ago sports a 41.4 trillion price tag. It was foisted upon Congress two days ago. No one has read it. It extends the Export-Import Bank for seven years. It funds government research on gun control No siree, there won't be any agenda driving that "research." Continues tax breaks for play-like energy forms. Continues to fund the extermination of fetal Americans by Planned Parenthood.

My understanding is that, due to the bad taste that omnibus spending bills have left in post-America's mouth, this behemoth has been split into two bills. Still comes to $1.4 trillion.

I guess the Senate is going to vote on it / them today. Will be watching for that. And then it / they go to the White House for the VSG to either sign or veto. You'll recall that in March 2018 he said he'd never sign anything like the $1.3 trillion package that was before him at the time. Maybe he'll do the right thing this time, but I'd say the smart money is on him using the excuse that it's two bills to sign. He's as spooked by the specter of a government shutdown as every other Beltway officeholder.

Congress is comprised of mostly unserious people. The one thing they can muster up any seriousness for is getting reelected.

The day has arrived

As I write, the House is debating guidelines for impeaching the Very Stable Genius.

Pardon me if I can't give a flying diddly.

Look, among the players, there is none who rise to the level of savory, much less admirable, much less statesmanlike.

Lest's start with the person at the center of the proceedings, one Donald J. Trump. He's 73 years old and has maturity issues most people have resolved by the age of 20. He is petty and vindictive, he demands personal loyalty like some kind of Cosa Nostra don, and he knows no other way of responding to slights than to engage in schoolyard taunting. He has no core set of principles, which has resulted in incoherent economic policy and foreign policy. He's switched parties several times over the course of his life. He is a man of low character. He was cheating on his first wife with the person who became his second wife. He was in the midst of divorcing the second wife in 1998 when he was out on a date at New York's Kit Kat Club with a cosmetics heiress. He saw Melania Knauss and, when his date went to the restroom, approached her and asked for her phone number. Years later, after he'd married Melania, he was at a golf tournament in Lake Tahoe while his wife was home with their newborn son. While there, he embarked on affairs with the pornographic movie actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy Playmate of the Year Karen McDougal. He doesn't read - not only policy materials, but anything. He can't put together a coherent sentence when he speaks.

To the point at hand, the transcript of the July Zelensky call, as well as what we know about the Giuliani shadow-Ukraine-policy team's activities earlier in the year, make it clear that Trump wanted the new administration in Ukraine to look into the Biden / Burisma situation, as well as the thoroughly bizarre Crowdstrike conspiracy theory, and that he'd hold up aid Ukraine needed to deal with the Russian threat to get them to do it.

Then there's Adam Schiff, who, prior to the Trump era, had actually established himself as a Democrat whose leftism was tempered by an understanding that the US needs a strong military, and by his activism on behalf of press freedom. But from the get-go in 2017 he has been unabashedly determined to get Trump removed from office as soon as possible. His memo in response to the Nunes memo has been thoroughly discredited. The FISA warrant applications were indeed principally based on the Steele dossier, and the FBI acted very squirrelly, to say the least. He'd rather not talk about that now.

Nancy Pelosi didn't want to see this happen for political reasons, but now that her party has gone down this road, she has to toe the line. (It's been an interesting year for San Fran Nan; she's a leftist of the first order, but has come out looking like an adult in the room as the likes of AOC, Tlaib, Pressley and Omar have burst onto the scene.)

Republicans who had, in the past, justifiably earned conservative respect and admiration, such as Louie Gohmert and Jim Jordan, have guzzled the VSG Kool-Aid and become shills for the MAGA brand. They try to keep their public pronouncements on the level of concern for the election process and the Constitution, but you'll never hear a word from them about Trump perhaps having some shortcomings that make it difficult to defend him. (Then there is Matt Gaetz, who has never been anybody's poster boy for depth, decorum or dignity.)

Bottom line: the way this is going to play out is already set in stone. The House will impeach today, the Senate will acquit next month, and the whole thing will be a distant memory by next summer, as the election-year news cycles accelerate, with fresh ugliness at every turn. The post-American people will consider the implications of the collectivist, redistributionist and identity-politics schemes of whoever the Democrats nominate, and reject them in sufficient numbers to give the VSG a second term.

And we'll have four more years of chaos, embarrassment, imperiled national security, and cultural rot.

I have no tribe or brand to champion here. I daily have to live with my fury at how Trump and his cult have deformed the public's understanding of conservatism, and I still understand full well how determined the Left is to dismantle Western civilization.

I harbor no illusions that what is really needed to heal post-America's profound spiritual sickness will be tried any time soon.

So pardon me if I don't either cheer or rage once today's votes are tallied.

Tuesday roundup

A New York high school tries to weasel out of recognizing a Christian club, but the Liberty Institute is on the case:

A New York school district violated federal law when it rejected a Christian student's request to start an on-campus Christian club, according to a nonprofit legal group representing the student.

The First Liberty Institute sent a letter to Wappingers Central School District on Wednesday demanding that it approve freshman Daniela Barca’s application to form the “OMG! Christian Club” at Roy C. Ketcham High School. 

The aim of the club, according to First Liberty Institute, is to offer “faith-based support” during biweekly student-initiated meetings where students have “discussions about living for God in a godless society.”

First Liberty Institute has accused school officials of stonewalling and slow walking approval of Barca’s proposal.

Ultimately, the student's request was denied on grounds that a Christian club was too “exclusive” and that a public school could not support a religious club. 

“[T]he discrimination toward Daniela’s religious speech has prevented OMG from pursuing their community-wide goals of ‘food drives, clothing drives, Operation Christmas Child’ and other charitable endeavors,” the letter from First Liberty Institute counsel Keisha Russell states. 

Eli Lake lays bare Adam Schiff's agenda-driven disingenuousness:

Eli Lake‏Verified account @EliLake

Schiff says on @FoxNewsSunday “there were serious abuses of FISA” but then says it wasn’t apparent two years ago. He had the same information as Nunes. Nunes called out those abuses. Schiff chose to attack Nunes instead of performing his oversight duties.

7:43 AM - 15 Dec 2019 

Excellent Maureen Mullarkey piece at The Federalist entitled "No, I'm not Buying A Little Boy A Tea Set For Christmas." A taste:

 . . . the saleswoman in an upscale toy store recommended one to me. I had told her the age and sex of the giftee when I asked her to point me to a suitable section in a tumble of displays. Reluctant to let me browse alone through fake mustaches, wooden puzzles, and Fisher-Price gear, the clerk insisted on being helpful.

She held up a boxed tea service. Inside was a round-bellied polypropylene pot and four miniature cups and saucers in watery pastels. Considering the sex of the recipient, even the washed-out color seemed emblematic.

“It’s quite adorable,” she purred.

“No, thank you. Not for a boy.”

“My son has one.”

Poor kid! Did I imagine it, or did she deliver that in a tone that signaled superior consciousness? Tea sets are paraphernalia for playing house, the hallowed pastime for girls. Was this mother of a son taking a stand against “gender apartheid,” the still-kicking bugbear of Gloria Allred and co.? The whiff of it rankled me.

I'm no Chris Cillizza fan by any stretch, but he has done yeoman's work here by archiving the VSG's 199 wildest lines of 2019, each with either a little commentary or the truth that stands in contrast to what the VSG uttered. A taste:

129. "We had 14 seasons, think of that. The Apprentice. I proudly signed four bipartisan human trafficking laws securing $400 million to support victims of human trafficking." July 17 (North Carolina rally) 

These were two sentences that the President said back-to-back. And, no, I have no idea what he believed the connection to be -- or if he believed there to be one.

108. "One person has a higher percentage than your favorite president, Donald Trump. Do you know who that president is? He's got a higher percentage than me and it's devastating. His name is George Washington." June 18 (Trump Orlando kickoff rally) 

First, Trump is saying his record of appointing federal judges is behind only that of America's first president. Second: "Your favorite president, Donald Trump."

81. "This is one of the true, in terms of war, in terms of, probably you can also say, in terms of peace, because this led to something very special." June 6 (Ingraham interview in Normandy) 

A real, unedited sentence from the President of the United States.

Uri Friedman piece at The Atlantic entitled "Under Trump, the U.S. Has Become A Leading Source of Instability":

 

For years, the Council on Foreign Relations has asked hundreds of U.S. government officials and foreign-policy experts to rate the potential security crises that could most threaten the United States in the coming year. Typically the respondents have focused on the world’s hot spots. More top of mind this year, it seems, was the destabilizing force at home.

Yes, there is “rising anxiety about the state of the world,” Paul Stares, who oversees CFR’s annual poll, told me. And that anxiety, he added, “probably has a lot to do with the policies of the Trump administration,” and the “turbulence” and “instability” it has created around the globe.

Over the past several years, as Donald Trump took the reins of American statecraft from Barack Obama, the United States as an actor in the world morphed from a known quantity to an unknown one to a “known unknown,” Stares observed, channeling Donald Rumsfeld.

“In the early months of [Trump’s] administration, there was some hope—call it wishful thinking—that he would become more appreciative of the U.S. role in the world, its contributions to international stability and peace and so on, and would essentially then follow the long-standing playbook of U.S. foreign policy,” said Stares, an expert on conflict prevention. “But that hasn’t been true. So we now are more prepared [for the] unexpected, or more cautious about how we project future U.S. policy.” 

China and Russia reach out to North Korea, saying, "We're forming a strategic alliance to serve as a foil to the US-led array of nations. Want to get on board?" 

While most everyone in America is obsessing over the impeachment follies, the situation on the Korean peninsula has gone from bad to worse, at least in terms of the goals of the United States and the west. Russia and China have prepared a UN resolution that would lift many sanctions on North Korea. The stated goal is to “enhance the livelihood of the civilian population.” But as admirable as such a goal might be, it would effectively take the handcuffs off of Kim Jong-un, leaving America and her allies nothing to go on but Kim’s promises to be a better actor on the world stage. And history has shown us repeatedly what his promises are worth. 

In March 2018, the VSG vowed never to sign another omnibus spending bill like the one he was signing at the time. Today, in a floor speech about how atrocious the current spending bills are, Texas Representative Chip Roy said he looks forward to the VSG getting out his veto pen. He also asked why the recent revelations about how utterly failed the US mission in Afghanistan has been aren't affecting spending on that.

In early 2019, Rudy Giuliani was just a private citizen - albeit the president's personal attorney - and Maria Yovanovitch was a government employee, the US ambassador to Ukraine. Still, Rudy knew what he had to do to further his client's aims:

In a long conversation with me this past November, Giuliani largely confirmed Lutsenko’s account of their relationship. He, too, saw Yovanovitch as an obstacle, hindering his attempt to dig up dirt against his client’s rival in advance of the 2020 election. “I believed that I needed Yovanovitch out of the way,” he said. “She was going to make the investigations difficult for everybody.” Giuliani compiled a dossier on the Bidens and Yovanovitch, which he sent to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and which was shared with the F.B.I. and with me. John Solomon, a journalist, had interviewed Lutsenko for the Washington-based publication The Hill. Giuliani promoted the project. “I said, ‘John, let’s make this as prominent as possible,’ ” Giuliani told me. “ ‘I’ll go on TV. You go on TV. You do columns.’ ”

Former Pakistani general and president (he assumed that latter position in a coup) Musharraf has been sentenced to death. But it's in absentia. He's been living in Dubai for years.

 

The identity politics jackboots claim a much-prized scalp

They stop at nothing in their quest to drive Christianity from the public square and completely underground.

You see, the Hallmark Channel has one of the most readily identifiable demographics in media consumption: women from their mid-20s through their 50s who like their entertainment wholesome if a little bit corny and cloying. Both provider and viewer have been perfectly satisfied. In post-America, that will never do. They can't be left alone with their preferences.

One of the network's sponsors, a wedding planner, had to give Hallmark a little prod, to see if something outside its formula would be found acceptable. It wasn't - until the jackboots brought the full extent of their wrath to bear. Hallmark got wobbly in the knees and went full Chik-fil-A:

After stirring controversy on social media, Hallmark’s CEO is apologizing for pulling a commercial featuring a same-sex couple and says the company will reinstate the ad to air on the Hallmark Channel.

The controversy began when One Million Moms, part of the American Family Association, complained about the Zola ads featuring a lesbian couple kissing at a wedding altar, saying the commercial was not appropriate for the family-friendly cable network.

The ad from the wedding planning company was subsequently removed from the network, generating an outcry from gay rights advocates, The Associated Press reported. The Hallmark Channel responded to the criticism by saying that the ad was serving as a distraction from its programming and that the network’s goal is to never be divisive.

“The debate surrounding these commercials on all sides was distracting from the purpose of our network, which is to provide entertainment value,” said a statement provided to The Associated Press by Molly Biwer, senior vice president for public affairs and communications at Hallmark.

Ellen DeGeneres asked Hallmark on Twitter: “Isn’t it almost 2020? What are you thinking? Please explain. We’re all ears.” 

In a statement released Sunday evening, Mike Perry, president and CEO of Hallmark Cards Inc., explained his decision to reinstate the ads to the Hallmark Channel. “Hallmark is, and always has been, committed to diversity and inclusion – both in our workplace as well as the products and experiences we create. It is never Hallmark’s intention to be divisive or generate controversy, Perry said. He went on to outline Hallmark’s track record of being an inclusive workplace.

As for the fate of the Zola ad, Perry said, "The Hallmark Channel will be reaching out to Zola to reestablish our partnership and reinstate the commercials.” 

The "isn't it almost 2020?" remark speaks volumes. Leviticus 18:22 and Romans 1:26-27 are not the passing viewpoints of proselytizers from cultures whose times came and went. They are the inerrant word of God, impervious to the ever-changing contours of culture.

But if one does want to approach this from a temporal standpoint, it's essential to point out that, prior to the last 20 years at the very outset,  in no culture or society anywhere in the world, at any point in history, did the institution of marriage encompass unions between people of the same sex.

And let's head off the charge of bigotry at the pass. I daresay the typical Hallmark viewer holds no animus toward gay people. She has a live-and-let-live attitude and probably even has gay people and maybe even couples among her acquaintance, maybe in her immediate social circle. She just isn't interested in having her worldview challenged when she tunes into Hallmark. She wants her smooches and hugs and sleigh rides and moonlight dances on the balcony to be of the normal variety - and statistics back me up on the word I've chosen here.

That's not good enough for the jackboots. You will look straight ahead and gaze unblinkingly upon a lesbian kiss. Your will get your mind right. You will not mention your strange little niche belief system in public.

No.

What we must do is what Reverend Bishop exhorts us to do:

In an inspired and powerful presentation at “Transformed! the Wesleyan Covenant Association’s Fourth Global Gathering” at Asbury United Methodist Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on November 9, 2019, the Rev. Shane Bishop said, “A failure to embrace the ministry of the Holy Spirit has produced a disconnect and a lack of firepower in the church today. The firepower has to do with orthodox theology. If we don’t believe God can actually change people and we are not willing to boldly pray for and celebrate such transformations, we are open to every single criticism the culture hurls at us.”

“It is time to walk in the power of the Holy Spirit and not our own strength,” said Bishop, senior pastor at Christ Church in Fairview Heights, Illinois.  “It is time to teach good theology rather than disparage bad theology. It is time to tell our story and not have our story told for us. It is time for signs and wonders; not sighs and whiners. It is time to boldly celebrate who we are, where we are going, and what God has called us to be!”

And we'd better start now, while we can still do so with at least official assurance that it's permissible.