BRIDGET JOHNSON: Eight Countries Stand with U.S. as UN Condemns Recognition of Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, Bridget’s unexplained and unacknowledged Twitter banishment remains unexplained and unacknowledged by Twitter management.

OH, THAT FUNDAMENTAL TRANSFORMATION. Theodore Dalrymple: I Have Seen London’s Future and It Is Caracas.

The Good Dr. Dalrymple’s bleak forecast makes for a bracing contrast with George Orwell’s classic “England Your England” essay written in 1941 during the Blitz, when Orwell wanted to capture what might vanish as the result of a very different sort of fundamental transformation.

HELP A DAD OUT? Single dad ‘prepared to take out a loan’ after son’s life-saving medicine taken from porch.

The three-month supply of medicine for the 4-year-old’s kidney costs around $5,000, according to KSTU. It was swiped exactly a week before Christmas, and his father wasn’t sure he would be able to replace it in time. Whoever took it hasn’t returned it as of Thursday, but luckily Taylor has been working with his insurance to get a replacement.

Cody Taylor, a single father, says he’s had medication delivered right to his door for years and never had a problem until this week when their most expensive and arguably most important medication was stolen.

Austin Taylor, 4, is a little boy with a big heart who was born with several severe birth defects. Doctors weren’t sure he’d survive.

“He’s my little miracle. He’s my hero. Because of everything he’s gone through, I can’t complain about life,” Cody said. “They gave him a 25 percent chance of living three months.”

But now, four years later, “He’s so strong and always fighting,” Cody said.

No sign of a Kickstarter or GoFundMe campaign, but I’ll keep an eye out.

DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE AND THE WAR ON CHRISTMAS: Why does the University of Minnesota hate Christmas and Hanukkah?

PRIVACY: WhatsApp Gets One Month to Stop Data Sharing With Facebook.

France’s data protection authority CNIL gave a sharp warning to WhatsApp by issuing a formal notice, criticizing it for “insufficiently” cooperating. The decision comes a year after European Union privacy authorities said they had “serious concerns” about the sharing of WhatsApp user data for purposes that weren’t included in the terms of service and privacy policy when people signed up to the service.

CNIL “decided to make this formal notice public in order to ensure the highest level of transparency on the massive data transfer from WhatsApp to Facebook Inc. and thus to alert to the need for individuals concerned to keep their data under control,” the regulator said in a statement on its website on Monday.

Facebook faces regulatory hurdles throughout Europe over a range of privacy issues. Germany’s Federal Cartel Office in preliminary findings published Tuesday criticized Facebook’s data collection practices, saying the company abusively requires users to allow it collect data from web use beyond its site. Menlo Park, California-based Facebook rejected the German authority’s findings as giving an “inaccurate picture.”

I suspect WhatsApp isn’t financially viable without significant data sharing with Facebook, but more importantly, the EU has long been way out ahead of the US on digital privacy issues.

IF CORPORATE TAX CUTS ARE SO BAD, WHY ARE THE BLUE STATES SLASHING THEIRS? Leave it to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and other blue state officials to provide yet another illustration of utter hypocrisy in politics.

Shortly after Congress approved the largest tax cut in American history and the most significant reform of the tax code since, 1986, Schumer lamented that “now we know they are popping champagne down Pennsylvania Avenue. There are only two places where America’s popping champagne: The White House and the corporate board rooms, including Trump Tower.”

Thanks to the tax reform bill, Schumer added that the measure “officially cements the Republican Party as the party of the wealthy and the party of big corporations against the middle class and the working people of this country.”

Then there’s this piquant observation from Lifezette’s Brendan Kirby, who points out that: “Even as prominent Democrats such as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) trashed the idea, their extremely blue home states have been cutting corporate tax rates.

“The three states are among a dozen overall that have changed their corporate tax rates since 2012, according to a report this month by the Tax Foundation. All of the changes have flowed in one direction: down.”

As “they” say, you just can’t make this stuff up.

CHANGE: Year One List: 81 major Trump achievements, 11 Obama legacy items repealed.

AT AMAZON, Hot New Releases, Updated Hourly.

Plus, new Kindle Daily Deals.

And, today’s Digital Deals.

WHAT ELSE HAVE THEY GOT? Liberals Poo-Poo the Post-Tax Cut Announcements of Raises, Bonuses.

The GOP would be smart to put together a gag reel of these condescending pronouncements.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: U.N. Jew Haters, Mueller, ‘Andy’s Office’ and Much, Much More.

PEOPLE MAGAZINE ASKS, Who Killed Dan Markel?

BUBBLE ECONOMY: Long Island Iced Tea shares went gangbusters after changing its name to Long Blockchain.

Up until this morning, Long Blockchain was a little-known company making non-alcoholic lemonades and ice teas. As of Wednesday, the company had a market value of just $23.8 million, but at one point in pre-market trading had 9.76 million outstanding shares, giving the company a market value of close to $138 million. That’s small by Wall Street standards, but significant considering the only factor seemed to be the name change.

Caveat emptor.

STONEWALL: Byron York: Frustrated lawmakers pressed FBI’s McCabe for answers on Trump dossier. They got nothing.. “At one point, McCabe was reminded that another top FBI official had months ago told the House that the bureau had not been able to corroborate the dossier. McCabe’s response was noncommittal.”

HMM: FBI’s top lawyer said to be reassigned.. This WaPo story really builds him up in contrast to new FBI Director Christopher Wray, from which I conclude that this highly respected FBI lawyer was probably a major leaker to the Post, especially in light of this: “He was very close to former FBI director James B. Comey, who asked Baker to be his general counsel. They were colleagues at the Justice Department and when they were out of government at Bridgewater Associates, an investment management firm.”

Ann Althouse is also parsing the coverage.

WAR ON SCIENCE: Kansas State University class: ‘Gender is not determined by chromosomes.’

Chris Mooney, call your office.

QUESTIONS ASKED: Did Rosie O’Donnell Offer a Bribe to Senators?

Beyond that, Ace asks:

Question: Isn’t there something wrong with people who have this level of emotion and ego invested in who wins this or that in politics?

People have only a finite reservoir of #Caring, as Kurt Schlicter calls it. You cannot care passionately but for a few things.

When deranged imbeciles like this and the rest of the #BlueCheckmarkMafia melt down every single day – rend their garments every single day– basically call Taylor Swift a racist for not being a basket-case neurotic depressive like themselves, every single day — isn’t that complete proof that these people have absolutely nothing going on their lives to be happy about, to take pride in?

And how can we all avoid becoming like them?

Bad things happen when you make politics your religion. It has to be utterly exhausting to be on the left and pretend that every move by the Republicans will cause PEOPLE TO DIE!!!!1!!!!

(To be fair, being out of coffee is a perfectly legit reason to panic.)

WELL, YES: Democrats Are Fooling Themselves About Tax Reform’s Unpopularity. “Like Obamacare, people don’t know what’s in the Republican tax bill. Unlike Obamacare, they’re probably going to be pleasantly surprised.”

It’s one thing to be told you can keep your plan and then have it taken away for a worse one which costs significantly more. It’s quite another to be told you won’t be getting a tax cut, and then to find more money in your paycheck.

The Democrats have overplayed their hand on this one, but whether the GOP can capitalize on their mistake is a separate issue.

HAVE YOU NO DECENCY, SIR? Former Obama Staffer Ben Rhodes Dreams of Ryan, McConnell, Pence Obituaries.

WITH ONE BREATH WITH ONE FLOW, YOU WILL KNOW THE SYNCHRONICITY OF THE WORST ELITES IN AMERICAN HISTORY: ESPN chief becomes 41st to lose a feud with Trump.

I don’t think any of the implosions that Don Surber cites in the above link directly resulted from a skirmish with Trump, except that he really does seem to have the power to drive leftists utterly insane, exposing would-be technocratic elitists as anything but in the process. As Glenn has noted on several occasions, “if the press and the political opposition — but I repeat myself — were just sober, straightforward, and honest they could beat Trump easily. But then, if they were capable of that, we wouldn’t have gotten Trump to begin with.”

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Venezuela’s Oil Industry Staggers Closer To Collapse.

Venezuela used to have a diversified economy and some of the world’s largest proven oil reserves. Now they have an oil-dependent economy yet can’t even get the oil extracted.

Unexpectedly, of course, and certainly the fault of wreckers, hoarders, saboteurs, Trotskyites, kulaks, Yankee Imperialists, counterrevolutionaries, and Jews.

SO WHEN DO THE LUCRATIVE LAWSUITS START?

THINK OF THEM AS DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES AND YOU WON’T GO FAR WRONG: A deafening media silence on the Obama-Hezbollah scandal.

Politico published a jaw-dropping, meticulously sourced investigative piece this week detailing how the Obama administration had secretly undermined US law-enforcement agency efforts to shut down an international drug-trafficking ring run by the terror group Hezbollah. The effort was part of a wider push by the administration to placate Iran and ensure the signing of the nuclear deal.

Now swap out “Trump” for “Obama” and “Russia” for “Iran” and imagine the eruption these revelations would generate. Because, by any conceivable journalistic standard, this scandal should’ve triggered widespread coverage and been plastered on front pages across the country. By any historic standard, the scandal should elicit outrage regarding the corrosion of governing norms from pundits and editorial boards.

Yet, as it turns out, there’s an exceptionally good chance most of your neighbors and colleagues haven’t heard anything about it.

Days after the news broke, in fact, neither NBC News, ABC News nor CBS News — whose shows can boast a collective 20 million viewers — had been able to find the time to relay the story to its sizeable audiences. Other than Fox News, cable news largely ignored the revelations, as well.

Most major newspapers, which have been sanctimoniously patting themselves on the back for the past year, couldn’t shoehorn into their pages a story about potential collusion between the former president and a terror-supporting state.

Democracy dies in darkness.

BOOM: Limited Strikes on North Korea Are Past Due.

This comes from retired US Navy Captain David Allan Adams:

Whether North Korea can be deterred is a pivotal unanswered question. The trouble is that many of the same experts who are calling for the United States to lean on diplomacy and deterrence also say that Kim Jong Un “is not rational.” [iv] These leaders either failed or have forgotten their basic political science courses on deterrence. Renowned Harvard Professor Graham Allison explains in his Essence of Decision (Little Brown, 1971) why deterrent strategies require rational decision makers to succeed. In practice, Allison’s theories have proven right time and again. The success or failure of the U.S. North Korean policy hinges almost completely on the rationality of the North Korean regime.

Those who call for diplomatic solutions and a posture to deter North Korean aggression while at the same time calling out Pyongyang’s conduct as irrational cannot have it both ways. Allison and others argue that Kim is rational, although erratic. [v] Allison goes on to claim that if confronted even with limited military strikes, the North Korean dictator would unleash a suicidal war on the peninsula. This is hardly a rational response to measured U.S. military action.

The truth is, nobody knows for sure whether Kim is a “crazy fat kid” [vi] or a rational actor cleverly playing to his regime elites’ notion of their nation’s best interest. The distinction, however, is critical. Since no one knows for sure, the only way to absolutely discern the true nature of North Korea’s provocative decisions may be to gauge the regime’s response to limited military action.

China should take the lead on reining in their dangerous ally before our hand is forced.

WHEN WILL DANA MILBANK ISSUE A RETRACTION OR CORRECTION TO THIS COLUMN? Trump’s ticket to survival: Ban all the words.

MAYBE JUST SEND HIM THIS FOR CHRISTMAS: No, the Trump Administration Didn’t ‘Ban’ 7 Words at the CDC.

OR THIS: No, HHS Did Not ‘Ban Words.’

OR THIS: CDC director says there are ‘no banned words’ at the agency.

Democracy dies in darkness, I’m told.