Politics

Joe Biden has had a lot to worry about lately. First, according to his own account, he has cancer thanks to emissions from oil refineries near his childhood home in Delaware: "That’s why I and so damn many other people I grew up with have cancer and why for the longest time Delaware had the highest cancer rate in the nation." A White House spokesman later clarified that Biden had had "non-melanoma skin cancers" removed before he took office, though that doesn't explain why he claimed he has cancer now. Apparently he's contracted Covid too. The president tested positive today and will be isolating at the White House.

The coming energy storm Europe may be grappling with record-breaking heat, but it’s what happens when temperatures drop this winter that has policymakers worried. This morning, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen urged the continent to be “proactive” when she announced a plan to cut gas consumption by 15 percent between now and next spring. “Putin is blackmailing us,” she said in a blunt assessment of the messy confluence of geopolitics and energy policy that has left some of the world’s most advanced economies in such a vulnerable position. Europe’s energy worst-case scenario is not some remote nightmare but an imminent possibility.

During the course of my daily media interviews, one of the most frequent questions I hear is, “when will things get better?” Being the bearer of bad news is frustrating, but unfortunately that’s all I see for the next few years. Following the basic laws of economics, energy prices can only come down based on two factors: increase the supply or decrease the demand. They may not like to admit it, but President Joe Biden and his team understand the need for a supply increase. It explains the president's trip to Saudi Arabia to ask their king to increase oil production. He has dispatched envoys to Venezuela and Iran for the same purpose. Unfathomably, his administration continues its relentless attacks on domestic oil production.

The mainstream media has picked up on a story of a heroic armed citizen being heralded as “a good Samaritan” for shooting and killing a gunman who opened fire inside a Greenwood, Indiana mall. It’s been a long time coming, but it’s better late than never for such left-leaning media outlets as ABC, NBC, People magazine, the Today Show, the Washington Post and others reporting what gun owners have known forever: the best — and ofttimes only — way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with another gun. Yesterday, a man with a rifle managed to kill three people inside the Greenwood Park Mall. But then, a 22-year-old man used a firearm he was legally carrying concealed to shoot the gunman and end his killing spree.

Birth control may finally become available over the counter in the United States. HRA Pharma, a French drugmaker, hopes the FDA will approve its application for sale of the Opill brand after seven years of tests. You’d think Opill was some new kind of drug, except it’s been prescribed to women for decades. “For a product that has been available for the last fifty years, that has been used safely by millions of women, we thought it was time to make it more available,” commented HRA’s chief strategy officer to the Associated Press. HRA Pharma started lobbying for OTC status in 2016 after purchasing the drug rights from Pfizer. And HRA isn’t the only drug company playing a regulatory game of limbo. Cadence Health planned to start a trial for its drug Zena last year.

Joe Manchin to the rescue Just when you think the mood among Democrats couldn’t get any darker, it does. Lumbered with a chronically unpopular president, still coming to terms with the end of the Roe era and nervous about an economy that feels like it is spiraling out of control, the party could at least look forward to the prospect of a smaller version of Build Back Better passing the Senate. Well, not any more. Last night Joe Manchin torpedoed plans for any climate change spending or tax increases in any reconciliation package being haggled over by his party for at least a few months.

In their 2004 chart-topping album American Idiot, Green Day sings that “another protester has crossed the line to find the money’s on the other side.” Fast forward to 2022, and we find that many young politicians posing as threats to the establishment are singing the same tune. Top millennials in Washington may brand themselves as rebels, but their votes often end up indistinguishable from the elder establishment they so revile. In a recent campaign ad, South Carolina Democratic gubernatorial candidate Joe Cunningham declared that both his state and America are being run by a geriatric oligarchy. “Some of these people have been clinging onto power for 30, 40, even 50 years,” Cunningham said.