Politics

My brothers, my sisters, hold it right there. Thank you. We’re missing a major point, howsoever understandably. All this media chitchat coupling Joe Biden’s political incapacities to his undoubtedly advanced age and slowing gait requires, in my estimation, some context. Nor do I suggest the president’s recently acquired case of Covid — from which we all pray he recovers speedily and fully — lends point and pith to the discussion. I suggest that the problem with Joe Biden isn’t age as such, nor the infirmities that go with having lived back when Cokes cost a nickel and Ed Sullivan was king of TV.

On Thursday, a man jumped onstage and tried to kill one of the two candidates running for New York governor. Fortunately, he failed. Even so, the incident was terrifying, not only because it endangered Representative Lee Zeldin but because it underscores two grave problems facing America. One is the failure of our law enforcement system to treat serious crimes seriously, both to deter them and punish the offenders. This failure makes it a misnomer to speak of our “criminal justice” system. It’s not providing justice, and it's not deterring crime, especially violent crime. The second is the danger violence poses to our established constitutional order, beyond its danger to any individual.

Joe Biden and Bennie Thompson may be laid up with Covid, but the January 6 committee, to borrow a phrase from Donald Trump, was ready to fight like hell on Thursday. “Doors have opened, new subpoenas have been issued, the dam has begun to break,” declared Representative Liz Cheney at the outset. “He chose not to act,” added Representative Adam Kinzinger, slamming “Trump’s dishonor and dereliction of duty.” Speaking of slamming, it was the footage of Trump smacking the lectern on January 7, as he stumbled through a video intended to display his displeasure with the violence that he fomented, that displayed the real Trump. Vexed, exasperated, distressed. “Yesterday’s a hard word for me,” he announced. “I don’t want to say the election is over.

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.