Lot of stories and quick news items to catch up on starting out the week.
• The left is outraged about the Supreme Court’s student loan decision, but kudos to the Washington Post for an especially clueless take:
That’s what the Supreme Court said—Congress, not the president, can authorize student debt relief. You’d think this would be easier.
• The latest from Operation Dump Biden, from Walter Shapiro in The New Republic:
Biden Can’t Hide From the Media Forever
. . . Biden’s handlers should see the Nicole Wallace appearance as an argument for the president to make more unscripted television appearances and grant far more print interviews. Yes, there is always a danger that a maladroit statement or some baffling syntax will go viral. But trying to replicate the 2020 pandemic-era campaign bunker in the coming presidential race will only foster conspiracy theories about Biden’s health.
Chaser:
We need a serious conversation about Joe Biden’s brain
Speaking to reporters Wednesday, President Biden falsely claimed that Russia is at war with Iraq. Russia is at war with Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is “clearly losing the war in Iraq,” Biden told the press pool, “losing the war at home. And he has become a bit of a pariah around the world.”
On Tuesday, during an unrelated fundraising event in Chevy Chase, Md., Biden made the exact same slip-up, mistaking Ukraine for Iraq.
“If anybody told you … that we’d be able to bring all of Europe together in the onslaught on Iraq and get NATO to be completely united,” the president said, “I think they would have told you it’s not likely.”
Although many journalists did a fine job this week highlighting the president’s apparent confusion regarding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, one can’t help but feel as if the news industry as a whole is avoiding the obvious follow-up question. Namely, “Is Biden OK?”
No, he’s not.
• John notes below that the energy transition is failing like trans-everything else just now, but did you see how fast it failed in Nebraska last week? A solar farm intended to last 25 years was wiped out in a 15-minute hailstorm:
But sure, let’s keep building these land-hogging installations. I’ll be they do great in a tornado, too.
• Up for a smile? Recently the Just Stop Oil nutcases over in the UK disrupted a Pride parade (isn’t that an international human rights violation?). But a bunch of rowdy revelers from a pre-wedding stag party hijacked a Just Stop Oil march, and it’s the best thing you’ll see today:
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