I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Wednesday, November 24th.

A little good economic news on this Thanksgiving Eve, the weekly new jobless claims number came out this morning,

and I read it was the lowest single week number in 50 years. So despite the new rise in COVID

cases this month, it doesn't seem to be shutting down the economy very much. That's different from

parts of Europe right now. Austria, have you heard this, with its surge being worse than our

surge right now, has ordered a lockdown and a national vaccine mandate, not just certain workers,

everyone, except the medically or religiously exempt, and they are expecting economic losses as well,

as well as public health gains from the lockdown.

But another thing in this country that is affecting most people is the recent rise in gasoline prices,

as the holiday has approached. And yesterday President Biden announced a release of oil from what's called the National Petroleum Reserve,

and he acknowledged the tension that I'm sure many of you are thinking about right away

between his recent climate promises about getting off of fossil fuels and flooding the market with them now to ease the short-term pain.

It will take time, but before long, you should

see the price of gas drop where you fill up your tank. And on the longer term, we will reduce

our reliance on oil as we shift to clean energy. So President Biden yesterday, now before we

bring on our first guest to talk seriously about all this,

two bits of satire. This first one was sent to me by a friend. I'm not sure of the original source,

but if anyone else has seen this going around, you can let us know. It says, having observed the

activities at COP 26, I have set an ambitious target to phase out my

alcohol consumption within the next 29 years as part of an impressive plan to improve my health.

The program will see me continue to drink as normal for the foreseeable future before reducing

consumption in 2015 when I turn 92.

...