President Joe Biden wrapped up his tour of Europe today with a personal meeting with Russia's Vladimir Putin and then a solo press conference afterwards (Putin also gave his own solo press conference, before Biden spoke). The summit meeting between the two leaders was built up with breathless anticipation in the political media, but the actual outcome was pretty mundane and more process-oriented than many might have expected. This first meeting was never supposed to be about big breakthroughs or bilateral agreements, it was designed to lay the groundwork for future negotiations and possible cooperation.

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Joe Biden has returned America's foreign policy (or at least the face of it to the rest of the world) back to normalcy. The president of the United States is once again treated respectfully by foreign leaders, mostly because he understands that allies are indispensible in the modern world -- and he knows the difference between allies and dictatorships (no matter how much dictators might try to flatter him and build up his ego). Our allies have welcomed our return to sanity and comity, and Biden's outreach is already bearing fruit on his first trip abroad. The trip's biggest test will come when he meets with Russia's Vladimir Putin, but he will do so knowing that Europe is largely backing the United States. That is all a drastic and relieving change from the past four years, when Donald Trump could barely stand to be in a room with Europe's leaders, would casually and viciously denigrate NATO and other bedrock alliances, and then throw his arms open wide for the likes of Putin and North Korea's Kim Jong Un. Or, to put it more succinctly, we are experiencing a return to normalcy.

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The two most powerful men on Capitol Hill should really sit down and have a talk with each other. It'd be risky, but maybe it's the only way the situation could improve. Senator Joe Manchin should invite Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to lunch, and the two should spend the entire time talking about the concept of bipartisanship. Of course, the risk involved in this strategy would be if McConnell instead actually talked Manchin into switching parties (which has to be considered a real possibility, at this point). But the benefit could be Manchin coming to a new understanding of how there just is never going to be any bipartisanship on the budget, on voting rights, on the 1/6 commission, or on just about anything else of any importance at all.

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President Biden is currently in Europe, in the midst of his first trip abroad since he took office. So the folks at Pew Research decided it was a good time to see how America is now viewed by the rest of the world (or the countries with advanced economies that were surveyed, at any rate). The answers are exactly what you'd expect them to be -- America's standing in the world has dramatically improved, now that a sane adult is in charge of the country once again (instead of an unstable and temperamental toddler).

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Progressives such as Senator Bernie Sanders have been pushing for a national $15-an-hour minimum wage for quite some time now. So far, they have been unsuccessful, due both to the Senate filibuster and to corporatist Democrats like Senator Joe Manchin (who, the last time the subject came up, would only even consider raising the minimum wage to $11 per hour). But the natural forces of the marketplace seem to be forcing employers towards this goal anyway, now that they're finding it so tough to hire workers. This shouldn't be all that surprising, because it is basic supply and demand. When the demand (for workers) is high and the supply is low (fewer people returning to work), then the marketplace will do what it always does when the formula is applied to merchandise: prices will rise. Or, in this case, "wages," not prices.

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Recent actual, no-foolin', you-can't-make-this-stuff-up news item:

A vaccine can now get you some pre-rolled bud in the state of Washington.

The state's liquor and cannabis board announced on Monday that in an effort to support coronavirus vaccinations, it will temporarily allow state-licensed cannabis retailers to give a free joint to adults who get their first or second dose at a vaccine clinic at one of the retail locations.

Call it the latest bounty in an ever-expanding list of incentives popping up across the country meant to push Americans to get their shots. "Joints for jabs" and similar campaigns have been around for months, with cannabis activist groups and local dispensaries offering joints for vaccinations. Now, a state is promoting the program.

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President Joe Biden has had enough, it seems. After wasting more than two months talking to a group of Republican senators led by Shelley Moore Capito, Biden has now come to the conclusion that this purported effort at good-faith negotiation is nothing more than a gigantic stalling tactic designed to waste as much time as possible. Everyone -- likely including Biden -- already knew this from the start, of course, but it had to be allowed to play out because Senator Joe Manchin loves Kabuki theater so much he made the rest of Washington suffer through it all. What comes next will either be "Kabuki (Part 2)" or the Democrats going it alone and successfully passing the lion's share of Biden's American Jobs Plan (as well as possibly his American Families Plan, just for good measure).

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Senator Joe Manchin may have just torpedoed much of President Joe Biden's agenda. He wrote an opinion piece for a local West Virginia newspaper where he reiterated his full support for the filibuster rule as it stands, and announced his opposition to the For The People Act (also known as "H.R. 1" or "S. 1"). His reason is specious, because what it amounts to is that the Republican Party should be allowed to pass as many voter-suppression laws as it pleases (without any attempt at bipartisanship, of course) in all the states where they hold the majority, and Democrats at the national level should do absolutely nothing to stop them -- unless and until 10 Republicans in the Senate see the error of their party's ways and suddenly decide to join with the Democrats in protecting the bedrock of American democracy. This is beyond magical reasoning, it is downright delusional.

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The ushers are flashing the lights in the lobby. Intermission is over, and the last act of the "Bipartisan Infrastructure Kabuki" extravaganza is about to begin. Actually, truth be told, we were among those who thought this play would be over by now, but apparently a final act was hastily added at the last minute, for no real apparent reason.

President Joe Biden called Senator Shelley Moore Caputo today, in what most view as the final negotiation attempt which will try to hammer together a compromise infrastructure package that 10 Republican senators will actually vote for. Biden is, in essence, making his final offer. It is eminently reasonable, considering where the two sides started from, but that doesn't mean it will have any chance of success, since Republicans are really just trying to run the clock out and stall for as long as they can get away with before they admit to the world that there simply is no infrastructure bill that 10 Republican senators are ever going to vote for -- at least not while a Democrat sits in the Oval Office.

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The biggest thing America gained with the election of President Joe Biden was the freedom to ignore Donald Trump once again. And it seems, with each passing day, that more and more people are happily exercising that freedom. Trump is fading. Call him the incredible shrinking Donald Trump. This was what went through my mind upon hearing the news that Trump's personal blog/website (all it ever really was, despite Trump touting it as a "a new social media platform") had turned out the lights and disappeared from the internet. It didn't even survive three Scaramuccis, which is a pretty short life span indeed for something Trump had promised would rival Twitter and Facebook and all the other social media platforms which had evicted Trump from their sites. A month later, Twitter, Facebook and the rest of them are doing just fine, while Trump's site is dark after only 29 days, due to lack of interest.

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