Opinion

Marty from Wisconsin called in to my SiriusXM radio program as I discussed the insurrection at the Capitol. He started out weirdly referring to Princess Leia from "Star Wars," and saying "we're gonna be stronger."

This article was originally published at The Signorile Report

Florida's Republican Governor Ron DeSantis on Friday announced he will order flags across the state to be lowered to honor recently deceased right wing radio host and hate purveyor Rush Limbaugh.

“I know they're still figuring out the [funeral] arrangements but what we do when there's things of this magnitude, once the date of internment for Rush is announced, we're going to be lowering the flags to half-staff," DeSantis, a devout Trump supporter, told residents in Palm Beach County, as local NBC affiliate WFLA reports.

The Nation's Joan Walsh is among the journalists who is not shy about using the word "liar" to accurately describe Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. But in an article published on March 23, the liberal Walsh gives the far-right Republican credit for speaking the truth for once. Cruz, Walsh notes, recently admitted that making it easier to vote benefits Democrats, while making it more difficult to vote benefits Republicans.

All over the United States, Republicans in state legislatures are pushing voter suppression bills designed to make it much harder to vote. A bill in Georgia even proposed making it a crime to give food or water to someone waiting in line to vote. And Democrats, at the federal level, are fighting back with the voting rights bill House Resolution 1, a.k.a. the For the People Act — which was recently passed in the U.S. House of Representatives but faces an uphill climb in the U.S. Senate.

Keep your eye on Evanston, Ill., which this week became the first U.S. city to make reparations available to its Black residents through home loan repairs or down payments on property.

Reparations – financial amends for discrimination and slavery – is among the most controversial of social programs sought by progressives.

Quick, how much is $2 trillion? That's the amount President Joe Biden wants for his infrastructure package.

Okay, it is more money than even Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos have, put together. That probably still doesn't give people too much information since most people don't have much familiarity with these folks' fortunes. But it might be helpful if the media made some effort to put the proposed spending in President Biden's infrastructure package in a context that would make it meaningful.

Democrats seem to be operating in two worlds at the same time: There's a real energy, driven by the base, to move ahead with bold plans, knowing that big majorities of Americans support them.

This article was originally published at The Signorile Report

What a difference a year makes in international diplomacy.

A year ago, then-US President Donald Trump was obliged to abandon his plans for a G7 summit at the presidential retreat of Camp David outside Washington.

Various excuses were advanced by participants, including the inadvisability of travelling across the world in the midst of a pandemic. But in reality few, if any, G7 leaders wanted to associate themselves with Trump in what was hoped would be the last days of an ill-starred presidency.

A year later, these same leaders gathered at an English coastal retreat – in the shadow of a persistent COVID-19 pandemic – to celebrate the end of a disruptive chapter in diplomatic history. Relief was palpable in the interactions of representatives of the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, Italy and Canada.

America was back, not in its “America First" guise, but as the proclaimed leader of the free world, to use an old-fashioned description.

However, in the four years of the Trump presidency, during which Washington effectively abandoned its global leadership role in favour of an inward-looking posture defined by its embrace of an America First doctrine, the world had changed, and shifted dramatically.

President Joe Biden and Democratic leadership are glowing with pride about a major infrastructure bill. It's bipartisan and therefore gets gushy praise from the Beltway press. Even voters, who don't really care about bipartisanship, care about shoring up crumbling American infrastructure, so the bill is a win in that department for Biden and the Democrats. But while Democrats hyped their still-fragile victory on moving that bill forward, another crisis threatens to steal the top headlines.

This article originally appeared at Salon.