Bad News, Good News

So much bad news has come down the pike of late, you've got to allow me to let out a whoop and a hollar at some really good news. Rotate in your graves, Strom Thurmond, Anita Bryant, Jerry Falwell and all you other sexists, white supremacists and homophobes of yore, as the world gets a look at the Vice-President of the United States swearing in a Senator pro-tem from California yesterday. The new senator's name is Laphonza Butler. She is black. She is married to the third woman in the photo, with whom she is raising a daughter (just in case you missed the fact that LGBT people have family values, too). In fact, all three women in the photo are black women. We've come a long way since the 13th and 14th time the U.S. Constitution was amended: the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, and the moment women were granted the right to vote in the U.S. on August 18, 1920.

"Piano, piano si va lontano" they say in Italian. Literally, "Take it easy if you're going a long way." Meaning you can't rush things if you want them done right.

Sometimes the pace of progress is agonizingly slow. We live in a country where the political right gets away with slapping the label "socialist" on health care for all Americans, knowing that most Americans can't distinguish the word from "communist" and they know a bad thing when they hear one. The Equal Rights Amendment has yet to pass, and it appears to be at the end of a long line of things progressives would like to see happen. We can't stop a self-serving minority from dictating to the majority via the Electoral College and the way voting districts are gerrymandered. Hungary, Estonia and Portugal each have one billionaire each living within their borders. The United States has 735. Not a problem per se, but something to think about when you realize that if you went out and spent $100 on dinner every night of the week, it would take over 2.7 million years (that's 2,700,000) before your check would bounce for insufficient funds. And that's if you have only one billion dollars in the bank. Most of the 735 have more than that. Elon Musk is alleged to have $251 billion, so multiply those 2.7 million years by 251. You get my point.

And put that fact (if I've done my math right - no guarantee there - if not, please set me right) up against the fact that the Republicans were on the verge just now of shutting down the government because they don't believe it should involve itself in helping the 14.5 million American children living in poverty. They prefer to leave that to the market. Oh, and of those 14.5 million, more than 13.1 million are food insecure.

I could go on forever listing all the good news items I've come across lately and line them up against the bad news items. It's part of the art of living how much of each you let into your awareness of the world to spur you to responsible action and how much you keep out to save your sanity. I zeroed in the other day on the fact that parking meters in Berkeley now want $2.75 to allow you to park your car on a commercial street per hour. Highway robbery, if ever there was such a thing. Greedy bastards run the City of Berkeley. Then today I had Darling Daughter Boobie (aka Bounce) get her once-every-three-years rabies shot, a necessary step in getting her dog licence renewed. The cost of that is $40 for those three years. But because I'm over 65 years old, the City of Berkeley lets me register my dog for free. So today I love the City of Berkeley and want to find the person or persons who put that regulation in place and give them a hug and a smooch.

Other good news on the gay liberation front comes from Mauritius, where they just rescinded the law punishing gay people for having sex. Piano piano.

And from the Vatican, where the pope is trying to convince the hardliners in his church to lighten up and allow priests to bless same-sex unions. The hardliners are holding out, reasoning that it's just not right to bless sinners. One might argue that the line they fling around is "love the sinner and hate the sin." But I guess they're not idiots. They know that a good many of the men and women who go to the trouble of standing up in front of God and all the world to declare their love for each other are probably going to do things in the bed at night besides snore.  No matter. Let's hear it for Papa Francesco. Piano piano.

Kevin McCarthy got bounced, good news, and replaced by another one of us Mc people, neither good nor bad news, except that this one is an out-and-out homophobe, bad news, and a guy known for being rude as hell. Check out his run-in with Elizabeth Warren, for example. He also just kicked Nancy Pelosi out of her office, but I don't want to fault him for that, necessarily. Good news is he's speaker only pro tempore, and therefore not third in line for the presidency.

What all is next? Will the Maldives sink below the ocean due to global warming? Will the Ukrainians hold out against the Russian invasion? Will we ever get mom-and-pop stores back instead of putting immigrants into jobs where they get abused by cost-cutting big corporations? We're onto the real possibility that there may be a cure in the offing, and not just a stop-gap medication, for HIV/AIDS. My eye doctor tells me my eyes are good for another year without cataract surgery and Boobie is back sleeping in my bed again, at least when I get to bed before midnight.

Let me end on a positive note. Tangerine Turd, of the political party that touts itself as the family-values party, is now on display as the Big Daddy who taught his two older sons to be bare-faced liars. They may lose the right to do business in New York, and TT père has been legally declared a fraud.  Ditto Jr. and Eric. Dyed-in-the-wool Maga folk will still follow him anywhere, I know, but there is reason to believe their numbers are diminishing. 

Slowly, but surely. Piano piano.

photo by Getty images: