Points of light

Maybe it seems like nothing good ever happens.  The COVID-19 death toll continues to rise.  Tornadoes are killing people.  That sound was Krakatoa, one of the half-dozen volcanoes with name recognition.  The locusts are worse than normal -- normal? -- in eastern Africa.  All the wars that were going on before the Event are still going on, answering the question "If the Russian army kills Ukrainians and even the BBC doesn't see it, are they really dead?"  Speaking of Ukraine, would you like to read the words "fire," "radiation" and "Chernobyl" in the same sentence?

Here in the Shining City on the Hill, political ratfuckery has hardly missed a beat.  There is no good reason why all the states and colonies territories should not vote by mail, which already occurs in Oregon, Utah, Washington, Hawaii and Colorado with no fuss.  No reason except the Republicans fear, with some justification, that more voting will hasten the day when they join the No-Nothings and the Anti-Masonic Party in the dumpster of history.  They have erected every roadblock they can think of, from gerrymandering to voter ID to closing polling stations to purging names because a clerk omitted a hyphen.  (In Georgia, Secretary of State Brian Shemp even "mislaid" the power cords for a lot of machines delivered to mostly-black precincts.  Another stable jenius!)  The poll tax has been slipped back in under new names -- you can't vote if you owe child support, or a fine for an overdue library book.  Nobody believes the Russian bots can't somehow fiddle the numbers.  And still people insist on voting, especially people who remember the 1960s.  What to do?

The social distancing necessitated by this pandemic -- the British use the much cozier term "cocooning" -- have made mail voting more attractive, especially if COVID continues or re-ignites in the fall.  So desperate are the Republicans that they have stepped up efforts to destroy the postal system itself.  Because of a scheme that requires it to guarantee pensions for employees who haven't retired, haven't even been hired, the postal service is broke, and the Trump regime won't agree to any stimulus bill that helps it survive.  Their hope is to kill two birds:  destroy a unionized public utility that helps rural people as well as Amazon, and save the Republican Party's ass from rampant democracy.  If this fails, even the Electoral College won't keep them in power.

Everyone saw Wisconsin voters standing for hours in the rain last week just to vote in primaries, and some states are moving to fix the problem.  I call attention to baby-blue Virginia, where amazing things are happening.  Last week they passed a whole slew of gun safety bills which stop just short of grabbing everybody's assault weapons/freedom.  This week they just about went crazy with new laws to protect LGBTQ veterans, allow local authorities to decide what to do with their Confederate memorials, and yes, make it easier to vote.  Who do they think they are, the People's Republic of Burlington (Vermont)?

All the other news is bad, but some of it is grimly amusing.  Remember William Bennett, the virtue-mongering Secretary of Education way back when (the golden Reagan years)?  He's also a degenerate gambler who showed up on "Fox & Friends" to whine about the lockdown -- of casinos.  There's online gambling, of course, but almost nothing to bet on, and Bill is climbing the walls.  Bennett probably has a slot machine in his living room, but somebody should buy him another one.  

Another padded Bill (O'Reilly) surfaced in the same studios to dismiss the overreaction to the Trump Pandemic:  "Many people who are dying...were on their last legs anyway, and I don't want to sound callous about that."  Without sounding callous, he might want to call the family of the Theodore Roosevelt crew member whose death was announced today.  As an active-duty sailor in the US Navy, he probably was not on his "last legs" when COVID killed him.  But as Trump remarked to the widow of another service man, "He knew what he was getting into."

Food shortages?  In America?  In 2020?  This is going to make the toilet paper panic look like a couple of dogs disputing a squeaky toy.  

Trump has been tweeting veiled hints to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci if the only trusted member of his coronavirus team doesn't stop saying things like this.  All who fail to praise Donzo must feel his wrath, like the World Health Organization.

The media is the media.  Not satisfied with reporting, they are trying to gin up a feud between Governor Cuomo and Mayor DiBlasio over who gets to close New York City schools.  Look, I get that there's nobody left standing except Joe Biden (they were hoping for just one more debate between the Sunshine Boys) now that Bernie Sanders has endorsed him.  Would it be asking too much for them to stop acting like a little kid playing her divorced parents off to get a better PlayStation?  I am trying to be positive here.

Trying so hard.  Oh, I almost forgot the Pope's Easter message.  What's Latin for "universal basic income"?  Can they canonize him now?