Nothing New

While I was away last week, I went off the grid.  I watched no news shows, only turning on my fabulous really large screen TV for DVD's and weather (and okay, Bill Maher because I don't get HBO at home).  I used the internet for the HBO schedule and restaurant menus.  Never checked my email.

But then on Friday evening, I broke down and caught a few minutes of NPR.  My mistake.  Here are the first three items I heard:

Why the Supreme Court was likely to give some version of a states' rights ruling on gay marriage.  Why they couldn't give too much credence to the President's position statement against DOMA -- that would put too much power in the hands of the president.

Really.

Number two was the fact that our idiots in Congress were backing even further away from any type of "meaningful" gun legislation.  Even, gods help them, the Democrats.  Harry Reid, it was reported, was being as spineless and ineffectual as ever.  The President was still exhorting Congress to do something the keep us from killing each other.

Finally, the first item on the business report was something to do with a procedure that would make gasoline cleaner.  The fuel industry had loudly proclaimed that this would raise the cost of gasoline by nine cents a gallon.  The EPA claimed the figure was more like one cent, and choosing more fuel efficient cars would make that increase negligible. The newscaster ended by saying that despite the increasing cost of gas, the two most popular vehicles over the past year were gas guzzling pick-ups.

At that point, I turned off the radio to enjoy my few remaining hours of vacation.

Why could there not have been a single item that made me cheer, or even sigh with relief?

Before my vacation, the big news was that Rob Portman had changed his views toward gays because his son had admitted to being gay.  This was some kind of lukewarm hero, who kept his right-wing mouth shut during the election season, and only changed his views, cheney-like, because it was family, not because it was right.  But today when I googled the information, I found that -- no, Portman has not changed his views on gay marriage at all.

Well, thank you for not shattering my jaded world-view.

Next thing I'll be hearing is that Pope Francis didn't really mean that he wants the Catholic Church to be poor, just the Catholic people.