How about the better reality JK has helped create? Today is the day:

[beachmom]

This is it, folks!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8438865.stm

US lifts HIV/Aids immigration ban

The US has lifted a 22-year immigration ban which has stopped anyone with HIV/Aids from entering the country.

President Obama said the ban was not compatible with US plans to be a leader in the fight against the disease.

The new rules come into force on Monday and the US plans to host a bi-annual global HIV/Aids summit for the first time in 2012.

The ban was imposed at the height of a global panic about the disease at the end of the 1980s.

It put the US in a group of just 12 countries, also including Libya and Saudi Arabia, that excluded anyone suffering from HIV/Aids.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-ralls/come-as-you-are-the-end-o_b_410298.html

In about 72 hours, a plane from The Netherlands will arrive at JFK Airport in New York and two passengers onboard will, for the first time in more than two decades, be able to step safely onto U.S. soil. The arrival of Clemens Ruland and Hugo Bausch will also signal the end of a shameful and discriminatory policy that has exacted a heavy price on our country's reputation in the scientific community and kept countless individuals - both straight and gay - separated from their loved ones.

Beginning today, the United States' decades-old HIV Travel and Immigration Ban will be a relic of the past, and the stigma and discrimination it has engendered around the world will, with any luck, begin to fade, too.

...

Repeal of the ban - which was shepherded through Congress by Senator John Kerry, Congresswoman Barbara Lee and former Senator Gordon Smith - began under the Bush Administration, as part of the former president's PEPFAR legislation to curb and treat HIV/AIDS around the globe. Kerry, Lee and Smith rightly recognized that, in order to curb the disease, the United States must also lead the way in ending the stigma and misinformation surrounding the disease, too. The first step in doing so was to take the U.S. out of the company of 11 other countries, such as Lybia and Saudia Arabia, who continued to deny entry to HIV-positive people, and put us alongside much of the rest of the world.

The end of the ban has had immediate impact as well. In addition to allowing individuals like Ruland and Bausch to finally return to the United States and visit family and friends, it has paid diplomatic and scientific dividends, too. Just days after President Obama announced the end of the ban, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton followed with news that, for the first time in decades, the United States would again host the World AIDS Conference, which will be held in Washington, D.C., in 2012. The conference, which brings together the world's top researchers and experts on HIV and AIDS, had not been held on U.S. soil since 1989, when a Dutch researcher was detained by U.S. officials because of his HIV status. Its return to America represents a turning point in our reputation among the world's leading scientific thinkers.

This is a rare occasion where an issue the Senator has worked on has been completely resolved and is a done deal. Take a moment to contemplate that.

[karynnj]

1. Congratulations to Kerry, Smith, Lee

and even to Bush, who signed it and Obama who authorized it in the executive branch. This is one real thing that might not have happened had McCain become President.