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I sat down this morning with the morning brew and Sunday Edition, and found that here in ole Virginny, paranoia is the course du jour at the gun shows. Ammo and guns are flying off the gun store shelves, and the booths at the gun shows cannot keep enough semi-automatic and high caliber ammo in stock to satisfy the local yahoos who evidently believe that armageddon is coming, and they better be prepared. Evidently, this is becoming a national phenomena.

This all started when Obama was elected last November 4.

The FBI performed more than 4.2 million firearms background checks from November 2008 through this January, according to agency figures. That's an increase of more than 31 percent above the 3.2 million checks the agency performed from November 2007 through January 2008.

4.2 million background checks in 3 months. That's just the numbers that deal with gun stores - gun shows aren't subject to the background checks, mainly because every time some "librul scum" tries to institute a law requiring it, rednecks...I mean, republicans, scream that the world is coming to an end, and it doesn't get passed. Personal sales also are not subject to the background check requirement. So, in other words, 4.2 million background checks does not tell us how many guns were sold - but I'm willing to wager that $2 eating a hole in my purse that the number of guns actually sold in those 3 months is at least double the number of background checks, because from every indication, the gun shows are swamped.

An acquaintance, already not the brightest bulb in the billboard, said the other day she will be "arming herself for the coming revolution."

I asked her what revolution. Her face went slack with that blank expression which means "I dunno..." Which means she heard it on Rush Limpbucket, or Glenn Schmeck, or some other right-wingnut fantasy land radio buffoon.

I carried a handgun in the 90's, when I worked for a lawfirm in a sketcy part of Richmond, VA, then one of the murder capitals, and where we had sometimes not-so-harmless mental cases in group homes on the block behind my office building. They were often found wandering our parking deck, and our halls. A client was beaten in the hallway one day, and that's when I started carrying. I gave up my S&W .38 Saturday Night Special when we started to consider having a kid. A gun in the house with a kid was just not somewhere I wanted to go.

However, I'm beginning to wonder if I need to re-arm to protect my little family from these wackadoos who, given the timing of when they started this run on the gun stores and shows, are worried to death that African-Americans are going to rise up and kill them all. They say it's because they are afraid that Obama is going to ban guns, but I think it is because they are afraid of black people. Insanity, but maybe there is an degree of unconscious guilt there, too. After all, slaveholders in the south lived in constant fear of slave uprisings, and for good reason - treat an entire people like they are something the dog left behind for hundreds of years, and yeah, that breeds a certain amount of hostility. I don't believe for a minute that would ever happen because I figure the African-American community really has better things to do, but let the paranoiacs feel some guilt - it's good for them.

Guns don't scare me - they are inanimate pieces of metal. It's the asshole standing behind it with a finger on a trigger that worries me. Usually, that asshole isn't in any danger of being invited to join Mensa anytime soon, either, if you know what I mean.

And all this on the same day we see a big fat headline that says 8 People shot and dead at a North Carolina nursing home. They don't think the shooter was related to anyone in the home, nor do they think he knew any of the employees. For now, we presume that he was crazy. He probably bought his gun at a gunshow. I believe that's where the VA Tech shooter got his gun - a gun show, before he murdered 32 people 2 years ago this April 17.

In Texas, big surprise, bills are pending in the state legislature to allow concealed weapons to be carried on college campuses in order to thwart massacres. A similar idea was bandied about here in VA, but I don't believe it ever got past the wishlist phase. Most likely, they would miss and shoot an innocent bystander. They want to be The Hero, but more likely, they would just make the matter, should they ever find themselves in it, worse. Or they would just freeze, and forget they have their gun at all. In my experience, in crisis situations, 98% of people freeze like deer in headlights. There are absolutely no guarantees that the ones carrying are going to be in the 2% that take action. Not to mention that one fight over a girl, one bad drug deal, one night at the dorm when someone has one drink too many and everyone else finds out they are a mean drunk...those situations are just too dangerous to give carte blanche to carry concealed weapons.

As if this world isn't dangerous enough already, now every tom dick and wannabe Dirty Harry will be carrying weapons around and putting the rest of us at risk with their own stupidity and paranoia. Just great.

But I suppose the silver lining is that the gun industry is making out like bandits. At least someone is doing well in this economy. Snark.

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In the 1987 case Edwards v Aguillard, the Supreme Court struck down the Louisiana law that stated that if evolution were taught in a public classroom, then creationism had to be given its due too. The Court decided that creationism is a religious belief, and therefore to teach it in a science class in a public institution is a violation of the Establishment Clause. And the science and teaching communities said "Hallelujah."

The Creationist movement seemed to have disappeared.

And then it resurfaced, clad with a new name, Intelligent Design, and given a think tank of it's own with the misnomer of the Discovery Institute. A misnomer because the only thing this "think tank" was charged to discover was how to make an end run around the US Supreme Court's 1987 ruling banishing creationism to the religious studies classrooms.

Spring ahead to 1996 or so, and Michael Behe publishes Darwin's Black Box, which was supposed to be a biochemical refutation of evolution theory, but instead proved to be...creationism. "Don't know how we got the way we are, so God done it."

Move ahead again, and we come to Kansas. Members of the Kansas school board in 2006 tried to introduce measures that would make it compusory to teach evolution and creationism in public high school science classrooms. The media shitstorm that ensued eventually led to another crushing defeat for the creation-mongerers, and the ouster of each of the offending parties at the next election. It proved to be quite an embarrassment for the entire state, and creationism, now thinly disguised as "ID" disappeared again.

Only to resurface in Dover PA, in late 2004, when after the once again "packed" school board voted that the creationist textbook (and I use that term in the loosest possible fashion) Of Pandas and People was just miraculously gifted to the local high school after teachers there had picked a standard high school biology text. The ACLU took the case to Federal District Court. After a lengthy trial, and the ripping apart of the entire community, Federal Judge John E. Jones III found that Intelligent Design is creationism in disguise, and is therefore a religious belief, and not a scientific theory. What was perhaps even more momentous was twofold:

1. John E. Jones III was handpicked by the Bush Administration for his ultra-conservative views. You know this had to stick in Rove's craw like a turkey drumstick. 2. Because ID was finally smacked down in a federal court, and was ruled to be creationism, ID'ers would have a very, very difficult time ever getting the next Court, the Supreme Court, to hear their case, because of the 1987 ruling.

It was, by all accounts, a brilliant win on the part of the ACLU attorneys and the science teachers in Dover who refused to kowtow to the religious reich when they started the harrassment proceedings (death threats, menacing phone calls, snotty remarks to neighbors - all the really sordid stuff that the reich is so good at.)

And scientists and teachers across the nation said "Hallelujah!"

Fast forward again to 2009. We have a president who is pro-science, and the creationists are coming back out of the woodwork. To celebrate Darwin's 200th birthday, the University of Oklahoma hosted a talk by Richard Dawkins. A couple of yahoos in the legislature didn't like that very much, that danged atheist evolutionist talking that trash monkey's uncle talk to the impressionable young students at their state university! By god, they just wouldn't have it! So, they tried to pass resolutions denouncing Dawkins and Evolution. Denouncing them as what, I don't know, but I'm sure the word evil was included. Then, they proposed to "investigate" the speech, to see if any money had exchanged hands. But they didn't have much to investigate, since Dawkins worked for free that day.

Now, the Texas Board of Education has voted 13-2 to put in place a plan that would instead require teachers to encourage students to scrutinize “all sides” of scientific theories, a move criticized by evolution proponents.

Sigh. Here we go again. The school board says that it believes that that its decision would encourage critical thinking in science classrooms.

As if critical thinking is ever encouraged in any other class in any other public high school across the country.

The problem with this is that this vote may very well influence what textbooks in other parts of the country have to say about evolution. The theory is complicated enough, without introducing some imaginary controversy that only exists in the minds of creation believers who plug their fingers into their ears and say "lalalalalalalal we can't hear you lalalalalalala" at the very mention of Charles Darwin's name. If evolution isn't mentioned at all, then biology makes no sense - it never did before the theory of evolution, and it never will without it.

As if education standards in this country weren't bad enough already, we need some yahoos in Texas polluting the information pool like we all need nuclear warheads in our backyards.

Recently, while watching the excellent NOVA documentary "Intelligent Design on Trial" which recounted the Dover court case, something occurred to me. After the Scopes Trial in the 1920's, textbook publishers were wary of the controversy, and slowly and quietly began writing evolution out of the biology texts. As a result, for decades, many americans had no clue what evolution is about, and therefore were highly susceptible to the self-generated controversy that the creationists pushed, and most of those creationists themselves were functionally scientifically illiterate. So, they project their fears and doubts and ignorance on another generation, and the vicious cycle of scientific ignorance is perpetuated right through to today, while within the scientific community, there is no doubt that evolution did, and does, occur, that it led to the plethora of life today, including us humans.

So it is disturbing that The state of Texas, one of the largest textbook purchasers in the nation, has significant influence over the content of books marketed across the country.

Maybe in our wishlist for the Obama administration, we should add a wish for a federal office to review and approve textbooks for use in all american public schools. The states clearly cannot handle this task on their own without mucking up their own programs. This office could be staffed and overseen by actual scientists, historians, english professors, etc. from the university level, who would probably be delighted to know that just maybe their next round of students will be somewhat versed in those disciplines when they get to college. Rather than having to "teach the stupid" out of them, which no university level professor wants to waste time and resources on.

So, Texas Board of Education, Sit Down, Shut Up and Stay Out of the Way. And President Obama, consider this a formal request for a national system of textbooks to go along with that national healthcare system. States rights be damned, they are making a mockery out of the Nation.

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If you have 10 minutes to spare, and want a real howl, go take a gander at the republican " Road to Recovery".

The republicans, as we all know, rend breasts and gnash teeth over every single Obama initiative and plan, so of course they're not taking his proposed budget well at all. In fact, they became so vehement in their opposition to it, that Obama on several occasions taunted them to produce an alternative.

Well, a couple of days ago, they took the bait and produced their...budget. It isn't quite a budget, as it only has something like 5 numbers in it, but you sure can tell they did their best to present a thoroughly unworkable plan, which really isn't a plan, it's more a re-hash of the last 8 years and of the Reagan/BushI years.

It is a whopping 19 pages of print, almost looks flashy and is pretty much nothing but "Kill the environment, kill Medicaid, kill Medicare and boost the private insurance industry at all costs, drill-baby-drill, trickle down and cut taxes for the wealthy." Basically, it's the McCain campaign platform wrapped up in a blue cover and called "a plan." Well, I think someone forgot to tell the signers, Boehner, Cantor, Pence, McCotter, Rodgers, Carter, Sessions, McCarthy, Dreier and Blunt that the McCain campaign platform was overwhelmingly rejected in November.

So what does the Road to Hell I mean Recovery say about how the republicans intend to fix the economy and put American back on the right track?

The deficit for the current Fiscal Year is projected to be upwards of $1.8 trillion, and over the next ten years, the deficit will total $9.3 trillion by conservative estimates. Families simply cannot afford to pay for such levels of government.

Yes, you read that right, and the empasis is mine - Families are the intended payors. Not a terrible surprise, as we have been the intended debtor since Reagan. Note who is missing from that statement - big business.

The Road to Hell is also paved with various talking points which are utterly meaningless, such as my favorite: Republicans seek to ensure that the federal budget cannot grow faster than families ability to pay the bill." Again, laying it all on the middle class.

On page 5, Republicans would cut overall nondefense spending by reforming or eliminating a host of wasteful programs deemed ineffective by various government agencies.

Such as that pesky EPA, but more about that later.

What do the republicans propose for reforming the healthcare industry? After an entire page 6, wherein they recount the two stories of the failures of the British healthcare system (all they could find was 2? One would think that the evil socialist nationalized healthcare system of England would produce thousands, indeed an entire encyclopedia, of horror stories, but I digress), the republicans tell us that unfunded promises to current beneficiaries will need $56 TRILLION to cover it all. With approximately 87 million people covered by Medicare and Medicaid, that computes to approximately, on average, $643,678 per person. Assuming that every single one of those 87,000,000 contract the absolute worst and longest suffering forms of every type of cancer imaginable, and suffer horrendous dismembering accidents at the same time which require total body transplants. Of course, they don't bother to provide sources for their information, save in a few cases where they quote the Congressional Budget Office, or provide a handy little simplified chart. Or an empty circle. So what is the republican plan for Entitlement Reform? Give us another horror story, only this one isn't quite what they think it is.

The Road to Hell tells, oh-so-briefly, the story of Deamonte Driver, a child who died in 2007 from a tooth infection which migrated to his brain. The republicans say that Driver waited months for a Medicaid dentist in the Maryland program. But that's not entirely true: The Washington Post in 2007 said that Deamonte's coverage had temporarily lapsed when the family became homeless. Was this a Medicaid failure? Of course it was, and we all know that system is not perfect by any stretch, and we all know it needs to be changed - and we all know that the rational response is Nationalized healthcare. But how disingenous of the republicans to blame the democrats in this Road to Hell, when it is the republicans who have had a sitting president for 18 of the last 26 years, and with much of that time with congressional majority as well. They could have "fixed" that system at any time, and indeed had plenty of time and opportunity to "fix" the system, but went about it like a great white through a school of tuna to the extent that their "fixes" threatened to dissolve the entire system, and leave that 87 million with no coverage at all. Which is exactly what they have wanted since Lyndon Johnson signed it into law in 1965. They also forget that in 2007, when some of the republicans had the decency enough, after Driver died of his tooth infection, to cross the aisle and take part in a bi-partisan bill which would have added dental coverage to more children under Medicaid and SChip, Bush vowed to veto the bill, and let's not let them forget that Bush was...republican.

So what is the republican plan to "fix" Medicare and Medicaid, with their trillion dollar unfunded liabilities (Hey, what happened to the 56 Trillion)? Tax cuts to help make private insurance affordable, McCain campaign style. And, something even more ominous:

...(W)e would go further to save Medicare, by simplifying the current benefit structure in traditional Medicare to include a catastrophic cap on out-of-pocket expenses for the first time in the program's history.

In other words, the republicans want to turn Medicare and Medicaid into self-funded PPO's - the kind that are so in vogue now with employers, the kind where the insured has to go out of pocket a set amount each year before their insurance even starts to come into play. That amount is usually around $2,000 per year for an individual insured. Families pay more. So let me ask this question: What recipient of Medicare and Medicaid even has Twenty dollars to "prepay"? And we all know that the republicans, while they do not, of course, give a figure for this "cap on out-of-pocket expenses", we can rest pretty assured that their first number is followed by 3 zeros.

The republicans end their "healthcare reform" section by saying ...(W)e will be on the side of patients, doctors, (sic) and the American people"(pg 8). To which the rest of us must respond: You had the last 8 years, and 12 years under Reagan/Bush, but you did nothing but block any initiative at reform, and in fact, have tried to behead it at every turn.

Next is the Republican Plan which CREATES JOBS & lowers taxes, their emphasis. How do they propose to do this? What else? Trickle down. They want to implement a 10% rate on anyone making less than 100,000/year, and a maximum of 25% on anyone making more than that. They want to keep the estate tax dead, lower capital gains taxes, and loosen restrictions on savings vehicles in order for individuals to catch up and replace losses from the market. i.e., higher taxes for low income, same or higher taxes for middle-income, and less taxes for the wealthy - and don't forget de-regulating the 401k industry.

How do they intend to Keep Energy & Fuel Costs Low? Drill, baby drill! They tell us that:

Democrats continue to restrict the exploration ofalternative energy sources. Forexample, theAdministration has already taken steps to hinder the leasing of the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS), which is estimated to hold at least 19 billion barrels of oil, andDemocrats have long championed the prohibition on drilling in the Arctic Coastal Plain—which is estimated tohold 10.4 billion barrels of oil. Furthermore, Democrats continue to block the procurement of advanced alternative fuels from sources such as oil shale, tar sands, and coal-to-liquid technology. U.S. oil shale alone couldprovide about 2.5 million barrels of oil per day.

So their plan is to decry the democrats blocking of useless measures to drill baby drill. Measures useless because they do nothing at all to address the critical problem of global warming, and are themselves wastes of resources. If, for example, offshore leasing actually led to some exploration, which it hasn't, it would be roughly 10 years before production begins, that's assuming that any oil is even found. As for oil shale, ask Canada - the costs of strip mining alone is prohibitive, without even factoring in the evironmental costs. They do provide estimated numbers for how much oil could be gleaned from the Outer Continental Shelf (19 billion barrels), the Arctic Coastal Plain (10.4 billion barrels) and shale (2.5 million barrels per day). Not counting the shale oil, that would provide a whopping 2.83 years worth of oil for America, which in 2007 used 20.8 million barrels per day. Not quite worth spending 10 years in development and exploration on. That's energy independence for you, and that's the backwards-thinking of the republican party for you.

Another gripe the republicans have is that democrats have not approved a nuclear power plant since the late 70's. Forgetting, again, they were in power the majority of that time, and could themselves have pushed through some permits. However, even if, assuming that development is ready, the plans are ready, crews are ready and just waiting to start building and all that is needed is a permit, it would take at least 10 years to get a reactor online.

On page 15, they tell us how they would go about ending the bailouts and reforming the financial system (even though Boehner said, in the press conference where this dead duck was rolled out this week, "we'll see" when asked if the republicans would support anymore bailouts). So who do the republicans blame for the current economic crisis? Not themselves, of course! They blame: Fannie/Freddi and CRA which pushed and forced those poor banks to make bad loans to poor people who couldn't afford them.

But CRA has encouraged banks to make risky loans, contributing to the record foreclosures..." (pg 15)

So, what is their solution? De-regulation! (pg 16) and arranged sales! Privatizing the GSE - i.e., Fannie and Freddie.

Finally (thank-the-dog), on page 18, they get around to their solution that Keeps the Cost of Living Low. The plan is...well, they don't really say, they only say ...the Fed establish some numerical definition for price stability and maintain tha policy.

The "Road to Hell" is 75% democrat bashing, and 25% typical republican ideology. Trickle down, drill-baby-drill and vague, poorly understood by themselves concepts of "some" definition for price stability, defense spending is off the board, gut Medicaid and Medicare even further than they already did under BushCo, kill the CRA, privatize, tax, monkey with the 401k even more, deregulate the financial industry even further, bloated numbers that make no sense, bloated sense of self-importance and frankly, this entire 19 page "prelude" to the "real budget" that we're supposed to see next week, is a lesson in self-indulgence by the party that has already done all of these things, has already advocated all of these hatchet-jobs, and has already been renounced because of the deleterious effects of all those efforts. Someday, one or two of them might, just might evolve in their brain enough to realize why they lost so badly in 2008.

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The Death of History?

John Hope Franklin died today at the age of 94.

According to this AP Press article, (R)evered Duke University historian and scholar of life in the South and the African-American experience in the United States...died of congestive heart failure at the university's hospital in Durham.

Born and raised in an all-black community in Oklahoma where he was often subjected to humiliating incidents of racism, he was later instrumental in bringing down the legal and historical validations of such a world.

As an author, his book "From Slavery to Freedom" was a landmark integration of black history into American history. As a scholar, his research helped Thurgood Marshall win Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 case that outlawed the doctrine of "separate but equal" in the nation's public schools.

Franklin broke numerous color barriers. He was the first black department chair at a predominantly white institution, Brooklyn College; the first black professor to hold an endowed chair at Duke University; and the first black president of the American Historical Association.

Above all, he documented how blacks had lived and served alongside whites from the nation's birth. Black patriots fought at Lexington and Concord, Franklin pointed out in "From Slavery to Freedom," published in 1947. They crossed the Delaware with Washington and explored with Lewis and Clark. The text sold million of copies and remains required reading in college classrooms.

Late in life, Franklin chaired President Clinton's Initiative on Race and received more than 100 honorary degrees, the NAACP's Spingarn Award and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor...

...Franklin attended historically black Fisk University, where he met Aurelia Whittington, who would be his wife, editor and rock for 58 years until her death in 1999. He planned to follow his father into law, but the lively lectures of a white professor, Ted Currier, convinced him history was his field. Currier borrowed $500 to send Franklin to Harvard University for graduate studies.

Four years later, he completed his seminal work, "From Slavery to Freedom," and accepted a job at Howard University, beginning his long academic career.

Dr. Franklin did not live in an ivory tower. He lived in the trenches of racism along with every other African-American in this nation. In 1956, he was given the chair of the history department at Brooklyn College, but couldn't get a loan to buy a home in a "white" area. In 1985, he and his wife could not hail a taxi in New York City after, just the night before, he won the Clarence Holte literary award. In 1995, when he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, he was commanded by a white woman in a Club where he was hosting a party to get her coat from the coat check room. In 1995.

Who will take his place in the study of the human struggle?

If this article by Chris Hedges in TruthDig, entitled America Is In Need Of A Moral Bailout is correct, noone. Hedges says:

Only 8 percent of U.S. college graduates now receive degrees in the humanities, about 110,000 students. Between 1970 and 2001, bachelor’s degrees in English declined from 7.6 percent to 4 percent, as did degrees in foreign languages (2.4 percent to 1 percent), mathematics (3 percent to 1 percent), social science and history (18.4 percent to 10 percent). Bachelor’s degrees in business, which promise the accumulation of wealth, have skyrocketed. Business majors since 1970-1971 have risen from 13.6 percent of the graduation population to 21.7 percent. Business has now replaced education, which has fallen from 21 percent to 8.2 percent, as the most popular major.

I find this a highly disturbing and disheartening trend. We all see today in the uncertainty and outright fear permeating our society what the focus on "business majors" leads to, and what the lack of focus on the humanities likewise leads to. A generation of those who want the fast track to the High Life, and a dearth of those who ask the hard questions and then attempt to answer them.

Questions such as "really, is free-market capitalism the end-all be-all, or is it just a gigantic high-stakes poker game, with the middle class usually ending up the losers? And if it is, how do we fix that system? What will work better? What has worked before?"

Or questions such as "Do we really want a state which is ruled by the whims of the personal religious belief, or do we want a state guided by the principles of equality and equity for all humans?"

Or "What is important enough to go to war over?"

As we all know, those important questions were not being asked for the last eight years, and were certainly not asked often enough prior to the Bush era. We are paying for the dearth of questioners, those who have the time and motivation to think of the tough questions that noone really likes to have asked, but which are imperative to progression of the human species. Perhaps lately, we see questions like these posed, but rarely with a cogent answer in tow. With the world on the brink of natural catastrophe in the form of global warming, and with nations at each others throats with nothing but constant struggle over diminishing resources in sight, someone needs to be asking these questions, but even more, someone needs to be answering the questions. Someone needs to be doing the thinking, but with such a small number of humanities students graduating with the training to think and question, who will take John Hope Franklin's place?

Just as we see a vicious cycle in the economic meltdowns of the past year, we can see a corollary in the graduation rates among the institutions of higher learning. College costs big bucks. Most students have to finance that cost. Knowing full well they will not be able to pay off that cost for 15 years in a teaching job (be it secondary or higher education), they will gravitate toward the business majors, where they stand a chance of gaining employment which will allow them to pay off that student loan in 5 years. So, more students continue to gravitate toward the majors which will provide the higher earning potential. Business schools gain more and more of the top students, while the humanities falters, funding is cut, programs are all but abandoned or ignored and the chances for obtaining wealth, that harbinger of "American Success", falls far short for its graduates. Teaching just doesn't pay that much. Most authors never get published, much less sell enough books to pay off that studen loan. So, my question is will that high school graduate, already well versed in what has become largely a vocational education, take the risk and follow their heart to major in history? Will they have the desire to ask the tough questions, and dig deep into the human experience for the much-needed answers?

Turning on my Kindle, scrolling to the history section, there are, as of today, 17,461 title available for download. Among the top ten are The Federalist Papers, Victor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, and Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. In other words, books that can actually tell us something of where we've been, and where we'll end up if we do not acknowledge history's lessons. Some tell it in a dynamic and engaging manner, and from others we can get it straight from the horses mouth. However, on the National Best Sellers list, the number 1 book today is Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man, more self-help swill which promises to empower women by teaching them how to land and keep a good man, but really just helps women to just feel worse about themselves, all the while patronizing them as "strong, independent" but lacking a "good man" to make them whole.

Who will take up the mantle of the John Hope Franklins of the world - those who thew in our faces the ugliness and inequality of our society, and in turn helped to change that society? Who will be there to counter the revisionists who would have us believe their ill-thought and ill-conceived dogma, as they strive to re-write history in the image of their dim dreams, as the Bush Legacy is attempting to do now?

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Global warming. Climate change. Unsustainable energy sources. Polar Bears dying off because their icy home is melting. Bird populations, bellwether of the health of land, water and ecosystems are declining in the US due to over development.

For the past eight years, the Bush Administration not only turned a blind eye to all of this, but vehemently denied global warming. BushCo pulled out every stop to find any scientist, be they from Liberty University and teaching "Creation Science" or be they podiatrist in the strip mall across the Potomac in Arlington, to decry global warming and climate change as a "librul lie!" In fact, every breathing body who could possibly pass as a reputable scientist, as long as noone was looking at their lack of credentials, and who would say "there's no such thing" when asked about global warming, was cozied on up to the administration to have their name put on whatever denial manifesto the administration could dream up.

BushCo went out of it's way on numerous occasions to block any type of legislation which even smelled of possibly being good for the environment. Any legislation which would make the environmental catastrophe breathing down all our backs do that breathing even faster, was applauded as "good fer the country." He even appointed cronies from his "oil biz" days as heads of the very agencies charged to protect us all from...well, oil companies.

So, out of one side of his mouth, Bush denied the science that tells us just how deadly real climate change is, and out of the other side he makes asinine pronouncements like "I'll send men to mars!" We haven't even had a human on the moon since Apollo 17, and that was 37 years ago - how in this universe he ever thought we would send men to mars anytime soon is beyond me.

BushCo not only railed against the environmental science which is the only thing standing between us humans and a man-made armageddon, but he railed against the health sciences too, banning federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research. One of the most promising treatment and research avenues ever, and BushCo decides that those frozen embryos might just spontaneously grow into full grown humans one day. Never mind they have to be taken out of those freezers and implanted into an actual human female. Never mind that the embryos used are often those discarded by fertility clinics as unviable.

For the past eight years, we have been living in the scientific dark ages imposed by BushCo and his antiquated and self-indulgent personal beliefs.

But the light has come on, at last. President Obama has reversed the BushCo executive order banning federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.

Thursday, the Senate confirmed Harvard physicist John Holdren as director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Holdren is now Obama's senior science advisor.

Holdren has advocated sharp government action on climate change policy and is a former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the nation’s largest science organization. He will manage 40 experts, and has been given thetask of fleshing out new procedures to guarantee scientific integrity in the policymaking process.

The Senate also confirmed Jane Lubchenco, marine biologist formerly with Oregon State University, as head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Lubchenco, the first woman to head the NOAA, specialized in climate change and the effects of overfishing.

It looks like the era of the republican-imposed scientific dark ages is finally, thankfully, over. It won't be over without a fight, though. Creationism has reared its ugly little un-scientific head again, in the form of the Oklahoma state legislature trying to start a full on McCarthy-esque "investigation" into a talk given by Richard Dawkins at the University of Oklahoma to honor the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin. Investigating...what? That Dawkins spoke at the University pro-bono?

Or investigating ways to keep those pesky "evolutionists" from those precious young impressionable college students with their god-killing ideas of natural selection? The motivation for this "investigation" is clear, and will get Oklahoma embarrassed before this is over, just as the entire creationist 'movement' got itself embarrassed before the US Supreme Court in 1987, and just as Kansas got itself embarrassed, and just as Dover, Pennsylvania got itself embarrassed when the courts got the cases and said "no, creationism is just a religious belief, it is not science."

The arguing and carrying-on with the silliness of creationism is far from over. But we have a President who will push the science, not the pet ideologies, when making decisions regarding science and technology. That is indeed something to celebrate, as the sun comes shining through the thick and gnarled armour of ignorance and superstition.

And that, my friends, is some good news, at last.

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This week the Turkey of the Week award goes to The Pope.

Pope Benedict XVI is, quite frankly, an ass. First he says it's perfectly fine to believe in aliens. Great, like we need anymore UFO shows on the Discovery Channel.

Now, he goes to Africa. And he tells a populace in which HIV/AIDS is a horrendous epidemic that condoms won't solve the problem. How utterly and pontifically negligent of him to drop that little bomb in a continent that is infected by the millions with one of the deadliest and most prolific diseases that the human species has ever been privvy to.

The Pope told his "flock" that abstinence only would solve the AIDS epidemic in Africa. What a crock of unrealistic dogma with a big fat cherry lie on top of it. The Pope indulges his woefully outdated sense of Quote-Unquote morality at the expense of how many lives a day lost to AIDS in Africa, not to mention the rest of the world?

Meanwhile, women in Africa worry about how they can keep from passing HIV on to their children at birth.

Meanwhile, in the Congo, rape is used as a brutal weapon of war, and HIV is spread.

Meanwhile, in Sudan, women are brutally raped while outside the refugee camps looking for firewood. And HIV is spread.

Meanwhile, in our own nation's capital, at least three percent of the inhabitants of Washington D.C. are infected.

Meanwhile, in 2008, AIDS became the leading infectious disease in China.

Meanwhile, the virus is evolving in larger populations to fight off anti-viral drugs. While we know that AIDS virus changes in individuals to attack cells, now we know it is evolving on a much larger scale. That makes my blood run cold.

There is hope, though. We all know that condoms can protect against HIV/AIDS, as well as the whole host of other STDs. A company in Massachusetts has a new anti-microbicide vaginal gel which shows some real promise of providing women protection in parts of the world where men refuse to wear condoms. Like in much of Africa.

The Pope, much as I personally dislike him and see him as an ancient relic of an antiquated institution, has a duty to that "flock" of his. That duty is to do what is practical and reasonable in regards to their personal welfare. When he tells his parishioners, in a part of the world where machismo is rampant and where the culture is definitely not in favor of the female gender, is it criminally negligent of him to dismiss the use of condoms as "no answer" in the self-indulgent belief that every sexual act should end with a living baby. Because in some places in the world, that sex act may end up with a living baby, but that baby may not live for long, and will suffer the effects of a debilitating illness before that illness finally kills it.

So all the Bee has to say to the Pope, should she ever chance to meet him, is: Get your head out of your potifical ass. After that surgery, just shut up, sit down, and stay out of the way.

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3/13/2009

Not of healthcare. I could talk about that all day, but others like my good buddy blogger Jolly Roger have already made that case, and made it well.

What I want to talk about today is nationalization of daycare, because this story makes the case for every reason why we need a national daycare system based on the French model. I can hear you howling, my precious right-wing stalkers.

In Little Rock, Arkansas, ten little ones drank windshield wiper fluid that was accidentally given to them at snack time.

Windshield wiper fluid. You've seen it, you've put it in your car. It comes in blue, pink, even purple - just like Kool-Aid. It seems that someone went shopping and accidentally put the windshield wiper fluid in the fridge, thinking it was the children's drink.

How could this possibly happen? What kind of raving moron does one need to be to mistake Kool-Aid with windshield wiper fluid?

The kind running a daycare in a shithole like this:

Look carefully at that picture. See how the porch is sagging? See the stovepipe coming out of the neighbors house? How much education in childcare and development is running this show? My best bet is little to none, except for practical experience "in the field." And while practical experience "in the field" of raising children goes a long way toward being an effective childcare giver, I also know from personal experience that further education can take the entire relationship up to a whole new level of the "wow! my kid is not even three, and she's counting to 20 in Spanish!"

I do not believe that the owner of the daycare deliberately gave the children windshield wiper fluid. I do not believe that the woman who runs this daycare is a raving moron. I believe this was a genuine mistake, borne from the chaos and exhaustion of caring for TEN of somebody else's kids all day, and barely making a living. Because from every detail in this picture, I can clearly see that this neighborhood is barely making a living. I also see children's cutout pictures in the window, and there might be some flowers blooming in the small garden come spring - that is love. This daycare is not a hall of horrors. It almost was, though, due to a simple mistake. That kind of mistake that gets made by stressed out and overworked people crammed into too small a space with 10 of them yelling, running, crying, falling, bumping into things, getting into trouble, making messes and creating general mayhem.

From personal experience, the most expensive of daycares, in the most affluent of neighborhoods, with a very low teacher-child ratio, can seem like a filming of a new reality show based on the Lord of the Flies. Can you imagine the insanity that a tiny little house, serving as a daycare to ten children at a time, could induce? This is not the type of daycare where the staff get vacation time, and probably not sick time, because this daycare cannot afford to provide those things. In fact, this daycare is a one-woman show. One woman to ten children, and all of it perfectly legal per Arkansas state law (which is another blog entry in itself).

Safe, clean, developmentally challenging daycare can be a tough find in any neighborhood, but in a neighborhood living in poverty, or a half-step up from povery, it can be an impossible find. With every day of the economic tsunami we are in, most of us not already in the thick of it get a bit closer to that degree of poor.

What this country needs is nationalized daycare, to prevent some of the tragedies that can, and do happen on a daily basis in daycares where the ratios are too high and where the stress level is too high. Today almost saw a horrible tragedy, that was fortunately diverted. Next time, though, someone might lose their child to the fact that the staff are overwhelmed.

We also need nationalized daycare so that working families who are barely surviving but who have no choice but to work outside the home, have a safe and reliable place to take their children.

My little family is fortunate, of that I am very aware. We have a choice as to which daycare to drop our daughter off at every day. Most families, we are also aware, do not have that kind of choice, and so they drop their children off at daycares that are understaffed, underpaid, overworked and overburdened, and they take the chance that something horrible could happen on any given day. This is not fair. It is not right. Noone should have to take the chance of having their child hurt or endangered, even if accidentally, because they really have no choice in where to place their children. This must change. The days of one parent staying home to raise the children are pretty much over for most of us. Factor in single mothers, and the need for a National daycare system becomes exponentially greater.

Subsidized daycare for low income families would be a great help. But a national daycare system, operated by the federal government and paid for by the People, would be even better. In the end, it benefits us all.

I hear Tim Kaine here in Virginia extolling the virtues of funding for public preschool, and I wonder "But Tim, why stop there? Preschool education benefits us all in the long run by extending the educational opportunities for the little ones who need it the most. Nationalized daycare for low to middle income families goes one step further, and also benefits us all, in the long run."

To the self-indulgent republicans who still yammer on about "socialism" and "free markets" and "welfare states" anytime anyone mentions school lunch programs, or nationalized healthcare, or nationalized daycare, or any other progressive social program aimed at ameliorating the crippling effects of the poverty that too many children and adults are forced to live in: sit down, shut up, and get out of the way.

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3/11/2009

Life is cheap for most women in the world. Women in Sudan are raped, beaten and murdered for daring to step outside the refugee camps in order to find firewood for cooking. Girlsl are sold to sex-slave traders all over the world. Here in the US just a few months ago, a sex-slave ring in California was busted, and over 100 pimps were arrested, pimps who hocked women and young girls from various parts of the world to the highest bidders.

However, for the most part, women in the western world have got it a lot better than we did in days past. Our great & great-great grandmothers had no public voice, so they fought for the right to vote. The generation before me fought for the right to work without the possibility of being fired or at least looked over for promotion in the workplace. We still fight, for reproductive rights over our own bodies, and a say in what our place in the world shall be. We 30'somethings and younger have husbands who are increasingly happy to be fathers to their children and change diapers, help keep the house clean and generally share in the responsibilities of keeping a household running at least somewhat smoothly. We women of the 21st century are learning still that we do have a voice, that we do have a method, we do have skills and we do have a purpose.

And that purpose is not to "obey" any man, living, dead or in between.

And with that purpose, comes responsibility. We have to be the ones to stand up for our own rights. We are the ones responsible for our physical and emotional health, and we are the ones responsible for our own well-being. This is not an easy thing, but life isn't easy, and that is exactly what all of this is. Life. It is thinking for yourself, making your own mind up when faced with alternatives and opinions and every form of blather that the world produces on a titanic scale in this digital age. It is making your own way in the world, with or without a helping hand.

Some women can't handle it. Maybe they don't have the self-esteem to have any indication of their own worth as a human being. Maybe that is not a thought that ever even occurred to them. It did, however, occur to Martha Peace, who has written several books on how the correctly christian way to be a wife is to be ever submissive to her man.

That's what I said - "Wait a minute, is this 2009, or 1809?"

But this woman is serious - she believes that her own self-perceived inadequacies as a wife and mother in her younger years was due to her being a self-styled "substance-abusing, adulterous, career-worshipping feminist who farmed her children off to babysitters, nearly left her marriage, and even contemplated suicide."

A troubled woman in her youth, indeed. So, Martha found her salvation in subservience. Let someone else make the decisions. Let the husband make the decisions. Consult him in all things, from where or if to work, to what to wear, and what brand of canned peas to buy for dinner. Let the husband do all the thinking, and life will be so much...easier.

Because those pesky decisions we girls have to make every day are just too hard!

And just like the typical cult following, this one has grown, and grown expanded out of all reasonable and logical proportion. I blame the faulty state of education in this country. A semi-literate population is an easy one to control, and this contributes to the problem of a whole group of people who not only don't know what their rights and value as humans beings are, they don't seem to care.

And I cannot digest that drivel. Yes, life is hard, but to forsake the event of living one's own life in favor of having someone else make the decisions is unconsionable.

Peace says that "If you disobey your husband...you are indirectly shaking your fist at God."

Well, Ms. Peace, the Bee's husband actually likes that he doesn't have to think for more than one person at a time. Being an enlightened man, he would never presume to order me around. And even if he did, he could be assured that both he and god would not get a shaking fist, but an upraised middle finger.

So I ask myself "Ok, Bee, so this is one woman, who admittedly has a few screws loose, so much so that she preaches subservience to the husband when you have to wonder, who negotiates those book deals? Does Mr. Peace have to proof-read them first? And how does she reconcile her support of Sarah Palin's bid for the VP slot, when Palin should be subservient to her man? So what do you care, Bee?"

I care, because we western women have come too far to allow anyone to waylay us, especially when in so many other parts of the world, there is still soo much work to do to better the lives of females. I care, because she presumes to believe that she has anything constructive to say that will be of any good to any woman on this planet, when she has nothing to offer. I care, because she, and her like, roll back the clock for all women with every convert to her convoluted belief that life is too hard for women, so women have to hide behind their men.

Just a few years ago, turkeys like Rick Warren and Pat Robertson were the fringe. Now, they think they are the mainstream. So, just a few years ago, women who spouted the nonsense that Peace spouts regularly in her books and appearances, were marginalized and considered to be nuts, best ignored. Now, they wish to be in the center of the public consciousness also. And I am not amenable to allowing them that place of importance, as their message is vile and unproductive to the progress of society.

While women and girls are still raped, beaten, tortured, maimed and generally forgotten by societies all over the world simply because they are female and simply because society can do these things to them and often without consequence, I am not inclined to condone the self-indulgence of fools who refuse to acknowledge the worth of all women.

So, to women like Martha Peace, I say "Shut Up, Sit Down, and Stay Out Of The Way."

To her misguided converts, I stretch out my arm and say "Take my hand. You have worth, you have meaning, and you have purpose, and it need not be dictated by the men in your life. There is another way."

This post is dedicated to my daughter, in hopes that she has the opportunity to read it later in her young life.

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3/9/2009

Why? Because President Obama has set the cutting of the Defense Budget in his sights, citing overblown budgets and exhorbitant waste.

Could this be the end of the era of the $700 hammer? Not if the Aero-Space Industries Association, which says that cutting the defense budget, even for ever-burgeoning cost over-runs, would be "dangerous...in this economy", has anything to say about it.

Dangerous? What isn't dangerous now? Letting Bank of America and the other big-box banks tank, and letting GM go under, would be dangerous along with just about anything else that is attempted in this economy. So why should defense be any different?

The F-22, which even the Bush Administration considered to be an "cold war relic" costs the government approximately $143 million each.

Doesn't the US Government even warrant a discount for bulk purchase? We've been buying the F-22 Raptors since 2003. One would think that a "frequent customer" discount would be in order. Or a better negotiating table from the Government.

And this seems to be what Obama wants to do: Stop the sight-unseen bids which are intentionally low-balled by the Aero-Space and Weapons industry, only to be sky-rocketed to eyeball popping numbers 5 years later when they can claim "development delays", such as was the case with the F-22.

I know I am not the only person in the room who saw the 60 Minutes special in the 1980's about the cost overruns coming out of the Pentagon. $700 hammers. $200 screws. $100 nails. Nothing has changed in 25 years. Nothing is even designed on a scrap of cocktail napkin until the bid has been accepted, so no wonder the costs go into orbit somewhere around Saturn.

Obama faces a fight, though. Republicans in Congress are crying the blues that cutting some of that "pork" they usually crow so loudly about from the Defense Budget would cost their states untold numbers of jobs. High-paying, technical jobs.

Fine.

Then how about this: We create the global green initiative. Take those Lockheed and Boeing engineers, and put them to work designing the hydrogen-cell car that will do 0-60 in 7 seconds, run for about 8 hours on one tank of water, and design it so that it uses dirty water, which we have in plentiful supply. That way we don't waste what clean water is left.

How about putting those high-paid technical workers to work on the design and development process for re-tooling all of GM's North American plants and factories to produce solar panels, wind turbines and the next wave in fuel cells? Meanwhile, staffing said plants and factories with former GM workers, who I'm sure would be thrilled to keep their jobs. Even Lockheed says that "...25,000 jobs depend directly on the F-22, and perhaps 70,000 more indirectly. But only a few thousand of the people working for the company or its suppliers would face immediate layoffs if the program were canceled, because production would continue for two more years under previous government orders."

This country can, and should be at the forefront of solving the oil problem, that problem being that gas may be back down below $2.00 a gallon, but it's still running out, and it's running out soon. Yes, shaking the cobwebs out of the Defense Budget might cause some job-losses at a time when one doesn't even want to contemplate how many have already been lost. However, those jobs can be replaced, and replaced quickly. That said, I am skeptical that cutting some of the waste from Defense Spending would cause as many layoffs as the Military Industrial Complex would have us believe.

Frankly, the money can be put to far better, more important, and more security-inducing pursuits, such as education, healthcare, and making this country the bright city on the hill in leading the way toward the oil-free future that we must achieve, or all our lives will be forfeit for generations to come.

Win-Win.

Or we can keep allowing the Defense Budget, the largest in the world by nearly twice the rest of the worlds defense budgets, eat us all alive. Maybe they, Big Box Banks and GM can keep putting out their hands plaintively mewling "please sir, may I have another" while telling the rest of us that there are plenty of poorhouses for the likes of us.

Lose-lose.

Tough choice there.

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3/6/2009

I don't suffer fools lightly. They really, really annoy the hell out of me. I don't really like to acknowledge their existance at all - I prefer to remain in denial that they don't exist, and hope that someday they won't exist. Which is why I wasn't going to say anything about the whole "Rush Limbaugh is the new voice of the Republican Party" thing that has been way overblown by the MSM.

That was until I read this article in today's WaPo email: GOP Fights Back.

What a pile of snake drivel. A "Key Republican Senator" said that the White House was being hypocritical when Emmanuel said that Limbo has become the new voice of the republican party.

Wow...coming from the republicans...that's pretty, ahem, well, HYPOCRITICAL.

Limbo compared the Obama Administration to Nixon in going after "private citizens" like a Nixonian "enemies list." Uh huh, sure. What private citizen? Limbo? Hate to break it to Limbo, but some dip with his mug all over CSPAN and his voice all over the AM airwaves and a multi-million dollar contract to do nothing but sit behind a microphone while the jowls keep expanding is not exactly a private citizen anymore.

He also apparently challenged the President to a debate on his show. Right. Like that's going to happen. But I guess that's why Limbo made the challenge - he knew Obama would never have time in his life to go on the show. This way Limbo can say "What are you afraid of, Mr. Obama?" Kind of like when a evolutionary biologist refuses to debate a creationist. It's like debating "The sky is blue." "No it's not, it's purple with bright yellow polka dots! Yes it is! And you can't prove it's not!" And on and on and on. The "ick" factor alone would be enough to turn off any sane person.

Limbo's show allegedly has doubled in ratings, and now boasts 25 million listeners. Wow, that's a whopping 0.8% of the entire american population! What a coup!

I don't know if any of you out here in left-of-center-land listen to Rush Limbaugh's show. I do, on occasion, when I'm on a lunch break, in the car, and feeling particularly masochistic. I can tolerate about 10 minutes before I start worrying about the couple of million brain cells that just died while listening to whatever this Top Tapeworm of the American Bottom-Feeders Association has to blather on about on that particular day. I do tend to listen to that .8% that calls into his show. If you've never heard true ignorance and frightening levels of stupidity, you should listen to his call-in's. They are truly a primer on the dire need to place supreme importance on education in this country, because they don't have any. Most of these people really did just fall off the tomato truck. Limbo himself even gets annoyed with his callers. Seriously, you can hear it in his Oxycontin-induced wheeze.

There was once a time when I just wished he would have a prescription drug-induced heart attack, and would either die, or just have to quit. Now, though... So, here's to Rush Limbaugh, may he finally nail that coffin shut.

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3/4/2009

Actually, he's been rockin' and rollin' since January 20. I have lost count of how many Bush Executive Orders he has voided since he took office. Last week Obama stroked that pen and voided Bush's "Conscience" Clause for health care workers who felt that it offended their delicate sensibilities to dispense birth control to women. Bush's order decreed that it was just fine for those poor little religious nuts to say "Sorry, Lady, I'm a pharmacist, yeah, but I don't believe in Birth Control. Sorry you were raped last night, lady, and sorry your heathen atheist devil-worshipping doctor says you should have the "morning after" pill so you don't get pregnant by your rapist, but I don't believe in the "morning after" pill, so I"m not going to sell it to you, and sorry if you're on the bus line with no other transportation, and that it's 3 a.m., and that the only other all-night pharmacy is 100 miles away, but I have my principles."

Well, Obama put paid to that. It won't be such an easy ticket for the pharmacists (and other healthcare workers) to claim "personal religious beliefs" when they cause severe bodily and mental harm to women anymore. And that's a good thing.

One of the most worrisome, at least to me, aspects of the Bush error was the way BushCo was constantly picking at Russia, niggling at them like a sand flea, pushing Putin's buttons and angering the Bear. Obama may not have much foreign policy experience, but a diplomat he most certainly is.

Probably Russia's biggest bone of contention with the US was the deal we signed with Poland to put a missile defense shield in Russia's backyard. I suppose that noone in the Bush Administration had ever heard of the Cuban Missile Crisis, so therefore of course they never understood why Putin (and Medvedev) would get their knickers in a wad over a missile "defense" system in their back 40. Obama seems to get it, though, and I'm not suprised.

Three weeks ago, Obama had delivered a private letter to Moscow offering to scrap the missilel defense system in Poland for Russia's help in laying the heat on what many believe to be an increasingly out-of-control Iranian nuclear weapons development program.

Of course, Medvedev says Nyet, Mr. President, we will dismiss that idea...which is Russian for "hey, here's an easy way around and out of all this posturing we've been doing for the last few years." Medvedev said " “What we are getting from our U.S. partners shows at least one thing, that our U.S. partners are ready to discuss the issue...That’s good, because only a few months ago we were getting different signals — that the decision has been made, there is nothing to talk about, that we will do everything as it has been decided.”

Obama has Russia talking, and that's a major accomplishment, given that Bush did nothing but yank their chains for the past 8 years.

And finally - He's going after the defense budget. Pinch me, I can't believe it - a President who thinks that maybe those $500 hammers and no-bid contracts and outsourcing aren't such a good idea, and cost too much.

Yes, this American President has been a very, very busy man. Luckily for us, he shows no sign of slowing.

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3/1/2009

I normally do not mention religious charities. I believe that too many of them are wastes of money - they do not seek to actually touch on the root of the problem they seek to solve, and they tend to have operating costs out of synch with what they bring in donations. Even the secular relief organizations tend to just put a band-aid on a gaping wound in their well-intentioned, but poorly though-out, relief plans.

However, the Jewish World Watch has spearheaded a relief system for the Sudan/Chad/Ethiopia regions of Africa that is probably the best bang for the buck I've seen yet, and is a model of ingenuity.

For a donation of $30, they give refugee camp women a Solar Cooker, made of cardboard and tin foil. They also are given various supplies to use with the cooker.

So what's the big deal? In this region, women in the refugee camps are more often than not the head of the household. They are responsible for feeding, clothing and caring for everyone else in the family. With traditional cooking methods, they would have to leave the refugee camp to forage for increasingly non-existant firewood. Once they were away from the safety of the camp, they were at the mercy of the janjaweed, and were often raped, beaten, branded and killed - simply for trying to feed the family. If they were lucky, and none of the above occurred, foraging for firewood took all day.

Then somebody finally got a good idea. The solar cooker collects the suns heat, transfers it to the pot, and cooks the food, heats the tea, even boils the water, thereby disinfecting it. One cooker lasts for several months and is easy to make and transport. Women in the camp are trained to make them, and thereby train other women in their use. The cookers are also being used throughout asia. It is beautiful in its simplicity, and self-sustaining for an indefinite period of time.

While it takes longer to cook with than firewood or gas stoves, the cooker is hands-off and low maintenance, which allows the women more time for childcare and learning new trades and survival skills, visiting with family and friends, and basically living their lives without the fear of being raped and/or murdered for simply trying to survive.

For the cost of a night at the movies for 2 (not including popcorn), the solar cookers can't be beat for value.

We all have heard the old cliche "give a man a fish, feed him for a day, teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime" yadda yadda. Well, give a woman a solar cooker, and she and her whole family just might survive the hell that is central Africa.

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