You knowYou know we have a real race problem in America when The New York Times, in the second paragraph of its story on the severity of AIDS infection in the African-American community, writes that a just-released report “provides a startling new perspective” on the epidemic. Where have y’all been? The report, by the Black AIDS Institute, is old news. The problem is that the news media has been so dazzled by the show of support for people living with HIV in Africa by President Bush and other conservatives that it doesn’t ask the question I always ask when I hear Bush talk oh-so-compassionately-conservative about AIDS in Africa: “What about us here in the U.S.A?”…

When we talk about citizen action at FireDogLake, we mean meetings with officeholders, FAXes and phonecalls to our ‘critters, finding them when they make a public appearance (“Hello, Dianne? It’s me, Teddy!”), and signing petitions organized by our allies in the fight to make our government honest, responsive, and accountable.

Today the House passed the Farm Bill by a veto-proof margin. Tonight or tomorrow the Senate may do the same. That’s bad news.

The Farm Bill that passed the House does contains a badly needed $10.4 billion increase in food assistance and a few other good policies (including increased support for organic ag, produce farmers, African American farmers, and beginning farmers; disaster relief for salmon fishermen who lost their catch to irrigation pumps; elimination of disincentives to fruit and veggie production; and around a 10% cut – but not removal – in subsidies for corn-based ethanol). Tragically, these nuggets bob in a lagoon of waste and eco-devastation big enough to make a CAFO owner blush. The Farm Bill the House passed even slashes the miserly amount the US spends on international food aid, surely a thoughtful act when our neighbors across the Caribbean must resort to dirt sandwiches.

Why do they hate us?

In case you missed it, last week the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention announced their long-overdue statistics on HIV in America, for 2006. Due out in December of last year, and held up for a peer review that never took place, the numbers will certainly provide fodder to the right wing to declaim that America is sinking in a cesspool of more sin, more immorality, and more sexual irresponsibility.

Watching yesterday’s testimony from AG Michael Mukasey was an evil form of verbal water torture. I’m used to watching people on the stand parse their words so closely that a split hair seems substantial, but that was just painful yesterday….

As readers and bloggers we spend a lot of time looking at what is going wrong in our country – and in our world. In How to Change the World, David Bornstein tells us instead about some things that are going right. And then inspires us to take a new look at how we too can change the world. His stories of social entrepreneurs from around the globe open new possibilities, new models for how we can take action for progressive change.

Americans aren’t becoming complacent, Mrs Bush. A new generation of Americans has been kept in the dark about sex as they have attained sexual maturity. The abstinence-only movement has helped keep them ignorant. Not teaching our young people, and not providing them with the tools and information they need to have safe sex, is what’s fueling this epidemic. Keeping our young people ignorant about sex by teaching them nothing about sex in abstinence-only programs is the problem, not complacency due to successful pharmaceutical treatments.

Video via this year’s Clinton Global Initiative, regarding AIDS orphans in sub-Saharan Africa.

The difficulties faced by the children left behind in the horrible wake of AIDS in Africa are staggering.  These children manage to keep going despite their losses, with the help of extended family and village members and others.  But the sheer weight of poverty and desperation for so many of these children who are left with no one — and

So … in tonight’s debate will Tim Russert ask the question Matt, Chris and I asked in the Richardson ad: how many residual troops will you leave in Iraq? and will he followup until the candidates answer?

I’ve got my popcorn ready and I’m going to be watching carefully. Care to join me?

The LivingLiberally folks have provided a drinking game in case you need something stronger than my ice tea (with lots

Finally, over the strenuous lobbying of the conservative groups leaching off this particularly insidious form of “bleed the beast” wingnut welfare, Federal funding for abstinence-only sex (mis)education is being cut:A controversial federal program that stresses abstinence outside heterosexual marriage has been chopped by $28. million.Previously, under the Republican Congress, the federal government spent about $50 million annually on abstinence-until-marriage education.