Tis the season for commencement speeches! Who gave yours? Do you remember anything they said?

Hopefully the ladies of women’s college Barnard will remember this year’s speech given by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (herself a graduate of Wellesley, also a women’s college).

Sec. Clinton spoke at length about the cold hard fact’s of women’s lives:

Although not always acknowledged by governments, businesses, or society overall, women and girls bear a disproportionate burden of most of the problems we face today. In the midst of this global economic crisis, women who are already the majority of the world’s poor are driven deeper into poverty. In places where food is scarce, women and girls are often the last to eat, and eat the least. In regions torn apart by war and conflict, women are more likely to be refugees or targets of sexual violence.

And just yesterday in a column by one of the former honorees by Barnard, Nick Kristof, we learned that one of the most dangerous places for women to be in the world is in childbirth.

I’m not sure childbirth is a “place” but I appreciate Clinton’s highlighting of just how dangerous giving birth is for a huge population of women. According to the UN, “Globally, more than 500,000 women die in pregnancy or childbirth annually. In the developing world, the risk of dying in childbirth is one in 48, even though virtually all countries now have safe motherhood programmes.”

I especially appreciated this bit:

And women’s progress is more than a matter of morality. It is a political, economic, social and security imperative for the United States and for every nation represented in this graduating class. If you want to know how stable, healthy, and democratic a country is, look at its women, look at its girls.

takepart by checking out the National Organization for Women.

Talking about the dumb things US Representatives come up with is sort of like twittering: you feel bad for continuing the complete idiocy, and yet, somehow you can’t stop. It’s something about the amusing to terrifying ratio that just compels you to, you know, pay it forward.

Which why I’m chagrined (and yet thrilled!) to let you know about good old Representative Paul Broun — who’s a Republican from Georgia, as if that’s a huge surprise — who wants to make 2010 the official Year of the Bible!

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With a headline like “In Recession, Women Splurge As If Addicted” a story from LiveScience.com, distributed by Yahoo News and the AP, my hackles can’t help but be raised.

What luck then that I find my preemptive anger is right on target!

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Aiming for a “clean-energy economy,” President Barack Obama has proposed a slew of new rules in emissions and fuel efficiency standards.

According the to the New York Times, “The effect will be a single new national standard that will create a car and light truck fleet in the United States that is almost 40 percent cleaner and more fuel-efficient by 2016 than it is today, with an average of 35.5 miles per gallon.”

With a goal of removing “177 million cars from the roads over the next 6 1/2 years,” the President spoke about the need the responsibility of the auto industry; included in the new rules and regulations in the provision that all new vehicles must average 35.5 miles per gallon.

takepart by reading up on the new proposals:
The New York Times
AP
Reuters

Just in time for the 2009 National Riffle Association Convention, “Explorer Scouts” have taken on a whole new, post-9/11 militia bent!

Were you ever a boyscout or a girl scout? I ended up quitting when I got annoyed at all my badges being like “ballet!” and “make up!” when the boys got to learn useful things like “knots!” and “make fires!” — though maybe things have changed.

(Or, you know maybe they just focused on keeping gays and atheists out of the organizations.)

But there’s a whole new scene in the scouts: training kids to be Border Agents and Terrorist Fighters.

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At least 84 Afghan girls in Muhmud Raqi, Afghanistan have been hospitalized for severe poisoning — it’s believed to be the latest in a string of attacks on girls’ schools by the Taliban, staunch opponents of any education for women.

Each of the attacks, including the first last month in Parwan, have been from gaseous fumes or “poisonous clouds.”

The students were lining up outside their school in northeastern Afghanistan on Tuesday morning when a strange odor filled the school yard, and one girl collapsed, said the school’s principal, who was herself in a hospital bed gasping for breath as she described the event.

While the AP is reporting that this recent attack has effected 84 girls, NPR is reporting the number to be more near 89.

This news comes on the same day the Pentagon released that Gen. David D. McKiernan will be relieved from duty of commander in Afghanistan after only holding the position for less than a year. According to Elisabeth Bumiller and Thom Shanker of the NYT:

The move reflects a belief that the war in Afghanistan, waged against an increasingly strong Taliban and its supporters across a rugged, sprawling country, is growing ever more complex. Defense Department officials said General McKiernan, a respected career armor officer, had been removed primarily because he had brought too conventional an approach to the challenge.

McKiernan will be replaced by Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, a former commander of the Joint Special Operations Command. He served in Afghanistan as chief of staff of military operations in 2001 and 2002 and “recently ran all commando operations in Iraq.”
takepart by checking out Help Afghan Women, which is run by the American Feminist Majority Foundation.

Hey guys, remember the election?

Mostly, I try to forget.

Not the part where the nation rose up in a swell of hope and all that good stuff to elect President Obama (squee!) but the part where it was eight months or more of absolute batshit craziness. Remember that? Remember Sarah Palin? REMEMBER JOE THE PLUMBER WHO WAS NOT REALLY A PLUMBER?

Yeah, me too, unfortunately. Well, via the Huffington Post who took it from the Colorado Independent, who in turn took the original quotes from Christianity Today (what, you’re not a reader?) Joe Wurzelbacher took some time out to talk about how much he’s all for “loving your brother” and all, but not you know, in that faggy way. Also, keep the gays away from his children.

Christianity Today: In the last month, same-sex marriage has become legal in Iowa and Vermont. What do you think about same-sex marriage at a state level?

Wurzelbacher: At a state level, it’s up to them. I don’t want it to be a federal thing. I personally still think it’s wrong. People don’t understand the dictionary–it’s called queer. Queer means strange and unusual. It’s not like a slur, like you would call a white person a honky or something like that. You know, God is pretty explicit in what we’re supposed to do–what man and woman are for. Now, at the same time, we’re supposed to love everybody and accept people, and preach against the sins. I’ve had some friends that are actually homosexual. And, I mean, they know where I stand, and they know that I wouldn’t have them anywhere near my children. But at the same time, they’re people, and they’re going to do their thing.

My favorite part is “People don’t understand the dictionary.”

Oh, and so many other things, Joe the Plumber!

You can takepart by checking out the definition of “homophobia.” Just a sneak peak, it includes the word “irrational.”

Is anyone else confused about what’s going on with Swine Flu?

I thought we had gotten to the point when everyone scolds mocks the media for making too big a deal of it (thus signaling that the worst has past), but then again I keep reading that more people have died from the H1N1 virus, which seems to indicate we’re supposed to still be scared and paranoid.

Well, in either event, it seems we can all count on the confusion to continue on for some time, and not just because thousands of people die from the flu every year.

It seems we can count on Swine Flu making a comeback next winter.

And if that doesn’t scare you enough, here’s this quote:

Two separate flu strains could also mutate into a new strain that is more contagious and dangerous. “We have a concern there might be some sort of reassortment, and that’s something we’ll be paying special attention to,” World Health Organization spokesman Dick Thompson told AP.

Well. I feel better now.

The best way to feel educated and prepared is to read up. takepart by checking out the CDC’s page about the flu, flu vaccines, and how and where to get them.

President Bush’s controversial “No Child Left Behind” act, which pushed schools to aim for high test scores in literacy and math (to the detriment of anything else, er, “some would say”) is coming under a new light with the new administration according to the AP.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is starting a 15 state tour, I swear, just to hear what schools and their students think about “No Child.”

Let me say that again:

President Obama is sending his Education Secretary around just to ask people, “Hey, is this working for you?”

“I don’t know if ’scrap’ is the word,” Duncan told reporters last week. “Where things make sense, we’re going to keep them. Where things didn’t make sense, we’re going to change them.”

While some education specialists have reported that “No Child” has put the spotlight on elementary school students from under-funded school districts, and garnered some degree of improvements, high schools — which have a 1 out of 4 drop out rate — have not changed for the better.

takepart by checking out the Network For Good: Keeping kids in school which reports “the mean monthly income for workers with a four-year college degree is $1,829 a month, compared to $453 a month earned by those without a high school diploma (Source: National Institute for Literacy).”

Daily Examiner

If you’re anything like me, you’ve taken to reading anything and everything about the first family.  I love it all — how did they chose the playground? What did Michelle wear to work in the Victory Garden? What was President Obama’s stance on the Supreme Court when he was just a professor?

I drink it up.

So of course I was thrilled to read about the First Grandma, Marian Robinson, in the Sunday New York Times.

Mrs. Robinson still spends much of her time tending to the Obama girls, Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7. She shuttles them to and from school most days and accompanies them to some play dates, the first lady said. She attends class presentations, helps with homework and baby-sits when the president and first lady need extra help. And with her plain-spoken, matter-of-fact manner, Mrs. Robinson helps keep the girls grounded amid the gilded trappings of their new lives.

I personally like to imagine my own grandmother living in the White House — crocheting in a meeting of the Joint Chiefs.

Here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson!

(Oh, and takepart by checking out the National Senior Citizens Law Center, which works to “improve the lives of America’s elderly poor.”)