Rock can save the world, and Bush can do nothing to stop it

One of the coolest parts of the Verigo tour is when Bono commands the audience to take out their cell phones and text to the One campaign. 10,000 cell phones come out and light up the darkness. WaPo adds:

The Bush folk are pretty much surrounded. Even though they have already launched two major Africa initiatives -- the Millennium Challenge Account aid effort and the president's initiative on HIV -- it's a pretty sure bet that, in the run-up to the G-8 summit and the September U.N. gathering, the Bush administration will have to do another something. The White House has gotten the message that Britain and other rich countries will be announcing bold pro-Africa initiatives. If the United States aspires to lead the world, it cannot stand there empty-handed.

But the real test for the administration -- and for the One campaign and its allies -- will be the initiative's content. If the announcement is mainly smoke and mirrors -- for instance, a debt-relief proposal that's paid for out of the financial reserves of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank -- that won't be much of a triumph. If on the other hand the administration makes a strong announcement involving real new money, the question is going to be whether Congress will fund it.

That's the ultimate One challenge. The campaign wants to boost U.S. development spending by 1 percent of the budget, a sum equivalent to around $25 billion a year -- enough to bring the American contribution up to European levels as a share of GDP. But when the administration recently proposed a modest $3.3 billion extra for all foreign operations, the House leadership cut the proposal by nearly 80 percent, preferring to protect programs such as ludicrous domestic farm subsidies.

Even Pat Robertson is in on this. I am surprised he took away from his precious gay-bashing time to make the commercial.

AIDS, Pregnancy and Poverty Trap Ever More African Girls

It's too bad we are using guns and bombs to force "democracy" on people rather than doing something about a whole continent that is starving or dying of AIDS.