Sub-Saharan Africa will move into the 21st century carrying the crippling burden of AIDS, a disease that is slashing life expectancy, shattering families, pushing industries to the brink of bankruptcy, and creating a generation of orphans.
(It also slashes life-saving science research, agricultural funding, food inspection, and clean drinking water).
But no politician, least of all Mr. McCain, is simply going to slash the life out of the program.
"'After-slash-Life,"' someone else said.
What happened to the rest?Some have died of AIDS, which has slashed the average life expectancy from 61 years in 1990 to 34.
As benefits are slashed, what little life there is in some local economies will be further sucked out, taking more jobs with it, and thus making the difficulty of finding work even greater.
Since 1990, HIV/AIDS has slashed the average life expectancy in Zimbabwe from 61 to 33 years (2003; source: SOWC, Excel format), and there are now 1 million children in Zimbabwe who have been orphaned due to AIDS-related deaths.
It's hypocritical, to say the least, for someone to fight tooth and nail against a woman's right to choose -- under the idea they are protecting "life" -- while standing by as "life" is slashed, mutilated, burned, raped, mangled, hacked, and strangled out of women and girls in every corner of the planet.
Meanwhile, state legislators, who these days often seem to be suspicious, if not resentful of the freewheeling dynamics of university intellectual life, have slashed budgets for higher education.
