A Bad Day In The White House

There aren’t many good ones as the effect of six and one/half years of Bush decisions manifest themselves on a daily basis, but yesterday seemed just a bit worse then normal.

Republicans in Congress, when they are not announcing that they don’t plan to run for their own seats in 2008, are faced with the prospect of defending the Bush planned veto of legislation aimed at providing medical insurance for poor children. No matter how the Administration tries to claim that the veto is an attempt at a broader bill (that apparently stands no chance of passage) this is just one more example of Republican pro-life policy that deals with children from conception to birth and then forgets about their existence. To quote Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), one of the leading sponsors of the children's health bill, "it's a bizarre thing that a president who believes in testing kids for math does not believe in testing kids for measles and mumps."

One of their loud claims about progress in Iraq is the decrease in sectarian killings. Karen Young, in today’s Washington Post, identifies how Pentagon numbers are being used selectively to bolster this argument. A team of analysts reviews each death in Iraq and based on “evidence” determines whether it is a sectarian killing or just a plain every day event. The latter don’t show up in the statistics. The Government Accountability Office said it "could not determine if sectarian violence had declined" since the U.S. troop buildup began in the spring and saw no decrease in overall attacks against civilians as of the end of July. The GAO recommended that the administration expand its statistical sources to include "all relevant U.S. agencies" and that it use "broader measures of population security" to establish trends.

A reconciliation gathering (the hallmark of the Petraeus counter-insurgency strategy) of Shiite and Sunni tribal leaders, provincial officials and security commanders in Baqubah on Monday, saw a suicide bomber kill at least 21 people, including the city's police chief, despite the presence of thousands of US troops in the area.

The Taliban is back and is extending its reach. Not content to reside in Pakistan’s tribal region and concentrating on southern Helmand Province, they are now staging attacks just outside the capital, according to Western diplomats, private security analysts and aid workers. "The Taliban ability to sustain fighting cells north and south of Kabul is an ominous development and a significant lapse in security," said a recent analysis by NightWatch, an intelligence review written by John McCreary, a former top analyst at the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency.

Since Bush will never reverse a position he has held, no matter how egregious, he cannot be expected to admit that climate change is a world problem that requires action. Not doing anything is bad enough, but the Bush administration is now stopping states from dealing with this problem in their own. California, along with 11 other states, is hoping to enact rules that would cut global warming pollution from new motor vehicles by nearly 30 percent by 2016. To do so, California needs a waiver from the Environmental Protection Agency, a request that has been pending for nearly two years. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) has threatened to sue if EPA does not rule on the waiver by Oct. 22. The Bush administration has conducted a concerted, behind-the-scenes lobbying campaign to try to generate opposition to California's request to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks, according to documents obtained by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform as reported in today’s Washington Post.

Violent crime in the United States rose more than previously believed in 2006, continuing the most significant increase in more than a decade, according to an FBI report released yesterday. The uptick presents a significant political challenge for the Bush administration, which has faced growing criticism from congressional Democrats, big-city mayors and police chiefs for presiding over cuts in federal assistance to local law enforcement agencies over the past six years.