Peace Offering

Okay, you won't see me doing this all too often, but give credit where credit is due: it's a wonderful use of the bully pulpit for President Bush to call for a $30B expenditure to fight AIDS in the developing world. The NYTimes article makes this move out to be a bit of a power play, to distract the rest of the G8 countries from the fact that we are the major recalcitrant on climate change by highlighting our work on alleviating poverty, hunger, etc. worldwide. Which may or may not be true, but the fact is that this is money extremely well-spent, in terms of human capital returns, and I don't give a rat's ass why he's doing it.