The White House daily press briefing is currently underway. Since Mr. Bush threatens to veto the stem cell research bill, I’d love for some member of the corpse to ask the following question:
What does the president believe should be done with the 400,000 unused embryos at fertility clinics? Does he propose that enough women be found (or forced) to carry the eggs so that not one of them is ever destroyed?

Feel the progress:

“The message is clear, and the message confirms the sectarian differences,” said Fadhil Sharih, a leader of the Sadr movement. “It seems clear that it’s been moving toward the direction of civil war.”
U.S. and Iraqi government leaders have argued that the 150,000-strong foreign troop presence has kept the country from descending into full-scale civil war. But many Iraqi officials fear the threshold has been crossed.
“What is happening in Iraq is a disaster and a tragedy,” Adnan Dulaimi, a Sunni Arab leader, said in an interview.
“It’s bloodshed and killing of the innocents, killing the elderly and women and children. It’s mass killings. It’s nothing less than an undeclared civil war.”
Many members of Iraq’s political class spoke gravely of the massacres and bombings of the last few days, even as two U.S. Cabinet officials visiting Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone this week touted Iraq as a potential bonanza for private investors.
. . .
The surge in violence has terrified residents of Baghdad and other mixed Sunni and Shiite areas. The Baghdad airport has been flooded with Iraqis of modest means seeking to escape even temporarily the country’s upswing in sectarian slayings.
According to a U.N. study based on Health Ministry statistics, 2,669 Iraqi civilians were killed in May and 3,149 were killed in June. And this month, the violence appears to be accelerating, particularly in the Baghdad area that is the target of a sweeping security crackdown aimed at quelling the violence. U.S. and Iraqi troops launched the sweep, to great fanfare, after a visit in mid-June by President Bush.

What a mess. How can we expect a effective reaction to this situation when leaders in Washington refuse to even acknowledge reality?

Senators Alexander and Frist vote in favor of increasing federal funding.
The Decider promises to exercise his first veto.

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), who has survived two types of cancer, said he believed "it is a clear-cut question to use embryos to save lives, because otherwise they will be destroyed." Fertility clinics hold about 400,000 unneeded embryos, he said, and only 128 have been "adopted" by families that played no role in creating them. "A century from now people will look back in amazement that we could even have this debate when the issues are so clearly cut," Specter said.

Many of us don’t need a century of hindsight to be amazed.

There’s got to be some left from the 1990s, right?
An interesting moment during the G-8 summit. Presumably, this is another instance where Mr. Bush didn’t realize the camera was running.

“U.S. to Aid Americans’ Lebanon Evacuation”
To be fair, if I was stuck in a conflict zone, I’d be thinking about getting out too. My point is that mindless slogans can cut both ways.
Josh Marshall writes:

Thinking back through the 1960s, 70s, 80s, and 90s — with key crises in each decade — I don’t think there’s any example where an American administration has so thoroughly marginalized itself or shown such impotence and irrelevance.

In watching Mr. Bush yucking it up with pig jokes on the world stage, I don’t know how you can conclude anything other than that we’re not seeing leadership from the world’s supposed leader.