New evidence shows that President Bush’s PEPFAR program has had its intended effects:

The president of the International AIDS Society says new research indicates the incidence of HIV is decreasing in African countries helped by George W. Bush’s AIDS initiative.Thousands of AIDS experts at an international AIDS conference cheered Sunday when Dr. Julio Montaner announced the result, saying it is from a yet-to-be published analysis of the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, called PEPFAR.

Bush’s pet project is credited with saving millions of lives. It focused on the worst-hit African countries.

Apparently George Bush does care about black people.

Today, Gov. Pawlenty traveled to Iraq to meet with members of the Minnesota National Guard and offer his condolences for the deaths of three of the Guardsmen:

The subdued Pawlenty, whose Iraq visit was scheduled months ago, said the late soldiers’ colleagues praised the trio as among the best people – not just soldiers – they had known.

The governor also sent a message to the soldiers’ families: “We are thankful for their sons and what they represented … and their service to their country.”

And finally, governors from both parties have expressed serious reservations about the strings attached to health care plans circulating through Congress:

“I think the governors would all agree that what we don’t want from the federal government is unfunded mandates,” said Gov. Jim Douglas of Vermont, a Republican, the group’s incoming chairman. “We can’t have the Congress impose requirements that we are forced to absorb beyond our capacity to do so.”

The governors’ backlash creates yet another health care headache for the Obama administration, which has tried to recruit state leaders to pressure members of Congress to wrap up their fitful negotiations. Both Ms. Sebelius, who was Kansas’ governor before she joined the cabinet in April, and the federal Medicaid chief, Cindy Mann, made appearances at the meeting on Sunday. Meanwhile, other administration officials spent the day pushing President Obama’s proposal on television talk shows.

…Although many governors said significant change in how the nation handles health care was needed, they said their deep-seated fiscal troubles made it a terrible time to shift costs to the states. With the recession draining states of tax revenues even as their Medicaid rolls are surging, the National Governors Association projects that states will face aggregate deficits of $200 billion over the next three years.

Each of several health care bills coursing through Congress relies on a large increase in eligibility for Medicaid, the state and federal insurance program for the poor, as one means of moving toward universal coverage.

Because the states and the federal government share the cost, any increase in eligibility levels, benefits or payments to doctors would impose new burdens on the states unless Washington absorbs them. In at least one of several bills circulating in Congress, the states would eventually pick up a share of the new costs, and the governors fear they cannot count on provisions in other bills that they will not bear costs.

The obstacles to Obama seeing his beloved health care “reform” become reality seem to grow larger every day.