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Bush really nailed it in his tax relief speech yesterday:
“And in our society, when somebody demands a good or a service, somebody is going to produce that good or a service…”
Not bad. Now, apply that logic to abortions and drugs.
May. 13th, 2003
Mr. Sterling, titan of the Friday night prime time landscape, will not be returning next fall. Total cliffhanger: now I’ll never know if he was gonna get reelected! I imagine I will assuage my grief with badly written fanfic…
No, no, I won’t do that.
It is more or less being replaced by this:
Kate Fox (Silverstone) works as an associate in her father’s Los Angeles law office. In addition to being a sharp divorce attorney, Kate has a knack for matchmaking. She considers her gift a hobby until a socialite bride credits Kate and word of her talent spreads. Soon Kate is juggling the conflicting worlds of divorce and true love. Her father Jerry would rather she focused on work — and her reluctant law partner Nick couldn’t agree more. However, Kate is determined to “spread the love.” Plus, a chance meeting with a handsome stranger (David Conrad, Relativity) may help her find true love in the process.
Well, that’s just super. Damn it, where the hell am I going to get my fix of poorly plotted improbable Washingtonian drama now… Oh.
Tim Dunlop makes a totally unsubstantiated report on terrorist recruiting. (Via CalPundit.) I do not believe or disbelieve it, I just think it’s worth noting. The interesting bit is the increase in MI6 recruitment. One could take it as evidence that the terrorist threat is increasing, or one could take it as an indication that public fear drives hiring in certain government agencies. Both are rather distressing.
Speaking of which, the State Department’s Patterns of Global Terrorism 2002. Much trumpeted, since the number of terrorist attacks went from 355 in 2001 to 199 in 2002. Woo! However, if you look at the numbers, you’ll find that most of that drop is because of a sharp drop in Latin American terrorism.
The much maligned Western Europe is the area which is showing steady decline in incidents over the last four years, by the by. Africa’s doing pretty well too, which probably does reflect a drop in terrorism sourced from the Middle East. But man, Europe has its act together. Might be the IRA getting out of the terror business, dunno. Oh, and “France has provided outstanding military, judicial, and law-enforcement support to the war against terrorism.” Also, “Germany is an active and critically important participant in the global Coalition against terrorism. The country’s efforts have made a valuable contribution to fighting terrorists inside and outside of German territory.” Booyah.
Phil Carter reports on an important piece of news out of the Army War College. Essentially, to quote Phil, “America’s strategy of pre-emptive defense might lead to pre-emptive strikes by terrorists and rogue nations around the world, possibly with weapons of mass destruction. Asymmetric warfare — striking at U.S. weakpoints with unconventional tactics — will also become the norm by which our enemies fight us.”
I’m a little surprised that this is seen as surprising; we have already entered into that era. What else was 9/11? Still, if this raises awareness, I’m glad.
We should also remind ourselves of the lessons learned from General Van Riper’s war game. He managed to pull out something close to a victory for what was essentially the Iraqi side, and some of us were very quick to point at his results during the second week of Gulf War II. Our bad. We need to recognize that the potential for such tactics does not constitute the inevitability of such tactics.
On the other hand, we’d best be ready for ‘em. So, yeah, good exercise.