I always figured if anyone would open a zero-star hotel, it’d be me.

Sadly, I snoozed and I lost.

Consolation prize; I didn’t snooze at a zero-star hotel…

If you show this image around the world…

…of the “Avtomat Kalashnikov” model 1947 assault rifle, people think “marxism”, “revolution”…

…or “gangs of teenage thug “militiamen” here for your stuff”.

The AK47 is one of the iconic images of the past 100 years. More than 100 million AK-series rifles have been built – the vast majority of them serving the militaries of totalitarian dictatorships, he private guards of warlords and thugs, and “revolutionary” groups around the Second and Third Worlds from the 1950s to today. It’s the AK-series (colloquialized as the “AK-47” in the US, although it covers the vastly more-numerous AKM, the more modern AK-74 and others) that served everyone from the guards at Red Square to the Viet Cong to the militias of Mogadishu. The AK was romanticized by the American left (Che uses ’em!) and then, as the Cold War wound down, demonized (so do the Crips!).

It developed a substantial mythology that largely obscures the political and social aspects of its design; designed to be rugged and easily maintained by illiterate peasants, it is not an accurate rifle; it’s designed for badly-trained people to spray automatic fire in your general direction, to scare you away, or to keep your head down long enough for someone to throw a grenade at you. It is the very antithesis of the American tradition of marksmanship.
But I’m not going to write about the AK.

The west never developed a counter-icon with the counter-culture romance of the AK – indeed, since so much of the survival of the west involved refuting the idea of the romantic totalitarian hero, that’s completely appropriate.

But if the west did have a counter-icon, it’d likely be the FN-FAL:

D

Designed and built at Belgium’s Fabrique Nationale (FN), the Fusil Automatique Leger (“Light Automatic Rifle”), or “FAL” served the west from the mid-fifties until the present – although it’s been falling out of front-line service with the west’s militaries for the past 15 years or so. It’s big. It’s powerful – unlike the AK with its short 7.62x39mm “intermediate” round, it fires a full-powered 7.62x51mm round (known as “.308 Winchester” in the US).

The big difference? It’s accurate in a way the AK never could be. It’s a marksman’s rifle; while it could spray automatic fire (at least in its Belgian version; the British and Canadians adopted a semi-automatic only version, the “SLR”, from 1957 through the mid-eighties), it was way too light to use as a machine gun. It’s rugged like the AK, but it wasn’ “simple”; where the AK was a cheap specimen that could be manufactured in any third-world machine shop, the FAL was the product of old-world European craftsmanship, painstakingly machined to fairly tight tolerances.

And yet, in battle after battle around the world for fifty years, when the forces of “revolution” and thuggery took to the field with their AK47s, they were as often as not faced with troops with the FAL. As the USSR and NATO stared each other down from the fifties through the ’80s, many of the NATO troops that stared back across the border – the Dutch, the Belgians, the British and Canadians and many others – carried the FAL.
As did the US – almost:

[In US trials to replace the M1 Garand in the ’50s, the FAL prototype that the American procurement establishment called the “T48”] competed against the T44 rifle. The T44 was a heavily modified version of the earlier M1 Garand. Testing proved the T48 and the T44 comparable in performance, with no clear winner. However, the supposed ease of production of the T44 upon machinery already in place for the M1 Garand and the similarity in the manual of arms for the T44 and M1 ultimately swayed the decision in the direction of the T44, which was adopted as the M14 rifle.

The various civilianized semi-auto versions of the FAL are a joy to shoot, although they buck like mules, firing the full-power .308 cartridge from a frame that weighs only about eight or nine pounds.  Compared to heavier weapons firing the same cartridge (the similar German G-3, in its civilian incarnation as the HK91, which’ll be featured in an upcoming episode of HGF), or even the M-1 Garand with the slightly more powerful old American 30.06 round, the FAL series is a handful.

The FAL is falling out of front-line service with the world’s marquee armies; the Brits traded the SLR in for the space-age looking IW; the Dutch, Belgians and Canadians traded theirs in for more modern weapons using the lighter 5.56x45mm round developed for the American M16; the Australians, the Austrians and even the Irish traded theirs in for  the space-age looking 5.56mm Steyr AUG.  And yet the FAL soldiers on around the world, in places like India and Brazil and South Africa and, in places like Zimbabwe and Venezuela, alongside its old nemesis, the AK.
One of the great regrets of my life; at a gun show in Saint Paul in the late eighties, I found a guy unloading a British SLR semi-auto version, in the case with all the original parts, for $595. I thought about it – hard – but took a pass. I figured “I need the money for other things – and hey, there’ll be other gun shows”.

As, indeed, there were. But in the intervening time, the Stockton Massacre – where an insane man shot up a California playground with, what else, an AK) led to talk of draconian restrictions on “assault weapons”, which led the price of most such weapons to nearly triple overnight.

One of these days.

Since keeping and bearing arms is an individual right…

…and disability must not get in the way of our rights…

…then the time is obviously right for this new prescription handgun for the elderly and disabled:

…the inventors of the Palm Pistol are planning to change all that with a weapon that is ideal for both the elderly and the physically disabled. In a statement submitted to Medgadget, the manufacturer, Constitution Arms, has revealed the following: ‘We thought you might be interested to learn that the FDA has completed its “Device/Not a Device” determination and concluded the handgun will be listed as a Class I Medical Device.’ Physicians will be able to prescribe the Palm Pistol for qualified patients who may seek reimbursement through Medicare or private health insurance companies.”

On the one hand, I’m not sure about the ergonomics of this particular piece, to the point where I almost wonder if it’s a hoax. 

 Also, it’d seem that it’s a single-shot piece, so that disabled/elderly person had best be a pretty confident self-defense marksman.

The French are so lame. Their stimulus package couldn’t even pay the postage on ours!

PARIS — France will spend $33 billion over the next two years to soften the blow of the global downturn and limit the effects of increasing unemployment, President Nicolas Sarkozy said Thursday.

You call that at Stimulus Package?! $33 Billion! Is that the best you can do?! Ours is like $700 Billion! Ha! Losers!

Sarah Palin refuses to bounce on Oprah’s couch? Does she not know that the world revolves around her and “That One?”

“I said I would be happy to talk to Sarah Palin when the election was over… I went and tried to talk to Sarah Palin and instead she talked to Greta [Van Susteren]. She talked to Matt [Lauer]. She talked to Larry [King]. But she didn’t talk to me.”

Does that make Palin a racist?

President Elect Obama has hit a small speed bump with his selection of HRC as the constitution apparently contains a little-known circuit breaker to prevent a move from her seat in the Senate to the President’s Cabinet.

What’s a little matter like the Constitution among friends? That’s a question a few legal eagles are asking as they note that Hillary Clinton can’t become Secretary of State thanks to something called the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution.

The Emollients Clause of the Constitution refers to an appointed or elected official’s “prudent and regular practice to apply moisture-retention and softening compounds to the exposed areas of the epidermis.” You see in olden times, congressional leaders and cabinet members had to travel days, often weeks to traverse long distances across our burgeoning nation to serve in its Capitol.

Exposure to the elements, and the resultant chafing, rash and dryness could cause great discomfort and would often hinder or even prevent the discharge of one’s duty to our young nation.

The Emollients Clause was enacted to require the use of (then rudimentary) skin care creams and lotions to protect against these hazards so as to assure consistent attendance in Congress in order to expedite and secure the work of the legislative and executive branches of our republic.

Emollients leave your skin feeling soft by depositing moisture into your skin. These tend to be a bit greasy but definitely have a great benefit for your skin. Another common emollient is mineral oil.

In the modern age, The Emollients Clause suffers diminished relevance as modern transportation methods in closed vehicles and aircraft have greatly reduced travel time and exposure to the elements.

Furthermore, skin care regimens have become universally affordable and have enjoyed widespread adoption in most states, especially the northern tier and Alaska.

Nonetheless, the law, while ostensibly outdated, is still on the books. Clearly, Ms. Rodham Clinton must demonstrate compliance or risk confirmation of her appointment.

But is it too late?

A close examination of Hillary’s facial skin shows the unmistakable effects of early aging, frowning, bitching, dryness and wrinkling. All are the hallmarks of poor skin care and the failure to moisturize.

Hillary knows this. Bill surely knows this. Now Obama, and soon Congress will know this and they will be forced to take corrective action – they must deny the confirmation of Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State.

Hillary is not above the law. She must be ordered to moisturize and she must begin today.

As long as we are “lowering” expectations for his disciples, here’s another Hopey-Changey campaign promise that needs to be broken.

Let’s be clear on how wealth and jobs are created because a politician that says “we (the government) will create jobs” is either unaware of how capitalism works, or is (once again) just plain lying to the American people in the interest of political gain. In the case of [the man formerly known as Obammy], I’d say it’s a little of both. “Jobs” are not “created” by the government.

Make no mistake, the government has many legitimate functions. Those functions are funded and employees are hired to implement and administer them. Those particular jobs however, are not yielding net economic benefit and as such should not be taken into account as it relates to economic benefit. Creating even more of them for their own sake is simple liberal lunacy.

The dollars to fund whatever program for whom these employees would work have to come from somewhere, and there is always an opportunity cost, short term and long term, for those dollars, usually borne in “real” jobs lost somewhere else.

Nowhere is it mentioned that these “green-collar jobs” would be terribly costly, and that the planned “investments” are really just subsidies. And, as we know, things that require subsidies aren’t competitive in the market, and thus aren’t profitable.

Spending money on projects where costs exceed benefits simply to “create jobs” is a bad idea. Taking capital from productive uses and redeploying it to politically popular but nonproductive uses lowers productivity by paying those with “green jobs” more than their output is worth. It’s not welfare, it’s “greenfare.”

The “Green” movement is big business, from Hybrid cars to new forms and uses of battery and lighting technology to specialized architectural disciplines. If Obama’s ideas are superterrific, why aren’t entrepreneurs lining up first?

Claims that such “investments” will create five million jobs are false. It’s likely more jobs will be killed than created due to higher costs and increased inefficiency of the U.S. economy. A recent report from the Center for Data Analysis at the Heritage Foundation found that limiting CO2 emissions under recent proposed legislation would destroy 900,000 net jobs.

Until Barack Obama starts getting behind proven strategies like tax and (especially) spending cuts to stimulate our economy, stagnation, job loss and a volatile stock market will rule; the cycle will continue to repeat itself. Government largess got us here; it won’t get us out of here.

A gaffe, it is said, is when a politican slips up and tells the truth.

By a similar token, I suppose, “reporting” is what happens when a news organization stops trolling for titillation and/or stops carrying water for their favored politicians, and starts doing their putative job – in this case, “fisking” (although they’d never call it that) a recent letter from Rep. Charlie Rangel that made some iffy claims about his own record:

The New York Times has posted Rep. Charles Rangel’s letter alongside a point-by-point takedown of his arguments. “You really have to read it to believe it,” write Gabriel Sherman and Chris Rovzar. “Now the paper has moved beyond implying that Rangel has done wrong and is currently calling him a liar and a fantasist.”

Will wonders never cease?

Great band?  Yes.

Great song?  Yes – indeed, one of my favorite songs of the rock and roll era.

Excellent performance of a great song by that great band?  Oh, my, yes.

But after all these years, it’s incumbent on the responsible to say that, “performer” and “sex symbol” and outsized personality and media myths aside, and considering only technical ability, Mick Jagger would get laughed out of karaoke night as a singer.

Don’t shoot the messenger.

Watching Obama’s cabinet appointments, it’d be tempting to ask “wow – with an overwhelming mandate like they had, why are they not going straight for the end zone, rather than suddenly and visibly racing for the center?”

The answer, of course – they didn’t have a sweeping mandate.  It was a clear victory, all right, but McCain (thanks largely, I think, to Sarah Palin bringing out a base that’d been sitting on its hands since February) actually got about as many votes as Bush did in 2004; he’d have beaten Kerry.  Obama swept into office on millions of new voters – and as Minnesota Third, Sixth and Senate races showed, his coattails weren’t especially sturdy; people apparently voted for Obama and nothing but the Obama.

So how does the left feel about this?

Charlie Quimby:

I’m not one of those who thought an Obama presidency would be the First Coming for the American Left, so I’m not going to indulge in much hand wringing over whether he has or hasn’t deviated from campaign promises. Anyone who can’t read reality between the lines of a campaign speech deserves whatever disappoint they feel.

For someone who follows politics, that just makes sense.  It crosses party lines; Ronald Reagan disappointed social conservatives by restricting his anti-abortion agenda to preaching from the bully pulpit, among many ecumenical examples; anyone who watches politics knows to be a little cynical or accepting of pragmatism, however you want to call it.

But among the less jaded, is it possible to catalog the extent to which Obama has been oversold -indeed, the extent to which Obama oversold himself?  The light worker, bringing enlightenment to the benighted; the messiah; the guy who’s going to solve your problems  by holding up his end of a quid pro quo that started when they went to the polls and put him in office.

How accepting are they going to be when he doesn’t levitate and make the flowers bloom in January?

How many Twin Cities leftyblogs jumped up and down and chattered like poo-flinging monkeys at the Franken campaign’s claim that, according to their double-dog secret internal count, were up 22 votes in the recount?

Many.  A veritable   phalanx of the dim,  in-the-bag, deluded, chuzzlewitted and overexposed.
How many said “Hey, wait, this is Franken’s lawyer’s internal count, and we might not want to necessarily use this as grounds to throw another epic Broward-County-like tantrum to try to delegitimize any result that doesn’t go our way, undercutting democracy in the process?”
Few. Very few.

Wrong again Mr. Jimmy. Best consult with your National Suckurity team before you follow through on that particularly obtuse ambition.

The Air Force’s airborne laser program passes yet another test, proving “unproven” missile defense once again. The question is not whether we can get it to work, but whether we can afford not to.

Americans should be very afraid of Obama because the bad guys are not. The greatest threat: a rogue nation with new found nuclear weapons capability and the ability to launch said lode ballistic. EMP over NYC. Our best new hope of defending against said threat: the technology that Major B.O. wants to cancel.

Missile Defense Takes Off

This week, Boeing and the Missile Defense Agency announced another successful test — the first ground test of the entire weapon system integrated aboard the aircraft, including the firing of a high-energy laser through the ABL beam control/fire control system. Earlier tests had unit-tested other components of the system, particularly the ability to find, track and target missiles in flight.

A campaign promise that actually should be broken. This is not the time for a wuss in the White House.

Mumbai cops cop a “CTU” riff in interrogating the lone captured gunman:

Indian police interrogators are preparing to administer a “truth serum” on the sole Islamic militant captured during last week’s terror attacks on Mumbai to settle once and for all the question of where he is from…

Repressing the rights of terrorists? 

Don’t they know the US is the worst in the world at stripping civil liberties from terrorists?

Zack over at MNPublius noticed a story that caught his attention over on the Strib:

Given that North Dakota has…:

• almost identical SAT, ACT, and IQ scores as Minnesota, and…
• …vastly-better high school graduation rates, and…
• …at the moment a much more recession-proof economy, and does all this…
• …while spending a fraction of what Minnesota does per capita, using…
• …a legislature that meets every other year and that otherwise keeps out of peoples’ hair, and…
• …still pays legislators $5/day (they haven’t gotten a raise since the 19th century…

…I thought “Yay.  My home state is finally doing something to keep hapless Minnesotans from sabotaging the place, the way Californians have mangled Colorado”. 

Alas, it was not to be: the Predators are supposed to keep Canadians, running from their own liberals’ power-grab, isolated on their side of the border.

Zack from MNPublius:

It’s about time the government did something about the swarms of North Dakota freeloaders taking advantage of their state’s proximity to ours.

We come here for the nightlife. 

We stay to convert the place, in good time, to “East Dakota”.

All in good time.

…thy name is also Oprah.

Oprah filming in DC for inauguration week

“There are not even words to talk about what this night means,” Oprah told Access Hollywood that night. “Everybody keeps using the word historic — there’s never been a night like this on the planet earth… Nothing can compare to this.”

The morning Caveman discovered fire?

How about the day World War II ended?

The night Jesus was born?

Hybrid automobiles are ugly. The Honda insight, which will presumably be successful, is no exception.

Uhhh-gly.

The Honda insight is a mirror image of the Toyota Prius and equally hard on the eyes.

By design.

People don’t buy Hybrids for the energy savings; at least those that can do math. Relative to comparably-sized cars, you can’t drive a Hybrid enough miles to make up the difference in cost or to mitigate the environmental impact of manufacture and disposal.

Anyone want Nickel Metal Hydride in their back yard?

People buy Hybrids because they want to make a statement. They want a pat on the back and a place to put their Franken sticker.

Honda acknowledged poor sales of the previous generation Honda Accord Hybrid and ceased its production: they had not adequately “differentiated” the Hybrid variant. Read: not ugly enough.

Even the Cadillac Escalade Hybrid was accompanied by a memo to dealerships assuring them that the unsightly “Hybrid” monikers and badges could be removed without cosmetic damage for well-heeled but less conspicuous tree-huggers.

Being “Green” – or at least looking “Green” is big business and consumers willingly pony up, even when the costs are too high and the benefit negligible.

As Minnesota finally accretes its first snow cover, we see again a local “custom” among the short-on-time and chronically-tardy; people driving down the street with snow billowing off of cars they haven’t had time to brush off.

I saw one of these snow squalls moving toward me up Hamline Avenue this morning; curls of fine snow spray covered the street in the gusty wind.

As it blew off of a Saint Paul police car.

Big post about Obama’s tightrope walk in trying to diminish expectations among his disciples followers?

Eaten.

Six hours of meetings await.

May have to reconstruct tomorrow…

According to David Brauer, the Strib’s management is counting down to bankruptcy – or at least that’s what they’re telling their unions:

Publisher Chris Harte, who sent what I’m now calling the “six weeks to bankruptcy” memo Tuesday afternoon, wasn’t at a meeting Royce and other Guild leaders shortly before the communication was released. Instead, the Guild types found representatives of the Blackstone Group — the Strib’s “restructuring consultant” — and “a couple, three lawyers,” Royce says.Management, which seeks $20 million in cuts from the Strib’s unions, met its major locals separately. I asked Royce if he received the newsroom’s expected share; he declined to comment.

The question for readers, of course, is how many journalists will be left after the wreckage clears.

(Sarcasm on)  “No, David: the real question is how many journalists are there now, and if having more actual journalism and less strident agenda-flogging might have helped the paper out (/sarcasm off).

No, I suspect that even a paper that had spent decades building a reputation for rigorously balancing points of view would be having trouble today.  An interesting question might be “would a paper with a reputation for meticulous balance, or an out-and-out conservative paper, be in this kind of trouble today”?

Of course, there are painfully few examples of either.  The Wall Street Journal is mistakenly considered “conservative” (their columnists are, but their news coverage is all over the place), and they seem to be holding their own, more or less, but then their market is a lot more specialized.

Examples?

Henry Louis Gomez at Babalu Blog crunches the numbers behind Obama’s win in Miami:

I was looking at some of the elections data for my ongoing series about the shift and found that John McCain only garnered 544 fewer votes in Miami-Dade County than George W. Bush did in 2004.

It wasn’t so much that people shifted to the Democrat, it’s that the Democrats recruited a bunch of new voters. We knew this already but not the extent of it. Obama garnered 90,099 more votes than Kerry did.

Look for the Dems to spend the next four years telling you that this past election was a definitive sea change.

or “last great act of defiance?”

Call it what you will, but the Georgia Senate election wasn’t even close.

Obama’s coattails either didn’t extend into Georgia,or for a month after the election.

Either way, with the Minnesota recount seemingly slowly resolving in Senator Coleman’s favor and now Chambliss’ blowout, we seem to be two votes shy of Armageddon.

Whew.

Hmmm.

Senate Seat, that is.

The Occupier of the Office of The President-Elect Barry Oprah reveals his National Suckurity Team, which of course includes Mrs. Bill Clinton, a fervent rival who roundly criticized The President-Defect during the primaries, but now: BFF!

Mr. Obama essentially said Americans should not take too seriously some of the things said during “the heat of a campaign.”

Really, Mr. Oprah, sir? It will be quite interesting to see just exactly how far you get with that ticket once you step into the Oval Office and find out how utterly unprepared you are for the job (and that it’s a smoke-free workplace), and start doing the math on all the promises you made to win the White House for the people who’d been waiting for you to be the people for whom they were waiting.

Some examples I think you’ll have an unfunny challenge with:

1. Give a tax break to 95% of Americans (better hurry up, you don’t want to piss off 95% of Americans – especially those clinging to their guns)
2. “If you make under $250,000, you will not see your taxes increase by a single dime. Not your income taxes, not your payroll taxes, not your capital gains taxes. Nothing.” (“Read My Lips?” I wonder how he will be paying for the expanded child and dependent care tax credit, the expanded earned income tax credit, the universal mortgage credit, the $1,000 emergency energy rebate to families, weatherizing 1 million homes annually, and lowering health care costs for the typical family by $2,500 a year?)
3. Dramatically simplify tax filings so that millions of Americans will be able to do their taxes in less than five minutes (a lot of people that voted for Obama think tax returns are actually grant applications; why bother with filing? Let’s just give them all government debit cards)
4. Match 50% of retirement savings up to $1,000 for families earning less than $75,000 (because saving for your retirement shouldn’t be so hard, or even your own responsibility – behold, the C.R.A. of the retirement industry)
5. Give American businesses a $3,000 tax credit for every job they create in the U.S. (unless they make more than $250,000 $150,000 $100,000 $75,000)
6. Make employers offer seven paid sick days per year (Mr. Carter sir, can we just combine #5 and #6? Why don’t you just give the $3000 directly to the sickly so we don’t have to hire him; and why stop at seven? Seems so arbitrary. Besides, work is hard. People should have the right to work, or not work)
7. Sign into law an employee free choice act — aka card check — to make it easier for unions to organize (that way once the Unions are done destroying the airline and automotive industries they can move on to retail, hospitality, and health care)
8. Cut spending on unproven missile defense systems (Let’s wait until a missile destroys New York City)
9. Demand higher standards and more accountability from our teachers (best wait until your second term for that one – let ’em all vote for you one more time first)
10. Go through the budget, line by line, ending programs we don’t need (like the military?) and making the ones we do need (like the pork in Illinois, only bigger and better, Senator?) work better and cost less

Just put the budget up on a teleprompter. He won’t Change anything, but at least some of us will feel better about it.

…it was AIDS that was going to reach across all divides – national, affectional, behavioral – and kill us all.

Or, y’know, maybe not:

As World AIDS Day is marked on Monday, some experts are growing more outspoken in complaining that AIDS is eating up funding at the expense of more pressing health needs.

They argue that the world has entered a post-AIDS era in which the disease’s spread has largely been curbed in much of the world, Africa excepted.

“AIDS is a terrible humanitarian tragedy, but it’s just one of many terrible humanitarian tragedies,” said Jeremy Shiffman, who studies health spending at Syracuse University.

Roger England of Health Systems Workshop, a think tank based in the Caribbean island of Grenada, goes further. He argues that UNAIDS, the U.N. agency leading the fight against the disease, has outlived its purpose and should be disbanded.

“The global HIV industry is too big and out of control. We have created a monster with too many vested interests and reputations at stake, … too many relatively well paid HIV staff in affected countries, and too many rock stars with AIDS support as a fashion accessory,” he wrote in the British Medical Journal in May.

AIDS in its day was a dreadfully scary epidemic, and it killed an awful lot of people.  It was also a political football, and one of the first examples of systematic politcally-correct groupthink dominating policy on a key issue.  AIDS became a politically-correct policy football from the very beginning, costing scads of lives in the process.  Case in point; nations that followed the same sorts of rigorous public-health practices that the US had in attacking all sorts of epidemics in the past – like, say, Cuba – and had the political courage (or lack of political opposition, in Cuba’s case) to focus their national policy on the real causes of the epidemic (behavioral vectors like sharing needles and unprotected sex practices) escaped the worst of the epidemic.  The US and much of the western world wasted much time on politically-correct diversions; “Anyone can catch AIDS”, we were warned throughout the ’80s and ’90s, even as the evidence mounted that straight, non-IV-drug-users who eschewed promiscuity and approached sexuality with a certain amount of prudent, albeit unerotic and less-than-romantic clinical due diligence, were actually quite unlikely to be at especial risk. 

The reason given was to avoid stigmatizing gays.  And gays rightly feared stigmatization; one would be willfully obtuse to say gays haven’t suffered from discrimination.

But how many lives was that feel-good exercise worth?  Because it certainly sacrificed many, and diverted much funding, awareness and effort early in the epidemic’s course.

The UN bureaucrat who would lose his job if that were universally recognized begs to differ:

Paul de Lay, a director at UNAIDS, disagrees. It’s valid to question AIDS’ place in the world’s priorities, he says, but insists the turnaround is very recent and it would be wrong to think the epidemic is under control.

As with any deadly epidemic, it’s legitimate to avoid complacency.  But there’s a real question:  does AIDS need to have the same level of global mobilization that it has had, and still has today?

It’s not a loaded question.  I’m genuinely curious.