The Poor Man Institute

Via Sully the Pooh, a profound bit of Greenwaldian reasoning that I somehow missed:

[W]ouldn’t it be preferable to at least require the President to demonstrate to a court that probable cause exists to warrant the assassination of an American citizen before the President should be allowed to order it? That would basically mean that courts would issue “assassination warrants” or “murder warrants” — a repugnant idea given that they’re tantamount to imposing the death sentence without a trial — but isn’t that minimal safeguard preferable to allowing the President unchecked authority to do it on his own, the very power he has now claimed for himself? [sic]

Yeah, I don’t know.  How about this:

I think mine -while repugnant – has some obvious advantages, especially with regard to Mr. Situation. But, you know, I’m easy. We should take our time. The important thing about codifying laws for the New Kind of War is that you really want to be as comfortable as possible with them, because we are going to have to live with them forever. I mean, unless New Kind of War somehow somehow gets superceded by an even Newer, even more Totally Badass and Unprecedented and Extreme Kind of War – a Nü Wär, if you will – in which case I guess we’ll have to scrap everything and start over … oh, wait, what am I even talking about?  What am I thinking? You can’t just break The Law, silly!

What am I saying is that this – like the question of whether or not we are more humane than the Spanish Inquisition – is real, real, real interesting, on a certain level, but mostly just a sign of how we’ve come to accept the War On Terror as an immutable fact of life.  We’ve accepted that it’s the sort of thing that happens to Other People, but not nice Americans. We’ve made our Peace with it, if you will.  Hmm.  Making Peace … with War.  Nope, I don’t see any way this could go wrong.  Kind of amazing nobody thought of this before.

So, apparently, Megan McCain is fat is the new Michael Moore is fat, which itself was an evolution of Al Gore is fat.  Not to be confused with the Hillary Clinton has fat cankles theorem.

Which leaves me in that familiar pose: head tilted, gazing plaintively upward, struggling with that age-old conundrum, “Why are liberals so damn condescending all the time?”  And, as a follow up, “Isn’t there someone at that non-partisan AEI that can answer this question – preferably in one of those MSM communist liberal fascist rags?”

By working our network of highly-placed sources in DC Republican circles (thanks, Kandy! You deserve all the bills that fit in that garter.) we’ve been able to acquire a copy of Mitch McConnell’s secret GOP talking points on the upcoming health care summit. We’ve reprinted them below.

CONDFIDENTIAL — NOT FOR RELEASE TO PRESS — CONFIDENTIAL
From the Desk of Mitch McConnell
Subject: Health Care Summit

Yo, my brahs. I’ve put together some notes for us all so we can stay on message as we prepare to participate constructively in the president’s health care summit…. ahahahaha. No, I can’t even do it. I really can’t. Anyhow, I put together some talking points, but before I get to them, one unrelated note: I want to thank Rep. Vitter for his excellent selection last movie night — I think I speak for everyone in saying I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell was a really touching, powerful movie — but I do want to make sure we’re all on the same page: we do NOT need the press reporting that anybody cried at the ending. Let’s keep that out of the papers.

Anyhow, I know that Obama’s proposed health care summit has a lot of you nervous. Obviously our last open Q&A was a huge mistake, and it’s not one we’re likely to repeat. However, the press has shown a bit of unexpected spine as far as that goes, and we need to be able to explain our principled refusal to participate. So:

1. We will gladly participate in the health care summit, but only if the President, in a show of good faith, is willing to resign the Presidency and allow Scott Brown’s truck to be sworn in.

2. We believe — in this interest of a fair airing of views — that it is vital that every nutjob with a confederate flag t-shirt who has ever attended a tea party rally be invited to bring their guns to the summit.

3. While we support the goal of expanding access to health care for hard-working Americans, we are deeply skeptical of the idea of allowing people with pre-existing conditions to get health care, as they are likely to develop into a race of perfectly healthy superpredators capable of eviscerating regular Americans with one swipe of their razor sharp claws.

4. We demand that the health care bill be translated from the Swahili it is currently written in.

5. We will gladly participate in the health care summit if every individual member of the Republican caucus, plus a reasonable selection of senior staff, is given one million dollars and a monster truck.

6. It is with regret that we must point out that Obama likes poop, smells like poop, and probably eats his own poop.

7. We wanted to pass healthcare, but it’s too snowy.

I think these points should effectively make our case. I’ve spoken to the New York Times, and they’ll have Nagourney put together a 15,000 word news analysis making our case by this afternoon. See you all next movie night — Faces of Death is an old favorite, so I’m really looking forward to it.

Both Steve Clemons and Jane Mayer look at some failures of Obama’s first year, both policy and political, and can report based on multiple, highly-placed sources, that Rahm Emanuel sucks. Good to know.

Rahm Emanuel may well suck, but laying the blame for the disaster that health care reform has become, and the relentless back-tracking on civil liberties, and the overall decline in political fortunes that this White House has presided over on his shoulders is not that useful. Obama is the guy in charge. Obama doesn’t have to keep him around, he doesn’t have to listen to his advice, he doesn’t have to let him do anything but exactly what the President wants. The White House is a black box – it’s not important how it works, only if it works. And it doesn’t.

Jane Mayer quotes AG Eric Holder:

This is something that can get a rise out of me, the notion that somehow Eric Holder and Barack Obama, this Administration, is not tough. We have the welfare of the American people in our minds all the time. We’ll fight our enemies, and we’ll do that which is necessary, and we won’t turn our backs on the values and traditions that have made this country great. That is what is tough.

This comes after twenty paragraphs detailing – in touching detail – how the White House spent all year scratching Lindsey Graham’s tummy, at the end of which, predictably, he shit all over the Oval Office rug. And then a bunch of Democrats shit all over that shit pile. And then nothing happened. It’s the hard-bitten story of how a man with a girl dog’s name punked the White House, and how Obama’s supposed allies ditched him because, really, why not?, and I’m sure America’s enemies now know the type of tough, take-no-prisoners badasses they are dealing with. Shit’s gettin’ real, Osama. Shit just got REAL.

Also, I’d like to take this moment to remember Joe Biden, who tragically died a few months ago. I can’t remember just when or how he died, but I’ve really noticed his absence these past few months. It’s real tragic.

I thought it was quite good.

Obama is nothing without a teleprompter, other than when he’s waxing the floor with top GOP lawmakers in a little unscripted Q & A slaughterfest.  But he is part African, which means he’s dumb.  Get it.

Sarah Palin, on the other hand, well, obviously, white people don’t need no teleprompters.  Even for scripited Q & A fluff fests. 

Fear the Dumbpocalypse.

Tin Machine?  Really?

No, I won’t get over it.

I don’t see any way this thing is over in 36 months:

So, as foretold in the ancient prophecy, your next Leader:

I made it all the way to the 1:02 mark before I just couldn’t take it.  Making it to the 4,207,590:09 mark may be slightly more difficult.  If anyone can get me some illegal needle drugs, I will be in the dark alley behind the Hot Dog Hut.  I will be the guy huffing paint – Dutch Boy, “Coral Bliss”.  I will know you because you will know the secret password.  The secret password is I am here to sell illegal needle drugs.  This could be the start of a beautiful relationship.

Daniel Larison, 1/31/2010:

The “massacre” at Racak was a key part of Clinton’s justification for intervening. The massacre was staged by the KLA. It never happened.

Human Rights Watch, 1/29/1999:

Human Rights Watch today categorically rejected Yugoslav government claims that the victims of the January 15 attack on Racak were either Kosovo Liberation Army soldiers killed in combat, or civilians caught in crossfire.

After a detailed investigation, the organization accused Serbian special police forces and the Yugoslav army of indiscriminately attacking civilians, torturing detainees, and committing summary executions. The evidence suggests that government forces had direct orders to kill village inhabitants over the age of fifteen.

Institute for War & Peace Reporting, report of day 161 of Milosevic war crimes trial:

Though pressed by the accused, Dr. [Helena] Ranta [Finnish forensics expert cited by Milosevic in his defense] refused to give an opinion on whether the killings occurred in battle or in a massacre. That, she said, is something the court will have to decide based on the evidence. How then, Milosevic demanded, can you describe the events at Racak as the killing of unarmed civilians? The doctor, trained to be precise, corrected his characterization of what she said. “There were no indications of people being other than unarmed civilians. I said nothing more or less than that.” [...]

Milosevic also spent considerable time trying to establish that the dead people were KLA fighters. Dr. Ranta held to her conclusion that there was nothing to indicate they were anything besides civilians. Milosevic produced a photograph of a grave of a KLA soldier killed in Racak on January 15, 1999. However, as Judge May pointed out, the presence of KLA at Racak is not contested. Last June, KLA Commander Shukri Buja testified that about 45 KLA soldiers were billeted near Racak. In the early morning hours of January 15, they underwent a surprise attack by Serbian forces that left 8 to 10 KLA soldiers dead with 8 more wounded. Having lost such a substantial part of their force, the KLA withdrew. According to KLA rules, they took their dead with them. Following the KLA withdrawal, forty-one villagers were killed, twenty of them in a nearby gully. It was these twenty who were the subject of Dr. Ranta’s investigations and her testimony to the Court.

While Dr. Ranta would not provide a definitive answer about whether they were killed in battle or were executed, she was clear that the scene was not staged.

Daniel Larison, 1/31/2010:

There is no evidence that there was a systematic or extensive policy of ethnic cleansing in the works. [...] Clinton portrayed intervention as something he did grudgingly to halt genocide, but there was no genocide to halt.

Human Rights Watch, 2/1/1999:

This report documents serious violations of international humanitarian law committed by Serbian and Yugoslav government forces in Kosovo’s Drenica region during the last week of September 1998. As Yugoslav President Slobodan Miloševic wrapped up a summer-long offensive against the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), special forces of the Serbian police (MUP) and Yugoslav Army (VJ) committed summary executions, indiscriminately attacked civilians, and systematically destroyed civilian property, all of which are violations of the rules of war and can be prosecuted by the International War Crimes Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). These atrocities took place in the face of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1199, passed on September 23, 1998, which demanded an immediate cessation of all actions by the Yugoslav and Serbian security forces against civilians.

International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights, 3/30/1999:

The capital of Kosovo, Prishtina, and its Albanian population is surrounded and under threat of being crushed from all sides by Serbian forces and militias. Parts of town are ablaze as is the case with scores of other towns in Kosovo. According to reports reaching the IHF, residents indicate that they are afraid to leave the burning city for fear of apprehension by death squads and other groups that extort monies in return for safe passage. A reign of systematic, state-sponsored terror by Serbian militias has taken hold all over Kosovo, apparently in retaliation for the on-going NATO air strikes on Serbian military targets, a program of terror that has been threatened explicitly beforehand by high Serbian officials. [...]

These pre-planned murders represent an attack upon the future of Kosovo, and can only be compared to the most inhumane cases of Nazi or Stalinist terror.

Jeffrey Fleishman and Lori Montgomery, Knight-Ridder, 4/9/1999:

SKOPJE, Macedonia. More than three months before NATO launched airstrikes against Serbian targets, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was readying a fresh offensive against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.
As early as December, Serb special police and sinister paramilitary units quietly began to infiltrate Serbia’s southern province. Ignoring an October deal for peace, Milosevic massed Interior Ministry police and Yugoslav army troops in Kosovo and along its northern border in numbers far beyond those allowed by the cease-fire plan.

By mid-March, Serb forces had wired tunnels and bridges on the main southern highway with dynamite, and Serbian civilians had armed themselves to the teeth.

The long buildup to Yugoslavia’s ferocious campaign in Kosovo puts the lie to both Milosevic’s claim that the NATO attack spurred the ethnic Albanians’ exodus and to NATO claims of surprise at how quickly Yugoslav forces have moved.

Maybe it takes information longer to reach Conservatopia, due to gravity or whatnot.  I could never get my head around that stuff.

Very interesting:

LIVERMORE, Calif. — The first experiments at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) have demonstrated a unique physics effect that bodes well for NIF’s success in generating a self-sustaining nuclear fusion reaction.

In inertial confinement fusion (ICF) experiments on NIF, the energy of 192 powerful laser beams is fired into a pencil-eraser-sized cylinder called a hohlraum, which contains a tiny spherical target filled with deuterium and tritium, two isotopes of hydrogen. Rocket-like compression of the fuel capsule forces the hydrogen nuclei to combine, or fuse, releasing many times more energy than the laser energy that was required to spark the reaction. [...]

The experiments, described in an article in today’s edition of Science Express, the online version of the journal Science, resulted in highly symmetrical compression of simulated fuel capsules – a requirement for NIF to achieve its goal of fusion ignition and energy gain when ignition experiments begin later this year.

This has been an unusually controversial project – I can’t think of another project where the lead scientist is called a “snake oil salesman” in public.  And I’m still waiting for a press release that reads “we just realized this is never going to work, but we’re funded through the year, so suck it.”  And, even if it does work, we would still be a long way from commercial application.  But fusion is the only technology I can think of that could solve so many of our environmental and energy problems in an unambiguous way.  Hydrogen is not a limited resource, and helium is about as harmless as a substance as exists, if you don’t mind talking like a chipmunk.