Month: August 2009

As promised, Scalzi goes after Star Trek’s design failures.

For a given value of ‘little.’ A taste:

V’Ger
In Star Trek: The Motion Picture, a Voyager space probe gets sucked into a black hole and survives (GAAAAH), and is discovered by denizens of a machine planet who think the logical thing to do is to take a bus-size machine with the processing power of a couple of Speak and Spells and upgrade it to a spaceship the size of small moon, wrap that in an energy field the size of a solar system, and then send it merrily on its way. This is like you assisting a brain-damaged raccoon trapped on a suburban traffic island by giving him Ecuador.

(Via Fark Geek) They get better. No discussion of modified tachyon bursts, but the Star Trek holodeck gets its nod.

You know, I liked Foucault’s Pendulum.

This is not the first time that I’ve seen the book casually criticized, and while I’m not actually upset or anything I’m also not exactly sure what was supposed to be the problem with it. You sort of have to assume a certain quirkiness from translations and Foucault’s Pendulum is probably one of the better correctives to conspiracy thinking anyway. Watching one of the characters… well, no spoilers.

Moe Lane

PS: If you’re wondering why nobody ever made a movie out of it, it’s because after The Name of the Rose Eco didn’t want his books turned into films. Which is kind of odd, because that was actually a pretty good adaptation.

It’d be faster to figure out what Charlie Rangel reported *correctly.*

Taxes not paid, income not reported, assets not declared… but Madame Speaker doesn’t want to remove him as chair of Ways and Means.  What is it going to take?  The FBI buying Rangel a freezer?

Via Instapundit, who is probably as embarrassed for the country as I am right now.

Crossposted to RedState.

Henry Waxman doesn’t *care* what President Obama said.

He doesn’t think that he has to care.

And he wants to make sure that the pharmaceutical companies understand that, too. The House Energy Chair intends to retroactively remove what Waxman calls a ‘windfall’ involving Medicare D drug charges, and never mind what either the President or PhRMA thinks:

Drug makers contend they have already worked out a 10-year, $80 billion cost-savings deal with the White House and crucial Senate gatekeepers on the trillion-dollar health care overhaul. The industry says that trying to add Mr. Waxman’s provision could scuttle that agreement.

Putting aside the actual merits of the argument for a moment – I (and Hot Air) may have excellent reasons to assume that a Democrat posturing about ‘windfall profits’ is simply posturing, but it’s still an assumption – it’s instructive to see how little a powerful House Democrat fears the wrath of the White House on this issue.  Then again, this is what happens when you’re a President who hands off responsibility for a bill in the first place; the people who do the work naturally end up deciding that their opinions on its final form are more relevant than yours, and unless you have the ability to do something about it they’re going to show little reluctance in showing public defiance.  Given that the President just hit 50% on Gallup, and lacks any real experience in leading people who don’t want to be led, I’m not surprised that Waxman is doing this.

And this is why people say “If you want something done right, do it yourself.”  Cliche, yes, but cliches exist for a reason.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Howard Dean: No tort reform for fear of trial lawyers.

You know, this admission may have justified the entire town hall thing, right there:

Here’s the quote:

“This is the answer from a doctor and a politician. Here’s why tort reform is not in the bill. When you go to pass a really enormous bill like that, the more stuff you put in it, the more enemies you make, right? And the reason that tort reform is not in the bill is because the people who wrote it did not want to take on the trial lawyers in addition to everyone else they were taking on. And that is the plain and simple truth.”

Not that Dean’s being completely truthful: the various health care rationing bills share a distressing lack of taking anybody on. And he neglected to mention that the problem wasn’t so much ‘taking on’ the trial lawyers as it was ‘losing the money‘ from them. But this is still more truth than we’ve grown accustomed to from a Democratic politician: no doubt one reason that they packed Dean off to American Samoa right after the election.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Sen. Tester (D, MT) ‘meh’ on public option.

Devastating, in its own way.

It apparently doesn’t excite his interest either way:

U.S. Sen. Jon Tester said that a so-called “public option” in the health care bill is optional for him – and said he is not yet committed to backing the plan being put together by U.S. Sen. Max Baucus.

Tester said Wednesday he could envision voting for a health care reform bill with or without the option that would let the uninsured buy into a Medicare type government program.

“I don’t need it either way,” Tester told The Associated Press between meetings with constituents. “I could either support it or not support it. It’s all in the design.”

Via @seanhackbarth. This is actually worse news for health care rationing proponents than if Tester was adamantly opposed to public/government option; it demonstrates that not only is he indifferent to what many progressive Democrats consider to be a make-or-break part of the bill… but Tester thinks that he can get away with saying so in public. Which he probably can, at that.

Honestly, the sooner that the other side simply admits that government option is off the table, the better; it’s keeping us from discussing the minimum level of tort reform and cross-state insurance availability needed in the final bill before Republicans will seriously consider voting for it…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Submitted without comment.

Meanwhile, listening to ”Reflections on Sen. Kennedy … Lion of the Senate” on the Diane Rehm Show on the drive home last night, I was deeply moved to hear Newsweek’s Ed Klein tell guest host Katty Kay about Kennedy’s love of humor. How the late senator loved to hear and tell Chappaquiddick jokes, and was always eager to know if anyone had heard any new ones. Not that Kennedy lacked remorse, Klein quickly added, seeming to intuit that my jaw and perhaps those of other listeners had just hit the floorboards. I gather it was a self-deprecating manuever on Kennedy’s part, exercised with the famous Kennedy charm, though it sounds like one of those “I guess you had to have been there” things.

– Jules Crittenden

Crossposted to RedState.

Mike Berryhill challenging Dennis Cardoza (D, CA-18).

[UPDATE] Mike’s campaign site is now up; contribute here.

CA-18 is a D+4 district that voted for Bush in 2004; incumbent Cardoza ran unopposed in 2008.  Of course, that was before unemployment in Cardoza’s district hit double digits*, and why Cardoza’s yelling for help from the federal government, while treating Speaker Pelosi like the radioactive career-killer that she is.  Mind you, Cardoza’s also ducking those inconveniently public town halls in favor of nice, controllable mass phone calls; which tells you everything that you need to know about his interest in his consituency.  Or his personal moral courage.

So he’s getting a challenge: Mike Berryhill, who’s a local irrigation district director – and apparently annoyed. Continue reading Mike Berryhill challenging Dennis Cardoza (D, CA-18).