It is going to be a busy week for science fiction. The Doctor Who special, The Waters of Mars, aired today on the BBC  and I’ll be reviewing this soon. The remake of The Prisoner starts a three day run on AMC tonight. I have my doubts as to how good a remake of such an excellent show will be, fearing that any attempts to answer the questions it left will be a disappointment. There is no doubt I’ll watch, but some early reviews, such as at IO9 have been disappointing.

The big event of the week for movies will be the release of the J.J. Abrams Star Trek movie on DVD and Blu-ray, with lots of extras. The Blu-ray release of the third season of the original show might be disappointing due to the deterioration in quality that season. There will be an unexpected extra–a recently discovered alternate version of the pilot episode, Where No Man Has Gone Before. This second pilot was written after NBC found the original pilot episode, The Cage, to be too cerebral. It is believed that this lost version is the one actually watched by NBC executives deciding upon whether to pick up the show, with some changes having been made by the time the episode actually aired to fit into the reworked series. A clip, including the original opening for the show, is above.

It comes as no surprise that Dollhouse was officially canceled. The series finale will air January 22, with the final two episodes still be be filmed, giving a chance at some degree of closure. Joss Whedon states he plans on starting new internet ventures and binge drinking in response to the cancellation. He also teases, ” By the time the last episode airs, you’ll know what my next project is. But for now there’s a lot of work still to be done, and disappointment to bear.”

It is looking likely that there will be a fourth season for Torchwood with Captain Jack returning. Via Airlock Alpha:

“The recession has hit British television,” he explained to TV Guide magazine. “But fingers crossed, it will be a go. We expect things to start to move in January.”

Davies has always insisted that he has a plan for the future of the show, and even when the miniseries concluded, he revealed that he even had an idea for the fourth season ready to present to the BBC should they give him a call. Of course, it comes as no surprise that the Beeb is very much interested in an additional season of the show thanks to some stellar ratings which grew as the five-part adventure unfolded earlier this year.

“We’ve got great ideas for the show,” Davies said. “I think there’s a further lease on life for many years to come, but certainly for a [fourth season].”

While some might be questioning whether or not star John Barrowman will return to reprise his role as Capt. Jack Harkness, Davies made it clear that this is the star of the show.

If 2010 is too long to wait for a Capt. Jack fix, however, fans have no further to look than “Doctor Who.” Barrowman has a role in the final episodes of David Tennant’s tenure and will help smooth over the transition of introducing a new Doctor.

Caprica begins January 22 on SyFy. Cylon sex was always a big part of Battlestar Galactica, and nudity was included in the DVD release of the pilot for Caprica. They are continuing to try to use sex to sell the series, as can be seen in the promotional poster above featuring a nude Zoe Graystone.

The first point of interest is that the Congressional Republicans have event turned to a CMS actuary. During the battle over George Bush’s Medicare Part D program, the Bush administration had threatened to fire a CMS actuary if he reported to Congress about the true cost of the program.

With this report the Republicans were able to obtain the answers they want due to the limitations placed upon the data requested. The report basically says that if you ignore 1) potential cost savings and 2) any increases in any forms of taxes, then health care reform will increase government expenses. You hardly needed an actuary to tell you that.

The report makes many of the same points I have made here in previous posts. Yes, as I have frequently written, health care reform will probably cost more than is estimated. Democrats are not without blame here. They are doing what all politicians do. The Democrats are underestimating the initial costs of their program, just as Republicans underestimated the cost of the Medicare D program and of the Iraq War. It is common for politicians to underestimate the costs of their programs. At least they are not threatening to fire those who present the data as the Bush administration did.

Among areas where the report is consistent with my previous predictions, they note that it does cost more to institute preventive care programs and that the cost savings of these are not clear. As I’ve previously argued, we should spend money on preventive because of its benefits to the country. Potential cost savings are an added benefit, but not the primary reason for spending money to have a healthier population with a longer life expectancy.

The report also is consistent with my objections to expanding Medicaid to provide coverage to the uninsured, noting that patients in Medicaid programs will have difficulties with access to care. Of course the solution to this problem is to spend more money to allow everyone to have private insurance or a public plan which provides benefits comparable to private insurance. It is doubtful that Republicans will agree to this added spending.

Health care reform is largely a matter of how much we are willing to pay and how much government action we are willing to accept to hold down costs. If this was purely a matter of cost, then by far the most cost effective way to deliver medical care would be a with a single payer system modeled on the Medicare program. Republicans try to obfuscate the benefits here by citing projections of future financial difficulties for Medicare if there are no changes. Of course any projections which do not allow for changes over time mean very little. What business would remain in business indefinitely if they never made changes? In addition, much of Medicare’s financial problems come from Republicans-sponsored measures in the Part D program which would be eliminated under health care reform legislation.

Republicans certainly will not accept a single payer plan regardless of how much money it would save. The added irony of their position is that they complain about the cost of health care reform while fighting most of the measures which would bring about the greatest cost savings. They oppose the public option (while a small number of economic conservatives have made a free market argument for the plan). Republicans also oppose plans to take future decisions on Medicare partially outside of the political process, and they even voluntary attack end of life counseling as the creation of “death panels.” Of course health care reform will cost more when the Republicans block most attempts at cost savings. You hardly needed an actuary to tell you that.

The real problem here is in allowing the Republicans to frame the issue as simply a matter of cost. Republicans have so altered the political debate that any consideration of spending more money (unless it involves invading other countries or committing torture) is difficult to bring up, regardless of how beneficial increased domestic spending in some areas might be.

If we frame the issue as one of spending money, then of course the Republicans will win. There is no such thing as a free lunch. If Americans can once again look at the issues as adults, then we can look at the real issues. We have the worst health care delivery system in the modern industrialized world. Any discussion of health care should start from the perspective that the United States should be able to do what the rest of the industrialized world does in enabling all of its citizens to obtain affordable health care.

So far the Republicans have no meaningful answers as to expanding health care coverage. They essentially have two proposals: allowing people to purchase insurance across state lines and malpractice reform. The first is basically a way to allow insurance companies to avoid state regulations which is the opposite of what is needed as long as insurance companies are destroying the individual market by finding ways to deny care. Tort reform should be included in health care reform. We need to take advantage of all possible ways to reduce health care costs without reducing quality or limiting choice. While this should be included, tort reform would only have a small impact on overall health care costs and by itself it is not a solution.

We need to look beyond the question of whether health care reform costs money to  looking at the problems which must be solved. Unfortunately the Democrats also reinforce the Republican framing when they make promises which they might not be able to keep to reform health care without raising any taxes on most people. Having a country in which  everyone has access to health care, and nobody has to fear that losing their jobs or developing a serious illness might force them into bankruptcy, is something which is worth paying for. If the rest of the industrialized world can do this, the United States should be able to. Republicans are hoping that they can fool enough people with their spin on this report to avoid having to answer the real questions on health care reform.

While Paul generated a lot of interest, he was not able to receive a meaningful number of votes. It is questionable if he could match his 2008 levels of support without the Iraq war as a major issue. Paul did manage to build a grass roots movement capable of making some noise, but was not able to obtain any meaningful degree of national support.

Unfortunately the libertarian elements of his movement were ultimately drowned out by the racists, anti-Semites and neo-Nazis who also flocked to the Paul movement, often better understanding Paul’s views than his younger supporters. Ultimately Paul’s close relationship with extremist groups and the promotion of racism in his newsletter led many libertarians to disassociate themselves with Paul. Without either the Iraq war or support from libertarians it is questionable if Paul could recreate the excitement of the 2008 campaign.

Sarah Palin’s book, Going Rouge is coming out. Look for it in the fiction section of your local book store. Considering how many of my posts on Sarah Palin are devoted to debunking the falsehoods she states, did anyone really expect to see any honesty in her book?

AP fact checks her book and provides some examples of the errors:

PALIN: Says she made frugality a point when traveling on state business as Alaska governor, asking ”only” for reasonably priced rooms and not ”often” going for the ”high-end, robe-and-slippers” hotels.

THE FACTS: Although travel records indicate she usually opted for less-pricey hotels while governor, Palin and daughter Bristol stayed five days and four nights at the $707.29-per-night Essex House luxury hotel (robes and slippers come standard) overlooking New York City’s Central Park for a five-hour women’s leadership conference in October 2007. With air fare, the cost to Alaska was well over $3,000. Event organizers said Palin asked if she could bring her daughter. The governor billed her state more than $20,000 for her children’s travel, including to events where they had not been invited, and in some cases later amended expense reports to specify that they had been on official business.

——

PALIN: Boasts that she ran her campaign for governor on small donations, mostly from first-time givers, and turned back large checks from big donors if her campaign perceived a conflict of interest.

THE FACTS: Of the roughly $1.3 million she raised for her primary and general election campaigns for governor, more than half came from people and political action committees giving at least $500, according to an AP analysis of her campaign finance reports. The maximum that individual donors could give was $1,000; $2,000 for a PAC.

Of the rest, about $76,000 came from Republican Party committees.

She accepted $1,000 each from a state senator and his wife in the weeks after the two Republican lawmakers’ offices were raided by the FBI as part of an investigation into a powerful Alaska oilfield services company. After AP reported those donations during the presidential campaign, she said she would give a comparative sum to charity after the general election in 2010, a date set by state election laws.

PALIN: Rails against taxpayer-financed bailouts, which she attributes to Obama. She recounts telling daughter Bristol that to succeed in business, ”you’ll have to be brave enough to fail.”

THE FACTS: Palin is blurring the lines between Obama’s stimulus plan — a $787 billion package of tax cuts, state aid, social programs and government contracts — and the federal bailout that Republican presidential candidate John McCain voted for and President George W. Bush signed.

Palin’s views on bailouts appeared to evolve as McCain’s vice presidential running mate. In September 2008, she said ”taxpayers cannot be looked to as the bailout, as the solution, to the problems on Wall Street.” A week later, she said ”ultimately what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy.”

During the vice presidential debate in October, Palin praised McCain for being ”instrumental in bringing folks together” to pass the $700 billion bailout. After that, she said ”it is a time of crisis and government did have to step in.”

——

PALIN: Says Ronald Reagan faced an even worse recession than the one that appears to be ending now, and ‘’showed us how to get out of one. If you want real job growth, cut capital gains taxes and slay the death tax once and for all.”

THE FACTS: The estate tax, which some call the death tax, was not repealed under Reagan and capital gains taxes are lower now than when Reagan was president.

Economists overwhelmingly say the current recession is far worse. The recession Reagan faced lasted for 16 months; this one is in its 23rd month. The recession of the early 1980s did not have a financial meltdown. Unemployment peaked at 10.8 percent, worse than the October 2009 high of 10.2 percent, but the jobless rate is still expected to climb.

——

PALIN: She says her team overseeing the development of a natural gas pipeline set up an open, competitive bidding process that allowed any company to compete for the right to build a 1,715-mile pipeline to bring natural gas from Alaska to the Lower 48.

THE FACTS: Palin characterized the pipeline deal the same way before an AP investigation found her team crafted terms that favored only a few independent pipeline companies and ultimately benefited a company with ties to her administration, TransCanada Corp. Despite promises and legal guidance not to talk directly with potential bidders during the process, Palin had meetings or phone calls with nearly every major candidate, including TransCanada.

PALIN: Criticizes an aide to her predecessor, Gov. Frank Murkowski, for a conflict of interest because the aide represented the state in negotiations over a gas pipeline and then left to work as a handsomely paid lobbyist for ExxonMobil. Palin asserts her administration ended all such arrangements, shoving a wedge in the revolving door between special interests and the state capital.

THE FACTS: Palin ignores her own ”revolving door” issue in office; the leader of her own pipeline team was a former lobbyist for a subsidiary of TransCanada, the company that ended up winning the rights to build the pipeline.

——

PALIN: Writes about a city councilman in Wasilla, Alaska, who owned a garbage truck company and tried to push through an ordinance requiring residents of new subdivisions to pay for trash removal instead of taking it to the dump for free — this to illustrate conflicts of interest she stood against as a public servant.

THE FACTS: As Wasilla mayor, Palin pressed for a special zoning exception so she could sell her family’s $327,000 house, then did not keep a promise to remove a potential fire hazard on the property.

She asked the city council to loosen rules for snow machine races when she and her husband owned a snow machine store, and cast a tie-breaking vote to exempt taxes on aircraft when her father-in-law owned one. But she stepped away from the table in 1997 when the council considered a grant for the Iron Dog snow machine race in which her husband competes.

——

PALIN: Says Obama has admitted that the climate change policy he seeks will cause people’s electricity bills to ‘’skyrocket.”

THE FACTS: She correctly quotes a comment attributed to Obama in January 2008, when he told San Francisco Chronicle editors that under his cap-and-trade climate proposal, ”electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket” as utilities are forced to retrofit coal burning power plants to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Obama has argued since then that climate legislation can blunt the cost to consumers. Democratic legislation now before Congress calls for a variety of measures aimed at mitigating consumer costs. Several studies predict average household costs probably would be $100 to $145 a year.

——

PALIN: Welcomes last year’s Supreme Court decision deciding punitive damages for victims of the nation’s largest oil spill tragedy, the Exxon Valdez disaster, stating it had taken 20 years to achieve victory. As governor, she says, she’d had the state argue in favor of the victims, and she says the court’s ruling went ”in favor of the people.” Finally, she writes, Alaskans could recover some of their losses.

THE FACTS: That response is at odds with her reaction at the time to the ruling, which resolved the long-running case by reducing punitive damages for victims to $500 million from $2.5 billion. Environmentalists and plaintiffs’ lawyers decried the ruling as a slap at the victims and Palin herself said she was ”extremely disappointed.” She said the justices had gutted a jury decision favoring higher damage awards, the Anchorage Daily News reported. ”It’s tragic that so many Alaska fishermen and their families have had their lives put on hold waiting for this decision,” she said, noting many had died ”while waiting for justice.”

——

PALIN: Describing her resistance to federal stimulus money, Palin describes Alaska as a practical, libertarian haven of independent Americans who don’t want ”help” from government busybodies.

THE FACTS: Alaska is also one of the states most dependent on federal subsidies, receiving much more assistance from Washington than it pays in federal taxes. A study for the nonpartisan Tax Foundation found that in 2005, the state received $1.84 for every dollar it sent to Washington.

——

PALIN: Says she tried to talk about national security and energy independence in her interview with Vogue magazine but the interviewer wanted her to pivot from hydropower to high fashion.

THE FACTS are somewhat in dispute. Vogue contributing editor Rebecca Johnson said Palin did not go on about hydropower. ”She just kept talking about drilling for oil.”

——

PALIN: ”Was it ambition? I didn’t think so. Ambition drives; purpose beckons.” Throughout the book, Palin cites altruistic reasons for running for office, and for leaving early as Alaska governor.

THE FACTS: Few politicians own up to wanting high office for the power and prestige of it, and in this respect, Palin fits the conventional mold. But ”Going Rogue” has all the characteristics of a pre-campaign manifesto, the requisite autobiography of the future candidate.

I’m sure we will be hearing a lot from the people Palin wrote about. Former McCain strategist John Weaver describes her claims about the McCain campaign as “petty and pathetic.”

The Business Roundtable, which represents the chief executives of major U.S. companies, released a report that stated that without changes to the current U.S. health-care system, costs would rise to $28,530 per employee. But the “right legislative reforms” would reduce those costs by more than $3,000 per employee, according to the report…

President Barack Obama in a statement said the report “underscores what experts and businesspeople have told us all along–comprehensive health insurance reform is one of the most important investments we can make in American competitiveness.”

A statement from Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D, Mont.) states that the report “adds to the evidence that the bottom line is on the line for businesses in health reform.”

The report points to a number of possible changes included in some form in House and Senate health-care bills to make health spending based more on quality than quantity and improve prevention and wellness efforts. One example is payment “bundling” to doctors and hospitals, which would provide a single payment for all services related to a treatment or condition.

Another bright spot cited by the report is a section in legislation approved by the Senate Finance Committee that would design a system of “value-based” payments from Medicare to doctors and hospitals. The proposed system would base some payment rates on quality measures.

Ivan Seidenberg, chairman of the Business Roundtable and chairman and chief executive of Verizon Communications Inc., in a statement cited a need to “make sure we improve, not erode, U.S. competitiveness.”

“We can do that by implementing the broad-based delivery system reforms approved by the Senate Finance Committee and avoiding ill-advised proposals such as the public option,” Mr. Seidenberg said.

But the report states that the current bills “are missing some ingredients” to permanently draw down future growth in health costs. The report commends the bills’ provisions on “comparative effectiveness research,” which evaluates the effectiveness of treatment and therapies, but states that “we must find ways” to encourage health-care providers to adhere to evidence-based guidelines on care.

The desire to regulate treatment decisions which is not in government regulation is consistent with current trends in health care. While conservatives worry about a government take over of health care, it is typically insurance companies and not government which interferes in the doctor-patient relationship. While it is desirable that results of comparative effectiveness research be voluntarily used by physicians, it is dangerous to write this into law. Decisions in the cases of individual patients who have multiple medical problems often legitimately vary from generic practice guidelines which are usually written based upon a single disease state. The physician, and not insurance companies, businessmen, or government bureaucrats must make the ultimate decisions. Fortunately the current health care legislation avoids any acts to place bureaucrats between doctors and patients, despite the claims from the right.

Even though health care reform might be good for business, some pro-business groups still plan to spend millions on ads opposing health care reform.

There is one business which benefits by preserving the status quo–the insurance industry. An analysis from Goldman Sachs found that the insurance companies would profit the most from preventing any form of reform. If health care reform does pass, they are projected to do better if there is no public option. No wonder the health insurance industry has been working so hard to provide all those bogus talking points for the right wing to use.

Jon Stewart’s coverage of Sean Hannity’s admission that he was wrong and Stewart was right in his recent item showing how Hannity used faked video to exaggerate the turn out at a protest against health care reform.

I’d put ‘em in a small cell, and make them watch home movies of the birthdays and baptisms
and weddings of every single person they killed, over and over, every day, for the rest
of their lives. And then they’d get punched in the mouth every night
at bedtime. By a different person, every night. There’d be a long list of volunteers…

The Republican strategy on health care is to deny others they choices they have. Conservatives added an amendment which would greatly restrict insurance coverage of abortions. In contrast, Politico has found that the insurance plan offered to employees of the Republican National Committee has covered abortions.

The RNC has subsequently announced that they will drop this coverage after news came out about this on Thursday.

What we are seeing here, I suspect, is what we see everywhere with Obama: a relentless empiricism in pursuit of a particular objective and a willingness to let the process take its time. The very process itself can reveal – not just to Obama, but to everyone – what exactly the precise options are. Instead of engaging in adolescent tests of whether a president is “tough” or “weak”, we actually have an adult prepared to allow the various choices in front of us be fully explored. He is, moreover, not taking the decision process outside the public arena. He is allowing it to unfold within the public arena…

What strikes me about this is the enormous self-confidence this reveals. Here is a young president, prepared to allow himself to be portrayed as “weak” or “dithering” in the slow and meticulous arrival at public policy. He is trusting the reality to help expose what we need to do. He is allowing the debate – however messy and confusing and emotional – to take its time and reveal the real choices in front of us. This is politically risky, of course. Those who treat politics as a contact-sport, whose insistence is on the “game” of who wins which news cycle, or who can spin each moment in a political storm as a harbinger of whatever, will pounce and shriek and try to bounce the president into a decision. And those who believe that what matters in war is charging ahead regardless at all times will also grandstand against the president’s insistence on prudence.

But he won’t be bounced and his concern seems to be genuinely to do the right and the most sustainable thing. Which is a kind of strength we haven’t seen in a president since Reagan.

Considering the mess Obama inherited both at home and in foreign policy, it is good to have a president who can think outside of the box and not just continue along the same path. This doesn’t guarantee he will always make the right choice, but the chances for actually solving problems and avoiding quagmires is much greater.

At that point in time you were fairly well aligned with much of the conservative blogosphere which unified behind the war on terror.  Lately that seems to have changed.  More and more LGF seems to be distancing itself from the right.  What’s changed? Has national security become secondary to economic issues, or does it run deeper than that?

National security is still an important issue. But the main reason I can’t march along with the right wing blogosphere any more, not to put too fine a point on it, is that most of them have succumbed to Obama Derangement Syndrome. One “nontroversy” after another, followed by the outrage of the day, followed by conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory, all delivered in breathless, angry prose that’s just wearying and depressing to read.

It’s not just the economic issues either. I’ve never been on board with the anti-science, anti-Enlightenment radical religious right. Once I began making my opinions known on issues like creationism and abortion, I realized that there just wasn’t very much in common with many of the bloggers on the right. And then, when most of them decided to fall in and support a blogger like Robert Stacy McCain, who has neo-Nazi friends, has written articles for the openly white supremacist website American Renaissance, and has made numerous openly racist statements on the record … well, I was extremely disappointed to see it, but unfortunately not surprised.

I’ve always written the truth about my opinions, and I have no intention of changing that policy now, just to fit in with a “movement” that has gone completely off the rails.

Do you think there is any chance the right can reorient itself, or is the right-wing blogosphere’s daily outrage symptomatic of deeper failures from within conservatism?

Also, where do you see yourself politically these days now that the War on Terror is under the purview of the Democrats?

Without making any prediction — that’s above my pay grade — I think the Republican Party has a serious deficiency of real ideas, and the few popular ideas they do have are about pandering to the religious right and regulating private morality: abortion, gay marriage, etc.

I always thought “conservatism” meant the opposite — staying OUT of people’s private lives. In fact, in my opinion this is one of the main problems with the conservative movement today – the dominance of the religious right, which seeks to impose its own narrow belief system on the entire country.

Where I see myself politically — same as I ever was, Independent. George W. Bush in 2004 was the first time I ever cast a vote for a Republican President.

These are surprisingly insightful comments coming from someone who voted for George Bush and isn’t embarrassed to admit it.

The observation by Media Decoder might be taken as skepticism that this was really inadvertent. Regardless of this specific episode, the use of altered audio and video has been a common tactic used by Fox and many others in the right wing to make their arguments when the facts are against them. It is especially common for right wingers to attack liberals and Democrats based upon altered statements as opposed to attempting to respond to their actual views.  I noted a recent example of Glenn Beck doing this a few weeks ago. Media Matters has accumulated a longer list of examples of Fox resorting to using doctored video.

[I've often posted links to posts on Facebook. This might be the first time that a slightly revised version of my last Facebook status update was turned into a blog post. One day soon everything that everyone writes will simultaneously turn up on a blog, Facebook, and Twitter.]

John Stewart ridiculed the tea party protests against health care reform and their comparisons between health care reform and the Holocaust (video above). He later demonstrated how Sean Hannity used video from another date to inflate the size of the crowd (video below):

Sean Hannity isn’t the first to use editing to increase the size of a crowd. I made fun of George Bush’s campaign for doing this in an ad in this post written during the 2004 presidential campaign:

Army of Clones?

Breaking News: George Bush develops army of clones, first seen in Bush ad (photo above).

It is speculated that the Bush administration developed this clone army, based upon an idea from George Lucas, in order to proceed with the neoconservative agenda of world dominance, without having to resort to a draft. Critics of the plan point out the effects upon the Republic when implemented.

Others speculate that these are actually alien clones, as first revealed by Chris Carter. Under this theory, the bulge on George Bush’s back in the debates was either an alien communication device or mind control device.

Proponents of both theories fear that Bush might also be planning to use cloned Republican voters to steal the election next week.

Others speculate that this actually represents use of Photo Shop to create the illusion of a larger attendance at a Bush rally–a rather boring explanation.

Update: Sean Hannity reportedly will be addressing the issue on his show tonight. I’d love to watch his show but I had already planned to spend the time doing something more interesting, perhaps such as watching to see if the grass is still growing this time of year. I bet that Jon Stewart will fill us in (but I fear it won’t make it until tomorrow’s show).