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It's starting to look like one other Senator, in addition to Ted Stevens, placed a "secret hold" on that bill to make government spending more accountable. It's not confirmed yet but Robert Byrd may have also done the deed. For what it's worth, my opinion of Byrd is not as low as my opinion of Stevens...but it's close.
Over at Cartoon Brew, they're reporting the death of veteran cartoonist Ed Benedict at the age of 94. Which would mean he was almost born in the same year as the cave people he drew so well for The Flintstones. Ed was mainly a designer for animation and he is generally given credit for the early Hanna-Barbera shows including Ruff 'n' Reddy, Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear and those cave people. (There are or were a few old-timers around who felt that others, like Dick Bickenbach, did more on those shows than is sometimes acknowledged. I'm agnostic on the issue but I thought it should be acknowledged.)
In any case, Benedict was certainly a terrific cartoonist...the kind whose very presence on a project could set the style for everyone else around him. He was especially effective in the fifties as studios were moving away from the ornate Disney look and wrestling with the new, minimalist U.P.A. look for animation. Benedict could work in either style but he was especially good at bridging the gap, managing to simplify the animation in a way that increased the expression and personality instead of diminishing it. Just drawing with fewer lines is simple. Anyone can do it. It takes the kind of talent Ed Benedict had to use fewer lines but to make them count for so much.
The Cartoon Brew obit and attendant links will tell you more about Ed Benedict than I ever could. I never met the man but I sure met and loved the drawings.
Back on August 21, George W. Bush held a press conference that...well, let's put it this way. You have your people out there who think the man is a terrible president and that there's something wrong with him in terms of being able to think or communicate. And you have your people who think he's a great leader and that he's fully in command of everything he's saying and doing. Both groups seem to think that this particular press conference inarguably proves their case. If you'd like to watch it, you can decide for yourself.
At the time it occurred, I couldn't link to it because the only place I could find the whole thing was the C-Span website, which seems to receive its tech support from Larry the Cable Guy. But Steve Billnitzer, a loyal reader of this site, figured out how to view it despite Larry's best efforts.
This link should work in most browsers. You'll need to have Real Player installed to view the clip, which runs a bit less than an hour. You'd think, in this era of Google Video and You Tube and ifilm that someone would establish an online source for all the major political speeches and press conferences. Yeah, you'd think that.
By the way: That's an rtsp link, those letters standing for Real Time Streaming Protocol. In theory, your browser is supposed to connect to an rtsp link and allow you to view the clip but not to download it...and in many cases, you don't want to download it to your harddisk because those files can be very large. But if you come across an rtsp link and you want to download it, it's a cinch with Net Transport, a file downloader that can download almost anything and run manage several download links at the same time. You can download a trial version of the program at the Net Transport website. Sometimes what you happen to do is open a media file in Windows Media Player or Real Player's standalone player, look on the Properties or Clip Info page and get the exact web address from which the media file is coming, then paste that address into Net Transport.
See what wonderful stuff you can learn from this site? I'm feeling so helpful today that I think I'm going to put up another ad to encourage tipping. My PayPal account is low and I need to buy some real odd junk this week.
Here's our last clip from The Night of 100 Stars, at least for now. It's in two parts which total around 11 and a half minutes.
Here's some trivia for you. Star #4 wrote the tune he's conducting. Star #10 went to junior high school with me. You may notice an odd similarity between Star #17 and Star #18. And you're about to see the lousiest part that Maureen Stapleton ever had in her whole career, as well as Joe Namath in a moment almost as embarrassing as when he modelled panty hose or when he was drunk and trying to kiss a lady reporter...
Okay, that's Part One. Now, click and watch Part Two...
To the surprise of absolutely no one, it turns out that "The Masked Senator" who's held up a bi-partisan bill to make government spending more transparent is Ted Stevens of Alaska. He was unmasked by bi-partisan detective work done on a thing called the Internet which, as I understand it, is a series of tubes.
So no one's surprised it's Stevens. What's amazing is his stated reason for doing what he did. Ted Stevens is the guy who fought for and got $453 million to build a bridge in his home state...a bridge that would only be of use to a very small group of people.
So then along comes this bill to establish a database of government spending so that our elected officials will be more accountable as to how they spend our money. The bill has wide support from both sides of the aisle and the database is only supposed to cost $15 million. So why does Stevens try to stop it? Because he's afraid it will cost too much.
You have to feel sorry for people who have to write political satire these days. How do you stay ahead of stuff like that?
September 1, 2006
