Posted 5:47 PM by Angie Schultz

Jimmy Carter: The Director's Cut

CNN has a transcript of Jimmy Carter's speech to the Democratic National Convention. I think there were a few lines left out, so I've put them back in. Think of it as closed captioning, or subtitles.

-----------------------------------------------------
My name is Jimmy Carter, and I'm not running for president.
It didn't go so well the last time.

...

Twenty-eight years ago, I was running for president. And I said then, "I want a government as good and as honest and as decent and as competent and as compassionate as are the American people."
I said that twenty-four years ago, too, and Ronald Reagan was elected.

...

As many of you may know, my first chosen career was in the United States Navy, where I served as a submarine officer.
I was on a nucular sub.

At that time, my shipmates and I were ready for combat and prepared to give our lives to defend our nation and its principles. At the same time, we always prayed that our readiness would preserve the peace.
It was the praying that did it, not the guns and stuff.

I served under two presidents, Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, men who represented different political parties, both of whom had faced their active military responsibilities with honor.

They knew the horrors of war. And later as commanders in chief, they exercised restraint and judgment, and they had a clear sense of mission.

We had a confidence that our leaders, both military and civilian, would not put our soldiers and sailors in harm's way by initiating wars of choice unless America's vital interests were in danger.
Nobody ever had any doubts about Korea, or the Cold War, ever. Nobody's tried to second-guess the A-bomb drop, either.

...

Today, our Democratic Party is led by another former naval officer, one who volunteered for military service. He showed up when assigned to duty, and he served with honor and distinction.

He also knows the horrors of war and the responsibilities of leadership.
In particular, his leadership is responsible for some of those horrors of war. Or so he's said.


...

As you all know, our country faces many challenges at home involving energy, taxation, the environment, education and health. To meet these challenges, we need new leaders in Washington whose policies are shaped by working American families instead of the super-rich...
Like John Kerry...oops!

Today, our dominant international challenge is to restore the greatness of America...
(Our European friends can just forget I said that; I know it scares them.)

...based on telling the truth, a commitment to peace, and respect for civil liberties at home and basic human rights around the world.
As long as it doesn't involve fighting.

...

After 9/11, America stood proud -- wounded, but determined and united. A cowardly attack on innocent civilians brought us an unprecedented level of cooperation and understanding around the world. But in just 34 months, we have watched with deep concern as all this good will has been squandered by a virtually unbroken series of mistakes and miscalculations.
Made by the French, the Germans, the Russians, the UN, and Saddam Hussein.

Unilateral acts and demands have isolated the United States from the very nations we need to join us in combating terrorism.
Such as the British, the Australians, the Italians, the...

Let us not forget that the Soviets lost the Cold War because the American people combined the exercise of power with adherence to basic principles, based on sustained bipartisan support.
The Democrats backed the Cold War 100%!

We understood the positive link between the defense of our own freedom and the promotion of human rights.
Unlike, say, George Bush.

But recent policies have cost our nation its reputation as the world's most admired champion of freedom and justice.
Taking out Saddam was a blow against freedom and justice everywhere!

What a difference these few months of extremism have made.
I'm talking about Bush here. Bin Laden? Who's that?

...

With our allies disunited, the world resenting us, and the Middle East ablaze...
Just like it was twenty-four years ago, when I left office...

...

In the meantime, the Middle East peace process has come to a screeching halt.
And yet, paradoxically, Israel has been more peaceful since then. Pay that no mind.

...

The achievements of Camp David a quarter century ago and the more recent progress made by President Bill Clinton are now in peril.
I brokered a great peace deal a quarter century ago. Have you heard? It's in all the history books. Of course, there's been no peace since then...

...

Elsewhere, North Korea's nuclear menace, a threat far more real and immediate than any posed by Saddam Hussein, has been allowed to advance unheeded, with potentially ominous consequences for peace and stability in Northeast Asia.
Not that we should confront North Korea!

These are some of the prices of our government has paid for this radical departure from the basic American principles and values that are espoused by John Kerry.
Er, a list of those values and principles was supposed to go here, but he never got back to me on that. Just use your imaginations.

In repudiating extremism, we need to recommit ourselves to a few common-sense principles that should transcend partisan differences.
NOTE: "extremism" = "Bush". Not Islamism. Islam is a religion of peace. Bush is the extremist.

First, we cannot enhance our own security if we place in jeopardy what is most precious to us, namely the centrality of human rights in our daily lives and in global affairs.
And that means leaving dictators alone!

Second, we cannot maintain our historic self-confidence as a people if we generate public panic.
Or if we want to keep the French happy.

Third, we cannot do our duty as citizens and patriots if we pursue an agenda that polarizes and divides our country.
So I'm going to have Michael Moore taken out and shot. Ha ha! Just kidding.

...

You can't be a war president one day and claim to be a peace president the
next, depending on the latest political polls.
Oops! John, that was going to be a private remark to you. Don't know how it got in the speech.

When our national security requires military action, John Kerry has already proven in Vietnam that he will not hesitate to act.
He will not hesitate to act in a flashy yet ultimately pointless manner, claim glory, then engage in shallow public breast beating when polls so decree.

And as a proven defender of our national security, John Kerry will strengthen the global alliance against terrorism while avoiding unnecessary wars.
He chides! He bribes! He makes kissy face with Chirac while being stabbed in the back!

Ultimately, the basic issue is whether America will provide global leadership that springs from the unity and the integrity of the American people...
We'll be all unified and integral and stuff, and they'll have to follow us! We won't have to do a thing!

...or whether extremist doctrines, the manipulation of the truth, will define America's role in the world.
Remember: Bush is the extremist truth manipulator here. There are no other threats.

At stake is nothing less than our nation's soul.

In a few months, I will, God willing, enter my 81st year of my life.

...

Thank you, and God bless America.
Remember, Europeans: my invocations of God are harmless; Bush's invocations of God show a man in the grip of a terrifying religious fervor.

-----------------------------------------------------

Well, that's all in good clean fun. I am sorry, but not surprised, to hear Carter talk like this. He thinks that "leadership" is being wise and strong and sitting here on our unity and integrity, and yet not doing a single blessed thing. In case he's forgotten, this is pretty much what did his presidency in, the touching yet naive belief that good intentions alone would earn the respect of the world. News flash: People without good intentions don't respect them. And even some with good intentions think that "leadership" (whatever that may mean at a given moment) requires that we do something more than sit quietly with our self-placed halos shining smugly around us. We have the UN for that.

Many bloggers have said that they don't believe a Kerry administration will do anything much different than Bush has done. I don't know what to think, really. This David Brooks column pretty much sums it up for me:

Kerry has been talking for years, and yet such is the thicket of his verbiage that he has achieved almost complete strategic ambiguity.

... Is Kerry a little dull because he is steady and sensible, or is he just incapable of making up his mind? Is he prudential because in times of crisis the nation needs a steady hand, or is he cautious because he simply doesn't grasp that we're in a new world, confronted by a rabid ideological foe?

Good questions. I don't know the answer.

But I'm pretty sure I know what our poor abandoned "traditional allies" will do if Kerry is elected. Where Bush got a cold shoulder and a curt brush-off, Kerry will get a warm embrace and a polite brush-off. Kerry and the Europeans will have wonderful dinners where the champagne freely flows, and they will speak in beautiful French, and get along so amiably.

And Kerry will be able to get our European friends to come to certain agreements with us, unlike that vulgar cowboy Bush. But there will be qualifications, you understand. Exceptions. Nuance. And we all (especially Kerry) will walk away quite satisfied, despite the fact that the agreements have been qualified and nuanced into futility. It isn't that the Europeans will have put one over on Kerry, but more the fact that he understands all this subtlety and sophistication. He understands the importance of coming to meaningless agreements. After all, we have agreed! We have consulted our allies! And isn't that what's really important? Actually getting things done comes a distant second.

Posted 9:35 PM by Angie Schultz

The Day Before The Day After Tomorrow

Several weeks ago, Sci Fi presented us with another specimen collected from the mephitic tarpits of the UFO swamp (employers of blogger jkrank), and this one was so...not bad.

It was Post Impact, a poor man's Day After Tomorrow, made in collaboration (er) with some German TV producers. (Not to be confused with Deep Impact, a much more expensive movie that concerns itself with events pre-post impact, as it were.)

There'll be some spoilers along the way, but there's a rather large spoiler at the end which I'll try not to reveal.

Quick summary: In 2010, a comet strikes central Europe, plunging the northern hemisphere into darkness and cold. Three years later, a satellite thought destroyed comes to life. This can only mean that someone's alive at its control center in frozen Berlin. A team is dispatched to check it out, and discover the intentions of the controllers.

Plot: Capt. Tom Parker (not Col. Tom Parker, Elvis's manager---don't be confused as I was) is our hunky hero, in charge of security at the American Embassy in Berlin. As the movie opens he's working security at an embassy gathering; among the guests are Dr. Starndorf and his assistant/daughter, Anna. They're watching a comet (which I believe Starndorf helped discover) when Starndorf gets a call on his cell phone, and they have to rush off.

Oh no! The comet has taken a sudden detour, by virtue of an asteroid collision, and it's going to strike central Europe in 48 hours! Starndorf's institute has built a microwave satellite, which has the ostensible purpose of collecting peaceful, sustainable solar power and beaming it gently down to an energy-hungry world; but they also built in a death-beam mode. They try the death beam on the comet, but to no avail. This scene exists primarily to show us the barking, unpleasant Col. Waters (Nigel Bennet from Phantom Force), and mewling, puking, pants-wetting scientist Hensa, another one of Starndorf's assistants.

Well, since that didn't work, they begin a surprisingly orderly evacuation of Europe. Parker brings his wife and tiny daughter to the airport. Also showing up at that moment is Anna Starndorf, who has to be dragged kicking and screaming onto the plane (she doesn't want to leave her father). Parker does such a good job of calming her that Waters orders him onto the plane to calm down the others. He intends to leave before the plane takes off, but of course for no adequately explained reason they're in an almighty hurry, and the plane begins to leave. Parker does a great deal of kicking and screaming himself, but it does him no good, and his family is left behind to catch the "next" plane.

Three years pass, and everyone assumes that Central Europe is a frozen lifeless wasteland. But some radio signals or sumpin from Berlin prompt the New United Northern States (N.U.N.S., with its capital in Tangiers) to send a plane full of minority soldiers to go check it out. The Death Beam satellite wakes up and zaps their plane, cooking them slowly until the plane explodes.

Standing, um, somewhere not very specific are Tom Parker (now extra-hunky due to the magic of scruffy facial hair) and his trusty Husky, Sasquatch. Parker sees the plane explode, and knows immediately that the microwave/Death Beam satellite has something to do with it. They head to Tangiers to see if they can get in on the action. See, all these years Parker has been trying to get back to Berlin to look for his family. He's tried eight times without success ('cause it's damn cold, as we will see).

Meanwhile, the destruction of the mission has Madame President (of NUNS) pissed off, and here we see one of the movie's fine eccentric performances (all of them from secondary characters). Col. Waters explains to her that the whole peaceful energy thingy didn't get enough funding, hence the military chipped in some bucks in return for a weapon. "A weapon!" she spits in derision, as if she's never heard of an excuse so lame. She sounds very much like the school marm in Blazing Saddles. I loved her.

About this time Anna Starndorf---summoned by Col. Waters---wanders in, trailing Parker and the dog in her wake. Parker introduces himself and begs to be allowed to go along. This scene has been in thousands of movies and books over the yers, but usually the hero is about ten. Waters is against the idea, but the President agrees, as you knew she would.

Waters assembles a team consisting of himself, Parker, Starndorf, and one other woman. She's "a former British SAS member, trained to kill", according to the IMDB's plot summary. She's got an accent that makes you want to slap her silly. I shall refer to her as Skanky Spice. There's a brief scene where Parker and Skanky, both de-briefed, are in the showers together. She tries to get into his non-pants by giving him the who -- er, hoary -- old "we may not return from this dangerous mission" come-on. Parker -- the man who has spent the last three years trying ceaselessly to return to his wife -- falls for it instantly. I suspect this scene was a lot less brief on German TV.

Our four team members begin their trek toward Berlin, taking along a half dozen redshirts, all of whom managed to get themselves killed by the end. (Is this a spoiler? No, it is not.) They're under the gun because they have determined somehow that the death-beam satellite is going to fry Tangiers in a few days' time. So they begin in a plane, and, of course, after a while the satellite sees them and starts toasting the plane.

In the very nick of time, heart-pounding seconds before the plane explodes, Parker and Starndorf -- sit down and have a nice heart-to-heart chat about why they're on the mission, how Parker wants to find his family, and Starndorf wants to find her father, etc. Somehow, though, they manage to get out of the plane by escaping in cute little tanks that are dropped from the plane and parachute to earth. This should be a ride when there's a UFO Grand Hotel in Las Vegas.

The middle of the movie is taken up by a long slog through frozen central Europe, which allows you time to get a sandwich or go to the bathroom. If you want to stick around to watch, your best entertainment value is counting how many times the laws of physics are ruthlessly violated and left for dead (see below). A couple of the redshirts are left for dead, too.

When they reach Berlin, Parker and Starndorf go off to do a little recon in just the cutest little sled -- it looks like a piglet on runners. Parker notes a hill that he does not remember, and they go up to check it out and nearly run off the cliff. It turns out that they're on top of the Brandenburg Gate. I'm sure that if you're German, this will make your hair stand on end, but we just said, "Huh? Where is that?" And then we decided it was the Reichstag.

At this time our team comes under fire. Naturally, this comes as a bit of a shock to them, since they sort of thought Berlin was deserted. They find a convenient manhole and scurry down it as quickly as the jelly in a frozen Berliner. They do some wandering in a trademarked UFO sub-basement so Parker and Starndorf can do some trademarked UFO heart-to-heart chatting, and then they find they are being watched by a giant newt.

No, it's just a little girl, and her name's not Newt (that we know of); Newt was the name of the little girl found in similar circumstances in Aliens. After being bribed with some candy, Not-Newt leads the team to a group of survivors.

And here follows one of the most awkward scenes in bad movie history. Our well-fed, well-armed heroes come upon a rag-tag band of pale survivors. Now, what should happen is that the survivors stare dazedly for a few seconds, then throw themselves at our heroes' feet, kissing them amid glad cries of "Hallelujah! We're saved!" and so forth. Then the team will lie and tell them they're just the advance men, here to scope out the situation, and that the rescuers will come later, but it was really tough to get to Berlin, and they should be patient.

Instead the two groups just stare at each other nervously. The team members look as if they're afraid the survivors are going to say, "You're not here to rescue us, are you?", and the survivors look as if they're afraid to hear the team answer, "No". The survivors do tell the team that they've been able to survive thanks in part to "the Doctor", who's been good to them.

Little Not-Newt leads them to the Doctor, who is living inside the giant greenhouse that was (for real this time) (I think) the Reichstag. (Isn't that cool? Here's a picture of the hall where the Bundestag meets. Be sure not to sit under the giant pointy thing.)

The Doctor, of course, turns out to be Prof. Starndorf. The poor doctor is now blind, but this goes completely unexplained, so we don't know why this is nor why it matters. Starndorf does explain that he hopes to use the satellite death beam's "defrost" setting to gently warm central Europe and perhaps nudge the climate back to normal.

There's also a touching reunion scene between Anna and her father, all the more touching for being really brief. Our heroes have not been there but about five minutes when they're attacked. This is the doctor's own security squad, of course, but they're really working for someone else. Our last two remaining redshirts purchase some agricultural property, and Prof. Starndorf is ventilated in the crossfire.

The good news is that all the attackers (including the eccentric leader, whom I liked, he vas efil in ze gut old tradition uf efil Chermans) are also killed.

Our mission, you remember, was to get to the satellite control center before Tangiers is toasted. Somehow the team finds its way there with little difficulty and discovers the dithering pants-wetter, Hensa, at the controls. He's ticked off at having been left behind to freeze, and in his rage plans to fry what's left of civilization, starting with Tangiers.

Here, folks, is one of bad moviedom's truly riveting performances. Hensa (the actor's name does not show up in the IMDB listing) terrified us. He's pale and hollow-eyed and launches into a funny/psychotic schtick like Robin Williams on speed. In fact, he reminds one very much of Robin Williams in Good Morning, Vietnam, since the control booth he's sitting in looks like a radio station booth.

Well, after some rigamarole, our heroes defeat him -- AND THEN COMES A PLOT TWIST. I can't say that I didn't wonder if something fishy was going on with one of the characters, but I didn't exactly expect what was coming either. Well done!

I won't reveal the denouement, except to say that it was not happy endings all 'round.

Analysis: The science in this movie was not all it should have been. Just off the top of my head:

1) When the comet strikes the earth it instantly starts snowing in Berlin. Supposedly, dust (well, dirt, trees, rocks, cities) thrown up by the comet (as well as smoke from fires the comet will set) will blot out the sunlight and cool the earth. But that should take weeks.

Though our characters would be dead by then. This nifty page calculates the effects of a bolide impact on the Earth. I used a "typical" comet impact velocity of 51 km/s, with ice for the projectile material, and dense rock for the target. I chose a distance of 1000 km for the distance from the impact (i.e., the distance of Berlin from the impact), and an impact angle of 75 degrees (the comet seemed to be coming at an angle). Eight km was used for the comet diameter (comets are typically 1-10 km in diameter).

Some effects:

The Earth is not strongly disturbed by the impact and remains intact.
The impact does not make a noticeable change in the Earth's rotation period or the tilt of its axis.
The impact does not shift the Earth's orbit noticeably.

Whew! So that's good.

Energy: 3.49 x 10²³ Joules = 8.33 x 10⁷ MegaTons TNT

Say with me now, 83 mmmillion mmmmegatons. That's about 1.7 million of the largest H-bombs ever built.

Final Crater Diameter: 108.37 km = 67.30 miles
Visible fireball radius: 62.4 km = 38.8 miles
The fireball appears 14.2 times larger than the sun
Duration of Irradiation: 183 seconds
Radiant flux (relative to the sun): 30.0
Effects of Thermal Radiation -- Much of the body suffers second degree burns
Deciduous trees ignite

That is, at a distance of 1000 km from the impact point.

Seismic effects: The major seismic shaking will arrive at approximately 200.0 seconds.
Richter Scale Magnitude: 9.9 (This is greater than any earthquake in recorded history)
Ejecta: The ejecta will arrive approximately 494.4 seconds after the impact.
Average Ejecta Thickness: 16.3 cm = 6.41 inches
Mean Fragment Diameter: 1.6 mm = 0.0648 inches

Unfortunately, this is all it says about dust. Berlin will be 6.5 inches deep in dust starting at 500 seconds after the impact, but it doesn't say how long it will take to achieve this depth. There's nothing about nuclear winters. I thought the fragments would be a lot bigger than that---whole buildings or trees or whatnot. But they get pulverized.

The air blast will arrive at approximately 3333.3 seconds.

That's about an hour.

Max wind velocity: 162.5 m/s = 363.6 mph

In Berlin. 360 mph winds in Berlin, which results in:

Multistory wall-bearing buildings will collapse.
Wood frame buildings will almost completely collapse.
Highway truss bridges will collapse.
Glass windows will shatter.
Up to 90 percent of trees blown down; remainder stripped of branches and leaves.

Oh, and also:

Sound Intensity: 100 dB (May cause ear pain)

Always wear ear protection in comet impacts. And always read the fine print:

Earth Impact Effects Program Copyright 2004, Robert Marcus, H.J. Melosh, and G.S. Collins
These results come with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY

(Thanks to Jay Manifold for pointing to this page, in the course of noting that the world had failed to end (again).)


2) And about that comet. Kudos to the writers for not just lobbing it onto the Earth without explanation, but the whole asteroid-comet collision thing is a bit ripe. The chances of a comet striking an asteroid near the orbit of the Earth -- where asteroids are kind of scarce -- are, er, astronomical. But, OK, OK, if we didn't have that we wouldn't have our movie. But an asteroid that close to the Earth, large enough to deflect the comet, would have probably been known and have its orbit plotted before this. The collision would've been expected.

3) I also don't believe that microwaving the plane would've cooked the people inside, but I'm too lazy to look that up.

4) When the team is crawling across central Europe in their little tanks, they mention that the temperature is something like -57 Celsius. Then Parker and Starndorf go outside for a breath of fresh air, dressed in ordinary parkas sufficient for a stroll through a Chicago winter. I don't think so. This is near the average winter temperature at the South Pole!

5) At one point, the team wants to cross a river, but Parker tells them it's too risky, because the ice can sometimes give way (or something). So instead they cross a bridge, which is made of steel which has been hanging in the open wind in mind-boggling temperatures. I mean, it's not like metal ever becomes brittle and fails at low temperatures, right?

Well, that's enough beating up on the science. Aside from the many times when the action comes to a crashing halt for a heart-to-heart talk -- and the fact that the people handed unhappy endings in the end don't seem unhappy enough about them -- this wasn't that bad a movie. I haven't seen The Day After Tomorrow to compare the two, but at least Post Impact can proudly hold up its head and say that it was not based on a book by Art Bell and Whitley Strieber.

Of course, it could've been a lot better with a heaping helping of jkrank.

Posted 9:09 AM by Angie Schultz

A Day in the Life of a Dinosaur

Speaking of lost treasures found on the Web -- when I was a little kid I had a record about a "chrononaut" who goes back in time and meets a brontosaurus named Bronty. They have a few adventures, and then the chrononaut leaves. It's sad at the end, because you know the dinosaurs will become extinct.

I remembered the cover, but almost nothing about the record, nothing that would help in Googling. Every once in a while I'd google on "Bronty children's record" or something like that, but got too many hits to sort through.

But finally, I found it: A Day in the Life of a Dinosaur. But it was a "terra naute", not a chrononaut. My adult mind must have supplied the proper terminology.

This one is on CD, and I got it the other day. Man. It's amazing how many of the words and little musical snippets I can remember. Every once in a while a fragment of music bubbles through my memory, and it bugs me trying to figure out where it comes from. When I heard the title song, I finally identified a tune that has occasionally haunted me.

There's one bit where the brontosaurus becomes stuck in the swamp, and he calls for his dinosaur buddies to come help him out, and another place where they are attacked by allosauruses (allosauri?). My mother's parents had a pond that took up a good chunk of their property, and there were places where it came near the fenceline. Sometimes those places could get pretty soggy. Once, my grandfather pretended that he was stuck in the mud, and I had to pull him out, "Help! Help! The allosauruses will get us! Boooy! That was close!" He must've gotten that from the record.

Some of the dialog is kind of weird. For example, there's a discussion of dieting ("Your problem is glandular," the terra naute tells Bronty.) Early on, Bronty says something like, "I'm tired of dragging around this fat flesh. It would be a relief to be a skeleton." Uh, sure, just ask Karen Carpenter.

After the allosaurus attack, the mental problems of allosaurs are discussed, and Bronty says of them, "You'd rather fight than switch from meat!" This is a reference to the slogan for Tareyton cigarettes, "I'd rather fight than switch", an ad campaign that featured Tareyton smokers with black eyes. (Unless the Tareyton ad itself was alluding to something. That's been known to happen.)

I think this record led to my very first ambition: I wanted to be Queen of the Dinosaurs.

Posted 9:02 AM by Angie Schultz

Get a Load of This You Heathen Monkeys

I'm declaring a fatwa against Time-Warner. They have defiled the Holy of Holies: Jonny Quest

In [the new DVD release of] the classic episode "Pursuit of the Po-Ho," Race Bannon smears purple berry juice all over his body so he can impersonate the water god Aquezio and frighten the Po-Ho into releasing Dr. Benton Quest and a colleague. As Race emerges from the river to the agitated cries of the startled Indians, he declares, "All right, you ignorant savages -- get a good look at Aquezio, you heathen monkeys!"

Or at least that's what he used to say until somebody bowdlerized this beloved and classic animated series and truncated the audio to "Get a look at Aquezio!" Race's mouth keeps moving when the supposedly offensive lines are bleeped.

Time-Warner can consider themselves cursed. Anubis will stalk their halls, mutterning "Coin! Coin!" (I've been known to do that, too.) Turu the Terrible will swoop down and carry off their young. And the energy monster will sap all their transmissions.

So it is ordered, in the name of the father, the son, and the holy bulldog, amen.

Via Tim "Beer Bottle of the Righteous" Blair

Posted 5:23 PM by Angie Schultz

The Hunter and the Song

This is the post about the wonder and the glory that is the Web.

It had been four days since the word she spoke had gone
And through four lonely nights, his weary mind rolled on
...
He was into trackin' somethin'
And you know his heart was thumpin'
Wildly
...
...swallowed all the air
His senses came alive, he'd never been so aware
At last they came face to face, the hunter and the bear
...
Such a lovely creature
How could you shoot him, my friend?


Those are the lyrics I heard about a half dozen times through the extremely lo-fi radio my sister and I had as a teenager in the late '70s. It was a spooky, sad song, with wind sound effects. I never figured out what it was about.

Every once in a while, something reminds me of a long-forgotten song, and I try to google up the lyrics. I've never been successful with this one. Partly, perhaps, because I'm not sure those are the right lyrics. How many days was it? A monosyllabic number, I'm sure. "Swallowed all the air"---can that really be right? But I'm certain that "face to face the hunter and the bear" ought to hit. Nothin'. Not only that, but I didn't know the name of the song, or the band.

Until the other day, when I was thinking of it, and suddenly, out of nowhere, the name of the band popped into my mind: The Blend.

So I started googling on that, and the other day, I finally got a hit. This is a response to someone asking a very vague question about a song that may be called "The Hunter and the Bear". The song is actually called "The Prize". This page tells me it's off the album Anytime Delight, but they don't have it. This place does, though. Here's a little page devoted to the band. They had two whole albums released, and took "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me" to number 91 on the charts in 1978. (That was the year the Blues Brothers version of "Louie Louie" went to 89, and Willie Nelson's "Georgia on My Mind" made it to 84. In other words, not really that good a showing.)

Unfortunately, it's not on CD.

Posted 8:51 PM by Angie Schultz

The Dream [Fact] Police

Last night I dreamed about Michael Moore.

I dreamt that he lived near me, and I met his wife and talked to her about Fahrenheit 9/11. They also had a toddler son, and a puppy. Or maybe it was a kitten, I forget.

The most interesting part of the dream was when I showed Mrs. Moore -- who was very proud of her husband, and fully confident in the movie -- a place where the movie was inaccurate. "See here," I said, pointing to a transcript, "it says that [some office supply product or other] is used in [my field] in Sydney, Australia. Ha! Well, I worked in that field in Sydney for three years, and we never used these products!" She said there must have been a mistake, but I could see the doubt in her eyes.

But even in my triumph, I knew that his blunder about our Post-It notes was not going to really convince anyone. So he got a little fact wrong, so what? He's telling the Truth! And if all his facts are wrong, it still doesn't matter: the Truth is not inconvenienced by a few facts. Like John Pilger, they believe certain lies are more True than facts.

My dream was no doubt inspired by a transcript of the movie which has been posted at Red Line Rants (Part I, Part II, third part to be posted).

I read the second part of the transcript the other day, and came across this:

NARRATOR: And who else stood to benefit from the pipeline? Bush's number one campaign contributor, Kenneth Lay, and the good people of Enron.

I immediately detected a piscine aroma. Ken Lay and Enron seem entirely too convenient -- mentioned because they were famous for their failure. Was Lay really Bush's top contributor? So I went to Open Secrets and found this page listing Bush's top 20 contributors. Enron comes in at number 12. However, you see that these are actually the employers of Bush's top 20 contributors (or, sponsors of PACs which contributed to Bush). It's possible that Ken Lay was the biggest individual contributor, but that many other employees of the other corporations added up to their larger totals.

[This also explains why Bush's 17th largest contributor is the State of Texas, and why Gore's top contributors include the US Depts of Agriculture, Justice, and State, plus the University of California.]

So I wanted to find out what Lay's individual contribution was. It took a lot of doing (search-by-contributor seems to be down), but I finally found this, which reports all Lay's contributions. You can sort by election cycle, and you find that Bush got $4,000 out of the Lays, in four contributions. Now, of course they also contributed to a bunch of other political causes, many of them Republican (e.g. Americans for a Republican Majority, and the Republican parties of thirteen states). They also contributed to Houston Democrat moonbat Sheila Jackson Lee ($1500) and other Democrats Bob Kerrey ($2000) and Ken "nephew of Lloyd" Bentsen ($2000).

The next step is to find out whether anyone donated as much as Lay. This was difficult, because of the broken search engine, but it turns out that Tobias and Marianne Randall of Eli Lilly also donated $4000 to Bush during the 2000 election cycle.

But that doesn't really matter. It's only a technical objection. "Bush's number one campaign contributor" might mean the guy who's raised the most money for Bush overall, or who has contributed the most to Bush's various political campaigns over the years. And even if I found that this wasn't true, it doesn't negate Moore's main point, that Lay has seen to it that the Republicans got lots of money. If you are disposed to think that Bush would go to war primarily in payback for this favor, then knowing that other people in other industries might have given more will not change your mind. (And neither will realizing that Enron did not actually dig any oil out of the ground.) So my nitpicking is pointless.

Here's some more Moore:

NARRATOR: Or was the war in Afghanistan really about something else? Perhaps the answer was in Houston, Texas. In 1997 while George W. Bush was Governor of Texas, a delegation of Taliban leaders from Afghanistan flew to Houston to meet with Unocal executives to discuss the building of a pipeline through Afghanistan bringing natural gas from the Caspian Sea. And who got a Caspian Sea drilling contract the same day Unocal signed the pipeline deal? A company headed by a man named Dick Cheney: Halliburton.

If I recall correctly, Halliburton doesn't dig up oil either. The just sell machines and whatnot that do. Continuing on...

NARRATOR: And who else stood to benefit from the pipeline? Bush's number one campaign contributor, Kenneth Lay, and the good people of Enron... Then in 2001, just 5 1/2 months before 9/11, the Bush Administration welcomed a special Taliban envoy to tour the United States to help improve the image of the Taliban government.

...

NARRATOR: ...When the invasion of Afghanistan was complete we installed its new president, Hamid Karzai. Who was Hamid Karzai? He was a former advisor to Unocal... Faster than you can say Black Gold Texas Tea, Afghanistan signed an agreement with her neighboring countries to build a pipeline through Afghanistan carrying natural gas from the Caspian Sea.

Note that "black gold, Texas tea" are synonyms for oil, but "natural gas" is not. Just thought I should clear that up. The pipeline deal was indeed signed in late 2002. That BBC article notes that (at that time) potential investors were skittish. This DOE page says that the pipeline project seems to be dead in the water, and that "no major Western companies have expressed an interest in reviving the project."

But, again, a little niggling detail like that won't make a difference to you if you already know It's All About the Oil (Or Possibly Natural Gas).

Speaking of natural gas, Moore's emanations ("So-and-so 'just happened' to be in Houston at the same time as George Bush happened to be in Austin, only a few hours away on the day that such-and-such a paper was signed by someone else, half a world away...") sound a lot like the TV ads for those old books on the paranormal: "When Dorothy Hork hit her thumb with a hammer in her home in Baltimore, her mother in Los Angeles experienced a sharp, stabbing pain in her knee. Coincidence? Read the book..."

Or better yet, read Richard Cohen (registration required) or this item at MSNBC.