Who's the biggest fan of the Patrick Fitzgerald investigation?
Bill Frist. Luckily for him, the national scandal buzz can only handle one at a time. If a politician "implodes" and nobody's around to notice, can he still be elected President?

MEDIA MONDAY
What have you been listening to, watching, reading?

Super Creepy--Be on the Lookout
Just so you know, if your young kids show up with a CD of the newest wholesome-looking little girl group, 2 cute blond 13-year-old twins named Lamb and Lynx Gaede, you might need to have that we're-not-white-supremacists talk with them earlier than you expected. It's not just bad-music fun. It's recruitment.

Songs like "Sacrifice" — a tribute to Nazi Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy Fuhrer — clearly show the effect of the girls' upbringing. The lyrics praise Hess as a "man of peace who wouldn't give up."

So, what's creepier, the fact that they call themselves "Prussian Blue"? Or the smiley Hitler face t-shirts they wear in promo pictures?

Seriously though, is today some kind of autumn version of April Fool's Day I don't know about? This can't be for true.

Top 100 Films, Again
Another useless best-ever list, but it's interesting. Total Film magazine "surveyed UK film experts" to compile the rankings for their next issue. Here's the top ten:
10. His Girl Friday
9. The Lord Of The Rings
8. The Empire Strikes Back
7. Tokyo Story
6. Citizen Kane
5. The Godfather Part II
4. Fight Club
3. Jaws
2. Vertigo
1. GoodFellas

I've got no beef with Goodfellas being #1. It's a great movie. And I liked Fight Club alot, but not sure about #4 of all time....

We're old!
This December 3, The Beatles' Rubber Soul will be 40 years old. That means that today we're farther away from events in 1984 than 1984 was from Rubber Soul. This Tuesday an inevitable tribute album is released. It may be a decent listen, I don't know. But I'm already pissed at one of the contributors, Rhett Miller:

Miller, for instance, didn't do much to alter "Girl," though he was sure to monitor his breathing.

"I got to correct what I saw as one of the only flaws on the record," he says. "After John sings 'girrrrrl,' there's this sharp intake of breath and it sounds like he's taking a bong hit. That's always bothered me, having to hear his respiratory. So I didn't do that."

A flaw??? Are you kidding me, dude?? Sure, don't do the breathy part, but only because you're not worthy....when he said it that way, they should have kicked him right out of the project.

a flaw...please. that's one of the most beautiful parts of the album.

Other contributors include Ben Harper, Sufjan Stevens, Dar Williams, Low, Ted Leo, Ben Kweller, The Donnas, Cowboy Junkies, Fiery Furnaces, Mindy Smith.

Nerd Beauty
Math as art

Weekend Box Office
1. Doom (seriously?)
2. Dreamer
3. Wallace and Gromit
4. The Fog
5. North Country

Anne Rice
Who knows, it may be great, but this strikes me as a little weird

In two weeks, Anne Rice, the chronicler of vampires, witches and—under the pseudonym A. N. Roquelaure—of soft-core S&M encounters, will publish "Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt," a novel about the 7-year-old Jesus, narrated by Christ himself. "I promised," she says, "that from now on I would write only for the Lord." It's the most startling public turnaround since Bob Dylan's "Slow Train Coming" announced that he'd been born again.

10,000-year clock
The November Discover Magazine carries an article about a super-clock being designed to remain accurate for 10,000 years (and if it doesn't make it the whole way, one of those engineers should get canned!). So I'm reading along, because I can't resist stories like that, and I get to this:

Everything about this clock is deeply unusual. For example, while nearly every mechanical clock made in the last millennium consists of a series of propelled gears, this one uses a stack of mechanical binary computers capable of singling out one moment in 3.65 million days. Like other clocks, this one can track seconds, hours, days, and years. Unlike any other clock, this one is being constructed to keep track of leap centuries, the orbits of the six innermost planets in our solar system, even the ultraslow wobbles of Earth's axis.

And I'm screaming the question that no doubt you are also: What the *?!% is a "leap century"?! I guess I should remember, since we just lived through one a few years back:

Because the old Julian calendar was 3/4 of a day too long per century, the new Gregorian calendar skipped the leap year in three out of four century years and created what could be called "leap centuries." By the new calendar, 1600 was a leap year, but 1700, 1800, and 1900 were not. [ed.: so, 2000 was a leap year also...and I didn't even know century years usually were not...too bad we couldn't skip the Presidential election.]....In the Julian calendar there was a leap year every four years and thus a year was 365.25 days long. But we use the Gregorian calendar which drops a leap year every 100 years ( — .01) and adds it back in every 400 years ( + .0025). Years now average to 365.2425 days.

And the Wikipedia entry on this topic offers other "long-term" calendar considerations.

The accumulated difference between the Gregorian calendar and the vernal equinoctial year amounts to 1 day in about 8,000 years. This suggests that the calendar needs to be improved by another refinement to the leap year rule: perhaps by avoiding leap years in years divisible by 8,000.

However, there is little point in planning a calendar so far ahead because over a timescale of tens of thousands of years the number of days in a year will change for a number of reasons, most notably:

1. Precession of the equinoxes moves the position of the vernal equinox with respect to perihelion and so changes the length of the vernal equinoctial year.
2. Tidal acceleration from the sun and moon slows the revolution of the earth, making the day longer.

In particular, the second component of change depends on such things as post-glacial rebound and sea level rise due to climate change. We can't predict these changes accurately enough to be able to make a calendar that will be accurate to a day in tens of thousands of years.

So, Bush is not only screwing up the environment with refusal to address climate change problems, he's messing up our clocks...the next time you're late to something, think about blaming W.

Facing Your Accuser
Some DUI arrestees in Florida are demanding to confront their accuser. Problem is, the accuser is a machine whose inner workings are a proprietary secret.

The prosecutors say that the software is a trade secret belonging to the company that sells the breathalyzer. It's a fascinating problem: what's more important, the trade secrets of a vendor or the constitutional right to due process, which surely includes the right to examine a machine used to determine one's guilt? Does selling breathalyzer software for use in evidence in a court of law mean that you waive your right to keep the software's workings a secret?

Hopefully this will work and we can use that to open up the software of vote-counting machines, which have a similar problem.

Bush vs. Congress
A new front in the war between the Republican congress and the Republican White House has opened up, says Josh at TPM.

Rep. George Miller (D-CA) seems to have found a way to force a floor vote in the House of Representatives on whether or not to overturn the President Bush's Gulf Coast Wage Cut.

He indicates there is enough support for the bill to indeed overturn Bush. I keep hearing pipedreams about how this Miers fiasco is going to drive a real and lasting wedge between Bush and congressional Republicans, but I haven't really been buying it. Could it be true? Then again, it could just be that with the House leader Delay and the Senate leader Frist just doing what they can to stay out of the pokey, maybe there's not enough energy left to keep the GOP in line?

Who's Undefeated? [Update: 6-0!]
The Nashville Predators, that's who. Looking pretty good in doing it, too. Going for 6-0 tonight, against the Blues. It's too early to be crowning the best teams in the NHL this year, but the Preds have everyone back from the last season, plus added an all-star. And the new rules are fitting their skating game nicely. They lead the league in fewest penatly minutes. Sorry to hear there are still plenty of seats available, but we're just not a weeknight hockey town. Wonder how many in a row they'd have to win to change that.

[Update: note....no jinx. Preds win again. Love the shootout. Stevie T this means you must call me in the middle of all future home games. Sorry to make you put off your work, but it must be good luck for the team--Mambo!]

Shameful
At 6.25/hr., the minimum wage would offer $13,000 a year, before taxes, to a person that worked 40 hours per week, 52 weeks/year. Republicans think that's too much.

Senate proposals to raise the minimum wage were rejected yesterday, making it unlikely that the lowest allowable wage, $5.15 an hour since 1997, will rise in the foreseeable future.

A labor-backed measure by Senator Edward Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, would have raised the minimum to $6.25 over an 18-month period. A Republican counterproposal would have combined the same $1.10 increase with various breaks and exemptions for small businesses.

The Kennedy amendment to a spending bill went down 51 to 47.

The next time you are suspecting, or hearing, that there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans, know that no Senate Democrat voted against the minimum wage increase. Almost every Republican voted against. Democrats were joined in support by Specter, Santorum, Dewine and Chafee, the last 3 of whom face tough re-election campaigns next year.

Question for the lawyers in the room
Link

What did the president tell Patrick Fitzgerald? As a number of lawyers and former prosecutors have informed me this morning, not being under oath does not get President Bush out of legal jeopardy if he didn't tell the truth.

Why not? I thought the oath was the thing. No, really.

Defining the Opposition
While we're all in a mode of waiting (for Miers, Wilma, and Patrick to play out), it gives me the chance to go back to something I've been thinking about for a while. A recent post at Washington Monthly brings this problem to light in terms that are helpful. Democrats/liberals/progressives are feeling pretty good right now in the sense that not only is Bush on the ropes, politically, but so are Delay, Cheney, Rove, and Frist. But it only matters, and we can only help put the country in a position to recover from this band of hoodlums, if the public can be convinced to translate unhappiness with specific Republicans into votes for Democrats.

Every time I see new Bush approval numbers I get a jolt of glee, but it's immediately blunted by the reality that the President couldn't run again if he wanted to. Running against the President won't be easy so long as Republicans aren't running with him, and they won't be. They'll be running on what's gotten them in the majority, their perverted sense of "conservatism." As most everyone acknowledges, Bush is hardly a conservative in any sense. So what are Democrats to do? Don't worry, I'm not about to whine that Democrats need a positive message. Please. What we need is decidedly, undeniably negative. But we can't just point out the inadequacies of a few. The real trouble is a right-wing ideology that continues to coast unquestioned. Kevin Drum quotes Paul Waldman saying it this way:

Liberals may write best-selling books about why George W. Bush is a terrible president, but conservatives write best-selling books about why liberalism is a pox on our nation (talk radio hate-monger Michael Savage, for instance, titled his latest book Liberalism Is a Mental Disorder).

Indeed, large portions of the conservative movement can be understood as an effort to crush liberalism in all its manifestations. Conservatives understand that their main enemy is not a law, government program, or social condition they don't like. Their main enemy is a competing ideology, and that is what they spend their time fighting.

In contrast, liberals spend very little time talking about conservatism. They talk about their opposition to President Bush or the policies proposed by the Republican Congress, but they don't offer a critique of conservatism itself. When was the last time you saw a book-length polemic against conservatism?

Essentially, I agree, although I seem to remember Republicans writing alot of books about a certain particular President during the 90s, but one could easily argue that strategy was a political failure that backfired--President Clinton left office with high approval ratings. But Waldman is right in the sense that Republicans have successfully demonized and ridiculed liberalism to the point that their job on the campaign trail is simpler. If you can stomach it, spend a half hour listening to Rush or watching Bill O'Lielly. They do like to ridicule particular hated Democrats, but spend equal time calling into question liberalism generally. In fact, that is the primary characteristic used to abuse those Democrats: that they are in fact liberal.

We on the other hand use the logical, civil tactic of questioning particular acts of incompetence or cruelty. And there's plenty of that to earn our contemptful gaze. This might win us a few elections from time to time, but no real trending shift in public opinion will occur until conservatism has received a constant barrage of questioning, insults and ridicule as a governing philosophy.

Can this be done? Or is the die cast? Are we stuck hoping to pile up small victories and stay in office with sheer competence and efficiency?

Nevermind, for now
We can all ratchet down that White House indictment fervor.

The prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, is not expected to take any action in the case this week, government officials said.

I suppose it could be a fake, but not sure what good that would do.

Tennessee: Bush job approval numbers
Link, via Kos
Approve: 40%
Disapprove: 57%

The gap was only 5% last month in SUSA's state-by-state polling. Check your state here. Unless you live in Utah, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Alaska, Wyoming or Idaho, Bush's approval numbers in your state are below 50. That list was 10 states long a month ago.

Indictment Watch
Jeralyn at TalkLeft says that all the factors that bear on criminal targets usually succeed in convincing them to turn against higher-ups, and that goes also for those involved in the CIA leak case that is due to produce either indictments or a huge disappointment sometime this week. Mandatory sentencing guidelines leave them little hope for leniency in punishment; the expense coming their way if indicted is huge and being low profile (as opposed to Karl Rove or Tom Delay) offers them little chance of garnering financial support from the public; and then there's the little issue of family values:

This is the week that all of the subjects facing Indictment will be faced with their "come to Jesus" moment. Spouses will be telling them to cut their losses and think of the family. They will be forced to juxtapose their loyalty to the Administration with their loyalty to their families and their interest in self-preservation.

My experience tells me that only those who truly believe they are innocent -- and those whom Fitzgerald advises are looking at felonies and jail time even with a deal -- will hold out.

So, the Raw Story may be on to something in identifying Cheney aide John Hannah as cooperating with the Fitzgerald investigation. Either way, it's probably too much to hope that this will land on the VP. But that hasn't stopped rumors from making US News and World Report. Still, at this point, that's not so much exciting as just kinda funny.

Miers confuses Specter?
I don't take this as a good sign for the nominee. After a meeting with Senator Specter, he emerged to say she believed in the right of privacy and affirmed the correctness of the Griswold case. After word got out, and she had time to be re-programmed by White House officials, she called the chairman back to say he had misunderstood her on both counts.

Specter's carefully worded statement did not withdraw his comments about Miers discussing Griswold with him, nor did it offer a correction. However, the statement said the chairman accepted Miers contention "that he misunderstood what she said."

What, were they speaking in pig latin? Did she think maybe she could tell him what he wants to hear and he would keep it to himself? I can't imagine how such a misunderstanding could occur. Senator Specter's a pretty smart guy, probably had his questions evaded more than most---he knows what it looks like when someone's trying not to take a position. So, I have to ask, can her opinion be molded so readily? It could make the hearings genuinely interesting. The first Senator to ask a question differently than those that prepared her wins! The White House won't be able to step in and save her once she's in front of the committee and her answers are public for all to hear.

But how scary is it that they are going so far out of their way to remove themselves from Griswold? Even Roberts didn't go that far.

MEDIA MONDAY
What have you been listening to, watching and reading?

John Moe v. Charlie Daniels
What John Moe has been listening to, "for the first time in 25 years," is Charlie Daniels' "The Devil Went Down to Georgia." John has a few questions. 39 to be exact, published at McSweeney's. Here's #8:

8. If the Devil went down to Georgia 'cause he was looking for a soul to steal, why does he arrange what appears to be an honest competition?

Simpsons Did It
From BoingBoing, and in Media Monday's recognition of yesterday being Dictionary Day, a link to Wikipedia's list of words made up on The Simpsons, with their explanation. My current favorite:

Skittlebrau

Skittlebrau (or Skittlebräu) is a type of beverage that looks like beer with candy floating in it. It is implied that Homer imagined it by mixing Skittles and beer (brew in German is bräu) in "Bart Star". However, later episodes show Skittlebrau as an actual product being sold at the 33 cent store. Another episode shows Homer asking Apu for some at the Kwik-E-Mart, only for Apu to tell him that it does not exist. It is assumed the combination derives from the known phrase Life is not all beer and skittles from E. Cobham Brewer. In addition, it may be derived from a odd regional penchant in various enclaves around the USA (parts of the Midwest and South) for combining M&Ms or peanuts and cola.

This has been tried in the real world, here among other places.

This joke is reminscent of a previous gag on the Simpsons where Homer declares that he is a white male between 18-49 and "everyone listens to him," as he pops open a can of Nuts & Gum (Together at Last!).

Time's 100 Greatest Novels
ever since 1923...i can't claim to have read even most of them, but there are a few head-scratchers. [UPDATE: It's not a list of greatest novels ever, just greatest novels since "Time" began, if that distinction makes sense. They're so clever. I should have read a bit closer. At least the list itself is not so confusing now.]

Weekend Box Office
1. The Fog
2. Wallace and Gromit
3. Elizabethtown
4. Flight Plan
5. In Her Shoes

Darnitall, I've been looking forward to Cameron Crowe's Elizabethtown ever since I heard about it. But I see it gets not-so-good composite score at Metacritics. So, now something else will have to happen to tip the scales in its favor and get me to buy a ticket. Too many other enticing things are out or coming here soon: Corpse Bride, History of Violence, Good Night and Good Luck, to name a few. Also sorry to see that Article 19 favorite Atom Egoyan apparently has a dud on his hands as well. Too bad. His trio of Exotica, The Sweet Hereafter and Felicia's Journey is one of the most shocking, riveting, upsetting, beautiful set of films I've seen from a single director.

Melloman
BoingBoing links to a homemade version of the old mellotron (heard at the beginning of Strawberry Fields Forever, for example). This contraption, the melloman, instead of directly playing tape loops of flutes and strings, activates walkmen with the keyboard. A brilliant poor man's sampler. The mellotron is a fabulous and underused creation, although composer/producer Jon Brion sneaks it in film scores and the tracks of unsuspecting rock and rap artists from time to time.

The Melloman reminds me of the night many years ago that I planted a Beavis and Butthead talking device (push a button and hear one of their classic catch phrases) into a girlfriend's piano. It was a clandestine operation that left her middle c giggling with huh-huh-huh boy-laughter instead of striking its intended string. I loved playing Mozart's C Major Piano Sonata that way. But alas, some were not so amused. I believe that was the night that lost me my key privileges, and marked the beginning of the end of that doomed relationship. From the vantage point of today, definitely a fun time that was worth it.

Cat Power
Chan Marshall is playing at the Mercy Lounge tonight. I'm hoping to go. If you're a Nashvillian looking for some Monday night culture, maybe I'll see you there. A little-known claim to fame of mine is that in the Women in Music in America since 1900 encyclopedia, I wrote the entry for Barbra Streisand. I didn't do it for the money (zero); and not because of my amount of love for the music of Ms. Streisand (also, zero). I did it because it was part of a package deal that allowed me to also write the entry on women in indie rock. Ms. Marshall, aka Cat Power played a role in my version of events, but I've never seen her live.

Wal-Mart Sucks
Your tax dollars at work, and your bill of rights in action. It's no wonder kids have little sense of the importance and scope of their freedom of speech, since they get squashed when they try to take the idea seriously.

"Halfway through my afternoon class, the assistant principal got me out of class and took me to the office conference room," she says. "Two men from the Secret Service were there. They asked me what I knew about the student. I told them he was a great kid, that he was in the homecoming court, and that he'd never been in any trouble."

Then they got down to his poster.

"They asked me, didn't I think that it was suspicious," she recalls. "I said no, it was a Bill of Rights project!"

At the end of the meeting, they told her the incident "would be interpreted by the U.S. attorney, who would decide whether the student could be indicted," she says.

The student was not indicted, and the Secret Service did not pursue the case further.

"I blame Wal-Mart more than anybody," she says. "I was really disgusted with them. But everyone was using poor judgment, from Wal-Mart up to the Secret Service."

Why blame WalMart? You have to read the story to find out. Via BoingBoing.

39%, 28%, 2%
Those would be, the President's new-low approval ratings in the WSJ poll, the new-low percentage of Americans who think we're on the right track as a country, and--my favorite--the percentage of African-Americans who approve of the job the President is doing. That's right, 2%.

If I may impose a bit of Bill Bennett ethical logic...if we could just get rid of all the white people (or even just the white men), Republicans would never win.

Public Transport, anyone?
Here in Nashville, officials are reporting record traffic on Metro buses last month, a likely response to rising gas prices. Do you take public transportation regularly? If not, would you consider it, if gas prices continue the upward trend (or stay where they are)? Have you made a conscious decision to not travel somewhere for the purpose of saving gas costs?

In Pittsburgh, I rode the city bus to grad school all the time because it was so convenient to where I lived, and free to students. This year, my current school announced a similar relationship with Nashville's bus system to relieve parking congestion but alas I live too far away. I would only have 1 chance in the late afternoon to catch a bus that would bring me home. If they came around (much) more often I would definitely ride into town that way. Especially since I don't have a car, still, but that's another story.

It's one more reason to live in the city and not the sprawl. But, if you were in charge of the buses, wouldn't you take this time to greatly increase number of routes and advertising and get people accustomed to the idea of riding?

Read this Classy Obituary
In the Chicago Tribune (via BoingBoing), Theodore Roosevelt Heller's passing offers a chance to make the world a better place, in lieu of flowers.

Gore Update
Via Kos, it would seem Al Gore has heard the rumblings and pleadings from the Internets and has responded: No thanks.

Former Vice President Al Gore said Wednesday he had no intention of ever running for president again, but he said the United States would be "a different country" if he had won the 2000 election, launching into a scathing attack of the Bush administration.

"I have absolutely no plans and no expectations of ever being a candidate again," Gore told reporters after giving a speech at an economic forum in Sweden.

Still, of course, that's far from a promise not to run and he could easily have his "plans" and "expectations" change, but it kinda sounds like he means it.

Wow...[updated]
Maybe only an outbreak of the bird flu could help Bush deflect from this possible knockout punch:

The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg are working on stories that point to Vice President Dick Cheney as the target of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into the leaking of CIA operative Valerie Plame's name.

And there's more...

Mr. Fitzgerald's pursuit now suggests he might be investigating not a narrow case on the leaking of the agent's name, but perhaps a broader conspiracy. . . . Lawyers familiar with the investigation believe that at least part of the outcome likely hangs on the inner workings of what has been dubbed the White House Iraq Group. Formed in August 2002, the group, which included Messrs. Rove and Libby, worked on setting strategy for selling the war in Iraq to the public in the months leading up to the March 2003 invasion.

Usually these big promises turn out to be duds...so I'm trying not to get hopeful. But, might there actually be a principled prosecutor who is finally willing to see abuses of power where our politics as usual used to be? And call the powerful on it? If Cheney is shown to have broken laws in this conspiracy, we may have the first VP resignation since Agnew, and if Fitzgerald can prove a wide-spread criminal Administration conspiracy to mislead the American people into war...well I can't even say it. (Darn I was trying not to get hopeful.)

Not bad news for a hump day.

[UPDATE: Kevin Drum rightly points out that the anticipated WSJ article today did not in fact contain a single reference to Cheney, negating, he says, the Huffington Post's hype. My wishful thinking would reply that the Huffington teaser only said they were "working on" such a story, not that it would be out today. They could indeed still be working on it. This grand jury is going to have legs until fitzgerald makes announcements one way or another.]