Beldar apparently hasn’t gotten the memo yet: In a trial you can’t judge success by how the jury votes–you need to judge success every day.

And it sounds to me that, since the expert witnesses were stacked against him, he totally beat the spread.

I just finished Karl Zinsmeister’s Combat Zone, his real-life stories of troops in Iraq. Zinsmeister is the editor of The American Enterprise, so there’s no real shock that he would have reported and written a story like this. The twist is, it’s a comic book..

Penciled by Dan Jurgens, it’s a pretty gorgeous graphic novel–imagine CulturePulp, sent abroad, and done up big and glossy.

I can’t recommend Combat Zone enough.

This entertainment story contains so many plots and subjects that it could be an Altman film. Although ostensibly just a puff about Fiona Apple’s new album, Extraordinary Machine, it’s also about:

* The intersection of the internet and art

* The bizarre ego economics of the recording industry

* A Deep-Throat-style whodunnit

Also, it touches on legal semantics. While Apple’s album is just now in stores, 11 of the songs from it surfaced online nearly a year ago:

Many of them posted links to the MP3s songs on their personal web pages. Others released the entire album — including some homespun album cover art — over the Bittorrent file-sharing network.

Nadja Dee Tanaka of Seattle posted all 11 of the “Extraordinary Machine” MP3s on her Web site. . . .

Tanaka begrudgingly took the links down after receiving a notice from the Recording Industry Association of America.

“I was scared. I was angry,” Tanaka said.

She might have been a bit confused as well. At the time it was made, no one would confirm Apple had even made the recordings, much less delivered them to the label.

If no new Apple material existed, what were downloaders being asked to stop downloading?

And it remains unclear if the RIAA went after the original album leaker with the same vigor it went after Tanaka and other Apple fans . . .

Bonus Obsessive Angle: Since the 11 tracks appeared online a year ago, Apple has split with her long-time producer, Jon Brion. Brion used to produce Aimee Mann. Mann’s husband is Michael Penn and both of them have worked closely in the past with movie director Paul Thomas Anderson. Who was once (and may still be, for all I know) Fiona Apple’s quite serious beau.

What could this all mean for future collaborations between Mann, Penn, and Anderson? If only there was a high-brow version of Us Weekly.

A commenter on yesterday’s Electoral-Based Community post has a very perceptive point:

The point spread comment is telling in another way: political partisanship has become as fundamentally irrational as rooting for your team in sports. One of the joys of sports rooting is saying “Ortiz stinks!” when clearly as a rational matter he does the opposite of stink. But the localizing of all problems in this country with the rival political party is equivalent to actually believing Ortiz stinks just because he is on the other team. The Dem blogger litmus test which focuses so much on hating the Pres and the Republican party is about as constructive for the country as beginning a sports discussion with a red Sox fan by asseting that Ortiz stinks; it contains not only a false premise, it precludes anything approaching dialogue, compromise or consensus. that’s no harm when sports are the issue, but the ascendence of this type of thinking/strategy in politics means that we are in danger of having a society being run by the “face-painters” among us. That’s not good for anybody.

Update: It is “Papi,” of course, not “Poppy.” What am I, John F. Kerry?

Sports Editor, INQ. is a blog run by Jim Jenks, the sports editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer. For those interested in such things.

Over at the Swing State Project we learn that Bob Brigham–the fellow who wants Democrats to “stop judging success on Election Day”–just had dinner with John Podesta and a Democratic governor (Brian Schweitzer).

And you can guess who was giving advice to whom.

This smart blogger has kept a running list of quotes from Daily Kos that should be instructive to any mainstream Democrat wanting to know about the site.

Galley Friend C.M.O. has this interesting theory about the vile Professor Umbridge:

She’s not that competent, true–but look at who she targeted to kick out of the castle: Trelawney. What is Voledemort trying to do in Book 5? Get the prophecy. He can get it through Trelawney if he can get her out of the castle, where she has been protected by Dumbledore for 15 years. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. And notice what a fit Umbridge throws when she is stopped from kicking Trelawney out of the castle–Dumbledore says she may be able to sack Trelawney but Trelawney can stay in the castle and Dolores is NOT HAPPY about that one. Why? I think because she’s just been thwarted in her effort to help Voldemort get the prophecy. (She also targets Hagrid, who is one of Dumbledore’s most faithful people. Of course, he’s also a half-breed, so that could explain it as well.) Note also that the first time he had detention, Harry’s scar burned when he looked at Umbridge, and we never hear any explanation for why that is. And, Umbridge is a big fan of the Slytherins, especially Malfoy, and she hates half-breeds. Definitely Voldemort-like. I think she is his highest-placed spy at the Ministry.

Pretty convincing.