It seems Sen. Mary Landrieu has a new friend, at least according to Coalition for a Democratic Workplace. The group is currently running a campaign against the proposed congressional bill, Employee Free Choice Act.     And now Johnny Sacks, a New York crime boss, is hanging around our Senator. What gives? How does Mrs. Sack feel about this? And what about Sack’s death from lung cancer? This warrants an investigation, but where’s Jim Bernazzani when you need him? 

The precipitous fall from grace of former state Sen. Derrick Shepherd rivals that of former New Orleans City Councilman Oliver Thomas, except that Shepherd’s rise was almost as meteoric as his descent. Thomas, on the other hand, methodically worked his way to the top over the course of nearly two decades before being outed as a shakedown artist.

Another key difference is that the public loved Thomas, as did many of his fellow politicos. Shepherd managed to fool his constituents regularly (and this newspaper, at first), but his former colleagues in the Louisiana House and Senate quickly pegged him as a crook. Lawmakers almost universally considered him the least trustworthy member of the entire Legislature, which is saying a lot — and that was before his indictment. When the feds finally indicted Shepherd in April, none of his fellow senators was surprised.

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It’s Gambit’s guide to the 10th annual Voodoo Music Experience, with a pullout section that includes schedule cubes, a map, band profiles, and interviews with everyone from R.E.M.’s Mike Mills to Sharon Jones of Dap-Kings fame…along with TV on the Radio, Panic! At the Disco, Tokyo Police Club, and more more more.

• In our cover story, Alison Fensterstock explores the phenomenon of Lil Wayne — from the 17th Ward to the top of the charts….

• Noah Bonaparte Pais checks out the ways that the Obama/McCain race is shaping up on local college campuses….

• Clancy DuBos chronicles the rise and fall of Derrick Shepherd, and wonders if Shepherd’s resignation will help keep Bill Jefferson in office….

• Jeremy Alford notices that Bobby Jindal hasn’t exactly been front and center helping John Kennedy in his battle to unseat Sen. Mary Landrieu, and wonders: O Governor, Where Art Thou?….

• And the November issue of our monthly home and lifestyle magazine, CUE, is all about New Orleans food culture. Your guide is CUE editor Kara Nelson.

Pick up a copy on Sunday before the Saints/Panthers game (Alejandro de los Rios will be here blogging and doing color commentary on Brees v. Delhomme), or click back here on Monday afternoon for the online edition. Now get off the computer and go enjoy this beautiful weekend. (Is fall really, truly, finally here at last?) – Kevin

When Felipe’s, proprietor of New Orleans’ best $5 plates slung up like prison slop, announced that it was opening a second location on the corner of Bienville and North Peters streets, I chalked it up to divine providence. Ditto for La Divina, whose new Place d’Armes outpost makes the city’s finest gelato fix an any-hour possibility. (Although I will miss scoffing at those poor, misguided souls sitting outside of Sucré, crowing over a costlier and inferior product while subsidizing the sweet boutique’s stainless steel Sub-Zeros and travertine trimmings.) But the news of Iris Restaurant’s impending Bienville House relocation — technically not a franchise, I’m aware, but Carrollton’s loss is still the Quarter’s gain, and on behalf of Sixth Warders from Rampart Street to the river, allow me to say: nanny nanny boo boo — has me considering more scientific conspiracy theories. How else to explain the great Vieux Carré migration of so many favorite eateries? Maybe some physics-minded foodie and St. Philip Street denizen designed a gastro-magnet in his fourth-floor attic? Or could the city actually be folding up on itself, Stephen Hawking-style? Whatever the reason, it seems to be the epicurean equivalent of running up the score — after all, we already lay claim to arguably the best fine-dining (Stella!), diner fare (Clover Grill), patisserie (Croissant d’Or), seafood (GW Fins), African (Bennachin), Italian (Irene’s Cuisine), coffeeshop (Café du Monde), steakhouse (Dickie Brennan’s), burger joint (Port of Call) and convenience-store-deli health violations (Verti Marte) in the Croissant City limits. Plus, ever since the Delachaise quietly kicked open the doors of its North Rampart digs in August, we’ve had the market cornered on domestic beer denial and brusque French bartenders, too. Coming soon: $14 tapas supremacy. Your serve, Uptown.  

My government is my worst enemy. I’m going to fight them with any means at hand.

The quote is from Joe Vogler, the raging anti-American who founded the Alaska Independence Party. Inconveniently for Palin, that’s the very same secessionist party that her husband, Todd, belonged to for seven years and that she sent a shout-out to as Alaska governor earlier this year. (“Keep up the good work,” Palin told AIP members. “And God bless you.”)

Well, gosh darn it, they’re a team of hypocrites too, dontcha know. Please note that Gov. Palin curiously manages to hit all her final ‘g’s’ in her taped address to the Alaska Independence Party. Too bad there wasn’t an opportunity to say ‘nuclear’ in there. She might have nailed that one too.

Props to David Talbot and The Salon for putting this into sharp relief.

Business & Media, Oct. 6, 2008:

It seems anxiety from the financial crisis is reaching new highs, but the tipping point for one individual came at the Lehman Brothers gym in the midst of the company’s collapse.

While former Lehman CEO Richard Fuld was testifying before the House Oversight Committee Oct. 6, CNBC reported he had been punched in the face at the Lehman Brothers gym after it was announced the firm was going bankrupt. CNBC and Vanity Fair contributor Vicki Ward said Fuld was attacked at the gym on a Sunday following the bankruptcy.

“Frankly, I sat there and listened and I’m with the guy who apparently, the day before Barclays announced they were coming in and Lehman had already filed for bankruptcy, went over to him in the gym and punched him because that’s how I feel when I, you know, when I watched that,” Ward said on the Oct. 6 Power Lunch. “I didn’t think he was contrite at all, I thought he was arrogant.”

ABC News, Oct. 7, 2008:

Less than a week after the federal government committed $85 billion to bail out AIG, executives of the giant AIG insurance company headed for a week-long retreat at a luxury resort and spa, the St. Regis Resort in Monarch Beach, California, Congressional investigators revealed today.

“Rooms at this resort can cost over $1,000 a night,” Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) said this morning as his committee continued its investigation of Wall Street and its CEOs.

AIG documents obtained by Waxman’s investigators show the company paid more than $440,000 for the retreat, including nearly $200,000 for rooms, $150,000 for meals and $23,000 in spa charges….

To hear City Councilwoman Shelley Midura tell it, residents of New Orleans are about to get screwed — again — by Entergy. She makes a compelling case.

The council regulates utilities in New Orleans, and Midura chairs the council’s Utilities Committee. Her ire thus is no small matter.

Over the years, the council has taken Entergy New Orleans and its predecessors to court (or to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) many times, and often won. Still, the utility never seems to tire of trying to put the screws to its customers.

The latest example of Entergy’s disregard for local ratepayers, however, is one for the ages. Entergy New Orleans (ENO) is effectively sitting on its hands while two of its sister companies — Entergy Mississippi Inc. (EMI) and Entergy Arkansas Inc. (EAI) — move to pull out of a “system agreement” under which six Entergy subsidiaries agreed to share the costs and benefits of generating and transmitting electricity.

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photo credit: Gary Hershorn, Reuters
The cliché juxtaposing Wall Street and Main Street was killed yesterday, beaten to death by Washington, D.C., legislators after a long period of overuse by presidential candidates and television pundits. The actual age of the cliché was unknown. The Wall Street/Main Street cliché is survived by two prominent catchphrases, It’s a Free Country! and It Is What It Is, and several lesser-known dependent idioms.    

From a cover story in the new issue of Entertainment Weekly, of all places:

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You guys regularly make a mockery of the 24-hour news networks. Do you see anything good about the format?

STEPHEN COLBERT: There’s not more news now than there was when we were kids. There’s the same amount from when it was just Cronkite. And the easiest way to fill it is to have someone’s opinion on it. Then you have an opposite opinion, and then you have a mishmash of fact and opinion, and you leave it the least informed you can possibly be.

JON STEWART: We’ve got three financial networks on all day. The bottom falls out of the credit market, and they were all running around. On CNBC I saw a guy talking to eight people in [eight different onscreen] boxes, and they were all like, ”I don’t know!” It’d be like if Hurricane Ike hit, and you put on the Weather Channel, and they were yelling, ”I don’t know what the f— is going on! I’m getting wet and it’s windy and I don’t know why and it’s making me sad! Maybe the president could come down and put up some sort of windscreen?” By being on 24 hours a day, you begin to not be able to tell what’s salient anymore.

What they said.

I don’t know what’s worse in cable news: a week when there’s actually lots going on (the credit collapse, the U.S. presidential “race”), or when there’s nothing going on and whatever they choose to yak about (Missing College Girl! American Idol!) takes on more import just because…well, it fills time between the Head-On and the Free Credit Report commercials.

Wolf Blitzer is still the Unflappable WolfBot 3000, thinking that giving equal time to two screaming heads in Brady Bunch boxes means Journalism is Being Committed Here. Hannity and Colmes = Fair and Balanced, because they’re offering both sides of the issue when it comes to the question: Are Liberals Destroying America Because They Hate It, Or Because They Just Don’t Know Better?. Keith Olbermann vibrates with the exact same level of outrage whether he’s discussing American torture policies or Bill O’Reilly’s latest idiocy; there’s an hour to fill, and the hour becomes more important than the filling, because it’s all delivered with the same graphics, the same sound effects, the same urgency.

It’s the irrelevancy of equivalency, and I don’t know what the answer is. But, hey: it’s a good, thought-provoking interview, and it’s in Entertainment Weekly…and not, tellingly, on any of the cable news networks.

With the help of new policy advisor and driver Emmett “Doc” Brown! Or didn’t you hear?