As a grad student, I am naturally drawn to PhD Comics, which details aspects of life in ways that only scientists would find humorous. But here is a comic in which Jorge Cham really gets to the heart of what makes researching cancer so difficult. It’s one of the most poignant comic panels I’ve seen. And it’s a good thing to keep in the back of your mind anytime you read about a potential “cure” for “cancer.”

Merry Christmas and happy holidays and all that jazz, folks.

Before I left to go see Avatar today, I saw a news blurb about someone trying to light “fireworks” in a plane. Odd, I thought, but I didn’t think much more, and I had some place to be. But now I get back and I see White House officials are saying it was an attempted terorist attack to blow up the plane. Oh boy. Here we go again.

Obviously, this story is still unfolding, so we’ll see the details soon enough. But after the most recent times people have tried to do this, we all have had to take our shoes off or keep our shampoo in bottles of no more than 3.4 ounces. We’ll see what new policy they adopt this time, but whatever it is, I’m sure it will be security theater, not actual security.

Security theater is anything designed to make people feel more secure, but doesn’t actually make them more secure. Some examples of this are detailed in this article here, where Jeffrey Goldberg openly flouts security rules and gets away with it. It’s easy to imagine that today’s scenario, as I expect we might learn, made a mockery of the liquids rule. We’ll see.

We have thus far steered clear of the Tiger Woods hullaballoo, but this open letter from Ron Artest is too good to pass up:

There are a lot of sports announcers and regular reporters who are not perfect in their own homes, yet they want to bring you down.

You have done so much for people, the sport of golf, and your family and you gave your wife a life that people can’t even dream of.

I thought you were 36 or 37 until I read the news today. A 33-year-old man who has been a model citizen with so much at stake. This is your first publicly known issue since you started your career, compared to my 50 or more publicly known issues and mistakes.

Thanks, Ron.

As Stendhal hinted, I do indeed come to the opposite conclusion than he does: this health care bill should fail. To begin, let me say that there are indeed some progressives who are so pissed at what has happened to the bill, that they are wishing defeat on the bill out of spite and are not seeing the big picture. This claim feels more true when people like Greg Sargent point out that it tends to be the wonks (Ezra, Benen, Yglesias) who still support the bill while party operatives and activists (Dean, Kos) are now wishing its failure. Thus, let me unequivocally state that while, yes, the actions of Lieberman, Obama and friends are infuriating, the reason I want this bill to fail is because I think its passage would make America worse. Here’s why.

A mandate for coverage without any mechanism to control health care costs is both bad politics and unethical. There are tens of millions of people in the country who don’t have insurance. These people don’t get it from their employer, and choose not to buy it themselves either because they’ve decided they can’t afford it or for other reasons. This bill requires them to buy insurance or else face a fine of thousands per year. But it is wrong for the government to force people to buy insurance without ensuring that it will be both affordable and high quality. The bill doesn’t “cover” 30 million Americans so much as make them criminals if they don’t buy bad insurance that many of them cant afford.

Regarding the quality, there is nothing to prevent insurance companies from placing a cap on annual cap on benefits. Moreover, the supposed good and uncontroversial parts of the bill designed to address quality might not work. Supporters claim that the bill will prevent insurers from denying coverage based on preexisting conditions, a reform that was long overdue. But the language in the bill still allows exactly this kind of denial, if they think you committed “fraud.” That sounds suspiciously like the status quo, where not disclosing your back acne from middle school means no coverage for your newly-discovered brain tumor. But more critically, even if the law does prevent exactly that type of denial, there is nothing to say the insurance companies couldn’t say, fine, you’re still covered, but your premiums are insanely high.

Regarding the affordability, wait, some supporter might say. That $900 billion over 10 years cost of the bill is mostly to subsidize health care for those who cannot afford it. Yes, it’s true. And between that and expanded Medicaid eligibility, these parts of the bill do appear to be doing a good thing. But here’s the catch. There is nothing to stop the insurance companies from increasing their premiums (and health care providers, too). So if you are just “rich enough” to not get those subsidies, you’re super fucked, and even if you do get the subsidies, there’s nothing to stop the insurance co’s from increasing at a rate greater than the subsidies, so you’re could still be fucked anyway. Some supporters say, well, if that happens then we’ll increase the subsidies. But once again, if there is nothing to keep costs down, it becomes a never-ending circle that ends in national bankruptcy.

The goal of a public option was to create competition, give consumers a choice, and thus keep costs down. There doesn’t have to be a public option in the bill for me to support it, but short of that, there has to be some mechanism of keeping costs down. If not, then this bill amounts to a corporate giveaway to insurance companies, forcing millions of consumers to buy minimum (read: crappy) coverage they cannot afford. There was an amendment to allow importation of drugs from Canada, which would have saved consumers billions of dollars. It enjoyed bipartisan support and got 51 votes in its favor, which of course means that it failed. Why did it fail? Because the White House didn’t want it to pass. They made a deal with big Pharma to keep their support, and Pharma would have screamed bloody murder if this amendment made it in. Once again, we lose and they win.

In short, this bill resembles Max Baucus’ bill from the Senate Finance committee. That bill was essentially written by the insurance industry. Someone once said, never be so unwise as to think that the wealthy and powerful will allow you to legislate away their wealth and power. The likelihood of a health care bill passing was always directly proportional to how many billions of dollars by which it will increase their bottom lines. The only chance we had to change that was to have a strong President, someone who would make a moral argument for universal health care, aggressively push for progressive policies, use his new mandate and popularity to leverage support from hesitant senators, and explain to the public when the GOP/wingnuts/industry tries to inject their lies or obstruction into the debate. Obama is not that leader, and has done none of those things.

Lastly, I don’t like false choices. The supporters say things like, “pass the bill or we won’t be able to try again for another 20 years.” If the system is indeed as dire and doomed to failure as everyone thinks it is, if costs continue their pace of skyrocketing and the insurance companies continue to drop people off, then this simply isn’t true. The public would demand reform. Polls still show that, even despite the increasing opposition to the health care bill, a majority still thinks the government needs to do something to institute reform and control costs. Moreover, even bigger majorities still favor both the public option and increasing Medicare eligibility by lowering the age to 55. It would be possible to try again near the end of Obama’s first term, or mostly certainly in his second. But that assumes that giving up on this bill doesn’t mean trying to pass the good progressive parts via reconciliation, which is what I currently support anyway.

There are people, ranging from bloggers like Ezra all the way up to Obama, who are so invested in getting a bill passed that their goal has morphed from actually reforming health care in a positive way to simply getting any bill passed. It’s not worth passing a bill that will hurt America.

Unlike many (including Howard Dean and the Great Orange Satan and probably Linus) who say that we should “kill the Senate bill,” I believe that a flawed bill is better than nothing.

Let’s take a trip down memory lane to, oh let’s say, 2004. Some left-wing New England governor, who was something of a health care wonk and touted as a viable progressive alternative to John Kerry, proposed a daring health care overhaul. His plan would increase coverage to 26 million more Americans, but it had no public plan, co-op or anything similar. It did have a federal employees health plan, similar to the one currently in the Senate bill. It did not eliminate rescission or regulate insurers’ ability to refuse patients with pre-existing conditions.

This plan belonged, of course, to lefty progressive hero Howard Dean.

The current Senate health care bill would pay for more people’s coverage, would cover more people, and would regulate insurers to force them to stop their most egregious cost-cutting tactics. Instead of a tax increase, it has an individual mandate, which in the end will function the same way.

(For a more comprehensive list of what we still get, check Kevin Drum.)

Put another way, the current Senate health care bill is arguably to the left of the Howard Dean health care plan of 2004.

Yes, we are in a more progressive moment. Yes, we should have a better chance than we did in 2004. But a setback here will be a setback for another generation. If this bill fails to pass, 40 million Americans still won’t have health insurance, no matter how much pride the progressive wing of the Democratic party has saved. I am pissed at Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson, and the rest. I’m pissed at the filibuster. I’m pissed at the horse-race-obsessed media. I’m pissed at Obama for not taking a more progressive stance. The fact that I am pissed will not make anyone get health insurance. This bill will.

When a student talks during a test, I give the student automatically half-off. Usually, the student pouts and throws his/her test on the floor, exclaiming “If all I can get is half, I don’t want to take your stupid test!”

I pick up the paper off the floor, and gently ask the student, “You still have 25 minutes left. If you choose not to finish, that’s your choice. But think about this one question: Is something better than nothing?”

The student sits there, thinking. Eventually, the student finishes.

Something is better than nothing.

The lede on this NYT article begins “In a surprise setback for Democratic leaders,” and then goes on to describe how Joe Lieberman has said he will not vote for the health care bill, even in its current form: a watered-down compromise of a compromise of a compromise. And all I can think is, which idiots are surprised by this? I have been saying for months that there will be no health care bill passed by Obama, not now or ever. Stendhal, commenters on this blog, and smart people like Ezra Klein have all insisted that I was wrong this whole time. I thought, perhaps I was. But the bottom line is that the perversion of Senate rules require 60 votes for everything, and there are simply not 60 senators who support health care reform in any form whatsoever. There are 58, max. What am I missing?

We’ve done songs and albums, so now we’re moving on to a new medium. In no order:

Ratatouille

This is pretty easily my favorite animated movie. It’s daring and inventive. The hero of the movie is not a cute mouse, but a rat, and one that touches your food no less. This fact is always present, but never heavy-handed. The critic Anton Ego’s speech at the end is as wonderful an exposition on the relationship between art and its critics as you will see in film and in short form. Moreover, it has a happy outcome that genuinely is in doubt. After all, all the workers at the restaurant walk out except for one, Anton Ego comes around to like the food but gets fired for it, and the restaurant is shut down for a rat infestation. On its surface, that is not a happy ending. But, of course, there actually is a happy ending, and because it works out after all, that makes the ending fully earned, which is true of so few movies.

Children of Men

I once read somewhere that the end of the world would not be a big cataclysm, but slow and predictable. In that light, I hate most disaster films like 2012, but here is a dystopic film that resonates with our times. The cause of social breakdown – losing the ability to procreate – might be one that we find less likely (than, say, global warming), but the nightmare world in which they live is one – sadly – that I can imagine too easily. As a cherry on top, the film boasts not one but two single-shot sequences (in the car, and at the end) that cinematographers will study for decades to come.

Wall-E

You’ll see this as a pattern, but I tend to reward movies for being daring and inventive. And what can be more inventive than making the first 45 minutes of a movie take place in a world with no people, with a hero that is a robot who (mostly) doesn’t speak? The second half isn’t as good as the first, which is why Ratatouille gets the nod from me (for finishing stronger), but the environmental message is not overwrought, and the film ends with perhaps the most optimistic rolling credits I have seen.

The Royal Tenenbaums

Wes Anderson, when taken to excess, is not great cinema (and is easily parodied). But Royal Tenenbaums is pitch perfect dramedy about a family that is both too fanciful ever to exist, but remains very real in its pain and flaws. Anderson creates a world that is New York, but still never identifiable as the city. The music choices are excellent, and Luke Wilson was at his best. The key scenes (the tennis meltdown, the attempted suicide) belong mostly to him.

Das Liben der Anderen (the lives of others)

Speaking of earned endings, it doesn’t get any more earned than this. Try not to smile when he says “It’s for me” at the end.  This movie unfolds with a script and direction that prevent it from getting tired, predictable, or sappy. The late Ulrich Muhe is the centerpiece, and watching him change from cold-hearted Stasi to what he becomes at the end is to witness the emotional rebirth of a human.

Being John Malkovich (technically released in late 1999, but with worldwide releases stretching into 2000)

After I saw this movie for the first time, I was so astonished by what I had seen I watched it again the next day. Here is a movie so wildly inventive and clever that it is almost embarrassing. To wit, no movie in the 10 years that followed has attempted to recreate or even imitate it. Except perhaps other films written by Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine is an honorable mention, while Adaptation was too clever by half.)

Moulin Rouge

No, it didn’t usher in a new period of musicals like some predicted, but the film stands on its own. Baz Lurhmann, like Wes Anderson, does not make great cinema when allowed to run wild and indulge his excesses. But like Anderson, he also made one movie in which his strengths were played up and his weaknesses were not. As such, Moulin Rouge contains wildly inventive songs, staging, costumes, and camera work, with a good Bohemian story to hold it all together.

Gangs of New York

Not that many movies unabashedly attempt to be IMPORTANT!, but Martin Scorsese is both unapologetic about the grand attempt of this movie, and actually pulls it off. This is a movie about how America was built, the blood that was spilled to do it, and its forgotten legacy. Daniel Day-Lewis was in top form, and this was the movie that cemented Leonardo DiCaprio as not some pretty boy from Titanic, but a titan of acting from his generation.

Brokeback Mountain

Ang Lee directs the movie with such attention and delicacy, so that in addition to its four terrific characters, the scenery and music emerge as 5th and 6th characters central to the movie’s success. The ending is also a perfect example of how I like to see films strive for emotional impact. There’s no excessive mawkishness, no Heath Ledger breaking down in tears and crying out how much he misses Jake Gyllenhaal. Instead, the music swells as Ledger closes a closet door, revealing Gyllenhaal’s old shirt, as the camera focuses in on it and the music swells. More movies should learn from its example.

The Lord of the Rings (trilogy)

I think it’s fair to rate these as one movie, but if I had to my nod would go to the first, Fellowship of the Ring, as the best constructed movie. It’s the heart of the trilogy, because as the movies progress, the battles get bigger and longer. And if it weren’t for the initial work that went into making us invested in these characters, we wouldn’t care about what they were doing and why it matters by the end. And that’s the chief failing of most action films. Peter Jackson did a better job bringing a fantasy world to life than anyone predicted, and Howard Shore’s score rivals anything John Williams has done.

Honorable Mentions

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Little Miss Sunshine

Pan’s Labyrinth

Finding Neverland

The Dark Knight

Some say, “Yes.”

(image from Mediabistro)

After being caught using a hilarious wrong graphic, Fox News has promptly denied that it did anything wrong! We elitists just don’t get how “percents” in a poll can add up to more than a hundred “percent.” (Someone remind me what “per cent” means again?)

In any case, I’m not sure if it’s ironic that Fox News is misrepresenting data about people worried about scientists misrepresenting data, but it is funny.

As an aside, a good round-up of the East Anglia e-mail leak is here.

As you might have noticed by now, Stendhal and I love lists, and as the decade is ending, it seems like the perfect time to try to organize our thoughts on the best the decade had to offer. Stendhal posted his 10 best albums here, and now I’ll have a go at mine. In no order:

Night Ripper/Feed the Animals – Girl Talk

Girl Talk accomplished one of the most rare things: he changed the way I thought about music. Before discovering Girl Talk, I didn’t realize what a mashup was capable of. To me, they were just a combination of the words from one song and the music from another. Sometimes it was clever or even good, but usually not. Girl Talk busted that wide open. It might be cheating to list two albums under one, but there’s really no reason to pick between them. Night Ripper was his first in this style, and a great leap forward over his previous albums, while Feed the Animals perfected the formula. The two albums together are like one really long and awesome dance party.

FutureSex / LoveSounds – Justin Timberlake

I’m no hipster, but I of course read and respect Pitchfork’s opinions on a lot of matters. So when they named “My Love” the best song of 2006, I still thought JT was little more than a talentless former ‘N-Sync boy who happened to churn out hits. I skeptically checked out the album. JT has some missteps now and then, and the album peaks halfway through with “What Goes Around,” but the music is a throwback to outstanding pop a la Michael Jackson. The interlude and ending of LoveStoned are perfect.

Stankonia – Outkast

I’ve read that producers were worried about including the guitar part in B.O.B. because they thought rap stations wouldn’t play it. I’m glad they were wrong. This album almost didn’t make the list, because a few tracks are weak (Toilet Tisha), Aquemini was better, and I really wish skits would go away for good, but when Outkast are on, their best songs are the pinnacle of hip-hop. Highlights include the rhythms of Humble Mumble, the lyrics of So Fresh, So Clean (“cooler than Freddie Jackson sippin’ a milkshake in a snowstorm”) and everything about B.O.B.

Ys – Joanna Newsom

Sure, she sounds like a midget pirate, but it’s really not about her voice (which shows clear improvement over her debut album, anyway.) The quality of her arrangements are so good that 17-minute songs only feel like a few minutes. This is music as storytelling and peotry, and after many times through the album, I catch new things every time. I can’t think of many other albums that get better each time I listen.

Late Registration – Kanye West

Kanye’s sophomore album is probably his most consistent. Kanye’s talent lies not in his skills as an MC, of course, but in his production values. Points that stand out include the sampling of Curtis Mayfield in Touch the Sky, the touching lyrics of Roses, the ode to his mother in Hey Mama combined with its crass ending of her driving around in a Benz, and of course the overall combined arrogance and insecurity: this album is a beautiful mess.

Come on and feel the Illinoise – Sufjan Stevens

The Michigan album is indeed more emotionally grounded, as Stendhal has said previously, but Illinoise wins because it has better music. Sufjan is capable of making your heart sing with songs about Superman, and moments later tugs on those same strings while he sings about someone dying of cancer. I haven’t listened to The BQE, but it’s clear from this album that Sufjan has real talent as a composer; songs on Illinoise boast some of the most complicated arrangements this side of pop.

Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer – Of Montreal

Of the bands listed here, this is the only one I was introduced to live. Kevin Barnes paraded around in drag, sacrificed a paper-mache creature and threw its “blood” (red-dyed applesauce) all over the crowd, and generally rocked our faces off. The experience of the album almost matches the concert. To listen to Of Montreal is to engage in a sort of schizophrenic experience. The music is certainly dance pop, but something very dark lurks in very shallow waters. We Were Born the Mutants Again with Leafling is the perfect capstone for the album.

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot – Wilco

Jeff Tweedy is weird. Listen to the leadoff track from this album, one of the best leadoff tracks from any album. After some dissonant sounds, Tweedy croons “I am an American aquarium drinker / I assassin down the avenue” I don’t know what it would look like to assassin down anything, but it’s pretty awesome to think about anyway. Wilco was never better than they were here. The first half of the album is perfect, while the second half is merely very good. Jesus, Etc. stands out.

Kid A / Amnesiac – Radiohead

Despite the fact that Amnesiac was originally described as the unreleased tacks from the Kid A recording sessions, I’m counting this listing as the final two albums. Radiohead dominated this decade in a way no other band did, and it’s only fitting that they are the only band to get two albums on my list. I considered Hail to the Thief, as well, but these two albums best capture what make Radiohead so special.  Life in a Glass House reminds me of the movie Being John Malkovich; it is so awesome and so far above the competition that no one has even bothered to try to repeat or imitate it.

Honorable Mentions

Black Album – Jay-Z

Funeral – Arcade Fire

Hail to the Thief – Radiohead

Chutes too Narrow – The Shins

Discovery – Daft Punk

Silent Alarm – Bloc Party

Mass Romantic – New Pornographers

Well, we’ve already done best songs of the decade (Stendhal list here, Linus list here).

Let’s try best albums.

Top ten, no order:

Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Sometimes a band’s conflicts lead to trauma and the end of creativity. Every so often, they lead to acts of genius. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is the latter. Haunting, with the right amount of Jim O’Rourke production foolery to bring alt-folk back to the future. Along with Kid A, this stands as the entryway into the fragmented, technological and alien world of the 21st century.

Track:  “Jesus, Etc.”

Radiohead – Kid A

Speaking of which, it’s practically cliche to say that this is one of the greatest albums of all time, but why the hell not? I would point out, though, that the 00s have led to a decline in melody and a rise in the focus on rhythm — whether in hip hop, pop or rock. In this case, the layered polyrhythms and hidden downbeats frame a world out of sync, out of balance. Yorke’s vocals never sounded better, and although OK Computer opened the door, this is the album that separated Radiohead from the league of ordinary bands.

Track: “Everything in its Right Place”

Bruce Springsteen – The Rising

When an American icon is destroyed, it takes an American icon to speak back. Harold Bloom suggested that no work has yet stepped into the void to respond to 9/11, but I think Springsteen does the job as he does any job — workman-like, plaintive, heartfelt. These are the songs of a man punched in the heart, who doesn’t know what to do. If I think back to the helplessness of the first days of the post-9/11 world, I cannot help but think of this album’s conflicted moans. Sure there’s too many toe-tappers, but Springsteen could only do what he knew how to do.

Track: “My City of Ruins (live)“

The New Pornographers – Mass Romantic

I fell in love with Neko Case when I heard Mass Romantic. “Indie rock” was just another confusing genre with no borders and no standard-bearer. I still said the word “pop” with a disdainful sneer. That changed with the New Pornographers. They were strange, harmonically complex, and unapologetic pop, of a strain that I had never heard. Yet even years later, hearing “Letter from an Occupant” brings the feeling of toe-tapping, sing-along despite its relative age. All the power pop to follow is still playing catch-up to this album.

Track: “My Slow Descent into Alcoholism”

White Stripes – White Blood Cells

Stripped-down garage rock seemed played out but then came Jack White. His not-quite-bluesy, not-quite-country yowl colored the spare arrangements with all the pathos necessary to float a surprisingly “light” album. One imagines the White Stripes of “Seven Nation Army” and “Fell In Love With A Girl” as breakneck, jam band hard rockers. In fact, the album proceeds at a measured pace, clicking through its calculated guitar licks like a Swiss watch. It’s not enough to call it retro; it’s retro through the looking glass, the musical past filtered through the mind of Jack White.

Track – “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground”

Dizzee Rascal – Boy in Da Corner

In a decade where anyone could make the Billboard charts, perhaps one of the biggest disappointments has been the failure of Dizzee “Jus’ a” Rascal to break through on the U.S. charts. He has made four great albums, and has clearly separated himself from the pack of grime artists. Dizzee sounds like he’s from Neptune by way of East London, while the beats take choice dubstep samples and turn them into the perfect background for Dizzee’s off-the-wall rhymes. No one is weirder, funnier or brainier than Dizzee, and Boy In Da Corner cemented his status as more than just another wunderkind.

Track: “I Luv U”

Lucinda Williams – Essence

Pop country is fine, but country music’s soul is about too many cigarettes, too much bourbon, cracked fingers and voice boxes cranking out the sound of a forgotten past. If that’s how you define country music, then Lucinda Williams’ voice is its perfect instrument. Her voice is like a winter wind, creaking through the treas from a whisper to a howl — a voice of a woman who has seen much. In a genre of the next new thing, Lucinda Williams is the complete package: perfect songs, perfect voice. One wonders whether the Miranda Lamberts and Taylor Swifts of the world will ever make it that far.

Track: “Essence”

Spoon – Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga

Spoon is the hardest-working band in the business, and they prove it on an album like Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. Spoon produces great songs with each album, but Britt Daniel makes everything come together on this one. Usually the band is all loose ends and ephemera, but this album sounds tight, from the maracas clacks to the percussion reverb. From the baroque layers of the Jon Brion-produced “The Underdog” to the piano and guitar flourishes on “My Little Japanese Cigarette Case,” no brushstroke is out of place on this masterpiece.

Track: “Don’t You Evah”

Justice – [cross]

Not since Aphex Twin’s Richard D. James Album has an electronic band produced this much menace. What separates Justice’s first album from the waves of Euro-electro-dance-pop to wash upon our shores is its undeniable darkness. Even though its breakout hit was “D.A.N.C.E.”, the album itself plumbs the depths of bass to pull out laden melodic lines, over which hover the highlighted strings samples. Justice is dancing, all right, but their brand of dance music hints at the danger beneath the surface.

Track: “Stress”

Kanye West – Late Registration

Perhaps my selection of Late Registration most typifies the way I went about making this list. I only picked one “flawless” album to go on here (Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, in case you were wondering), whereas the others all have shortcomings or tracks that I skip. I prefer the ambitious leap more than the cautious tiptoe, and no one did more to break the sophomore slump than Kanye West. The album is sprawling, with Jon Brion’s excellent production and great guest spots from pretty much everyone (Brandy? WTF?). The key again, though, is the ambition — the attempt to bring more electronic manipulation into the old soul samples, the strings in “Gone,” the introduction of Lupe Fiasco –that sets this album apart. On Late Registration, Kanye made himself the work of art, for better or worse.

Track: “Gone”

UPDATE:

Per Linus’ request, the next ten…

Taylor Swift – Fearless
Girl Talk – Feed the Animals
Phoenix – It’s Never Been Like That
Sufjan Stevens – Greetings! from Michigan
Okkervil River – The Stage Names
Joanna Newsom – Ys
Jill Scott – Words and Sounds, Vols. 1-3
Jens Lekman – Night Falls over Kortedala
Johnny Cash – American IV: The Man Comes Around
Outkast – Stankonia