Off the Grid from Newser

Galleon Scandal: Shocked, Shocked by Insider Trading

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 9:41:00 CST

How is it that we get a major insider trading scandal every two decades or so? The last big one, which ultimately ensnarled Michael Milken, the legendary junk bond king, happened in the late eighties. The current one, with a mass of arrests yesterday, threatens the hedge fund industry.

It seems reasonable to assume from the intermittent decades of prosecution that this particular sort of financial larceny is quite a rare bird and when it rears its head the Feds pounce.

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Rupert Murdoch Is Mad but Cute

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 9:04:16 CST

The Wall Street Journal was a great paper. It is still a pretty great paper but it is not the great Wall Street Journal. That former paper, with its particular look and feel and characteristically myopic focus on business and finance, has departed the stage, replaced by a vigorous, strong-minded paper focused on equal parts business, politics and public policy, and great events of the day. To that, its owner for almost two years now, Rupert Murdoch, is now adding a...

Skype Lives!

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 8:39:57 CST

I follow entrepreneurial dramas the way other people follow sports (did somebody win the World Series?). In these comedies, tragedies, or farces, people really do rise beyond human limitations or get ignominiously crushed. Sometimes there are second chances. Entrepreneurs—true entrepreneurs—pride themselves, like none-too-bright boxers, on their ability to take a punch. But there aren’t too many second chances.

Not like the second chance that is unfolding right now.

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Why the GOP Will Rise Again

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 9:49:14 CST

The strange business that is going on in New York’s 23rd Congressional District, which occupies some other universe than the one commonly associated with New York, wherein the designated middle of the road Republican fell to a crypto-fascist sort conservative, is meant to signal, at least for liberals, an internecine death struggle within the GOP. The hardliners, along with Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, and Fox News, will force the party so far to the right that it will be merely an oddball...

Sarah Palin and Levi Johnston: How They Took America

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 8:47:54 CST

Of all the outcomes of the 2008 presidential election, the strangest, beyond the rise of Sarah Palin herself, is the success of Levi Johnston.

He, in fact, may be the antidote to her rise, dogging her with his smile and his scabrous asides.

Or, as likely, they enable each other. Both stoke the other’s publicity machine. Levi wouldn’t be anything without Sarah. Sarah might well have been just an ordinary failed VP candidate were it not for the...

Why the Media Is Taking So Long to Die

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 9:27:32 CDT

I participated the other night in an oddly formal, anglophilic, Oxford-style, for-and-against-the-proposition debate on the topic of (you guessed it) the mainstream media. I was on the side arguing (you guessed again) that it should be buried as fast as possible.

My side, with radio host John Hockenberry and Politico founder Jim VandeHei, resoundingly lost.

This seemed surprising, if not inconceivable, because mainstream media is being buried by the stampede of...

How the Internet Got Lost and Why Google’s GPS Won’t Show Us the Way Out

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 9:02:28 CDT

I had lunch yesterday with my old friend and former colleague, Chip Bayers, who, 15 years ago this week, after having left my fledgling Internet business in New York, helped start HotWired in San Francisco. This is significant because advertising on the Internet started with HotWired’s launch and because it started with the banner ad, invented by Wired’s editor and founder, Louis Rossetto, and because advertising on the Internet is still dominated by the banner ad, which has never...

Pot Will Save Us

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:10:44 CDT

Wow. Pot. Just like that, on its way to being legalized. Well, just like that after 50 years or so.

In order to save itself from financial oblivion, the state of California seems inclined to just do it . Just say yes. To become Amsterdam.

It may be the biggest thing to come out of the financial meltdown. We won’t get meaningful reform of the banking system, but we’re going to get legalized pot.

This is partly because the Justice Department has just issued...

Is Obama a Sleaze?

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 9:06:00 CDT

So it turns out there’s a reason the president hasn’t wrapped up health care or Iraq, figured out Afghanistan, closed Guantanamo, or found anybody a job. He’s been out raising money.

He’s been schmoozing, and golfing, and kissing ass.

The Wall Street Journal has outlined in quite excruciating detail just how the president has actually been spending a significant amount of his time and attention. In nine months he’s done 26 fundraisers. Three a month.
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