Decline and Fall

CBS was once the greatest name in broadcasting. And its greatest asset was CBS News. No longer. Now it's a media packaging company.

Best Rounds of the Day

If you click here, it takes you to the page called "best rounds of the day" at the US Open Championship. And if you scroll to the bottom of that list, you'll find virtually everyone who was within reach of Jim Furyk when the day began.

Vijay Singh shot a 78. He shot a 63 on Friday. Nick Price never got it going. Justin Leonard never got it going. No one mounted any kind of charge at all.

Kudos to Jim Furyk, who was magnificent all four days.

The Air War in Iraq

The first detailed analysis of the Air War in Iraq has been released by the United States Air Force. It is worth reading in full.

The folks at Global Security have a good summary of the report, if you want the e-z version.

Geezer Alert Ultima

Walter Cronkite retired in 1982, which was 21 years ago. He's now 86 years old. And soon he will be a.......King Features Syndicate columnist. His column even has a name: "And That's The Way I See It."

I think this retires the Geezer Alert prize for unwillingness to leave the stage.

Him or Them

The night before Howell Raines and Gerald Boyd stepped down, I finished a piece for Tech Central Station that said Raines wasn't the real problem, the publisher was the real problem. The piece was posted about an hour before the news broke, but I think it's still worth your time.

Annika!

I hadn't seen Annika Sorenstam's card from Friday, but I found it by clicking here. It's definitely worth a look.

Where Is Tom Wolfe When You Really Need Him?

If you fly "private," as Denise Rich does, it only makes sense that you bring along your personal guru. Some who fly "private" bring along a whole entourage; masseuse, chef, guru, whatever. A fine account of this, ah, micro-trend can be found by clicking here. You really cannot make this stuff up.

Grief's Deceit

I found this on the WSJ's "Best of the Web." It's worth repeating.

"Death was quick, but grief, I find, keeps going on and on and on and it affects me in strange ways.

I feel no denial. No anger. No bargaining. No depression. And this makes me wonder if I'll ever get to peace and acceptance. These five classic stages of grief, cited so authoritatively by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, aren't working for me.

Instead my grief is amorphous, deceitful, unpredictable. Sometimes it hides behind distractions; sometimes it covers my spirits like the pall on Mike's coffin, and sometimes it knocks me flat, particularly when I think of Mike's beloved wife, Max, and their little boys, Tom, 7, and Jack, 3, who must live their lives without him."

-- Marguerite Kelly, writing about the death of her son, Michael.

New York City Blues

The best article about the New York City fiscal crisis can be found by clicking here. The killer fact: Over the course of the last decade, New York City has added not one private sector job and nearly 100,000 public sector jobs. There's a tipping point for most everything and New York City is in danger of tipping over.

Guest Comment on "Front Running."

Jim Cramer of TheStreet.com posted this comment recently on the "front-running" scandal. It's worth reading.

Random musings: "If I see corruption, I take no prisoners. I have filed more complaints, gotten on the phone to more governors, asked for more government intervention than just about anybody in this country. So if I say that I think this New York Stock Exchange investigation is overblown, you should think twice before you think it isn't. This investigation seems more like a case of negligence by some Floor brokers who shouldn't overlook trades from "the box" -- the outsiders trying to get in -- than fraud. Before decimalization, we had much more front-running than we do now. When specialists could take an eighth, sometimes they couldn't resist. When they can take only a penny, big deal. They shouldn't do it, but if they really were ripping people off, you would see it in their earnings -- which, by the way, stink."

"The real issue here, as far as I am concerned, is a competitive one. We have lots of people trying to get into trading. It is important for many of them to tarnish the NYSE in any way they can. Is the NYSE innocent of any wrongdoing? Of course not. Did some specialists front-run? Sure. Can some people not resist taking advantage of others? Yes. But I refuse to buy into the notion that the whole darned place is corrupt. And this is coming from someone who has spent 14 years fighting front-running, writing people up and demanding investigations when I thought they should occur. Fourteen years ago I wrote a piece for The New Republic talking about how corrupt the specialist system was during the crash of 1987. It hurt my business mightily. I didn't care. I knew the critical piece was right. I think I played a role in trying to clean it up with my writings. If I thought it was corrupt now, I would be coming at the issue with guns blazing. I don't owe anyone down there and don't care one whit what they think of me. But darn it all, the Exchange is getting a bad rap on this one. There are some bad apples. They will be picked. But beyond that, things are working better, and more fair, down there than at any other time I can recall. I gotta call it as I see it."