Paul Krugman pens a review in this week’s NY Times Review of Books in which he makes the following observation:
In 1998, CFO Magazine gave an Excellence award to Scott Sullivan, the chief financial executive of WorldCom. In 1999 it gave one to Andrew Fastow of Enron. And in 2000, it gave one to Mark Swartz of Tyco. All three have since been indicted.
I’m not much of a professional basketball fan anymore. But I remain a solid Mickey Herskowitz fan, the longtime sportswriter for the Houston Chronicle and author. Mickey writes today about the Houston Rockets, a rather boring and generally underachieving NBA team, and observes about the frustrations that the coach must feel:
A great basketball coach once said that to appear successful, one who chose the profession needed an image shaped by two conditions: white hair for the look of distinction and hemorrhoids for the look of distress.
It’s a bit difficult to recall a figure of national stature falling as quickly as Al Gore. This article details how Gore’s endorsement of Howard Dean ended up being the booby prize for Dean. My sense is that Gore’s abysmal treatment of his 2000 running mate Joe Lieberman during this campaign season reflects Gore’s true character.
The mercurial Victor Davis Hanson weighs in with another fine piece that makes a compelling case for the war against Iraq. As Hanson adroitly notes:
The real outrage is instead that at a time of one of the most important developments of the last half-century, when this country is waging a war to the death against radical Islamic fascism and attempting to bring democracy to an autocratic wasteland, we hear instead daily about some mythical rogue CIA agent who supposedly faked evidence, Martha Stewart’s courtroom shoes, Michael Jackson’s purported perversion, and Scott Peterson’s most recent alibi. Amazing.
Thomas Friedman of the NY Times, a supporter of the war, nevertheless criticizes the Bush Administration’s approach to prosecuting it. Thanks to my friend Professor Scott Hagen for pointing me toward Friedman’s piece.
Finally, Ryan Scarborough of the Washington Times makes the point that the successes of our intelligence agencies are often ignored in the rush to criticize their errors.
Heavyweight Champ Lennox Lewis announced his retirement over the weekend. Lewis’ legacy will be similar to that of former champ Larry Holmes–that is, a very good but underappreciated champion.
Part of Lewis’ problem is that he is not American (Lewis is a Jamaican raised in Canada), so the U.S. boxing community never really embraced him as champ. Part of Lewis’ problem is that he never really had a defining fight against a well-regarded opponent. The other part of Lewis’ problem is his two losses–one was to the unheralded Oliver McCall and the other was to Hasim Rahman on a fourth-round knockout. That loss may actually be the fight that Lewis will be best known for. Lewis spent the final two weeks in training before that fight “acting” during the filming of the movie, Ocean’s 11.
In a prior post, I noted that The Producers is playing at the Hobby Center the next couple of weeks. One of my sons, my wife and I went to this past Friday’s performance, and it is truly a great show. Even Everett Evans, the Chronicle’s tough theatre critic, gives the show a spectacular review. This is Broadway at its finest, so don’t miss it.
The excitement over the Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte acquisitions resulted in the Astros‘ selling out their season opener against Barry Bonds and the Giants in record time. More on baseball later.
This looks like a pretty sweet deal for the Williams Company, Texas’ largest highway construction contractor.
John McClain, the Houston Chronicle’s main NFL reporter, weighs in with an articlethat Houston’s success in hosting Super Bowl XXXVIII will likely result in another Super Bowl later in the decade.
Frankly, I do not have a clue on how Jacksonville is going to handle Super Bowl XXXIX next year. To handle the various festivities for this year’s Super Bowl, Houston used two large convention centers, Minute Maid Park, the Astrodome, the Reliant Stadium, thousands of hotel rooms, two distinct entertainment areas (Main Street and the Galleria area), and hundreds of restaurants. Jacksonville simply does not have facilities of that size or nature. Already, the NFL and Jacksonville are planning on docking a fleet of cruise ships in Jacksonville Harbor to make up for the lack of hotel rooms in the area.
The Super Bowl may have become such a huge event that only a few cities are going to have the facilities and infrastructure to handle it. Stay tuned.
After a weekend of no blogging because of resolving some technical issues with the blog site, I’m back blogging. Hopefully, we have all the tech issues resolved with the blog and are good to go for an extended time.