Blogs of note

Mark Cuban

I really got a kick out of Mark Cuban's exchange (calm, no CAPS LOCK) with a New York Times reporter. Cuban's permalink. Cuban's best one-liner:

Actually I rarely think the market is right. I believe non dividend stocks aren’t much more than baseball cards. They are worth what you can convince someone to pay for it.

OK, that's more than a one-liner. Excerpt of the lede and the first quote:

MARK CUBAN, the entrepreneur and owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team, has a reputation for screaming like a deranged fan from the sidelines during games. He has been fined more than $1 million by the National Basketball Association for his antics since he bought the team five years ago.

...

Calling the sale "disastrous to the interests of the stockholders," he said the "price does not come close to fairly valuing the business of this company" and added that he planned to vote his shares against the deal.

This was all done by email. Cuban never said a thing. Way to go, NY Times. NY Times story.

Syria

SyriaComment.com on Syrian President Bashar Asad's visit to the United Nations in September, permalink. Excerpt:

Those in Washington who insist on continuing President Bush's campaign to "reform the greater Middle East" by ratcheting up the pressure on Syria and refusing to engage President Bashar, even at the price of added instability in Iraq, are foolish. First, such a policy will fail. There is no internal opposition to President Bashar worthy of the name. Second, it is bad for the US. More American soldiers will be killed in Iraq because of it, and Iraq's chances of finding a way out of its downward spiral into chaos and civil war will be diminished. The US needs Syria's cooperation, and it should put its Iraq policy above that of bringing regime change to Damascus.

Iraq

Professor Banbridge writes that conservativism has suffered a body-blow from the war in Iraq. The Professor.