Fox Business Cancels Lou DobbsThe canning of the longtime host, Trump booster, and stolen-election propagandist prompted a statement of support from the former president.
Lou Dobbs to Lloyd Blankfein: Say It to My Face, Pansy-ManThe other night, Lou Dobbs fired the opening salvo in what might be the best rumble since the legendary Biff-McFly smackdown. Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein had apparently been complaining to CNN honcho Jonathan Klein about what a windbag Dobbs is, and so Dobbs decided he’d offer the little guy a chance to prove exactly what a big man he was.
“Perhaps Lloyd would like to come on here and show me the error of my ways and educate me perhaps from his lofty Wall Street perch on how millions of Americans are faring and what their prospects are,” Biff Dobbs huffed on air. “Lloyd, you certainly… I would love to have you do it. I would love to have you come on and talk to my face, not to my back, partner. I know it’s not the way you do it on Wall Street there, hotshot, but try it here. Come on down. Open invitation.”
Um. We actually can’t even add anything more to this because it is pretty much the best thing ever.
Goldman CEO Challenged On-Air by Lou Dobbs [Huffington Post]
intel
Tonight: Blogging the Super Tuesday ResultsIn honor of the orgy of voting that is going on all over the country today, Daily Intel is staying up late tonight. Really late. Starting at 8:30 p.m., New York columnist Kurt Andersen is going to be live-blogging the primary results. Then, later in the evening, Chris Smith will take a look at voting in our home state and what it means, and John Heilemann will analyze the national results on both the Democratic and Republican sides of the table. So tonight, when you get home from the gym, after your friends have arrived to watch the results and you’ve ordered pizza and uncorked that magnum of Cavit Pinot Grigio that someone random dragged over, go ahead and log on to Nymag.com. After all, as the hours go on, even Lou Dobbs’s voice starts to pound against your eardrums like a Q-tip during a hangover (you know, like Chris Matthews’s voice does every day). We’ll be quietly examining what today’s voting means for the candidates and, more importantly, what it means for you.
P.S.: Last night, we were at the Met watching Carmen, and we totally spotted MSNBC’s Chuck Todd out of the office, on a date. Slacker!
company town
Steve Schwarzman Takes the Fun Out of BuybacksFINANCE
• Steve Schwarzman found yet another way to stiff his investors, using the GSO deal as an elaborate cover to buyback shares of Blackstone without the typical benefit a buyback program gives to other shareholders. No wonder the Chinese, who have lost $1 billion on Blackstone, hate him. [DealBook/NYT]
• Bank of America bought Countrywide Financial, the huge mortgage company teetering at the edge of bankruptcy, for $4 billion in stock. Some observers worry the deal will take the bank down, but considering Countrywide was worth $30 billion before the mortgage meltdown, it may yet make B of A CEO Ken Lewis a king. [Deal Journal/WSJ]
• Merrill Lynch will likely take a $15 billion write-down next week, far in excess of the $12 billion some already bearish analysts had predicted. John Thain is looking to rescue the bank with still more foreign investment capital, but with the Senate getting anxious, that stream dry up. [NYT, NYP]
early and often
Lou Dobbs Pulls a Bloomberg
Though New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg has been hogging all of the attention, he’s not the only one who’s been by flirting with entering the presidential race while coyly denying it (or, as David Remnick rather grossly put it in an editorial in the New Yorker this week, keeping “the interest of the press well fluffed”). As we mentioned back in November, CNN demagogue Lou Dobbs also dipped a toe into the stream, when he published a column on his Website about how a mysterious third-party candidate just may enter the race. The Wall Street Journal checks in with Dobbs today. “I haven’t got the personality or nature to be a politician,” he told them. Well, that’s that, right? But then! A teaser. “I cannot say never.” Not even when it involves giving rights to illegal aliens, Lou?
Here we go again. This reminds us: What’s Al Gore doing these days?
CNN’s Lou Dobbs for President? He Says No, Sort of
Wealth of Nation: Comment: The New Yorker [NYer]
Earlier:Lou Dobbs Is Thinking About Running For President???
it just happened
Lou Dobbs Is Thinking About Running for President? In retrospect, it’s so completely obvious that this would happen. The way he talks about the government’s “war on the middle class,” his appealing to the average Joe on immigration: Lou Dobbs was campaigning. Yesterday the Boston Phoenix speculated that when Lou Dobbs recently wrote that a mystery candidate might yet enter the presidential race, an “independent populist … who understands the genius of this country lies in the hearts and minds of its people and not in the prerogatives and power of its elites,” on his blog, he was talking about himself. Now the Wall Street Journal is saying that, “Friends of Mr. Dobbs say he is seriously contemplating a race for the first time.” Apparently, Lou got to thinking that at some point during this campaign, voters will get so fed up — with Rudi’s pandering, with Hillary’s flip-flopping, with this whole seemingly endless ordeal — that they’ll collapse, exhausted, straight into Lou Dobbs’s stubby and welcoming arms. Says the Journal:
They spin a scenario under which the acerbic commentator would parachute into the race if Michael Bloomberg, the New York billionaire and favorite of East Coast elites, enters the field as an independent. With Hillary Clinton continuing to score badly in polls in the categories of honesty and integrity, and with the public’s many doubts about Rudy Giuliani and other GOP contenders, Mr. Bloomberg may well see an opportunity to roil the political waters by entering the race late. If so, Mr. Dobbs then sees a niche for a “fourth-party” candidate who could paint the three other contenders as completely out of touch.
At the very least, the Journal points out, all this talk could surely boost his ratings.
Dobbs is Advertising For Himself [WSJ]
Man Of the People [Boston Phoenix]
Katie Couric Orders Takeout From IraqOscar de la Renta doesn’t want any socialites at his Fashion Week show because they never actually buy his clothes. (Also, some models for Marc Jacobs are annoyed that he tapped The Hills star Lauren Conrad to stomp the catwalk for him). Kate Hudson is trying to get in touch with Owen Wilson, but has been rebuffed. New York Ranger Sean Avery claims he dumped Elisha Cuthbert, and not the other way around. East Village hipster hangout Mo Pitkin’s House of Satisfaction is for sale for $5.5 million. Tommy Lee may or may not have had sex with a blonde girl in a room full of people at Dune in the Hamptons. Katie Couric placed an Italian food takeout order for her daughters in New York from Iraq.
gossipmonger
Divorces, Horses, and So OnPaula Zahn’s friends say she wanted to stay in the Fifth Avenue apartment she shares with soon-to-be ex-husband Richard Cohen for the sake of their kids, but he made it too difficult. Lou Dobbs’s daughter Hillary won the Open Jumper Class (and $7,500) at the Hampton Classic Horse Show. (Soon-to-be-mom Kelly Klein also rode there.) Heather Mills has racked up a number of parking tickets in her Bentley convertible in East Hampton. NYU’s school newspaper went out of its way to point out that people use the campus library to commit suicide and hook up on Craigslist. Larry David doesn’t like fund-raisers on yachts in Martha’s Vineyard. Courtney Love is blaming ex-boyfriend Steve Coogan for Owen Wilson’s attempted suicide, and now Coogan is worried about his career prospects. The New York Times has a clear anti-Yankees bias, “Page Six” says.