Lance Armstrong retires, hold on to your wallet

Lance Armstrong, the seven-time Tour de France Champion, and suspected PED user is calling it quits to his bike career. Armstrong, 39, was clearly done at last year's Tour where he finished just three spots ahead of two French kids riding their bikes to school. He's going to retire and raise more money for cancer, um, awareness I guess?

Armstrong says he wants to work with California lawmakers to create a cigarette tax to fund more research on cancer. He did similar work in Texas and we're going to be paying for it here for the next decade. In 2007 Armstrong shepherded a bill authorizing $3 billion in bonds to fund research here. As testimony showed, the money would do little to nothing to advance a cure. What it would do is allow Texas to pay higher salaries to researchers and attract them. That's right, the taxpayers of Texas are on the hook for $3 billion to increase the odds that a cure for cancer is found here. As if a cure found in California wouldn't be available everywhere. That's less than 10 percent of what the NCI alone spends each year. I can't find the numbers from CDI, states and other nations, but it's clear that Texas' $300 million a year is a drop in the bucket.

Now Armstrong is going to push his shell game to the Golden State. I guess we'll have a bidding war, but other than enriching the researchers, it's hard to see the benefit to cancer patients or their families. But Armstrong, who was a mediocre biker until he contracted a disease linked to PED's, has never been shy about pushing himself to the front. Whether it's dumping the wife who stood by him through his cancer, or dumping the fiance who contracted cancer herself, the Armstrong behind the headlines has never been worthy of the Armstrong the media created.

Armstrong will continue to push to keep his name out there. But it will be at the expense of the cause he claims to care about. Texas agreed to borrow the money before there was a $27 billion deficit. California's woes are already legendary. How much meaningless money will taxpayers want to spend while schools are being closed?

Wail of a tale

Anyone else sick of Yankee media ripping Dallas for the weather? Gene Wojciechowski of ESPN has been the worst of the bunch, though Bill Simmons has made a strong run at biggest whiner. Simmons even ripped Dallas for not having enough strippers. Of course, when the Super Bowl was in Houston, the best stripper town in America, the luckiest writer in the business didn't like that either.

Let me explain it to y'all. I'll type slowly so you can understand. Dallas gets three or four snows a year on average. We don't buy snow tires. We don't use chains and we don't salt the roads. Those things cost money and the snow will be gone in three days. What are we supposed to do with them the other 355 days of the year? I'm sorry you're stuck in your hotel, having to live off an obscene expense account while you write for four hours a week to promote the most over-hyped, overrated, corporate whoring convention in the world. But that is the career path you chose.

Let me explain the facts of life. We have a $27 billion budget deficit here. We don't get much snow or ice. When we do, we're perfectly content to stay home until it melts. We're not going to go spend a bunch of money on snow plows so the idiots who bought hotel rooms in Dallas can have an easy trip when they learn the game isn't being played in Dallas, or that the strippers are on the other side of town. We don't do winter here. We do summer. It starts about April 23rd and goes through Halloween. We're going to spend our money on freon. The next time I read about people dying in Boston because the temperature hits 90 and they don't have air conditioning, I'll try to stifle a laugh.

Meanwhile, real reporters are doing great work

Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times has slipped past the barricades and his tweets alone are quite moving. He's told us of an 80-year-old woman prepared to sleep in Tahrir Square. The Great Christiane Amanpour has interviewed Mubarak.

Meanwhile, Anderson tells his van got attacked again and as I write this CNN is reporting on Charlie Sheen. But Anderson also tells us everything is okay. Might be time for him to take a step back and look beyond himself.

Where is Buzz Bissinger when you need him?

Anderson Cooper is an idiot

CNN's top throat got beat up yesterday. No word on whether the blows to his face will cost him his job, but if they don't heal, Cooper certainly doesn't have any journalistic acumen to rely on. His beating brings journalism's main problem to the fore.

Cooper might or might not be a good anchor. I don't watch television news unless there is something live happening, because I can read. Thanks to the Internet, I've been watching Al-Jazeera's outstanding coverage of Egypt. Cooper's trip to Egypt isn't unusual. Rather, Brokaw and the boys were all at Tienanmen Square and we all remember Bernard Shaw's wonderful reporting from Baghdad when the first Gulf War started.

But all those men had extensive experience reporting. Not just reporting, but reporting from war zones. Cooper is a news reader. His performance in New Orleans during Katrina showed how bad he is at collecting information. And reporting a hurricane is fairly simple. Reporting a revolution from the ground, I would guess, is next to impossible. There would be nothing wrong with Cooper sitting above it all and bringing all the reports together. It's not something he can do from the middle of a riot.

The reason Al-Jazeera is killing CNN is they have people on the ground. CNN seems to have three reporting teams there. Al-Jazeera is everywhere. CNN has a talking head (a throat in print speak). AJ has a team of hardened reporters. And this begs the point. Cooper is making $7 million a year. He's grossly overpaid. What if CNN paid him $2 million a year and used that other $5 million to hire 25 more reporters. I'm guessing on the market value, but for six figures and a good benefits package, I'd take the job. We'd all be better off and poor Anderson wouldn't have to risk having his only asset smacked with a stick.