Tell It To Al

I know plenty of journalists who’ve had to redefine themselves amid the collapsing newspaper industry.

Chris Walsh is the only one who did so by turning to marijana.

No, he doesn’t smoke it. He covers it like a beat as editor of the Medical Marijuana Business Daily.

Weed was already becoming an industry with states legalizing medical marijuana. This week voters in Washington state and Colorado voted to legalize it’s recreational use, giving Mr. Walsh plenty to write about. 

Click here to read my column on Marketwatch.

Protestor Joshusa Ehrenberg isn’t just against Wall Street. He’s against money.

The world, he says, is way too obessed with it. And he’s tried to live for the last year using as little as possible.

Click here to read my column on Marketwatch.com

With some political forecasters crowing or eating crow this morning, I would like to point out that I predicted an Obama victory back in January.

Yes, January. When we didn’t have a clue who the GOP challenger would be. 

I made this prediction, the way I make all of my predictions, using my Magic 8- Ball. Click here to read my Jan. 1 column in The Sunday Wall Street Journal. I also talked about it in this December 2011 video.

I posed the question multiple times, and the 8-Ball insisted President Obama would win relelection.

Here’s more or less how it went, as you can see in the link posted above:

Q: Can President Obama be re-elected in this mess? A: “It is decidedly so.” Q: Really? A: “You may rely on it.” Q: Because his challengers inspire even less confidence? A: “Without a doubt.”

This is remarkable considering the bromide that no president wins with the kind of unemployment we’ve seen, or the conventional wisdom that, “It’s the economy, stupid.” It even went against my own gut feeling that Mr. Obama didn’t really deserve another term.

This election brought us a choice between the party that was in charge of the White House when the economy collapsed, and the party that has so far failed to fix it.  The 8-Ball wisely saw that this wasn’t really a choice.

There are less than two months left in the year for some of my other Magic 8-Ball predictions to come true.

It has been far more accurate than Karl Rove. Click here to read a story and see a video of Mr. Rove battling denial on Fox News last night. I am thinking of buying him an 8-Ball.

The good news for Republicans is that this is not the end of the world. In fact, the 8-Ball predicts the world will not end on Dec. 21, as predicted by the ancient Maya.

The New York City Marathon may be cancelled but Sotheby’s is going forward with its extravagant art sales, including a Picasso priced at $50 million.

Above Manhattan’s 40th Street, with a few exceptions, it’s like the hurricane never happened. After walking the dark and gloomy streets of Lower Manhattan, going to Sotheby’s was like going to heaven.

Click here to read my column in The Sunday Wall Street Journal.

First Hurricane Sandy, then a bunch of people in Spandex, blowing into town.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg cancelled the New York City Marathon, late Friday, amid mounting criticism that he was insensitive to people who are still counting the bodies and digesting the damage from Hurricane Sandy.

My hotel is filled with runners who came here from all over the world to run this race. Nice job stringing them along, Mayor.

It was a difficult call, I suppose.

On one hand, resources – including power generators and police officers – were being diverted for the race.

On the other, the race generates about $340 million in the city. And it would also raise money for the relief efforts here.

The course runs through all five boroughs, beginning with the absolutely devastated Staten Island and ending in Manhattan’s relatively unscathed Central Park.

Some runners had already dropped out of the race out of respect for hurricane victims. Others seemed completely oblivious to the damage.

It’s the tale of two cities.

For anyone staying anywhere above 40th street in Manhattan, it’s like the hurricane didn’t even happen. Below 40th, the power is out and the streets are eerie, and some parts of New York are still underwater.

What do you think? Should Mayor Bloomberg have cancelled, or should he have let the race roll on?

Where did I plan to ride out Hurricane Sandy?

In a 40th floor hotel room that just happened to be below this collapsed crane.

My wife and I were evacuated from Le Parker Meridien hotel just as the storm hit.

Were it not for the kindness of a good friend, we’d have been left homeless, or at least temporarily out of the running in the mad scramble for another hotel room.

Click here to read my column on Marketwatch.com

This is the most ridiculous emergency situation I’ve ever seen.

Seven blocks remain cordoned off. The businesses on these blocks are closed. Hundreds of police and emergency workers, who could be, say, fishing bodies out of houses, are maintaining barricades instead.

All because of a crane that was building new homes for billionaires.