Paul Newman, RIP, I love your pasta sauce

Our country and the world need more people like Paul Newman.

He created a brand that any actor would envy, one worth millions for a movie role, or an endorsement. Then he put that brand on a line of foods -- pasta sauce and salad dressing, for example. The food is good. His face and name sell a lot of it. And he gives away the profits to charity.

$250,000,000. Gave it away. To charity. Created camps for sick children. What a guy.

I like his movies. I love his pasta sauce. The world will be a poorer place without him.

Paul Newman died today. Rest in peace, Paul Newman.

On the banks of the Rubicon ... uh ... the Hudson

I'm reading a book about the end of the Roman Republic. Julius Caesar's legions rest on the banks of a small river in southern Gaul as their leader deliberates whether to lead them into Italy and toward Rome. To do so would break the law. In the end, he plunged into a contest to rule an empire, and Rome became a dictatorship for centuries to follow.

There are no legions poised on the Hudson to invade, but the pillars of a financial empire are tottering on the brink of collapse. After bailouts of Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, federal regulators and the princes of Wall Street searched over the weekend for ways to avert a meltdown of New York financial giants Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and American International Group.

Their success or failure to prop up the financial pillars of the American financial empire could be no less consequential than Caesar wading through the waters of the Rubicon.

Wouldn't it be ironic if this nation, which built the most powerful and sophisticated military the world has ever known to ward off invasion from abroad, simply drowned in a sea of debt and bad investments?

My new job

In July 2008, I accepted a buyout offered to staff at The State newspaper, and toyed with the idea of retirement. But there was a new player in the state capital, the Columbia Regional Business Report, and I decided instead to accept an offer to work on this start-up business newspaper.

Our first edition was published August 25, to a very favorable reaction from the local business community. We will have a print edition twice a month and a daily presence on the internet:

http://www.columbiabusinessreport.com/

I will be interviewed about the new publication on Walter Edgar's Journal, on SCETV radio, at noon on September 26.

Hanna, at Sunrise

Hurricane Hanna's leading edge, at sunrise on the beach at the Isle of Palms.