Dan Rather's Audience Now Even More Microscopic

The washed-up former CBS news hack, disgraced in 2004 for trying to influence the presidential election with the use of forged memos on 60 Minutes II, now has an even smaller platform as his obscure network has been yanked by Time Warner cable in New York.

TIME Warner Cable in New York is dropping Mark Cuban's HDNet channel at the end of the month, officials said yesterday.

The move will effect Time Warner systems across the country and cost Cuban's pioneering HD channel more than 1 million of its reported 15 million subscribers nationally.

The programming on the channel includes special investigative reports by former CBS anchorman Dan Rather, live concerts and wrestling. "But in a world with hundreds of channels, simply being HD isn't enough," said a spokeswoman.

HDNet will go off May 31, when its current contract expires, she said, and will be replaced by Smithsonian HD.

Perhaps Smithsonian HD channel can air programs about TV relics who refuse to go away gracefully.

Mark Cuban Charged With Insider Trading

Couldn't happen to a bigger jerk. The pompous owner of the Dallas Mavericks and current employer of Dan Rather has been charged with insider trading.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged the Dallas Mavericks owner and Internet entrepreneur Mark Cuban with insider trading.

The complaint claims that in 2004 Cuban learned of a private offering of Mamma.com (now known as Copernic) that would decrease the value of his 600,000 shares. It says he then sold off his stake and as a result, reportedly saved $750,000.

"As we allege in the complaint, Mamma.com entrusted Mr. Cuban with nonpublic information after he promised to keep the information confidential. Less than four hours later, Mr. Cuban betrayed that trust by placing an order to sell all of his shares," said Scott W. Friestad, Deputy Director of the SEC's Division of Enforcement."It is fundamentally unfair for someone to use access to nonpublic information to improperly gain an edge on the market."

More here.

Mr. Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, owned a 6.3 percent stake in the company, now known as Copernic Inc. At the time of the sale, he was the company’s largest-known shareholder.

Mr. Cuban was told about the stock offering through a phone call with Mamma.com’s chief executive on June 28, 2004, according to the SEC complaint.

Mr. Cuban “became very upset and angry during the conversation” because the private offering would dilute existing shareholders, according the complaint.

“Well, now I’m screwed,” Mr. Cuban told the executive. “I can’t sell.”

But Mr. Cuban later called his Dallas broker and ordered him to sell all 600,000 shares he owned. “Sell what you can tonight and just get me out the next day,” he said, according to the complaint.

Cuban needs to be made an example of. Life in prison should suffice.

He can probably kiss any hope of buying the Chicago Cubs goodbye.

Let's not forget Cuban was the money-man behind that colossal anti-war bomb Redacted last year. He should do hard time just for that fiasco alone.

'Redacted' Biggest Bomb Ever?

This one didn't even need a thumbs up from a Kos Kid to go completely in the tank.

IT'S hard for Hollywood pacifists like Brian De Palma to capture the hearts and minds of America if Americans won't see their movies. While the public is staying away in droves from “Rendition," “Lions for Lambs" and “In the Valley of Elah," audiences are really avoiding “Redacted," De Palma's picture about US soldiers who rape a 14-year-old Iraqi girl, then kill her and her family. The message movie was produced by NBA Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who insisted on deleting grisly images of Iraqi war casualties from the montage at the film's end. Cuban offered to sell the film back to De Palma at cost, but the director was too smart to go for that deal. “Redacted" - which “could be the worst movie I've ever seen," said critic Michael Medved -took in just $25,628 in its opening weekend in 15 theaters, which means roughly 3,000 people saw it in the entire country. “This, despite an A-list director, a huge wave of publicity, high praise in the Times, The New Yorker, left-leaning sites like Salon, etc. A Joe Strummer documentary [of punk-rock band The Clash] playing in fewer theaters made more in its third week," e-mailed one cineaste.

UPDATE: Instapundit links. Thanks! More also at Flopping Aces, Macsmind.

UPDATE II: Commenter Paul notes this review from Kurt Loder.

De Palma's use of an abominable crime as an emblem of U.S. conduct in Iraq is a gross insult to American soldiers who've never done such things — which is to say, the overwhelming majority of them. But the director thinks he's courageously lobbing a truth-grenade into the cultural conflict over the Iraq war, and no doubt he's hoping that any attendant controversy will help sell tickets. Recently, he's been trumpeting his own victimization by the great media-military war machine: Because the movie's distributor felt compelled to mask the faces in a collage of actual bloody bodies at the end of the film, De Palma claims that his own movie has been "redacted." It seems not to have occurred to him that the families of those dead people might resent his use of their identifiable corpses to score a facile political point.

Warriors Demolish Mavs

It what is the greatest upset in NBA playoff history, the Golden State Warriors not only defeated the Dallas Mavericks, owners of a 67-15 record enetering the playoffs, they completely humiliated then, winning Game 6 in blowout fashion last night.

What happened in Oakland on Thursday night climaxed the most improbable playoff series the league has ever seen. Dallas had won 67 games to the Warriors' 42 during the regular season. They were the all-conquering masters, talking boldly of returning to the NBA Finals, while the Warriors clawed desperately into the eighth and final playoff spot on the last day of the season. That 25-game difference is what makes it historic -- and not just for the NBA. Neither the National Hockey League nor Major League Baseball has seen a disparity that great.

Making it even more delicious is we get to laugh at 9/11 Truther moron Mark Cuban, who deserves nothing but ridicule. Hey Mark, how's that Dan Rather thing working out?

They're not taking things well in Dallas.