The-Asterisk

Iranian centrist candidate Hassan Rohani From Vetted List, Iranians Pick a President .  That was the headline in the dead-tree version of the Wall Street Journal on June 15, 2013. The sub-head read " Voters in Increasingly Isolated Nation Seek Economic Boost From Slate of Candidates Approved by Clerical Council " As I read that, I kind of snorted to myself "Yeah, they get to pick the best from the worst", but then it hit me like a two ton heavy thing , that this is virtually the same situation that we have in the United States.  No, we don't have our prospective President picked by a Council of Elders from an established religion, but we certainly have our choices for President narrowed down by a very small group of activists, on both sides, who subscribe to the religion of the Left or of the Right. Between straw polls and conventions, only a rare few of "the folks" get to be involved in the sausage-making process of picking the party's...

I just read in the Wall Street Journal that MF Global , former Senator and Governor Jon S. Corzine's investment firm, took $1.2 Billion from customer's account, more than double that which was previous estimated. A couple of days ago I tweeted that the ex-Guv/ex-Sen must have forgotten that only government can play fast and loose with money (both theirs and other people's) in that manner without suffering the penalty of illegality. Now it appears that they have stolen (there is no other word for it) a HUGE sum of money. What will the penalty be? At what point does over a billion dollars become a big enough sum to warrant swift and harsh retribution by the authorities? At what point does the management of that company forfeit everything that they personally own in order to make investors whole? At what point do these people spend the rest of their lives in jail? A long, long time ago I sat on a jury which convicted a ghetto guy of grabbing 10 cartons of cigarettes ...