Seventy Five: Madoff Sentence

It occurs to this writer that 150 years for BM is ridiculous to the point of providing grounds for appeal. BM didn't murder or maim anyone. He didn't commit any crime which has ever justified capital punishment, which for him, 150 years certainly is. BM essentially gave greedy people what they wanted - comfortable double digit returns on their investments without doing much homework, or any other type of work for that matter.

If BM's victims has been mostly middle class people, like Bernie Ebbers or Jeff Skilling, Madoff would be doing 15 to 20 at a Club Fed. Bernie's real crime was making a lot of influential rich people look stupid.

Seventy Four: Olberman the Entertainer

In the bad old days when my personal and professional habits were, shall we say, undisciplined, I would often watch Jimmy Swagert, the Gonzo evangelist, for entertainment. There was absolutely nothing believable about him, and I always wondered about the people in Swagert's audience (I later learned they all became Clinton voters). Since Jimmy's fall from grace, I have missed the occasional viewing of a pseudo-intellectual/actual idiot, until I discovered Olberman.

When I first saw the KO show, I thought it was a rerun. Then I realized that a full seven months after BO won the election, KO is still obsessed with what he perceives to be some kind of Bush political conspiracy foisted upon the American public which can never be undone. KO seems to be a rather harmless idiot, unless you count the advertising sponsors as victims, but they should know better.