Today's piece in Barron's Up & Down Wall Street:
The World's two biggest jackasses -- and, believe us, given the enormous population of that particular species, there was some very stiff competition to earn that coveted ranking -- are Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinjad, respectively but not respectably, the presidents of Venezuela and Iran (you'd run, too, if Mahmoud was you president.)

Hugo, as befits his name, is beefy; Mahmoud can't find a suit small enough to fit him. Hugo's clean shaven, perhaps the better to show off his significant jowls. Mahmoud to his credit has managed to achieve the impossible: cultivate a permanent five-day beard. In an earlier incarnation, they might have made it as one of those numerous pairs of not-very-comical comics on the old burlesque (hardly the least of reasons burlesque went belly up)

o o o.
Reads like Ashton with Coulter virus infection! :)

I happen to have a Barron's subscription. Ordinarily, I would not read it. But, my wife subscribed to Smart Money, another Dow Jones publication, and a year's worth of Barron's was available for one dollar! Two cents a week to have it mailed to me seems about right. Their positive or negative mention about a company often "moves the market" for that company on the following Monday.