This month's Charles Schwab IMPACT conference made an unfortunate choice of keynote speakers -- unrepetant Stalinist and self-appointed expert on the antebellum South, Harry Belafonte, along with Saudi-leaning business consultant and chronically clueless former White House fixture Brent Scowcroft.

The schedule would have been set months before Belafonte embarassed himself by insulting Colin Powell last week, and Chuck Schwab happens to be a supporter of the President and a reliable Republican money spigot. I can't imagine there was any kind of hidden agenda here. Just a bad choice made worse by unlucky timing.

I tried to come up with some clever joke involving a calypso duet and Iraq. But I couldn't so I will leave that as an assignment to the reader. An as yet undetermined and probably unglamorous prize goes to the best reader submission.