Intelligence, Please…

THIS WILL PROBABLY DRIVE GUN NUTS NUTTY – A Chicago police officer is murdered with his own weapon, just shortly after the United States Supreme Court decides a case that asserts the right of individuals to keep and bear arms more strongly than ever before:

The 43-year-old officer was killed at 3:48 p.m. at 61st and Racine, outside the old Englewood District police station that is now used by the department’s targeted response and gang enforcement units. At least one other officer shot the suspected robber in the chest, but he was not killed.

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WHO WOULD’VE THUNK IT? – Apparently Hugo Bucher has figured out that life on Earth rebounds much quicker after global natural disasters than paleontologists originally thought:

THE dinosaurs went out with a bang. Most palaeontologists agree that those creatures and much of the rest of Mesozoic life ended when the Earth collided with an asteroid or a comet 65m years ago. But the Mesozoic, too, began with a mass extinction. Some 251m years ago, the efluvia of Siberian volcanoes wiped out 95% of life in the seas, and almost as much on the land, in an episode known as the Great Dying. This was the end of the Permian period, and of the era of life called the Palaeozoic. The survivors regrouped, re-evolved and turned into the Mesozoic species that led eventually to the dinosaurs, pterosaurs, ammonites and belemnites that generations of fossil hunters are familiar with.

How that regrouping happened will be the topic of a presentation by Hugo Bucher, the director of the Palaeontological Institute at the University of Zurich, at the Third International Palaeontological Congress in London on July 3rd. According to Dr Bucher, it occurred faster than anyone had previously thought, but also stuttered on the way as the volcanic activity waxed and waned.

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BUT WEREN’T THEY JUST DUPED BY A RING OF RUSSIAN SPIES? – The NSA has a $100 million program in place to protect critical infrastructure using some kind of embedded network sensors:

The surveillance by the National Security Agency, the government’s chief eavesdropping agency, would rely on a set of sensors deployed in computer networks for critical infrastructure that would be triggered by unusual activity suggesting an impending cyber attack, though it wouldn’t persistently monitor the whole system, these people said.

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“I LOVE YOU.” “I KNOW.” – And she’d have to in order for me to have a cake like this at my wedding:

Spanish for "May the Force Be With You"...that or "Why, you stuck-up...half-witted...scruffy-looking...NERFHERDER!"

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STEP ASIDE, “MA’AM” – Taegan Goddard on tech tycoon Carly Fiorina’s chances of ousting Senator Barbara Boxer from her seat this fall:

A new Field Poll in California shows Sen. Barbara Boxer (D) leads challenger Carly Fiorina (R) by just three points, 47% to 44%.

Boxer’s job approval rating is among the lowest the pollster has measured for her since she was first elected to the Senate in 1992: 48% of likely voters disapprove of her performance while 42% approve.

Said pollster Mark DiCamillio: “She is vulnerable. This is very ominous for her.”

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I FIND YOUR LACK OF FAITH DISTURBING – 100 custom-painted Darth Vader helmets from the 30th Anniversary STAR WARS celebration in 2007 will be auctioned off today in Philadelphia, with a starting bid of $1,500:

The Freeman’s Auction House in Philadelphia is auctioning off 100 Darth Vader helmets this Saturday with an average starting price of $1,500.

Yeah, now we’re talking. And unlike Ford’s model-T, your choice of color is not restricted to black. Instead, every helmet has been customized by an underground artist who started with a full-size prop replica. The collection was completed in 2007 and has been on touring exhibition including appearances in Europe and Japan.

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BARACK OBAMA: GARDEN VARIETY POLITICIAN – “Hot Rod” Blagoevich may be too hot to handle for the Obama White House that tried to throw him under the bus:

Obama — who crusaded against government-by-crony — was dragged into the proceedings last week when a top Chicago labor official testified that Obama tapped him to talk to Blagojevich about the Senate seat.

That testimony – by Tom Balanoff of SEIU Local 1 – is the strongest challenge yet to a White House transition office timeline from December 2008 that lays out the Obama team’s discussions surrounding the efforts to fill the seat.

Balanoff told jurors that he answered Obama’s call on the eve of the presidential election and told the soon-to-be president that he would pitch Jarrett to Blagojevich – but that call isn’t mentioned in the transition team report, prepared by then-incoming White House counsel Greg Craig.

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GOOD LUCK WITH THAT – Yeah, this will probably never happen:

Two interest groups plan to spend as much as $15 million this year on a nationwide campaign in favor of new public-financing legislation aimed at limiting the influence of wealthy donors and large corporations in congressional races.

Common Cause and Public Campaign are making the push on behalf of the Fair Elections Now Act, which would allow lawmakers to qualify for public matching funds by raising money exclusively from small donors. On Thursday, the two groups plan to unveil details about the campaign, which will include TV ads targeting wavering lawmakers and grass-roots efforts in 24 states.

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NO MEANS NO – The President’s Administration sure is spending a lot of time trying to usurp the courts these days – so much for institutional design:

In a court filing late Tuesday, theInterior Department said that the six-month ban on drilling in more than 500 feet of water, imposed in late May, was necessary to allow time to adopt stricter safety and environmental regulation of deepwater wells.

The action has put hundreds of people who operate and service deepwater wells out of work and has brought long-term uncertainty to the Gulf Coast economy. Politicians all along the coast have called the moratorium a case of federal overkill that threatens the livelihood of the region.

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SHOCKER: ADMINISTRATION HIDING POLITICAL PAYOFFS – I made noise here some months back on the results of federal “stimulus” spending; I even gave a run-down of Rep. Jim Cooper’s pet projects (none of which help the middle class):

The website used to track stimulus spending does not meet the transparency requirements laid out by the administration last year, according to a report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

According to the 400-page report, only a quarter of the projects listed onRecovery.gov provide clear and complete information on the cost, schedule, purpose, location and status of stimulus-funded work. Most of the entries on the site provide some of that information, but 7 percent of the entries provide little to no information about how stimulus dollars are being spent, the report said. The study was conducted at the request of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

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See you this afternoon!

You don’t even have to know what it’s about. I give you no back story. I just- it’s just….just read it.

Enjoy.

It’s that time again! That’s right- the World Cup! If you are like my family you are super excited about watching some guys run around a lot and kick a ball. And if you are like me, you have no idea what’s going on.

Everyone in Cape Town, South Africa is even more excited about hosting nine of the games this year. But one problem that every city has to confront has recently surfaced: What do you do about the homeless blight (when you are hosting one of the most important sporting events in the world)? Cape Town’s answer: Move ‘Em.

As many as 800 people have been relocated to a shanty town outside of the city to make way for the over 300,000 soccer fans that are projected to arrive for the games this Friday. Allegedly many have been coerced, forced, and tricked into getting onto a bus and then dumped inthe middle of rows and rows of tin shanties in an area outside of the city. As one local official noted, “You have to clean your house before you have guests over.”

Wow.

Personally, I think these people should show ‘em all and join this league instead.

I, like my fellow bloggers, hold a special place in my heart for this great city. It is shocking to me, being on the west coast, that when I mention Nashville to people here, the response is, “Huh? What floods?”

Awesome.

So, I wanted to repost a bit of Joe’s blog from below. To help out the city that we all love and want to preserve, go to this link. It can direct you on how to help out- whether you are in Tennessee, or thousands of miles away (like me, *sniff*).

Let’s not forget Nashville!!

UPDATE:

To help the Middle Tennessee Red Cross Chapter for the Flood Relief Efforts, you can donate $10 from your mobile phone. Text REDCROSS to 90999. Or you can go to here to learn more.

And I don’t mean DJ Qualls (Coincidently, he’s a native Nashvillian. My high school Spanish teacher had classes with him at Belmont University. Weird, right?). Alright, enough reppin’ for home.

Who am I? My name is Jason. I’m a History Undergraduate at the University of Tennessee. I’m 23. I’ve been in college almost every semester since high school, yet I still do not have a degree. Some would say, “What are you, an idiot? Why the hell are you writing on a blog called ‘Intelligence, please…’?” I assure you, the irony is not lost on me. I’ll do my best to earn my keep.

I promise I'm not a Republican.

So here I am. I just started my blog, Whim’s Random Walk, too. It is in its infancy, but feel free to check it out. Here I’ll likely post about things like sports and political philosophy. My blog will likely be about stuff going on with or around me.

I owe George many thanks for inviting me to write on his blog. Instead of, you know, thanking him, I decided to post a poll at his expense/for my amusement. Let George know what you think of him.

I look forward to adding to a great community of bloggers. I hope you enjoy what I bring to the site, and if you don’t, well, #%@&*! you.

ABC News and BusinessWeek are running stories about unsecured creditors trying to go after Ernst and Young for botching the Lehman audit. I have no doubt that Lehman Brothers probably used some sketchy accounting transactions, and that Ernst and Young probably should have asked a few more questions. But the chances are good that Lehman Brothers actually complied with Repo 105 (the accounting rule in question) and that everyone’s just pissed because they can’t really bag them on it. Still, they’ll attack E&Y and Dick Fuld anyway, mainly because we like someone to sue in America.

Allow me to give you a short discussion on accounting rules in America. Our accounting standards are set by the Financial Accounting Standards Board, or FASB for short. We Americans, with perhaps a few other random nations, are the only people who use FASB standards. They are only notable because they are a rules-based standard. We Americans expect hard and fast rules with our accounting to tell us exactly what to do. This is perhaps a throwback to our “strict constitutionalist” past, where you could do just about anything that the law didn’t forbid and the government could only do what the rules said it could.

This is why I imagine that Lehman probably correctly used Repo 105 to hide its leverage. The rules said they could. The rules state that if you aren’t in possession of $50B in loans at 12/31/2008, even if you have to take those loans back on 1/1/2009, the financial statements have to be displayed sans $50B in loans. Our rules declare that the balance sheet is a “snapshot” of the company on 12/31/2009. Technically Lehman didn’t have those crap loans on the book.

But in principle they did, and that’s what these unsecured creditors are riled up about. But who determines what principle is in a rules-based system? Under the rules for how a balance sheet is to be displayed, Lehman (and their auditor E&Y) would have been in error to state that their balance sheet had +$50B in loans as of 12/31/2009. They didn’t. Some other bank had them as part of a repurchase agreement. A principles-based standard would have to be in place for E&Y to demand that Lehman display those loans on their balance sheet – the sort of principles-based standard that the rest of the world uses (it’s called IFRS, by the way, if you’d like to look it up). It should be a comfort that our CPAs are realizing that IFRS makes a lot more sense than FASB, even if everyone secretly likes the rules-based standard because it lets everyone get away with stuff (large and small businesses alike).

I suspect that there will be a furor over this, and E&Y will probably have to pay some sort of fine. But think twice before you rip down another auditor, a la Arthur Andersen. Big accounting firms take a long time to develop, and if you want to take out E&Y, you’re down to the Big 3 (as opposed to the Big 4). Only 3 steps away from suing the accounting firms into oblivion, and then the SEC starts taking over all your audits. I mean, if you trust the SEC to do your audits, be my guest…

[Disclosure: I work for one of the big accounting firms (not in the audit section), so I suppose I am a bit biased.]

Some people think this sandwich is everything that is wrong with America. But as an unemployed person with a Masters degree, no home, no job prospects and no money, I have to say, I’d probably eat it. It’s innovative. Come on, it’s a MEATWICH. I give you: KFC’s Double Down Chicken Sandwich. ……………..Double Down to Pound.