CYBER NOTES
SLASHDOT At least one university liberal enough to accept the deeply flawed and mostly rejected Vista OS is recommending faculty and students stay away from SP1. "University of Pennsylvania tech staffers are advising faculty and students not to upgrade their computers to the new service pack for Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system. The school's Information Systems & Computing department said it will support Vista SP1 on new systems where it's pre-installed, but added that it 'strongly recommends that all other users adopt a "wait and see" attitude,' according to a newly published department bulletin." And CIO magazine doesn't quite go so far as to call on Microsoft to throw away Vista, but it does ask its readers to weigh in on that topic.
MEDIA
FAIR The 25 most media-prominent think tanks were cited 17 percent less in 2007 than they were the year before, FAIR's annual survey of think tank citations found. The decline was felt across the board among centrist, conservative and progressive think tanks. Once again, the centrist Brookings Institution garnered the most citations, with the general decline affecting them less than the average think tank. They accounted for 16 percent of all citations counted, with almost twice as many as the next-most-frequently cited think tank, the centrist Council on Foreign Relations. The American Enterprise Institute, Heritage Foundation and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, three conservative groups, had the third, fourth and fifth spots on the 2007 list. The overall ideological breakdown was the same in 2006 and 2007: 47 percent of citations went to centrist think tanks, 37 percent to conservative or right-leaning think tanks, and 16 percent to progressive or left-leaning think tanks. The Center for American Progress was the highest-finishing left-leaning think tank, finishing eighth with 673 citations. The center-left group lost only 2 percent off of its 2006 total. . . There is no ready explanation for the drop. Although it was an off-year for national elections, that has not usually resulted in a decline in think tank citations.
MONEY
JOHN HUSSMAN, THE HUSSMAN FUND - In my view, the deal would be palatable if J.P. Morgan was to remain fully responsible for any losses on the 'collateral' provided to the Federal Reserve, assuming shareholders were to consent to the buyout. As it stands, Congress should quickly step in to bust the existing deal and demand an alternate resolution, by clearly insisting that the Fed's action was not legal.
The Fed did not act to save a bank, but to enrich one. Congress has the power to appropriate resources for such a deal by the representative will of the people – the Fed does not, even under Depression era banking laws. The 'loan' falls outside of Section 13-3 of the Federal Reserve Act, because it is not in fact a loan to either Bear Stearns or J.P. Morgan. Bear Stearns is no longer a business entity under this agreement. And if the fiction that this is a 'loan' to J.P. Morgan was true, then the only point at which the 'collateral' would become an issue would be in the event that J.P. Morgan itself was to fail. No, this is not a loan. It is a put option granted by the Fed to J.P. Morgan on a basket of toxic securities. And it is not legal.
BEHIND THE BUSHES
AP Older White House computer hard drives have been destroyed, the White House disclosed to a federal court in a controversy over millions of possibly missing e-mails from 2003 to 2005. The White House revealed new information about how it handles its computers in an effort to persuade a federal magistrate it would be fruitless to undertake an e-mail recovery plan that the court proposed. "When workstations are at the end of their lifecycle and retired ... the hard drives are generally sent offsite to another government entity for physical destruction," the White House said in a sworn declaration filed with U.S. Magistrate Judge John Facciola. It has been the goal of a White House Office of Administration "refresh program" to replace one-third of its workstations every year in the Executive Office of the President, according to the declaration. Some, but not necessarily all, of the data on old hard drives is moved to new computer hard drives, the declaration added.
OUTLYING PRECINCTS
AP A retired Air Force general compared former President Clinton to Joseph McCarthy, the 1950s communist-hunting senator, after Clinton seemed to question Democrat Barack Obama's patriotism. Merrill "Tony'' McPeak, a former chief of staff of the Air Force and currently a co-chair of Obama's presidential campaign, said he was disappointed by comments Clinton made while campaigning for his wife. . . "I think it would be a great thing if we had an election year where you had two people who loved this country and were devoted to the interest of this country,'' Clinton said. "And people could actually ask themselves who is right on these issues, instead of all this other stuff that always seems to intrude itself on our politics.''. . . "It's a use of language as a disguised insult. We've seen this before, this little clever spin that's put on stuff,'' McPeak said.
BEST VIDEO REFUTATION OF CLINTON'S BOSNIA TRIP LIES
FURTHERMORE. . .
RULES OF THUMB Planning a party: One toilet per keg of beer.
SLASHDOT At least one university liberal enough to accept the deeply flawed and mostly rejected Vista OS is recommending faculty and students stay away from SP1. "University of Pennsylvania tech staffers are advising faculty and students not to upgrade their computers to the new service pack for Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system. The school's Information Systems & Computing department said it will support Vista SP1 on new systems where it's pre-installed, but added that it 'strongly recommends that all other users adopt a "wait and see" attitude,' according to a newly published department bulletin." And CIO magazine doesn't quite go so far as to call on Microsoft to throw away Vista, but it does ask its readers to weigh in on that topic.
MEDIA
FAIR The 25 most media-prominent think tanks were cited 17 percent less in 2007 than they were the year before, FAIR's annual survey of think tank citations found. The decline was felt across the board among centrist, conservative and progressive think tanks. Once again, the centrist Brookings Institution garnered the most citations, with the general decline affecting them less than the average think tank. They accounted for 16 percent of all citations counted, with almost twice as many as the next-most-frequently cited think tank, the centrist Council on Foreign Relations. The American Enterprise Institute, Heritage Foundation and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, three conservative groups, had the third, fourth and fifth spots on the 2007 list. The overall ideological breakdown was the same in 2006 and 2007: 47 percent of citations went to centrist think tanks, 37 percent to conservative or right-leaning think tanks, and 16 percent to progressive or left-leaning think tanks. The Center for American Progress was the highest-finishing left-leaning think tank, finishing eighth with 673 citations. The center-left group lost only 2 percent off of its 2006 total. . . There is no ready explanation for the drop. Although it was an off-year for national elections, that has not usually resulted in a decline in think tank citations.
MONEY
JOHN HUSSMAN, THE HUSSMAN FUND - In my view, the deal would be palatable if J.P. Morgan was to remain fully responsible for any losses on the 'collateral' provided to the Federal Reserve, assuming shareholders were to consent to the buyout. As it stands, Congress should quickly step in to bust the existing deal and demand an alternate resolution, by clearly insisting that the Fed's action was not legal.
The Fed did not act to save a bank, but to enrich one. Congress has the power to appropriate resources for such a deal by the representative will of the people – the Fed does not, even under Depression era banking laws. The 'loan' falls outside of Section 13-3 of the Federal Reserve Act, because it is not in fact a loan to either Bear Stearns or J.P. Morgan. Bear Stearns is no longer a business entity under this agreement. And if the fiction that this is a 'loan' to J.P. Morgan was true, then the only point at which the 'collateral' would become an issue would be in the event that J.P. Morgan itself was to fail. No, this is not a loan. It is a put option granted by the Fed to J.P. Morgan on a basket of toxic securities. And it is not legal.
BEHIND THE BUSHES
AP Older White House computer hard drives have been destroyed, the White House disclosed to a federal court in a controversy over millions of possibly missing e-mails from 2003 to 2005. The White House revealed new information about how it handles its computers in an effort to persuade a federal magistrate it would be fruitless to undertake an e-mail recovery plan that the court proposed. "When workstations are at the end of their lifecycle and retired ... the hard drives are generally sent offsite to another government entity for physical destruction," the White House said in a sworn declaration filed with U.S. Magistrate Judge John Facciola. It has been the goal of a White House Office of Administration "refresh program" to replace one-third of its workstations every year in the Executive Office of the President, according to the declaration. Some, but not necessarily all, of the data on old hard drives is moved to new computer hard drives, the declaration added.
OUTLYING PRECINCTS
AP A retired Air Force general compared former President Clinton to Joseph McCarthy, the 1950s communist-hunting senator, after Clinton seemed to question Democrat Barack Obama's patriotism. Merrill "Tony'' McPeak, a former chief of staff of the Air Force and currently a co-chair of Obama's presidential campaign, said he was disappointed by comments Clinton made while campaigning for his wife. . . "I think it would be a great thing if we had an election year where you had two people who loved this country and were devoted to the interest of this country,'' Clinton said. "And people could actually ask themselves who is right on these issues, instead of all this other stuff that always seems to intrude itself on our politics.''. . . "It's a use of language as a disguised insult. We've seen this before, this little clever spin that's put on stuff,'' McPeak said.
BEST VIDEO REFUTATION OF CLINTON'S BOSNIA TRIP LIES
FURTHERMORE. . .
RULES OF THUMB Planning a party: One toilet per keg of beer.
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