Initial reviews of the nation's largest accounting firms have turned up numerous rule violations and shoddy recordkeeping practices, as regulators embarked on a new effort to regularly examine auditors' work.

The inspections mark the first independent scrutiny of the so-called Big Four firms, which had previously operated under more than 70 years of self rule. Congress mandated the examinations in a 2002 law designed to clean up the troubled accounting industry. Accountants' lax reviews and overly cozy relationships with clients have been blamed for fueling corporate scandals that wiped out billions in investments in the past few years.

[...]

The most oft-cited problem in the reports relates to how public companies treat credit agreements on their books. Inspectors said that across each of the four firms, auditors mistakenly allowed some client companies to classify certain debts as long-term rather than as current liabilities.

That "serious error" helps companies understate their current obligations and overstate the amount of their working capital, according to George H. Diacont, the accounting board's director of registration and inspections. Twenty companies restated their financial statements based on debt issues the inspectors found.

Inspectors also cited all four audit firms for faulty recordkeeping practices, which can make it difficult to determine how stringently the auditors checked such basic things as cash reserves and inventory.

CACI said its investigation, conducted by the Washington office of Steptoe & Johnson LLP, has not found "credible or tangible" evidence supporting the claims in the report prepared by Army Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba. The company described the investigation's results as "preliminary" and said its probe is still ongoing.

[...]

Last week the company was awarded a new contract worth up to $23 million to continue providing interrogators and other intelligence services to the Army in Iraq. "The message from our customer has been consistent throughout and this is what they have shared with us: They are pleased with our work," Brown said.

Don't agree with me? Well have you seen Pamela Anderson Panda? WTF? It looks more like Miss Piggy than a panda. There at least needs to be discipline in the medium here! And if we're going to put monuments to trashy women, why not have a Jenna Jameson Panda, for that matter?!

And what is this?

Fox News Alert
Our first medical expert reports that AWOL is probably just a Nebulizer, a commonly-available device used to deliver medicated air.

This is the Currency Museum.

Sparks Street, a pedestrian mall area. It appears to have no relationship to the caffinated-malt-liquor drink of the same name.

Justice at Canada's Supreme Court.

The Parliament Building is beautiful.

The American embassy, which looks like the Holocaust Museum and has more security than any other building in Ottawa.

The Peacekeeping Memorial.

Q. Now, what did we learn?
A. It's good to be readiness?

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Swedish graffiti artists kidnapped a fiber-glass cow from the international art exhibit CowParade, held power drills to its head and threatened to "sacrifice" it unless the sculptures were declared "non-art."

[...]

"We demand that the cows are declared non-art. Otherwise the hostage will be sacrificed," said a voice on the video. The group gave the organizers of the Stockholm exhibit till noon on Aug. 23 to comply with their demand.

[...]

Vandalism marred the Prague show, prompting ex-president Vaclav Havel, who decorated one cow, to say: "Maybe some people can't bear to look at anything nice, unusual or ornamental, maybe they can't even bear to look into the mirror."

People driving or riding in a sport utility vehicle in 2003 were nearly 11 percent more likely to die in an accident than people in cars, the figures show. The government began keeping detailed statistics on the safety of vehicle categories in 1994.

[...]

Industry groups have insisted for years that S.U.V.'s are at least as safe as passenger cars, if not safer. One group run by industry lobbyists, called the Sport Utility Vehicle Owners of America, says on its Web site that it is a myth that S.U.V.'s guzzle gas or that their higher rollover rate makes them more dangerous for their occupants. Ron DeFore, a spokesman for the group, cited statistics from the insurance industry, which found last year that fatality rates for newer sport utility vehicles were markedly improved from older models.

[...]

The traffic agency has also released new rankings of rollover risk for many 2004 models. It calculated that the Honda Pilot S.U.V. has only a 16 percent chance of rolling over during a single-vehicle crash, compared with a 26 percent chance for the Chevrolet Tahoe and for many versions of the Ford Explorer.

[...]

Complicating the safety question is what happens to people in the other vehicle in a collision. Because of the higher ground clearance of sport utilities and large pickup trucks, their bumpers often skip over the crash structures of passenger cars, raising the likelihood that an occupant of the car will be killed or seriously injured.

"The only way forward is enlightened, multilateral foreign policy. Give up the notion that we can run the world as if it were a prison, Warden Bush. It didn't work for the Romans. And it won't work for us."

The Washington Post reports:

"The U.S. government, which has held Yaser Esam Hamdi incommunicado in a Navy brig for two years without charges, much of the time without a lawyer, indicated yesterday that it is nearing a deal that would free him altogether.

"The government is negotiating with Hamdi's lawyers about "terms and conditions acceptable to both parties that would allow Mr. Hamdi to be released from . . . custody," according to documents filed in federal court in Norfolk. The legal papers, submitted jointly by federal prosecutors and Hamdi's attorneys, asked the court to stay all proceedings for 21 days while negotiations continue.

"Terms of the release are still being hammered out but, according to people familiar with the situation, are likely to include that Hamdi renounce his U.S. citizenship, move to Saudi Arabia and accept some travel restrictions, as well as some monitoring by Saudi officials. In addition, he may have to agree not to sue the federal government over whether his civil rights were violated.

In a society rife with conflicts of interest, disclosure of such conflicts is usually a good tonic. In finance, we can read the fine print and decide whether to invest or seek other advice. We can hedge our bets. But in medicine, where decisions on treatment can have lasting effects, mere disclosure isn't enough. Patients need advice they can act on without having to calibrate how likely it is to be biased. Physicians and scientists with financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry should not just have to disclose conflicts -- they shouldn't be permitted to issue guidelines at all...

In describing the use of disclosure in business circles, an economist recently said, "It has become a truism on Wall Street that conflicts of interest are unavoidable. In fact, most of them only seem so, because avoiding them makes it harder to get rich. That's why full disclosure is so popular: It requires no substantive change." Disclosure covers up the question of bias with a patina of honesty. It tells you little or nothing about whether the disclosed conflicts of interest actually tainted a report. Because the issue of bias challenges the very integrity of researchers, people in the field shy away from talking about it.

...we should dissuade leading physicians from doing non-scientific work for pharmaceutical makers. Doctors who want to be respected as independent authorities should not become paid speakers for drug companies or consult with the industry on marketing issues. These arrangements do not benefit medicine or improve patient care; they only promote the profit goals of the companies. We should save the prized task of preparing clinical practice guidelines for experts without such conflicts. After all, having a financial conflict is voluntary; physicians can either take it or leave it. We must convince them to leave it.

...If medical organizations continue to use heavily conflicted experts to make clinical policy, they will erode the confidence of the public. The public needs medical institutions it can trust for help with decisions it can barely understand.

But another important number that's often ignored is the amount of private debt in the US. In July, that figure rose to $2,031,200,000,000 last month! Yes, two trillion dollars in credit debt! $742,800,000,000 of that is in revolving accounts!

So our actual debt is $9.3 trillion. That's almost $32,000 for each man, woman, and child in the country!

Well, Bill Maher's Real Time has the answer to Westin. It's so good that I've transcribed it below. This is from the July 30, 2004 episode.

And finally, new rule: Political conventions are important and they deserve to be broadcast and viewed in their entirety.

You can't call everyone in Washington morons if you don't know exactly what it is that makes them morons.

Now the conventional wisdom on conventions is that they are no longer worth of our attention because they are too produced and there is no drama...

We're picking a president here, not the last comic standing.

The media treats conventions like pointless interruptions of their real job, covering the Scott Peterson trial. No surprises, no excitement? Hey, you know what's exciting? It's exciting when politicians get drunk with power because people aren't keeping an eye on them. No one expected that we would retaliate for 9/11 by attacking Iraq! Unpredictable! Exciting!

And the reason the conventions are so produced is because if they weren't the networks wouldn't air any of it. And the site of John Kerry last night rushing through his speech in cold sweat so that he wouldn't go over time and force viewers to miss the first two minutes of Elimidate was one of the saddest moments in the history of democracy. The man is proposing how to rule the globe and we treat him like it's an audition at the Improv and he just got the light.

I'm not saying everyone has to pour over the issues and read everything that is out there. We can't even get our president to do that.

But the conventions are one of the only times when the election isn't reduced to sound bytes and attack ads. You can get to know these people a bit. It's not exciting enough just to hear Theresa Heinz Kerry? Oh I'm sorry, next time we'll get Justin Timberlake to whip her tit out.

Maybe the conventions aren't boring, maybe it's the people who don't participate in our society who are boring. Once every four years the two parties put on a little pageant for you. These are our faces, these are our voices, this is our vision of America's future. You'd think that would be a little more interesting than reruns of celebrity poker...

If you think the Democratic convention was too slick? Wait until the Republicans and their convention with OBL making a grand entrance in chains from the back of the arena like King Kong!