An embarrassed White House apologized on Tuesday for an "unfortunate mistake" — the distribution of less-than-flattering biography of Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi at the Group of Eight summit.

The biography described Berlusconi as one of the "most controversial leaders in the history of a country known for government corruption and vice."

Berlusconi doesn't care about Italian people.

More than 1,000 music-lovers showed up on Saturday, July 5, in a German town to hear a change of note in the longest-running and slowest piece of music ever composed. Eccentric US composer John Cage (1912-1992) planned his composition to last 639 years, meaning more than a dozen generations of musicians will be needed to play it on an automatic, as-yet unfinished organ at Halberstadt, Germany.

Entitled ORGAN2/ASLSP, it began in 2001 and has so far reached its sixth note. The second part of the name means "as slow as possible."

Link

I was gonna post some stuff this morning. You know the usual news that everyone's seen now:

Cheney's Office Censors EPA Congressional Testimony. Hey...I'm sure Darth used good science in telling the EPA what to report.

U.S. Blocks Payments To ACLU Attorneys Working At Guantanamo Bay . OK so the Supreme Court says these guys can finally use habeas corpus to question their imprisonment & the DOJ says the ACLU can't pay IT'S OWN ATTORNEYS with their own private funds to work on these cases. WTF?!? (fascism...)

I'm still pissed at the Dems over the FISA stuff. Backstabbing idiots. What kind of photos does bush43 have of all those Congresscritters & Senators anyhow?

Oh yea, and you gotta love that our Administration has long said: The US will leave Iraq as soon as we are told by the Iraqi people that they want the US to leave. Many members of the Iraqi government say they want a timetable saying when the US will leave. bush43 first trys to say "It's a bad translation, that's not what Malaki said", then when confronted by other Iraqi officials saying they want the US to prepare to go & the Administration says "We'll get back to ya". Yea....Like I bet that'll ever happen. if it's penciled in on any calender anywhere, it's penciled in for a meeting to discuss the possibility....on 1/22/09. Deceitful hateful people. I don't mind their souls burning in hell but I sure don't appreciate them wrecking the good name of the American people for me.

The final votes will follow a bit later this afternoon because Republicans have a special luncheon or something.

From McClatchy via Kevin Drum:

WASHINGTON — After at least a quarter-century of pressing for deregulation of financial markets, economists and members of Congress are pushing for renewed regulation in hopes of heading off a collapse of the global banking system.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Tuesday became the latest official to call for additional government powers, saying that the Fed should be given more authority to determine how much cash investment banks are required to keep in reserve and to monitor how they manage the risk involved in their investments.

When the head of the Fed calls for greater financial regulation, echoing Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, a former Wall Street titan, it's significant. It's also a repudiation of the long-held view that markets alone can best regulate themselves. Whether regulations will be successful is an open question.

...

Before the hearings, Bernanke spelled out what he wants from Congress: a new, more robust framework for regulating investment banks, which aren't subject to supervision and capital requirements, unlike commercial banks.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has oversight of the holding companies that own investment banks, but the oversight is based on voluntary agreements with the banks.

"Strong holding-company oversight is essential, and thus, in my view, the Congress should consider requiring consolidated supervision of those firms, providing the regulator the authority to set standards for capital, liquidity holdings and risk management," Bernanke said.

Investment banks also are deeply involved in trading complicated financial products called over-the-counter derivatives. These transactions are often are not recorded on a bank’s balance sheet, meaning they are often hidden from the attention of regulators.

This largely unregulated market is huge. The Bank of International Settlements estimates that as of June 2007 derivative deals were valued in excess of $500 trillion. For comparison, the entire U.S. economy produces about $14 trillion in goods and services each year.

The risk to the global banking system from derivatives became apparent during the sudden March meltdown of Bear Stearns. The Fed feared that allowing Bear Stearns to fail could lead to confusion over who owed what to whom in derivatives markets, sparking panic and a run on other investment banks and perhaps collapse in global financial markets.

Emphasis added.