No issues, Plead process to delay FISA bill

Lehrer Newshour did a piece on the failure of the US House to pass a new FISA bill. Steny Hoyer for the democrats and Somebody-or-other Hoogland (sp?) for the republicans got a solid bit of air time to explain their sides.
Democrat Hoyer didn't talk about issues he cared about, but he had a lot to say about "process". He had a lot of Not-Invented-Here talk, a lot of "we don't have all the paper work talk", more "we need more time" talk, but never did he mention the contents of the bill, or any problems with said content. In short he stalled, in public, on national TV. Made himself and his party look stuck on stupid.
Republican Hoogland did a little better. He explained that the telco's need immunity from law suits when they cooperate with intelligence agencies. If the telco's have to fight off 40 lawsuits for helping out, next time they won't help. Only the telco engineers know how to make the fancy electronic switches cough up the desired phone calls. Without telco support, intelligence agencies can't do anything. If the telco suits find out that cooperating just gets them in trouble, they will stop cooperating.
Hoogland failed to explain how the new bill was going to limit wire tapping to Al Quada terrorists and not authorize every two bit sheriff to tap any old phone just for the hell of it. All in all, a very poor public performance by both parties.

Update: Could it be that the trial lawyers want the opportunity to collect fees by suing the telcoes? After all the trial lawyers are one of the heaviest contributers to democratic campaigns.

Record Crop Prices, Increase Farm subsidies

Wall St Journal shows crop prices up 100% since 2006. Places like China and India have enough money to buy food overseas, and biofuels are sucking up plenty more. Farm income is as high as it was during WWII after adjusting for inflation. On a raw basis, farm income is five times what it was in WWII. Business in good in the farm belt, farmers are buying new machinery, pickup trucks, appliances and remodeling farmhouses. Things are the best they have been since who knows when.
Same page of the Journal describes how much money the federal government is planning to spend on farmers. A $6 billion increase on an unspecified, but much larger, farm bill is acceptable to the White House and the Republicans. The Democrats claim $6 billion is too small.
Question. Why should farmers get any federal subsidy at all. What makes farming worthy of my tax dollars? Why not subsidize my company instead. Or steel or oil or semiconductors or autos or motorcycles or .... we all need money too. Who doesn't? Why do farmers get a free ride on my tax money?
The Great Depression has been over for 60 years, but the farmers are still raking in subsidies that were laid on to cure said depression.

CIA interrogations by Army Field Manual

Odd way for Congress to write a law. The law flat out says "Use only interrogation techniques in Army Field Manual". So what does this mean really? If Congress intends to outlaw waterboarding, why not just say "no waterboarding?"
Law, acts of Congress, ought to be declarations of general principles that don't change over time. The Army rewrites its regulations and field manuals nearly every year. Next year's edition might permit much harsher treatment. Does Congress want to delegate interrogation policy to a board of Army officers? A law saying "Use this manual" isn't general or long lasting.
Of course, a law that defines acceptable and unacceptable interrogation procedures in 25 words or less is hard to write. On the other hand Congress has thousands of bright lawyers in it and working for it and you would think they could do better than this.

Bonehead Insurance for Wall St.

Used to be, bankers were the makers of loans. The steely eyed loan officer would examine the borrower and his business and decide if the loan, if made, would get paid back. Then some of the steel went out of the bank backbones, and they started buying bonds. Then a bond or two defaulted, leaving the bank out of money. So the banks started buying "bond insurance". Pay a small premium, and the bond insurer would promise to make the bond good even if the bond issuer fled the country. The bond insurers only insured state, country, or municipal bonds which are incredible safe. The state, county and municipal governments have taxing power, they can always raise taxes to pay off the bonds and they cannot flee the country to avoid payment. Nice safe business for the insurer, you just collect the premiums and keep them. You never have to pay anything out.
Then the bond insurers started to insure sub prime mortgage bonds issued by brokerage houses. The steely eyed loan officers didn't have clue as to what such a bond was worth, but if they could insure it who cares? The bond insurers wrote trillions of dollars of such insurance, even though they only had millions of dollars to pay off claims. Now that the sub prime bonds are defaulting left and right, the bond insurers will be broke in another week or so.
Did the premiums paid on sub prime bonds do any good? If you are Merrill Lynch, worth trillions, why are you buying insurance from a smallish insurer with much less money than you have?

The many panes of Windows, Pt 5

E-Week reports that Internet Explorer has yet more vulnerabilities, holes that permit hackers to take control of your computer. The latest bug[s] surface in the image uploader functions of Facebook , Myspace and Aurigma. The article recommends a complex resetting of Internet privilege to "high security". Apparently the bug is only in Internet Explorer, so a better way would be to switch to Firefox.

Start of the shelf layout (Model Railroading)

The itch to build an operating HO model train layout got scratched today. Decided upon a thin around the walls layout that allows the guest bedroom to still hold guests. Expected guests are mostly grandchildren, who will think model trains are neat. This is the basement guest room, I have an upstairs guest room for grown up guests.
One wall will have a 2 foot deep shelf for trains, on the other three walls, the layout will be narrower, one foot or a half a foot. I made up some big angle brackets to support the wide two foot side. Gussets are 3/8" plywood. A piece of 1*2 lumber goes on the wall, a piece of 2*3 lumber goes on top. A 3/8" dado in the wall lumber and the top lumber accepts the plywood gusset, and some Titebond II carpenter's glue bonds the gusset firmly into the wood. I made up seven brackets from wood I had kicking around the garage, making the cost of this part of the job zero. I painted each bracket with two coats of left over wall paint, so they match the room's sheet rock nicely.
After an internet recommendation, I bought a Zircon stud finder at WalMart. It's battery powered, $17, and works like a charm. It found every stud, even locates the edges of the stud. The wall brackets went up with 3 inch sheet rock screws, and every screw bit into a stud. Variable speed electric drill sinks the sheetrock screws no sweat. Studs go every 16 inches, making for seven studs from one corner to the other. I put seven brackets on the seven studs and that ought to be plenty strong.

Is Bin Laden still alive?

Transterrestrial Musings blog speculates that Bin Laden has been dead for years. He figures the reason we haven't seen a Bin Laden video for a long time, just audios, is that Bin Laden is actually pushing up daises and is thus unavailable for filming. Audio tapes are easier to fake than video so we just get audio. The piece ends wondering why our "intellegence" agencies won't call OBL dead.
Another real good question is why CIA issues a press release authenticating every OBL tape. Smarter, and of more benefit to the United States, would be to say nothing. As it is, the United States government, via CIA, confirms OBL is alive each time they authenticate one of his tapes. Let OBL's people do the selling of OBL's tapes as real, as opposed to fake.