Looks like there is political opposition in Eygpt

According to this, the headquarters of  the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, the party of president Morsi, were torched by a mob.  Sounds like Morsi has a bit of an opposition.  Question, are we in touch with the opposition?  Even if we like Morsi better than the opposition, we will find Morsi easier to deal with if he has to watch his back. We ought to be giving the opposition a little friendly support. 

Hope. Lots and lots of hope

Today's junk mail included one from the New York Times.  A one year subscription for ONLY $797.90.  How can I resist this opportunity to read half truths, lies, the democratic party line, and slander for only $2.55 an issue?
Hell, I get the Wall St Journal, for only $125 a year.  And the Journal is ten times the paper the Times will ever be.
 The Times is hoping for revenue.  Lots of hope , little revenue.
 

Argh. The Endless Campaign.

Today internet websites started running stories about 2016 presidential candidates. Don't we deserve even a one month break from the endless campaign?

Silence gives assent

Democrats ran anti Romney attack ads for months.  They accused Romney of being a vulture capitalist who bought up companies and closed them down, throwing the employees out of work
Romney should have said something like this "At Bain we financed this successful company, that successful company, some other companies, who are employing a fantastic number of workers, full time  with benefits."   Romney didn't say that, or anything else. He was silent.
   And voters like me begin to think the attack ads might be right.  If Romney doesn't deny these really awful accusations, maybe they are true.
Rule of thumb, you have to answer attacks.  Ignoring attacks doesn't make them go away.  Some political "consultants" will say that denying an attack just spreads it.  Not true.  Lack of a denial hurts Romney, and the democratic newsies will spread it no matter what you do.  So deny all attacks.  ASAP.
  That's not the only reason Romney lost, but it's a big one. 
  Dukakis could have told him about Willie Horton.

Maybe Obama wants to go over the fiscal cliff?

It would give him a solid broadbased tax hike.  He thinks tax hikes will solve the deficit problem. Obama is not one to believe a big tax hike will hurt anything. It will take a solid whack at military spending, and Obama doesn't like our military much.  The other cuts don't hit Obama's sacred cows much, if at all.  Best of all, he won't have to sit across a table from John Boehner and negotiate, without his teleprompter telling him what to say. 

Feds holding hearing on Patent Trolls

And about time.  In the industry you have to budget substantial money for lawyers.  Any thing your company makes will draw a troll, waving some obscure patent that should never have been granted, and demanding money or he will sue.  The biggest score by trolls so far is $600 million extorted at lawyer point from the Blackberry makers back in 2006. 
   Trolls feed armies of lawyers, a noxious life form, and raise the price of everything. 
   This could be fixed.  Change the law to allow challenging the validity of the patent at patent infringement trials.  Most of the infamous patent cases revolved around truely awful patents, ones which were well known ideas (prior art) or so obvious that anyone "skilled in the art" would immediately do things that way 'cause its the obvious way to do things.  We ought to clamp down on the patent office and insist that patents not be issued unless the idea is really new, really clever, and non obvious.  We should stop "business methods" patents, and software patents.  It is unreasonable to have lawyers quibbling over a patent on using one click to make a purchase on a website. 

Trip to Boston via Manchester

Daughter Karen flew up for Thanksgiving.  We picked her up at Manchester airport and 9:45 in the morning, and seeing as how Manchester is better than half way to Boston, we pressed on the to big city.  I93 was still under construction south of Manchester and little progress was to be seen.  The plan is to widen it to 6 lanes to handle the morning commuter rush.  The state highway department has been whining about lack of money.
   We did Quincy Market.  Took I93 right over fancy bridge and got off underground and came up right at the entrance to a parking garage.  I had looked for that exit on Google maps without success, I was pretty sure it was there, but not finding it on Google was a surprise.  The garage was $35 for any stay over 80 minutes.  Ouch.  But we are tourists from NH now, rather than the wily locals that we used to be. 
   Quincy was full of pedestrians, not too full, and on a fine sunny Saturday.  The central food court is as good as ever and all the storefronts are rented out and doing business.  No boarded up shop windows.  The Big Dig is fully dug and the rusty old central artery is gone, and Boston now has a beautiful green park running right thru downtown and the financial district.  It ought to be nice, it cost taxpayers plenty.
   Shopping is OK, but most of the shops are clothing stores, less than interesting to the male of the species. No book stores, no gadget stores.  They did have a Newbury Comics store at which we found a new model Tarzan comic.  Cover art shows Tarzan, in his customary garb (loincloth) but with a Thompson sub machine gun tucked under his arm.  This is revolutionary for Tarzan.  Tarzan never used firearms.  He specialized in lying on a tree branch, waiting for Numa the lion to pass beneath, at which point Tarzan would drop onto the lion's back and stab it to death with his long hunting knife, inherited from his long dead father.  Needless to say we bought it.