Legalize Downloading

This is the youth vote issue par excellance.  Republicans could take it up and attract just about everyone who owns an Ipod.  Not a peep out of Republicans or Democrats on this issue last election.  It's like they never heard of it.
  That probably comes from two reasons.  Pols are mostly old fuds in their 60's who don't even do email, and have lost contact with the college age generation.  They don't understand.  And the labels have given lots of money to keep downloading illegal.  Money talks to most pols.  Money may not vote, but it does talk.
   Just making downloading legal would be a fairly drastic step, it would mean the end of copyright.  Authors depend upon copyright for their livings, many of them would stop writing if copyright went away.  Movies need big money to make.  Without copyright protection they could not raise that big money, so we would be reduced to watching things like the Blair Witch Project.
   A decent  halfway step, would be to reduce the length of copyright.  Used to be copyright and patents ran for 14 years.  The last copyright law revision, aided by Disney and the labels, jacked copyright up to life of the author plus 70 years, halfway to forever.
  With copyright set to 17 years, most of the music sloshing around the internet would be legal.  The young are playing and downloading mostly stuff that was popular when I was in college, and that was more than 17 years ago. 
   Trouble is, making a policy of "17 year copyright" meaningful to the young would take a heap of doing.  Most of them would have difficulty connecting "17 year copyright" with "most of my music would be out of copyright" and "downloading out of copyright music is legal".

War for Women, Part 3

Daughter visited for Thanksgiving.  We did some political talking.  She sees the Republican loss as due to no free contraception.  Jobs, the economy, cuts little ice with her.  Even with an unemployed boy friend and unemployed brother, it was lack of free contraception that got her turned on, even shouting.  Discussion of jobs and the economy held no interest for her.  She is employed and that's good enough for her.  She doesn't see Great Depression 2.0 as anything much.
   If her viewpoint is typical, the US of A has some serious trouble in store. 

Walmart's on light gray Sunday

Time to refill my prescriptions, so off to Walmart on Sunday.  Place is busy, but not really crowded.  Run into my niece and her two daughters in the toy aisle.  Passed bins of low price DVD's.  Mostly Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter.  Looks like those are the last decent movies out of Hollywood, and that was quite some time ago. 

Bookstores in Concord NH

Discovered two very nice bookstores in Concord today.
 Liberty Book & Comic 75 Allison St.  Just off South St.  Shows up in Google maps if you need more directions.  Has a good stock of modern (in print) comics, a lot of good classic young adult books, used paperbacks, survival stuff, and interesting political works.  If you are homeschooling, you will find good material here.  I spent a pleasant hour browsing and came away with four books.  Good stock, fun to browse.
  Then I hit Annie's Bookstore, 132 Loudon Road.  It also will show in Google maps if you need more directions.  It's bigger on the inside than it looks on the outside.  It's a used paperback place, heavy on romances.  But a lot of stock, a good browsing place.
  What with the dying off of bookstores up in the North country, we need places like this.
  I was going to post a comment about these two stores on Google maps, but Google demanded that I sign up for GooglePlus, which I don't want to do. 

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?