Good Morning, everyone. Our last snow didn't amount to too much. I think we may have gotten 2 inches out of all that gloom last week. They are telling us to brace for a storm that may produce the largest amount of snow in several years. We will do our weekly shopping before it comes in. Mom had a cute quote on her home page this morning: Weather forecasters are right often enough that we have to take not of their forecasts; but they are wrong often enough that we can't rely on them. We'll see how this forecast turns out.

The big story has, of course, been the uprising in Egypt. For the most part I don't have much to say on it. Every now and then some talking head spouts some idiocy that irritates me but for the most part I am content to be a spectator and let the Egyptians settle the matter themselves. One piece of idiocy came Friday, I think, on CNBC. The main thrust of their discussions was how to benefit as an investor, which doesn't interest me at all since I have never had anything to invest. However, one of the pundits mentioned he was acquiring more defense stocks because all the talk about cuts in military spending, he thought, would come to nothing thanks to the situation in Egypt. My first reaction was: WHY??? We already spend more on 'defense' than all other countries put together. And we aren't really getting all that much for all that cash. And then there is the question of what we have been getting for the $1.5 billion/year we have been spending on Egypt. Only a couple of news reports said anything at all about that. Most say we are hoping for a moderate replacement for Mubarak but I wonder if our definition of 'moderate' is anything at all like what Egyptians would want.

Now we have the potential for protests in another northern African country: Sudan. I am not surprised that the trigger is the same as for other countries there: the increase in the price of fuel and important food commodities. That, of course, is exacerbated by the referendum over the last couple of weeks concerning independence for the oil-rich Southern Sudan which is running about 99% in favor.