Pinch me

Sari wouldn’t stand for that: With Apple winning a $1 billion patent infringement lawsuit against Samsung last week, consumers are wondering what it means for phones and tablet computers. It’s likely that the design and some functions of Samsung’s Android phones will have to be altered to avoid Apple patents.

For instance, instead of pinching and sweeping fingers to change the view on a phone’s screen, Samsung phone users may have to tickle their phones while using the voice command, “Choochie, choochie, coo.”

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That dent was there when I rented it: Rental car company Hertz is buying its rival Dollar Thrifty for $2.3 billion, pending antitrust clearance from the Federal Trade Commission.

But Hertz could deduct $300 million from the amount if Dollar Thrifty doesn’t return the cars in its fleet with a full tank of gas.

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I’m fixing a hole where the rain gets in: Senate Democrats are seeking to include $61 million in a stopgap spending bill to repair the dome of the U.S. Capitol, which has fallen into disrepair and has at least 1,300 cracks in it.

Henceforth, the old adage about “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic” to indicate a useless endeavor undertaken as doom approaches will be replaced with “fixing the cracks in the Capitol dome.”

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