Perspective

Sticking close to home today, I read a gratifying political story with the temperate headline of "District Liked Its Earmarks, Then Elected Someone Who Didn’t." Maybe it was preaching to my  choir, but it's about a Congressional District in the Hudson Valley that chose a Tea Party candidate who is the vanguard of those who choked off funding for numerous small-town projects, including some that were dear to the local folks. But think about it for awhile. The Times, and other news organizations, are six months late in raising this obvious question to every budget-ax-wielding candidate: Just what would you cut. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/05/nyregion/05earmarks.html

It's impossible not to mention Egypt. The Times has this interesting feature on breaking news, stealing a tactic from the aggregators on the web from Google on down to the most marginal, partisan blog: citing one another in a stream of headlines. As I read this stuff, I thought I'd really like to read something on differences between Tunisia and Egypt. The news, including the NYT, has a notoriously short memory and an unseemly fascinatiion with fortune telling. There is a big difference between analyzing the past and predicting the future. Here are two closely related events that have happened, and indeed, been intensively covered. Yet Tunisia seems to be on the verge of forgotten. And far off in the distant past was another public outcry on the part of long-suffering people -- in Iran. Discussing the realities of Tunesia, Egypt and Iran would be useful, but millions of protesters in Tehran seems to be ancient history now.

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/05/latest-updates-on-day-12-of-egypt-protests/