The Story You Should Be Following:

While our attention is being focused on who will win in Iowa—whether one Republican candidate's religion is cuter than the other's, whether Operah can influence as many Democratic voters as Bill—the story you should be paying attention to is being covered by Clifford Krauss in today's New York Times: "Oil-Rich Nations Use More Energy, Cutting Exports." Here's a teaser:

“It is a very serious threat that a lot of major exporters that we count on today for international oil supply are no longer going to be net exporters any more in 5 to 10 years,” said Amy Myers Jaffe, an oil analyst at Rice University.

Krauss's story is filled with these sorts of tidbits that tend to make the average Sunday afternoon couch potato yawn, and they are just the sort of details that will govern our lives over the next fifty years.


Yes, Dear, Al Gore Did "Create" the Internet:

Writing in the technology section of today's New York Times, John Markoff illustrates how then senator Al Gore played a crucial role in the development of the Internet. No single person, we all realize, created the Internet; it was a product of what we are beginning to understand in terms of "swarm theory." (See the National Geographic article and the BusinessPundit.com article on Google.) What Gore did was to get out in front in leading government to become a partner in the development of the Internet. There is little doubt among many leading scientists and engineers that his part surpassed that of any other national politician at the time.


Zingers:

Once upon a time, The New York Times' Maureen Dowd was noted for nailing the politicians she lives among in Washington, D. C., but lately she's been a little lame. I mean, just how often and how many ways can you ridicule Georgie and his bunch when they do such a good job of it themselves.

Dowd's Op-Ed piece today, without being overtly cynical, does a good job of describing Romney's recent message to the evangelicals:

“J.F.K.’s speech was to reassure Americans that he wasn’t a religious fanatic,” Mr. Krakauer agreed. “Mitt’s was to tell evangelical Christians, ‘I’m a religious fanatic just like you.’”

The backdrop, he said, is “the wickedly fierce competition between Mormons and Southern evangelicals to convert people.”

The world is globalizing, nuclear weapons are proliferating, the Middle East is seething, but Republicans are still arguing the Scopes trial.

Mitt was right when he said that “Americans do not respect believers of convenience.” Now if he would only admit he’s describing himself.

Dowd is quoting Jon Krakaur, author of Under the Banner of Heaven. It should be noted that Dowd is, or at least was raised as, a Roman Catholic. We do need to note that insight about the Mormons and the evangelicals being in serious competition for converts.