I was at the Hutchinson Center branch of the University of Maine last week and I urgently wanted to keep up with the news in the Mideast. I had on my person my cell phone and my iPod touch which is normally full of breaking news items from a wealth of sources, including pictures and live video. But the wifi went down for a while at the facility (and it's normally unavailable in some parts of the building) so I was dark except for the news I heard to and from lunch on the car radio.

I would have been better off packing one of my little AM-FM radios.

Sometimes the lowest tech is the best.

Chocolate

The best day of the year to buy chocolate is the day after Valentine's Day. Every establishment that sold fine holiday boxed chocolates will have fresh stock at half price or less.

Chocolate does go on sale on other occasions, however, it is usually not fresh at that point. The peak freshness of chocolate doesn't last long. Day after Valentine chocolate is almost always fresh.

Labels: Horse Sense Economics

Morning Joe on MSNBC is the smartest weekday show on TV. Worthy of the crack of dawn time slot. The View used to be the smartest weekday show on TV, but not any more. With each of the hosts having obviously more compelling professional interests, they've gone totally daytime.

The Situation Room on CNN is a contender, but whenever Wolf Blitzer takes a day off they put a cupcake (intended as a gender neutral disparagement) in the anchor seat. Blitzer is one of the best cable TV journos, and does news, news, without a lot of biased blather. Occasionally his attitude betrays his personal leanings, but in these days of yappity dog broadcast journalism, that puts him high on the Russert scale.

On weekends, it's still Meet The Press. I like Fareed Zakaria GPS for a smart TV show but Fareed is entirely too smug. He's condescending, who needs that? Christine Amanpour is a great journalist but doesn't do This Week very well, it's just not a good fit. She shined, however, with her coverage of the Egyptian revolution, but the Mideast is her beat. For the normal news week she's just not incisive enough.

Update: I apologize for that cupcake remark. After a couple of days, Candy Crowley filled in and she's no cupcake.

I also admire the Andrea Mitchell show on MSNBC, but it comes at an awkward time of the day so I don't often catch it.

I wrote the previous post on Egypt's populist uprising before violence broke out, but that violence, by pro-Mubarak thugs trying to provoke a fiasco, failed. The protests remained peaceful through even Mubarak announcing yesterday that he wouldn't resign. But by today, he finally got it; he was done, stick a fork in it.

Sweet: Swiss banks are freezing any assets they can ascribe to him. While his country struggled, he looted the treasury and collected billions in corruption. But no matter how his government deprived his people, some managed to get educated, to get on the internet and to organize a successful revolution on Facebook. The second millennium has shown it's colors.

I was so happy to be home and watching TV when it happened. I feel so fortunate to have watched Tahrir Square in Cairo erupt in celebration and triumph. We heard they were dancing in the streets of Alexandria. I cried and cried to see such a vehement victory of peace and persistence over a 30 year old autocrat and his corrupt regime.

By now everyone has seen it. Though, curiously, and what a surprise, Xinhua, the state run media of China, does not mention the 18 day protest when it reports the resignation of Mubarak. They have nothing to worry about. Cairo is not Beijing. But the mentality of the Chinese leadership has not caught up with the world they're emerging into.

However, in the rest of the Mideast, tyrants must be nervous tonight. And for good reason.

It's phenomenal what the Egyptian people have done peacefully and without the electronic connectivity that their tottering government has deprived them of. Even though the repercussions of the Egyptian uprising are unsettling, particularly in the case of Israel's security, it's a phenomenon that is hard not to admire and support. You go, Egypt! Claim your destiny!

I am reminded of being a little girl in school and learning about the Hungarian student uprising, which was brutally obliterated by the Soviet Union. The teaching point, as was to be expected in the cold war era, was how fearsome the Soviet Union was and how vigilant we must be not to fall under their domineering power. But that wasn't my nightmare, somehow. All I could think of was: "Those kids! What about those kids? What happened to them?" It was a defining moment in my sense of my world and it informed how my politics and sensibilities developed.

I believe and hope that all despots are soberly reconsidering their citizenry tonight, reconsidering them with deep apprehension.

I understand why President Obama and Secretary Clinton have to tread carefully and I don't castigate their efforts to maintain as realistic a diplomatic position as possible. This is not "our" fight, but it will affect us significantly, however it turns out. It is mortifying to read the "Made in USA" label on the tear gas canisters, a picture frequently broadcast. We made our deal with the devil, no doubt about it and at the time it was worth what we got -- a relationship with a strong Mideast ally that had a peace treaty with Israel. But on the upside, today Google made available Talk to Tweet technology that it developed over the weekend (!) to provide workaround connectivity to the Egyptian people as they stand united for a different leader and a better future.

You go, Egypt! Way to shake things up. If I have to pay a lot more for gas and heating fuel because of it, so be it. You're worth it.