Each morning at first sunbeam/I go op-edding rather than dream/and once as a trick/I wrote an opening limerick/and you all really need to calm down about rhyme scheme. Robert Samuelson: The financial market is not the economy. Repeat: The financial market is not the economy. What matters is not merely the direction of the ticker on CNBC -- though that matters enormously to the sort of people who do financial journalism -- but whether the current crises spill over into job losses and wage growth and other elements of the broader economic moment. Samuelson is more optimistic on our ability to dodge that future than I am, but the underlying point of his piece is a good one: We live in a society, not a financial market. It's the must-read of the day. David Ignatius: Yesterday was a good day in Iraq. The UN-negotiated compromise in Kirkuk has headed off -- at least for the moment -- one of the most dangerous eventualities, and suggested some rational action on the part of the players. Whether the Kirkuk agreement has much implication for national reconciliation is unclear, but a columnist can hope. Ruth Marcus: The Iowa Caucus doesn't make any sense. It is only important because we in the media deem it so. I will let the implications of this insight just hang out for a moment. Harold Meyerson: What would Jesus do? Probably not what the Republicans are doing. Indeed, he might smite them down for their immigration rhetoric alone. Michael Gerson: We need to do something in Darfur. But I'm not really sure what.
