apple juice

This is from the Washington Post:

“The recent attacks by Republican leaders and their ideological fellow-travelers on the effort to reform the health-care system have been so misleading, so disingenuous, that they could only spring from a cynical effort to gain partisan political advantage. By poisoning the political well, they’ve given up any pretense of being the loyal opposition. They’ve become political terrorists, willing to say or do anything to prevent the country from reaching a consensus on one of its most serious domestic problems. “

and this quote is especially spot-on:

Health reform is a test of whether this country can function once again as a civil society — whether we can trust ourselves to embrace the big, important changes that require everyone to give up something in order to make everyone better off. Republican leaders are eager to see us fail that test. We need to show them that no matter how many lies they tell or how many scare tactics they concoct, Americans will come together and get this done.

(Via Republicans Propagating Falsehoods in Attacks on Health-Care Reform.)

At this point it seems that all of these tea-baggers are digging themselves into a hole… and asking for more shovels.

“When lunch break comes at the construction site between Shanghai and Suzhou in eastern China, Xi Tong-li and his fellow laborers bolt for some nearby trees and the merciful slivers of shade they provide. It’s 95 degrees and humid — a typically oppressive summer day in southeastern China — but it’s not just mad dogs and Englishmen who go out in the midday sun.

Xi is among a vast army of workers in China — according to Beijing’s Railroad Ministry, 110,000 were laboring on a single line, the Beijing-Shanghai route, at the beginning of 2009 — who are building one of the largest infrastructure projects in history: a nationwide high-speed passenger rail network that, once completed, will be the largest, fastest, and most technologically sophisticated in the world. “

(emphasis mine)

(Via China’s amazing new bullet train.)

How’s that for a stimulus? 110,000 workers? The article goes on to say that China is spending $300 billion dollars on the project, which will take 15 years to complete.

“Go ahead, shoot me. I like the status quo on health care in the United States. I’ve got health insurance and I don’t give a damn about the 47 million suckers who don’t. Obama and Congress must be stopped. No bill! I’m better off the way things are.

I’m with that woman who wrote the president complaining about ‘socialized medicine’ and added: ‘Now keep your hands off my Medicare.’ That’s the spirit!”

(Via Newsweek.)

Perfect!

Both cases are distressingly telling examples of the authoritarian mentality so often found in right-wing politics — force and mob action to shut down actual discussion. It two sides of the same coin — the right in power versus the right out of power.

Par for the course.

(Via Authoritarian Mindset -Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall.)

If you haven’t heard, right-wing groups are organizing “regular citizens” to show up at these town halls, and essentially heckle, boo, and disrupt the discussion.

Sounds like the party of ideas to me .

“Spending an idle morning watching people look at art is hardly a scientific experiment, but it rekindles a perennial question: What exactly are we looking for when we roam as tourists around museums? As with so many things right in front of us, the answer may be no less useful for being familiar.”

(Via At Louvre, Many Stop to Snap but Few Stay to Focus.)

One of my favorite experiences in Paris was the Louvre, mostly because of this gentleman, Eric Smee:

It was like a mini art class for a few hours. He started the tour by offering an out: He was going to show us less than the other tour guides would, but he’d spend more time discussing each one.

I was pretty happy that we happened to get his tour.

We are way behind…

“. . .Japan’s zip through the countryside at an average of 180 m.p.h. One difference, of course, is that governments overseas have put big money behind these forms of transit. Spain, for example, plans to invest about $140 billion over the next decade to develop a network of 6,200 miles of high-speed rail lines.”

(Via Editorial – America’s Not-So-Fast Trains – NYTimes.com.)

Spain plans to invest $140 billion dollars on rail in the next 10 years.

Where is our plan for high-speed rail?

Great news for anyone in hale-page-diamond lake who ready to be done with comcast, and doesn’t find the city wi-fi to be a great option… qwest spent all week at the end of my block laying new fiber for their highest speed internet service.

Inexplicably, qwest has been limited to 1.5mbps in my neighborhood. They offer much higher speeds less than a mile away.

So supposedly, by fall, we’ll be able to get 20mbps service!