“Compare a map of Qatar to a map of Seward Park [in Seattle, WA.]“

Qatar, the Connecticut-sized Emirate that was recently the 2022 World Cup, will embark on a decade long effort to prepare to host the World Cup. .

Seward Park, a Seattle neighborhood that overlooks part of Lake Washington's western shore.

Even though they are only similar in their geographical and geological characteristics, the comparison still begs the question, isFIFA sure it made the right choice.

• Matt Taibbi

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/232460?RS_show_page=0

[edited - should spell names right...]

All he needed to do was add the punctuation. This is what he meant to say.

“It was too complicated.” (It was a tad bit too complex for its own good)
“For me, it’s about having dreams while you are dreaming and I.” (It is both about the convolution of the dream and reality states, and an analysis of the innate, solitary Self)
“Missed parts cause I.” (It is the repression of certain truths that facilitate the development of the current Self)
“I was sleep, so I was lost.” (The “I,” or Self, is not the actual “dream” state per se, so much as it is the “sleep,” or the action by which the dream state can be conceived. I was fucking blazed during the whole movie and walked around the theater for 25 minutes looking for the bathroom)

“You know, before we all started having health care, in the olden days, our grandparents, they would bring a chicken to the doctor. They would say, ‘I’ll paint your house.’ I mean, that’s the old days of what people would do to get health care with your doctors. Doctors are very sympathetic people. I’m not backing down from that system.”
(http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_04/023434.php)

now, even though we aren’t living in the ‘old days’, i could see how it may be kinda almost plausible. sure, if i need my teeth cleaned or a cast put on a broken arm, i could trade something i’ve got, or some services i could provide, for my friend the doctor to fix my arm. “but,” any thinking person may say, “what if i get real sick and require drugs, multiple surgeries, or other complicated shit to get better?” how may lowden reply? well let’s look to her statement: “Doctors are very sympathetic people,” she argues. doctors (and i suppose by extension drug companies, hospitals, etc.) should, because they’re altruistic, generous entities, agree to expend their time and money to make you better, as long as you’re able to offer some sort of meager in-kind payment? (again, forget the clear problems with this inane scheme, just go with it for a second.) it doesn’t seem that her complaint is really with obama’s health care bill. nor is it with medical malpractice suits, inefficiencies in medicare, waste and abuse within the system, or any other readily-identifiable real problem with our health care system. no, her concern is that health care has become too expensive because there’s all this money and profit getting in the way of people working together to help each other out of the goodness of their hearts. she thinks capitalism is the problem.

the alternative she proposes – bringing whatever random poultry you’ve got lying around to your doctor every time you need a checkup – doesn’t sound like any modern, industrial, capitalist society i know of. it sounds like, oh, i don’t know this weird idea: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!”. hell, a more intelligent version of lowden’s argument may be that our current health care system

“has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single unconscionable freedom – free trade. in one word, for exploitation veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation. [it] has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with reverent awe. it has converted the physician … into its paid wage-laborer[]” (communist manifesto)

that’s the root of marxist-lowden’s criticism. all this talk about deductables and co-pays and other insurance bullshit obscures the fact that if people can’t get health care some of them are going to die, and if health care is run through a marketplace, some people aren’t going to be able to get enough of it. in a different evaluation of the situation, we’d recognize that we’re all humans and need some basic care to survive, and that if people don’t have that care it leads to some pretty terrible circumstances. that suffering becomes rationalized by this concept of ‘money,’ which replaces real, human social relations with ‘business relations’ where an inability to afford something means you can’t have it, your health or life be damned.

that’s an intelligent way to make her argument. instead, she said what she said while running for the senate as a republican (presumably supportive of capitalism, money and fox news and against socialism, science and “books”) . she’s apparently the favorite to be the republican nominee in nevada, which means she stands a real good chance of beating harry reid and becoming a member of the united states senate. i can’t say i’m sad that reid won’t be the majority leader anymore, (not entirely sure what he’s actually accomplished), but damn, this is who’s got to replace him? that makes it harder to take. it’s a sad state of affairs if prominent conservative, republican political figures can be so clueless as to the logical conclusions of their own ideas that they accidentally question the fundamental premise of capitalism. it’s even sadder that our rulers can do things this dumb, and then still be in charge of the world.

[edited to remove profanity and make it more sensical]

1. Safeco Field, hereater referred to as the Seattle Baseball Palace, is still as beautiful as ever.
2. The Seattle Mariners are more competitive than they have been since 2003. They win in ways that can only be appreciated by purists: Pitching, defense, and other fundamentals.
3. Seattle Sports fans suck.

I shall expand on the third point. We just had our storied basketball team jacked from us in the last couple of years. We like to lament this, but let’s face it: the Sonics would still be here if people had gone out to see them between 2004 and 2008. We can go on and on about that particular chapter in American History, but the point I mean to make is this: appreciate what we have. The Mariners are a good team with good players to watch. They will win many games in the Seattle Baseball Palace. The Seattle Baseball Palace now allows spectators to carry food in. The only thing better than a Seattle Spring is a Seattle summer, and I expect to see much of tis town turn out. But don’t wait. They are good now, winning now, and the Palace looks as good as ever. Don’t miss it. Watch the games. See you there.

Democrats got serious and did in three months, what they could have done in three months starting in early 2009. The House passed their version of health-care reform in November in a 217-214 vote, and the Senate passed their version on Christmas Eve in a 60-40 vote. Since then, to abuse an oft-used metaphor, the Democrats have been inching their way from the 5-yard line to the goalline. They score the touchdown when the House and Senate bills are combined into one, and signed into law by the president. Whereas football teams line up and jam the football across the goal line with any run, pass, sneak, draw, or gimmick play they can, Democrats have not been able to muster the will to score a game-changing touch down when they need it most.

That is, until now. Forgive me for squeezing too much out of this football metaphor, but it appears that after calling a time out that has lasted the last two months, the coaching staff has settled on the plays that will get them a touch down. Both houses have agreed to the necessary changes. Before they adjourn for their Easter recess, the House will pass the changes to the Senate bill through an arcane but routine procedure known as “deem and pass.”

Anyone who would argue against the validity of the procedure is an idiot or a Republican. Which reminds me: Since Immigration, Abortion, Death Panels for Grandma, and “We Can’t Afford” it’s deficit-cutting pricetag have not gotten the Democrats to stop trying to solve one of our nation’s most prominent, expensive, and inhumane problems, Republicans have resorted to the sad and the desperate. They are “advising” their Democratic colleagues not to vote for the changes that would get HCR signed into law out of Republican concern for Democratic fortunes at the polls in November. After advising their colleauges, Republicans then turn their voices to the general public to make them fear the bill, and the means by which the bill will become law–deem and pass in the House, budget reconciliation in the Senate.

The media has given a lot of crazy people the opportunity to weigh in on the discussion, but the most compelling thing I’ve read in days was published in the Washington Post’s Op-Ed page today. I didn’t know who Marjorie Margolies was until just recently, but with many House Democrats wavering on how they will vote on their party’s highest priority policy at the end of this week, she has a compelling and pertinent story to tell.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/17/AR2010031701496.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

In 1993, President Clinton’s first budget proposal was controversial because it increased taxes and cut spending in order to reduce the deficit. It passed the House by one vote, cast by Margolies, who was a congressperson “in the country’s most Republican district represented by a Democrat.” This vote was made all the more difficult because “I still remember how, after I voted, Bob Walker jumped up and down on the House floor, yelling “Bye-bye, Marjorie!” I thought, first, that he was probably right. Then, that I would expect better behavior from my kids, much less a member of Congress.” But it was a difficult vote that has left Margolies to conclude that ” am your worst-case scenario. And I’d do it all again.”

She is writing because House members are facing a similarly tough vote with similar circumstances: Young Democratic Presidency, rabid partisan opposition based on political expediency, rather than on a desire to do what’s best for the country. She has a couple of important points to make. A district does not always know what is best for itself and the country; representatives are elected to make tough decisions through tough votes, or else we would simply legislate through public referenda; and losing your seat, the worst thing that can result from voting for the HCR would be to lose your seat. As she says, “The moral of my brief political story is not that casting a tough and decisive vote necessarily predicts a bad electoral outcome for you, nor that the majority of your constituents is always wrong or always right…I urge you simply to cast the vote you can be proud of next week, next year and for years to come. Given the opportunity, I wouldn’t change my vote.”

As much as I would love it if a lot of us normal people read her opinion piece, I hope current congress people are reading it. I do believe they are. The WaPo Op-Ed section is not so much for you and me to become informed as it is a way for politicians to prepare the public for the discussion of certain ideas–and to call each other out in public. The number of wavering democrats is estimated to be somewhere around 35-45 and they all need to hear Marjorie’s message. If they all vote for what they know is right, then they will have an enduring policy that helps millions of Americans for decades to come as the legacy of their limited time in Congress, regardless of what happens this November. Failure is not an option when it comes to healthcare reform, so I don’t understand why Congressional Democrats have acted as if it is.

Riding surging prices of his various telecom holdings, including giant mobile outfit America Movil ( AMX – news – people ), Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim Helu has beaten out Americans Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to become the wealthiest person on earth and nab the top spot on the 2010 Forbes list of the World’s Billionaires.”

http://www.forbes.com/2010/03/09/worlds-richest-people-slim-gates-buffett-billionaires-2010-intro.html

the article points out an interesting trend: “Most of the richest people on the planet have seen their fortunes soar in the past year.” the average billionaire has made $500 million over the last year. damn.

finally, name in article that sounds most like a billionaire: Thor Bjorgolfsson

http://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2010/03/this-is-before-rap-this-is-all-fact/37106/