Recommended reading

• A contrast: things seem to just be getting worse and worse for California's publicly-funded high speed rail project while The Atlantic looks at Tokyo's excellent privately-owned rail system.

• A diarist at Daily Kos has the definitive comparison of the Occupy Wall Street movement and the Tea Party while Frank Fleming sums things up rather nicely: "When one person takes the property of another, that’s tyranny, but when lots of people get together and do it, that’s democracy. So we should legislate that the 1 percent no longer get to keep that vast wealth and must instead distribute it among the rest of us."

• Tax something and you'll get less more of it: the mayor of Washington DC has a brilliant plan to help movie theaters and the movie industry by raising taxes on theaters. Don't laugh too hard, the feds have already put such logic into practice.

• Support for Obamacare has hit a new low.

• TPM makes a good point -- a number of Republicans suddenly become Keynesians when it comes to the defense budget.