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Judy Hurst of Ocean Park, Maine, Linda Dupere and her husband Lenny Dupere, both formerly of Derry and now of Campton, were on hand to demonstrate outside at the town meeting that President Barack Obama was holding at Portsmouth High School on Tuesday to discuss his health care plans. Photo by Allegra Boverman/Eagle-Tribune Tuesday, August 11, 2009.

It’s easy to concentrate on the circus aspects of it: A chorus of singers caroling in German while holding up a sign comparing President Barak Obama to Hitler clashes with the tunes being played by a group calling itself “The Leftist Marching Band.” A man carrying a U.S. flag and wearing some sort of pseudo-colonial-era shirt shouts to passersby that he’s ready to fight when “the Chinese come knocking down my door.” There are a lot of slogans, a lot of jabs of the “your momma” variety.

“You’re parasites … You want health care? Try getting a job,” a man with a megaphone shouts from the side of the street dominated with those protesting the president’s health care plan. On the other side, a man shouts back to a heckler, “you gotta problem? We can meet after!” A few feet down, a woman decked in red, white and blue twirls a baton.

It would all be kind of funny, if it wasn’t real.

President Barak Obama’s town hall meeting at Portsmouth High School today is part of a series of such meetings the president is holding across the country to drum up support for his health care reform plan.While a select number of ticket holders asked the president questions inside, outside supporters and protesters alike lined the road. It’s easy to concentrate on the circus aspects of such demonstrations because — well, they make themselves difficult to ignore. People shouting, waving signs at other people waving signs. Zingers, jabs and taunts seem to overpower those seeking information. Civil discourse? Well, it’s more like shaking a box full of bees.

The ability of citizens to take to the streets wielding signs and slogans (right or wrong) is one of the things that have made this country the world’s shining example of democracy. It showcases our ability to allow discent. It doesn’t always showcase our best behaviors, however. One can’t help but wonder if the real democratic process isn’t happening quietly on the sidelines. Not from those who are shouting slogans, but to those asking questions. There were a few of those people there today, too.

President John Quincy Adams in his early years before becoming president.

Sure, he’s been dead for 161 years, but you can now follow former U.S. President John Quincy Adams on Twitter. And — as this Twitter user can attest to — he’s pretty Twitter savvy. This just in from our Associated Press wire:

John Quincy Adams tweeting thanks to Mass. society

By JEANNIE NUSS
Associated Press Writer

BOSTON (AP) - It seems John Quincy Adams was way ahead of his time.

A high school student touring the sixth U.S. president’s archives recently noticed his bite-sized diary entries looked a lot like tweets.

Starting Wednesday, history will meet modern technology as the Massachusetts Historical Society begins posting Adams’ updates from 200 years ago on Twitter. The historical society will include a presidential tracker of sorts, linking maps to show Adam’s progress on a diplomatic trek to Russia as U.S. minister.

The tweets will include mentions of his favorite reads, memorable meals, weather updates and the daily drama of months at sea.

His updates are concise enough to put Twitter experts to shame: “Thick fog. Scanty Wind. On George’s Bank. Lat: 42-34. Read Massillon’s Careme Sermons 2 & 3. Ladies are Sick.” (This one, from Aug. 6, 1809, comes in at 109 characters, well under Twitter’s 140-character limit.)

The Aug. 31 entry was even tighter, at only 91 characters: “Calm and light winds. Pleasant weather. Lat: 59-23. Long: 17-15. Cimon and Lucullus. Cards.”

His 95-character line showed Aug. 15, to be more eventful: “Weather fine- wind scanty. Lat: 44-13. Long: 53-40. This afternoon I found the Caboose on fire.”

Librarians and historians at the society say they hope to connect a new online generation with Adams by bringing his life into the 21st century. The group’s Web site has digital copies of Adams’ diaries that show his whimsical script.

Adams’ Twitter-ready entries suggest the micro-blog phenomenon has century-old roots. But no one knows what the former president would think of his diaries being used as social networking fodder. Perhaps he’d be LOL (laughing out loud).

Society librarian Jeremy Dibbell said Adams didn’t intend for his diaries to be published.

“When he’s doing this it’s not really for public consumption, although I think the Adamses kind of knew that what they were writing would be read for many years hence,” said Dibbell, an assistant reference librarian co-coordinating the society’s Twitter feed.

Robert Remini, an Adams biographer and historian of the U.S. House of Representatives, said such a public man would be pleased to know the online world was following his daily life two centuries later.

“I don’t think he would mind that,” Remini said. “It’ll show what a dedicated person he was in working for the public good.”

Follow John Quincy Adams on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/JQAdams_MHS

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So, the Fed is spending big bucks in the effort to restart our troubled economy, but how well is that money being spent here in Mass.? According to MassPIRG, a non-profit group that works on behalf of Bay State residents, the state is doing pretty good. The money is primarily being spent to fix up the state’s infrastructure.

Also interesting is the fact that 19 percent of the funds are going for non-auto related projects. That’s higher than the national average. That’s somewhat good news considering the state has dropped this year in its ranking of bicycle friendly states.

Here’s the latest from the State House News Service:

STATE HOUSE, BOSTON, JUNE 29, 2009…..Massachusetts has “done a relatively better job than most other states at spending flexible stimulus funds that will generate” nearly 5,000 new jobs but has “clearly room for improvement,” according to a consumer advocacy group’s analysis.

The report, released Monday afternoon, praised the state for prioritizing maintenance and repair rather than new construction, with 75 percent of the $438 million apportioned to the state paying for existing infrastructure, higher than the 67 percent national average.

“Massachusetts’s choices about which projects to support with its largest and most flexible source of transportation funding shows that the commonwealth is generally doing a good job at using those funds to make progress,” according to the MassPIRG study.

The group found that 19 percent of the Massachusetts funds would go to projects that do not entail automobiles, meaning public transportation and walking and biking projects. Other states average 3.1 percent.

Monday marks the deadline for states to commit at least half of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’s $26.6 billion for transportation spending. Only Delaware, Colorado, Iowa and Oregon spent a higher percentage of their funds on transit projects than Massachusetts.

“The state could use a larger portion of … funds for public transit and non-motorized transportation, particularly in a state where new and wider highways are not really an option,” the MassPIRG authors wrote. “With so little population growth and no unincorporated land, it is arguable that all of the commonwealth’s discretionary spending should have been used on system preservation, transit, and non-motorized transportation projects.  We hope that the second tranche of spending will show even better performance.”