(Illustration found here).

Upchucking the ‘toon above: The good news is not gay — it’s pretty-much a hard-packed ass, not happy at all.
In reality, there’s no good news.

As Sunday morning dawns, the news cycle is still Casey Anthony — she was released back into the wild with all kinds of implications amid death threats, book deals via total consumption by the media.
US peoples are a much-fickle peoples.
What’s the next public obsession?

It should be the state of the US government.
In the ugly business of the looming debt ceiling bullshit, the actual, real work of the US government has been thrown into the light, the dumb-asses behind the curtain have been exposed and without much exertion, one can see America is a total and complete train wreck.
The biggest problem facing the US, of course, if one has any sense in his eyes and ears, is not Wall Street, or Main Street, or oil prices or even climate change — it’s the current crop of GOP ass-hats.
Even UK’s The Guardian can see those elephant prints on the backside:

Yet even though their sums do not add up, they will not budge.
They are immovable.
Steve King, an ultra-conservative from Iowa, says that warnings from Wall Street’s finest are “empty threats.”
Others, elected as Tea Party candidates last November, consider they have been told by God to pursue the holy mission of rolling back the insidious and demoralising advance of the federal government.
Taxation is the illegitimate confiscation of honest citizens’ hard-earned dollars; in a perfect world, there would be a tiny state, close to no taxation and no regulation.
Americans must confront the reality that their country is allegedly bankrupt, a situation they say is created by irresponsible Democrat politicians and their allies, false Republicans.
“Real Republicans” don’t blink.
…
Navigating an economy through the aftermath of a credit crunch with a mountainous legacy of private debt and crippled banking systems is enormously difficult.
On top, there is the spectre of the implosion of the euro.
Yet in the US — and to a degree in Britain — the political right is implacably opposed to the creative public action that in the past has been crucial to success in such circumstances.
It is already clear that even if the US avoids default in the weeks ahead, the price will be to so cramp the US government that it can do little or nothing.

By the way, when was the last time we witnessed a ‘real Republican?’
Paul Krugman says it’s been years and years:

A number of commentators seem shocked at how unreasonable Republicans are being. “Has the G.O.P. gone insane?” they ask.
Why, yes, it has.
But this isn’t something that just happened, it’s the culmination of a process that has been going on for decades.
Anyone surprised by the extremism and irresponsibility now on display either hasn’t been paying attention, or has been deliberately turning a blind eye.
…
And even the administration of former President George W. Bush refrained from making extravagant claims about tax-cut magic, at least in part for fear that making such claims would raise questions about the administration’s seriousness.
Recently, however, all restraint has vanished — indeed, it has been driven out of the party.
Last year Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, asserted that the Bush tax cuts actually increased revenue — a claim completely at odds with the evidence — and also declared that this was “the view of virtually every Republican on that subject.”
And it’s true: even Mr. Romney, widely regarded as the most sensible of the contenders for the 2012 presidential nomination, has endorsed the view that tax cuts can actually reduce the deficit.
…
So there has been no pressure on the G.O.P. to show any kind of responsibility, or even rationality — and sure enough, it has gone off the deep end.
If you’re surprised, that means that you were part of the problem.

One can see this crazy in Eric Cantor, most-likely one of the biggest assholes in public life this side of Dick Cheney, a self-satisfied smiling little prick, who blubbered on and on so incoherently last week (actually it was way-too coherent, but a pure nonsense stance — a short-term hike in the debt ceiling, unacceptable to any fiscally-sane person) during last Wednesday’s session of the nasty, on-going debt-ceiling negotiations at the White House, that President Obama whipped-out some way-way-belated anger on him.

Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post described Eric to a T: “…the smirking, eye-rolling Cantor…”
GOPers apparently don’t give a fat-rat’s-ass, but that’s obvious to anyone paying truthful attention.
Less perceived is the spineless, baby-acting Democrats in this whole ugly episode.
One Democrat, former Ohio Governor Ted Strickland, told HuffPost: Democrats, he argued, have “allowed the center of the political debate to be shifted so far to the right that we find ourselves debating on their territory and using Republican language. It’s very troubling.”
And the concessions made by Obama off the backs of the poor, forever the real base for Democrats, has some old folks worried.
A failure to raise the ceiling, even for Digby, would still keep the problem with entitlements (Medicare, Social Security, etc.) getting whacked down, as they have all along.
From Politico:

With entitlement programs potentially on the chopping block during the current debt ceiling negotiations, a prominent liberal group is threatening to pull its support for President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign if Medicaid, Medicare or Social Security benefits are cut.
The Progressive Change Campaign Committee said Friday that 200,000 of its supporters had signed a pledge to withhold donations and volunteer hours for the reelection effort if the president agrees to cuts in the programs’ budgets.
…
“When Barack Obama was elected president, he said he was going to be our voice in Washington, and this is a chance to tell him that he’s not playing that role right now.
It’s sending a clear message to someone who we want to support and sending a clear message that if you don’t cut this out, we won’t be able to give you our time and money,” Sroka said (Neil Sroka, a PCCC spokesman).

Nobody it seems will come out winners in this, especially the big wad of hurting US peoples, and especially the low-income peoples who depend upon the state/federal health program, Medicaid, a project lost in the “muddled message” from Democrats.
Dems just ain’t got the balls — yet with a big chunk of Americans needing/wanting to keep those basic bottom-rung programs, why the shit don’t they grow a pair.
Witness the much-needed hilarity this past spring in those nasty town-hall meetings between GOPers, a vocal people’s backlash against Paul Ryan’s clusterf**k of a budget proposal — the sentiment is there, as many have warned, Republicans are so narrow-sighted, so-aligned with money-matters-only, and pure-nasty political, all their bullshit might suddenly clog their own system, causing horrendous bowel failure.
And not only at the ballot box, but also in those money matters: President Obama’s second quarter haul was bigger than the entire GOP field’s fundraising efforts combined. And with an average donation hovering at just $69, his reelection team will be able to go back to the well many times.
The GOP from all apparent notions has no idea a street-level life, even in rhetorical terms.

(Illustration found here).

And so it goes…