Starry-starry night early this Tuesday morning on California’s northern coast — first time in a long time stars can be seen in a clear sky and hopefully in a little while the sun will come up like thunder from the east.
Weather is weird, huh.
Always been that way, though, somewhat predictable for the region, but nowadays it’s way-more weird than it seems.

And Paul Ryan will make it even more difficult to understand the weird: Unilateral economic restraint in the name of fighting global warming has been a tough sell in our communities, where much of the state is buried under snow…e-mail scandal has not only forced the resignation of a number of discredited scientists, but it also marks a major step back on the need to preserve the integrity of the scientific community.
How can a heartless asshole use the word ‘integrity‘ with a straight face?

(Illustration found here).

A lot of bullshit floating around out there, and at a time when the BS factor should be way-cut and facts prevail — but wait, WTF, these are wing-nut, GOPers with a self-centered agenda way-beholden to other bigger assholes with money.
And the GOP knows they’re so, so full of bullshit and must do some damn thing about the stink.
From Paul Krugman yesterday:

Like Bush in 2000, Ryan has a completely undeserved reputation in the media as a bluff, honest guy, in Ryan’s case supplemented by a reputation as a serious policy wonk.
None of this has any basis in reality; Ryan’s much-touted plan, far from being a real solution, relies crucially on stuff that is just pulled out of thin air — huge revenue increases from closing unspecified loopholes, huge spending cuts achieved in ways not mentioned.
…
So that’s the constituency Romney is targeting: not a large segment of the electorate, but a few hundred at most editors, reporters, programmers, and pundits.
His hope is that Ryan’s unjustified reputation for honest wonkery will transfer to the ticket as a whole.
So, a memo to the news media: you have now become players in this campaign, not just reporters.
Mitt Romney isn’t seeking a debate on the issues; on the contrary, he’s betting that your gullibility and vanity will let him avoid a debate on the issues, including the issue of his own fitness for the presidency.
I guess we’ll see if it works.

And it won’t be for the lack of greenbacks: Sheldon and Miriam Adelson have given a combined $36.3 million to Super PACs in the 2012 cycle. It would take more than 321,000 average American families donating an equivalent share of their wealth to match the Adelsons’ giving.
Juan Cole concludes:

If you put your politicians up for sale, as the US does (alone in this among industrialized democracies), then someone will buy them — and it won’t be you; you can’t afford them.
After Nicolas Sarkozy lost the presidency in France, SWAT teams went into his house looking for evidence that he had received $50,000 illicitly from the L’oreal heiress.
$50,000?
Our politicians get that in their sleep; and it wouldn’t be illegal!

President Obama ain’t an innocent babe, either.
Last week, the bullshit factor went way, way high.

The US Justice Department announced Thursday evening it was ending a one-year criminal investigation and would not file charges against the giant Wall Street investment bank Goldman Sachs or any of its employees.
In April 2011, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a voluminous report on the role of major banks, federal regulators and credit rating firms in the collapse of the subprime mortgage market and ensuing financial crash of September 2008.
Of the report’s 640 pages, 240 pages, or 40 percent, were devoted to a detailed examination of Goldman Sachs’ deceptive practices in marketing mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations.
The report alleged that Goldman bilked clients by selling them mortgage-backed securities without informing them that the bank itself was betting the investments would fail. [..]
In its statement released Thursday, the Justice Department said it had conducted “an exhaustive review of the report,” but concluded that “based on the law and evidence as they exist at this time, there is not a viable basis to bring a criminal prosecution with respect to Goldman Sachs or its employees in regard to the allegations set forth in the report.”
…
“We are pleased that this matter is behind us,” a bank spokesman said Thursday of the Justice Department decision.

One wonders at the dumb-ass US peoples.
Digby laments with a whiff of hope:

Ayn Rand hasn’t won this thing yet.
If someone, anyone, makes the case for decency, compassion, empathy and the common good, apparently there are enough decent people left in this country who are ready and willing to hear it.
The question is whether the Democrats are so far gone they’ve lost the vocabulary to talk about it.

Or before we all drown, fry or get blown away by the bullshit.