Clear skies over the northern coast of California this early Friday morning, getting a way-good start to the weekend — and it can’t come soon enough.

Although we have some very-livable weather up here right now, the eastern part of the country underwent a tornado alley run this week with an outbreak of twisters from Alabama to North Carolina — life should return to normal the next few days.

(Illustration found here).

Normal ain’t the word, however, for a small patch of ground in southeast Alabama — near where I was born and where most of my kin still habituate.
The story fairly-well known by now — a “survivalist type” with “anti-America” views shot to death a school bus driver and took a 5-year-hostage into a well-stocked and seemingly impregnable bunker, and that was Tuesday afternoon.
This is Friday: An FBI hostage negotiator was communicating with the alleged gunman through a plastic ventilation pipe in an effort to end the standoff. “They’re taking time and trying to wear him out,” said Police Chief James Arrington of Pinckard, who is familiar with details of the case.
The chief adds: “He don’t care too much for the government,” Arrington said. “That’s all we know.”

And the crazed asshole appears in line with US peoples — fear/hate for the government.
A recent poll from Pew Research indicates for the first time a majority of the public claims the federal government endangers personal rights and freedoms.
In short:

The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Jan. 9-13 among 1,502 adults, finds that 53 percent think that the federal government threatens their own personal rights and freedoms while 43 percent disagree.
In March 2010, opinions were divided over whether the government represented a threat to personal freedom; 47 percent said it did while 50 percent disagreed.
In surveys between 1995 and 2003, majorities rejected the idea that the government threatened people’s rights and freedoms.
The growing view that the federal government threatens personal rights and freedoms has been led by conservative Republicans.
Currently 76 percent of conservative Republicans say that the federal government threatens their personal rights and freedoms and 54 percent describe the government as a “major” threat.
Three years ago, 62 percent of conservative Republicans said the government was a threat to their freedom; 47 percent said it was a major threat.
…
People who say they have guns in their households continue to be more likely than those who do not to say that the government is a threat to their personal rights and freedoms.
About six-in-ten (62 percent) in gun-owning households see the government as a threat, compared with 45 percent of those without guns; this gap is no larger today than it was three years ago.
…
Just 20 percent of Americans say they are basically content with the federal government; 58 percent say they are frustrated while 19 percent say they are angry.

That 19 percent is the real threat.

And anyone who feels threatened, and who also owns a firearm, those threats could become serious — especially if that person is suicidal.
On Wednesday in Phoenix, Ariz., this angry 70-year-old guy shot and killed one person, wounding two others (one is not expected to live) and then fled.
His body was found yesterday after an apparent suicide.
The guy was truly fucked (via UPI): A man who once worked with Harmon told KTVK Harmon “exhibited behavior in the past that would seem to be a little bit hostile and erratic. I think that those should have been a little bit more of a warning sign.”
And as I indicated yesterday from a USAToday opinion piece, the lost of the collective will to live may fuel these crazy-assed people, who take out their freaked-out fantasies on innocent people — even small children, as 20 Newtown kids who no longer exist except in memory, or that 5-year-old buried alive in Alabama dirt with an old-fucker who in reality is just a shit-scared coward.

In the mental bowels of these crazed gun nuts are yellow-bellied, chicken-shit fright.