High overcast and a bit on the warm side this way-early Thursday on California’s north coast, though, rain has its smell in the air.
I hope not — my Jeep is in the shop and I’m on foot for this morning.

The news cycle continues: Repugnant story of the day — life has to be terrible for this guy in a Home Depot store in south California: “People just couldn’t believe it,” added Cpl. Rudy Lopez, with West Covina Police Department. “He walked into the saw area, picked up a couple of saws in the saw area and started cutting both of his arms.”

(Illustration found here).

Today’s way-best hilarious, soft-spot in the heart news story — Maria Popova at Brain Pickings examines a near-unknown Mark Twain short story, ‘Advice to Little Girls‘ (written when Twain was only 30), and some recommendations for young ladies acting true to oneself.
A few snips:

If you have nothing but a rag-doll stuffed with sawdust, while one of your more fortunate little playmates has a costly China one, you should treat her with a show of kindness nevertheless.
And you ought not to attempt to make a forcible swap with her unless your conscience would justify you in it, and you know you are able to do it.
…
If at any time you find it necessary to correct your brother, do not correct him with mud — never, on any account, throw mud at him, because it will spoil his clothes.
It is better to scald him a little, for then you obtain desirable results.
You secure his immediate attention to the lessons you are inculcating, and at the same time your hot water will have a tendency to move impurities from his person, and possibly the skin, in spots.

And my favorite (because of my age, I guess): Good little girls always show marked deference for the aged. You ought never to ‘sass’ old people unless they ‘sass’ you first.

Sage advice for the nowadays.

Probably the most-satisfying news item of the day — via Mediaite:

Within seconds of Karl Rove beginning a speech to the UMASS-Amherst and Smith College Republicans Tuesday night, protesters who had been demonstrating outside the auditorium began heckling him inside.
Utilizing the Occupy Wall Street-inspired “mic check” call and response tactic, the protesters attempted to shout down Rove by calling him a “murderer” and a “terrorist.”

A wonder how anyone from George Jr.’s watch could be found in public — jail is were they all should be.

The shit nowadays is apparently worse than we figured — people want to return back to those golden days of yesteryear. The 1980s?
From US News and World Report yesterday:

Fifty-eight percent of Americans would choose Reagan, according to a survey conducted by Kelton Research for the National Geographic Channel.
Reagan, a Republican who won the elections of 1980 and 1984, would even capture 51 percent of voters aged 18 to 34, even though young people were a key constituency for Democrat Obama in 2008 and 2012.
The survey was conducted to promote National Geographic’s upcoming mini-series about the 1980s, when Reagan was in the White House.
And it turns out that nostalgia for the Reagan era has taken many forms, even though he had his share of critics when he was president.
Today, 74 percent of Americans say the country was better off during the ’80s, and 76 percent say the country was safer and government was better run at that time, according to the survey.
People even say that television and music were better back then.

And the most-shameful, dumb-ass and way-funny news items of the time — literal jerk-off Tony Weiner wants to be mayor of New York City. Politics and sexual shit seem to float in the same toilet — look at Mark Sanford right now, seeming poised to beat Stephen Colbert’s sister, and of course, there’s Diaperman Dave Vitter, despite the whores and the kink, the clown is still in Congress. So I guess being a sexual shithead really don’t matter to voters.
Meanwhile, the Weiner is making his cum-back via a puff piece in The New York Times Magazine, but he’s still a buffoon of sorts.
From David Graham at The Atlantic:

And ah yes, the scandal.
We get lots of Emotional Weiner, Chastened Weiner, Learning and Trying to Get Better at Life Weiner in the piece.
To be fair, he does seem to have learned some things about himself and how to be a better person.
But he also remains skilled at displacing responsibility.
The man who claimed his appliances were turning against him has found new scapegoats — all while claiming he’s coming clean.
As Michael Barbaro notes, he refers to his “fateful tweet,” neatly glossing over the fact that while one tweet got him caught, he was after all communicating with many women over a long period of time.
Here’s Weiner’s list of reasons the scandal was so big: “My last name; the fact that I was this combative congressman; the fact that there were pictures involved; the fact that it was a slow news period; the fact that I was an idiot about it; the fact that, while I was still lying about it, I dug myself in deeper by getting beefy with every reporter.”
OK, dude, you hit the big ones, but certainly not in that order.
Did Weiner’s name make it easier to crack jokes?
Of course.
Was that why the story was big?
No.
(Early on, Weiner tried to play the whole thing off as being a hack amplified by his name.)
Or how about his claim that it was “a slow news period”?
Well, here’s a list of events from June 2011.
I’ll just name a few from the beginning of the month: the Syrian civil war kicked off; John Edwards was indicted; NATO was bombing Libya; Rafael Nadal won a record sixth French Open.
Weiner’s reputation for combativeness, the pictures, and the idiocy are on the mark (as are the fact that his wife was an aide to Clinton, creating an eerie parallel to Bill Clinton’s infidelities.)

In context, and in a showing revelation, Weiner and wife explained their work helped them overcome the ludicrous scandal — the workplace is easier than the home-place.
Eleanor Barkhorn, also at The Atlantic,  explains how Huma Abedin’s ‘my compass was my job‘ reflects how shit at home for anybody can produce the scent of roses at work.
Key snip:

Abedin’s view of work as a sanctuary from the turmoil of home life is a common one.
In her landmark 1997 book The Time Bind, University of California Berkeley professor Arlie Russell Hochschild explored why workers were spending more and more time at the office: between the ’70s and the ’90s, she reported, the average worker had lengthened his or her work schedule by 164 hours each month, and spent 14 percent less time on vacation.
For white-collar workers the motivation to work more, she found, was not fear of getting fired or even the desire to make more money.
Rather, it was that work was a more pleasant environment than home.

And finally, the political shit story of the day (outside of Obama’s budget) — via the Washington Post:

The campaign manager for Sen. Mitch McConnell’s reelection bid insisted Wednesday that the Kentucky senator’s office was bugged, comparing the recording of a high-level strategy meeting to the work of the Nazi secret police.
…
The senator has said that the office must have been bugged by the “political left.”
“This is Gestapo kind of scare tactics and we’re not going to stand for it,” Jesse Benton told radio host Mike Huckabee on Wednesday.
…
The McConnell campaign has not yet provided any proof that the office was bugged. Benton argued that it was the only explanation.
“It was a small group, and I can say with the utmost certainty that this did not come from anyone inside our campaign,” he told Huckabee. ”That can only lead us to believe that this was illegally and illicitly recorded by an outside source.”
…
The National Jewish Democratic Council objected to Benton’s allusion to Nazi Germany and demanded an apology from McConnell.
“If McConnell chooses to remain silent on this matter and tolerate this offensive rhetoric, it will be disrespectful to those who were murdered and abused by the actual Gestapo,” said NJDC Executive Director Aaron Keyak in a statement.

These clowns are scared to death of Judd — and too bad she’s not running, what a sight that would make.
And if Ashley does one day decide to run, Mark Twain tosses some indirect advice for her: Good little girls ought not to make mouths at their teachers for every trifling offense. This retaliation should only be resorted to under peculiarly aggravated circumstances.

And Mitch McConnell is way-peculiarly aggravating — Thursday, whoa!