Overcast and a bit on the chilly side this way-early Friday on California’s north coast — the last couple of days could have been pulled from somewhere in January.
Odd weather up here as we sometimes experience summer in winter, and winter in summer, but leave the coast and everything gets warm.

As we approach the first holiday weekend of the summer, the crazy modern life has its curving lines of dismay from uncaring to utter dumbfoundedness — a lot of people really don’t understand the peril to which we’ve all be saddled.

(Illustration found here).

And hitched hard to bullshit. In a new survey, most Americans think the economy still sucks:

According to a CNN/ORC International survey released Friday morning, a third of the public says economic conditions are good right now.
That’s up seven percentage points from the 26 percent who felt that way in a CNN poll from December.
And the 67 percent who rate the nation’s economic conditions as poor is down from 74 percent at the end of last year.
The poll also indicates that the number who say that conditions are “very poor,” the worst option offered in the questionnaire, stands at 29 percent, the lowest point in over a year.
“Any positive changes in the economy appear to have only helped college graduates, while the rest of the country is still struggling,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.
“The number of college graduates who think the economy is in good shape rose from 34 percent in March to 42 percent now, compared to no significant change among Americans with no college degree.”

Despite all, the majority of people are still in a deep hole.

And along with that simple news, I got up this morning to reports of the earth moving all over the place — earthquakes in the opposite direction. Last night, a 5.7 shaker popped northern California, (about 150 miles northeast of Sacramento) I didn’t feel a thing. Early to bed, I was probably already asleep. And there’s been some aftershocks, a 4.9 supposedly this morning.

Susan Shephard and her husband Alan Shephard, who run the Quail Lodge at Lake Almanor near Greenville very close to the epicenter, said they were watching “The Hunger Games” on TV when the whole building started shaking.
“All of a sudden things started falling off the shelves, mirrors fell off the wall, vases fell down to the floor, everything started crashing,” Shephard told the Redding Record-Searchlight.
“It felt like the end of our world.”

The quake was felt as far north as Oregon, and as far south as portions of Contra Costa County down in the Bay Area — eight aftershocks were noted, ranging from 2.6-to-3.5-magnitude. Earthquakes also were felt in Indonesia, magnitude 4.6, Ecuador, 4.8, and an 8.2 magnitude quake hit the Sea of Okhotsk, north of Japan during the same time period.
Meanwhile, again this morning the earth continues to shake — a 7.4-magnitude earthquake, followed by another tremor with magnitude 6.3, shook Tonga in the South Pacific early Friday.

Meanwhile, in the wake of the humongous tornado attack this week in Oklahoma, that state’s primary assholes in Congress — Jim Inhofe and Tom Coburn –  are taking much-deserved flak for being hypocritical shitheads.

However, according to a report by the Center for Public Integrity, Coburn and Inhofe voted against legislation to keep the Federal Emergency Managment Agency funded, even as Oklahoma was second only to Texas in the amount of money it recieved from FEMA between 2009 and 2011.
When Congress moved last year to assist victims of Hurricane Sandy, both Inhofe and Coburn voted against relief, saying that government programs be cut elsewhere in order to offset the the high cost of relief aid.
Tuesday, however, House Speaker John Boehner wouldn’t comment on whether the House relief package would include provisions to cut spending in any other government areas.
“We will work with the administration to make sure that they have the resources they need,” Boehner said during a press conference.

Orange-man Boner quickly fled the scene.

Beyond those assholes, another GOPer from the devastated area acted like a human being:

Rep. Tom Cole, a Republican who lives in the very neighborhood that was overwhelmed, was talking about a call he received from President Obama.
Hearing Cole, I realized how strange it is these days for politicians to speak in human terms about someone in the other political party — especially if that someone is named Barack Obama.
“He was very kind,” Cole said.
The president, Cole added, “ticked off very quickly that the assets were available … and said, ‘You know, you’re going to have everything you need and if something—you have a problem, just call me directly at the White House.’
It was an exceptionally kind, thoughtful and gracious call.”

And beyond the politics of a dying planet, the earth has been put on notice – a consensus statement from a shitload of way-concerned scientists calls on people to wake-the-fuck-up — before the “too late” bell goes to ringing:

By the time today’s children reach middle age, it is extremely likely the earth’s life-support systems, critical for human prosperity and existence, will be irretrievably damaged by the magnitude, global extent, and combination of these human caused environmental  stressors, unless we take concrete, immediate actions to ensure a sustainable , high-quality future.

Enjoy the weekend — never know what the future holds.