Here it is — Monday, and there just ain’t no way to get out of it!
Crystal-clear this early morning on California’s north coast, and if the fog don’t make a move in the next little while, the sun will come up like thunder – or so they say.

And over the weekend, in the spade of ugly news, a bit of wonder in Larry Summers recusing himself off the list to be Fed chairman — President Obama, in making the announcement, added this bit of bullshit: “…and I look forward to continuing to seek his guidance and counsel in the future.”
Yeah, right.

No doubt it will be a comfort to those who have to suffer the incompetent, nefarious workings of the US financial system.

Obama lost his favorite, and now the choices are the ‘seconds’ or ‘thirds’ — Janet Yellen, the Fed’s current vice-chair; Donald L. Kohn, the No. 2 official at the Fed until 2010, and a key lieutenant of current chairman Ben Bernanke during the financial crisis; and a miscellaneous assortment of others, of course. The Washington Post has a good look at them here.
The big boom, however, comes at the end of this month — again, but the shit-kicking starts now.
Via Stars and Stripes:

Call it the shutdown showdown.
When the fiscal year ends Sept. 30, so too does funding for federal government programs and services.
Roughly two weeks later, the federal government will once again bump up against its debt ceiling, forcing Congress into a vote to raise it.
However, a small but determined group of Republicans in the House and Senate are threatening to withhold funding for the government — or deny a debt ceiling increase — unless the health care law is defunded or somehow dismantled.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act passed Congress in late 2009 without a single Republican vote — and has been a favorite target of the GOP ever since.
The House has held some 40 different votes to repeal it, and in the Senate similar efforts have reached into the dozens.
The top Republican on the Senate Health Committee, Lamar Alexander, issued a statement last week that proudly noted he has voted to oppose or repeal the law more than 90 times.
For his part, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, issued his own vow last week affirming that House Republicans will tie the October debt ceiling vote to the dismantling of the health care law.
Boehner said he has delivered that message personally to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
“You can’t talk about increasing the debt limit unless you’re willing to make changes and reforms that begin to solve the spending problem that Washington has,” Boehner said.

The Boner, being an asshole liar, is just trying to calm the bat-shit crazies that is the attack-mode platform of the GOP — all the Tea Party nit-twits dream about is killing Obamacare.
And they’re screwed –via TPM:

At the end of the day the Obamacare spat, while politically significant in a variety of ways, is not what the real debate over the continuing resolution will be about.
The real negotiations will be about what level to fund the government at and what to do about sequestration.
But the box that GOP leaders find themselves in over Obamacare could splinter the House majority to such a degree that it hands the initiative to Democrats.
As the shutdown deadline looms, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) warned Thursday that the week-long recess at the end of September may be canceled.
“The anarchists are winning,” lamented Reid.
He added: “I like John Boehner. I really do. But I do feel sorry for him.”

I don’t like him, and I sure don’t feel sorry for the sonofabitch. It’s their dog box and let them lie with the fleas until they go over the cliff.

(Illustration above found here).

Let’s all just put our lips together and shout — Happy, happy birthday, Lauren Bacall. She turns 89 years young today.

One of my all-favorite actresses, and big crush for me as a small tyke, especially in my estimation one of the greatest movies ever made, for its genre, “Key Largo,” in her unabashed doubt of love and loss.
She and Humphrey Bogart made for ‘the’ couple for years and years — they just seemed to fit together. The first movie she made was with Bogie, “To Have and Have Not,” where she was only 19, but whoa, she looked thirty, and could way, way pucker.
Have a good day, Miss Bacall.

And you clowns out there in the ether, too, have a good Monday as best ya can!