Thick ground fog this early Friday on California’s north coast, and way-quiet, too — only a faint rumble from the Pacific Ocean just more than a mile away.
And we’re on the cusp of another weekend, already!

I guess Americans are letting loose with a sigh of relief after 16 days of political chaos from our ‘superiors’ in DC, but the perception is lost on nit-twitted assholes — Anthony Weiner explains the ‘what-if‘ of life nowadays: “Maybe if the Internet didn’t exist? Like, if I was running in 1955? I’d probably get elected mayor.”

Or the walking-dead, brain dead via John McCain: “Sometimes those are, comments like that are made out of malice, but if someone has no intelligence, I don’t view it as being a malicious statement.”

Or Eddie Snowden on paradoxical reality: “The system does not work…you have to report wrongdoing to those most responsible for it.”

(Illustration: M.C. Escher’s ‘Three Worlds‘ found here).

The US has become a highly-schizophrenic place, even our history is crazy — we easily forget, or push aside, slavery, the genocide of indigenous people, the first and only user of nuclear weapons, Iraq, and so forth, and so on, until we feel like a US person — right or wrong!
Wrong!
And the shit is finally catching up with us:

Obama is the executive manager of what the British punk band the Mekons called the “Empire of the Senseless.”
By this, I don’t mean an empire that is inchoate, but a government that doesn’t sense, that doesn’t feel, that is immune to the conditions and desires of the governed.
America has degenerated into a sham state, a republic of the observed and monitored, where government operations are opaque and menacing.
A pervasive dread seems to envelope the nation.

Indeed. Customers down to the person who frequent the liquor store I manage carry the weight of sober sorrow. Of course, it’s a freakin’ liquor store!  People don’t go there like they would, say, an ice cream shop. Coming through our doors is serious business — and all the products we carry are addictive and dangerous. They will/can eventually kill you.
People come in the store for relief, to find solace in a bottle, in a chip bag, or a pack of cigarettes. And for a great number of our customers, life sucks.
In the current flow of shit, life is not going to get any better any time soon, in fact, chances are everything is going to get a lot worse. Even with storms and crazy weather, near-about-nothing is being done about climate change, and if you think Ted Cruz is nuts, just wait on the weather.
Americans should step back and try and see us as the rest of the world sees us — not pretty:

Ordinary Americans, and especially the small minority active in Democrat and Republican primaries, must learn more of what people across the globe are thinking and saying about the US.
For if you follow that, you realise that the erosion of American power is happening faster than most of us predicted — while the politicians in Washington behave like rutting stags with locked antlers.

We sometimes don’t really grasp the fact that the people in charge of this country, or who have an influence on its governance, are self-centered, egomaniacs and worse than idiots.
Therefor, this did seem appropriate for the occasion — anytime any asshole politician opens his/her mouth, there should be someone nearby to comment.
Via Raw Story:

Sarah Palin, most recently a reality show star and Fox News contributor, joined Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and other Republicans on Sunday in protesting federal landmarks that were closed as part of the GOP-engineered government shutdown.
Hecklers repeatedly urged her to go home and pointed out that Republicans shut down the government as she tried to make a point about respecting veterans.
“This is a matter of shutdown priorities,” Palin said, shortly before she was interrupted by a particularly loud heckler standing a few feet in front of her.
“You’re an idiot,” the man bellowed, turning the heads of conservative figures standing behind her and drawing amused chuckles.
Palin paused briefly before continuing her remarks.

This is the way it should be — Palin should pause logically, and indefinitely, maybe forever.