Full fog this morning on California’s north coast, wet, moist and dense — real quiet, too, and seemingly surface-wise, so intensely peaceful.

Beyond this little space, however, the rest of the planet seems to have gone coo-coo with a capital K.

Including a different form of ugly protest boiling across the Arab world, this time against US diplomatic facilities — in Libya (the killing of US Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others), Egypt, and late yesterday, the Yemeni capital city of Sana’a.
An exasperated Cairo street vendor: “All I want for Egypt is security and stability,” he said. “And as you can see this isn’t it.”

(Illustration found here).

And the whole shebang has staying power, it appears.
From the New York Times this morning:

News reports also spoke of a separate protest in Tehran, where around 500 Iranians chanting “Death to America” tried to converge on the Swiss Embassy, which handles United States interests in the absence of formal diplomatic relations with Washington.
Hundreds of police officers held the crowds back from the diplomatic compound, which Swiss officials had evacuated as a precaution, Agence France-Presse said.
For a third straight day, protesters scuffled with police in Cairo, news reports said, while in Iraq, a militant Shiite group, Asaib Ahl al-Haq, once known for its violent attacks on Americans and other Westerners, said the video “will put all American interests in danger.”
In Sana, witnesses said Yemeni security forces had tried to disperse a crowd at the fortified embassy compound in the east of Sana, the capital. But protesters broke through an outer perimeter protecting the embassy, clambering over a high wall and setting fire to a building.
They were forced to retreat after trying to plunder furniture and computers, the witnesses said.

As stated above, ‘the video,’ is the supposedly cause of all this fracas behavior, a horrible, flame-inducing piece of crap, which participants have already disclaimed.
Created by Americans to fan hate:

Meanwhile, in a statement sent to CNN, the 80 members of the cast and crew of the movie said that they were “grossly misled” about the movie, which they believed was a historical movie about life in the Arabian Desert.
“We are shocked by the drastic rewrites of the script and lies that were told to all involved.
We are deeply saddened by the tragedies that have occurred,” the statement said according to CNN.
Anti-Muslim dialogue was dubbed in after the filming, an unnamed actress, who also said there was no Muhammad character in the script, told CNN.
The actress said she spoke to the director Wednesday and “He said he wrote the script because he wants the Muslims to quit killing,” CNN reported.
The director reportedly told the Wall Street Journal that “Islam is a cancer.”

You can read about the video at numerous online news sites; the UK’s Guardian has a good wrap-up; at TPM; and the whole production might just be a hoax.
And what a deception!

Meanwhile, what’s happening in the US?
Mitt Romney proved in the clear light of day he’s a much bigger asshole than we originally figured: I also believe the administration was wrong to stand by a statement sympathizing with those who had breached our embassy in Egypt, instead of condemning their actions.
And this the same shit after he blubbered before all the bad shit happened.
A good re-count of Mitt’s nasty-mouthed vulgarian bullshit can be found at Daily Kos with plenty of relayed remarks.
A good one from Dana Milbank: NBC News reported on Tuesday morning that Mitt Romney’s campaign was “throwing the kitchen sink” at President Obama: With prospects fading, the Republican challenger was trying any and all lines of attack to see what might stick. But the problem with throwing the kitchen sink is you might break a pipe — and then you’ve got a real mess.
Plenty of a similar vein there.

And all this shit makes John Cole at Balloon Juice way-depressed this morning:

I’m depressed.
I mean it.
I’m just fucking depressed.
Not about life in general, as my life and my family and my dogs and my friends are all fine, but I’m just depressed at how fucking stupid everything is these days.
This is the dumbest, most venal, most ridiculous campaign season I remember living through.
It’s dumber than even the PUMA’s or the Halperinesque 2008 tendency to tell us that everything wwas good news for McCain.
It really says something that this campaign season is dumber WITHOUT Sarah Palin.
It’s just hideous, and literally every time I check the headlines of any news outlet I want to swallow the barrel of a shotgun while hanging myself in the basement with a belly full of oxycodone and vodka.
…
So, yeah.
I’m fucking depressed.
Or maybe disgusted and fed up.
In a just world, for my support of the Iraq War, I’d be cleaning bedpans in military hospitals for the rest of my life.
Fortunately for me, this is not a just world, but at least I somewhat I learned something.
Dan Senor and those like him, on the other hand, continue their work as agent provocateurs, even though they should be half hung and flogged every day on the lawn of the White House.
So yeah. I’m rambling and depressed.

Really can’t blame the boy — at this point, even my brain can’t be scooped up off the floor like some ordinary pile of dog shit, my gray matter is scattered into the dense fog to flow softly, easily out over the Pacific to sink down into the depths, gone forever.

Happy, happy day — Not!