We know when summer has arrived in Los Angeles: The coast is foggy, valleys are roasting and streets are bloodied.

There's just something about warm weather that brings out gangbangers.

A few weeks ago, many, many American eggheads - those who study the incessant contortions of our social phenomena the way Gypsy seers peruse tea leaves - seemed convinced that paramilitary Rightwing militiamen were set to burst from their tule outhouses and overthrow American social and political apple carts. This was in the wake of some scattered violence linked to "conservative" or religious extremists, notably the assassination of an abortion doctor in the Midwest.

But for some of us out here, clinging to the underbelly of sticky unpleasantness that today passes for reality, the signal crisis facing this country isn't "hate" - white or otherwise.

It's violence.

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When will the first lawsuits be filed attempting to recoup Bernard Madoff's victims from the public dole - from taxpayers' pockets?

This brilliant creep was sentenced to a 150-year stretch today. Good. Although, it would be foolish to assume the veteran con man doesn't have some cash socked away in a mattress somewhere, and so we can be sure his expensive lawyers will continue energetically - and lucratively - pursuing justice for the poor, put-upon weasel. I see it all in my Coke-bottle crystal ball: fine candidate for early parole, just for his mop-bucket integrity alone.

But, from the beginning, this sad tale has been one of nonregulation connecting with prideful, sociopathic rapaciousness to produce a financial Frankenstein. The Securities and Exchange Commission seriously - and, perhaps, deliberately - dropped the ball here.

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This is my tribute to Doc Nebula and his Dream Research Project, pulp role-playing... sci-fi... thing. And because I'm bored. So very, very bored...

Monaco - 1964

Fighting off her tears of shame and torment, the Princess struggled against the taunt nylon cords binding her to the doorknob of the ornate liquor cabinet.

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One good development may emerge from the silly, obnoxiously covered sex scandal surrounding the South Carolina governor and his Argentine paramour: As his home-state newspaper publishes his embarrassing PG-13 puppy-love confessions via email, some may wonder why The State sat on these aching, treacly bon-mots since December.

And, as TPM Muckraker points out today, they may wonder why the rest of the American media - so sure about terror threats and emerging crises in every two-bit hamlet across the globe - had been so snookered so long. Gov. Mark Sanford was... somewhere with his feet up, writing. He was... bare-ass hiking on the Appalachian Trail. He was... oops... soul-kissing away his career.

Maybe the media will level with us about their tendency to prop up those in power long after the rest of the country has pinned a clothespin on its collective nose over obvious shortfalls and exposed dastardy. And maybe it'll chat about its tendency to champion specious causes for motives unclear... or, even sinister.

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If zeitgeist - that atmosphere of a particular time - burned oxygen like all transient life here on the planet, it would be breathing hard today, fighting for air amid a cloud of poisonous bubbles puffing up to spread spiritual corrosion as they pop.

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As violence that's shaken Iran since elections 10 days ago begins to taper off, and streets in the nation's major cities cool into uneasy quiet, perhaps some of the overheated rhetoric calling for the U.S. to do something - anything - more than we've done thus far may crust over, as well.

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Whether at a family reunion, a town hall meeting, or in diplomatic debates broadcast internationally, it's easy to determine when a wrong door has been opened, when attention has stumbed upon common anathema - deliberately ignored topics of outrage denied, of past embarrassment or current crimes, of universal shame.

Everyone shuts up - or is shut up. Everything quiets down. Everyone tries, again, to forget.

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Take a look at this woman's face. It could be the face of a family member. Or a good friend. It may even be the slightly stunned expression - with cheap shades cum hair fillet - staring out from the bathroom mirror. (I always look a little side-swiped in the morning.)

Thats' right! Take a good look at the face of Jammie Thomas-Rasset. Today, she's the copyright infringement Joan of Arc who's been broken on the turntable of the music industry!

But, tomorrow, it could be you!

Jammie just got jammed with an almost $2 million fine for downloading and sharing 24 songs on the internet. Don't bother jumping on the Metacalc site - I'll bust down the figures for you ('cause I've already read the story): That averages out to $80,000 per song Jammie must pay to get out of this... well... jam.

That's right!

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This site is overblogged with Iran updates. Can we ease off a bit? Some of us aren't obsessed with this issue. Interested? Sure. Enthralled to the point we want input from every waterbug colonizing Tehran's water and utilities conduits? No. We don't need a running blow-by-blow. The Iranians will work it out - or they won't. I consider my own responsibility as doing everything I can to prevent an American attack on Iran - for any reason and regardless of whose behest propels such an idiotic scheme. But as a wage-earner struggling through America's sorrowful era of diminishing expectation, I have my own agenda. Let me be frank, here: Right now, I don't care as deeply as I know I should whether Iranians blow up themselves.

Pull the plug on Tehran. Enough. This is what CNN is for.

Evidently, Democrats' "Hope and Change" revolution can't make its omelettes without laying a few eggs.

The Treasury Department's wish list for overhauling the country's financial system - which we now recognize as profoundly flawed enough to trigger a seemingly endless meltdown - stuffs a silk pillow with down feathers and the softest foam rubber, to gently tap money and banking sectors that deserve a relentless ass-kicking.

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It's apparent I can presume disagreement with any given piece I encounter on the Huffington Post, and today is no exception - since Sam Stein has given his sober, reflective thumbs-up to Attorney General Eric Holder's troublingly nebulous speech yesterday.

Hailing Holder's references to recent violence in Wichita and Washington, D.C., Stein wrote:

The brief speech - roughly seven minutes in length - was one of the sharpest denunciations of violent extremism since the recent spate of murders began.

I would've phrased it "since the recent spate of murders occurred", since there's no indication the violence marks the beginning of a nationwide Honkie Jackass Insurrection, except, evidently, in the minds of liberal-minded bloggers like Sam Stein. And, truthfully, how much grit is required - in this country, in these times - to denounce violent extremism?

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In the early '90s, I spent almost four mostly miserable years driving a cab in San Francisco. One stark memory I have of the ordeal was the day I watched a cabbie recount a tense encounter with some upper-income yuppies in Golden Gate Park.

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News cycles surf the constant ebb and flow of fickle public fascination. Last week, it was the tragic shootings in Wichita and at the Holocaust Museum. There was a lot of huffing and puffing about hate in the hinterlands, white extremist violence, yadda-yadda - a whole lot of folks who should know better seemed convinced yankee Hitlers were about to pop out of their pantries. Then the fever broke.

The week before, topics were Sonia Sotomayor and her alleged "racism" - whatever that arbitrarily defined term currently means. This silly meme was hammered hard by the shock-jock commissariat, that loose, loop-headed network of gas-bags self-assigned to spotlight whatever molehill masquerades as Mountain of the Moment. Frankly, Rush Limbaugh spouting in high dudgeon about his own race grievance is virulent hypocrisy as hazardous as any variety of bird-shit flu.

Then, the story faded.

Maybe, at some point, there'll be some action - and news - on issues we really care about, like healthcare reform. Or maybe some dealing with real American problems. I, for one, don't think the signal crisis of this country is "hate"; I think it's violence. Let's see the huffers and puffers tackle possible solutions to drive-by bloodbaths that so mark American neighborhoods - especially mine. It's complicated, as issues go, that's for certain. And something tells me answers to this very real, very tragic scourge won't be found in our bibles of political correctness. There are times - actually, most ot the time - when simplistic dogma pushing discredited agenda fails us... miserably.  

Now an old familiar topic comes down the pike - the Mideast and its constant, never-ending travails. Iran re-elected as president the always zany Ahmedinejad... or it didn't... or the election was stolen... or it wasn't. There's some rioting, some news agencies have accused the Iranian regime of interrupting their transmissions, the opposition is under house arrest. And on and on...

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Quick review of Google News indicates we're in the handbasket, sooo... which way is hell?

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Looking absolutely smashing in string bikini, there she goes, ladies and gentlemen - Carrie Prejean, late Miss California, driven by catcalls (and some bust-out catty calls) up the Via Dolorosa of Political Correctness.

Did anyone notice, in her firing yesterday, that nary a soul in media bothered to get her reaction until about 24 hours of news cycle had elapsed? Is that fair? She's on "Larry King" tonight - so does the delay indicate he had exclusive embargo on what will likely be a tearful self-exoneration? Or was Ms. Prejean's vituperative foes given first shot at framing the story?

And what's with the constant references to her STRIPPED! of her title? How about "relieved" of the title? Cashiered. What? Not enough chop-licking subliminal stimulation? Who's writing news copy these days? The Mitchell Brothers? 

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