Clear at sunrise, but now about an hour or so later this early Thursday on California’s north coast, there’s high-thinnish clouds filtering the shine, but clear skies scheduled for today, and supposedly warmer, too.
According to forecasts, dry as a bone for the next week to 10 days — one word, ‘nice.’

Also on the pleasant side of the street, not to mention a neat-bright angle on national politics, Sen. Bernie Sanders of  Vermont yesterday officially became part of the 2016 presidential race — a try for the ordinary guy.

Sanders exhibited a way-underdog’s bravado: ‘“I am running in this election to win.”‘

(Illustration found here).

Already a kind of political lone wolf, Sanders made an entrance onto the all-of-America stage in jostling style — instead of running as an Independent, he will be running for president as a Democrat (self-described “Democratic socialist”), which now presents Hillary Clinton with more turbulence than presented by a one-horse campaign.

I’ve always appreciated Sanders, a kind of straight-talking, no-bullshit guy with a main governing emphasis on the ordinary working stiff, especially in the nasty arena of income/wealth inequality — via Vox: ‘Even as a student at the University of Chicago in the 1960s, influenced by the hours he spent in the library stacks reading famous philosophers, he became frustrated with his fellow student activists, who were more interested in race or imperialism than the class struggle. They couldn’t see that everything they protested, he later said, was rooted in “an economic system in which the rich controls, to a large degree, the political and economic life of the country.”‘
Even at 73, Sanders can slap air and get some attention from a national audience — the 2010 filibuster — and could have a strong influence at least on how Hillary conducts herself.

One of the better journalists around nowadays, Matt Taibbi, in an enthusiastic ‘good-luck-and-give-’em-hell piece yesterday at Rolling Stone, gave Bernie-Boy the high-five, citing the media as possible linchpin:

This is why his entrance into the 2016 presidential race is a great thing and not a mere footnote to the inevitable coronation of Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee.
If the press is smart enough to grasp it, his entrance into the race makes for a profound storyline that could force all of us to ask some very uncomfortable questions.
…
It’s a little-known fact, but we reporters could successfully sell Sanders or Elizabeth Warren or any other populist candidate as a serious contender for the White House if we wanted to.
Hell, we told Americans it was okay to vote for George Bush, a man who moves his lips when he reads.
But the lapdog mentality is deeply ingrained and most Beltway scribes prefer to wait for a signal from above before they agree to take anyone not sitting atop a mountain of cash seriously.
Thus this whole question of “seriousness” — which will dominate coverage of the Sanders campaign — should really be read as a profound indictment of our political system, which is now so openly an oligarchy that any politician who doesn’t have the blessing of the bosses is marginalized before he or she steps into the ring.

A good, nice warm send-off to Sanders, with hope the splash makes enough proper waves — sure-as-dogshit would really like to see him win, though.