A smoke-tainted ambiance in the air this late-afternoon Sunday here in California’s Central Valley, with just an occasional slight dab of sunshine to give our view out windows a muted-bright sheen — once again, we’re back into a Mars-like motif to the weather, a freaky phenomenon becoming more common. Currently our second-straight year of “The Martian” scenarios.
We’re the climate-change-enhanced consequences off the KNP Complex and Windy fires currently burning in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park, located a couple of hours or so to the southeast from where I’m located — wind currents tell the tale.

Meanwhile, back East in DC there’s also smoke, but it’s the political shit kind being blown up the ass of America. Joe Biden’s agenda is way popular, support considered ‘overwhelming,’ especially with the package consisting of human aid: ‘President Biden’s $3.5 trillion reconciliation package would expand Medicare, combat climate change and offer free public prekindergarten and community college while boosting federal safety-net programs.‘

Although all the shit in the program is not only favored by voters, but needed by voters, Republicans can’t attack good humanitarian sense — yet they do, but by side-stepping:

This is very important exchange.

It is why opponents of the reconciliation bill DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT WHAT'S IN THE BILL

Because what's in the bill is very popular

Instead, they prefer to refer to the bill as a NUMBER which abstracts the actual policy https://t.co/LQYv0HDeqs

— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) October 3, 2021

Helping people is the backbone/background of the package — two free years of community college; buffing-up child care assistance along with universal pre-K; expand Medicare to include coverage of dental, hearing and vision services; extend the child tax credit; cut prescription drug prices and include paid family and medical leave. All directed at the welfare of individuals and families.
Also included are funds to help fight climate change, including the $150 billion “clean electricity performance program,” and even an SBA loan initiative to help former convicts.
In a poll last summer: ‘66-percent of voters, including 78-percent of Independents, say taking action to deal with climate change this year is an important priority for the President and Congress.‘

Late last month, a poll from progressive nonprofit ALG Research showed a strong majority for the plan:

The survey found that most voters in those districts similarly backed the Democrats’ massive spending plan, which includes popular issues like tuition-free community college, universal pre-K, and investments in public housing and climate change.

Fifty-four-percent of voters in those states and districts supported the plan, compared to 43-percent who opposed. The survey also found that 58-percent of independents respondents supported the proposal, while 37-percent opposed it.

Despite the support from Americans, yet the right-wing/Republican/MAGA hatters still throw rocks:

Story via Common Dreams from Friday:

A video out Friday featuring numerous polls showing the popularity of the programs included in the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package that Democrats are trying to push through Congress — and narrated by one of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ top aides — offered a scathing indictment of those within the party who continue to oppose the sweeping investments in childcare, Medicare expansion, housing, higher education, and climate.

Warren Gunnels, the longtime staff director and policy advisor for Sanders (I-Vt.) who is sometimes referred to as the “keeper of receipts,” argues in the video that corporate Democrats like Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona are blocking an agenda that is widely supported by the American public.

As The Nation’s John Nichols noted, the video shows Republican pundit Meghan McCain repeatedly claiming aspects of the plan — including “expanding Medicare, paid family leave, tuition-free community college, ending child poverty and saving the planet didn’t poll well” — but that Gunnels masterfully “explains that she is scorchingly wrong.”

“I’m not quite sure what planet Meghan is living on, but right here on planet Earth the overwhelming majority of the American people — including ‘independent centrists’ — support the $3.5 trillion… plan,” Gunnels says in the video.

He then runs through a list of surveys — including an August 12 Fox News poll that found a majority of likely voters favor spending $3.5 trillion on priorities including combating the climate crisis, health care, and childcare — to underscore the package’s popularity.

Noting the overwhelming support for some of the bill’s individual components, Gunnels says: “When 84-percent want to expand Medicare to cover dental, vision and hearing, and 81-percent want Medicare to negotiate lower prescription drug prices, opposing these policies doesn’t make you a moderate. It doesn’t make you a centrist. It makes you an extremist.”

Well said. The tide of America is shifting, changing more and more all the time. Republicans can see the writing on the wall — the absolutely-only way for them to win is to lie, cheat and steal. Time will run out for them eventually, but it’s going to be Shitsville until then.

And to close this out, a bit of my most-favorite music for a long while, Enigma, and ‘Remember The Future,’ a catchphrase for right now:

So once again, here we are…

(Illustration out front: Salvador Dali’s ‘Tête Raphaëlesque éclatée [Exploding Raphaelesque Head],’ found here)