(Image found here).

Clear-blue skies and tons of sunshine (albeit now fading sunshine) this late-afternoon Saturday here in California’s Central Valley — a glorious day, yesterday was, too, and maybe, hopefully, more of the same tomorrow.
Although forecasts differ, the weather is mostly a toss-up sometimes.

However, this past week’s American political life took a sweet turn to the light of optimismist hope, despite the real-world shit of ugly, cruel, and crass still plays to a minority-struck full house. I haven’t been posting much lately, in fact, it’s been a week since my last outing, and it was a weather story, would you believe it? I think as I myself am getting older (I turned 75 that past November) I feel like I’m being drained of energy for even simple mental tasks to compose posts, or really do anything of substantial-like value. Retired and getting up in age can be weird as shit.
Couple that with inherent, longtime laziness — exacerbated when presented with circumstances, like in this case, recovering from eye surgery — I fill my time with doomscrolling without having to doomscroll. Anything, everything, everywhere all the time is doomsville. You actually don’t have to pursue bad news, it’s already on your doorstep (or screen). News nowadays is noxious to the human nervous system.

Fold into the soup of ugly shit is the pure horror of the T-Rump and you have a full mixture of fright for the immediate future. The terror of a second T-Rump presidential term is beyond calculating, yet it is easy to ascertain — the end of America as we’ve known it for 250-plus years, an end of that sweet, sainted experiment of democracy. The asshole, shitty apprehension over the 2024 presidential race is a total clusterfuck.
In the last few weeks, I’d become really pessimistic, and gloomy about the chance Joe Biden could really beat the Orange Turd this coming November and the shitty reality of T-Rump (and the shit storm of hard-right horror to be inflicted on the American governmental landscape — beyond perception the terror).

However, a couple of days ago, the scenario shifted as the full-frontal lobe was placed front-and-center to the American people, creating hope that’s knocking on the door of dark wickedness.
David Rothkopf at The Daily Beast this afternoon (h/t LG&M):

Within a 24-hour period, the 2024 presidential campaign kicked off in a way that could not present the choice before the American public more starkly.

Joe Biden stood before the Congress and, in his State of the Union address, made a powerful case that he would fight with every fiber of his being to preserve American democracy and the fundamental freedoms of all Americans.

Then, late Friday, Donald Trump hosted Hungary’s authoritarian ruler, Viktor Orban, in the kind of pro-Putin, anti-democracy summit that perfectly captured the true nature of today’s MAGA Republican Party. The dinner reception was so important that even Melania Trump made one of her rare appearances at her husband’s side. Trump said, “There’s nobody smarter or a better leader than Viktor Orban. He’s the boss. He’s a non-controversial figure because he says, ‘This is the way it’s going to be and that’s the end of it.’ He’s the boss. He’s a great leader.”

A day earlier, Orban—Vladimir Putin’s man in Europe, his acolyte and champion—met behind closed doors with the leaders of the new American right at the Heritage Foundation.

There it is, America. Biden is running to preserve America’s traditional values and institutions. Trump and the GOP have openly embraced autocracy, celebrating the virtues of “strong man” government.

That sounds like hyperbole. It sounds like hysteria. It sounds like scare tactics. But it is none of those things and the sooner Americans realize it, the sooner they’ll understand the gravity of the threat we face in this election.

Not surprisingly, T-Rump acted the piece of shit he is (The New York Times): ‘During his campaign rally in Rome, Ga., tonight, Donald Trump made fun of Joe Biden’s stutter while criticizing the president’s State of the Union address on Thursday. After calling Biden’s speech “angry” and “divisive,” Trump slurred his words and pretended to stutter in a mocking imitation of the president.‘

Anyone with sense and two eyes/ears knows/recognizes the exact opposite happened. A cruel, immoral asshole takes a breakdown:

Of course, the T-Rump pushed back: ‘“Robert DeNiro has a terminal case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Such a stupid sounding guy, a low IQ individual!”‘

Despite all this Joe Biden has come to the forefront and it’s obvious T-Rump is an ignorant piece-of noxious shit. Plus, Joe and the SOTU speech maybe, hopefully, turned the left corner, and maybe, just maybe, there’s hope waiting at the end of the tunnel:

This afternoon in a post about the above ad, Digby nailed the feel I’m finally feeling:

Biden had a good SOTU address and the press is laying off of him for the moment, This ad is good and hopefully there will be more of them that we can see and send around to people who might need to see it. But I do want to caution everyone to be aware that there are going to be many bad days to come. It’s the nature of this closely divided electorate and a media that craves the controversy so I have no doubt we’ll be losing sleep over the next few months. But this moment at least marks the beginning of Biden and his campaign taking the initiative to turn the ship around and it’s heartening to see it.

Yes, it way-is!

The Beatles start our play out of here:

And Journey closes out with advice for our hazardous journey:

Hopeful, fingers-crossed optimism, or not, yet once again here we are…

(Illustration out front: New Yorker cartoon by Bruce Eric Kaplan, found here.)