Hot to say the least this Wednesday in California’s Central Valley — just turning 6 PM and it’s still 100-freaking-degrees, and apparently won’t really be tepid until well after dark.
Tomorrow the same with a forecast high of 106. Then some cooling through the weekend.
Summer, summer hitherto not here…

And again today protests across the country over the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police more than a week ago. Although a bit riotous for days, supposedly most of the protests were peaceful, and crowds way-diverse from what I could see on cable TV, and have read in the news, which make these events different from all others in the past.
However, there’s also a way-more military sense to the scenario — as described from The Washington Post‘s live updates this afternoon:

On the sixth day of protests Wednesday, Asia Horne and Haley Mahon walked into an unrecognizable version of downtown Washington.

Cops and military personnel seemed to walk on every sidewalk, block every road, bar every intersection.

On Monday, the American University students had been able to press up against the edges of Lafayette Square chanting with the familiar white columns of the executive mansion in sight. Two days later, they could hardly see it, the view blocked by rows of military vehicles and lines of law enforcement with riot shields.

Later, Horne and Mahon tried to march with hundreds of others to the Lincoln Memorial — only to realize it, too, had been converted to something akin to a military fortress, guarded by immense ranks of law enforcement.

“I’ve only lived here three years, but I did think the nation’s capital was supposed to be more open,” said Mahon, 21.
“These national landmarks are supposed to be open to the people.”

“I think he just wants to hide in his bunker,” Horne, 20, said of President Trump.
“I think he’s scared.”

No wonder with the T-Rump — from The Daily Beast updated this morning:

Additionally, the president has pressed aides and Pentagon officials for graphic details on the kind of armored vehicles, military units, aircraft, and even “tanks” that they could potentially send to maintain order in U.S. areas rocked by protests and rioting, according to two people familiar with recent discussions.

One of the sources, a senior administration official, insisted that the president wasn’t ordering tanks to roll down the streets, but was inquiring about “the kind of hardware” that could be used in military shows of force, and at one point Trump threw out the word “tanks.”

“I think that is just one of the military words he knows,” this official said.

Such a horror it’s really hard to comprehend — though, there’s a glimpse from the past for the nowadays, former President Obama displayed some optimistic perspectives via a virtual town hall event today on the civil unrest.
The difference is painful…

Refreshing to hear sane talk. Obama feels 2020 more than 2008. I noticed this toward the end of the speech: ‘“This country was founded on protest. It is called the American Revolution. Every step of progress in this country, every expansion of freedom, every expression of our deepest ideals, has been won through efforts that made the status quo uncomfortable.”‘

Read the full text here.

You can easily see our predicament.

Image below sort-of/kind-of looks like Obama, huh? In a sad, surreal way…

(Illustration: Pablo Picasso’s ‘Harlequin Head,’ found here),