Hot even in the shade this early-evening Wednesday here in California’s Central Valley — we’ve reportedly started a climb this week to summer-like temps as the weather heats up in accordance with the coming days.
A/C or the shade, inside or outside, as we try to handle the uncomfortable one way or another.

What’s hard to make/or take comfort in is the horror presented by Republicans on just about every aspect of living agreeably in the nowadays, from healthcare medical-wise, to healthcare murdered-by-gun-wise, climate change, to all the shit in between — GOPers have f*cked the plot. As the situation stands now, according to just about all I’ve read and seen, the GOP is expected to sweep the midterms this November and take back the House and Senate.
What a horror. One aggravating, raw nerve in this concept is Democrats playing nice when the opponent is anything but nice and has no shame, so thus, can lie, cheat and steal without a moral or ethical thought or concern. Democrats play nice, but drastic shit-times demand drastic shit acts.

Despite the reality of Democrats always cleaning-up Republicans’ horrible incompetence on so many occasions and Republicans’ terrible inability to actually govern in any sensible way without lying and cheating, as a political force in America, Democrats have proven to be wimps, and scaredy cats.
Democrats need to start playing by GOP rules:

“At a time when the other side is willing to lie about something as fundamental as who won an election, it’s important that Dems take a stand and don’t back down from a fight."@JohnFetterman to @MollyJongFast, who argues the time is now for bold action:https://t.co/z7J0M8BkVH

— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) June 1, 2022

Molly Jong-Fast this afternoon outlines a decent start at The Atlantic:

Support for tighter gun laws will probably last only until Americans forget about Uvalde. Given that we are, as Gore Vidal called it, “the United States of Amnesia,” Democrats have a small window of time in which to act on gun control.
But that’s okay, because Democrats don’t have much time before the midterms, either — now is the time for Democrats to put a big win on the board. A win on guns would not only protect children; it would shore up Biden’s anemic poll numbers and excite the Democratic base.
If Democratic voters don’t show up this fall, it will be because they’ve lost faith in Democrats’ ability to deliver. And yet, Democrats seem to be terrified to deliver.

Well, many of them do. Not, seemingly, Texas gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke, who showed up at a press conference about the Uvalde shooting and told off the current governor, Greg Abbott, saying, “You are doing nothing. You are offering up nothing. You said this was not predictable. This was totally predictable when you choose not to do anything.”
I was incredibly gratified by Beto’s disruption. We want electeds who will fight for our values as hard as Republicans will fight against them.
…
In Pennsylvania’s Senate primary, meanwhile, John Fetterman crushed polite centrist Congressman Conor Lamb. Seems like a lot of Democrats don’t want to be represented by some focus-grouped, mealymouthed moderate who just wants to find common ground with Ted Cruz. Maybe because sensible people have no common ground with Ted Cruz.

Fetterman told me, “At a time when the other side has basically declared war on reality, and is willing to lie about something as fundamental as who won an election, it’s important that Democrats not only call out the BS, but take a stand and don’t back down from a fight. When the stakes are this high, we need more Democrats who are clear and confident about what we believe, refuse to apologize for it, and don’t run away scared every time Republicans call us names.”

As Ron Brownstein noted in The Atlantic, “Pew polling found that significant majorities of Americans support background checks (81-percent), an assault-weapons ban (63-percent), and a ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines (64-percent); a majority also opposes concealed carry of weapons without a permit.”
Gun control is a winner for Democrats, and that’s why Republicans just want to run out the clock on it.
“I really hope people don’t speculate, don’t jump to the usual political conclusions, don’t call for these sweeping massive changes while people are grieving,” Kellyanne Conway said on Fox News’s The Five — as if taking no action and accepting gun violence as a given should be a comfort to someone who has just lost a child in a mass shooting.
Once again, Democrats need to stop pretending that Republicans are good-faith actors.
…
Before speaking at a Memorial Day observance on Monday, Biden said that Mitch “McConnell is a rational Republican. [Senator John] Cornyn is as well.” Maybe he was being ironic, or playing 16-dimensional chess.
History clearly shows that Mitch McConnell will not ever do anything to protect Americans from guns. If he’s saying that he wants a bipartisan solution, it’s because he knows he can simply keep saying that until the moment passes.
After Uvalde, McConnell told CNN, “I am hopeful that we could come up with a bipartisan solution.” And after the shooting at the Pulse nightclub in 2016, he told reporters, “We’re open to serious suggestions from the experts as to what we might be able to do to be helpful.”
Remember, this is the guy who, according to The Washington Post, refused a meeting with the Sandy Hook families.

In the old cliche — fight fire with fire. Due mainly to Republicans’ mantra of cruelty being the point of it all.

It can be done, as per President Bartlet playing ’em like a fiddle:

Acting lesson aside, here we are once again…

(Illustration out front found here).