Well, just shoot me. Or at least that’s what elected Washington appears to be saying after Senate hearings on the subject of gun violence and any tentative, ever-so-dainty potential measures to address its proliferation.

Though most Americans, including a majority of rank and file members of the NRA desire regulations such as universal background checks and banning of assault weapons and large magazines, as long as the cockamamie peanut gallery of cocoanut Republicans remain a persistent blockage in the workings of the congressional branch, and thus, the preservation of irrational governance within the government is guaranteed, the prognosis for the OK Corral remains keen.

Ditto all the way down the line for immigration reform, which despite being the current rage as the result of the President’s sincere advancement of it and proposals from the bi-partisan “gang of eight,” also will fly into the congressional Republican wall of extremist nihilism like a bug against a windshield too in all likelihood. In fact, let’s just make this one of my inspirational, regularly scheduled calls to cheerfully embrace the direst pessimism and to get in touch with your inner defeatist in the face of current system failure due to insanity in the plumbing of democratic infrastructure. In other words, good luck as long as the Looney Tunes Party stays that way.

Anyone daydreaming that anything else that conceivably could make a whit of positive difference in the lives of average Americans will make it down the pike in the near future should keep in mind that filibuster reform, hawked volubly by Democratic senate leadership as a means of alleviating some of the present obdurateness, rolled into the Senate DOA. Here’s a little something Harry Reid and other Democratic senators should nosh on: If you’re going to run your mouth loudly about filibuster reform and then pussy out in spectacular fashion you’ve stupidly and inexcusably trapped yourself. Because Republicans, should they regain power will take away the filibuster quicker than you can say “tough shit” and rub your noses in your previous loud endorsements of filibuster reform while they do.

If there’s any good news here it is that one no longer is required to expend considerable energy planning and carrying out one’s suicide because chances have risen someone else will save you the trouble, and stylishly too, with the latest in advanced weaponry.