THE DEMOCRATS WANT THEIR SLAVES BACK: Maybe Biden was right about the grave threat of White supremacy in America.

PUBLIC HEALTH NEWS: CDC now recommends wearing a seat belt even when you’re outside the car.

Yes, it's the Babylon Bee, but I wish they'd quit giving the nannystaters ideas....

MAYBE THERE'S HOPE JUSTICE AFTER ALL: Woke executive explains why his company is going to go out of business.

YOUR 'WOKE' MONEY ISN'T WELCOME HERE: Ted Cruz pledges not to take corporate PAC money.

I disagree. He should take the money and spit in their faces after he wins. It's the Democrats' playbook; use it against them.

FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH ON THE HUNDREDTH DAY OF BIDEN. Here is some data from the Rasmussen Reports Daily Presidential Tracking Poll for the last three presidents.

Each chart has three sets of data: green represents the percentage of approvals; red, disapprovals. They sum to 100%. The data in black is the Rasmussen Approval Index (scale on the right), calculated as the difference between those who Strongly Approve and those who Strongly Disapprove, which usually is about 70% of the total polled.

Here's Obama: Obama started with a very strong approval rate, but after 100 days his approval was close to divided at about 55%/45%, and his approval index dropped (along with total approvals) from plus 30 to near zero.

And Trump: His first 100 days were chaotic -- the typical initial honeymoon, followed by the usual drop. Disapprovals peaked in late March, then began a decline. At the end of the first 100 days, the rates were close to 54%/46%, with disapprovals dominating. The approval index dropped to a low of about -20 in April, recovering to about -10 at 100 days.

And finally Biden: He promised a 'boring' presidency, and largely succeeded. Approval/disapproval rates have consistently been right at the 50% mark, a sometimes little over, sometimes a little under. His approval index has consistently been below zero, slowly declining to the -10 level today.

Make of it what you will.

IT WON'T HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH SCIENCE: When will Biden declare the COVID 'crisis' over?

It will have everything to do with 'science'; for Democrats the only science is political science.

NEITHER IS JOE BIDEN: Majority of voters say Vice President Harris not qualified to become President.

EXCEEDED MY EXPECTATIONS, TOO: Biden's first 100 days exceed Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's progressive expectations.

I really didn't think he could possibly be this bad. I was wrong.

ALL THE UNICORNS HAVE GONE ON STRIKE: Why wind and solar energy are doomed to failure.

INTERSECTIONALITY, as described by the Left and Right.

I CERTAINLY HOPE SO: Will MLB’s decision to move the All-Star game from Atlanta hurt Democrats in 2022?

WHERE IS THE CDC WHEN YOU REALLY NEED THEM? An epidemic of brainless Leftists in this country.

Another Random Thought: Aren't they called zombies? (Well, except for the fact that brainless Leftists aren't mute.)

CAT REBUKES OWNER for being woke. Cats are smart.

SPRINGTIME 2021, Week 8: Well ... the leaves didn't come. The leaves didn't come! Looks like I was off by a week or few. Here's the almost usual pond picture -- just taken from roughly halfway from the deck to the fire pit.

The difference this time is that last year that picture couldn't be taken; the brush would have already obscured it. That's been cleared -- hopefully permanently. Note that the hardwoods are not cooperating. They're blooming, just not showing leaves as I had expected last week.

Here's our house, taken from the same spot as the one above. Again much of the brush has been cleared, and the pines are showing clearly but the hardwoods, both to the left and in the background are recalcitrant.

Looking north toward the fire pit, the brush is cleared but the hardwoods are still not cooperating.

The dogwood outside our kitchen window has decided to go full bloom this year. I don't think I've ever seen it this full. It has leaves showing, but the white blossoms have shown real staying power this year. The smaller deciduous softwoods and brush on the south side are rapidly getting their green on. Since there's been almost no attempt to clear the brush on that side, I expect it will begin to dominate the skyline by next week.

Finally, our road. Since it's lined with mostly oaks, I to expect our 'tunnel' to reappear this year, but as you can see the trees are still mostly bare.

'Till next week, then....

WANT TO BET THE ANSWER IS 'YES'? Are NYPD officers rushing to retire amid city’s anti-cop climate?

TWO TO MANY: PowerLine's Week in Pictures had so many good ones this week I couldn't decide. Here are my favorites:

Now for two 'headlines'. One real:

One unreal:

At least I hope unreal....

Now go see the rest.

WATCH: The fight for the future is here.

It's not so much for me, or even my children. It's the grandchildren who will suffer if we lose.

SORRY, BUT YOU ALREADY MADE YOUR BED. SLEEP WELL. Portland's Democratic mayor begs public to help 'unmask' members of 'self-described anarchist mob'.

If you're a Democrat, being 'mugged by reality' once isn't usually enough. But repetition helps....

HEH: It’s time to flatten the gun violence curve.

BLACK ASSAILANTS LIVES MATTER; black victims lives don't.

AMMO GRRRLL is presented with a totally unexpected opportunity!

NOW YOU UNDERSTAND WHY I MAKE IT A POINT TO ALWAYS OWE THEM: IRS holding over 29 million unprocessed tax returns, delaying refunds.

My check will be mailed just in time for the May 17th deadline. But it will be paid on time....

ELON MUSK buys Twitter for $600B and immediately deletes it.

A pleasant thought. And more seriously, Twitter is only worth about $60B, and while that's a serious chunk of change, it is within striking distance for Musk. Especially if he were to keep Twitter and just fire the twits who man it.

IT'S TIME TO GET RED STATES INVOLVED: Put the squeeze on 'woke' corporations.

The state of Georgia came damned close with Delta Airlines. I think it was enough to scare them, and I hope the attempt will give other red states some spine.

NON SEQUITUR discovers that double-edged sword thingy.

CALIFORNIA NATIONAL GUARD put fighter jet on alert in March 2020 for 'possible domestic mission'.

Hmm: I would have thought that a clear violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, but apparently it's a bit more nuanced.

Added Random Thought: Our ruling snowflakes really, really hate us and the evidence I'm seeing since Biden's inauguration suggests to me that the 98 pound weaklings (remember Charles Atlas, for those of you my age?) are getting really, tired of having sand kicked in our faces.

They're scared.

THE FORECAST IS cloudy for the next two years.

CDC RECOMMENDS everyone now wear tin foil face masks while in public.

They go well with the tin foil hats....

THE LEFT OFFICIALLY HAS GONE INSANE when Democrats start to echo Republicans who denounce their ideas.

The first part is true whether or not other Democrats agree. As to the second part, I'll tentatively agree with Deroy Murdock: cautiously optimistic.

YES. SERIOUSLY, YES: Are we led by anti-Americans?

SHOUT THE TRUTH: The only antidote to the ruling class’s nonsense.

To be honest, I'd keep the dog and boot the owner....

GENDER IS A RELIGION masquerading as a science.

Longer, but interesting. Read it all.

BEN & JERRY’S will discontinue vanilla ice cream to fight white supremacy.

IT'S ONLY BEEN 100 DAYS: How much ruin does America have left?

INSTEAD OF GUN CONTROL, America needs celebrity control.

ELECT JOE BIDEN? How to start a war.

THE VILLAGE IDIOT SELF IDENTIFIES:

Posted at Issues & Insights.

NOW IF WE COULD JUST BUY AMMUNITION: Finally, toilet paper demand drops.

THE #1 REASON to go to college.

Yes, it's the Babylon Bee but I'm not convinced it's satire....

THEY MAY BE WRONG, but they're always certain.

Certainly wrong; it's Vox.

YA THINK? Experts say Chauvin jury was likely influenced by media, politicians.

For once, the 'experts' got something right....

RANDOM THOUGHT: The purpose of higher education is to drive out common sense.

And experience.

YES, YOU DID. Now enjoy your 'victory'.

More here.

GIST OF BIDEN PRESS CONFERENCE ON CORONAVIRUS TODAY: If you're good little boys and girls and wear your masks as we demand, we'll let you have a candy on July 4th. (But only one candy as sugar is bad for your teeth.)

BINGO! Chauvin verdict was extortion by the left-wing mob.

MASKS TODAY, MASKS TOMORROW, MASKS FOREVER: We have to control you to keep you safe(ly under our control).

SECURITY IS FOR ME. Screw you.

IF YOU NEED ANY MORE PROOF THAT DEMOCRATS ARE GARBAGE PEOPLE, here it is.

THE NEW WORLD ORDER is taking its mask off while telling you to keep yours on.

But they're the anointed.

Self anointed. Bow to the self anointed.

Nuts.

HEH: DuckDuckGo uses App Store privacy labels to call out Google for ‘spying’ on users.

Google and I are not on the best of terms....

SPRINGTIME 2021, Week 7: The leaves are coming. The leaves are coming! 'Poof' day (my term for that day when you suddenly decide 'Hey, it's really green outside') is nearly here. I predict near mid-week. Here are the reasons for my assessment:

The dogwoods have ceased blooming and are now showing real leaves. Yet to fill out, but soon.

The smaller (softwood) trees are filling out. That bright yellow-green in the picture is new leaf; it will darken as the tree fills out.

The hardwoods, mostly oaks, have begun their spring dance. If you look carefully, you can see them finally budding out -- flowering, I guess you'd call it -- the air (and porch, and decks, and cars) are covered with fine green pollen and everyone is sneezing. Another week, maybe two, and we'll see the leaves asserting themselves.

Now back to the usual pond view. Not a whole lot of difference yet, the buds are still nearly invisible in the distance. Next week should show some change.

The same is true of the view northwest toward the fire pit. Since that part of the property has been cleared of undergrowth the seasonal changes are still nearly invisible.

Much the same for this view of our neighbor's house from the northwest edge of our property. In time (next week, maybe?) the house will disappear. Until then....

FORMER CDC DIRECTOR ROBERT REDFIELD believes COVID-19 resulted from gain-of-function research at a Wuhan lab.

FAUCI DISAGREES: He also thinks children should wear masks while playing.

Redfield is a bureaucratic tool who should have spoken up when he was part of the Trump administration; Fauci is Bozo the clown.

SHOULDN'T SHE BE ARRESTED AND PROSECUTED FOR INCITING A RIOT? Maxine Waters urges Minnesota anti-police crowd to ‘stay on the street’ if Chauvin acquitted in Floyd case.

UPDATE: The New York Post agrees.

KURT SCHLICHTER: The coming backlash.

I'm hopeful, but not sanguine, that the 2022 mid-term election will be sufficient to stop it. Otherwise....

MIKE ROWE: Minimum wage jobs are the lowest 'rungs on a ladder' to success.

My first job paid 25 cents an hour, with no benefits. My last job (before I retired) paid $65/hour, with benefits that equaled that amount on an hourly basis. Post-retirement, I briefly earned $300/hour for a short consulting gig.

Without that first job, I might never have had that last job.

Mike Rowe is right; the Dumbocrats are wrong.

No sane employer is going to pay $15/hour just for existing....

THE ‘PAUSE’ ON THE JOHNSON & JOHNSON CORONAVIRUS VACCINE reveals one systemic flaw plaguing the FDA: an overabundance of caution.

Maybe Americans will finally realize the extent to which federal bureaucracy routinely stops potentially life-saving innovation in its tracks.

SCROLL DOWN for a list of woke companies to avoid as much as possible.

I KNEW I LIKED BRETT FAVRE: NFL legend slams 'woke' sports leagues.

He's right.

BUT THEY HAVE A NEW BATCH OF EXCUSES AT THE READY: California is unprepared for another catastrophic fire season.

They've never been prepared.

THE PANDEMIC POWER GRAB: "They don't want you thinking you have the ability to take care of yourself."

SOUND ADVICE: How to woke-proof your kids.

RANDOM THOUGHT: The helping/healing professions are morphing into controlling professions.

BROOKLYN CENTER: Antifa comes to town. This comment is prescient: "Antifa will start being arrested and prosecuted when more of its members start arriving at the morgue."

I think the more accurate statement is that the riots will stop as soon as Antifa members start arriving at the morgue. They're only there because they know they have a free pass; it'll quit as soon as they discover their own bodies are at risk.

POWERLINE: If you live in an "environmentally conscious" state, Germany's energy disaster may be coming to you.

Here's the part I find interesting:

The government strategy calls for improving cross-border flows to spread localized and temporary supply risks, but its neighbors are doing the same.

Here's the thing. In buying electricity, Country 'A' is essentially selling its pollution to Country 'B'. What if Country 'B' isn't buying? Has anyone thought about that?

I thought not.

REMEMBER THIS WELL WHEN THE ALLIGATOR COMES FOR YOU: Passivity is a choice, and you voted for it.

Me, I have an AR=15 -- and a backhoe.

FAIRNESS IS OVERRATED: NBC's Lester Holt says we don’t need to hear both sides to define truth.

Truth is what we, the Democrat's media adjunct, say it is. So shut up, peasant. Obey your betters.

Fat chance.

WHEN THE ARMED FORCES SERVE A GLOBAL CORPORATE AGENDA, it’s no surprise that HR mandates are mission critical.

NANCY PELOSI SHOULD BE IMPEACHED. Pelosi’s wild declaration regarding the Iowa House seat Democrats tried to steal.

She lost this round, but she should have lost her own House seat long, long ago.

POWERLINE'S riot preseason edition of its famous Week in Pictures series has posted. There are many good ones (obviously) but I have three I want to highlight.

This first one is a zombie movie classic:

These next two are obviously related by a common thread:

And

And no, I don't think the curve is anywhere near flattening....

Now go see the rest.

FROM POWERLINE: Mayor Bower's odd decision.

PowerLine's Paul Mirengoff is at a loss to understand her decision. I suppose he's too young to remember The Outer Limits television series (1963-65):

There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can roll the image, make it flutter. We can change the focus to a soft blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity. For the next hour sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. We repeat: there is nothing wrong with your television set. You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to… The Outer Limits.

It's about control. With Democrats it's always about control.

THOUGHT FOR TODAY: "A Democrat is a terrible waste of mind."

SCIENCE, POLITICS, AND COVID: Will truth prevail?

In the near term, who knows? In the long term, certainly -- Mother Nature doesn't suffer fools lightly.

THEY SHOULD DEMAND THE FIRING OF ALL THOSE WHO AGREE: Virginia county school advisory board demands the firing of teachers who disagree with critical race theory.

No surprise: it's the 'wokest' county in the whole state....

STEVEN HAYWARD has more campus crazy at PowerLine. My favorite part is Hayward's parting shot: "Maybe next time the conference should invite Al Sharpton to address them on tax avoidance strategies. That will suit their ideology better."

BAD GIRL. BAD, BAD GIRL: Professor of gender studies compares transgender people to QAnon conspiracy followers.

Fury erupts, naturally. The question I have is who was more offended -- the transgenders or the QAnon followers.

MEDIA STRANGELY SILENT: Atlanta man arrested with six (6!) guns on his person.

Why the silence?

Well, first, he was black. And second, Georgia is an open carry state.

ZERO FOR FIVE: Gavin Newsom taken (again) to the legal woodshed at the Supreme Court.

Now kick him out of office but keep him in California to enjoy the 'benefits' of his own restrictions.

A reminder for California taxpayers: You paid his legal bills. You're paying for the cost of kicking him out of office. Elections have consequences. Vote smarter.

IT'S COME TO THIS: Armed citizens protected their property in Minneapolis during second night of rioting.

If the police are barred from doing their jobs, eventually citizens will.

It will be ugly. Necessary, but ugly.

RANDOM THOUGHT: Progressives are liberals who've doubled down on stupid.

SPRINGTIME 2021, Week 6: I see I've been not blogging a lot this last week since there's been so few posts between my weekly updates. I'll try to correct that but there's been so much going on....

Here's the usual pond view taken from the deck. Not that much visible in the picture has changed over the week but Mother Nature is clearly gearing up for an opening celebration. The flowers are gone on the tulip magnolia and leaves are showing; the perennials are popping up; and all the trees except the larger deciduous trees have buds showing.

Here's an example taken from the stairs down to the pond. The weeds in the foreground are popping up everywhere -- and growing faster that I can keep up.

The pond, with its fountain, was spectacular today. While there's still no leaves to speak of, the pond view is always greener because of the number of pine trees along the commons/boat dock area. Even though our next-door neighbor has cleared most of the brush so he can see the pond, his house (top left) will be nearly invisible by summer.

The same is true of our house, seen here from the pond. Even with my brush-clearing last winter, it will be nearly invisible when the deciduous trees turn green.

And as a finale, the dogwoods (we have Florida dogwood trees -- not nearly enough) have finally begun to blossom. Hopefully they will be spectacular this year.

Until next week, then.

I DON'T THINK THE CONSTITUTION GIVES BIDEN A SAY: Biden to let Justice Breyer decide when to retire from the Supreme Court.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON:

Wokeness is not really about fairness for minorities, the oppressed and the poor, past or present. It is mostly a self-confessional cult of anointed bullies, and hypocrites of all races and genders, who seek to flex, and increase, their own privilege and power.

Period.

Read it all.

IT'S MORE IMPORTANT TO BE DRONES THAN TO BE ALIVE: Big Tech’s ‘trust’ problem will soon cost lives by scaring people away from life-saving technology.

But what good are dead drones?
[Answer: they don't vote against the drone maker.]

WOKENESS IS NOT ABOUT TAKING POWER FROM THE MAN. Wokeness is The Man’s way of securing his power over the rest of us.

Just say no. Say Hell, no!

SPRINGTIME 2021, Week 5: This week I revert back to my more-or-less standard practice of the pond view first.

Here it is, from my usual place on the carport deck. The brush and other ground cover I pretty well suppressed over the winter, so it still looks winter barren but the trees have actually started to bud out. Not visible in the picture yet, but certainly will be by next week's pictures.

Here's the fire pit/hopefully soon-to-be north lawn. Still pretty much barren, especially since so many trees were taken down to make room for the hopefully soon-to-come barn, but as above the trees are just now starting to blossom.

A view from the north, looking back at the barn pad. Easter has been a gorgeous day out.

Finally, a view I don't expect to see again until next winter - a 'skyline' of the next ridge to the south. If the trees blossom as I expect, by next week the ridge (and sky, mostly) will be obscured by the leaves from the trees downslope.

Until next week, then.

IS BOTH AN OPTION? Democrats: Stupid Or Liars?

WELCOME to Woke America.

WHY AM I NOT SURPRISED? Study declares AOC one of the least effective members of Congress.