THE REAL REASON for freedom of speech.

RANDOM THOUGHT: Mobile phones have evolved from cell phones to smart phones to smart-ass phones. What's next?

SPRING 2023, WEEK 4: The tulip magnolia is back! Last week it looked dead after the freeze; now it's blooming again. It'll probably not fill out, but the new flowers suggest it will thrive again.

Now on to the usual, the view from the deck.

The tulip magnolia is there, but this picture was taken a day earlier and had only one tiny blossom. We go next to the fire pit for which it's a summer day (without leaves yet).

And now we make our first summer 2023 trip down to the pond. This picture is taken from our dock, looking roughly north.

And this one is from the other side of the pond, looking back toward the house. It's 112 steps back up the slope to the house from the dock.

All the green is pine trees; all the deciduous trees have not yet begun to bud. Here's our creek, fed from the pond. You'll probably never see it again this year as the brush is already beginning to fill in. It'll disappear into grass, weeds, and low brush soon

And finally we leave you with our lonely forsythia,still waiting for the trees o blot out the valley below us.

Until next week then, while we wait for the dogwoods to blossom. It'll be soon, maybe as early as tomorrow.

IS COFFEE RACIST? How drinking coffee perpetuates white supremacy.

I've heard that adding milk or cream to it removes the racism.

NOW THAT'S SAYING A LOT: Joe Biden lies a lot even for a Democrat.

DOWN WITH COLLEGE: The academic emperor isn’t wearing any clothes, and most people have noticed.

THEY'RE SCARED. VERY, VERY SCARED. Why is Pete's hubby Chasten Buttigieg so peeved over Florida banning porn is schools?

And rightfully so.

BATTERIES: Why wind and solar will never work.

Blindingly obvious to anyone with half a mind.

ONLY HALF? Half of U.S. population believes national media intend to mislead and misinform.

GOODER AND HARDER: The conservative case for San Francisco’s reparations plan.

TO QUOTE ILHAN OMAR "It's all about the benjamins."

And power. Don't forget power.

POWERLINE'S Week in Pictures has an obvious favorite for conservatives like me:

As you read them all look for Elon Musk's tweet, too.

ENGLISH PROFESSORS: Who killed English literature?

CAN I VOTE FOR BOTH? See the poll at the end.

CORRECTED: North Korea claims 800,000 join army in a single day to to fight the U.S avoid starvation.

SPRING 2023, WEEK 3: It's been a very cold week for spring, with freezing weather every night, so maybe it's back to square one for this year. Here's the usual pond view, with the tulip magnolia full of frozen - and dead - flowers. The tree will survive but the flowers won't.

The yard is still looking good as we've had plenty of rain, but the trees, well, hopefully they haven't begun to bud out yet.

Finally, since it had already flowered and begun to leaf out, the hardy forsythia.

And that's it for this week -- too dang cold for a trip down to the pond. Next week, maybe.

DO YOU REALLY THINK this ...thing ... belongs in a classroom?

THE TRUTH ABOUT GUNS: Biden adopts a whole-of-government approach in targeting firearm makers and gun owners’ rights.

At the moment it's more show than serious. But pay attention -- it does mean that the Left isn't giving up.

IT'S HAPPENING: Detroit armed robber shot in chest by concealed carry permit holder.

Another 'good guy with a gun' story.....

MORE FROM IMPRIMIS: The politicization of the Department of Justice.

THE LEFT: Born of the lowest circles of Hell.

GLENN REYNOLDS [INSTAPUNDIT] ON SUBSTACK: Reflections on falling away from unbridled tech-optimism.

I've always been skeptical, and it looks like I'm right again. Never bet against common sense.

HOW REFRESHING. Texas' unique plan to close the border looks promising.

If you won't do your job, I will....

POWERLINE'S DAILY CHART: No wonder the public doesn't trust our public health establishment.

Neither do our doctors. I was speaking to my health care provider at an appointment a few weeks ago; she agreed that her confidence in the CDC and our public health establishment was near zero.

"THE THING" that swallowed Britain.

[THING] ... that combination of postmodern identity theory, religious fervor, pseudo-therapeutic “empathy,” dogmatic moralism, private bullying, and ritualized public humiliation which has swept through Western societies over the last decade.

After reading the whole post, I'm left wondering if more people would be alive if 'personal pronouns' were limited to he, she, and it.

ASTRONUT SEN. MARK KELLY [D-AZ] asks three agencies (Fed, FDIC, and Treasury) if there was a program underway on social media to censor information that would lead to a bank run.

It's the Deep State, (and) stupid....

GOD HELP US ALL: Trans Biden administration official says changing kids' genders will soon be fully embraced.

I suggest selling California (wokesters included) to China and extending the border wall north at least beyond Sacramento (northern California, Oregon, and Washington state may still be salvageable).

AMERICA'S NEWS OF RECORD: Terrified Biden wanders around the White House wondering where Obama went.

Just because it's satire doesn't mean it isn't true.

IMPRIMIS: The Twitter files have revealed an existential threat to America.

Read the whole thing. Carefully. Then fight back.

POWERLINE'S DAILY CHART: The clear and obvious message is to keep current right-to-work laws and to work to expand them to all 50 states.

IT'S HERE: Censorship (by intimidation) on the Right.

RANDOM THOUGHT: I'm gonna miss my daily Dilbert cartoon.

Thanks, Wokesters....

BLACKROCK’S tyrannical ESG agenda.

Every time I can identify BlackRock within a country mile of my investments, I divest.

THEY WILL NEVER STOP TRYING TO DESTROY AMERICA. The Biden admistration is trying to ban gas stoves.

It's all about government cheese; more succintly, control.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The woke wrecking machine.

Someday wokeism will disappear because it is inherently nihilistic and cannibalistic. But in the meantime, Americans should end it now before it ends America first.

I'd prefer now.

WELL ... YES: Democrats really do hate America.

Because most Americans won't subscribe to their lunacy....

WHY SILICON VALLEY BANK FAILED: “Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.”

WHY I AVOID MORTGAGE-BACKED SECURITIES IN MY PORTFOLIO. Blackstone defaults: subprime meltdown 2?

WIDESPREAD POWER OUTAGES REPORTED as feet of snow fall in the Northeast.

Instapundit suggerst buying a generator if they can afford it. I don't; I suggest letting them enjoy the lack of electricity they don't want....

IMPRIMIS: Education as is a battleground.

LOUISANA SEN. JOHN KENNEDY has an excellent idea for what to do with President(ish) Joe Biden's budget proposal.

THEY'VE DONE A GOOD JOB WITH THE 'INSANITY' PART; now get on with 'destroy' part.

YES. NEXT QUESTION? Are Americans getting dumber?

But I tend to blame it on maleducation, not inherent intelligence (IQ).

RANDOM THOUGHT. Normal Americans should adopt a two-finger approach to wokeism: middle finger and (as needed) trigger finger.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The price of no consequences.

It will be high -- and violent.

ACTUALLY I THINK THE REVERSE IS TRUE: How Team Biden is getting more and more corporations to do its bidding.

LAUREN BOEBERT explains manhood to Adam Kinzinger.

Be sure to read Boebert's final tweet.

AMMO GRRRLL KNOWS WHY LORI LIGHTFOOT LOST IN CHICAGO: she only checked 3 of the 4 boxes in the Entitlement Olympics.

WASHINGTON EXAMINER: The Peter [Buttigieg] Principle (in)action.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The few sowed the wind, and the many we reaped their whirlwind.

LIGHTFOOT MEETS THE BIGFOOT: PowerLine's [last[ Week in Pictures. My favorite is Lori Lightfoot's CNN application:

Apologies for being late again ... now go see the rest.

THE HUMANITIES: Another example of Leftism ruining everything.

GLENN REYNOLDS [INSTAPUNDIT]: How I was wrong about COVID.

SHE'S LEARNING. Tulsi Gabbard accuses Democrats of becoming ‘racists they claim to hate’.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: 'Woke' moral bankruptcy leads inevitably to real bankruptcy.

THE WAR ON RURAL COMMUNITIES: Energy colonialism will worsen the urban-rural divide.

I'd add that when push comes to shove rural America will feed rural America first and let urban America starve.

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY [R-LA] shares more trademark truths.

With humor.

IT'S GETTING HARDER TO ESCAPE AND EVADE. This AI knows who you are and who all your friends are (and is telling the IRS).

DEPRESSED? You must be a liberal.

KURT SCHLICHTER: "Never, ever, take your red [state] for granted, or the next thing you know you’ll have a socialist human hairstyle for a Democrat governor too."

SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE IN THE NEWS:

Cuts are coming to both.

Social Security to go broke in 10 years.

Biden’s Social Security pledge will likely mean huge middle class tax hikes.

As a not-too-recent retiree, I'm hopeful (no, not really) that our political class will soon have the courage to touch these 'third rails'.

If you're interested in social security, consider my series of posts on social security privatization over the last several years. They're in no particular order given the way Blogger's search function works.

THE DAILY CHART: From bank run to panic.

Read the comments; then thank your friendly Biden administration.

DOESN'T SAY MUCH FOR HUMANS, DOES IT? OpenAI’s GPT-4 exhibits “human-level performance” on professional benchmarks.

YOU CAN'T SAY IT BETTER THAN THIS: “Woke” is just a short way of saying stupid, crazy, and vicious.

TAXES ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: 42,000 federal employees “repeatedly” failed to file taxes.

Now there will be about 87 thousand new opportunities....

NEW DEFINITION: 'intellectual desert' = stupid.

And of course, read the whole thing.

SPRING 2023, WEEK 2: It's been a cool, clammy, cloudy dull day as we start with our fearless forsythia, which now has traded in its flowers for leaves.

Unfortunately we're headed for a week of light freezes, which hopefully will not damage the plants.

Next is the usual pond view, highlighting the tulip magnolia, which is in full flower. A bright spot in an otherwise dull day.

You can't see them yet, but our two dogwood trees are just beginning to bud out.

Hopefully the coming cold nights won't affect them. Freezes are in the forecast, but they should be short and days are forecast to be mild.

Our lawn is greening nicely. We've had several inches of rain over the past few days so the barer spots are beginning to fill in. Another 2 weeks and we'll begin overseeding to fill in and add more lawn down beyond the barn/fire pit area

That's the tulip magnolia in the background.

Finally, a view down the road to confirm that spring isn't fully here quite yet.

YOU GOTTA BE KIDDING ME: Minnesotans to pay reparations for slavery?

It is, after all, a blue state....

THIS COULD WILL GET INTERESTING: Fauci previews his defense.

COULD? REALLY? Historic decline in IQ could stem from poor education.

CHICAGO MAYOR LORI LIGHTFOOT blamed election loss on racism, sexism. So it wasn't racists, sexist (and homophobes) who elected her in the first place, eh?

'LYNCHING THE DEPLORABLES': I'm all for it, provided I get to define 'deplorables'.

SAVE THE PLANET -- STARVE: Food consumption may add 1° of warming by 2100.

Or eat bugs....

ECONOMICS 101 by Michael Ramirez.

SPRING 2023 begins:

We start this season with the Bartlett pear trees, which are in full bloom throughout the region. This picture was taken at a cemetary along old U.S. 76 near the city of Blue Ridge.

They're still a bit behind our faithful forsythia, which has bloomed already and is beginning to show its leaves.

Now, the usual view of the pond from our back deck. The tulip magnolia is almost in full bloom, while the rest of the yard is still dormant -- even the low lying brush. It's still too early to tell whether the trees have begun to bud, but the weather here is suggesting it'll be soon.

Next is the barn and our new front yard. It's been mostly seeded and growing well. We still have some bare spots to patch and a little finish work yet to do behind the barn and down toward the fire pit (not shown here).

Here's our house, as seen from the north property line. The fire pit in in the center, and our intention is to extend the grassy area down below the fire pit to merge eventually with the path leading downhill to the pond.

Finally, on the other side of the house are the future dogwood trees. We only have two, and to date they're still asleep (I hope; last year's freeze took it's toll).

That side of the house and the steep valley below are usually the last to recover but when the leaves are full, the hill on other side is practically invisible.

Until next week, then. -

THE BETTER TO ACCOMPANY A PUPPET PRESIDENT. John Fetterman has officially become a puppet senator.

IN THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION, COMPETENCE IS NOT AN OPTION. Biden’s FAA nominee can’t answer a single question about aviation.