QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “We are being run by a cabal of cross-dressing, pronoun-obsessed idiots.”

From this Don Surber column.

DEBT CEILING: Most voters wouldn’t mind a shutdown.

And I'm one of them. Frankly, I'd prefer a government shutdown.

NOW IT'S OUR TURN: They fought for us.

REMEMBERING:

Lest we forget.

ON SERVING YOUR COUNTRY: Sacrifice and loss.

ALL GAVE SOME but some gave all.

NEVER TAKE FREEDOM FOR GRANTED: Lee Greenwood ["God Bless the USA"] remembers American heros.

MEMORIAL DAY 2023: Note on a white stone cross.

MEMORIAL DAY at the Chickamauga & Chattanooga National Military Park. Every year on Memorial Day we usually visit one of the national cemetaries; this year we chose instead to visit the civil war battlefield at Chickamouga. The park is quite large and monuments, such as this one

honoring the Georgia war dead are widely spaced throughout the park.

The monuments themselves date back as far as the 1890s. Although funded primarily by state & federal grants, they honor the various state armies and militias and were placed by the surviving civil war veterans themselves at the locations where the battles actually took place in September of 1863.

DEI NONPROFIT IMPLODES: It's only equitable if I get the lion's share....

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: the necessity of punishment.

THE PUSHBACK IS GETTING SERIOUS: She offered a LGBTQ-themed book to her middle schoolers. Parents filed a police report. More here.

Lawfare works both ways.

ONE MORE TIME: Texas sends [illegal] migrants to border czar Kamala Harris' home at the Naval Observatory. It will make no difference; Kamala Harris was put into the Vice President's office solely to keep Joe Biden from being impeached.

It's working....

THE DAILY WIRE IS ON FIRE making fun of wokesters. Here are two examples.

LIES, DAMNED LIES, and government statistics.

RANDOM THOUGHT: The Democrat party tagline should be 'Do as we say, not as we do.'

VOTERS' REMORSE: Blue state survey shows majority want to re-criminalize drug use.

More proof that Dumbocrats Democrats can learn if you smack 'em in the head with a 2x4 hard enough. It gets their attention and doesn't hurt the 2x4.

TIME TO BUILD THAT WALL -- around Chicago.

MICROSOFT: Our new AI shows signs of human reasoning.

Human reasoning? Or progressive reasoning? One's tough, the other not so much.

CAPITALISM WORKS; SOCIALISM DOESN'T: Anti-capitalist cafe in Canada shuts down after just a year in business.

It seems to me that I remember one on the Left coast (Seattle perhaps) that also lasted about a year.

ANALYSIS, TRUE: Homelessness is too profitable to ever be “solved”.

OBAMA LECTURES: United States should have strict gun laws like Australia.

So move to Australia (and leave your security detail behind).

I'm sure President Biden will be happy to drop you off from Air Force One on his next trip to the region.

SOMETIMES TRUTH HURTS. A San Francisco journalist wanted to debunk horror stories about her city....

POWERLINE'S DAILY CHART: The falling wages of Bidenomics.

MASS MURDER IS BAD ENOUGH but it's worse when politics weaponize it.

SUCK IT UP: Chicago residents learn that consequences aren't just for others.

THE NEXT STEP IN THE lEFT'S WAR ON AMERICA: Making Jordan Neely the new George Floyd.

ON THE SEARCH FOR VIRTUE! Spelunking the minds of Leftists.

If you have the courage to watch, click on the Twitter links.

FLORIDA GOV. RON DESANTIS responds (unkindly) to a reporter pushing radical gender ideology.

Related: Sit-in at DeSantis office results in arrests and a legendary photo.

If you have to eat at your desk you might as well enjoy the entertainment.

WOULD YOU TRUST THIS WOMAN TO BE YOUR CHILD'S DOCTOR? Medical school professor says parents must implement gender ideology for babies.

Nope. Not a chance.

THERE WILL BE CONSEQUENCES: Bud Light now hated by both sides.

Always unintended, and usually bad....

THE NARRATIVE DOESN'T ADVANCE ITSELF: Useful idiots -- we call them progressives -- are needed.

WHITE SUPREMACY: Its not just for whites any more.

Reality strikes: 'white' is the sum of all colors.

Apparently the Left is just now discovering prisms....

SORRY BUT WE DIDN'T VOLUNTEER TO BE SANCTUARY CITIES: NYC Mayor Adams thinks migrants should be sent to every city 'throughout the entire country'.

New York City did. Don't ask us to pay for your virtue signaling.

SPRING 2023, WEEK 12, AND THE END UNTIL FALL: We'll begin with our usual view from the top.

The trees have finally filled in, everything is green, and the ground cover (brush) is finally growing gangbusters -- the stairway and walking path to the pond will be hidden if I don't get to clearing them soon.

Here's the fire pit and a bit of the yard. The tomato plants and cucumbers (in the steel pots) were seeds and seedlings just last when they were planted. All the trees have fully leafed out, and the grass now has to be mowed weekly.

Here's today's pond, fully green. Last week I lamented that the flowers on the back side of the pond hadn't arrived; this week they did, but in white. They're fewer and not really visible in this long distance photo. The grass on the dam (not pictured here) is still thin, but now over a foot high. A few more weeks and I'll need a brush mower to clear it.

The house, taken from just beyond the fire pit. That's Wonda, our most recent full-time acquisition. Wonda is a Manx (tailless) cat; her previous owner gave her her name: "I wonda where she came from."

Finally, two street views. The first is of the carport side, with the roses and day lilies coming to bloom. The nandina and azaleas behind the fence are just now starting to grow.

That's it until the Fall series begins.

LAW SCHOOLS face an inflection point with diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Not just law schools, all schools -- kindergarten through university.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The Biden Administration's new diplomatic cultural imperialism is proving to be a disastrous foreign policy.

UNRIGGING OUR ELECTIONS: Republicans need a serious counter-offensive if they want to stand a chance.

If we want to keep our Republic, we have to go back to election day, not election month, in-person voting, and voter ID.

Otherwise we will have to learn to live with a totalitarian government demanding to control every aspect of our lives for their benefit.

CHEVRON DEFERENCE, PRESIDENT TRUMP, AND THE 2024 ELECTION: What I fear lies ahead.

I'm inclined to agree.

EUROPEAN UNION ensures Dutch farmers booted forever from farming because reasons.

(They're too damned efficient.)

SO CANCEL PUBLIC SCHOOLS: Your "rights as a parent, those rights are gone when your child is in the public school system."

WOKE JOURNALISTS BEWARE -- that AI thing may be coming for your job.

After all, you trained it....

FASTER, PLEASE: New York City is sinking.

OOPS! Liberal Supreme Court justice caught in scandal.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito told the Wall Street Journal in an interview recently that he has a "pretty good idea" who was responsible for the stunning leak last year of a draft opinion in the high court's Dobbs abortion case, but refused to identify the leaker: "I personally have a pretty good idea who is responsible, but that’s different from the level of proof that is needed to name somebody."

I wonder who....

IT TOOK ONLY 323 YEARS: China successsfully restored it's GDP per capita to where it had been in -- checks notes -- the year 1700.

WELL, BRANDON [JOHNSON] has taken control of Chicago.

I'm thankful my daughter left years ago.

IS THIS WHY transgenderism is exploding in American public schools?

I would consider gender 'transition' drug treatments as a possible culprit in the increase in trans violence as seen in the Hale case, but I blame public schools and the increasingly strident government teachers unions for the startling increase in gender dysphoria in the schools. I saw the beginning of that 'your child is now my child' attitude way back in the 1980's when my children were in school.

I didn't like it then, and fear it today Thank God parents (and some states) are fighting back. The only solution to my mind is to take away funding from public schools and return it to the students/parents to spend as they choose on education.

MSNBC: You don't have to be white to be a White Supremacist. You don't even have to identify as white.

BIDEN IS AN IDIOT (AT BEST): White supremacy is the most dangerous threat facing America.

DON SURBER writes on why the boycotts are working.

WOKE AND NEUROTIC: The new ugly Americans.

YOU HAVE TO WONDER how brazen the Biden White House has to lie before mainstream media reporters would be offended at having even their room-temperature (Celsius, not Fahrenheit) intelligence insulted. Wonder no more.

WATCH AS SEN. JOHN KENNEDY [R-LA] asks the 50 trillion dollar question.

SPRING 2023, WEEK 11. This week we begin at the pond, looking across toward the creek entrance and the fountain. All the foliage has filled in and the summer green coloring has returned.

Looking up at our house, the ground cover (brush) has taken over and probably will remain as weedeating on that slope is killing. At least this year we will finally have a decent view of the pond itself throughout the summer.

Last week I wished for the orange/red flowers to return. They did -- at least the first batch did. I'm hoping the ones on the other side will decide to flower as well.

And now back to my standard sequence of views. Here's the pond from the house. Compared to last week the tree crowns have finally filled it. A little darker green by next week maybe, but summer seems to have arrived.

Another small digression; the roses along the fence line which we were concerned might have frozen have recovered and are blooming nicely. The iris have popped up, are growing rapidly, but are yet to bloom. Maybe soon....

Now back to the fire pit. We've put in two 'vegetable' barrels; one tomatos, one cucumbers. They appear to have settled in well. The picture is a bit dark because the tree canopy in the adjacent lot has finally filled in.

Finally we leave you with a view of the lower terrace where the half-barrel planters have finally begun to show their contents. We have ferns planted along/beneath the retaining wall that are beginning to be visible. I'd like to have more but they're damned hard to transplant.

Until next week then, which will be our last for this year.

PHYSICIANS? Y'all better heal your ownselves.

As academic medicine begins to recognize and examine racism as the root cause of racially disparate health outcomes, we need curricula for training physicians to dismantle the systems that perpetuate these inequities.

You've gotta be freakin' kidding me!

I wish I could say that I'm surprised, but after nearly three years of watching our 'public health' community -- CDC, NIH, etc. -- self-destruct in narcissistic insanity, I can only be happy that I'm old enough that I won't live long enough to be treated by these future medicos....

THE NATIONAL ANTHEM IS TO PROGRESSIVES as the crucifix is to vampires.

AMMO GRRRLL SLICES BOLOGNA: Live every day like it’s your last!

ELECTRIC VEHICLES: the wave of the past.

IF GOV. DESANTIS IS WHO I THINK HE IS, there will be consequences.

HYPOCRISY MAKES FOR STRANGE BEDFELLOWS: Vox report on egg inductry practices flies in the gace of the Left's abortion and gender rhetoric.

A CAMPAIGN OF DELIBERATE INTIMIDATION: Democrats are threatening to remove security funding for Supreme Court.

Read the whole thing, including all the links. As Instapundit correctly noted, the Democrats aren't even thinking about making indimidation deniable, they're being outright threatening. Don't let them.

Congress should use its power of the purse to remove all security fromall Deep State administrative agencies. Let them fly steerage, and drive EVs....

COMRADE BERNIE [SANDERS] wants government to steal all the money you make over this amount.

As usual Bernie picks a number above the amount he has plans to 'earn'. This time, however, he is unusually optimistic about his earning potential....

On a somewhat related note (see tweet), Indian Business Gurus had this thought in the comments:

Funny thing about income tax is that billionaires hardly have any income. Majority take low salaries, have most of their wealth in stock and borrow against their shares to fund their lifestyles.

Which, I think, is largely true. Wealth isn't taxable (yet), and interest paid (with limits) is deductable.

DETROIT CONSIDERS making downtown a gun-free zone.

Legal guns, that is; illegal ones, not so much.

ANDREW F. PUZDER: The Biden economy and how it could be fixed.

It's not just the illegals (see below) who are better off under the Biden administration; it's our very own legal wastrels. Click the link to see.

AN EXCELLENT QUESTION: "What is citizenship worth if you can get better benefits by being illegally here?"

SPRING 2023, WEEK 10: Surprisingly, while this year has been much more volatile, we're still pretty much on track compared to previous years. Here's today's view of the pond from our back deck.

The only real difference from last week is that the greens are 'greener' as the leaves in the upper reaches of the trees are filling in. As is the ground cover which has most emphatically sprung.

It's much the same with the view of the firepit and barn area. The upper reaches of the trees are filling in fast, and new growth has finally pushed out the dead leaves from the tree next to the fire pit.

Finally, topside the gap across the road from our driveway has begun to fill in. We're planning for some shrubbery/flowers in the flat area so the backup cameras on our cars will have something to see when turning into the road....

Meanwhile, down at the pond everything has filled in and greened up. I'm hopeful that we'll still have some blossoms as we did last year, but that little project seems to be held up. The grass on the dam is going gangbusters, though; it's time soon to take the lawn mower down.

Finally finally here's a view of the house from down below showing the need for stair maintenance, brush cutting, and mowing around the perimeter of the pond.

Next week, then.

NOT WITH MY NICKEL, THEY'RE NOT: Reparations panel approves huge payments for qualifying Black residents in California.

DOESN'T IT HAVE SOMETHING BETTER TO DO WITH IT'S TIME? Pro-trans activist delivers blood curdling scream at San Francisco Board of Supervisors meeting.

On the other hand, it's San Francisco....

SEN.JOHN KENNEDY [R-LA]: Permit me to tell you what i believe.

I believe America was founded by geniuses but is now run by idiots.

I believe you can’t fix stupid, but you can vote them out of office.

When was the last time you heard of anyone trying to sneak into China?

America is so great that people who hate it, refuse to leave.

Let me say something about the Biden administration, the Biden administration sucks.

I believe exercise makes you look better naked. but so does alcohol.

Welfare should be a bridge, not a parking lot.

Weakness invites the wolves.

We must arm for peace.

We don’t have a gun control problem. we have an idiot control problem.

Free advice friends, if government tells you not to buy a gun, buy two.

I believe if you hate police officers, the next time you are in trouble, call a crack-head.

Here’s a free tip, cops will leave you alone if you don't do stupid things.

I believe we need an election day, not an election month.

I believe you should be able to prove who you say you are when you vote.

I believe 400,000 bodies buried at Arlington National Cemetery are the reason you should stand for the National Anthem.

I believe the water won’t clear till you get the pigs out of the creek.

I believe love is the answer, but you should own a gun, just in case.

From my email.

MAY THE FARCE BE WITH YOU

Stolen from Instapundit here.

WELL THEY'RE CERTAINLY NOT GOING TO BE ABLE TO SELL IT. Bud Light is giving away free beer to make amends after Dylan Mulvaney debacle.

POOR BABIES: LGBTQ⁺ lawmakers find themselves ‘literally trying to exist’.

MICHAEL RAMIREZ: The bright side of the banking crisis.

QUESTION: Kamala or ... ?

Your choices are word salad or no words. I think I'd prefer no words....

ARS TECHNICA: Elon Musk provides a detailed review of Starship's first launch.

I just wish they'd gotten through first stage separation before having to initiate command destruction.

WOKE: the epitome of privilege.

THE WOKESTERS SHOULD BE HAPPY: Indiana councilman comes out as a woman of color.

They're not.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The crazy contours of the crazier 2024 election.

TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE, TOO STUPID: Biden considering troop deployments to border as Title 42 set to expire.

From the comments: "To do what? Hand out water bottles, brochures for legal services, and direct them to the bus/plane of their desired US destination?"

GLENN HARLAN REYNOLDS (INSTAPUNDIT): "We are being lectured on ethics by scoundrels."

HAPPINESS IS

Kittens. You're welcome.

CONFIRMED: In case of a bear attack Potatus (heh) will choose the angry grizzly over you.

NYC MAYOR ERIC ADAMS accuses Texas Gov. Greg Abbott of targeting 'Black-run cities' with migrant buses.

Explain to me the difference between 'Black-run' and deeply blue, Democrat-run, virtue-signaling sanctuary cities.

JUST NOT PROGRESSIVES: Someone has to design, build and run the machinery.

Unless you want another industry to fail...

EAT MEAT: Women, children, the elderly, and poor benefit most.

IS THIS A SURPRISE? Reuters lies to defend their photographer over disputed NRA show child photo.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY:

Just sayin'.

MIKE PENCE APPEARANCE AT UNC causes some to leave campus ‘scared for their safety.’

These days colleges are mental institutions.

MEDIA FIGURES address the industry's flaws at Chicago conference.

My take: "Look at me; look how important I am."

NORTH DAKOTA LEGISLATURE passes bill allowing teachers to ignore students’ ‘preferred pronouns’.

Now pass a bill allowing me to use my preferred pronouns, which are he, she, and it.

THE MADNESS of King Joe.

[T]he frank defiance of the Comstock Act prohibition on sending abortion-inducing substances through the mail; the rewriting of Title IX on the fly to include gender identity and to impose new nationwide rules on schools regarding males in women’s sports; and the distortion of the rules to make illegal immigrants covered under DACA — itself the product of an edict with no basis in the law about a decade ago — eligible for ObamaCare.

All of this alone would be a pretty good record of lawlessness.

I would only substitute 'madness' -- as in insanity -- for 'lawlessness' and use it to indict the entire progressive movement.

Read it all.

STUPIDITY SHOULD BE PAINFUL. The ‘hurtful’ idea of scientific merit.

I'm reminded of T.S. Eliot's 1925 poem 'The Hollow Men': "This is the way the world ends: not with a bang but a whimper".

Read both links.

TRUMP'S GOOD IDEA: Reinstate "Schedule F".

[A] President ought to have the power to fire any government official who is in a policy-making capacity. In other words, anyone who has the power, even if delegated properly by Congress to the executive branch, to issue regulations with the force of law ought to be directly accountable to the president, like a Cabinet member or direct presidential appointee would. In what world does it make sense that the president could fire the head of the EPA for going against the president’s policy purposes, but not a bureaucrat who does the same thing?

That's a winning message.

ON THE BRIGHT SIDE we now know who to fire when tenure is revoked.

And it will be.

NON SEQUITUR: Clearly she's learning from the Democrats' playbook.

ENERGY SECRETARY JENNIFER GRANHOLM: DoD will be all-electric vehicles by 2030.

Yeah, and in the next war I can see all (diesel) refueling vehicles towing diesel generators to 'refuel' the tanks.

There is so much stupid in the Biden administration it must be chemically induced....

THE FREE PRESS: Climate activism has a cult problem.

SO, HOLLYWOOD ... How are those unarmed "security ambassadors" working out?

DOES CALIFORNIA EVER THINK ANYTHING THROUGH? Mandating your EV be able to help power the grid.

The California cognoscenti seem to have forgotten that for an EV to power grid or home, its battery has to be charged first.

Also there's that (expensive) little thing called a 'transfer switch'.

WHAT A TRAGEDY: A colon just won't work as a vagina.