SUSTAINABILITY: US Budget Deficit Hits $600 Billion In 6 Months, As Spending On Interest Explodes.

According to the latest Monthly Treasury Statement, in March, the US collected $210.8BN in receipts – consisting of $88BN in individual income tax, $98BN in social security and payroll tax, $5BN in corporate tax and $20BN in other taxes and duties- a drop of 2.7% from the $216.6BN collected last March and a clear reversal from the recent increasing trend…

… even as Federal spending surged, rising 7% from $392.8BN last March to $420BN last month, the second highest monthly government outlay on record…

… where the money was spent on social security ($85BN), defense ($58BN), Medicare ($75BN), Interest on Debt ($33BN), and Other ($170BN).

I’ve been warning about the interest payment bomb since George W. Bush was president, and that was more than twelve trillion borrowed dollars ago. Sure enough, now that interest rates are climbing, the debt bomb is indeed exploding — and is expected to overtake Defense spending as a slice of the budget pie around mid-decade.

OOPS: Bill Cosby accuser admits concocting story for memoir. “In what could be a major blow to the prosecution’s sexual assault case against Bill Cosby, a former model and reality TV star admitted on the witness stand Thursday that she fabricated passages in a memoir — including a story of ‘rebuffing’ the comedian’s advances. Janice Dickinson took the witness stand in a Pennsylvania courtroom, testifying in Cosby’s retrial on three counts of aggravated indecent assault. . . . Dickinson acknowledged that she concocted stories in the book in order to get a much-needed paycheck.”

TRUMP BUMP? Law School Applicants With LSATs Of 160+ Surge 21%.

YOU CAN’T POLICE STATE WITH HAMSTRUNG POLICE: Progressive Democrats run California—yet it does more than many states to shield police from scrutiny.

PROCUREMENT: Pentagon stops accepting Lockheed F-35 jets over repair cost dispute.

Last year, the Pentagon stopped accepting F-35s for 30 days after discovering corrosion where panels were fastened to the airframe, an issue that affected more than 200 of the stealthy jets. Once a fix had been devised, the deliveries resumed, and Lockheed hit its target aircraft delivery numbers for 2017.

But deliveries were paused again over a dispute as to who will pay for what will likely be a complex logistical fix that could require technicians to travel widely to mend aircraft based around the world, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.

When the Pentagon stops taking delivery of F-35s, foreign customers can also be affected. So far at least two foreign governments have stopped accepting F-35s as a result of this issue, two of the sources said.

More tough negotiations with Lockheed, please.

THE SCIENCE IS PRETTY DAMN SETTLED: Science proves communism makes nations poorer and less healthy.

Researchers testing historical connections between cultures found that whether a country had been under communism was the biggest factor for those with lower health, income and educational levels.

In the first undertaking of its kind, they analyzed the fortunes of 44 countries across Europe and Asia and looked at geography, religion, systems of government and a more intangible quality called “deep cultural ancestry.”

Writing in the journal Royal Society Open Science, they matched these factors against where they ranked on the United Nations Human Development Index, which measures per-capita income, life expectancy at birth and the number of years its citizens spend in education.

Most of the issues they looked at appeared to have little or no effect on the disparities between the countries, except for Islamic countries scoring a little worse on education.

Instead, the single strongest predictor for a country’s health, and the second-strongest for its wealth, turned out to be whether its rulers had embraced communism.

The study said that after World War II, economic growth in Communist Eastern Europe was slower than in the West, but despite the Soviet Union’s collapse almost 30 years ago, the effects are still being felt.

Communism destroys social trust — communist governments do this by design — and that does longterm damage.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. The 2016 election broke some people in media.

Beckett Adams:

MSNBC’s Joy Reid, for example, spent part of her show this weekend speculating about what might happen should the president refuse to allow himself to be arrested by federal marshals. This is a real thing that was discussed on a real show by real political analysts.

“Let’s say that Donald Trump decides he doesn’t want to give an interview with [special counsel Robert Mueller], but Mueller says ‘Oh, but you will.’ And he’s subpoenaed to [be] interview[ed] [by] Robert Mueller. And Donald Trump simply says, ‘I don’t recognize that subpoena.’ This is a president whose behavior is different as president of the United States. He doesn’t follow convention. Who would force him to comply with the subpoena ordering him to do an interview with Robert Mueller?” Reid pondered.

She asked later, seriously, “What if he refuses to open the White House door? What if he fires any Secret Service agent who would allow the federal marshals in? What if Donald Trump simply decides, ‘I don’t have to follow the law? I refuse to be held under the law. No marshal can get into this White House and any Secret Service agent who defies me is fired.'”

I’m not sure Reid is the best example, given that her connection to reality has always been tenuous. But Adams has others, and the trend is unmistakable.

RICHARD GERE: Some Republicans are ‘Real Jerks,’ Some on Hill ‘Should be Spanked.’

LEFTIES ALWAYS WANT TO SILENCE THEIR POLITICAL OPPONENTS: Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren Want the FCC to Revoke Sinclair’s Broadcast Licenses. For the crime of broadcasting-while-conservative.

OH, SPOD (SWEET PLANET OF DEATH) YOU DISAPPOINT US YET AGAIN:  No, the Rapture Isn’t Coming on April 23 Because of Nibiru (Which Doesn’t Exist).

WELL… IT WAS AFTER ALL A MONITOR LIZARD:  Extinct monitor lizard had four eyes, fossil evidence shows.

BESIDES, YOU’D LOOK FUNNY WITHOUT THEM:  The evolutionary advantage of having eyebrows.

A) SOME COINCIDENCE  B) ALIENS!  Stonehenge may have been in place before humans arrived – archaeologist.  Additional note: whoever has been putting crack in the faculty lounge coffee stop it.  It’s not funny anymore.

THE… WHAT? Obama judge OKs lawsuit forcing companies to hire DACA recipients.

WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE:  Their World, Our World.

THE LEFT’S VENEZUELAZATION OF AMERICAN CITIES PROCEEDS APACE:  Liberal Cities Embrace Homelessness.  But it’s okay so long as they convince voters that actual competent people are racistsexisthomophobic.

AND YET IT SHOULD BE REMEMBERED, AND ITS IMPLICATIONS CONTEMPLATED:  Millenials Haven’t Heard of the Holocaust: True Or False?

WHEN THE AUTHORITIES DO THEIR JOBS:  The Mass Shooting You’ll Never Hear About.

PARENTAL INTERACTION? THAT’D NEVER WORK!  How to help your kid with ADD.

OPEN THREAD: Did anything happen today?

IT’S “FRY SAUCE:” The Internet is divided over Heinz’s new ‘Mayochup’ sauce.

DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE AND THE RETURN OF THE PRIMITIVE. Josh Blackman: Students at CUNY Law Protested and Heckled My Lecture about Free Speech on Campus.

A student shouted out “Fuck the law.” This comment stunned me. I replied, “Fuck the law? That’s a very odd thing. You are all in law school. And it is a bizarre thing to say fuck the law when you are in law school.” They all started to yell and shout over me.

Read the whole thing; don’t miss the many photos of the protestors and their, err, colorful signage.

21st CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: “Sometimes becoming a parent feels out of my reach. My wife and I both have uteruses, and sperm costs too damn much.”

(Found via The Patriarch Tree on Twitter, who dubs the story “Spermless In Seattle.”

JUST THINK OF THE MEDIA AS DEMOCRATIC ACTIVISTS AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE: Five Times the Media Didn’t Ask Obama to Resign.