OH: British ex-spy will not talk to U.S. prosecutor examining Trump probe origins. “Christopher Steele, a former Russia expert for the British spy agency MI6, will not answer questions from prosecutor John Durham, named by Barr to examine the origins of the investigations into Trump and his campaign team, said the source close to Steele’s London-based private investigation firm, Orbis Business Intelligence.”

“WE WILL ONLY HAVE PEACE WITH THE ARABS WHEN THEY LOVE THEIR CHILDREN MORE THAN THEY HATE US”: Palestinian Authority TV Series Features Uncle Teaching Nephew How to Shoot at ‘the Jews.’

I DON’T KNOW, I CAN IMAGINE QUITE A BIT: Hollywood hates Trump, Republicans even more than we thought, according to Vanity Fair’s insider account.

Christian Toto:

The far-left magazine serves up a behind-the-scenes pastiche of an industry reeling over Trump’s very existence. Author Nick Bilton showcases a number of scripts circulating around Hollywood as well as what industry players have to say about them.

It isn’t pretty.

Several scripts feature Matt Drudge, the new media superstar whose bare bones web site draws millions of eyeballs each week. Others imagine Andrew Breitbart, not as the Happy Warrior who inspired citizen journalists, but as a loner smoking dope in his college dorm.

It’s all part of an amazing essay capturing the current Hollywood mood.

Read the whole thing.

Trump Derangement Syndrome makes Bush Derangement Syndrome look like a mild head cold.

OH: Mueller Spokesman Denies Key Claim in New Anti-Trump Book by Michael Wolff.

BUT OF COURSE: High school apologizes after students’ MAGA hats blurred from yearbook.

THE WORLD WOULD BE A BETTER PLACE WITHOUT… WAIT… NEVER MIND: Drowning Man With Swastika Tattoo Saved by Jewish Teens.

YOU CAN BET THE CRIMINAL SOCIALIST GOVERNMENT STILL HAS PLENTY: Venezuela’s economic crisis is now so bad that criminals can’t afford to buy bullets.

DON’T GET COCKY: Three Modelers Predict Trump Will Be Reelected.

GOOD LORD: Mom Accuses Union of Forging Signature to Deduct Money From Disabled Daughter’s Checks.

Maria Quezambra of California filed a federal lawsuit seeking to recover dues that she says United Domestic Workers Local 3930 (UDW) improperly took from the money that helps her take care of her daughter. She accused the union of misleading her about dues requirements, rebuffing her attempts to recover money, and trespassing on her property.

“Ms. Quezambra did not sign anything indicating she desired to become a union member or pay union dues, and the State began to deduct Union dues from her paycheck automatically,” the suit says. “The Union forged Ms. Quezambra’s signature to justify past dues deductions and to lock her into paying full union dues each year.”

The Supreme Court struck down Illinois’s mandatory dues scheme for home health aides like Quezambra in 2014, ruling that they were not public employees. The Court followed that ruling by forbidding forced public sector unions in 2018. The union never informed Quezambra of her right to abstain from dues payments. Her suit alleges that the union misled her into believing dues were mandatory and delayed her attempts to withdraw.

Maybe some prison time for fraud would put an end to this crap.

INCREDIBLE STORY: Air Force cadet conquered cancer to get lieutenant’s bars.

During Air Force Academy’s graduation on Thursday, senior cadets will be told about the uncertain world they are entering and the battles they may face.

It may be underwhelming for 22-year-old Parker Hammond. He’s already fought a private war.

Hammond went from a strapping 275-pound offensive lineman as a freshman to a shriveled and shivering senior as he fought through chemotherapy. He battled cancer, and he battled bureaucracy to get the lieutenant’s bars he’ll pin on after he crosses the stage in Falcon Stadium on Thursday.

Any service would be lucky to count someone with that much grit as one of its members.

Read the whole thing, and by the way, Parker is the VodkaWife’s boss’s son.

OREGON: Clerk fired after pulling gun on hatchet-bearing attacker, causing attacker to flee.

A hearty “Well done” and “Stout fellow!” are due the clerk. With well-disciplined use of the pistol, he defended his own life — surely the Plaid Pantry’s first consideration — while preventing the confrontation from escalating or bringing harm to anyone else. He managed to notify the police, and he didn’t make the error of trying to pursue the attempted robber. For good measure, the would-be robber took off without his hatchet, leaving it on the counter, so he was disarmed at that point too.

The clerk is now out of a job, however.

The president of Plaid Pantry told KOIN 6 News the stores have a zero tolerance for weapons and the clerk is no longer employed there. He said employees are trained to de-escalate robbery situations to avoid injury.

Granted, if the clerk knew about the “zero tolerance policy for weapons,” he shouldn’t have had a weapon in the store. (He probably shouldn’t have accepted employment there in the first place.) But what an indictment it is of zero tolerance policies for weapons, that the clerk would have had no way to bring off the same very happy outcome if he hadn’t been armed himself.

Read the whole thing.

IF IT WEREN’T FOR FAKE HATE-CRIMES THERE WOULD HARDLY BE ANY HATE CRIMES AT ALL: Subway rider lied about anti-gay attack, was actually aggressor.

EUROPE: Populist Wave in Europe Shows No Sign of Ebbing.

SALENA ZITO: Coming Home: American Freedom Is Paid for a Thousand Different Ways.

Just click over already.

OLD EUROPE: Germany tells Jews to pretend they’re gentiles.

Felix Klein, Germany’s government commissioner on anti-Semitism, recommends that Jews in his country would be wise to avoid wearing yarmulkes [aka kippahs or skullcaps] in public to avoid being attacked by anti-Semites. He did not, however, advise Muslim women to avoid wearing hijabs [head scarfs] or niqabs [face coverings] to avoid being attacked by Islamophobes, the same white supremacists who would attack both groups.

To be fair, Germany has a history of trying to tell Jews what to do.

BUT OF COURSE: Marine vet running for Congress vowed to fight socialism and now Democrats & MSM are accusing him of ‘threatening violence.’

In his ad, Republican Harrison Floyd promises to fight socialists in Congress just like he fought terrorists overseas. The ad shows the socialists in Congress, and it also shows him fighting overseas. That’s how videos usually work, with both pictures and words.

But bad faith Democrats and mainstream media hacks are pretending that they haven’t spoken English all their lives, and don’t understand metaphor, terms of art, narratives, or campaign ads. And therefore, the white opposition candidate Carolyn Bourdeaux is capitalizing on the moment to try to find some kind of advantage over the young, black, war veteran from a family with a history of service to this country.

Naturally, the media is playing dutifully along.

Rightwing speech is violence. Leftwing violence is speech.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Media Worried About Leaking of Dossier Sources After Leaking Dossier Sources. “Obama administration officials along with their media wet nurses and a motley crew of partisans are worked up. They are troubled over President Trump’s directive to his wing man, AG William Barr to declassify the documents surrounding the investigations into the Trump’s involvement in the RUSSIA collusion investigation. The spin coming from these malefactors and conspirators focus around the ‘danger’ of releasing classified information. Does this sound familiar? It should, we heard the same clap trap when the Nunes-run House Intel Committee wanted to release their report on the RUSSIA collusion scandal.”

THE COLOR OF HELL: On Memorial Day, Firewall host Bill Whittle shows how what we remember as iconic battlefields looked very, very different to the men that fought and died on them.

Must-see TV.

UNEXPECTED HEADLINES: Owners of replica Noah’s Ark sue insurers for flood damage compensation.

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update. “Biden continues to lap the field, Buttigieg’s boomlet bottoms out, O’Rourke stabilizes, Messam registers, Klobucher shows a tiny bit of life, and mentions of John McCain, Jimmy Carter and Alannis Morissette.”

CHANGE? Fiat Chrysler and Renault pursue $35 billion merger to combat car industry upheaval.

Fiat Chrysler pitched a finely balanced merger of equals to Renault on Monday to tackle the costs of far-reaching technological and regulatory changes by creating the world’s third-biggest automaker.

If it goes ahead, the $35 billion-plus tie-up would alter the landscape for rivals including General Motors and Peugeot maker PSA Group, which recently held inconclusive talks with Fiat Chrysler (FCA), and could spur more deals.

Renault said it was studying the proposal from Italian-American FCA with interest, and considered it friendly.

I’m surprised by the “merger of equals” language. As Daimler-Benz and Chrysler merged more than 20 years ago, it was sold as a “marriage of equals,” but in reality Stuttgart ran the show.

BUT OF COURSE: A Professor Who Argues Against Multicultural Ideology and for Western Exceptionalism Now Fears for His Job.

BYRON YORK: As Barr mulls declassification, a familiar tune from critics.

In February 2018, the House Intelligence Committee released the so-called Nunes memo. In four pages, the document, from the committee’s then-chairman Rep. Devin Nunes, revealed much of what the public knows today about the FBI’s reliance on the Steele dossier in pursuing since-discredited allegations that the Trump campaign and Russia conspired to fix the 2016 election. Specifically, it revealed that the FBI included unverified material from the dossier in applications to a secret spy court to win a warrant to wiretap Trump foreign policy volunteer adviser Carter Page.

All that was classified. To release it, the committee appealed to President Trump, who made a declassification order. That is the only way Americans know about the Page warrant. From that knowledge came later revelations about the FBI’s use of confidential informants and undercover agents to get information on Trump campaign figures.

It is good that the public knows such things, just as it is good that the public knows what is in the Mueller report. But in the days before the Nunes memo was declassified, many of the nation’s top current and former intelligence officials, members of Congress, and analysts in the press warned that declassification would do grave damage to American national security.

It didn’t happen.

Now, some of the same people are issuing somber warnings of the damage that will be done if Attorney General William Barr declassifies documents showing what else the nation’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies did in the 2016 Trump investigation.

Why, it’s almost as though classification had become little more than a scam to protect powerful interests.

DUSTIN SIGGINS: 83 Percent of the Deficit Could Be Eliminated With This One Simple Trick.

TOM HARRIS AND DR. JAY LEHR: Science’s Untold Scandal: The Lockstep March of Professional Societies to Promote the Climate Change Scare.