UGH: We Have 3 Years Before The National Debt Death Spiral. “According to the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Debt Management, the U.S. government is just five years away from the point of no return. With the national debt spiraling quickly out of control, there are only a few years left before every single dollar the government borrows will go toward funding interest payments on the national debt.”

RUN ALL THE CANDIDATES! Mark Cuban Still Might Run for President Because None of the Democrats Can Beat Trump.

CONRAD BLACK: Democrats Start To Perceive Debacle They Face.

The Democrats have, evidently, no idea how to deal with this president, and their moral crusade against him is about to be swamped by the unmasking of the skullduggery and chicanery of the Clinton and Obama Democrats in 2016.

The last fact that the Democrats have not begun to deal with in the effort to unseat the president is his extraordinary success. The economic performance is phenomenal, and the pathetic attempts of President Obama to claim credit for the economic recovery, like his fatuities about “the magic wand,” will be mocked with vicious hilarity. The success of this president in proclaiming a border emergency and doing something about it will be noted.

Do yourself a favor and read the whole thing.

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HUGE: A Look At The Specific Intelligence Causing State Dept. Warning – Leave Iraq ASAP.

Investigative Journalist and Iran expert Ken Timmerman gave insight into the source of the Iranian threats last week. Timmerman explained there was recent intelligence that Iran was planning “imminent” attacks on U.S. persons or U.S. assets in Iraq. The intelligence came from an Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) General in charge of information, who was fired by the supreme leader on April 19th and reacted to being fired by defecting to the west.

Iran Commentary, an online news portal that publishes information about Iran’s human rights abuses and illicit activity provided some of the details behind Timmerman’s Report. The defector, General Ali Nasir had a vicious argument with a superior officer, General Hossein Taeb. Nasari walked out of the meeting and left the country.

General Ali Nasiri (pictured above) is rumored to have taken refuge in a U.S. embassy or consulate in a nearby Persian Gulf state. And he brought gifts; including a large volume of documents recording the travels of senior IRGC commanders, intelligence personnel and operational units to foreign countries, all under cover of diplomatic missions. That intelligence information was given to the United States.

Developing…

SHE SEEMS NICE: NYU Journalism Teacher: The GOP Is “A Terrorist Organization.”

TREY GOWDY: Emails Between Brennan and Comey Show One of Them Demanding that Dossier Be Put in Intel Assessment.

I’m starting to think the best thing the Democrats have going for them is that Americans might not be willing to accept the depth and breadth of Democratic corruption. Not yet, anyway.

NEWS YOU CAN USE? 6 Things to Know About the Prosecutor Investigating Spying on Trump Campaign.

Durham’s resume includes investigating the mafia and crooked politicians.

Attorneys general from the Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama administrations all previously appointed Durham to lead special investigations.

Barr reportedly selected him to head the probe weeks ago, as the FBI came under intensified scrutiny for spying on one Trump campaign adviser and sending a confidential informant to talk to another.

In the aftermath of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report clearing the Trump campaign of conspiracy with Russia to influence the election, many Republican lawmakers called for an investigation into how the probe of Trump and his team commenced.

Two known incidents loom large: The FBI obtained a warrant under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to put Trump campaign aide Carter Page under surveillance. The FBI also sent a confidential informant to talk to George Papadopoulos, another Trump campaign aide, in a bar. The woman told Papadopoulos that her name was Azra Turk, and he later described her as “flirtatious.”

Much more at the link.

THIS IS CNN: CNN Spreads Deceptive Info On School Shootings, Calls For Gun Confiscation.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Beto’s Sorry, de Blasio’s Coming, and Biden’s Hiding Something on Ukraine. “While we’re talking about the 2020 Democratic primary, let’s take a look at the frontrunner, former Vice President Joe Biden. You see, Biden took the lead in Obama’s relationship with Ukraine (investing billions), and his son was making a killing with a certain company in that very country. As it happens, Ukraine dropped a criminal investigation into that same company for $1.8 billion in lost aid funding — days before Biden’s very last trip to Ukraine. What a coincidence! Or so Biden would have us believe.”

Tyler O’Neil is filling in for Liz this morning.

FASTER, PLEASE: US attorney John Durham has been reviewing origins of Russia probe ‘for weeks.’

THIS IS A SOLID EXPLAINER FROM LOREN THOMPSON on the F-35’s under-appreciated electronic warfare capabilities.

TYLER COWEN: China Loses More From This Trade War. “It is vulnerable because it is a much poorer country with more fragile political institutions.”

To see why the full picture is more complicated, let’s say the U.S. slaps tariffs on the industrial inputs (whether materials or labor) it is buying from China. It is easy to see the immediate chain of higher costs for the U.S. businesses translating into higher prices for U.S. consumers, and that is what the afore-mentioned studies are picking up. But keep in mind China won’t be supplying those inputs forever, especially if the tariffs remain. Within a few years, a country such as Vietnam will provide the same products, perhaps at cheaper prices, because Vietnam has lower wages. So the costs to U.S. consumers are temporary, but the lost business in China will be permanent. Furthermore, the medium-term adjustment will have the effect of making China’s main competitors better exporters.

Obviously, no final long-run estimates are possible right now. But it is quite plausible that China will bear the larger costs here, not the U.S.

Another risk for China is this: As its access to U.S. markets becomes more difficult, China may be tempted to look to Europe. It remains to be seen whether the European Union will adopt additional protectionist measures, but China must consider that the possibility is more than zero.

Beijing has been enjoying the benefits of free trade with the West and the domestic political fruits of an increasingly anti-Western foreign policy. It’s time they were made to pick one.

THE LONESOME LOSER: Sen. Mitt Romney votes against Trump judicial pick over comments he made about Obama.

HOW’M I RIDIN’? Private Plane Allegedly Carrying Two Billionaires, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, and 5,000 Cannabis Plants Grounded in St. Kitts.

KRUISER: SJW Scolds at Nike Step In It with Un-Woke Maternity Policy.

That’s right: no paid maternity leave for the athletes it sponsors.

Nike is the company that went all “Yay girl power!” over the hijab, which has become a social justice warrior fetish item in the United States and other free countries. In Muslim countries, it’s still a symbol of oppression. Women in Iran are prosecuted for removing them, and a female attorney who fought for them was recently sentenced to 38 years in prison and 148 lashes.

That’s what Nike celebrates for women. Not the faces of its company who are having babies.

Read the whole thing.

THE PLANET’S ON F**KING FIRE: Colorado wedding plans disrupted by winter avalanche cleanup.

Breckinridge and A-Basin are still open for skiing and snowboarding, and expect to stay open for another two or three weeks.

I EAGERLY AWAIT THE MEDIA’S CONDEMNATION OF THIS ATTACK ON THE FREE PRESS: Liz Warren: ‘Fox News Is a Hate-For-Profit Racket That Gives a Megaphone to Racists and Conspiracists.’

FUNNY HOW? Rosenstein Laughs When Asked if He Offered to Wear a Wire Around Trump.

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Why Woke Gender Swap Remakes Are a Bad Bet.

The original 2000 comedy “What Women Want” earned a spectacular $182 million. The gender swap remake, starring Taraji P. Henson in the Mel Gibson role, generated just $54 million earlier this year.

Last year’s “Overboard” remake, which gave Anna Faris the Kurt Russell role from the chipper 1987 comedy, scored $50 million domestically. It helped that the film’s budget came in at a trim $12 million. It’s still far from a smash. Some of its box office might likely came from popular Mexican star Eugenio Derbez.

This past weekend, the ghost of “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” did little to stop the “Avengers: Endgame” juggernaut. “The Hustle,” a very faithful remake of the 1988 Frank Oz comedy, cast Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson in place of Michael Caine and Steve Martin.

The results? A modest $13 million for its opening weekend. The original only made $42 million, but it’s become a beloved con caper. The remake mostly played down the feminist angle, but that didn’t save it from some scathing reviews.

For every remake, reboot, or gender-flip re-do, how many quality original scripts get passed over because they don’t have a “brand?”

YES. NEXT QUESTION? Did Christopher Steele, Fusion GPS, the Clinton Campaign & DNC Make Up the Russia Collusion Hoax?

LOGISTICS: The U.S. Air Force Fears for Its F-15s and F-35s vs. Russia’s S-400. But…

Russian air defenses can’t fire and reload missiles quickly enough to stop a NATO air and missile offensive. “The fact that it is possible to knock down no more than one target of a single SAM, apparently, does not need to be explained to anyone,” says Khramchikhin. “This is basic arithmetic. The combat algorithms for the S-300P and S-400 imply the use of two missiles for the same target in automatic combat mode; you can only switch to the option ‘one missile – one target’ manually. That is, if the regiment has 64 ready-to-launch missiles, then it can knock down a maximum of 64 targets, or actually 32. After which the regiment is ‘reset.’ The standard for reloading one launcher for an ‘excellent’ [inspection] rating is 53 minutes. That is, it will take at least an hour to restore the regiment’s combat readiness, which is a bit much in the context of a modern war.”

But Khramchikhin doesn’t believe even an hour’s reload time is realistic. “The regiment will not be restored in an hour or in two,” because the anti-aircraft batteries don’t have enough spare missiles or the machines to reload the launchers, he explains. “All this should be brought from the bases of storage and preparation of missiles. Accordingly, we are talking about many hours, if not days. What makes the regiment, in fact, ‘one-time’ (if we are talking about a war with a serious opponent).”

Russian air defense reminds me a bit of the old Soviet navy, whose job was to try to sink an American aircraft carrier or two shortly before ceasing to exist.

RUN ALL THE CANDIDATES! 22nd Dem Enters 2020 Race — With Tirade Against Free Speech in Politics.

DEEP STATE: Former DHS officials blocked Trump plan to arrest thousands of migrants before being ousted.

UGH: Senate Republicans Use New Rules to Save a Crony Institution.

After nuking their debate rules for nominations last month for the stated reason that they wanted to push the confirmations of more Republican judges, the Senate this week used the rule change instead to waste precious floor time expanding corporate cronyism.

The Export-Import (Ex-Im) Bank for more than 1,000 days has lacked the full quorum of its board of directors, which is necessary to approve taxpayer-funded loans of over $10 million to benefit America’s richest corporations (think Boeing, Caterpillar, and General Electric). The board now has a full slate, and can confirm loans up to $100 million.

The Ex-Im bank, you may recall, loomed large on the Tea Party agenda in 2014 and 2015. It stood as a symbol of everything establishment Washington had gotten wrong: K Street colluding, corporate favoritism, and the general feeling of, “Wait, I’m sorry, my tax dollars do what?”

Washington is where bad ideas go to achieve immortality.