HUH: Daimler Has ‘Absolutely No Idea’ How North Korea Got Its Mercedes-Maybach Limos.

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER: The U.S. Navy Is Shrinking the Size of Its Gargantuan 70s-Era Computers.

The hardware used to run Aegis was large and took up a significant portion of the ship. According to C4ISRNET, the military-grade computer, servers, consoles, and displays were so large that the Navy needed to cut holes in the hulls of ships when it needed to replace them. These systems also had a considerable electrical draw on the ship’s power supply, and required air conditioning—and more power—to keep them cool. Built to be large and rugged, these computers have also in many cases not been replaced for decades.

For March’s missile test USS Hudner ran its Aegis hardware from what the Navy calls a “virtual twin,” a handful of modern computers in ruggedized boxes. Just as your iMac running the Mac operating system computer can run virtualization software to emulate a Linux computer, the virtual twin completely emulates Aegis’ computer system and software but in a much smaller package. Moore’s Law allows these computers to replicate the physically much larger set of Aegis computers originally fitted to Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruisers and Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers built in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s.

“Much larger” is putting it lightly. Infographic of the original hardware at the link.

HE FIGHTS: Trump campaign manager names blue states ‘in play’ for 2020.

In addition to the campaign’s work in states that were key to Trump’s 2016 victory – including Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin – the campaign is setting its sights on Minnesota, New Mexico and New Hampshire, campaign manager Brad Parscale told CBS’ “Face The Nation.”

“I think Nevada, you know even Colorado” are winnable for the campaign, Parscale added. “And so those are states we did not win in 2016 that I think are open for 2020.”

You don’t win by racking up the totals in safe states. You win by taking states away from the other guy.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Toxic Masculinity Deterred Synagogue Shooter. “Anti-Semitism is excused and normalized by the media and the Democrats when they fail to critically cover people like Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and groups like the Women’s March and Black Lives Matter who are aligned with the anti-Semitic BDS movement. The Democrats in congress were unable to pass one of their stupid resolutions that would condemn anti-Semitism. These are not serious folks. Sadly, the Poway synagogue shooting will disappear as fast as the Sri Lanka “Easter worship” slaughter because it’s inconvenient to the left’s narrative: the Poway gun man was a Trump-hater.”

UPDATE: Link was originally incorrect. Now fixed.

WILLING DUPES: California Embraces Communist China’s ‘Belt and Road.’

UGH: Southwest and FAA officials never knew Boeing turned off a safety feature on its 737 Max jets, and dismissed ideas about grounding them.

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT OR WHATEVS: ‘Outrageous’ bill may release murderers, rapists back on city streets.

The “elder parole” bill, which would grant parole eligibility to all inmates ages 55 and up who have been in prison at least 15 years, is “outrageous and idiotic,” said Staten Island District Attorney Michael McMahon.

The legislation would even extend to those serving life without parole, a group which includes famed criminals such as ‘90s serial killer Joel Rifkin, the Queens Wendy’s massacre mastermind John Taylor, and Bronx child rapist Clarence Moss.

The legislation has quietly flown under the radar since being introduced in the Assembly in February by Queens Democrat David Weprin.

The release of Weather Underground terrorist Judith Clark, paroled earlier this month after serving more than 37 years in prison, gave the bill’s backers a new talking point.

Sen. Brad Hoylman (D-Manhattan), who introduced the accompanying Senate bill about a week before Clark’s release, praised her parole, saying “there are so many more Judith Clarks out there” and “we must work to fight for their freedom.”

Good lord.

THE RETURN OF THE PRIMITIVE: PG&E’s Radical Plan to Prevent Wildfires: Shut Down the Power Grid. “When dangerously high winds arise this year, the utility says it will black out fire-prone areas that are home to 5.4 million people.”

No U.S. utility has ever blacked out so many people on purpose. PG&E says it could knock out power to as much as an eighth of the state’s population for as long as five days when dangerously high winds arise. Communities likely to get shut off worry PG&E will put people in danger, especially the sick and elderly, and cause financial losses with slim hope of compensation.

In October, in a test run of sorts, PG&E for the first time cut power to several small communities over wildfire concerns, including the small Napa Valley town of Calistoga, for about two days. Emergency officials raced door-to-door to check on elderly residents, some of whom relied on electric medical devices. Grocers dumped spoiling inventory. Hotels lost business.

PG&E is “essentially shifting all of the burden, all of the losses onto everyone else,” said Dylan Feik, who was Calistoga city manager until earlier this month.

I’d ask the last conservative to leave California to turn off the lights, but they probably already will be.

YES. The Mueller Report Indicts the Trump-Russia Conspiracy Theory. “In the end, Mueller’s report shows that the Trump-Russia collusion narrative embraced and evangelized by the US political and media establishments to be a work of fiction. The American public was presented with a far different picture from what was expected, because leading pundits, outlets, and politicians ignored the countervailing facts and promoted maximalist interpretations of others. Anonymous officials also leaked explosive yet uncorroborated claims, leaving behind many stories that were subsequently discredited, retracted, or remain unconfirmed to this day.”

Kudos to The Nation for publishing this.

TREY GOWDY: Dem Presidential Hopeful Eric Swalwell ‘Ought to Scare the Ever-Living Hell Out of You.’

HMM: Bank of America Silent on Donations to Planned Parenthood, SPLC.

They sure weren’t silent about this: Bank of America to Stop Financing Makers of Military-Style Guns.

CHANGE: In a Dramatic Moment Trump Tells NRA Crowd That U.S. Will Halt Ratification of Obama-Era UN Arms Treaty.

I’VE BEEN READING THESE STORIES SINCE THE ’80S: Aging Sealift Fleet Is Achilles Heel Of Pentagon War Plans.

COLORADO: State Lawmakers Aim To Temper Teen Vaping Rates With Big Tax Increases.

Gov. Jared Polis joined public health advocates and high school students at the state Capitol on Wednesday to announce HB 19-1333, which would ask voters in the fall to increase taxes on cigarettes and impose new taxes on nicotine vaping devices, like the popular JUUL.

“We have a moral imperative to reduce teen smoking and vaping. We have financial imperative for public health,” Polis said.

The governor said the new bill was personal to him. His partner’s mother, a lifelong smoker, died at 58 from lung cancer.

Under the proposal, vaping devices, the pods that contain liquid nicotine and tobacco products would be taxed at 62 percent of their wholesale price. The cigarette tax would more than triple.

That new revenue line would raise more than $300 million annually for Colorado.

Prediction: It won’t.

CLAUDIA ROSETT: Trump Should Counter North Korea’s $2 Million Bill for Otto Warmbier with an Invoice from the American People.

LINDSEY 2.0: Graham says Senate should vote on Sanders prisoner voting idea.

Maybe it would be smarter to leave Bernie alone for a while, and concentrate on Biden.

OH: Baltimore mayor not lucid enough to decide whether to resign.

The embattled Democrat was at her house during an FBI and IRS raid on the property earlier Thursday and met with a doctor there, said her attorney Steve Silverman.

An earlier report from local outlet WJZ quoted sources saying Pugh had skipped town. But her lawyer — whose office was also raided by the feds — said he met with her for an hour at her Ashburton house, according to The Baltimore Sun.

“She understands the predicament of the city… she just needs to be physically and mentally sound and lucid enough to make decisions,” Silverman said.

“She is generally aware that there is a consensus that she should resign. For people to make material decisions in their life, they have to be at a certain level of stability,” he added.

Not lucid enough to resign, but lucid enough to serve — that’s a new one.

WHAT DID PRESIDENT OBAMA KNOW AND WHEN DID HE KNOW IT? How the Obama White House engaged Ukraine to give Russia collusion narrative an early boost.

HMM: ‘Going to be a bombshell’: DiGenova gets specific over alleged FISA abuse, ‘not going to need 1 lawyer, going to need 5.’

“John Brennan isn’t going to need one lawyer. He’s going to need five,” he said specifically of Brennan while speaking on “The Ingraham Angle” with guest host Mike Huckabee.

Why? Because of the role he’d allegedly played in crafting the viral Russian collusion narrative. In January of 2017, Brennan and Comey briefed President Donald Trump about the Steele dossier. This briefing was then used as a pretext by the media to publish the dossier in full.

It’s long been theorized that the duo had purposefully broached the debunked dossier with Trump so as to provide the mediate with an allegedly “legitimate” reason to disseminate the salacious document to the public and thus create the still-alive narrative of collusion.

More punching back please, more than twice as hard.

RICHARD FERNANDEZ: Get Ready for a Paradigm Shift on Russia, Climate Change, Everything You Think You Know…

I tried to find a good excerpt for you, but it’s just impossible — you’ll have to read the whole thing.

MICHAEL LEDEEN: Senior Revolutionary Guard Corps Commander Reportedly Defects to the U.S.‘

General Nasiri was said to have fled with hundreds of classified documents, which could be of great value to the United States, to which Nasiri is said to have defected.

Nasiri could provide valuable information about IRGC deployments in the Middle East, North and East Africa, and Latin America, notably in Venezuela. Even though Secretary of State Pompeo has proclaimed that we will not wage military attacks against the Islamic Republic, Nasiri’s military expertise might enable us to move against secret Iranian bases, capture Iranian agents, and stage limited operations.

I’d like to know a lot more about Nasiri’s relationship with U.S. intelligence. Was this a sudden walk-in? Or had he been supplying us with Iranian secrets for some time? Was his defection planned in advance, or an emergency decision? I have often been told that Western intelligence services have excellent sources at very high levels of the Khamenei regime. Is Nasiri one of them?

Much more at the link.

HOW IS THIS NEWS? Minnesota and Wisconsin Are About the Worst States To Put Solar Panels, Research Shows.

CONRAD BLACK: Day of Reckoning Is Now Dawning For Democrats.

What is occurring now is an unprecedented and almost unbelievable episode of political theatrics. The Democrats are pretending that their fraudulent attempt at what amounted to a coup d’état against the election of an administration of the other party still possesses the legitimacy to be continued and taken seriously after it has been largely unmasked by its own chosen investigators for what it was.

At the same time, the machinery of dispassionate justice is already turning towards the identification and eventual punishment of the Democrats for subverting the justice and intelligence apparatus of the former administration in order to influence the results of the election of the succeeding president and vice president of the United States.

It is an elemental rule of nature that the longer and the more febrile the efforts of the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives and the Democratic party generally, abetted by their media echo chamber, to delay the exposure of their wrongdoing, the more complete and overwhelming the defeat and discreditation of the entire effort to destroy the Trump administration will be.

Read the whole thing.

SELF-INFLICTED WOUND: California Gas Prices Hit Average of $4, Highest in the State Since 2014.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: DoJ’s Hottest ‘It’ Couple Back in the News. “I’m talking about Strzok & Page, of course! Fox News is reporting that some of the infamous texts between the anti-Trump duo are getting a fresh look. As more information comes to light about the Trump investigations, the timing and content of the couple’s text messages become even more significant.”