HEADLINES FROM THE MULTIVERSE: Scientists believe alien life may exist in other universes after discovering a mysterious ‘force.’

Life doesn’t get much more alien than coming from another universe.

PROGRESSIVE PARADISE: California STDs Raging At All Time Highs For Third Year In A Row.

CAPITALISM: This new beer is developed specifically for breast cancer patients.

MICHAEL WALSH: Happy Ramadan!

ANALYSIS: TRUE. France Suffering ‘Intifada,’ Jewish Lawmaker Says Following Paris Attack. “Since 2012, hundreds of people have died in a series of terrorist attacks across France featuring explosives, firearms and vehicular ramming.”

PEACE THROUGH SUPERIOR FIREPOWER: Pivot With a Nuclear Edge: Low Yield in the South China Sea.

Much has been said of the Trump administration, but an area where it has stepped up to the plate is nuclear modernization. The Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) released in February 2018 provides answers for not only dealing with the Russian tactical nuclear imbalance but also the South China Sea A2/AD problem. As outlined in the NPR, the Trump administration aims to “expand tailored response options” by developing a low yield sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM), reminiscent of the now retired nuclear tomahawk missile (TLAM-N). In the short term, however, the intention is to modify a small number of submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) warheads to significantly lower their yield. These will launch from the Ohio class ballistic missile submarines currently in service.

These tactical nuclear weapons deployed in the Pacific could be used to counter Chinese fortifications by effectively neutralizing the A2/AD capability with the appropriate yield. The thought of having to use any nuclear weapons is nothing to be taken lightly but so is the thought of a U.S. aircraft carrier being destroyed by multiple cruise missiles resulting in the loss of 5000 lives.

Indeed.

DEMOCRATS KNOW THEIR CORE VOTERS: Felons Voting, as Florida Voters Will Decide in November, Could Flip Major Races. “State Attorney General Pam Bondi and Gov. Rick Scott, two term-limited Republicans, have blocked a federal lawsuit that would force Florida to change the way it restores voting rights.”

Why the hell hasn’t Jeff Sessions stopped the lawsuit?

DIRTY MONEY: U.S. Sanctions Iran’s Central Bank Governor, Alleges Hezbollah Ties.

The Treasury Department said that Valiollah Seif, the governor of the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran, sent the funds to Hezbollah through an Iraqi bank, the al-Bilad Islamic Bank. The funds were sent on behalf of Iran’s Quds Force, an Iranian paramilitary organization fighting in Syria along with Hezbollah to support President Bashar al-Assad.

The sanctions are part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to preclude the Quds Force from using the international banking system.

Iran has long been involved in the Syria conflict and has supplied missiles and other weapons to Hezbollah, which is widely regarded as its proxy in the region. The Trump administration is trying to pressure Iran to curtail that support. But it has stopped short of taking military action against Iranian forces and Iranian-backed militias in Syria while defending Israel’s military strikes there.

In the sanctions announced Tuesday, Mr. Seif and Ali Tarzali, the assistant director of the international department at the bank, were named as “specially designated global terrorists.”

The Mullahs Regime is both a criminal and terrorist organization.

SCHOOL SHOOTINGS: Facts, Fallacies, Freedom and the Future.

Solid set of speakers at this one. It’s short notice, but if you’re going to be in the Los Angeles area this weekend, it might be worth your while.

STEPHEN KRUISER: Twitter’s Silence When Enforcing Behavior Rules Make Them Hard to Follow. “Conservative purge time again?”

Again or still?

GOOD QUESTION: Trump’s Instincts on Afghanistan Are Right, So What Happened?

Last month marked the 40th anniversary of the 1978 coup that violently brought communist rulers into power in Kabul. Two years later the Soviet Union invaded. Ten years later, they withdrew, laying the foundation for the Mujahideen Civil War that led to the rise of the Taliban in 1996 and their war against the Northern Alliance. This war was still raging on 9/11 when the U.S. military entered the scene. The fundamental causes of these various civil wars still remain today. After 40 years of fighting, the Taliban’s fight against Kabul is not going to simply end due to U.S. intervention.

The sooner Trump translates his instincts on ending U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan into policy, the better for America. A withdrawal will improve American national security and strengthen economic prosperity. Extricating U.S. troops from Afghanistan will not be easy, however, because there are many in Washington — senior military leaders among them — who want to defend the status quo at any cost. There is no benefit to the United States in trying to fight yesterday’s failed battles but trying to do it “better.” The strategy has failed, not the tactics.

There’s no light at the end of this tunnel.

TRUMP BAD. CONSTITUTION WORSE. Elizabeth Warren Is Gravely Concerned about . . . the Electoral College.

GET WOKE, GO BROKE? ABC set to dial back political humor from pro-Trump ‘Roseanne’ next season.

RELIGION OF PEACE UPDATE: New Terror Trend? Wave of Family Suicide Bombers Follows Intense ISIS Training for Kids. “The mother of one family cell detonated a bomb on one of her young girls before detonating her own suicide bomb at Indonesian church, authorities said.”

ELIOT COHEN: A Reckoning for Obama’s Foreign-Policy Legacy. “Veterans of the last administration are learning a hard lesson: Policies constructed by executive order and executive agreement are just as easily blown up by them.”

The Iran deal was, in truth, a very bad one. It did nothing to inhibit Iranian behavior in the broader Middle East, did nothing to stop its ballistic programs, and opened the path for a resumption of the nuclear-weapons program in a decade or so. Some of us said so at the time. Walking away from it, however, will make matters worse not only because success is unlikely, but because this shredding of an earlier presidential agreement further undermines the qualities that those who look to American leadership have come to value — predictability, steadiness, and continuity. Even when American allies have doubted the superpower’s wisdom, they usually felt they could count on its constancy.

Predictability in being taken for a sucker is no virtue, and tearing up treaties the Senate rejected is no vice.

“A CONSPICUOUS LACK OF CURIOSITY”: Questions the Press Hasn’t Asked about Violence in Gaza.

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Kellogg pulls out of Venezuela due to economic crisis.

Kellogg did not specify what difficulties it was facing in Venezuela, but companies typically struggle to find raw materials due to product shortages and currency controls that crimp imports. Socialist President Nicolas Maduro’s government also stops companies from raising prices to keep up with hyperinflation, denting profits and sometimes rendering operations unsustainable.

Venezuela’s Information Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

The closure is not expected to significantly worsen food shortages in Venezuela, but it was a further blow to morale for many Venezuelans as Kellogg’s is the most popular and available cereal in the country.

Stunned workers were barred from entering Kellogg’s plant in the central city of Maracay and massed outside, seeking information, local business sources said.

The move by the multinational was a typical one in Venezuela after years of economic crisis.

I’d ask the last company to leave to please turn off the lights, but that’s being taken care of already.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Nikki Haley Throws Down at UN and Much, Much More. “President Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen is fighting Michael Avenatti, the “lawyer” representing porn star Stormy Daniels, who released what appear to be Cohen’s bank records. How did he get these bank records?? The media is uninterested.”

It’s almost as though their disinterest leans in only one direction.

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: The Top 7 Media Lies About The Gaza Violence.

AMERICA’S LONGEST WAR: Green Berets Brace for Islamic State Offensive in Afghanistan.

The militants have been probing American and Afghan positions and hiding weapons caches in the ridges overlooking Mohmand Valley, which was controlled by ISIS fighters until allied troops chased them into the Spingar mountains at the end of last year.

That operation allowed civilians who had fled Islamic State to return to their stone-terraced farms. Now many families are reversing course in anticipation of an attempt by insurgents to retake the ground.

“The civilians are leaving the valley,” a U.S. Green Beret told troops who arrived this month to help defend an American outpost in the valley. “So those guys are going to be coming out of the mountains anytime now.”

Godspeed and God bless the Green Berets.

CYBERSECURITY: Navy Cyber War Breakthrough – AI Finds Malware in Encrypted Traffic.

“Every day, the Defense Department thwarts an estimated 36 million e-mails containing malware, viruses and phishing schemes from hackers, terrorists and foreign adversaries trying to gain unauthorized access to military systems,” Pentagon spokeswoman Heather Babb told Warrior Maven.

One particular technique, now being developed by CISCO systems for the Navy, seeks to address a particular irony or cybersecurity paradox; namely, while much DoD network traffic is encrypted for additional safety, encryption can also make it more difficult for cyber defenders to see hidden malware in the traffic.

CISCO is now prototyping new detection methods with the Navy.

“We have the ability to read and detect malware in encrypted web traffic. Even though the data is encrypted there is still a pattern to malware,” Kelly Jones, Systems Engineer for CISCO Navy programs, told Warrior Maven.

Faster, please — but keep training with sextants, too.

WHAT’S NEW? John Kerry: Reporting for Duty… From Vietnam to Iran.

Pointing to “peace” organizations that the KGB saturated with dubious anti-American propaganda, Pacepa stated: “The quote from Senator Kerry is unmistakable Soviet-style sloganeering from this period. I believe it is very likely a direct quote from one of these organizations’ propaganda sheets.”

Andropov would proudly tell Pacepa that the KGB’s Vietnam campaign had been “our most significant success.” Thanks to the manipulation of the American peace movement.

One can debate where and when John Kerry got his information. What is undeniable, however, was its value to America’s enemy: the Viet Cong.

In Unfit for Command, John O’Neill recalls the experience of one his band of brothers, Bill Lupetti, a Navy corpsman who had treated injured Swift Boat soldiers. Lupetti was stationed at An Thoi, where both O’Neill and Kerry had served. For Memorial Day 2004, Lupetti returned to Vietnam, painfully visiting Ho Chi Minh City, wandering through the streets earnestly looking to find out whether certain Vietnamese friends had survived the merciless communist takeover enabled by the American withdrawal.

Lupetti happened upon the War Remnants Museum. Inside, he came to an exhibit dedicated to “heroes” who had helped the communists win the war. A wall plaque at the head of the exhibit stated: “We would like to thank the communist parties and working class countries of the world.” This included the “wholehearted support” of various “progressive human beings.”

Among those progressives represented in pictures, Lupetti glimpsed American campus radicals from the 1960s. (In fact, Jane Fonda’s smiling face was captured in a photo in a separate Women’s Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, standing aside Madame Binh.) And there, Lupetti was staggered by the sight of a photo of John Kerry — the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee that year. There he was, John Kerry, in a special exhibit honoring those whose “heroic” contributions had helped the Viet Cong defeat the United States.

The communist Vietnamese never forgot John Kerry’s testimony in 1971. It had been a great help. And perhaps today, in Iran, Kerry’s words are again being heralded, this time by the world’s worst theocratic terror state.

Read the whole thing. And remember: The scorpion stings the frog, every time.

CHANGE: Bridge linking Crimea with Russia opened by Vladimir Putin.

The 11.8-mile bridge, which took two years to build and cost $3.6 billion, is Putin’s project to show that Crimea has joined Russia for good. Transportation links to Crimea deteriorated after both the Ukrainian and Russian militaries set up checkpoints into the peninsula and trains crossing the Ukrainian mainland were canceled.

The Ukrainian government reacted to the opening with anger. President Petro Poroshenko lambasted the bridge as “yet another piece of evidence of the Kremlin ignoring international law” and “an attempt to legitimize the temporary occupation of the Crimean peninsula.”

Give Putin some credit on this one. Building a bridge to connect Crimea to Russia proper is both less expensive and less murderous than conquering the rest of eastern Ukraine, which seems to have been his original plan.

WELL, THAT ESCALATED QUICKLY: Nikki Haley Crushes UN With Facts; Celebrity Left-winger Compares Her to Hitler.

BOOMER DAD CONFESSIONS: 5 Hits My Kids Brought Home.