RICHARD FERNANDEZ: No clear winner, but one clear loser.

David Goldman (Spengler) notes that political circles are rife with rumor. “A ranking Republican statesman this week told an off-the-record gathering that a ‘coup’ attempt was in progress against President Donald Trump, with collusion between the largely Democratic media and Trump’s numerous enemies in the Republican Party. The object of the coup, the Republican leader added, was not impeachment, but the recruitment of a critical mass of Republican senators and congressmen to the claim that Trump was ‘unfit’ for office and to force his resignation.”

Washington is now in situation elections were specifically designed to prevent.

That isn’t by accident.

SLOW JOE: Biden knocks Clinton: Not a ‘great’ candidate.

“I never thought she was a great candidate. I thought I was a great candidate,” he said, adding:

“No man or woman should announce for the presidency unless they genuinely believe that for that moment in the nation’s history they are the most qualified person to deal with the issues facing the country.”

Run, Joe, run!

RULING: Lerner’s tea party-targeting testimony can stay secret — for now.

Restoring Americans’ faith in our non-partisan federal agencies requires a full and public accounting.

THEY SAID WHAT? Real Planned Parenthood Quote: ‘It’s Our Responsibility to Use Our Superpowers to Slay.’

NO RAPE-RAPE? Swedish Prosecutors Have Dropped The Julian Assange Rape Investigation.

I suspect Russian trickery, and the seriousness of the charge alone is enough to require a full investigation.

LET’S MAKE AN ARMS DEAL: Saudis Said to Forge $6 Billion Lockheed Deal for Littoral Ships.

The final letter of agreement includes a better-armed version of the ships, support equipment, munitions and electronic-warfare systems, according to the people, who asked not to be identified in advance of an announcement that may come as early as Saturday morning Washington time. That’s when Trump is scheduled to arrive in Riyadh on the first leg of an eight-day trip that will take him across the Middle East and to Rome.

The Trump administration is promising to improve relations with the Saudis that were strained under former President Barack Obama. For its part, Saudi Arabia has pledged to buy billions of dollars of U.S. military equipment in the next decade and invest about $40 billion from its sovereign wealth fund in American companies.

The LCS is another one of those American weapons systems garnering foreign interest even after a troubled development process.

PROSECUTORIAL DISCRETION FOR SALE: George Soros Still Quietly Buying District Attorneys’ Seats.

The left-wing billionaire turned the Philadelphia district attorney’s race on its head by giving $1.45 million to fund a super PAC in support of his preferred candidate, Larry Krasner. Krasner, a progressive lawyer who has never worked as a prosecutor, sailed to an easy victory in the Democratic primary on Tuesday. Because Philadelphia is a Democratic stronghold, Krasner’s primary victory all but guarantees him to win the general election in November.

The influx of money from Soros gave Krasner a significant leg up over his opposition. Despite splitting votes with six other candidates, Krasner, who was not a favorite to win before Soros’ investment, finished 18 points ahead of the second-place finisher. As one Philadelphia Inquirer writer put it after the billionaire’s investment: “Soros changed the game.”

He means to change it further.

I WAS EXPECTING A BONE-SHATTERING KABOOM: New discovery shows T-rex’s bite could make bones ‘explode’

WELL, GOOD: Tim Scott Revives Police Body Camera Legislation.. “Our nation has experienced too much pain and heartache from tragedies that could have been more clearly explained.”

WOULDN’T THAT BE THE WORST? After Mueller, Trump Critics Worry: Maybe There’s No Scandal.

WELL, YES: Beauty Isn’t Only in the Eyes of the Beholder — You Can Smell and Hear It Too.

“Most people might know what their type is — in terms of physical attractiveness — but they might not know what kinds of odors or voices they like,” said Groyecka. “It is that feeling when you find someone attractive, but you’re not really sure why you do.”

In the absence of visual cues, researchers found that an attractive voice or body odor elicited “prosocial behavior” and positive impressions among subjects. Actually, these elements can independently predict differences in reproductive and socioeconomic success.

Another important finding was that when sight, smell, sound were evaluated simultaneously, the effect was synergistic — combined, they provided more information than any single element could individually. Combining an attractive face, for example, with an attractive voice or scent, resulted in a higher overall judgment of attractiveness than a single aspect could predict.

The science is interesting, but the findings are hardly news to anyone who has ever dated, married, or even just hoped to do either one.

HAVE YOU HUGGED A FRACKER TODAY? Full tanks and tankers: a stubborn oil glut despite OPEC cuts.

After the first OPEC oil production cut in eight years took effect in January, oil traders from Houston to Singapore started emptying millions of barrels of crude from storage tanks.

Investors hailed the drawdowns as the beginning of the end of a two-year supply glut – raising hopes for steadily rising per-barrel prices.

It hasn’t worked out that way.

Now, many of those same storage tanks are filling back up or draining more slowly than investors and oil firms had expected, according to global inventory estimates and more than a dozen oil traders and shipping sources who told Reuters about storage in facilities that do not make their oil volumes public.

The stalled drawdowns shed light on the broader challenge facing OPEC – the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries – as it struggles to steer the industry out of the downturn caused by oversupply. With U.S. shale oil production surging, inventories remain stubbornly high and prices appear stuck in the low-$50s per-barrel range.

The market has not strengthened enough to drain many major storage facilities around the globe – which OPEC oil ministers had hoped would be a first step toward rebalancing what has been a buyer’s market since late 2014.

Don’t you just love a buyer’s market?

BRIDGET JOHNSON: Russia Probe Has Gone from Counterintelligence to Criminal, Graham Says After Rosenstein Briefing.

HYBRID WARFARE: How Russia Weaponized Social Media in Crimea.

During the 2014 annexation of Crimea, the Russian government spent more than $19 million to fund 600 people to constantly comment on news articles, write blogs, and operate throughout social media.[4] They intended to sway public and international opinion, overwhelm the voices of dissidents online, and create an image of a population supportive of the annexation. To accomplish this, social cyber attackers appealed to the pro-Russian population of Crimea by spreading rumors of hate and fear. One such rumor involved the crucifixion of a three-year-old child in the public square of Slovyansk by Ukrainian soldiers, but independent sources quickly debunked this story as false.[5]

Despite the falsehood of this story, people believed it as it spread among the population. The supporters of annexation accepted this story as truth because it appealed to their bias against the Ukrainian forces in the area. Pro-Russian cyber-attackers released several similar stories in an attempt to further polarize the population in Crimea. An example of this involved the story of an alleged emergency physician named Igor Rosovsky at the epicenter of the May 2014 Odessa violence who asserted that Ukrainian supporters attacked Crimean nationalists and burned them alive. When “Igor” attempted to treat the nationalists, the Ukrainian fighters stopped him and made disparaging anti-Semitic comments towards him.[6] This Facebook post spread rapidly among Russian social media sites such as Vkontakte, where users shared the story 5,000 times within 24 hours. Again, Western analysts debunked this story, like the Slovyansk crucifixion of a child.[7]

Despite the invalidity of such stories, social media platforms allow a message to reach millions of people faster than ever before. The rate of interactions on these platforms vary from two to 70 interactions per post per 1,000 users.[8] For those attempting to shape a narrative, this platform is one of the fastest ways to spread rumors and generate fear or hatred against their opposition. Teams of social cyber attackers such as those involved in the Russian annexation of Crimea target demographics already sympathetic to their cause and stoke that flame to inspire them to take action.

Read the whole thing.

The takeaway? A relatively tiny $19 million investment in social media played a major part in Russia’s lightning campaign to invade and annex a strategically vital peninsula. That’s a valuable lesson, and one Moscow won’t forget.

HILLARY WON’T LIKE THIS: Elizabeth Warren Tests the Waters for 2020.

F.H. BUCKLEY: Comey’s actions don’t show any Trump ‘obstruction’

The best evidence that that’s what Trump meant and how Comey understood it is what happened next: Nothing. Comey didn’t say anything about shutting down the investigation. And he didn’t resign.

If Comey had been ordered to stand down, I expect he would’ve quit. He didn’t — which suggests he didn’t think he had to abandon the investigation. Nor did he, it seems. Testifying before the Senate last week, acting FBI Director Andrew G. McCabe, a Comey loyalist and Democrat, said, “There has been no effort to impede our investigation to date.”

Before we rush to judgment, therefore, recall that false rumors have been squelched before. For example, based on anonymous sources, The New York Times has reported that Trump held up funding for the Russian investigation. However, this was debunked by McCabe. McCabe also rejected the idea that a special prosecutor was needed, as the FBI hadn’t been interfered with and would carry out the investigation scrupulously and thoroughly.

Squelching false rumors is supposed to be one of the functions of the press, but alas.

CHARLIE MARTIN: Yes, Trump Might Have Had Good Reasons to Give the Russians Information.

WHAT? Uh-Oh: The House May Need to Vote on Health Care (Again!).

Republicans are using the budget “reconciliation” process to pass their health care bill, which allows them to push legislation through the Senate with a simple majority. But that depends on the bill meeting certain requirements — and one of them is that it reduces the deficit by at least $2 billion over the next decade.

The trouble is that Republicans voted on their House bill without waiting for the Congressional Budget Office, the federal agency that evaluates legislation, to finish its projections, which are expected next week.

Bloomberg News reported Thursday and NBC News has confirmed that House leaders have not formally sent their bill to the Senate on the chance that it fails to meet the deficit requirements.

The “repeal” effort has been handled… poorly.

HMM: Flynn has not responded to subpoena.

GOOD MORNING: Liz Sheld’s has your TGIF morning brief.

ROD KACKLEY: California Battles Trump as Gov. Brown Seeks Federal Help for Bullet Train.

A BILLION HERE AND A BILLION THERE… OPEC Lost $76 Billion Last Year Due To US Fracking.

I HAD BEEN ASSURED THAT VOTER FRAUD WAS A MYTH: Dallas County Whistleblower Tapes Democrat Campaign Worker Describing Voter Fraud Schemes.

HMM: U.S. household debt climbs to record high.

The quarterly survey on household debt and credit showed that overall delinquency rates were roughly flat at 4.8 percent. While balances have steadily shifted to more credit-worthy borrowers, New York Fed economists raised some concern over the 11 percent of student loan debt that was “seriously delinquent” at the end of March.

“This record debt level is neither a reason to celebrate nor a cause for alarm,” Donghoon Lee, a research officer at the New York Fed, said in the report. “Auto loan and credit card delinquency flows are now trending upwards, and those for student loans remain stubbornly high.”

And generally can’t be discharged through bankruptcy.

THAT WOULD EXPLAIN A LOT: Former Bush AG On Comey’s 2007 Brush With Scandal: ‘Jim’s Loyalty Was More To Chuck Schumer.’

Sean Davis:

In fact, the current episode is not the first time Comey and his associates plotted to oust a sitting Republican official through highly orchestrated political theater and carefully crafted narratives in which Comey is the courageous hero bravely fighting to preserve the rule of law. To understand how Comey came to be FBI director in the first place, and how he operates in the political arena, it is important to review the last scandal in which Comey had a front-row seat: the 2007 U.S. attorney firings and the fight over the 2004 reauthorization of Stellar Wind, a mass National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance program designed to mitigate terrorist threats in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

The pivotal scene in the Comey-crafted narrative, a drama that made Comey famous and likely paved the road to his 2013 appointment by President Barack Obama to run the FBI, occurred in a Beltway hospital room in early 2004. In Comey’s view, Comey was the last honest man in Washington, the only person standing between a White House that rejected any restraints on its power, and the rule of law protecting Americans from illegal mass surveillance.

A former White House counsel and attorney general with extensive first-hand experience dealing with Comey, however, paints a very different picture of what happened in that hospital room, and disputes numerous key details. In this account, Comey’s actions showcase a duplicitous, secretive schemer whose true loyalties were not to the officials to whom he reported, but to partisan Democrats like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). To fully understand and appreciate Jim Comey’s approach to politics, the writings and testimony of Alberto Gonzales, who served as both White House counsel and attorney general during the events in question and is intimately aware of Comey’s history of political maneuvering, is absolutely essential.

Read the whole thing.