THIS IS MY SHOCKED FACE: The de Blasio’s are strapped for cash.

PROMISES, PROMISES: Saudis Pledge Not to Shock Oil Markets as OPEC Clash Looms.

Saudi Arabia effectively scuppered plans for a global production freeze – aimed at stabilizing oil markets – in April. It said then that it would join the deal, which would also have involved non-OPEC Russia, only if Iran agreed to freeze output.

Tehran has been the main stumbling block for the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to agree on output policy over the past year as the country boosted supplies despite calls from other members for a production freeze.

Tehran argues it should be allowed to raise production to levels seen before the imposition of now-ended Western sanctions over Iran’s nuclear program.

OPEC is falling apart, and it couldn’t be happening to a nicer cartel.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: All the Places to Score Freebies on National Doughnut Day.

What a country!

#GUNSENSE: Remember when Obama lectured Kimberly Corban on firearm safety? Well, her story saved this woman’s life.

Just read the whole thing.

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TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE: Middle school teacher had sex with student, 13, ‘daily.’

21ST CENTURY CAMPAIGNING: Trump’s aversion to data puts RNC on the hot seat.

The RNC says it is ready for the challenge, having spent millions of dollars after Mitt Romney’s 2012 defeat to build a data and digital infrastructure able to compete with Democrats.

“We’re building an operation that’s scalable and workable for all candidates,” said Katie Walsh, the RNC’s chief of staff.

But some question whether it will be possible for the RNC to completely pick up the slack if Trump decides to outsource the work of building a high-tech campaign apparatus, which performs countless tests to optimize a campaign’s resources.

“There’s no way to do that through a party structure,” said Chris Wilson, who directed data operations for Sen. Ted Cruz’s (Texas) Republican primary campaign.

In an interview with The Associated Press last month, Trump called data “overrated” and said he plans to rely mostly on rallies and media interviews to propel his campaign. He cited President Obama as an example, even though his 2012 campaign was famously obsessed with data and spent millions using it.

If Big Data can propel a weak candidate with an aversion to truthfulness like Hillary Clinton to victory, then it has already become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.

CUE THE WORLD’S SMALLEST VIOLIN: OPEC fails to reach oil production deal.

Although a deal was not expected, the failure to reach an accord underscores the increasingly disparate interests within the organization. Two members in particular — Saudi Arabia and Iran — are engaged in a geopolitical standoff, and analysts say neither country wants to yield market share to the other.

“Member countries,” OPEC said in a statement following the meeting, “confirmed their commitment to a stable and balanced oil market, with prices at levels that are suitable for both producers and consumers.”

So the oil will continue to flow.

It couldn’t happen to a nicer cartel.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Can Bo Diddly teach us anything about the 2016 presidential election?

SKYNET SMILES: Facebook Unveils DeepText, An AI With ‘Near-Human’ Level Of Language And Context Comprehension.

HIGHER EDUCATION IMPLOSION UPDATE: Internal Documents Show Backlash Over Virginia Tech’s Disinvitation of Jason Riley.

Earlier this year, Virginia Tech’s business school invited conservative commentator Jason Riley to speak to its students. Then suddenly, 10 days later, Riley, the author of a controversial book about race, received an email informing him the lecture was off. The department head and others on campus were “worried about more protests from the looney left if you were to give the lecture,” the email said.

But instead of helping the university avert a backlash, retracting the invitation actually sparked one—with a firestorm of negative media coverage and threats to cancel donations.

Read the whole thing.

IT’S COMPLICATED: Dozens in Russia imprisoned for social media likes, reposts.

FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED, LATIN AMERICAN EDITION: US military eyes ‘extremist Islamic movement’ in Latin America.

“Radicalization is occurring,” said Adm. Kurt Tidd, commander of U.S. Southern Command, at a roundtable with reporters on Wednesday.

“We just have to recognize that this theater is a very attractive target and is an attractive pathway that we have to pay attention to,” he said.

Minding the border is so bourgeois.

21ST CENTURY LAWSUITS: Family of murdered Colorado mom files wrongful death claim against the companies that made and sold the legalized THC candy her husband had eaten before her murder.

GET READY: Third baby born in U.S. shows defect tied to Zika virus.

QUESTION ASKED: How long before North Korea can nuke a U.S. city?

SCENES FROM ANGELA MERKEL’S GERMANY: 3 asylum seekers arrested for sexual assaults at music fest.

In total 26 women have made statements to police about cases of sexual assault at the Schlossgrabenfest, a free music festival in the central German town, a spokesperson told The Local.

Of the 14 reports, some involve several women and only after further investigations will it become clear how many of the women were victims of sexual assaults, police said.

Three of the women had gone straight to police who were on patrol at the four-day festival on Saturday night.

The women complained that they had been encircled and then sexually harassed by a group of men they described as being of south Asian appearance.

Police were then able to arrest three men at the site of the festival. All three were between the ages of 28 and 31 and are asylum seekers from Pakistan, a spokesperson confirmed to The Local.

Darmstadt police added that “Up until this year we have had no cases of sexual assault where men surround women, like we have this year.”

Lovely.

NOW THAT’S RICH: Clinton launching national security case against Trump in California speech.

Word not used in Anne Gearan’s Washington Post writeup? “Email.”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: NOAA Warns Against Taking Selfies with Seals.

ASKING THE UNIMPORTANT QUESTIONS: How much is Donald Trump really worth?

I demand equal time for an investigation into the Clinton Foundation.

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: Adrift in their own land, Afghanistan’s displaced see their population swell.

More than 1.2 million Afghans are now displaced – a twofold increase in three years. The report, made public late Monday, said that more than 118,000 have fled in the first four months of 2016 alone.
…
“Those forced to flee their homes, by and large, lived in squalid conditions and were often housed in makeshift shelters with no protection from the hot summers and cold winters,” the report said of the nearly 1,000 people who are counted as newly displaced each day.

Those who live in makeshift camps that dot the nation’s urban centers have found themselves in a state of un-ending limbo.

Qand Agha, 32, has spent the last seven years in Kabul’s Chaman-e Babrak camp, which houses more than 700 other displaced families.

The settlement — defined by simple mud houses, open sewers and dirt roads — stands in contrast to its glitzy neighbors.

Eight years ago a young presidential candidate named Barack Obama gave a speech in which he called Afghanistan “A war that we have to win.“

THOMAS SOWELL: Socialism for the Uninformed.

Well, of course it is.

DON’T DO STUPID SH*T: Is the U.S. Violating Its Own Sanctions to Buy Russian Rocket Engines?

Maybe it’s just a reset of the reset.

SELF-FUNDED MIGHT NOT MEAN WHAT YOU THINK IT MEANS: Is Trump’s money a myth?

As for his campaign, the last FEC report said he had $2.4 million in his account, and $44 million in debt. That debt, by the way, is to one Donald J. Trump, which is proof he’s not even self-funding the red-hats-and-tweeting phase of the campaign. The RNC had about $17 million on hand and $4 million in debt. They’re only about $970 million dollars short of the combined Romney/RNC/SuperPAC total for 2012.

Those are worrisome numbers, unless Trump really can ride rallies and free media all the way to the White House.

RUN, BERNIE, RUN: Believing he can win California, Bernie Sanders stumps in Oakland.

Moments before he stepped outside Oakland City Hall to rally more than 11,000 adoring fans, Sanders pointed to the Golden State Warriors as proof that the final buzzer hadn’t yet sounded on his presidential campaign.

“They were down three games to one, and they came back,” said Sanders, who got to watch to watch the Warriors complete their comeback inside Oracle Arena.

“Well, we started out pretty far behind. And, I think we’re going to come back as well.”

While Clinton has a seemingly insurmountable lead in pledged delegates, she still needs the backing of top Democratic Party officials, known as superdelegates, to secure the nomination. Sanders is soldiering on, insisting that he will make the case to those leaders that he is their best chance for beating Donald Trump.

C’mon, superdelegates — there’s no better time than right now to starting feeling the Bern.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD AND AN EVERGREEN HEADLINE: Moderation Postponed in Iran.

For those puzzled by the hardline show of strength, it’s worth taking a look back at some of the smarter commentary at the time of the Iranian parliamentary elections this winter. The White House echo chamber and the 27 year-old know-nothings that Ben Rhodes has on speed dial were gushing over the “triumph” of the moderates and spinning it as a big win for the White House policy—but those who looked under the hood saw something different. As Eli Lake put it at the time:

Beginning in January, the regime’s Guardian Council began purging any candidates who espoused the slightest deviation from the country’s septuagenarian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Candidates who favored releasing political prisoners — including the leaders of the Green Movement that many Iranians feel won the 2009 presidential elections — were disqualified. Even members of the Assembly of Experts, who had previously passed the vetting process, were disqualified. So too was the grandson of Iran’s first supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. To paraphrase a former top U.S. negotiator in the Iran talks, Wendy Sherman, Iranians on Friday will have a choice between hardliners and hard hardliners.

Bottom line: the much ballyhooed ‘triumph of the moderates’ was another piece of White House spin, presumably pumped into the national consciousness by those helpful folks at Ploughshares.

The “triumph of the moderates” was one of the many lies used to sell Obama’s dangerous nuke deal with Iran.