THE OTHER OTHER WHITE MEAT: Vegans Threaten Neighbor Over Barbecue.

BACK TO THE FUTURE: Head of Russia’s crime agency suggests nationalising key parts of economy.

Moscow has already seized assets or acquired them at a heavy discount from some Western firms that have quit Russia or scaled back their activities since the invasion.

“We are essentially talking about economic security in a war,” Alexander Bastrykin, head of the Investigative Committee, told a conference that was streamed online. “Let’s go along the path of nationalising the main sectors of our economy.”

It was an unusual foray into economic policy for Bastrykin, who reports directly to President Vladimir Putin.

Russia conducted wide-ranging and often chaotic privatisations in the 1990s, after the collapse of the communist Soviet Union.

Some of the state’s most valuable assets ended up in the hands of so-called oligarchs, many of whom subsequently sold their firms or were forced to cede control back to the state under Putin.

Russia’s economy and government coffers rely heavily on production of oil, gas and metals.

Still.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: White Democrats Like Joe Biden Are the Real Racists in America. “Democrats treat minority voters like tokens to be used come election time. They enjoy the electoral bounty they reap from pretending to care. They also live in absolute terror of the day when minority voters realize that they’ve been had.”

NARRATIVES DON’T MAINTAIN THEMSELVES, YOU KNOW: CNN Abruptly Ends Interview After Migrant Makes Damning Admission About Title 42.

As a CNN reporter strolled the streets near the U.S.-Mexico border, he stopped to ask a migrant, “Were you aware of Title 42 and that they were going to open the border like before the pandemic?”

In response, the migrant said “yes,” telling the reporter that he heard the southern border would be wide open following the Biden Administration’s decision to lift the Trump-era policy and decided to make the trip.

The CNN reporter then abruptly thanked the man and quickly ended the interview.

Everybody knows this except for our Sgt. Schulz media.

RED-PILLED: A San Francisco Journalist Wanted to Debunk Horror Stories About Her City. She Got Kinda Sidetracked by the Truth.

BLUE CITY BLUES: New York, San Francisco Office Buildings Are Absolute Ghost Towns. “Things are so bad, in fact, that 26 Empire State Buildings could fit into New York City’s empty office space, as occupancy in the city is hovering around 50% of prepandemic levels, according to the chair of Harvard Economics Department, Edward Glaeser and MIT’s Carlo Ratti.”

And in San Francisco: “Meta, meanwhile, has listed all 435,000 sqft of their 181 Fremont St. location for rent, as the city’s 3rd largest tower currently sits 100% vacant.”

PRIORITIES: Homeless Vets Kicked Out of Hotels in Favor of Biden’s Border Boarders.

OH MY: Journo Fight at White House Correspondents’ Dinner After Party. “Jim VandeHei, cofounder and CEO of Axios, berated Matt Kaminski, editor in chief of Politico, during a White House Correspondents’ Dinner after party at the Swiss ambassador’s residence in Washington, D.C.”

FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY: That Last Round of Candy Crush Sent Him to Jail. “This week we have the most expensive smartphone game ever, a low-rent T.J. Hooker bad guy, and the Tennessee Hilton where the guests should sleep with their shoes on.”

WELL, GOOD: Texas university rescinds $28,000 charge to conservative students after legal threat.

HMM: Whoa! Elizabeth Warren Is Vulnerable in 2024!

DON’T GET COCKY: ‘Full-Throated F-cking Panic’: Yet Another Report Details How Dems Are Privately Fretting About Biden’s Reelection Chances.

LINCOLN BROWN: The Death of Women and the Death of Men. “As I exited the men’s room, the door directly across from me, the one to the women’s room, opened. And out walked a guy. And by guy, I mean a guy. He was dressed almost identically to me, minus the blazer. And for that matter, he needed a shave. He smirked and walked back to another office in the building. At first, I thought to myself, ‘Dude, at least try. Put on a skirt or something. If nothing else, shave.’ After he was gone it occurred to me: This guy, who was clearly a man, was using the women’s room because he could. And his smirk was a dare to me to say something about it. “

GREEN NUDE EEL: Coming To Texas This Summer: Demand > Supply.

BLUE ON BLUE: Chicago Democrats in Trouble With Black Voters Over Migrant Invasion of South Side.

DIPLOMACY: Biden says he visited Northern Ireland ‘to make sure the Brits didn’t screw around.’

According to the transcript, Biden told party supporters at a private New York residence that he had visited Belfast “to make sure they weren’t — the Brits didn’t screw around and Northern Ireland didn’t walk away from their commitments.”

Those words drew predictable fire from the Democratic Unionists, the main pro-British party in Northern Ireland. The DUP has spent the past year blocking the revival of a cross-community government with the Irish republican Sinn Féin party in protest against trade rules that make it easier for Northern Ireland to trade with the Republic of Ireland, an EU member, than with the rest of the U.K. Power-sharing between British unionists and Irish nationalists was the central objective of the Good Friday deal.

“It’s unbelievable and frightening to think this man is the leader of the free world,” said Sammy Wilson, who criticized Biden’s remarks as both hostile to unionists and politically incoherent. “If you believe that there should be a special relationship between the U.S. and U.K., then at least show us some respect.”

Even the leader of Northern Ireland’s middle-ground Alliance Party, Naomi Long, was taken aback when told of Biden’s remarks.

Thanks goodness Biden is restoring confidence for the U.S. among our traditional allies.

DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: Bragg Strikes Again: Hero Marine Who Helped Subdue Deranged Jordan Neely on Subway Faces Charges.

GLEICHSCHALTUNG: Gay professor placed on leave for sharing chocolate that affirms biology of sex, he says.

David Richardson already suing community college district for punishing him for using “Do, Re, Mi” as preferred gender pronouns in mandatory seminar.

A California community college is investigating a tenured history professor for the “serious misconduct” of handing out chocolate, he claims.

The composition of the chocolate wasn’t the problem for Madera Community College, David Richardson told Just the News. It was the gender pronouns on the wrappers: “He/Him” for chocolate bars with nuts and “She/Her” for the “nutless” version, reflecting the human sexual binary.

He shared the human resources letter delivered “by a uniformed police officer” Monday evening at his home.

If that seems intimidating, that’s the point.

BUSTED BORDER: Biden Administration Caught Coordinating Illegal Crossings with Mexican Government.

FALLOUT: Russia’s Budget Deficit Rises To $45 Billion In Four Months.

Russia’s Finance Ministry announced on Thursday that the federal deficit stood at 3.42 trillion rubles ($45.4 billion) from January 1 to the end of April, exceeding the annual plan by 2.9 trillion rubles, according to Bloomberg.

Public spending in Russia jumped 26%, while revenues fell 22%, as oil and gas revenues fell more than half from a year earlier.

Despite the Russian government’s efforts to limit spending, the deficit continued to deteriorate during the month of April, indicating that the government’s efforts in this regard have not been successful so far, which increases worries about high inflation rates in the period ahead and are forcing the central government to reverse some of the interest rate cuts it took last year, Alexander Isakov, an economist at Bloomberg and expert from Russia.

The Russian Finance Ministry said the increase in spending was due to advance payments made at the start of the year, which are not expected to continue for the rest of the year.

War is expensive.

Of course, in this country, so is peace:

If something can’t go on forever, it will stop.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: It’s Time for the Biden Border Fiasco to Become Supersized. “We here in the border states are going to have to deal with the pandora’s box that Biden is opening. The cartel action that’s about to get even busier here in Arizona is a much bigger concern than whatever is going on in Manhattan. These midwestern and northeastern libs who have been running around saying, ‘There are no illegal people,’ for years can just shut it.”

YOU CAN PRINT MONEY BUT YOU CAN’T PRINT WEALTH: The Great Wealth Illusion.

It’s no secret that for the past decade and a half the Federal Reserve has made it its mission to create a “wealth effect” in the economy by boosting asset prices. Back in 2010, Ben Bernanke explained, “…higher stock prices will boost consumer wealth and help increase confidence, which can also spur spending. Increased spending will lead to higher incomes and profits that, in a virtuous circle, will further support economic expansion.” And so he began a process of printing money with the explicit purpose of inflating asset prices, a policy that has been continued by each of his successors.

Over this time, quantitative easing, as the policy is called, has been inordinately successful in boosting asset prices while not so effective in boosting the economy. The most straightforward evidence of this is the fact that household net worth relative to the economy has soared to record highs during the QE era. If it had worked the way Bernanke intended then, after a brief surge in the ratio, it would have flattened out as growth in the economy caught up to growth in asset prices. Clearly, that didn’t happen.

It does appear, however, as if the central bank did at least accomplish the first half of Bernanke’s mission (boosting wealth) even if it didn’t quite accomplish the second half (kickstarting a virtuous circle of economic growth). But when you look at household net worth relative to the growth in the money supply, it’s clear that the rise in the former was nothing more than an illusion. Net worth has actually declined relative to M2 since 2008 and is now back to levels not seen in the 20 years prior to that time. The truth is that there has been no “real” wealth created at all when measured this way.

At the time I referred to this as Cargo Cult thinking: Print the money and the goods will come. It’s amazing how many of our best-credentialed people believed it would work — and still do.

THIS IS WHAT A $10 MILLION RETAINER TO BIDEN, INC. WILL GET YOU: Leaked Emails Show Biden Administration Protected China During Spy Balloon-gate.

STEPHEN MILLER: The circus returns to CNN — and CNN employees are very upset.

Employees and contributors woke up Thursday morning very upset to learn that they work at CNN, the network that helped in the great cause of giving candidate Donald Trump billions of dollars in unearned media on his way to steamrolling the 2016 GOP primaries and eventually capturing the presidency.

Media-at-large, and by that I mean CNN, then spent the better part of four years atoning for their failed attempt to engineer an election into a coronation for Hillary Clinton. Now, in a morning hangover rage fest over Donald Trump’s appearance at a CNN town hall (which was really more of a corporate promo for new 9 p.m. host Kaitlan Collins than it was anything to do with Trump or Republican voters), an entire new crop of contributors is very upset to learn who signs their paycheck.

With the ratings boost Trump provides, wait’ll they realize it’s virtually him signing their paychecks.

NEAT TRICK: Trump’s ’Nut Job’ Accuser Helped Get Law Passed That Allowed Her to Sue Him.