PrairiePundit

AP/Fox News: German police alerted to armed mob, find asparagus pickers They do seem ready for a terrorist threat.

Jerusalem Post: Iran: Israel helping Saudis fight Houthis The unconfirmed report published on Tuesday could well be false and part of Tehran’s media campaign against its Sunni opponents in the region. I have seen reports that Israel offered the Saudis the use of the Iron Dome system to fend off Houthis attacks on Saudi civilians, but those reports indicated the Saudis declined the offer.

AP/Washington Post: Qatar extends travel ban on ex-Gitmo inmates; talks continue ... The official said the ban would remain in place until diplomatic talks for a longer-term solution are completed. The restrictions had been due to expire on Monday under a May 2014 exchange for Bergdahl. U.S. officials said Friday the Obama administration was closing in on an agreement with Qatar to extend the restrictions for six months that could be announced this weekend. It was not immediately clear why that agreement had not been finalized. ... This looks like another short term solution to a political problem Obama created by doing the deal to begin with.  It is possible he is just trying to run out the clock until he is out of office.

LA Times: Rural riverfront communities in Texas have grown accustomed to flooding -- elevating homes and investing in boats, jet skis and all-terrain vehicles to weather the inevitable storms. But how do you weatherproof hundreds of head of cattle? About 40 miles northeast of Houston, ranchers were using an air boat to corral and feed a herd of about 500 cattle after they became stranded by flooding Saturday along the Trinity River that turned their pasture into an island outside the city of Liberty. “That’s about $1 million in cows,” said Tom Branch, Liberty County emergency management director. “They’ve been trying to get them out of there for days.” First by truck, then by power boat, man rescues Texas flood victims The Trinity River bisects Liberty County, where about a dozen subdivisions with roughly 600 homes sprang up along the river, mostly elevated homes. So far Saturday, none had flooded, Branch said. About half the residents evacuated. Officials opened a shelter, but only ...

Salena Zito: A tugboat pushing nine loaded coal barges chugged up the Ohio River, toward the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers. It eventually passed the McConway & Torley steel foundry along the Allegheny, likely headed for one of the few coal-fired power plants left in America. Hold on to that imagery: It is part of the left-behind community of Americans whose struggles with the we-know-what's-best-for-you elite will be central to the fight over our direction in the next presidential election. Workers in the coal industry and at McConway & Torley are in the cross hairs of the progressive left. The left rails against McDonald's for not paying a salary that sustains a family of four, as it simultaneously tries to snuff out the manufacturing base that provides well-paid middle-class jobs. McConway & Torley has been in Pittsburgh for nearly 150 years. It is one of the few places in the city where laborers can earn enough to stay out of poverty, own a...

NY Post Editorial: Come Monday, the five senior Taliban officials sprung from Guantanamo in the trade for accused Army deserter Bowe Bergdahl, could all be walking free. Free to rejoin their terrorist comrades in jihad against America — as at least three of them reportedly have already tried to do. It’s a reminder of just how bad a deal President Obama struck to free Bergdahl, the man the White House then hailed as a hero but who now faces criminal charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy — charges that could keep him behind bars for life. Indeed, retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal revealed last week for the first time that he’d been informed almost immediately after Bergdahl’s 2009 capture that the soldier “walked off [his base] intentionally.” Yet years later, in the runup to Obama’s trade, National Security Adviser Susan Rice claimed Berghdal had been “captured on the battlefield” after serving “with honor and distinction.” The State Department dismissed claims he’d dese...

Jerusalem Post: Israeli security sources believe Hezbollah kept a storeroom hiding massive quantity of explosives in Cyprus for an Iranian-orchestrated terror campaign against Israel. ... Security sources in Israel say they believe the apartment in which the suspect was captured was an explosive- materials storeroom that belonged to Hezbollah and was supposed to constitute an outlet for carrying out a large-scale series of terrorist attacks across Europe against Jewish, Israeli and Western targets. ... Iran is living up to its reputation of being the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism.  Imagine how much more dangerous they will be with nuclear weapons and billions of dollars Obama is going to give them.

NY Times: Democrats Seek a Richer Roster to Match G.O.P. Doug Mills/The New York Times Hillary Rodham Clinton in Monticello, Iowa, last month. She wants to raise around $1 billion. While Republican presidential candidates can count on a stable of billionaires, none of the top Democratic donors have committed to supporting Hillary Rodham Clinton on a similar scale. There may not be a formal tie between Soros and the Clinton campaign but a Soros backed group, Media Matters has been acting like a defense team in dealing with the scandals surrounding the Clinton Foundation.  She will also probably get indirect support from Tom Steyer who is a global warming true believer.  Her campaign has indicated that it expects to raise over a billion dollars which means she will likely outspend any Republican rival who will have to spend more to get the nomination to begin with.

William O'Keefe: ... Since the late 1980s, the climate establishment has been asserting that increasing levels of carbon dioxide—CO2—were causing rising global temperatures and extreme weather events. Their certitude was based on complex computer models that have been unable to accurately predict any climate events over the past 25 years. Instead of temperatures rapidly rising, they have been stable for the last 17 years and extreme weather events—hurricanes, tornadoes, etc.—have not been increasing. Gavin Schmidt, director of the Goddard Institute of Space Science has said: “General statements about extremes are almost nowhere to be found in the literature but seem to abound in the popular media. . . . .It’s this popular perception that global warming means all extremes have to increase all the time, even though if anyone thinks about that for 10 seconds they realize that’s nonsense.” The new McCarthyites are turning to threats and intimidation because with each passing day ...

Sunday Telegraph: Opec under siege as Isil threatens world's oil lifeline As the bloc’s 12 oil ministers meet in Vienna, the march of Isil jihadists in the Middle East is putting Iran and Saudi Arabia on a collision course with explosive consequences ISIL is already a threat to Iraq production and could threaten others in the region.  That could send the price of oil back over the $100 mark.

AFP: They're easy to drive and hard to stop, can be made on a farm and destroy a city block: the Islamic State group's monstrous truck bombs are reshaping the battlefield. IS fighters have used looted armoured personnel carriers, pick-ups, tankers and dump trucks. They pack them with tonnes of explosives and weld steel cages around them.The jihadists used about 30 explosives-rigged vehicles in the Iraqi city of Ramadi this month, blasting their way through positions government and allied fighters had managed to hold for more than a year. When a position is too well defended for a more conventional advance, a suicide driver steers a truck bomb, protected by the makeshift armour, through enemy fire and straight to his target. "They are protected from 12.7mm (heavy machinegun) fire and even some RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades). There's so much explosives (inside) that it's still effective at 50 metres (yards)," an Iraq-based military expert said. Videos of the...

CNN: Texas floods: Enough rain to cover entire state with 8 inches of water in May I checked out the Brazos River about six miles from where I live and found it about 18 inches from going over its banks near Texas 105.   The creeks near me are still draining although they have been over the roads during some of the storms.  There is more rain in the forecast for later today.

Jonah Goldberg: ... There are no “new” Hillarys. There are, on occasion, new strategies to dupe people into thinking there is a new Hillary. But these Potemkin do-overs are usually as pale, thin, and see-through as the skin of an agoraphobic Goth computer programmer. The simple fact is: This is her. There is no other her. There is no other Bill, either, by the way. They are Clintons and they are eternal, Aesopian, unchanging. The tackiness and the lying, the parsing and corner-cutting, the entitlement and fakery: This is what they do. Scandals swirl around the Clintons like the cloud of dirt surrounding Pigpen not because the Clintons are the victims of their enemies, but because the Clintons are their own worst enemies. They do this to themselves. They create these problems. They are the authors of their own torment because this is who they are. ... As I said last week, the Clintons’ favorite way to lie is by telling the truth selectively. There are a lot of benefits to this oh-so-l...

USA Today: ... In an email, Taya Kyle praises both the former Texas governor and his wife, Anita Perry, saying that “I’ve had an up-close view of their humility and commitment to doing the right thing for people regardless of who gets the credit.” She adds: “Believe me, they are a breath of fresh air in a political system full of people playing games and twisting the truth.” Taya Kyle has been an advocate for veterans’ families since the 2013 death of husband Chris, the Navy SEAL from Texas who is considered the most effective sniper in U.S. military history; he is the subject of the popular film American Sniper. ... I think the governor and his wife have effected many people like this.  I like them both and hope their campaign is successful.

Jonah Goldberg: The Clintons’ pathetic ‘no-smoking-gun’ defense The flaw in their argument is that circustancial evidence is in fact evidence and people are convicted with it all the tme.

CBSDFW.com: The National Weather Service River Forecasters are predicting a second and much higher crest of the Brazos River in Parker County. Just a day after homeowners near the river were warned to evacuate over concerns it would crest and rise to a level of 23.5 feet on Thursday – authorities are now expecting the waters to crest near 27 feet by Saturday night, May 30th. “The river is already above flood stage and will continue to rise through today and tomorrow,” Parker County Emergency Management Coordinator George Teague said. “This situation will get worse before it gets better.” ... The Brazos River was almost out of its banks where Texas 105 crosses it on Friday.  I also got a call from the Washington county Judge explaining that Lake Somerville is at capacity and may have uncontrolled water flowing over its spillway as more water accumulates.  There are some road closures already in the area. The area around Houston continues to grapple with the runoff. The ...

Eli Lake: In the month before the city of Ramadi in western Iraq fell, U.S. air strikes destroyed an armored personnel carrier, three humvees, three tanks, four mortars, four gun-mounted pick up trucks and two vehicle bombs belonging to the Islamic State outside the city. On Friday, Lieutenant Colonel Brian Fickel, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, shared this data with me, adding that the U.S. also hit 25 "fighting positions" and 14 pieces of "miscellaneous equipment." Fickel told me Centcom disputed aspects of my column on Thursday , which disclosed how U.S. intelligence agencies were able to observe the Islamic State's buildup of forces and equipment prior to the decisive battle, but the Pentagon "did not order airstrikes against the convoys before the battle started." (I spoke with Centcom before publishing that column, but was not given the information Fickel has since provided.) Fickel said the data showed there were strikes on the Islamic ...

Washington Examiner: Countries and companies that donated to the Clinton Foundation or paid Bill Clinton heavy fees for speeches saw an increase in State Department activity while Hillary Clinton served as secretary of state. The presidential candidate's supporters have dismissed as conspiracy theories allegations that she and her husband traded political favors for contributions to their foundation or for lucrative speaking engagements. A Washington Examiner analysis of Clinton Foundation donors suggests the State Department ramped up its diplomatic activity, foreign assistance and/or investment in countries that gave to the Clinton Foundation and hosted Bill Clinton for high-profile speeches. For example, months after Bill Clinton delivered a speech in Riyadh for a price of $300,000, State Department funding for projects and activities in Saudi Arabia spiked. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has also donated between $10 million and $25 million to the Clinton Foundation, donor reco...

Daily Caller: Everything is bigger in Texas, especially natural gas production. The Lone Star State alone produces more natural gas than every country in the world, except Russia, and that includes every member state of OPEC. The American Petroleum Institute has released a graphic showing that Texas produces 18.81 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day, well above any member of OPEC. The graphic is meant to show how hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling into shale formations has made the U.S. the world’s liquid fuels producer. The fracking revolution has changed the world's market place.  The US has the potential to be a major exporter of energy which presents a strategic problem for both OPEC and Russia.

Washington Post: Hastert accused of paying victim of molestation The former House speaker allegedly paid a male ex-student to keep quiet about acts that took place decades ago, a federal law enforcement official said. If Hastert had gone to the FBI when the extortion effort began he would have been better off and the person demanding the hush money would have been the like recipient of an indictment.  So why didn't his alleged victim just bring a case against him?  I suspect because he thought he could get more doing it the way he did.  It will be interesting to see if any charges are filed against the recipient of the hush money.

NY Times: Aided by the Sea, Israel Overcomes an Old Foe: Drought A major national effort to desalinate Mediterranean seawater and to recycle wastewater has provided the country with enough water for all its needs. The Israelis also developed a drip irrigation system which made the desert bloom with produce.  If California would look at their example rather than listening to Big Green they could solve their water problem.  But Big Green is turning the state in to Big Brown.

Fuel Fix: Cheniere Energy is ready to start construction on an expansion of its Sabine Pass liquefied natural gas export terminal, but it can’t start work until federal regulators dismiss an environmental group’s request to intervene. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in April cleared Cheniere to expand the terminal beyond the four trains already under construction in Louisiana, but the Sierra Club asked for a rehearing, delaying the project. The Houston-based LNG company said its eager to start work on the project. It has locked in contracts for a fifth production unit with a French company and an English utility, which plans to use the natural gas it buys from Cheniere to heat 1.8 million homes in the United Kingdom, CEO Charif Souki wrote in a letter this week to FERC. Cheniere is nearly finished piecing together financing for the project and is poised to give a construction company the green light to start work, but it can’t make a final investment decision until FERC rule...

Breitbart: IRAN RISING: TEHRAN USING HEZBOLLAH IN LATIN AMERICAN ‘CULTURAL CENTERS’ TO INFILTRATE WEST The spread of the sick culture of religious bigotry is not something to be proud of.  These people are enemies of civilization.

Daily Beast: The self-proclaimed Islamic State has claimed a major provincial capital in Iraq and taken over another strategically key city in Syria . In response, the Obama administration plans to do—well, not much of anything new. Four defense officials told The Daily Beast that there’s still strong resistance within the Obama administration to making any serious changes to the current strategy for fighting ISIS—despite mounting skepticism from some in the Pentagon about the current U.S. approach to the war. Although the Obama administration’s public messaging is that it still wants to “degrade and ultimately defeat” ISIS, in reality, many in the Pentagon view the real objective as just running out the clock. “I think this is driven by a sense that this not our fight and so we are just going to try to contain it and have influence where we can,” one official who works closely on the military strategy explained to The Daily Beast. “This is a long fight, and it will be up to the next...

Washington Post: The Islamic State had one of its most successful weeks recently with the capture of Ramadi in Iraq and Palmyra in Syria. But another statement about the group is also quite disturbing: The militants established 10 networks outside of Iraq and Syria, according to the Soufan Group . What's more: These Islamic State strongholds are only the ones that the jihadists have publicly accepted as part of their growing caliphate. Several others have pledged allegiance to the group, but only these were actually acknowledged. The theory behind this speaks to the Islamic State strategy. The networks — "three in Libya, two in Saudi Arabia, and one each in Sinai, Nigeria, Yemen, Algeria, and Khorasan in Pakistan and Afghanistan" — are seen as liaisons that won't easily become lost or overtaken by other forces, according to the Soufan Group. One of the most notable terrorist groups recently connected to the Islamic State is the Nigeria-based Boko Haram. After carr...

Rich Lowry: Black Lives Matter, the slogan of the movement that began in earnest after the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., is a lie. Taken at face value, the phrase is a truism, since obviously all lives matter. But the people who use it as a shibboleth don’t care about black lives per se so much as scoring points against the police. When there is some awful tragedy involving a cop shooting or harming a young black man (sometimes justifiably, sometimes not), they muster every ounce of their moral dudgeon and stage demonstrations eagerly covered by a sympathetic media. Baltimore was an obsession of the Black Lives Matter crowd and of the news media after the death of Freddie Gray from a terrible injury suffered in police custody. But now that 35 people have been murdered in the month of May, the highest in a month since 1999, the response has been muted. A few Baltimore organizations are staging anti­violence protests, but they won’t command major media attention. T...

NY Times: An Award for Bill Clinton Came With $500,000 for His Foundation EM Hillcock/Splash News The Czech model Petra Nemcova honored Bill Clinton at her Happy Hearts Fund's gala in New York in June 2014. Bill Clinton agreed to appear at a gala for the model Petra Nemcova’s charity in 2014 after Ms. Nemcova offered a large donation to the Clinton Foundation. The Czech's have some unusually attractive models which would probably spur his interest anyway, but the money didn't hurt.

Erick Erickson: The Circle of Jerks went blind the other day over a quote from Scott Walker about ultrasounds prior to an abortion being “cool.” The Politico ran it. Various left leaning journalists circulated it. It’s as if they had an email server and they all descended at once with their stories printed on kleenex. The only problem is that the story was made up. Some of the lefty journalists refused to retract their stories even after the quote was proven to be fabricated. It just fit their narrative too well. Now comes another one and this time it involves Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) 100%. Cruz opposed an aid package for Hurricane Sandy. But now he is supporting an aid package for Texas floods. The left-leaning New York Daily News swung into attack mode and with it came the very same “journalists”who had attacked Scott Walker. But, like with Walker, they got their keyboards sticky and their story completely wrong. Legal Insurrection has the complete play by play. The issue here is that...

Joel Kotkin: The Big Idea: California Is So Over California’s drought and how it’s handled show just what kind of place the Golden State is becoming: feudal, super-affluent and with an impoverished interior. Droughts are not a new phenomena in California, but Big Green has made this one worse and has used it to push its global warming agenda.  Rather than build water storage facilities, they are wasting water on bait fish and pumping it into the ocean.

Chris Walker: Some companies create such a successful business model that they are able to develop financing arms dedicated to creating more opportunities to bring their product to market. However, some companies have the good fortune of having a dedicated bank backed by the full faith and credit of the American taxpayer. There has been much in the news about the Export-Import bank in recent months, and unsurprisingly, Boeing has become the lead advocate for the re-authorization of Ex-Im’s charter that is due to expire on June 30th of this year. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the bank has been labeled as “Boeing’s Bank” due to the billions in financing that the government agency has provided the aerospace company in recent years. Last year, Boeing received over 68% of Ex-Im’s long-term guarantees and 40% of the total authorizations. Despite claims that Ex-Im exists to help small businesses, those entities only accounted for 25% of the authorizations. Boeing is a global leade...

Daily Signal: ... However, according to several reports, Collyer—who was appointed by President George W. Bush—repeatedly pushed McElvain today over his arguments for why the case should be dismissed. “So is it your position that if the House of Representatives affirmatively voted not to fund something … then that vote can be ignored by the administration, because after all, no one can sue them?” Collyer asked McElvain. Despite her pressure on the government, Collyer has not yet ruled on whether the case will be dismissed. In an interview with The Daily Signal, Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, pointed to the constitutional infringements cited by the House as reason for why the case should proceed. “This lawsuit talks about specific injury and a specific misuse of funds by the executive branch,” he said. “This makes it a very basic constitutional issue, which is that the executive branch cannot spend money unless it’s been specifically appro...

Eli Lake: The U.S. watched Islamic State fighters, vehicles and heavy equipment gather on the outskirts of Ramadi before the group retook the city in mid-May. But the U.S. did not order airstrikes against the convoys before the battle started. It left the fighting to Iraqi troops, who ultimately abandoned their positions. U.S. intelligence and military officials told me recently, on the condition of anonymity, that the U.S. had significant intelligence about the pending Islamic State offensive in Ramadi. For the U.S. military, it was an open secret even at the time. The Islamic State had been contesting territory in and around Ramadi for more than a year and had spoken of the importance of recapturing the city. The U.S. intelligence community had good warning that the Islamic State intended a new and bolder offensive on Ramadi because it was able to identify the convoys of heavy artillery, vehicle bombs and reinforcements through overhead imagery and eavesdropping on chatter from loc...

Guardian: Vladimir Putin has declared that all military deaths will be classified as state secrets not just in times of war but also in peace – a move that activists worry might further discourage the reporting of Russian soldiers’ deaths in Ukraine. The Russian president has amended a decree to extend the list of state secrets to include information on casualties during special operations when war has not been declared, among other changes. Previously, the list had only forbidden (pdf) “revealing personnel losses in wartime”. He has repeatedly denied any involvement of Russian troops in a pro-Russian rebellion in Ukraine. Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists that the changes were not connected to the conflict in Ukraine . Revealing state secrets is punishable by up to seven years in prison. Rights advocate Valentina Melnikova, secretary of the Union of Soldiers’ Mothers Committees, said the decree simply legalised the common practice of withholding information on all m...

Fox News: An epidemic of murder that has gripped Baltimore in the month following the Freddie Gray riots is threatening to undo decades of rebirth in the city's popular downtown -- and in the process, wipe away tens of millions of tourist dollars. “Sales are next to nothing,” said Kenneth Robinson, manager of the Fudgery, an iconic candy store tucked in the heart of the Inner Harbor. Local merchants were just starting to see business bounce back after last month's riots. But a crime crisis has since gripped Baltimore, with police saying criminals have taken advantage of the situation to wreak havoc on Charm City. Nine people were killed and nearly 30 wounded over the holiday weekend, about three weeks after the rioting. With 38 homicides so far in May, Baltimore is seeing its deadliest month since 1999. The number of killings this year is now at 111, compared with 211 for all of 2014. ... Baltimore has exhibited incompetent politicians from the mayor to the chief prosecutor....

Jerusalem Post: Chief of elite Tajik police unit defects to Islamic State, vows jihad against enemies ... Colonel Gulmurod Khalimov commanded the Central Asian nation's special-purpose police known as OMON, used against criminals and militants. He disappeared in late April, prompting a search by Tajik police. He reappeared Wednesday, vowing to bring jihad to Russia and the Unites States as he brandished a cartridge belt and sniper rifle, in a professionally made, 10-minute video clip posted in social networks. ...  He maybe difficult to capture. He may also give the enemy some insight in how special operations work is done.

Fox News: A Texas college student filed suit against her school this week, saying her constitutional rights were violated when she was shooed off the quad for displaying a pro-Second Amendment sign. Nicole Sanders, 24, who attends Blinn College, a two-year public college in Brenham, Texas, said she and a classmate at the 18,000-student school were holding signs near the student center in February when they were told to move. Sanders' sign read , “Defend Gun Rights on Campus,” and the other said “LOL,” with President Obama’s logo as the “O.” The pair was trying to attract members for a student group they were forming, a chapter of Young Americans for Liberty. Sanders claims a college official accompanied by three armed campus police officers approached and said someone had complained that their display was offensive and that they wouldn’t be allowed to do it again unless they got “special permission.” According to Sanders, the official added that it was unlikely such permissi...

Politico: To fight the Islamic State, Obama joins hands with Iran's proxies U.S. officials, stunned by the Islamic State’s gains, are making a risky bet on Shiite militias in Iraq. This is unlikely to end well.  The Shia militia will alienate the Sunnis who survive ISIL in Anbar province.  The minimalist policy of the use of force looks like a failure.

Fox News: US military pilots complain hands tied in ‘frustrating’ fight against ISIS This became obvious when there was no air attack on ISIL's victory parade through Ramadi.  A few A-10's could  have destroyed it and also destroyed their propaganda campaign, but the planes never got off the ground.

Seth Lipsky: ... The impact could extend way beyond the Lone Star State, shifting political power away from cities. Particularly cities with relatively high, non-voting immigrant populations like — oh, say — New York. The case has the potential to require authorities to strip away during the redistricting process population that isn’t eligible to vote — undocumented aliens, felons, children. ... Not just upstate. Blum reckons the case could lead to changes in city councils, too. He speculates that council districts in such big cities as New York, Houston and Chicago are among the “most malapportioned” in the country. ... Slate.com is already suggesting that a victory by Blum’s clients (two Texas voters who feel underrepresented) could mean “more Republican districts.” This is because most states apportion districts based on total population, which, Slate says, “includes noncitizens, children, felons and others ineligible to vote.” ... It would also lessen the impact of ...

NY Times: Armed With Google and YouTube, Analysts Gauge Russia’s Presence in Ukraine An independent report that draws on publicly available videos, photographs and satellite images has concluded that Russia is continuing to conduct military operations inside Ukraine. While the exposure should be embarrassing, Ukraine is dealing with a Russian government that has no capacity for shame.   In the West the governments are also reluctant to call the Russians on their perfidy because it might mean having to do something more than tut-tut.

Michael Barone: American colleges and universities, long thought to be the glory of the nation, are in more than a little trouble. I've written before of their shameful practices — the racial quotas and preferences at selective schools (Harvard is being sued by Asian-American organizations), the kangaroo courts that try students accused of rape and sexual assault without legal representation or presumption of innocence, and speech codes that make campuses the least rather than the most free venues in American society. In following these policies, the burgeoning phalanxes of university and college administrators must systematically lie, insisting against all the evidence that they are racially nondiscriminatory, devoted to due process and upholders of free speech. The resulting intellectual corruption would have been understood by George Orwell. ... American graduate universities, dating back to Johns Hopkins's founding in 1876, have been built on the German professional mod...

Michelle Malkin: Ask Venezuelans How Sanders-Style Socialism Is Working Out for Them Anyone who thinks socialism is the answer to anything good is ignorant of history and economics.  A photo with the piece shows a woman looking at empty shelves. Recent studies have shown that socialist have a much lower IQ than conservatives.

Jeff Zeleny of CNN talks about how Fiorina is getting interviews from the press gaggle gathered to watch Hillary Clinton not talk to them. It is a pretty clever idea.  It would not surprise me to see other GOP candidates do the same thing.  The media might also smoke Clinton out of her witness protection mode.

Bill Gertz: Iran has dispatched additional paramilitary forces to Yemen to aid pro-Tehran rebels seeking to take control of the strategic southern Arabian state, according to recent U.S. intelligence reports. The Iranian leadership earlier this month ordered militants from the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ (IRGC) Quds Force, along with Lebanese Hezbollah fighters, to Yemen, where Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Arab states are seeking to defeat an insurgency led by Houthi rebels that currently control large parts of the country. The influx of Iranian forces was outlined in several classified intelligence reports circulated within government over the past two weeks, said U.S. officials familiar with the reports. A State Department official said the Sunni Arabs in nearby states are opposing the Houthis and seeking to prevent Iran from establishing a foothold on the peninsula. Estimates put the number of both Iranian and Iraqi Shi’ite forces helping the Houthis in Yemen at around 5,0...

Politico: The CEO of one of the world’s largest oil companies downplayed the effects of climate change at his company’s annual meeting Wednesday, telling shareholders his firm hadn’t invested in renewable energy because “We choose not to lose money on purpose.” “Mankind has this enormous capacity to deal with adversity,” ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson told the meeting, pointing to technologies that can combat inclement weather “that may or may not be induced by climate change.” The comments, which met with applause, were first reported by The Associated Press. At the meeting, shareholders sided with the company’s board and voted against a measure proposed by Father Michael Crosby and Sister Pat Daly, representatives of a Milwaukee-based Roman Catholic organization, to add a climate change expert to the company’s board. ... Inefficient alternative energy using current technology is not viable without substantial subsidies and without government intervention in the market place.  Th...

Erick Erickson: When the economy began to slide under George W. Bush and then cratered complete with Barack Obama entering the White House, Texas’s economy stayed strong. When the summer of recovery saw more and more Americans leaving the workforce, Texas saw more and more people going to work. In fact, if Texas were not a hotbed of economic activity in the past six years, Barack Obama would not be able to claim even the meager successes he claims because those successes belong not to him, but to Texas. And during all that time Texas was led by one man — Governor Rick Perry. It was telling in 2012, before Perry began to stumble, that the national press corps poured out considerable ink to tell people that Perry really had nothing to do with Texas’s job growth. At the same time, liberal writers in Texas were telling anyone who would listen just what a Potemkin Village Perry was running. They were scared of his economic record compared to Obama’s. All of this makes for the singular r...

Reuters: Russia's army is massing troops and hundreds of pieces of weaponry including mobile rocket launchers, tanks and artillery at a makeshift base near the border with Ukraine, a Reuters reporter saw this week. Many of the vehicles have number plates and identifying marks removed while many of the servicemen had taken insignia off their fatigues. As such, they match the appearance of some of the forces spotted in eastern Ukraine, which Kiev and its Western allies allege are covert Russian detachments. The scene at the base on the Kuzminsky firing range, around 50 km (30 miles) from the border, offers some of the clearest evidence to date of what appeared to be a concerted Russian military build-up in the area. ... Other reports say that Russia has brought mobile crematoriums  to the conflict so they do not have to transport bodies back home to relatives.  It is also happening at a time when the Russians are intensifying their cyber war with the US.

Brietbart : It must be rainbows, butterflies and unicorns for Sacramento liberals, as California successfully defended its crown as America’s CEOs again named California the worst state to do business –for the eleventh straight year. Business leaders highlight California state and local government officials’ negative attitudes toward business. CEOs blamed the cost of trying to comply with the state’s “capricious” regulatory system, calling it a job killer, especially for “smaller firms that are the least able to bear the costs.” The annual ChiefExecutive.net survey of 500 CEOs from across America grades states on a “variety of measures of tax and regulatory regime, the quality of the workforce and the quality of the living environment” that are viewed as critical components of its business climate,. Employees’ attitude toward management is also considered, since it is a crucial factor in the perceived quality of a region’s workforce. Important “quality of living” factors include th...

Washington Examiner: The State Department must release batches of emails belonging to former secretary of state and presidential contender Hillary Clinton ever 30 days, beginning at the end of next month, a federal judge ruled Wednesday. U.S. District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras has ordered the State Department to release some of the 55,000 Clinton emails on a monthly basis starting June 30 and ending Jan. 29, 2016, two days before the Iowa Democratic caucus. The ruling is in response to a civil suit by Vice News reporter Jason Leopold, who had been seeking the release of some of Clinton's emails every two weeks. The State Department, which initially proposed a one-time release in January, had offered on Tuesday to release the emails every 60 days. The court appears to have compromised between the two sides. ... Her email scheme will result in a monthly reminder to everyone of how she tried to avoedi accountability.

Fiorina has shown a willingness to take on Clinton in ways that other candidates have avoided.

CNN: Sources: IRS believes massive data theft originated in Russia This must be their way of demonstrating displeasure over the sanctions imposed on their economy in response to their aggression in Ukraine.

Houston Chronicle: This May has been a real soaker for Texas. And now, with four days to spare, it’s officially the wettest month in the state’s history. According to data compiled by the state’s climatologist, John Nielsen-Gammon, the state has received an average 7.54 inches of rain this May, besting the previous record of 6.66 inches in June of 2004. ... I just crossed the Brazos River this afternoon on highway 105 and it is within a few feet of the top of its banks.  There are reports that at some points it is over its banks.  El Nino has apparently shifted the jet stream and is bringing in a lot of this moisture in a relentless pattern.

Fox News: Amnesty International accuses Hamas of torturing, killing Palestinians in new report on Gaza conflict This is about torture and summary executions of other Palestinians.  It does not include the other Hamas war crimes of targetting Israeli noncombatants and storing missiles and otehr weapons among civilians turning them into human shields.

Jim Geraghty: ... Gabriel Malor contemplates the sorts of questions that the press would ask Hillary, if the queen ever lowered herself to taking questions from the rabble: “Secretary Clinton, did you get tax advantages from your use of a shell corporation?” “Secretary Clinton, were the payments made through your shell corporation from foreign governments? What about during your time at State?” “Sec. Clinton, were you or your husband getting paid by foreign nationals through this shell corporation while you were secretary of state?” He concludes, “By definition, the Clintons’ shell corporation must be ignored for the greater good. That’s always the progressives’ bottom line.” Remember, three years ago, being secretive about your wealth was considered ipso facto evidence that you were a tax cheat. Here’s Vanity Fair, back in August 2012: Romney, with an estimated net worth as high as $250 million (he won’t reveal the exact amount), will be one of the richest people ever ...

Town Hall: Tonight Ann Coulter shut down Fusion TV host Jorge Ramos when he tried to tell her the numbers in her new book, Adios America , were wrong. In the  book , out on Monday, June 1, Coulter estimates that the number of undocumented immigrants in America is about 30 million—not 11 million, as Ramos insisted. “The number we keep hearing is 11 million, 11 million, 11 million. That’s so weird! It’s been 11 million for a decade,” Coulter said. “I’m sorry, it defies common sense that in the last decade, not one more illegal alien has come.” Her 30 million figure, which she explains in detail in  Adios America , comes from a Bear Stearns study of several factors, including school enrollment in illegal alien hotspots, housing permits in illegal alien hotspots, and remissions of money back to Mexico. ... Ramos tried to argue that America’s growing diversity is a good thing for the country. “What’s wrong with diversity?” he asked Coulter, who quickly pointed out that “wh...

IBD Editorial: Lawlessness : Fueled by this president's anti-police policies and race-baiting rhetoric, thugs are attacking cops and terrorizing major cities. Horrible violence is breaking out all over. We are witnessing a national crime wave. Law enforcement expects to see an escalation in criminal activity over the summer. Already we've seen a disturbing trend in May, including: • The deadliest month Baltimore has seen in more than 15 years, with almost 30 shootings and nine deaths just over the holiday weekend. That makes well over 100 murders this year, compared with 71 at this time last year, the fastest the city has reached 100 homicides since 2007. • Any time Baltimore officers respond to calls on the city's west side, scene of the Freddie Gray riots, as many as 50 people threaten them, Police Chief Anthony Batts says. "We have to send out multiple units just to do basic police work," he said. "It makes it very difficult to follow up on violence th...

Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com I suspect that Obama really did not want a plan to deal with ISIL and only came up with a half ass plan once it became a political problem.  It is an interesting video that shows just how incompetent this administration's war effort is from top to bottom.

Rowan Scarborough: Beneath the glowing battle reports about Iraq from U.S. military spokesmen in recent months, there remains a strong undercurrent of dissatisfaction among the Pentagon rank and file with the Obama administration’s Islamic State strategy. “What strategy?” asked a Pentagon official involved in counterterrorism analysis. “We are now floating along, reacting to ISIS,” using a common acronym for the Islamic State. This source said the military has a plan for introducing ground troops and defeating the Islamist group, but the belief is that President Obama will never activate it. Whether this unhappiness has reached the inner sanctum of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is unclear. In public, the military leadership says it is squarely behind the strategy of limited U.S.-led airstrikes coinciding with the rebuilding of the Iraq army for all the ground fighting. But a Washington Times spot check of department officials and people who interact with the Pentagon reveals deep-se...

NY Times: ... Mrs. Clinton lacks some of the extraordinary gifts for connection and empathy that her husband possesses, and the round-table events that have characterized her early campaign can feel stage-managed. But even these settings are producing revealing moments, as Mrs. Clinton finds herself far from the world of international diplomacy and scrambling to re-educate herself about the nation she hopes to lead. ... The events are so obviously staged that the RNC has made a video mocking them:

Daily Mail: The silent missile that can destroy an enemy's electronics with PULSES: Air Force confirms work on terrifying new weapon Champ, or Counter-electronics High-powered microwave Advanced Missile Project, is now an 'operational system already in our tactical air force', according to Major General Thomas Masiello The missile can be launched by both bombers and air force fighter jets.  It has th4e capacity of turning off the enemy's weapon systems.

Daily Mail: Hillary Clinton's financial disclosure omitted 'pass-through' company used by Bill Clinton to collect consulting fees -- and nobody knows how much The newly released financial files on Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton's growing fortune omit a company with no apparent employees or assets. The disclosures keep dribbling out, and at a minimum it looks like a very disorganized operation especially for someone who wants to be a chief executive.

Bloomberg: Russia Is Using Mobile Crematoriums to Hide Ukraine's Dead The casualties must be an embarrassment to the Russians who claim they aren't fighting in Ukraine.

International Business Times: Clinton Foundation Donors Got Weapons Deals From Hillary Clinton's State Department The Saudis had already donated millions to the foundation before she took office but only months before the deal Boeing donated another $900,000. ... The Saudi deal was one of dozens of arms sales approved by Hillary Clinton’s State Department that placed weapons in the hands of governments that had also donated money to the Clinton family philanthropic empire, an International Business Times investigation has found. ... There is much more  in what looks like tainted deals.  No wonder Boeing and Clinton have been so closed mouth about the deals.

Telegraph: US-China war 'inevitable' unless Washington drops demands over South China Sea Warning from state-run China newspaper as Beijing reveals plans for development of disputed South China Sea islands They seem to be very serious about their expansion of territorial claims in the South China Sea.  I suspect they think Obama is bluffing about his insistence on freedom of the seas.

James Taranto: Veni, Vidi, Benghazi Mrs. Clinton only wishes she had no accomplishments. ... A rebuttal of sorts comes from last week’s tranche of emails released by the State Department. “A top State Department official boasted of Hillary Clinton’s ‘leadership/ownership/stewardship of this country’s Libya policy from start to finish,’ ” Vox.com’s Jonathan Allen reports. The sender of that August 2011 email was Jake Sullivan, Secretary Clinton’s deputy chief of staff; the recipients were State Department aides Cheryl Mills and Victoria Nuland, the former a longtime Clinton loyalist. “HRC has been a critical voice on Libya in administration deliberations, at NATO, and in contact group meetings,” Sullivan wrote. “She was instrumental in securing the authorization, building the coalition, and tightening the noose around [Moammar] Qadhafi and his regime.” There follows a timeline that runs from Feb. 25, 2011, when “HRC announces the suspension of operations of the Libyan embassy ...