OUT ON A LIMB: Confirmed: Media Matters is a garbage place.

Timothy Johnson, a “researcher” with Media Matters for America, announced Monday that he had left the organization after ten years — and apparently not on amicable terms.

Johnson not only accused his former boss of covering for a sexual predator, but offered a rare mea culpa for his time with Media Matters. Maybe —  just maybe — he notes, the organization dedicated to using out-of-context quotes, spurious accusations, and old tweets to destroy the livelihoods of its political enemies is not the virtuous place he thought it to be.

In a long tweet thread, Johnson claims that Media Matters editorial director Ben Dimiero knew for years that a male staff member was engaging in sexual misconduct but did nothing to stop him.

Read the whole thing.

IT LOOKS MORE LIKE A FOILED ASSASSINATION: Is Chuck Schumer Culpable for the Death Threat Against Justice Kavanaugh?

HEADLINES FROM WEIMAR AMERICA: Methodist Church’s First Drag Queen Pastor: ‘God Is Nothing.’ 

NOT STYLISH BUT STILL USEFUL: .308 Based Cartridges: The popularity of the AR-15 and .223/5.56 has eclipsed the popularity of the AR-10 and the utility of .308 based cartridges.

I want an AR-10.

WHAT’S IN THE BAG: The List of Gear Kavanaugh’s Would-Be Assassin Was Carrying Is Terrifying.

DEAL OF THE DAY: Carhartt Men’s Short Sleeve Pocket T-Shirt. #CommissonEarned

SHOT: Biden claims ‘more Americans feel financially comfortable’ since he took office.

Chaser: Majority Now See Another Depression Ahead.

Who you gonna believe, Joe or your own lyin’ eyes?

NATO: Sweden’s NATO Bid Is in Trouble. “Before submitting their NATO applications, Sweden and Finland had surveyed alliance members; no one spoke up to object. Then they submitted their applications, and Turkey blocked them. ‘Unless Sweden and Finland clearly show that they will stand in solidarity with Turkey on fundamental issues, especially in the fight against terrorism, we will not approach these countries’ NATO membership positively,’ Recep Tayyip Erdogan told NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg last month. The Turkish president’s beef mostly seems to concern Sweden, which has long hosted Kurdish refugees (some of them of the militant variety). One former Peshmerga fighter, Amineh Kakabaveh, is even a member of Sweden’s parliament. Erdogan wants Sweden to curtail its links to Kurdish groups and end its suspension of arms exports to Turkey.”

UNEXPECTEDLY! Biden Is Making the Sun Shine—for China.

This week, President Biden invoked the Defense Production Act to expedite domestic production of solar panels. The move is yet another empty and cynical gesture camouflaging an increasingly evident and disturbing anti-America agenda.

According to press reports, the purpose of Biden’s DPA announcement was to increase domestic manufacturing of solar panels in order to increase U.S. energy security and independence and lower energy costs for Americans at a time of skyrocketing gas prices; the national average an unthinkable $5 a gallon this week.

Blah-blah-blah, as Greta Thunberg might say. The actual purpose of Biden’s invocation of the DPA was to roll back the Trump-era tariffs on Communist China-made solar panels.

Who on earth could have seen this coming?

SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: Want to reduce stroke risk? Sit less. Move more. Do chores.

ITS ORIGIN AND PURPOSE, STILL A TOTAL MYSTERY:

No enemies to the left.

DON SURBER: PayPal is saving America.

I don’t see a lot of worries about pronouns or concerns about equity and privilege in the stories about them. Thiel is gay but not LGBT. As for the others, it’s none of my business.

My point is 5 immigrants and 2 natives made it rich quick and did not go all PC and hate the country that enabled their success. Indeed, they are grateful for America.

We need more of that and less of Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos. The way you save the world is through capitalism. The way you destroy it is by forcing vaccines on everyone and talking about reducing the population.

Read the whole thing.

Related: I think we can safely Elon Musk never visited Epstein’s Island: Elon Musk has a question about Jeffrey Epstein.

Elon Musk recently posted a meme about Jeffrey Epstein and the Department of Justice (DOJ) on Twitter, the brand he’s soon (maybe?) hoping to buy. The meme says, “Only thing more remarkable than DOJ not leaking the list is that no one in the media cares. Doesn’t that seem odd?”

While Cockburn has nothing but reverence for his governmental overlords, Musk’s reference to the Jeffery Epstein/Ghislaine Maxwell client list does stand out as a particularly juicy piece of news. The mainstream media has avoided the list like the Spanish Flu. Doesn’t the average person deserve to know which of their esteemed leaders has taken a trip to the infamous Little Saint James Island? The short answer is no, because ever since the Maxwell trial (which was also subject to a media blackout), very little has occurred in the public eye.

Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and the DNC-MSM memory hole makes perfect sense.

Evergreen:

SHOULD WE MAKE US SMARTER, STRONGER, FASTER: That’s a question that is becoming increasingly relevant as scientific advances clear the path toward bionic brains and muscles becoming an everyday reality. But the Colson Center’s latest “What Would You Say” video on HillFaith suggests there’s more to the issue than creating an actual “Six Million Dollar Man.” Remember him?

FASTER, PLEASE: Transcranial stimulation lowers blood pressure in patients with resistant hypertension, study shows.

TOP PRODUCER ALBEMARLE RISKS SHUTTING GERMAN PLANT IF EU DECLARES LITHIUM A HAZARD.

INCITED BY DEMOCRATS’ HATE SPEECH, OBVIOUSLY: Police capture armed man near Kavanaugh home. “A California man carrying at least one weapon near Brett M. Kavanaugh’s Maryland home has been taken into custody by police, after telling officers he wanted to kill the Supreme Court justice, according to people familiar with the investigation. . . . Two people familiar with the investigation said the initial evidence indicates the man was angry about the leaked draft of an opinion by the Supreme Court signaling the court is preparing to overturn Roe. v. Wade, the 49-year-old decision that guaranteed a person’s constitutional right to have an abortion. He was also angry over a recent spate of mass shootings, those people said.”

So, basically, an NPR listener pushed into violence by their extreme rhetoric.

Plus: “In this case, police got lucky with a tip about the perpetrator. They caught him before he made it onto Kavanaugh’s property. But will police get lucky the next time while Democrats dither on additional security for Supreme Court justices in this environment? And will Schumer apologize for encouraging this madness, even knowing it was explicitly illegal? . . . Also, the group that doxxed Supreme Court justices in the wake of the Dobbs leak insists that they bear no responsibility for this attempted attack. However, they’re pretty thin-skinned about it.”

Democrats would be happy to see Kavanaugh gone and replaced by Biden. Republicans need to say that they won’t allow a seat opened by assassination to be filled until after the next presidential election.

UPDATE: Josh Blackman: So Long As Dobbs Remains Undecided, The Lives of the Justices Are At Risk: The Dobbs 5 should immediately issue an unsigned per curiam order, with an opinion to follow, even over the Chief Justice’s objection.

UPDATE (From Ed): At the end of the 2020 election, Omri Ceren asked:

(Updated and bumped.)

CREEPERS GOTTA CREEP:

WELCOME BACK, CARTER! World Bank: Get ready for That 70s Stagflation Show.

The global stagnation at the end of WWII came in large part because so much national wealth had been destroyed in Europe and the Pacific Rim. The US avoided much of that destruction, and even then we suffered through an economic downturn in the immediate aftermath of the war. Without capital to invest, Europe entered into a stasis of poverty and famine, until the US pulled together its Marshall Plan after dealing with our war debt to revitalize the continent.

The lack of real capital then parallels our situation now. In the 1970s, we had oil shocks, asset bubbles, and over-regulation that created the stagflation maelstrom, but we didn’t have a significant amount of national debt in relation to GDP. The debt-to-GDP ratio remained in the low 30% range all decade long, giving the US lots of flexibility for budgeting and investment.

Now, however, we’re back to oil shocks, asset bubbles, and over-regulation impeding economic growth, but our debt-to-GDP ratio is now 124%. That’s higher than it was during World War II in any one year; 114% in 1945 was the wartime high, and it got to 119% in 1946 as the US economy went into recession. We no longer have any flexibility for capital investment to deal with the strategic conditions of the present day, especially while we refuse to extract and refine the oil we can access.

In retrospect, this was the moment when we know that ’70s Show was guaranteed to be in reruns for quite some time:

IT’S EFFICIENT: Brain applies ‘data compression’ when making decisions, study finds.

FASTER, PLEASE: LA officials warn DA George Gascon after Chesa Boudin recall: ‘You’re next.’

As New York Times owner Tom Cotton wrote in December: Recall, Remove & Replace Every Last Soros Prosecutor.

ALL MY DOMAINS ARE HAPPY: Time to Get Your .gay Domain Name!

IT’S HARD WHEN YOU’RE OUTDOORS ALL THE TIME: Farmers at high risk for tick-borne illnesses do little to prevent exposure.

WELL, BYE: How Chesa Boudin lost San Francisco: DA resoundingly recalled for failing to get a grip on crime and disorder.

A friend comments: “SF ousted their DA by a vote of 61%-39%. The same voters elected Biden 86%-12%.”

Next, George Gascon. Chesa Boudin’s reign is over, George Gascon should be next, says LA deputy DA.

EVERY BUBBLE POPS: The Great Leveler Is Coming, Mimi. “Thanks in large measure to the SUPERgenius economic management of the Biden Administration, the world is now exiting an era of historically cheap money and entering a period of rising interest rates. A whole lot of business models that seemed to make sense during an era of cheap credit are going to look as retroactively foolish as Pets.com.”

HOW’S THAT WELCOME WAGON PROGRAM COMING ALONG? Successful Americans Are Abandoning These Five High-Tax States, New IRS Data Show.