TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! Biden (falsely) claims that he personally created 10 million jobs.

TRIUMPH OF A LIMOUSINE LEFTIST: Review: Like a Rolling Stone by Jann Wenner.

A great editor requires many qualities—an intuitive understanding of his audience, an ability to spot small stirrings before they become big trends, a taste for good writing, money—but self awareness is not one of them. In a memoir as gossipy as Wenner’s this is less of a handicap than you might think. The reader will figure out what’s going on even if the memoirist doesn’t. Wenner seldom lets more than a few pages go by without a reference to his soul-deep friendship with some rock star or other. Bob Dylan drops by when he’s in town. Bruce Springsteen invites him to his horse farm. Jagger jets in for a sail around the Caribbean. Why, a court order couldn’t keep Paul McCartney or Bono or Jackson Browne away from the radiant pleasure of hanging with their pal Jann.

That their pal Jann also just happened to be the editor of their industry’s most important trade magazine—the cover of which generated enough publicity to almost guarantee the success of a new record or tour—is, as Jann himself sees it, an item of no importance in maintaining the spiritual communion he enjoys with these busy, ambitious, calculating, and relentlessly transactional show biz figures. He must be a hoot to be with! His charm, his humor! The sparkle of his conversation! Why else would Bob or Paul or Bruce be so eager for his company? Of course, he usually goes ahead and obliges them with a cover story. What else are friends for?

The same obliviousness holds true in his political excursions. Manmade climate change is evidently unaffected by the long flights on his personal jet. He is, who would’ve guessed, a passionate advocate of gun control and the confiscation of private firearms; one chapter is even titled “Fuck the NRA.” But—boy!—was he ever glad his guide on a cross country motorcycle trip was packing heat to protect him from the rednecks that infest the land between the coasts. (In fairness, I should add that the guide didn’t have to shoot any of them.) He bravely condemned the “greed” unleashed by Ronald Reagan and other Republicans. Yet even as he tends an ever rising pile of money, fighting for every inch of market advantage, squeezing the best financing rates he can from Wall Street, and slashing payroll to juice profits, he never succumbs to greed himself. Greed is one of those terrible character flaws that only afflicts other people. Most of them, thank God, do not have summer compounds in Montauk.

Like most great magazines, Rolling Stone not only fed off its readers’ enthusiasms but in time began to shape them too. In the early days, as the magazine’s and Wenner’s success grew, a debate stirred among the hippies about “whether making money, or more than you needed, was wrong.” Could there be such a thing as “hip capitalism”?

In nearly 600 pages of memoir, Wenner doesn’t answer the question directly—he was never good at making arguments, as he proved in the many pompous, moralizing editorials he wrote for the magazine and insists on quoting here.

His life was his answer—a resounding “Hell yes!” The same market economy he disdained in theory could be squeezed in practice for unlimited financial gain. The radicalism that Wenner flirted with in his youth and quickly rejected requires a kind of self-denial, even asceticism, that couldn’t withstand the constant allurements to which he happily submitted. By contrast, he writes, “I believed in a revolution of culture and consciousness.” Good choice! That kind of revolution is a much lighter lift than a revolution in economic arrangements, and much more fun.

And now that Wenner has had his fun and made his millions, it’s time to pull the drawbridge up:

This isn’t new for Wenner, who does not understand the free press. He interviewed President Obama in 2016 and said, “Wenner: Maybe the news business and the newspaper industry…needs a subsidy so we can maintain a free press?”

… which is literally the opposite of a free press. https://t.co/TmYafJN6gh

— Pudge (@pudgenet) October 10, 2022

A socialist wanting to nationalize the media — why is the founder of Rolling Stone working Salon’s side of the street?

FINGERS CROSSED: Regime Endgame? Protests Threaten Iran Oil Industry. “I’m not getting my hopes up. The Mullahs regime has maintained power for so long by being much more willing than Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi ever was at spilling the blood of his own countrymen.”

SUBVERSION: China’s Stake in World Ports Sharpens Attention on Political Influence. “The party calls them ‘floating fortresses.’ These mighty vessels are at the forefront of long-term efforts by the CCP to strengthen a hold on global shipping and logistics, prompting concerns in some Western countries over risks ranging from espionage to economic coercion, digital domination and military expansion.”

PARTY OF TOLERANCE: Kari Lake Tried to Speak With Democrat Opponent at a Town Hall Event. She Got Booted Instead. “Lake has been incessant about debating her Democratic opponent to no avail. So, when all else fails—improvise. At a town hall event that featured both candidates, Lake decided to stick around after her session was over. It was stipulated that both candidates wouldn’t share the stage, so Lake retreated to the audience. The sight of her triggered Hobbs, which caused Lake to be booted from the venue.”

THIS HONESTLY EXPLAINS A LOT: Testosterone: Going… Going… Gone!

The reasons for the reduction in testosterone levels remain unclear. A rise in obesity and a decline in smoking have been suggested, since “testosterone levels are lower among overweight people and smoking increases testosterone levels.” Conspicuously absent from these reports are the effects on serum testosterone of changes in life experiences over time.

More reliably, other researchers have implicated estrogen-mimicking chemicals, which leach into the environment from plastics (BPA). . . . It is very possible, even likely, that the feminization of society over the past 20 to 30 years is changing males, body and mind. It is very possible that the subliminal stress involved in sublimating one’s essential nature is producing less manly men.

Hmm.

BURIED LEDE: THE DIXIE CHICKS ARE STILL A THING? The Dixie Chicks endorsed Robert Francis O’Rourke and the crowd booed.

SPRING FASCISM PREVIEW: Jill Biden isn’t mutton dressed as lamb; she’s even worse.

When Melania Trump entered the White House, we thought that our eyes would never again be offended by a badly dressed First Lady. Even when Jill Biden walked through those doors, we thought that a 70-year-old, middle-class, White lady, if not stylish, would at least be blandly unexceptional. How wrong we were. Although it’s hard to fathom, Jill may well be the worst-dressed First Lady in American History. It’s not just that she too often wears clothes unsuited to a woman her age (“mutton dressed as lamb” is not a compliment); it’s also that, as one hilarious Twitter thread shows, she wears clothes that are better suited for furniture.

Michelle Obama, with her, um, husky build, had a challenge finding flattering clothes but she did try. Most of her clothes were unexceptional, although she sometimes forgot that she represented the American people. It was only after she left the White House that she dressed like a giant banana in glitter boots:

Earlier: Tweep’s ‘hobby’ of finding sofas and other objects that Jill Biden’s dresses are ‘MADE from’ results in spectacularly HILARIOUS thread.

(Classical — and possibly NSFW — reference in headline.)

GREAT MOMENTS IN LOW INFORMATION VOTERS: One more time: Super compilation of leftist blue checks missing Lauren Boebert’s ‘two words’ joke.

We told you about George Takei missing the joke, and we told you about Jon Cooper beclowning himself.

Sorry, guys, but we’ve got to go back to the well one more time on this one because the number of left wing blue checks self-owning over this one is just too good to pass up.

In case you somehow missed it, like apparently half of the libs on Twitter, Biden began a speech the other day with the phrase ‘Let me start off with two words: Made in America.’

It’s a testament to which the DNC-MSM avoids reporting Brandon’s many, many gaffes and malapropisms:

UPDATE: “Two Words: Biden Is Dumb,” Jim Treacher writes: “Those intelligent, well-informed liberals don’t know about the latest stupid thing Biden said. But that’s not really their fault, because the only media they consume never told them about it. Our moral, ethical, and intellectual betters in the press are doing everything they can to minimize Biden’s increasingly obvious dementia. They know he’s losing his mind, and they’re desperate to help their fellow Democrats maintain power. If that means keeping their audience so ignorant that they make fools of themselves… oh well! 🤷🏻‍♂️”

STUPIDITY SHOULD BE PAINFUL, BUT COME ON:

WELL, THAT IS THE TEAM’S INDIGENOUS NAME: ESPN Invites Wrath of Woke Gods, Mistakenly Refers to Cleveland Guardians as ‘Indians’.

BLINKEN’S AN IDIOT: Matt Taibbi: Anthony Blinken Raises the Pucker Factor on Dissent: A brief note about disagreement in the blacklist age.

Blinken: “We will hold to account any individual, entity, or country that provides political or economic support for President Putin’s illegal attempts to change the status of Ukrainian territory. In support of this commitment, the Departments of the Treasury and Commerce are releasing new guidance on heightened sanctions and export control risks for entities and individuals inside and outside of Russia that support in any way the Kremlin’s sham referenda, purported annexation, and occupation of parts of Ukraine.”

Taibbi: “There’s no way to know what a State Department official might believe meets the definitions of ‘political support,’ support ‘in any way,’ the ‘Kremlin’s sham referenda,’ or any of a half-dozen phrases in that passage. This is why the negative precedent of government watch lists after the PATRIOT Act was important. By making lists, officials can seriously impacting your life without notice or right of appeal. Even if courts later strike down the activity, it may take nearly 20 years to get there, and that’s assuming a) the state discloses enough to make a court challenge possible and b) they abide by any judicial rulings.”

Plus: “The State Department boasted about Putin’s election as both legitimate and the fruit of a long, U.S.-aided effort to build democratic infrastructure in Russia. They described an event heralding a pluralistic future. I leave it to the reader to decide if that constitutes ‘support in any way.'”

That’s different because shut up, peasant.

ANDY KESSLER: Blame Lockdowns on Silicon Valley: Without technology to keep the economy from imploding, they wouldn’t have lasted.

Lockdowns were a huge policy mistake. I blame Silicon Valley. I know, I know, the real blame resides with ill-informed technocrats who instituted the draconian and non-Jeffersonian lockdowns: the Trump and Biden administrations, blue-state governors, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the rest of the alphabet soup of head-nodding agencies. Yet policy makers implemented lockdowns only because they could—because Silicon Valley provided the tools to lock people in their homes without completely imploding the economy.

Think about it. You couldn’t force lockdowns without laptops, Zoom, Amazon deliveries, cloud computing, Slack, QR codes or Netflix. Without them, lockdowns would have lasted two, maybe three weeks tops before the utter destruction of the economy forced everyone back to the workplace. Instead, we took the Faucian bargain of technology-enabled yearlong lockdowns because it was doable. Silicon Valley’s tools became shackles.

Lockdowns came with huge costs: job losses, increased crime, stunted learning, delayed medical treatments, violent protests, government spending blowouts, supply-chain disruptions, inflation, mental-health issues—all avoidable. Like bad air days, I fear bad carbon days will soon invoke climate-emergency lockdowns to keep people from driving.

Technology giveth and technology taketh away. The latest example is the plan to install cameras on every New York City subway car to limit crime. Gov. Kathy Hochul said, “You think Big Brother is watching you on the subways? You’re absolutely right. That is our intent.” Privacy advocates, such as the New York Civil Liberties Union, are naturally up in arms. Its statement reads, “Living in a sweeping surveillance state shouldn’t be the price we pay to be safe.”

Smart cities are now possible. Surveillance cameras, congestion pricing, timed traffic lights, buses that actually show up on time, balanced electricity usage, it could be urban utopia. But I wonder when smart cities crash, will we turn them off and then back on again? China has already created smart cities and uses data as scoring inputs for its Social Credit System, which stifles freedom for its citizens. Tech giveth and taketh.

The National Traffic Safety Board last week recommended blood-alcohol monitoring for all new vehicles.

Lockdowns were also welcome to many members of the laptop class, to the point where many tech employees are still working remotely and fighting efforts to make them return to the office. And, of course, they led to a huge wealth transfer from small business and working-class people to big companies.

Related: The rich and powerful thrived as the rest of us suffered in the year of lockdowns.

BATTLESWARM: Kerch Strait Bridge Update: Russia’s Still Using It. “They’ve opened up the surviving lane for traffic. ‘It’s been said that the road span can handle 20 cars an hour and has a weight capacity of 3.5 tons.’ That’s rural mail route capacity, not ‘support a major front in a war’ capacity.”

IT’S… COMPLICATED? Stacey Abrams Doesn’t Know When Pregnancy Starts.

DEAL OF THE DAY: Calphalon Nonstick Jumbo Fryer Omelet Pan with Cover. #CommissionEarnd

‘I REGRET IT EVERY DAY:’ New survey of women who have experienced chemically induced abortions reveals the procedure’s emotional and spiritual aftermath is often devastating. And chemical inducement is now the approach to killing unborn babies favored by the Biden administration and the abortion lobby.