As I’ve written before I’ll be able to tell you who is lying about the state of the economy, the Biden administration or our own eyes, by the end of the week. Two big clues just turned up.
The first is that the Saturday after Cyber Monday which during the Trump years had been an optional 7th workday of the week will be a regular day off. While this is a big clue it’s also possible that the change in the shift structure from six months ago at my place meant there is enough weekend coverage that we aren’t needed. So it’s possible that this is solely due to clever preparation by the company to cut down on overtime expense.
The 2nd is more substantial. Yesterday was Cyber Monday, and not only were we able to keep up with orders but by the end of the day we were told that instead of coming in two hours early the rest of the week for the ten hour days they scheduled us for we can come in at our normal times.
Four days after Black Friday and we’re already back to 8 hour days. In the time that I’ve been here that’s unheard of.
As of right now Friday is still a mandatory 6th day. If that becomes optional before the week is out then hold onto your hats everyone because if you think it’s a bumpy ride now it’s about to get worse.
Frank Perconte:Hey this guy says he’s not a Nazi. All of Germany and I haven’t met one Nazi yet
Band of Brothers 2001
For a long time after World War Two there was an enduring myth that the French Resistance to the German occupation of their country was larger than it was. This myth was advanced for political reasons but the reality that nobody wanted to admit that the vast majority didn’t want to get involved as:
Finding basic necessities like food was a priority
It was a great way to get yourself killed
Until late in the war it seemed unlikely that the Nazi’s were going anywhere
In fact there was a great one line joke in France concerning the “resistance” that I first heard in the 1970’s I recall it went like this:
If everyone who claimed to be part of the [French] Resistance [to the Nazis] had been a member there would have been nobody left to collaborate [with the Germans].
This was similar to a phenom in Germany where you were hard pressed to find either:
A Nazi
or
Anyone who knew what the Nazi’s had done.
It brings to mind a scene in the movie Judgement at Nurenburg, not the famous one between Spencer Tracy & Marlene Dietrich but one where Spencer Tracy’s Character asks the servents at his house Mr. & Mrs. Halbestadt what it was like to live under National Socialism. After making a point of saying how apolitical they are he continues…
Judge Haywood:For instance, there was a place called Dachau… which was not too many miles from here. Did you ever know what was going on there?
Mrs. HalbestadtWe knew nothing about it. How can you ask if we knew anything about that?
Judge Haywood:I’m sorry.
Mr Halbestadt:Your Honor, we are only little people. We lost a son in the army… and our daughter in the bombing. During the war we almost starved. It was terrible for us.
Judge Haywood: I’m sure it was.
Mrs. Halbestadt:Hitler did some good things. I won’t say he didn’t do some good things. He built the Autobahn. He gave more people work. We won’t say he didn’t do some good things. But the other things… the things they say he did to the Jews and the rest… we knew nothing about that. Very few Germans did.
Mr. Halbestadt:And if we did know… what could we do?
Judge Haywood:But Mrs. Halbestadt said you didn’t know.
Judgement at Nurenburg 1961
Apparently it was almost impossible to find anyone in Germany who knew anything that was happening at all.
And that brings us to the present day and US universities:
It’s been an ironic week in these expensive bastions of learning. These are places where identifying someone by the wrong pronoun can get you blacklisted but supporting Hamas as they rape women and behead children, that’s was fine:
I have been asked by a number of CEOs if @harvard would release a list of the members of each of the Harvard organizations that have issued the letter assigning sole responsibility for Hamas’ heinous acts to Israel, so as to insure that none of us inadvertently hire any of their… https://t.co/7kzGOAGwp9
Fallout from a controversial statement published and initially signed by about 30 student groups at Harvard University continued Wednesday as two trucks circled Harvard Square for much of the day, featuring the names and photos of students linked to the statement.
The billboard trucks, funded by the conservative news group Accuracy in Media, featured LED screens that changed throughout the day to feature at least a half dozen Harvard students under the words, “Harvard’s Leading Antisemites.” The trucks also linked to a website, HarvardHatesJews.com, which directs users to send messages to Harvard’s board of trustees.
“Tell them to take action against these despicable, hateful students,” the website reads. “Each and every one of these students should be expelled and their student organizations should be kicked off campus.”
And suddenly you have all kinds of Harvard students who where going to be lawyers are suddenly resigning from the student groups and/or claiming they never read the statements before they went out. To wit:
Simple question: If these groups had signed onto a statement condoning the murder of blacks, or gays, or trans people would you still call this "harassment" or would you demand CEO's not hire any member of such a group, even if they left said group after the fact?
As a commentator at Instapundit descried this sudden Volte faca
“The lesson is that luxury beliefs vanish the instant the luxury is threatened. How much of our fake politics would turn in an instant if we didn’t have institutional enforcement and narrative policing, and everyone just had to stand on their own behind their own thoughts? What if radical chic consistently cost something? What if tenured communists had risk?”
I predict that by the end of this week students at all of these schools will be saying this.
And by April or May of next year when students get ready to graduate or apply for internships all of these students at these universities will like Germans after 1946 insist they were not political, that they did not know about these student organization or their statements. By the time we get to 2025 there will be so many students and graduates who claim to have been opposed to the statements supporting Hamas there will scarcely have been enough students left to have drafted them.
But whatever happens make no mistake. It was the prospect of future lucrative careers being beheaded over those statements not the reality of Jewish babies being beheaded by Hamas that will be the sudden cause of these denials
It was six months ago today–April Fool’s Day no less–when Dylan Mulvaney, to cap off his 365 Days of Girlhood series, did his first of two social media posts hawking Bud Light. Previously, in the words of Alissa Heinerscheid, who was in charge of marketing the brew, it was a “fratty” beer. The effect on Bud Light sales was immediate–a consistent and sustained 30-percent sales drop.
Immediately, the “experts” in the business world and the media, who are in fact narrative-driven morons with crisp, broadcast-friendly speaking voices, immediately ran to defend InBev, the parent company of Anheuser-Bush, with a consistent refrain, as if they were reading the same script, declaring “Boycotts don’t work.”
While that’s generally correct, the sales drop for Bud Light, a brew that tastes the same as Coor Light and Miller Lite, was in fact a walkaway. “Joe Sixpack,” the typical Bud Light drinker who believes that men are men and women are women–despite mutilation surgeries and hormone injections–found a way to scream “F*ck you” to the elites who say otherwise.
Bill Maher said on his HBO show that the average American is furious because “they’ve had an agenda shoved down their throat.” When one of his guests, US Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) objected to Maher’s truth, he struck back, “You have to accept everything they say or you’re a bigot.”
So true.
The plummet in Bud Light sales is a major victory for conservatives, as well as the majority of Americans who have known the difference between males and females since they were two years old.
And gender, despite the claims of now former Meet the Press host Chuck Todd, is not “a spectrum.”
Mulvaney, whose ditzy faux female social media posts are about as pleasant as loud audio feedback, as well as the rest of the Anheueser-Busch marketing staff, did what was deemed impossible: killing a cash cow. I had a couple of marketing classes in college. Cash cows were revered by my professors, they are product lines that sell well with minimal advertising support. Heinz Ketchup, Ivory Soap, and Kellog’s Corn Flakes come to mind. The bountiful profits from cash cows are “milked” to support struggling brands. It’s a marketing circle of life.
One of those professors, in a lecture decried the use of celebrity endorsements in advertising, calling it “lazy marketing,” He also warned that celebrities, particularly those from the entertainment world, are known to do things morally objectionable, or get involved with unpopular political causes.
Now Anheuser-Busch is now spending a lot of money on its Bud Light “Easy to Sunday” campaign tied to the NFL as well as producing, again, commemorative cans, but this time with the logos of popular NCAA football programs, instead of a one-off Mulvaney can that was not sold to the public.
Too little too late.
As sales continue to lag for Bud Light, it’s likely that scarce shelf space in supermarkets and liquor stores will soon be allocated to better selling brews. Modelo Especial this summer surpassed Bud Light as America’s bestselling beer.
The Bud Light cash cow has gone dry.
As I predicted here at Da Tech Guy months ago, using transgendered people to hawk mainstream products, while not completely dead, is now close to it.
We have witnessed six months that shook the marketing world.
After years of calling out the outrages and absurdities of political correctness and its successor, wokeness, I still manage to be regularly shocked. Yesterday I stumbled across a box while grocery shopping that boasted, “Ultra concentrated Tide–turn to cold to use 90 percent less energy***.”
Yes, even laundry detergent has gone woke.
Okay, who wants to save money?
Pretty much everyone.
However, when you look at the triple asterisks–you mean one isn’t enough?–you learn about the cold water claim, according to Tide, it occurs “on average when switching from hot to cold water.”
When Mrs. Marathon Pundit and I purchase detergent, we look for fair prices, which means we don’t buy overpriced Tide, but more importantly, we want soap that cleans our clothes without damaging them.
That’s all. We are modest folks.
The Marathon Pundit household is confident that the fate of Earth is not connected to our choice of laundry detergent.
As for Tide, it has a sustainability page on its website, where among other things, Tide claims people washing their clothes can “get great results, no matter the water temperature. Tide is specially designed to give you the best clean in every wash, even in cold water. Tide even cleans better in cold water than the bargain brand does in warm.”
Sorry I don’t believe it.
I have reasons to be skeptical of overreaching claims, as I am old enough to remember being told that carbon emissions would lead to a new ice age. That is, until I was lectured by my “betters” that carbon emissions would lead to global warming and the melting of the polar ice caps, as soon as the last decade. Al Gore predicted that last one. Yes, he did–don’t believe the lying fact-checkers.
Not only am I skeptical of leftist claims, but I am also doubly so of marketers’ claims.
As a liberated 21st century male, I do a lot of our family’s laundry. Unless a fabric is super-delicate, most of what I wash is–sorry Tide–done in warm water. Our clothes come out cleaner and there is no soap residue, as is usually the case when, against my better judgement, I wash clothes in cold. With whites I use the hot water cycle.
But Tide tells us cold water is better.
Hogwash.
Oh, my guess is that the marketing geniuses with Tide are out-of-touch rich slobs who have hired help handling their laundry chores.
If you are squeamish, you may want to skip the next three paragraphs.
I’m a runner and I run about 40 miles a week. Athletes’ foot and jock itch, usually caused by the ringworm fungus, is something I have to cope with every summer. The best way to eliminate this pernicious fungus is to wash infected garments in hot water. You hear that, Tide? Color garments might get damaged by hot water, yes, but apple cider vinegar soaking for infected color garments is great way to kill fungus.
Let’s stick with white socks. And if you had any doubts, now you know why athletes wear white socks.
Not only is cooler water, both cold and warm, ineffective in killing fungus, washing in such temperatures runs the risk of spreading the fungus to other garments. Oh, if you have a significant other who you share a bed with and you are infected with a fungus skin rash, and then your partner pulls a sheet from you as you are sleeping, guess who might acquire that rash? Even after your bedsheets go through a full cycle of a cold or warm water wash.
Oh, I’ve unknowingly put on infected clothes months after a failed wash, and guess what happened?
Let’s just say fungi are survivors.
Once again, Tide, I buy laundry detergent to clean our clothes. My way. Without wokeness, haughtiness, and without soap stains and the spread of fungus.
Back to bed sheets: Hot water washes, not cold or warm, kill bed bugs.
And finally, I don’t believe Tide’s claim that using cold water while washing clothes and bed sheets consumes “90 percent less energy.” I’ve been lied to way too many times.
Use Tide detergent. Save the planet. Get bitten by bed bugs. Spread fungal infections.
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