Over the last several years hundreds of thousands of residents of California have decided to leave the state deciding that that there was no future for them there.
America’s biggest home insurance company has announced it will no longer insure houses in California, saying that the risk from wildfires was too great and the cost of rebuilding too high.
State Farm, the nation’s biggest car and home insurer by premium volume, said existing customers would not be affected.
But from Saturday, no new home insurance policies will be issued. The company will continue offering auto insurance.
The shock to me is that they still consider it safe to offer auto insurance, but it is a pretty big state and there are likely more than a few places outside of Oakland, Sacramento, San Francisco and LA where you can insure a car without losing your shirt.
Of course if the state had sane forestry policies as they once did before the left made it their fiefdom this would not be an issue but the voters are bound to get the government they deserve.
Unlike Anheuser-Busch (who has reached the point of buying back cases of Bud Light past the sell by date) Target is not claiming any of this stuff is a mistake, they’re not demoting groups of their marketing people or pulling the stuff promoting Satanism off their shelves.
Nope what their doing is trying to hide the stuff in the back so that most avg shoppers don’t notice it right away and only in some stores down south. Apparently if you live in the blue state their all in on grooming kids and Satanism.
For the target team it’s not about a mistake, it’s about trying to minimize any sales losses as their push their agenda.
Put simply Target is trying to (at least in some spots) hide who and what they are and always were.
A societal seismic shift, a black swan moment, occurred for the American elite, our “betters,” on April 1. Yep, April Fools Day, but the joke was on the elites. It was April 1 when on his–yes his–Instragram page, the transgendered influencer, Dylan Muvlaney, announced his sponsorhip deal with Bud Light, a beer brewed by Anheuser-Busch that is, or was, favored mainly by macho types.
The backlash was immediate. A boycott of the brew–with conservative celebrities leading the charge began–and Anheuser-Busch has since lost $5 billion in value.
Receiving the blame for this debacle is Alissa Heinerscheid, Bud Light’s vice president of marketing, who went on a leave of absence last week.
It’s likely that Bud Light triggered a tripwire, likely, to use Bill Maher’s words, Americans are angry because “they’ve had an agenda shoved down their throat.” Like the dimwitted sheep in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, many elites, particularly in the media, believe transgendered women are women. Most Americans disagree.
And most Americans, unless they are woke, aren’t dopes. They know that males have an inherent physical advantage over women in most sports. If they decide to think about it–they know that the annual physical for Rachel Levine, the Biden administration’s assistant secretary for health who is transgendered, consists of a prostate exam. They are aware that after “gender-affirming” surgeries, some trans people want to switch back.
And these same folks are fed up with being called a bigot or some sort of “phobe” when they raise their objections to the transgender ideological movement.
And they are sick of transgendered women appearing in clothing ads wearing garments designed for females.
As for the elites, many of whom like Heinerscheid have an Ivy League education, they’re the types of folks who don’t interact with smelly people who drink Bud Light. These smug know-it-alls are stupefied that the Mulvaney sponsorship has damaged the brand.
The elites live in their bubble, which makes them quite vulnerable to a black swan moment.
What has happened to Bud Light takes me back to 1979 and the Disco Demolition stunt that was part of a Chicago White Sox Teen Night promotion during a twi-night doubleheader with the Detroit Tigers. Oh, “Disco Sucks” wasn’t just a Chicago thing, I saw my first “Disco Sucks” T-shirt a year earlier on sale on the boardwalk at Ocean City, Maryland.
I was a 17-year-old when Steve Dahl, a morning disc jockey for rock station WLUP-FM, began humorously “blowing up” disco records during his show. He’d play some crappy–aren’t they all?–disco tune for thirty-seconds or so, and then blow them up, not for real, but with sound effects. Dahl also took his act on the road, including a mock “takeover” of a suburban disco club, and the same thing happened at each event. Crowd control was an issue–too many people in too small of a space.
Surely, Mike Veeck, the son of White Sox owner Bill Veeck, thought that Comiskey Park, the home of the White Sox, could comfortably host Dahl and his minions, known as the Insane Coho Lips. The ballpark had a capacity of 45,000.
But the doubleheader sold out and there were an estimated thirty thousand others outside Comiskey Park clamoring to get in. Teens who deposited disco records at the turnstiles were admitted for 98 cents, which was dirt cheap even in 1979.
Dahl, in faux military garb, as you’ll see in the YouTube clip, exploded the records in spectacular fashion as the Insane Coho Lips chanted “disco sucks” following the conclusion of the first game of the doubleheader, a White Sox defeat. Immediately afterwards, about 7,000 of the rockers stormed the field and a riot broke out, one that included destroying the batting cage and igniting the crate from where the records were exploded. It was rock and roll’s first saturnalia. Police in riot gear promptly ended Disco Demolition 90 minutes later, and because the field was deemed by the umpires as unsafe for play, the second game was forfeited to the Tigers.
I watched the game at home on television with my parents and my brother. I hated disco and loved rock and roll, so I looked on with mixed emotions because I was also a Sox fan. I didn’t object when my brother pointed at me and said, “Hey, mom and dad, there are thousands of them on the TV, who are just like your son, tearing up the field.” Hey, don’t forget, I was 17 at the time.
Retro historians, often people who were born years after Disco Demolition, have tried to turn that night into a racist or anti-gay thing. Wrong. The people I knew who listened to disco were shallow and vapid–just like the music. It was love at first sight for them.
Here’s the disco black swan moment.
The Disco Demolition coverage from the media, particularly the national media, was one of shock. Even more so than now, the elite media was based in New York, and they were the people who hung out at disco’s hallowed temple, Studio 54 in Manhattan. They lived in their ’70s bubble, one that didn’t include people who loved rock music and wore “Disco Sucks” T-shirts.
Up until Steve Dahl blew up those records, disco was seemingly everywhere–on TV shows, in commercials, and in the movies, most notably, with John Travolta dancing in Saturday Night Fever. Rock acts, including the Rolling Stones, the Kinks (sadly, one of my favorite bands), and Rod Stewart, recorded songs with a disco beat.
But post-Disco Demolition Night, the media, as well as the advertising and marketing “experts,” realized, after the totality of the riot, that more people hated disco than liked it. Disco didn’t die that night–even a freight train experiencing engine problems can’t be stopped on a dime, but disco went into a fatal tailspin. A month after Disco Demolition, Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall, a disco album, was released. It enjoyed brisk sales and a lot of airplay. But Jacko’s next album, Thriller, was more of an R&B album, it even included the King of Pop’s only hard rock song, “Beat It,” which was graced by guitar work from Eddie Van Halen.
Rockers had stopped cutting disco tracks well before Thriller was released.
A couple of weeks before Off the Wall arrived in record stores, principal photography began on a movie starring the Village People, Discoland . . . Where the Music Never Stops. Sensing trouble because of the anti-disco backlash, the film’s producer, Allan Carr, changed the name of his project to Can’t Stop the Music. It’s remembered as a legendary Hollywood box office bomb.
As the saying goes, “History doesn’t repeat itself but it rhymes.” One of supporting actors in Can’t Stop the Music was Bruce Jenner, who now goes by Caitlyn.
By the early 1980s, the expression “As dead as disco” was common.
Transgenderism isn’t going away. Over my life I’ve known a few men who have gone thru procedures that allows them, sort of, to live as women. Fine, it’s their life. If, as an adult, men and women want to transform themselves into something different, well, no one should stop them. The same goes for people who want to obliterate their faces with tattoos.
On the other hand, don’t shove your choice down our throats and demand us to celebrate you.
In the advertising and marketing world, using transgendered spokespeople to promote mainstream products just might be as dead as disco.
No one wants to be the next Alissa Heinerscheid. Her job was to sell Bud Light, not to drive people to avoid it.
There was never a Can’t Stop the Music sequel.
Marketing people must not be good at math. One percent of the population identifies as transgendered. Which means of course means 99 percent doesn’t.
I remember sitting next to Ace of Spades at the Scott Brown Victory Party in the press area. Even then he was a person who did not mince words nor had any patience or qualms about saying what was on his mind and what is on his mind about Trump is that he’s finally crossed the line:
This frankly is Trump’s nature. He has always fought like a Democrat and it’s a lot of fun when his target is a Democrat, but right now he sees Ron DeSantis as the greatest threat to his campaign to return to the White House so anything goes. Ace concludes thus:
I’d also point out that we know for a fact who is the most uncomfortable with the Culture War — cultural liberals like the The Bulwark Boyz and The Dispatch Boyz. They hate the Crazy Christians fighting all the time with their gay frenz, and they want them to stop.
Well, guess who else is cultural liberal who doesn’t want the Crazy Christian fighting the trans extremists.
Is this True Conservatism, Trump-style, now? Is this “populism” — adopting all the cant and tactics of the leftwing, trans-crazy Ruling Class?
And he’s going to be the one to take on The Regime? LOL. He’s repeating every single point of their catechism!
This frankly is Trump nature and you can’t have the good problem solving Trump without putting up with this one but read the whole thing anyways any more than you could get the pragmatic Bill Clinton without the womanizing or the Politically savvy Lyndon Johnson without the temper and corruption.
On the same subject let’s compare and contrast two tactics in “support” of the Donald Trump campaign. A stupid one that relies on falsehoods:
This is a foolish move by @realDonaldTrump as people continue to vote with their feet to get there.
The question is: Is this foolishness the product of bad advice or in opposition to good advice?
Why not just campaign on the best record of any president in the last 125 years?
When you’ve got the best record of any president in the last century and a quarter why not run on that record?
At Town Hall Brad Slager has written a must read post which should be posted on the wall of every marketing division of every corporation that considers caving to the woke agenda:
I found Kristin Kroepfl, chief marketing officer for Quaker Foods North America, stating that in the year 2020, the Aunt Jemima brand had $350 million in sales. Okay, this gives us something of a baseline.
Throughout 2021, the Quaker Foods division saw the pancake mix and syrup sales plunge. The period following the introduction of the name switch that summer reported “a double-digit decline in pancake syrup and mix.” This was matched in the final quarter of that year – when the name change had gone into full effect – with “double-digit declines in pancake syrups and mixes.”
Ever hear how compound interest grows wealth, well compound losses takes it away
This downward trend continued through last year. Quarter 1 delivered another “double-digit decline.” In Q-2, Quaker saw unit volume grow 2% across all of its products but was weighed down by another “double-digit decline in pancake syrups and mixes,” something also seen in the Q-3 reports. The only glimmer of positivity is that the former Aunt Jemima brand saw its bleeding slowing in Q-4, as that line only saw “a high-single-digit decline in pancake syrups and mixes.”
Considering the vagueness of these reports (since “double-digit” can range anywhere from 10 to 99%), even applying the rosiest measurement, by only counting a ten percent decline in each of those six quarters, the former Aunt Jemima brand declined by at least -50% since the name change. It is very likely much worse.
Small bit of advice to Bud Light and all those other who cave to the woke, don’t cave to people who aren’t your customers anyways.
And for the record I haven’t bought “Pearl Hill pancake mix” since the name change.
One fo the things I’ve noticed over the last few months at Hotair are the interesting Notes that Ed Morrissey adds at the end ofo posts by various authors commentating on their point. This one on Abortion and the states is so good that it bears listing here:
The problem for both parties is that the end of Roe also means the necessity of governance on the issue of abortion. That means applying principles in an effective manner and garnering the broadest support for those principles without having to compromise too much on them. While much of the scrutiny of this issue has fallen on Republicans, Democrats have the same issue with their commitment to the extremist position of legalized abortion through all nine months of pregnancy. The side that figures out how to engage the center most effectively will win, but that requires real patience and risk taking — and neither quality is in large supply in American politics. — Ed
That’s it in a nutshell. SCOTUS has forced states to actually make real world decisions, forcing political animals to actually do the job that they’ve begged the voters for and that involves making some people angry.
You can’t go wrong reading Ed Morrissey, ever.
Finally I noticed that the media has done all it can to marginalize RFK JR. in his run for the Democrat nomination, suggesting he is a fringe candidate, however I think they are terrified of him.
USA Today’s confident use of the word “debunked,” however, can’t mask a growing suspicion among an increasing number of Americans that the authorities aren’t being honest with us. The COVID vaccine debacle, with what was originally touted as a single shot that would protect you from a deadly disease becoming multiple shots and boosters that carried side effects that were often worse than COVID itself, only fueled that suspicion. So the establishment media’s confidence that voters will dismiss Robert F. Kennedy Jr. because they dislike this vaccine skepticism may be whistling in the dark.
Kennedy also said something extremely interesting in his announcement that he was running: “My mission over the next 18 months of this campaign and throughout my presidency, will be to end the corrupt merger of state and corporate power that is threatening now – threatening now – to impose a new kind of corporate feudalism in our country.” Well, yes, and no one else is talking with this kind of clarity and consistency about the kind of collusion that we saw in the Twitter Files between the massive corporations and the government. Not even Donald Trump.
Robert Spencer is a smart guy and thinks it’s pretty much done
They’re going with Biden for reelection, and they know that he can only hurt his own chances by standing toe-to-toe against a man who can actually articulate a coherent sentence and defend his positions, as well as against a woman who, however loopy she may be, looks like Madame Curie next to Old Joe.
And so despite the fact that RFK, who has never been a national figure, immediately jumped to 14%, there will be no real Democrat race. There will just be a coronation. No one should have ever expected that anything would be different. After all, these people have made it abundantly clear that they don’t really like disagreement and want to silence dissent. Why would they allow it within their own party?
I’m not so sure, while changing the primary schedule will certainly help I suspect that RFK Jr. will do a whole lot better than anything thinks in the primaries because he doing what Trump was doing in 2016, saying forbidden truths aloud and promising to address the problems they bring and while the activist class that gets it’s funding from the machines are unlikely to be with him I suspect normal democrats who would never vote for Trump might just decide to hitch their wagons to a Kennedy.
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