Detective Gregory: Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?
Sherlock Holmes: To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.
Detective Gregory: The dog did nothing in the night-time.
Sherlock Holmes:That was the curious incident.
Arthur Conan Doyle: The Adventure of Silverblaze 1896
At Instapundit there is a link to a pair of stories about the Nellie Bowles book about how the New York times decided to ignore reality in their reporting. This part really jumped out at me:
First, it was blunting my reporting. It was saying you can’t report on the most interesting stories of the day, which was really frustrating and crazy-making a little bit because it was like, “What do you mean we’re not supposed to cover the riots? What do you mean we’re not supposed to talk about” … you name it, hot-button issue of the day. And basically there was a media blackout for a while.
I call it now time wandering, which is all of the most interesting issues. You’re allowed to talk about it in the world of all the Substacks, the conservative media covers it, and the liberal media waits about two or three years and then they’re allowed to touch it.
Cracker Barrel’s stock has taken a beating since the restaurant chain held an investor call in which its new CEO admitted the Southern country restaurant chain isn’t as “relevant” as it once was.
Julie Felss Masino, who became Cracker Barrel’s CEO nine months ago, told investors during the May 16 call that the 54-year-old eatery “was not delivering the financial results that shareholders deserve.”
“Cracker Barrel is a great concept and a great company,” Masino said. “… But to ignite growth, we must revitalize the brand.”
Before Masino and Cracker Barrel’s leadership held the meeting, the company’s stock hovered around $60 per share, but a day after the call, it dropped almost 20%, to about $48 per share, according to NASDAQ.
The stock closed Thursday at $45.75 per share.
Now why would a CEO saying the chain isn’t “relevant” cause the stock to drop 20%?
Well, maybe it’s because it means the CEO is not addressing the reason why the stock had dropped TO $60 a share from the $102 it was at a year ago. To find the answer to that question you have to ignore the USA story and search instead at Ace of Spades HQ:
In June of 2023 Cracker Barrel went woke, deciding that it could bring in new customers and investors by sexualizing the front porch with rainbow-striped rocking chairs. As it turned out, that was not a good marketing strategy, and it had the effect of repulsing existing customers who don’t want country cooking to be sexualized, be it gay, straight, or otherwise.
Image via Ace of Spades HQ
The fallout was immediate, with consumers announcing boycotts and the stock price taking an initial hit. Despite a lack of headlines or buzz since then, the boycott has continued and has been devastating to Cracker Barrel. The restaurant chain permanently ran off a great many loyal customers, and the persistently “unexpected” decline in traffic is taking a serious financial toll on the company.
It was just announced this week that Cracker barrel is slashing its dividend by 81%. Cracker Barrel stock has fallen from $102 per share at the start of “Pride Month” 2023 to $49 per share now, a 52% decline.
Now one might think that this would be an important part of the story of the drop in Cracker Barrel’s share price. Particularly when there were stories as far back as September that this was a “marketing” issue:
In a rare downbeat financial accounting, Cracker Barrel Old Country Stores acknowledged that its marketing and media efforts likely worsened a traffic drop-off during the quarter ended July 28.
We had expected the traffic would improve in June and July with the onset of the summer travel season,” said [CEO] Cochran. “Unfortunately, this didn’t materialize, and our restaurants and retail sales performance came in below our expectations.
Note that a “downbeat financial accounting” was “rare” for Cracker Barrel until they went work, but even in that story they pointed to “marketing” rather then going all in on the gay agenda. Of course Don Surber didn’t shy from the actual cause of the Cracker Barrel crack-up
On Friday, USA Today reported, “Cracker Barrel stock plummets after CEO says chain isn’t as relevant, must revitalize.”
It turns out, the rainbow people don’t like rocking chairs. Maybe Cracker Barrel can become relative by offering Bud Light and holding Drag Queen Sleepovers for children.
Of course the rainbow folks don’t like Cracker Barrell, in fact back in the days when Pintastic NE was in Sturbridge my son and I would go for breakfast at Cracker Barrell at least once during the event we would play a game which I called the “woke offense game” where pretended to be woke leftists and too turns pointed to items on the wall and explained why we were offended by them. The last person who couldn’t find something to be offended by lost. Usually we could not reach that point by the time breakfast was over.
This is all a question of people not knowing who their customer base is. Buck Throckmorton has a solution:
the first thing Cracker Barrel needs to do is apologize for insulting its loyal customers by sexualizing the restaurant and for effectively smearing its loyal customers as being “unwelcoming” people.
If it doesn’t, Cracker Barrel might as well go full woke. Perhaps it could hire Dylan Mulvaney away from Bud Light and have him cross-dress in Daisy Dukes while drinking an old-time pop from a rainbow-colored rocking chair. Alissa Heinersheid has experience using for Mr. Mulvaney for such promotions, and I believe she is available. Or maybe Cracker Barrel could run a Gillette-style ad accusing its legacy customers of being loathsome bigots and sexual predators.
June is only a week away and we will find out if Cracker Barrell’s new CEO is interested in serving the shareholders or serving the agenda. She can
Take Buck’s advice, apologize for last year and promise customers their only agenda will be good food served in a country motif. (Plan A)
Say nothing but make it a point not to go near the June “pride” agenda and hope the offended customers notice they decided to give it a miss this year (Plan B)
Decide to go all in on the rainbow agenda let the gay flag & rockers fly and damn the stock price! (Plan C)
Whatever the choice and result is we can be sure that the MSM in general and USA Today in particular will not report on the actually cause of the initial fall of Cracker Barrel, after all, it might discourage others from falling into line.
I don’t think I can do better than this speech in explaining what’s wrong with what it going on nationwide:
I have one questions for @UCLAchancellor Gene Block, the Board, and the majority of administrators/faculty at my alma mater @UCLA. I'm at your disposal to meet and discuss your answer. A message to the Jewish and non-Jewish students under siege across our nation as well.… pic.twitter.com/z3vQGO9p1q
He rightly asks if any of this would be tolerated if the targets were Muslims and/or a Muslim country.
That this would be the basis for lawsuits goes without saying.
A lot of institutions are risking a lot to try to shore up Michigan for Joe Biden in accordance with the Ghastly Tom Hagen Math and Jewish leftists who enabled them for years are finding out where they stand are discovering the truth of Glenn Reynolds words:
Several generations of Jews thought there was safety in secularism, and shunned Christians. That hasn’t worked out as expected.
If you are a jewish Democrat you might as well get ready to put the yellow star on because like believing Catholics and pro-lifers before you, it might be finally clear to you that unless you know your place you are no longer welcome anymore in today’s Democrat party.
However if there is one thing that human beings have an incredible capacity for, it’s self delusion and for a very long time there will be plenty of Jewish democrats who remain in denial even as their children attending elite colleges find themselves treated as second class citizens if ever and whenever they try to acknowledge and celebrate their Jewish identity and hide it due to fear. It’s very much like some elderly faithful Catholics who somehow haven’t gotten through their heads that this is not the democrat party of JFK or Tip O’Neill anymore.
The process of discovering reality is going to be very painful for them and some will go to their graves in denial because the truth is too horrible to face.
Sometimes it sucks being right.
On the plus side if you’re a lawyer you are going to clean up big over the next few years with these suits and if you are a Jewish lawyer your victories over those who want to see you dead will be doubly sweet.
Back in 2016 I covered a Trump Rally at the DCU center in Worcester Ma a deep blue city which is not only the 2nd largest city in New England with 200,000 people but has 10 colleges the breeding ground for the left. The left had called for a massive showing of protesters. Well there was a massive showing…of Trump supporters. As for the counter protesters…
The voice you heard at the end was a protester saying “people had to work” in response to drawing 15 people.
I ended up at the press conference asking Donald Trump about it.
This is where Trump paid me the complement: “Nobody reports that but you do. That’s why I like you.” (A quote that I suspect put me on the shit list of a lot of people in the GOP, particularly here in MA but I digress.)
Trump rallied a crowd of what his campaign estimated to be 25,000 supporters at Crotona Park in the Bronx on Thursday, far more than the initial 3,500 it said were expected to attend. Those numbers appeared to also include those lined up outside the event – who waited hours for a shot at getting inside even after the event began.
Now that’s a good number of people, but what about counter protesters?
As I said before in Worcester MA the 2nd biggest city in New England with a population of 200,000 drew a pathetic 15 protesters against Donald Trump in 2016 . New York City not only has a population of over 8 million, 40 times that of Worcester but Joe Biden won the city by over 60 points. Furthermore nationally known Democrats and large Democrat organizations called for people to protest.
So how many people did they manage to draw for a counter protest? Lets ask the Trump hating New York Daily News:
About 200 protesters rallied against him on Claremont Parkway, which cuts through Crotona Park, some holding a sign that read, “F–k Trump, F–k Biden, the people of the Bronx, we run this s–t.”
here is some video
A few protesters have shown up at the Trump rally in the Bronx
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) May 23, 2024
Doesn’t look like 200 to me but for the sake of argument let’s go with the New York Daily News’ 200 number.
Now run that number through your head for a moment. In a city of 8 million a city 40 times the size of Worcester, after 8 full years of attacks on Trump with the NY DA going after him in court and the full might of the liberal media and governments working against him 24/7 they managed to draw only 200 to protest against supposedly the most hated president since LBJ at the end of his term.
Remember the number of protesters is Worcester in 2016 was a pathetic 15 people but that’s a city 40 times smaller than New York City and before the Trump Derangement was in full bloom. To match that Worcester number proportionately they would have needed to draw 600 people in a city of 8 MILLION.
They could only manage a third of that. To put it in perspective that’s as if they had drawn only 5 people to protest Trump in Worcester way back when.
Combine that with an attendance a minimum of 10 times larger then they had anticipated per yahoo and you get a very unhappy CNN:
The pain in the CNN reporters face and voice admitting how big Trumps crowd was, is priceless 😂 pic.twitter.com/kGPLxFjzcN
If I was running the Trump Campaign I’d hold more rallies in deep blue areas. This would force local news to cover the events and get his message out to people who thanks to the censorship of national news never hear him. It’s the type of thing that will give Democrats fits.
Or as Phil Sheridan used to say: “Ride right through them, they’re demoralized as hell!”
One of the things that tend to irritate me is when people say something so obviously contrary to reality and expect me to play along. These tweets are a great example.
I'd say it's because all those corporations existed during the Trump era and those price increases didn't happen
Yup Donald Trump slaughtered them all and put them all in a mass grave but on January 21st 2021 like John Cleese’s Character that was turned into a Newt they all got better.
I had a Lesbian co-worker years ago who was convinced that Donald Trump would put her in a concentration camp if he was elected and the lack of being put in the concentration camp during the Trump years never convinced her otherwise.
As you can see fame is not a cure for this inability to see reality
Seriously? Cleese is trying to sell Trump as mentally impaired when he’s running against Biden? Cripes even Bill Mahar won’t play that game.
But even with all I’ve seen the most incredible bit of BS I’ve seen pushed at me was this:
Because I do the shopping in the house and have for years and that very day I went to the soda aisle and for the first time ever saw 2 liter bottles of soda offered at 2 for $5. I grabbed a cheaper brand and went to the frozen food aisle figuring to buy some Michelina’s frozen Penne & pasta meals & maybe a fettucine alfredo as they are a cheap alternative for lunch. They’re normally a buck each but I had seen them as high as a buck and a quarter lately.
They were $1.50 each A 50% increase over the Trump years and remember these are the bottom of the line in terms of price (not in quality however they are rather tasty).
So imagine what went through my mind when I saw this:
Why on earth is this stuff effective to some? The answer comes from human nature.
People hate to admit they were wrong, to notice the crashing economy, the rampant antisemitism, our rejection around the world, the abandonment of our allies, the massive amount of illegal immigration, the emptying of our strategic petroleum reserve all of the layoffs nationally and of course the President’s inability to walk or talk or complete a speech without a long list of corrections coming out from the White House is to concede that perhaps they were wrong for either their support for Joe Biden or the opposition to Donald Trump or both.
And to make that admission is more than they can bear.
My Pastor at St. Bernard’s Parish at St. Camillus church often talks about seeing yourself in the light of truth and that part of reason why so many choose hell is they give the choice of seeing themselves in the light of truth and accepting mercy and denying that truth for all the sufferings of hell they find all the torments of the damned preferable to the uncomfortable truths about themselves.
The truth about Joe Biden in general and the party they have adopted not as a means to a political end but as their religion is too much for them to bear.
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