Open thread 8/29/2025
This weekend is Labor Day weekend. Summer is nearly over; how did that happen? It was here a minute ago.
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
This weekend is Labor Day weekend. Summer is nearly over; how did that happen? It was here a minute ago.
Cracker Barrel has apparently drifted far away from it’s original concepts and food preparation of down home, southern style comfort food–cooked fresh, in house, and from scratch.
As the Cracker Barrel saga has unfolded, and as more and more people have focused their attention on CB–and done a little digging–the extent of CB’s apparently deep leftist involvement in the culture war, with DEI and LGBTQ+, has become visible.
Had this controversy not erupted, I doubt that any of CB’s “woke” involvement in the culture war would have come to many people’s attention.
Reportedly CB’s largest shareholder warned the Board about the likely bad results of their new policies, but he was ignored, and their share price has dropped from the 150s five years ago to the high fifties today.
It almost seems like this board and the new CEO are taking a wrecking ball to what was a pretty successful restaurant chain, with a formula that worked, food that people liked and came coming back for.
Matt Taibbi has another big piece on Russiagate up at RacketNews.
The first takeaway is that FIB spying went on throughout the 2024 campaign.
One victim of this phase, Michael Caputo, a former Trump advisor and the man behind the documentary “The Ukraine Hoax” — which his lawyer says triggered the Fed surveillance — explains more.
INTERVIEW https://x.com/Bannons_WarRoom/status/1961095869027016911
Matt Taibbi’s fresh piece “For Some, Russiagate Never Ended”. LONG and appalling. https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/4337432/posts
For Noob’s, Lee Smith’s book “The Plot Against The President” (2020) gets the 90m documentary treatment by Amanda Milius (the daughter of John Milius who made Dirty Harry have famous lines, as well as directing “Red Dawn”).
It’s currently free on Tubi, a free streaming platform by Fox News (the app is convenient, too). https://tubitv.com/movies/629149/the-plot-against-the-president?
Looks like the Democrats are attempting to pay about 90 high profile Social Media “influencers” 8k a month to spread their propaganda, but some of them are a little squimish about accepting. After all, authenticity (or the appearence of it anyway) is the coin of the realm for such people. I guess they’re a bit worried about losing credibility with their millions of followers if they make such a Faustian bargain and it leaks out.
@Nonapod: This isn’t a “trying to” thing, it already happened. Original source here, byline is one Taylor Lorenz, of whom you may have heard.
Snow on Pine,
The founder of CB did not have much good to say about it’s present CEO and the direction of the company.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/yourmoney/article-15047217/cracker-barrel-founder-tommy-lowe-logo-verdict.html
First Budweiser, now another white, liberal woman out to destroy a classic American brand.
Yeah but shes certifiable id be surprised if the gop wasnt secretly paying her
Yes the earth seems to be traversing the solar system faster
@miguel cervantes:Yeah but shes certifiable id be surprised if the gop wasnt secretly paying her
My guess is that one faction of the Left fed Taylor Lorenz the story in order to kneecap another faction of the Left.
“Feats of strength become the 2025 litmus in Trump era of masculine politics”
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/aug/29/feats-strength-become-2025-litmus-trump-era-masculine-politics/
“The CIA -vs- DNI Tulsi Gabbard”
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2025/08/29/the-cia-vs-dni-tulsi-gabbard/#more-275467
“CIA agent unmasked by Tulsi Gabbard has ‘deep state’ ties to … ‘Russiagate'”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15043729/undercover-cia-agent-tulsi-gabbard-deep-state-trump.html
Re: Cracker Barrel vs Bud Light
Notice how much faster CB backtracked compared to Bud.
Are we learning yet?
One of things that Chorus sought to restrict its influencers from doing was any kind of confrontation or attempt at explication of Dem politicians’ stances on Israel and Gaza.
And I think I understand now why the story was given to Lorenz and why she agreed to have her name on it: Lorenz is anti-Israel and so is the faction of the Left that gave her the story.
By the way, has anyone been over to Haaretz lately? I didn’t think they could get any dumber. I was clearly very wrong.
you mispelled evil,https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-08-29/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/some-say-its-the-end-of-zionism-and-i-say-thats-all-right/00000198-e107-de0b-a7d9-e9e759200000
the commenters are
this is just one example, as Jews are being hunted in every Western Capital,
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025/08/28/newsom-continues-denial-about-antisemitism-at-ucla-fine-for-what/
Re: Cracker Barrel rebrand
Cracker Barrel rebrand: $700 million
Current CBRL capitalization: $1.33 billion
https://companiesmarketcap.com/cracker-barrel/marketcap/
So CEO Julie Masino just bet over half the value of Cracker Barrel on a costly cosmetic rebrand.
Sure, she can restore the old-fashioned logo on their menus and remove DEI references from their web pages for next to free. But so many of the physical changes in the pipeline are already paid for.
The company was already in crisis, losing customers and stock value. In 2016 CB was worth $4 bil. The real complaints from customers were on declining food quality, which the rebrand did nothing for.
Dead company walking.
Speaking of Frost in the other thread, I got a sudden notion to try driving to the old Frost farm museum-thingy in New Hampshire at some point. Maybe during color season. How’s the driving in northern New England these days? The highways, at least, around Albany seem to be getting more nerve-wracking* lately.
* (Why is ‘wracking’ supposedly merely a variant here, according to merriam-webster.com’s current information? Is it really possible that ‘racking’ is the correct and original form of it?)
@ Philip Sells – I’m glad you asked that question. I was curious enough to look.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/rack-vs-wrack
M-W did clear up the etymological history of the two words, but was quite unhelpful about choosing between them.
My preference has always been to use the word that alludes to the torture instrument, hence nerve-racking (stretching your nerves on a rack).
Time waits for no man or woman.