Coalition of the Clueless
Zelensky and his European babysitters come to DC to keep the money flowing. Meanwhile the "insurgent" MS-DNC gets spun off into the abyss. It's another For Funk's Sake Friday.
For my little sister . . .
Or . . .
And we’re off . . .
It was a bad week for blending in . . . at least for this shark . . .
Of course, it was a good day for the fisherman. A million dollars buys a lot of beer.
Next round is on him.
And that’s how the horror movie started . . .
Health officials are working to alert hundreds of people in dozens of states and several countries who may have been exposed to rabies in bat-infested cabins in Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park over the past few months. . . .
“What we’re really concerned about is people who saw bats in their rooms and people who might have had direct contact with a bat,” Harrist said Friday.
I’m more concerned about the person who didn’t see the bat but had contact with it anyway. See, that’s how the horror movie starts.
The cabins have been unoccupied, with no plans to reopen, since concessionaire Grand Teton Lodge Company discovered the bat problem July 27.
You know what’s worse than the government running something? The lowest bidder running something.
How do you miss that?
Russian paranoia . . .
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s bodyguards often make headlines for various reasons. This time, it is for reportedly carrying his ‘poop suitcases’ to the Alaska Summit in the United States.
Reports said that his bodyguards gather his stool and take it back to Russia whenever he travels overseas.
And you thought you had a bad job.
I mean, our “intelligence” agencies wouldn’t really steal Putin’s poop and go through it, would they?
We are so not a serious society . . .
Social media slang doesn't always make sense — but the popularity of "skibidi," "delulu" and "tradwife" on the internet helped these three phrases cinch spots on the Cambridge Dictionary's list of recently added words.
Sadly, because I have a Zoomer niece, I did not have to look up “skibidi.” I’d already been introduced to the “toilet” by that name. To be fair to my Bear, she knew what it was but she wasn’t a fan. (That sound you hear is me thanking God . . . repeatedly.)
I told my niece that is probably the most disturbing thing I’d ever seen in my life and I grew up in the Elm Street, Hellraiser, melting faces as height of special effects era.
And now “skibidi” is in the dictionary, as is “delulu,” which I did have to look up.
What they are saying: "We only add words where we think they'll have staying power," Colin McIntosh, a Cambridge lexical program manager, said in a press release announcing the additions.
Merriam-Webster has its own methodology for adding words to its dictionary, but the other linguistic juggernaut added entries for "skibidi," "delulu" and "tradwife" before Cambridge.
Merriam-Webster is the go-to resource for publishing houses. And now I’m very depressed.
"Skibidi" started as a joke coined by the creator of an online video of human heads swirling around in toilets.
It's most often used by Gen Alpha (another new entry), which Cambridge defines as those born in the 2010s.
So we’re going with words that tweens and toddlers use now?
I blame capitalism.1
Speaking of “words” and capitalism, there’s a lot of rebranding going on . . .
Yup, after nearly fifty years, Cracker Barrel is taking both the cracker and the barrel off the logo.
The logo isn’t the only change. They’re also redoing the interior.
Going from this . . .
To this . . .
And immediately . . .
Now I don’t actually think this is a “Bud Light” moment. Bud Light was at the top of their game when put Dylan Mulvaney to their head and pulled the trigger. I think Cracker Barrel was struggling already, as so many restaurant chains are, and they brought in a CEO that has made every possible bad decision, getting rid of what worked and turning it into just another bland, pointless restaurant, at least in looks, alienating the customer base it did have.
Investors saw that and said . . .
But since everything is seen through the lens of politics, the company has ended up in crosshairs of the culture war.
And D-aligned media fanned the flames, chortling all the way, because of course no one wants to talk about real issues.
In a statement, the chain declared the revamp a “fresh” new look, part of a yearslong effort to update itself. But the restaurant’s rebrand has emerged as a Rorschach test in America’s divided political landscape. A new logo is not just a new logo for Cracker Barrel, where the addition of meatless sausages to the menu in 2022 sparked a furious debate over values and so-called “wokeness.”
For the record, I hated when they took away the chicken sausage.
The new stamp sparked a torrent of outrage from MAGA voices, including Donald J. Trump Jr.
“WTF is wrong with Cracker Barrell??!” the president’s eldest son said in a post on X, responding to a post that claimed the rebrand was linked to the chain’s use of inclusive hiring practices.
“It’s almost as if groups on both sides of the political spectrum are looking for an excuse to brand business decisions as politically or socially hostile,” said Jill Fisch, a professor of business law at the University of Pennsylvania who studies how corporations operate in political spaces.
Ya think? I didn’t need to be a professor the U of Penn to figure that out. That’s why it’s called a “culture war.”
Look, if Cracker Barrel still has fried okra and the hashbrown casserole, I’m there. But I do have to admit that it feels like a gigantic misstep that will be a chapter in a “what not to do” book in marketing classes on down the road.
Rather than keep the rustic charm of a dusty old Southern kitchen where the smell of country ham and stovetop biscuits coats the air, walls adorned with busted farming equipment and Rockwellian photos from a bygone American era, the new remodels look like joyless First Watch knockoffs.
We get changing with the times, but this is the Cracker Barrel for crying out loud. You want to improve the Cracker Barrel? Up the game on the food options; don't take away the one thing that made it worthy of nostalgia, its aura.
Culture war issues aside, this is my problem. Cracker Barrel used to be a place I could go and look at the walls and reminisce. Now it’s just another banal restaurant with junk on cold white walls, variable food and service, and nothing to distinguish it from the Perkins and IHOP down the road.
Being from the northern hinterlands, I waited until my late twenties to have a Cracker Barrel nearby rather than having to wait until we went south to eat there.
I’d hate to see it go away.
However this next rebrand . . . I’ve been waiting for this for so, so, so long.
Yup, they went and did it. NBC spun off MSNBC and a few other of its channels under a different company called “Versant.”
I think they were going for this definition . . .
But we also have this definition.
We all know that MSNBC, sorry MS NOW, is on its way out. But the cope over there is magnificent. I give you Joe “The Best Biden Ever” Scarborough.
I love so much about that four minutes and seventeen seconds I don’t know where to start, so I won’t.
I’ll only say two things: (1) MSNBC/MS NOW is about as “insurgent” as toe fungus2 and independent as a drone, and (2) Molly Jong-Fast is just two years younger than I am and I know about the grand MSN (Microsoft Network) experiment that became MSNBC. Who could forget the company that was going to rule the world but quietly slunk into the corner, its legacy being its crappy operating systems and Bill Gates, the epitome of the mad billionaire, though without the fashion sense to go with it.
But I can’t do any more justice to this subject than the top comment on the video above.
Yup.
And I’m going to enjoy watching every second of the sinking as the rats scramble for the lifeboats.
Meanwhile, we’re going to have to come up with something new besides MSDNC. I’m thinking something along the lines of MS NOT or MS NO . . . oh, oh, or even MS KNOW NOTHINGS.
Okay, work in progress.
Speaking of flailing media networks, CNN discovered state’s rights this week.
President Donald Trump’s announcement Monday that he will sign an executive order aimed at getting rid of mail-in ballots and voting machines seems unlikely to amount to much. He doesn’t appear to have any such authority, and legal challenges would surely follow.
But it was instructive in one way: It made clear the president elected to lead the party of states’ rights has very little regard for states’ rights.
Yeah, and the network that previously championed things like a Voting Rights Act that made asking for ID illegal suddenly finds it loves the idea of states being able to choose.
All is farce. Welcome to the Elephant and Ass Show.
So last week, on Friday, Putin and Trump met in Alaska. Did anything come of it?
It all seemed to go very well, with one moment that Trump-friendly media grabbed on with both hands like a starving man with a ribeye.
In all fairness, this is likely true. This war started because Biden was bought off and stupid enough to go along with the neocons. However, the fighting has continued because Trump is either arrogant enough to think he can get a “deal” or he’s let the neocons talk him into dragging this out. So while it matters how it started for American political purposes, as a larger issue, the fact is we’re in the thick of it now. But Trump seems to be on the right track in stepping us further back from nuclear war.
How is the D-aligned media taking all this?
From CNN . . .
I would love for someone at CNN to tell me what they thought Trump was supposed to do. I mean, the US has tried everything short of nuking Moscow. And that’s not really an option, right, CNN?
CNN?
Good grief.
And then we had the righteous indignation that Putin got a red carpet . . .
The bizarre summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Alaska should sway all but the most credulous doubters that the White House is more interested in friendly relations with Russia’s dictator than achieving a lasting peace in Ukraine.
An abridged program saw the two leaders swiftly conclude the meeting earlier than had been expected. They then heaped praise on one another at a press conference that didn’t feature any questions from the press.
Worryingly, Trump is still as unconcerned about handing Putin symbolic victories as he is unwilling to put any real pressure on the Russian leader.
Again, what pressure exactly could he have put on Putin?
Sanctions didn’t work. Giving Zelensky long range missiles didn’t work (Biden, not Trump). Trump placed secondary sanctions on India for buying Russian oil and supporting “Putin’s war machine.” How did that turn out?
Let’s see if I can roughly translate India’s response to Trump.
Ahem . . .
It’s nice to know Mr. Rogers was a real person.
And Russia did this . .
There’s another large country that buys Russian oil, but Trump has not sanctioned it.
It means that Trump is not quite ready to commit financial suicide himself, just bully India to look tough to impress the Court Eunuch and the neocons and neolibs.
Well, this gets better and better. An old rule of relationships: Never demand, “It’s me or them.” You might not like the answer.
But you know what is dumber than Trump’s tariffs? The antics of the TDS and P(utin)DS addled crowd.
How else are you supposed to roll out a carpet I’d like to know. 🙄 I mean, they could have stood there and tried to “shoo” the rug into position, but I doubt it would have listened. It’s not a magic carpet. Besides, I’d hate for Putin to trip and break something. Can you imagine the lawsuit?
And then there was the letter Melania allegedly wrote to Putin about the “abducted children,” or as others suggest more accurately “children removed from the conflict zone.”
Of course, a hen from the View had to get in on the act.
“What about the children in America?” As if Navarro cares.
But the situation for the children in Ukraine is bad. Did you know that roughly 30 percent of the fatalities are children, with over sixteen thousand dead as of August 6th?
Oh, wait. That’s not right.3 I got the wrong “war.”
Here are the real numbers. As of February 24, 2025, 669 children had been killed in the fighting in Ukraine. Total civilian casualties as of the end of February 2025 were 42,500. Meaning the percentage of children killed was . . . 1.5 percent . . . in three years of fighting, versus a year and a half in Gaza.
Which brings us to the final complaint about the Putin-Trump summit, which was more social media flurry than a media flurry.
As Russian President Vladimir Putin prepares to meet President Donald Trump in Alaska for a high-stakes summit on the war in Ukraine on Friday, one question is ricocheting across social media: Could the Russian leader, who is under indictment at The Hague, theoretically be arrested the moment he sets foot on U.S. soil?
The answer is, as anyone who pays a shred of attention to these things knows, “no.” The US is not a signatory to the Rome Statue, which created the ICC.4 And that’s a good thing, at least for one particular Middle East leader, who has made repeated trips to visit Trump.
I’ll let a couple posts from Brian Krassenstein sum up the hypocrisy . . .
The post got taken down for “violating” X’s rules. I say leave it up. Let everyone see what Brian is.
Hypocrisy is our national brand.
So on Friday, they had the big meeting between Trump and Putin, and Europe panics, so the next thing we know, Zelensky and six babysitters are descending on Washington, DC.
Okay, that’s AI generated. You can tell because Macron has three legs, and the woman in red has one.
But this was real . . .
Now don’t get me wrong: that’s a painfully truthful picture, and I really don’t care if Trump spares these people’s pride or not. They’re beggars coming with their hands out.
In the middle of the meeting, Trump made the grand gesture of calling Putin . . . in private of course.
“I didn’t do it in front of them — I thought that would be disrespectful to President Putin. I wouldn’t do that, because they have not had the warmest relations,” Trump told Fox News’s “Fox & Friends.”
No, Trump didn’t do it because as arrogant as he is, there is one big sticking point and he knows it, and he knew there was a 99 percent chance he’d have egg on his face.
No NATO on Russia’s border. In fact, no foreign troops on Russia’s border.
But . . .
And this may well be true, not because Putin is in love with Trump, but because unlike every president that came before Trump, Trump actually is as close as we’ve gotten to an anti-war president (anything to do with Israel is the exception, but then anything to do with Israel has always been the exception).
Putin may see a badly spray tanned TV star with a combover, a big mouth, and a “break everything until you fix it or it’s dust” approach to foreign policy as his best chance for a lasting arrangement.
I find that thought rather disturbing, because I think he may be right.
But so it goes.
Okay, well, I didn’t sleep well last night and I have to tear out of here because I’m in charge of harvest at the community garden, so I hope everything makes sense. If it doesn’t, I apologize now.
I do not know why, but the 80s country channel on my Amazon music loves this song. Fortunately, so do I, so . . .
Have the best weekend!
Yes, I can back that up.
I said it because I wanted to compare MSNBC to toe fungus, but think about it: toe fungus is a mindless opportunistic infection that won’t kill you but will annoy you until you wish you could die unless you can figure out a way to get rid of it. See, works, right? Nothing “insurgent” about it.
Okay, three things before anyone starts on the source of the numbers: (1) You look at the video out of Gaza and tell me this isn’t believable. (2) We believe the Israeli numbers even though we know they lie too. (In fact, God forbid you question Israel’s numbers.) (3) Israel won’t let western media in, so until they do, I’m going with the Ministry of Health of Gaza, no matter who runs it. Israel wants to disprove it, they can let third parties in.
Technically, Clinton signed on, the US Congress never ratified it, and Bush Jr. took us out.
I didn't sleep either. I am awake constantly worrying about things. I am so tired of worrying about.
"Look, if Cracker Barrel still has fried okra and the hashbrown casserole, I’m there."
Uncle Herschel's Favorite or GTFO!