Better in their words…

MSNBC rebrands with an autoimmune logo; Cracker Barrel stock cracks with worst flop since Bud Light; Texas map fight clears; salamander gerrymanders resurface; Bolton raid leak stings.

Not even six months into Trump’s term. Amazing. mrossol

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WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY

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It was a Lovecraftian tale of two logos. This week featured two high-profile “re-brandings” that each spurred broad mockery and derision. First, “MSNBC” is no more, consigned to history’s dustbin, buried beneath eggshells, coffee grounds, and an old “Orange Julius” sign. The New York Times ran the story, headlined “MSNBC’s Rebrand Invites Bemusement and Ridicule.”

LA news anchor Rob Archer impertinently asked, “Multiple sclerosis now. Is this some kind of new show?” Online punters, between fits of laughter, deliriously queried, “Most Surely No One Watching?” and “Majorly Skewed News Overly Woke?”

It does sort of sound like a medical condition.

In 1996, Microsoft (MS) invested a bunch of money in NBC’s news division, became a joint venturer, and got a first dibs position in the new name: MSNBC. Ironically, even though Microsoft eventually hawked its stake, its initials stuck, and have even survived into the new-and-improved moniker. In other words, with the software giant having long since peaced out, the first two letters have been and still are fraudulent.

The Times quoted Carmen Harris, a communications specialist in McKinney, Texas, who mused, “Microsoft hasn’t been involved in years. I don’t get it.”

Anyway, MSNBC’s current owner, Comcast, is now shedding the ailing “news” network. As part of the deal, MSNBC isn’t allowed to keep its affiliation with NBC or its proud peacock logo. As hard as this is to believe, “MS NOW” was the best idea that a small group of overcaffeinated, probably very diverse, part-time interns could dream up.

As late as last week, stunned MSNBC staffers had been promised the network would keep its name and logo. But never mind! “This gives us the opportunity to chart our own path forward, create distinct brand identities and establish an independent news organization following the spin,” Mark Lazarus, CEO of the new network owner Versant, enthused in a memo to employees.

And now they can independently go out of business.

They’ve learned nothing. Rebecca Kutler, MSNBC’s current president, promised that the rebrand will not change the network’s core identity or its editorial focus, vowing the network will continue to serve a “progressive audience.” One senses tubes of lipstick are being unscrewed prior to application on the snouts of woke MS NOW pigs.

It’s brave. It’s bold. It shows NBC wants to be as far away as possible when the cable news division hits terra firma. But, funny as it was, that wasn’t the worst one. Not even close.

🔥 The Hill ran a story Friday headlined, “Cracker Barrel loses almost $100M in value after divisive logo ‘refresh.’” Not since Jaguar’s no-cars, diversity-forward marketing scheme or Budweiser’s trans-enabled beer ads has a rebranding generated so much hilarity and delight (and disaster for shareholders). In case you missed it:

You can see the problem. The breakfast chain’s iconic logo had too much “old white guy.” They’ve also modernized the chain’s rustic interior decor. The new design looks like a budget version of Panera combined with a food-court Pizza Hut:

Julie Felss Masino became Cracker Barrel’s President and CEO in July 2023 (total annual compensation: $6.8 million), right after its infamous Pride Month stunt, when the chain slathered rainbow colors on its equally iconic rocking chairs. Here’s DEI champion Julie Masino defending the changes on Good Morning America. Pretty AWFL:

I think, and I’m just spitballing here, they may have missed the point. A third-grader could tell you that Cracker Barrel’s charm was always about nostalgia,not modernization. It wasn’t even so much about the food. The fried okra and biscuits were props in a larger set piece where the real stars were the rocking chairs, checkerboards, cast-iron skillets on the wall, and the feeling that you’d stumbled into a Norman Rockwell painting.

It was always about rocking your cares away and buying your kids an oversized, old-timey lollipop in the general store while waiting for your turn to be seated in a dining room borrowed from a barn-raising party. The Cracker Barrel experience was about time-travel; zipping back to a long-lost Americana past and forgetting about the culture wars for an hour or so.

It stung. Corporate media coverage leaned into the “Republicans pounce!” trope, mocking conservatives for “overreacting” to the corporate branding change. But of course, they only deploy that silly shibboleth when conservatives are right, trying to shift the story from the truth of the claims to the unfairness of complaining about it.

Finally— money talks louder than MS NOW. The stock fell almost 10% overnight. Boycotts are organizing. Go woke and … well, you know the rest.

So long, Cracker Barrel. Thanks for the memories.

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Yesterday, NBC News (not MS NOW) ran an encouraging story of progress headlined, “Texas Senate passes new Republican-drawn congressional map.” This might be the single-most inflammatory issue since Trump took office. Not since USAID’s plug was pulled has there been more fury on the left, and it has escalated into a national debate over the Hitlerian evils of gerrymandering.

“The One Big Beautiful Map has passed the Senate and is on its way to my desk, where it will be swiftly signed into law,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott said yesterday.

“This is not democracy, this is disgraceful,” state Senator Sarah Eckhardt complained. And California’s oleaginous Governor Gavin Newsom has vowed to meet or beat Texas’ five new Congressional seats, by re-gerrymandering the Golden State’s already spaghetti-like district maps.

By way of conservative rejoinder, this eye-popping chart made the rounds all week:

So. Fair’s fair.

🔥 The term “gerrymander” was coined in 1812, when Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry (pronounced “Gary”) reluctantly signed a redistricting bill that favored Democrats. The resulting districts were, for that time, bizarrely contorted. One of the districts resembled a winged salamander. That’s all it took— one political cartoon later, a new term would become enshrined in US politics. The mythical cartoon creature birthed a catchword, a legacy, and every contorted map monster that followed.

Feelings about gerrymandering vary depending on who’s in charge.Gerrymandering is the only monster both parties swear they’ll slay— right up until they catch it, saddle it, and ride it through the next election. Outrage depends less on principle than on who’s holding the district-drawing pen.

I happen to like salamanders. Michelle tolerates them, finding the slippery creatures only mildly alarming (not like snakes). It seems profoundly unfair that they got swept up in politics and were defamed in such a vile and heedless manner. Salamanders don’t draw maps or anything, really. They eat bugs, and mostly mind their own business. Unlike progressives, say, who are reptilian busybodies.

🔥 But even more tectonic changes than just Texas or California are rumbling. There could be a political earthquake coming. The Federalist ran a story about it this month, headlined “Upcoming SCOTUS Case Could Reshape Redistricting As We Know It.”

In less than two months (mid-October), the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case captioned Louisiana v. Callais. The case relates to Louisiana’s latest redistricting map, which, under duress, added a second majority-Black congressional district following a lower court’s ruling that the originally proposed map had diluted Black voting power— potentially violating Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA).

The case was brought by a group of alert Louisiana residents, who argue that the new map violates the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause by “prioritizing race in its creation.” They are essentially asking the court to find that race should never be a factor in redistricting, especially when the federal government is bossing states into redrawing maps.

Older Supreme Court cases —as recently as 2023— upheld the VRA’s rules ‘protecting’ minority districts, which allowed the federal government to basically order states to redraw maps— and thereby create more Democrat districts. But, since the Supreme Court has now agreed to revisit the issue, it seems poised to overturn all that prior precedent. If it does, it could open the floodgates for a whole new round of gerrymandering, especially in the Southern red states.

In addition to the October oral arguments (a rare second-round requested by SCOTUS), the Supremes tellingly asked for supplemental briefing on whether creating a majority‑Black district violates the 14th or 15th Amendments— meaning they’re considering whether race in any form can be used in map-drawing, even when it’s intended to comply with the VRA.

Needless to say, all the minority-drawn districts lean heavily Democrat. Deleting federally gerrymandered “opportunity districts” would tilt dozens of seats toward Republicans. In a narrowly divided House, it could decisively sway control of Congress to the GOP. Perhaps for a generation.

As of the 2023 congressional map, there were 141 majority-minority “opportunity districts” in the U.S. House, which is about 32% of the 435 seats. Of those, Democrats hold 119 seats, while Republicans hold only 22. Analysts estimate that, if the Supreme Court finds the VRA unconstitutional, as many as sixty House seats could shift red.

That’s a lot of salamanders. It’s practically a herpetological exhibit.

Isn’t it strange we haven’t heard more about this case, especially with the Texas drama plastered on every corporate media front page? So weird.

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On Friday, the New York Times ran a short but incredibly provocative story about this week’s early-morning raids on mustachioed former intelligence chief John Bolton. It was simply headlined, “Bolton Investigation Linked to Overseas Intelligence.” The bland but intriguing sub-headline said, “The nature of the intelligence collected overseas is not known. The F.B.I. obtained the search warrant after presenting evidence to a federal judge.”

According to anonymous sources, which could only be from an approvedleak, the information used to get the search warrant for Bolton’s home and office was based on information provided by the CIA. That single data point is mind-blowing.

The initial reporting about the Bolton raids speculated it was related to the long-dormant investigation over Bolton’s stupid TDS book, an investigation that Biden’s FBI promptly smothered in the crib. But this CIA angle means it’s not about the book. (Or at least, not only about the book.)

Here’s how we know that. The CIA is only allowed to investigate overseas. And it is definitely not allowed to investigate domestic US persons. So, if the CIA collected evidence against Bolton suggesting he committed a crime, that evidence must have been incidentally collected from foreign adversaries. And CIA has properly turned that evidence over to the FBI, since US persons are not within the CIA’s investigatory jurisdiction.

There aren’t many possibilities of what that evidence could be that don’t quickly devolve into seditious conspiracies or even treason. The gentlestspeculations wonder whether Bolton may have been selling classified intelligence to foreign adversaries.

Meanwhile, the Atlantic, in full freakout, ran a hand-wringing story, also on Friday, under another short and sweet headline: “The Bolton Raid Feels Like a Warning.” Take a look at this paragraph, surprising not for what it says, but for who said it. Does this sound familiar?

Just this week, in addition to the Bolton raids, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth fired the chief of DoD’s intelligency agency, the DIA. And DNI Tulsi Gabbard revoked security clearances of over three dozen current and former national-security officials linked to RussiaGate. The Atlantic complained the word “purge” was inadequate to describe the week’s progress.

The deep state is taking it very badly. “One current official,” the Atlantic said, “described the mood among career intelligence officers as panicked.”

They shouldn’t be surprised. 150 years ago, author Ralph Waldo Emerson famously quipped, “when you strike at the king, you must kill him.” Since Democrats are the ones calling Trump a “king,” you’d think they would’ve put two-and-two together.

They swung and they missed. Trump survived, regained power, and now he’s in a position to swing back with the force of the entire executive branch. The raids, the clearance revocations, the purges — they’re not just revenge theater. They’re a real-world demonstration of what happens when you take a shot at the king and leave him standing.

Senior intelligence and national-security officials live in a dense jungle of classified-information rules, disclosure regulations, and conflict-of-interest statutes. It’s what you might call a target-rich environment. Before this term, the IC’s “norms” and “customs” shielded insiders. “Mistakes” were quietly corrected, papered over, and colleagues covered for each other.

Bolton —up to his hairy upper lip in RussiaGate, both impeachments, and his enthusiastic public defense of the Mar-a-lago raid— may find it hard to hide the skeletons inconveniently languishing in his home closets.

The mortgage fraud investigations are another perfect cautionary tale about swinging at the king and missing. Half of Washington has probably fibbed about a primary residence at some point. It’s no big deal— until the day you’re on the wrong side of a power that you’ve done everything to destroy. Then your little white lie on a mortgage form turns into a 20-year felony indictment.

This week, Bill Pulte announced two more referrals to DOJ for mortgage fraud. (He hasn’t yet said who.)

Don’t cry too much about selective enforcement. Those little white lies would be strictly enforced against regular folks like us. Prosecuting top officials for them is collapsing the two-tiered justice system, not creating a new one. It’s not “revenge.” It’s even-handed justice.

To the Atlantic, this feels like “selective enforcement” only because their elites were selectively shielded for decades.

Remember: No one is above the law. Or so I’ve been told.

Have a blessed Sunday! Thank you enormously for your continuing loyal support. I’ll meetup with you all again tomorrow morning, when we’ll kick off a terrific new week of essential news and commentary.

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