KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ and the Indomitable Conservative American Spirit. “Hey, if you have to suffer through the tyrannical rain of a faculty-challenged president who is trying to abrogate as many of your freedoms as he can, all the while burying you under an inflation problem that’s about to turn Domino’s pizza into a luxury item, a sense of humor really helps.”
Author Archive: Stephen Green
October 19, 2021
DON’T UNDERESTIMATE JOE’S ABILITY TO F*** THINGS UP: How bad does a supply chain crisis have to be for Dunkin Donuts to be out of Donuts?
October 18, 2021
THE COMPETITION JUST LAPPED US. NOW WHAT? Psaki On Communist China Obtaining Advanced, Nuclear-Capable Weapons Tech: ‘We Welcome Stiff Competition.’
#RESIST: ESPN Tries to Mandate Vaccine on Allison Williams Despite ‘Advanced Maternal Age,’ She Quits. “I know a little something about this, having once spent nine months on pins and needles.”
This one is just for our PJMedia/Townhall VIP members, so if you’ve been thinking of becoming a member, you can do so here — and don’t forget to use that VODKAPUNDIT discount code.
VIDEO: State Trooper Quits Over Vaccine Mandate with Defiant Message Over the Police Radio. “Jay Inslee can kiss my ass.”
Related: California Police Officer Chants “Let’s Go Brandon.”
TRUTH, JUSTICE, AND ALL THAT STUFF: DC Comics to Give Superman a New ‘Woke’ Slogan.
THE REGULATORY STATE: ‘Sprinklegate’ sinks a U.K. bakery’s top sellers after topping is found to be illegal.
He says the decision is a huge deal for his business and also “very f***ing annoying.”
Customers often ask for raspberry glazed donut cookies or a “Birthday Bruce” (a towering slab of 12-layer chocolate cake), Myers said. Both of them prominently feature the outlawed sprinkles.
The doughnut cookies, Myers added, “are not only our best-selling cookie, but they’re utterly sensational.” But for now, they’re off the menu.
“It is HIGHLY unlikely that we will find any legal sprinkles that we will use as a replacement,” Myers wrote. “British sprinkles just aren’t the same, they’re totally s*** and I hate them.”
He added: “I am extremely passionate about sprinkles.”
The State is extremely passionate about saving people from trace amounts of Red No. 3.
THUMB ON THE SCALE: As Joe Biden Drowns, Some Pollsters Are Trying to Pull Him Up.
HEINLEIN’S CRAZY YEARS (CONT’D): McAuliffe Agrees Public Schools Should Not Tell Parents If Their Child Is ‘Gender Fluid.’ “If it’s your child, Terry McAuliffe doesn’t think you should know about their struggle. He would force schools to hide a student’s new name and pronouns from parents. He even supports policies where schools use the child’s birth name with parents but a different name at school.”
OH, CANADA: Canada Bans Public Employees from Using ‘Let’s Go Brandon.’ “Canadians might prefer to know who would be foolish enough to sign their own name to such a liberty-snuffing document, while they gather together their tar and feathers.”
KAROL MARKOWICZ: The incredible, disappearing — incompetent — Team Biden.
As Americans start to worry about stocking their cupboards and buying Christmas presents, Biden goes more than a week refusing to take any questions. Sorry, but this is unacceptable, no matter who’s president.
Maybe we should’ve known: After all, Biden hid in his basement for much of his presidential campaign, and his aides routinely called early “lids,” telling the press the candidate would be unavailable for the day.
But he wasn’t president then; now he is.
Nor are those of his surrogates not on paternity leave offering more reassurance. Last week, Biden chief of staff Ron Klain retweeted a tone-deaf reference to the supply-chain issues as “high-class problems.” Really? It sure doesn’t feel that high class when people are worrying about getting staples for their home. We all remember the toilet-paper shortages during the pandemic last year; did that feel “high class”?
Asked if holiday gifts would arrive on time, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was positively arrogant: “We’re not the Postal Service,” she huffed.
“High class” is the rating the people who created this mess — but won’t fix it and have no empathy for those suffering from it — give themselves.
THE VISIBLE HAND: The Distorted Market for Woke Capitalism.
The founder of modern economics, Adam Smith, was no fan of the merchants of his time. He regarded them as among the most responsible for how “the mercantile system,” as Smith called it, accorded legal privileges to politically connected producers over the interests of consumers. Nor did Milton Friedman have a particularly sympathetic view of the business leaders of late-twentieth-century America. “The two greatest enemies of free enterprise in the United States,” he wrote, “have been, on the one hand, my fellow intellectuals and, on the other hand, the business corporations of this country.”
Whenever I inform students of Smith and Friedman’s unflattering opinions of the business community, they are invariably shocked. But their eyes start opening when I point out that large established businesses don’t actually like competition, aren’t wildly excited about other people’s new ideas and products threatening “their” market share, and are quite happy to hop into bed with complaisant legislators to use state power to make life difficult for new and potential competitors. At this point, students begin realizing that to be pro-market is not the same as being pro-business. The two are at odds in some very important ways.
This is one way of understanding the phenomenon of “woke capitalism,” and it features in Vivek Ramaswamy’s Woke, Inc: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam. For if there is anything that characterizes woke capitalism, it is the desire—like the mercantilists of old—to exclude (ironically, in the name of tolerance, diversity, equality, etc.) particular individuals and groups from “their” markets and corporate America in general. In the case of woke capitalists, the excluded is anyone who doesn’t embrace all the usual progressive orthodoxies or who won’t play the woke game to go along to get along.
Plus: “At the nexus of all this is a curious combination: a neo-mercantilist approach to realizing profit alongside a conviction that the business of business somehow involves resolving as many of the world’s political, social, and cultural problems as possible. This reflects deep misunderstanding—if not corruption—of the role of business vis-à-vis other groups’ responsibilities in society.”
Fascinating piece, well worth your time.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: ‘Escalating Into A Firing War’: Texas Gov. Abbott Says ‘Aggressive’ Mexican Cartels Shooting At National Guard.
“Everyone saw what happened in Del Rio with regard to the Haitians that came in there,” the governor continued, as he said the current “hottest point” along the Texas border is “in Roma … and that’s the area where the cartels on the Mexican side of the border are shooting at the National Guard on the Texas side of the border. And so what Texas is having to do, we’re having to step up and guard multiple points across the entire border.”
The governor said the situation cannot compare to October 2020. “Listen, a year ago, of course, was still during the Trump administration and the Trump administration had put in place all the policies that led it to the greatest reduction in cross-border crossings,” he said, adding that “now, we’re seeing the highest number of cross-border crossings and it’s all because of the catastrophic open border policies by the Biden administration and we’re seeing more and more people come in.”
Democratic Laredo, Texas, Mayor Pete Saenz said in September that border security was effective under Trump.
Who had “Possible Shooting War with Mexico” on their “Don’t Underestimate Joe’s Ability to F*** Things Up” bingo card?
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: What If They Gave a Mandate and No Law Enforcement Came? “Tyrants need enforcers and the enforcers are not amused.”
GOOD. TANTRUMS SHOULDN’T BE INDULGED: Netflix fired the employee who organized a walkout in solidarity with trans workers. “We have let go of an employee for sharing confidential, commercially sensitive information outside the company. We understand this employee may have been motivated by disappointment and hurt with Netflix, but maintaining a culture of trust and transparency is core to our company.”
October 15, 2021
YES: The Real ‘High Class Problem’ Is How Out Of Touch The ‘High Class’ Is From Everyone Else.
The truth is that this tweet is not some explosive new insight into what the Democrats in charge think about the economic catastrophe lawmakers have created. They remind you every day how little they think of the plight they’ve put you in. They’ve been reinforcing the hierarchy for as long as COVID-19 has been a thought in our minds.
Klain’s “high class problems” attitude is basically a repeat of the Mayor Lori Lightfoot scandal in April 2020. All the Chicago Democrat’s constituents were under a strict stay-at-home order. But even after posting a cringey “Stay home, save lives” PSA video — complete with the line that “getting your roots done is not essential” — Lightfoot sneaked off to get a trim.
It got worse. After she was caught, she defended her haircut by saying she was an exception to the rule because she needs to look good on television.
“I’m the public face of this city. I’m on national media and I’m out in the public eye,” she said at a press conference with real Ron Klain energy.
Or take an example from our president just this week. After ordering health-care providers, full-time federal workers, government contractors, and private companies with 100 employees or more (the latter of which is still just a toothless press release, by the way) to get injected or potentially lose their jobs, Biden had the audacity to say that vaccine mandates shouldn’t be divisive.
When the people in charge of fixing problems are immune from the problems themselves or from the costs of the solutions, they aren’t exactly incentivized to get it right.
Or even to demonstrate some basic decency.
Plus: “However much contempt you harbor for these media corporations — and I know it’s a lot — it’s still not enough. They deserve more. No institution does more damage to political and cultural life than employees of media corporations.”
THE NEW DIVERSITY AND INCLUSIVENESS LOOK AN AWFUL LOT LIKE THE OLD CONFORMITY: Teaching while pro-Trump: Educator in training alleges political views led to his firing.