Category: Uncategorized

McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski on Monday admitted to investors that they should probably stop overcharging for shitty food as it kind of backfired and people aren’t eating there as much as they used to when a goddamned McChicken sandwich cost what it’s actually supposed to, CNBC reports.

“We recognize that in several large markets, including the US, we have an opportunity to improve our value execution. Consumers still recognize us as the value leader versus our key competitors but it’s clear that our value leadership gap has recently shrunk. We are working to fix that with pace,” said Kempczinski and if you read not very carefully he said the same thing we just wrote.

“At the end of the day, we expect customers will continue to feel the pinch of the economy and a higher cost of living for at least the next several quarters in this very competitive landscape. So we believe it is critical for us to consider these factors in order to grow market share, and return to sustainable guest count-led growth for the brand,” said McDonald’s USA President Joe Ehrlinger and holy shit what the hell do they need all the extra words? Can’t they just talk normally?

“The point is, we know how to do this. We wrote the playbook on value and we are working with our franchisees to make the necessary adjustments,” Kempczinski continued. And if you’re waiting for the part of the earnings call where they actually said something like “We’re telling our franchisees they can suck a fat, furry, purple Grimace tip if they don’t like it, but Big Macs are capped at $3.99 each nationally until further notice. Deal with it,” then you can go bobbing for nuggets in the fryer.

“Iran is seeking to harm Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in covert online influence operations, fearing a return to power by the Republican nominee would inflame relations with Washington, US intelligence officials said Monday,” writes the Wall Street Journal in the lede to an exclusive report.

The taking of a side marks a shift in Tehran’s strategy, as in prior elections they simply wanted to act as “chaos agents,” especially with regard to Israel and Palestine, according to the officials.

The story contains no specific examples of the newly anti-Trump focused effort, simply quoting an official who says the Iranians are creating “vast webs of online personas and propaganda mills to spread disinformation,” just like the Russians do to help support the fat orange fuck.

We’re just going to ask out loud if the government and/or the Journal wouldn’t divulge any specifics about the “propaganda” because people would simply roll their eyes. It’s not like saying “Trump raped a woman in a department store, is a convicted felon, stole top secret nuclear documents and kept them in a box with old copies of Hustler, and tried to overthrow the government when he lost the 2020 election,” makes his fans want to vote for him any less, so what kind of “disinformation” would actually work on the fat bastard? If they can’t come up with something legitimately novel and funny – and most importantly believable enough – they should worry about their own dysfunctional mess of a country instead of counterproductively trying to fuck with democracy in ours.

CHILLING FOOTAGE of two insurrectionists headed toward the Capitol on January 5th unearthed by Substacker Jamie Dupree reveal a desperate last ditch effort by Trump supporters to overthrow the government! Trump 2020 campaign minions Kenny Chesebro and Mike Brown met with aides to MAGA Pennsylvania Congressman Mike Kelly to hand them falsified electoral votes the afternoon before a shit ton more insurrectionists savagely attacked and tried to hang the vice president for not going along with the plan to create a constitutional crisis that could’ve led to a second civil war!

Whatever’s left of the Wagner Group after their founder Yevgeny Prighozin’s plane took a hard landing last summer took a serious beating during a battle with Tuareg rebels in the Saharan Desert country of Mali, near the border with Algeria, CBS News reports, citing the company itself.

It’s still not clear how many of the Russian mercenaries were killed in last week’s fight, some pro-Ukrainian accounts on Twitter said it was at least 80. Others showed videos of the carnage and photos purportedly of the Tuaregs holding up a Ukrainian flag alongside their own after the battle.

What. Why are all of you looking at the headline like that? Did we misspell something? Does it need one of those funny little accent marks on the vowels that we aren’t really consistent with?

Was that a little too provocative or reckless? Oh come on. The son of a bitch obviously cheated in the election and it’s not like it’s a close call. Plus the US military kills the leader of ISIS like every month. Why’s it okay to kill every new ISIS guy but not okay for Venezuela’s dictator?

Biden’s got less than six months in office left. He should have fun with it. Kill some more bad guys and let Kamala Harris own it and tell all the Venezuelans in Florida that the Biden-Harris Administration is tougher on Maduro than Trump and they brought justice for all their friends and family whose votes were stolen. The US military’s already got some boots on the ground in neighboring Guyana… Oh stop being such libs, the Venezuelans don’t have nukes and they won’t be able to retaliate in any meaningful way. Blast the fucker into next week and warn his replacement we’ve got plenty more where that came from if he doesn’t hold another free and fair election.

Plus we’d get to run a funny headline like “Adios, puto!” Wouldn’t you guys love to see that?

Maduro lost the election in Venezuela badly, then simply declared victory anyway.

He is an illegitimate dictator.

We stand with the people of Venezuela and their diaspora throughout the world in calling for an end to his murderous regime.

It is sad but true that a nation can…

— Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) July 29, 2024

Game recognizes game. What’s especially effective about his technique is how the first two sentences were extremely likely to have been directly mad-libbed from some Democrat’s tweet in late 2020/early 2021. You don’t need to actually like Matt Gaetz – we sure as shit don’t, even before he was credibly suspected of statutory rape and (technically) sex trafficking – but we can separate the art from the artist here: The utter void of irony or shame is a particularly vibrant texture of this tweet, as is the fact that it’s an objectively true statement about Maduro, who’s also a piece of shit.

As is the circumspection, because that would ruin the framing. Lesser trolls would have tried to tie it to the “Biden regime,” but Gaetz sets his own boundaries and colors so precisely within them.

Save for the fact that we’re analyzing it and heaping the appropriate plaudits rather than reacting as intended and spewing impotent vitriol in a reflexive rage, it’s a work approaching masterful. There are no masters of trolling, there is only masterful trolling. This tweet is almost worthy of such accord.

Sources tell CNN that convicted felon former President Trump has agreed to be interviewed by FBI agents as part of their investigation of the failed assassination attempt earlier this month.

Still think he’s going to have at least one of his lawyers present, even though this is standard operating procedure and the FBI always conducts interviews with victims of federal offenses.

At least eight people were stabbed in the northern English town of Southport on Monday when some fucking crazy asshole with a knife decided to try to get famous. Witness Colin Parry, a service garage owner who saw it happen called the cops, tells the Guardian it was like a “scene in a horror movie. Police have got him. It is like something from America, not like sunny Southport.”

Ouch. Not accurate though, because if it was some MAGA incel white nationalist with an AR-15 then the body count would’ve been higher. And we’d be talking about deaths, not injuries.

Former Trump Administration corrupt Secretary of the Interior and current Montana Congressman Ryan Zinke on Monday told Fox Business News-screecher Maria Bartiromo that a vote for convicted felon former President Trump is how Americans fight back against shit like the reportedly “Satanic” opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Paris. It’s not clear what Zinke meant in terms of policy, like if Trump would ban other countries from allowing drag queens to dance during such televised fanfare. Maybe he meant it in a symbolic way, like voting for Trump is a way of expressing anger over a global culture becoming more tolerant of men dressing like flamboyant, cartoonish women.

To Zinke’s other rant about the “assassination plot” against Trump: This fucking asshole was a Navy SEAL and knows better than most that if the “Deep State” – of which he was, possibly still is in some capacity a human weapon – wants someone knocked off they’re going to actually knock them off rather than send some incel dipshit who picks an AR-15 to do the job of a Carcano 38.

Health officials in Communist totalitarian North Korea are in a race to obtain desperately-needed medical supplies to solve a crisis that threatens the future of the state, the AP reports, citing South Korean intelligence reports indicating that the problem is increasingly expanding in size and weight.

Specifically the officials need drugs to treat high blood pressure and diabetes-related ailments being suffered by 40 year-old 5 ft 8, 308 lbs dictator Kim Jong-Un, whose sedentary lifestyle, coupled with heavy drinking and smoking are a major crisis in the tiny, improverished state’s government.

It’s not clear if efforts to get Kim to switch to Nicorette gum or Juul, booze only on weekends, and go on a crash diet of rice and lean salmon were met with summary executions or more elaborate and creative executions like the doctors getting blown up by large artillery guns on live television.

BREAKING: Residents of Wise County, Texas thought about it for a few minutes and realize that it might not be a good idea to locate a new landfill near a river that supplies their drinking water as runoff from a mountain of garbage could be hazardous, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports.

“We just really feel that it is not a viable location. We and the property owners just have a lot of questions,” said Wise County Judge [“Judge” is the title of the top elected official in each Texas county, they do not preside over courts, unless they also happen to be a jurist] JD Clark said.

That’s fucking crazy, right? You’d think a state that would elect Ken Paxton to serve as its top law enforcement official wouldn’t care if their drinking water was polluted with rainwater that mixes in with batteries that didn’t get recycled and soiled baby diapers and who the hell knows what else kind of awfulness. There might be hope for Texas just yet… Maybe. Probably not though.

Pelosi's top security aides got warnings about potential Capitol breach night before Jan. 6 riot, memos show https://t.co/JOwjjddehu

— John Solomon (@jsolomonReports) July 29, 2024

“The left’s campaign against Project 2025 is reaching absurd decibels. You’d think Mr Trump is a political mastermind hiding the secret plans he’ll implement with an army of shock troops marching in lockstep. If his first term is any guide, and it is the best we have, Mr Trump will govern as a make-it-up-as-he-goes tactician rather than a strategist with a coherent policy guide.”

“He’ll dodge and weave based on the news cycle and often based on whoever talks to him last. Not much of the Project 2025 agenda is likely to happen, even if Republicans take the House and Senate. Democrats will block legislation with a filibuster. The bureaucracy will leak with abandon and oppose even the most minor reforms to the civil service. The press will revert to full resistance mode, and Mr. Trump’s staff will trip over their own ambitions. Democrats know this, which is why they fear Trump II less than they claim. They’re targeting Project 2025 to distract from their own failed and unpopular policies,” writes the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board.

Wow, that’s a freaking scorcher of an attack on Trump’s plans to establish a fascist autocratic police state… within the context of it being weaponized against him politically. “The libs are lying to voters again. Trump is too fucking stupid to actually make this happen,” is somehow the pwn here.

Nor is it really all that accurate, because the parts of it that serve the fat bastard’s self-interests financially and legally would absolutely definitely, 100 percent happen. And even if the Journal is theoretically correct in principle, why take the chance? What assurances can they make that his laziness and clinical ADHD will save birth control from being banned? Also, the whole point of cleaning house in the government to install loyalists definitionally entails staffing it with morally corrupt and frankly fucking psychotic animals with no regard for Americans. They can and will simply break things without any oversight or consequences. That’s the true spirit of Project 2025.

Political strategists in both parties have opinions on how their respective presidential candidates’ campaigns should conduct themselves in order to win 2024 the race, Politico Playbook reports.

“There is no question Kamala has the momentum and she gets a summer lull period during the Olympics, a VP pick, then a convention before we are quickly at Labor Day and ballots starting to be mailed out shortly after,” one GOP strategist texted Politico on Sunday, adding that the party’s inability to unify their “messaging” hasn’t helped. “The campaign seems to have realized that and will try to set the tone this week, but I am not so sure the entire MAGA Universe will sing from the song sheet immediately,” the anonymous strategist continued in the opinion-focused text message.

“Veteran GOP operative SCOTT JENNINGS,” and you know he’s important because Politico printed his name in all upper case letters, told them that “focus will be essential for Republicans”: “Bag the stupid crap and just focus on her record, statements and work under President JOE BIDEN. More than enough there. With any luck she’ll spend the next two weeks disavowing her entire record, which of course will make her seem hollow to voters,” JENNINGS said in his opinion.

Have a couch you just…don't love anymore? Set it out the night before your TRASH ONLY (not recycling) collection day. pic.twitter.com/DUhX4uDVtk

— NYC Sanitation (@NYCSanitation) July 28, 2024

Maybe the mockery of JD Vance’s alleged objectophilia isn’t that obvious to you, like in your head you leave room for just a little ambiguity here. But when you look at the couch you might start thinking “Huh, why is it only stained and not like cat scratches or just general wear and tear,” and then that might get you thinking about whether their graphic artist might have made it from scratch or if it’s clip art. It is clip art – of a regular, unstained couch. We don’t know if maybe another version with the yellow stains exists or if they were added by DSNY’s comms team. Either way it’s clear they went the extra half mile to put this tweet together and no doubt it’s a laugh at Jaydee’s expense.

President Biden will on Monday publish an op-ed calling, as expected, for major reforms to the Supreme Court following some pretty fucked up shit in both the far right majority’s rulings and ethical conduct, according to excerpts shared with Politico ahead of printing in an unspecified paper.

“What is happening now is not normal, and it undermines the public’s confidence in the court’s decisions, including those impacting personal freedoms… We now stand in a breach,” Biden writes in the piece, which comes with a speech set for Monday at the LBJ Presidential Library in Texas.

“The nation was founded on a simple yet profound principle: No one is above the law. Not the president of the United States. Not a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States,” the piece continues. In it Biden outlines his proposals for an enforceable code of ethics but the mechanisms and penalties for enforcement remain vague. What’s less vague is the likely outcome: That nothing will happen in Congress this year given that it would be pointless for Senate Democrats to abolish the filibuster to pass reforms only for Jesus Dork House Speaker Mike Johnson to ignore it.

That’s different than saying this is a waste of time and energy. It isn’t. Making accountability for an unaccountable court a middle term reach goal for the next Democratic trifecta in Washington is a worthwhile policy statement for the party and a no-brainer as a campaign strategy.

Flights to and from Lebanon’s capital Beirut were canceled Monday as the country braced for a possible offensive by the Israeli military against the Shiite terrorist militia Hezbollah in retaliation for a missile strike that killed 12 kids on a soccer field in the Golan Heights, Reuters reports.

Lufthansa, Swiss, Turkish Airlines, and others have halted their flights until at least August 5th as the Netanyahu Regime signaled that they would start bombing their northern neighbor again.

Venezuelan dictator Nicholas Maduro on Monday celebrated “winning” a third term after the country’s election authority declared him the winner, despite the opposition declaring victory amid some fairly obvious signs of rigging by the ruling communist regime, the Associated Press reports.

Would like to say that in another timeline where Joe Biden hadn’t dropped out yet – or at all – that I would have still printed a retrospective with the same headline (up to you whether it’s the Bananarama or Taylor Swift track of that name playing in your head right now) a month from the day after the night that ended his long and storied career in politics. Truth be told I almost certainly would have just tried in my own way to continue to walk the line between gallows humor and hollow attempts at boosting morale, not even acknowledging the milestone. What would have been gained by being honest that American democracy was sliding towards another very dark period which it wasn’t terribly likely to survive? How does one ever truly process a trauma like that?

Those interminable days of the mainstream media grinning happily while banging out scorching hot takes like “Trump on glide path back to White House: Top 10 picks for cabinet posts,” their best at preemptively currying favor with a regime that is far more likely to imprison them for sedition than the current one ever would. The agony of waiting on something, anything else to happen that would change the subject. And the even worse agony of those other news cycles – the Supreme Court throttling the conspiracy case against the fat fuck and giving him a blank check to create a permanent dictatorship, that stupid incel bringing an AR-15 to a sniper rifle fight, Aileen Cannon doing what she was hired to do – just increasing the torment. That Biden was doomed and then he wasn’t because of a middling performance at this or that and then he was again.

Wanted war criminal Maria Lvova-Belova – Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s co-defendant on the ICC’s arrest warrant issued last year for her role in abducting children from Ukraine and forcing them to live in Russia – dubbed by the Telegraph as the “‘family values’ czar” for her position as the “Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights,” has reportedly walked out on her husband, Orthodox Priest Pavel Kogelman, and sacked up with billionaire Putin crony Konstantin Malofeev.

Malofeev’s racket is – you guessed it – an Orthodox church-backed propaganda media empire, called “Tsargrad,” which advocates for installing Putin as the “czar for life,” as if that isn’t already the de facto state of affairs for the Russian presidency. While we’ll note that nothing’s official or confirmed as the only sourcing for Malofeev wrecking Kogelman’s home – five natural kids and another five “adopted,” at least one of them abducted from Ukraine – is reports of Lvova-Belova being filmed holding hands with the “Orthodox oligarch” at a church procession last week, we’ll let this speak for itself. Readers can go to town with the obvious parallels here on the homefront.