American business has lost the last shred of the plot.

Cracker Barrel’s bone-headed “rebranding” — more on this below — is only the ne plus ultra of a long, stupid march through formerly beloved brands toward a joyless, millennial-gray final destination.

These are choices we’re making. Bad choices. Anti-beauty choices. Anti-human choices.

Look around you. What do you see? Alleged restaurants that look like industrial warehouses. Businesses that we used to call bakeries — everything is just a “store” now in modern corporate-speak — now decorate their interiors according to surgical sterile-field protocols.

Everything is hard, not soft. Everything is gray, not green. Everything is fluorescent, not incandescent. Everything is aluminum, not velvet.

Hamburglaring our history

You know what I mean because you see it everywhere. The built world has been drained of color, curve, ornamentation, and whimsy. The desiccated architectural corpses of abandoned Pizza Huts with their distinctive step-peaked roofs litter the suburbs. I found these sad to look at until I realized that Pizza Hut is in a better place now, where there’s no more pain.

It’s McDonald’s we need to worry about. Cast your mind back to your childhood when you first met Ronald, Grimace, and Mayor McCheese. Most McDonald's restaurants had a playground for kids with colorful characters. The buildings themselves promised fun and piqued your imagination. Like Pizza Hut, McDonald's roofs had angles and character. They were painted bright red with French-fry-yellow accents.

Francois Lochon/Getty Images

Observe a McDonald's today. The buildings are the best representation of the Brutalist revival taking over modern architecture.

Bloomberg/Getty Images

At best, they’re abstract, cubist boxes that offer the eye no rest. Hard edge overlaps hard edge. All ornamentation is stripped. Color is canceled. You get gray and brushed aluminum, and you better damned well like it.

The worst part is how the company has kept one bit of color — the famed golden arches. Stuck on these industrial boxes as an afterthought, you’d be forgiven for thinking McDonald's is making a joke at our expense: “Look what we took away from you. Lol. Lmao.”

These buildings aren’t restaurants; they’re wholesale crematories at the back of an industrial park.

Auto pilot

Automobiles are the same.

No, dear reader. Let me stop you before you start typing that comment. All cars don’t look exactly the same “because aerodynamics, and this is the optimal shape, and they have to do it to meet emissions standards.” That’s the “well, it’s not really as bad as you say” excuse.

It’s just not true (and it is as bad as I say). If it were true, then every single car would be exactly the same as every single other car. But they’re not. There are SUVs, for example. If “they have to do it for aerodynamics” were true, this size and shape of vehicle would not exist. Oversized, elevated rectangular boxes, by their nature, are un-aerodynamic. A Chrysler Airflow from 1934 has a much higher aerodynamic rating than any modern “luxury truck” and still manages to be pleasing to the eye.

It’s not “because they have to because government.” It’s because there’s something wrong with us. We’re sick at heart and sick in the soul, and our emptiness finds three-dimensional expression in the sea of white, black, gray, and silver cars that all look precisely the same as every other maker’s car in that vehicle class.

Crimes against coziness

These are choices we’re making. Bad choices. Anti-beauty choices. Anti-human choices.

You’ve likely heard of the recent kerfuffle over the “rebranding” of the Cracker Barrel restaurant chain. Cracker Barrel is a chain of down-home restaurants that serve unfussy American food like your grandmother used to make. Created in 1969, the founders wanted to offer a restaurant that would remind people of the comfortable general stores and wayside diners that once dotted the American rural landscape. Nothing fancy, just plain food cooked well and served in an atmosphere that invited you to sit down, take a load off, and have supper with other good people.

Staff would travel to flea markets and estate sales to pick up real Americana to stick up on the walls. There were framed pictures of famous boxers and lacrosse sticks, big kerosene lamps that used to light and heat the general stores. The effect was a combination of grandma’s attic and grandpa’s work shed, with a little bit of Christmas thrown in.

Take a look at how Cracker Barrel used to look.

Jeff Greenberg/Getty Images

Now, take a look at the “refreshed” Cracker Barrel.

From your grandparents’ house to the prison commissary.

Scott W. Grau/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

A woman's touch

Who makes these decisions? What kind of person takes a beloved restaurant brand and sticks up her middle finger to the customers? A middle-aged, corporate, almost certainly liberal-woke-Karen type. And here she is, Cracker Barrel CEO Julie Felss Masino, cackling on breakfast television behind oversized look-at-me glasses, telling the audience how much everyone just SUPER LOVES what we’ve done, and we’re doing it all out of LOVE 4 U!!!!!

American business apparently learned nothing from the Bud Light fiasco. In that case, a younger Karen named Alissa Heinerscheid sent the company’s profits into the toilet by making fun of her own brand’s “frat boy” image and slapping the face of a demented drag queen on the cans.

Keep the curves

America, we have to come back to our senses. The world doesn’t have to conform to Karen’s diktats. Karen hates us and hates the things we like, which is why she punishes us. But we’re not her children (do say a prayer for them), and we don’t have to listen to her.

God gave us a world of curve, color, romance, and beauty. For thousands of years, men have tried to follow this example by piling up stones and locking logs together in pleasing shapes that ennoble us and make our souls sing. The deracination of the beautiful and the divine started long ago with churches. We don’t build anything worthy of the name “cathedral” any longer; instead, we put up Brutalist boxes and stick a Mary-on-the-halfshell on the lawn.

The sickness that compromised matters spiritual is now devouring things temporal.

Beauty is our patrimony and our birthright. Let's take it back.

'She Greeted Every Person With That Thousand-Watt Smile': Watch All the Times Dems Touted Kamala's Alleged McDonald's Gig

For Democratic lawmakers and pundits, Kamala Harris's alleged summer job at McDonald's was proof of the presidential hopeful's working-class bona fides. For Harris and her campaign, it was a major source of anxiety.

The post 'She Greeted Every Person With That Thousand-Watt Smile': Watch All the Times Dems Touted Kamala's Alleged McDonald's Gig appeared first on .

Kamala Harris Worked at McDonald’s For… Two Weeks, New Book Asserts Without Evidence

While a Washington Free Beacon investigation found no evidence that Kamala Harris worked at McDonald’s, an alleged summer job that the failed presidential nominee tried to make a centerpiece of her campaign biography, a new book from a trio of mainstream media reporters has concluded that Harris toiled under the golden arches for "two or three weeks."

The post Kamala Harris Worked at McDonald’s For… Two Weeks, New Book Asserts Without Evidence appeared first on .

Woke pastor teams up with Al Sharpton to revive Target’s woke agenda

Dr. Jamal Bryant, a liberal black preacher at a Baptist megachurch in Georgia, is angry that Target stores have dropped the secular left’s diversity, equity, and inclusion initiative. And so, along with Al Sharpton, he has urged black people to boycott Target.

Bryant is leading a deceitful political scam while insisting he is a man who seeks to help black people. DEI has never been about that. Instead, proponents of DEI play the race card, using black Americans to advance what amounts to a godless agenda. Worse, in pressuring Target to restore DEI, this man of the cloth is undermining the gains Christians have made in getting the retailer to remove homosexual-themed children’s clothing from their stores.

Should Bryant’s boycott grow enough to overwhelm complacent Christians, it could possibly provide Target a new political lifeline (and excuse) to reverse course on DEI.

As many will recall, back in 2023, Target made national news when conservative influencers and media outlets reported how the national retailer was using customer profits to target children with a marketing campaign promoting pro-homosexual-themed apparel. This was bad enough by itself.

You boycotted, Target listened

What added insult to injury was the way Target seemed to be riding a wave of some organized propaganda campaign pushing drag-queen story hours — where perverse men dressed in women’s clothing would read books to children — often while behaving in lewd and suggestive ways.

As a result, a tsunami of public outrage ensued, and an untold number of Americans immediately decided to boycott Target stores.

It made a difference: Target got the message that the bulk of its consumers reject the woke agenda. In June 2024, the retailer announced that it would no longer sell children’s apparel as part of its “Pride Collection.” Even though Target still sells merchandise that promotes the homosexual lifestyle, the removal of this apparel from the children’s departments is nonetheless a victory for morality.

This victory was followed by President Donald Trump’s executive order against DEI in January, which prompted Target to join other major companies — including Walmart, McDonald’s, and Ford — in announcing it would end several corporate DEI initiatives.

A counter-boycott

This is when the left-wing preacher Bryant stepped into the breach to stage a counter-boycott that attempted to mimic what conservatives had done.

Protesting against the corporate practices that include selling homosexual-themed paraphernalia to children is an odd move for a man with the title of preacher — one would hope he is in agreement with biblical values.

Melina Mara/The Washington Post via Getty Images

In fact, Bryant has never publicly denounced Target’s previous practices. Yet, he’s chosen now to speak up and fight for Target to restore DEI. And so has Twin Cities Pride, a homosexual activist group, which also lashed out at Target for ending its DEI initiatives.

Seeing that Bryant is taking the same side as Twin Cities Pride, it’s hard not to conclude that Bryant’s passionate drive to pressure Target to reinstate DEI is motivated by his full-throated agreement with the far left’s secular agenda.

There’s more proof of this.

Woke, not Christian

Not long ago, Bryant appeared on a podcast and engaged in a heated exchange about political and spiritual matters with Pastor Mark Burns, a black conservative pastor who has gained fame for his support of President Trump.

The takeaway from some online viewers was that Bryant did not align with the standard scriptural interpretation that the Bible supports only traditional marriage and opposes abortion.

To make matters worse, Bryant seems to be making inroads with Target CEO Brian Cornell. In a symbolic gesture of agreement, Cornell reached out and met with Al Sharpton because of Bryant’s boycott.

It’s important to note that Cornell was also CEO of Target back in 2023 and had initially refused to back down from selling rainbow-colored onesies for infants and T-shirts that say, “Pride Adult Drag Queen ‘Katya,’” “Trans people will always exist!” and “Girls Gays Theys.” He was so adamant about pushing the homosexual agenda on kids that, in response to conservative backlash, he told the press that he thought it was “the right thing for society.” Cornell also admitted that this agenda is directly linked to Target’s DEI initiatives: “The things we’ve done from a DEI standpoint, it’s adding value,” Cornell said.

Hold the line

Based on these comments, can there be any doubt that Target would love to restore DEI, including its children’s “Pride Collection”? Of course not. But the social pressure against it is finally having an effect. That is, it was until Bryant and others began to get louder.

Let there be no doubt: Should Bryant’s boycott grow enough to overwhelm complacent Christians and conservatives, it could possibly provide Cornell a new political lifeline (and excuse) to reverse course on DEI. If that happens, you can bet that all perverse children’s merchandise will return to store shelves.

Editor’s note: A version of this article appeared originally at Chronicles Magazine.

Right-to-repair sweetens McFlurry but sours when lives are at stake

McDonald’s enthusiasts across the country are celebrating a change that could end the chain’s notorious ice cream machine breakdowns. Thanks to a new copyright exemption, McFlurries and soft-serve ice cream may soon flow without interruption.

A recent update to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act allows outside entities to access and repair “retail-level commercial food preparation equipment.” Previously, McDonald’s employees had to rely on specialized repairs from the manufacturer. Now, franchise owners can bypass copyright restrictions and fix the machines themselves.

Applying a 'McFlurry-style' right-to-repair policy to medical devices could compromise patient safety and device reliability.

Goodbye to “broken machine” memes — and hello to reliable ice cream.

The ruling marks a significant victory for the right-to-repair movement, which pushes for greater consumer and business control over repairing the products they own. While this is a win for consumers, it raises concerns about whether policymakers might overextend the movement into sensitive areas like medical devices.

Last month, I joined a panel discussion on the right to repair and examined how a “one-size-fits-all” approach to policy reform could lead to unintended consequences.

Unlike simpler technologies, where errors might cause inconvenience or financial loss, failures in medical devices can directly affect patient health and safety. Medical devices are heavily regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which enforces strict guidelines and approval processes to ensure all repairs and modifications meet safety and performance criteria.

The consensus at the event was clear: Applying a “McFlurry-style” right-to-repair policy to medical devices could compromise patient safety and device reliability. Unauthorized repairs might fail to meet the stringent regulatory standards necessary to ensure these critical health care tools remain safe and effective.

While the right-to-repair ruling for McDonald’s machines is a victory worth celebrating, a cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work for medical devices. Higher standards are essential when patient safety and human lives are at stake.

Unlike McFlurry machines, medical devices often store sensitive personal and patient information. This reality underscores the need for a controlled, regulated, and safe repair process.

On top of that, sensitive patient data is closely tied to medical devices, requiring a cautious, highly coordinated approach from policymakers. Rushing repairs without strong security measures could worsen vulnerabilities, risking severe consequences for data integrity and the health care system as a whole.

A cyberattack this spring on British hospitals illustrated a worst-case scenario. The attack, triggered by issues from an outside contractor, caused a 40-minute shutdown. Essential surgeries were interrupted, and access to critical medical records was lost, bringing hospital operations to a halt. The disruption affected 800 operations and forced more than 700 patients in London’s leading hospitals to reschedule their appointments.

Health care systems worldwide remain frequent targets for hackers. According to an FBI report, cybercriminals launched 249 attacks on health care institutions in 2023 alone. Using methods like ransomware and zero-day exploits, these hackers aim to maximize disruption, expose sensitive patient data, and destabilize systems for financial or political gain.

We can clearly see maintaining a distinction between higher risk technologies and other products within any legislative or regulatory action is not just prudent, but necessary.

The stakes in health care are far higher, as patient lives and sensitive personal data are at risk. The complex, interconnected nature of today’s health care systems demands carefully crafted policies that prioritize safety and security — not a generalized, “one-size-fits-all” approach.

While McDonald’s may now keep its McFlurry machines whirring, medical device repairs are another story. It’s best to leave those to regulated professionals to ensure patient safety remains the top priority.

'These parasites simply had it coming': Luigi Mangione, suspect in UnitedHealthcare CEO's killing, now charged with murder

Luigi Mangione — the suspect in last week's fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City — is now charged with murder.

Manhattan prosecutors late Monday filed murder and other charges against the 26-year-old Ivy League graduate, the Associated Press reported, citing an online court docket. The New York Times, citing court records, reported that the initial murder charge is for second-degree murder.

Mangione remained jailed in Pennsylvania, where he was charged with possession of an unlicensed firearm, forgery, and providing false identification to police, the AP said.

The outlet added that a McDonald's customer in Altoona — which is about two hours east of Pittsburgh — spotted Mangione on Monday morning, notified an employee, and soon police arrived to question him.

Police indicated in a criminal complaint that they recognized Mangione as soon as he pulled down his mask at their request in the restaurant. When they asked Mangione if he'd been in New York City recently, police said he was quiet but started shaking.

Later Monday, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch told reporters that Altoona police arrested Mangione on firearm charges and that he was believed to be “our person of interest."

'Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming'

The AP — citing a law enforcement official unauthorized to discuss the investigation publicly and who spoke with the outlet on the condition of anonymity — said a three-page, handwritten document found in Mangione’s possession includes a line in which he claims to have acted alone.

“To the feds, I’ll keep this short, because I do respect what you do for our country. To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn’t working with anyone,” the document said, according to the official who spoke with the AP.

The document also contains the following line, the AP reported: “I do apologize for any strife or traumas, but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming.”

According to the Times, the 262-word "manifesto" also says that as UnitedHealthcare’s market capitalization has grown, American life expectancy has not — and it condemns companies that “continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allowed them to get away with it.”

Mangione reportedly had back surgery last year

The paper added that friends said Mangione lived with significant, sometimes debilitating, back pain, which prevented him from surfing and negatively affected his romantic life; he underwent surgery for it last year.

The Times said R.J. Martin — a friend of Mangione who had lived with him in Honolulu — asked via text how his surgery went, and Mangione replied, “Long story,” and did not elaborate.

“His spine was kind of misaligned,” Martin told the paper. “He said his lower vertebrae were almost like a half-inch off, and I think it pinched a nerve. Sometimes, he’d be doing well and other times not.”

Nino Mangione — a Maryland state delegate and a cousin of Luigi Mangione — told the Times in a statement on behalf of the Mangione family that they “only know what we have read in the media” and that they were “shocked and devastated by Luigi’s arrest.” The paper said the statement adds that "we offer our prayers to the family of Brian Thompson, and we ask people to pray for all involved.”

Anything else?

Bullet casings found at the scene of Thompson's killing in front of a Manhattan Hilton hotel Wednesday — which New York City police called a "brazen" and "premeditated, preplanned targeted attack" — apparently were inscribed with words referring to health insurance claim denial tactics.

Just hours after the fatal shooting, Thompson's wife said her husband had been threatened. Paulette Thompson told NBC News in a phone call that "there had been some threats. Basically, I don’t know, a lack of coverage? I don’t know details. I just know that he said there were some people that had been threatening him."

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The 'rebranding' brigade's war on beauty

Hamburglaring our history

Auto pilot

Crimes against coziness

A woman's touch

Keep the curves

'She Greeted Every Person With That Thousand-Watt Smile': Watch All the Times Dems Touted Kamala's Alleged McDonald's Gig

Kamala Harris Worked at McDonald’s For… Two Weeks, New Book Asserts Without Evidence

Woke pastor teams up with Al Sharpton to revive Target’s woke agenda

You boycotted, Target listened

A counter-boycott

Woke, not Christian

Hold the line

Right-to-repair sweetens McFlurry but sours when lives are at stake

'These parasites simply had it coming': Luigi Mangione, suspect in UnitedHealthcare CEO's killing, now charged with murder

'Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming'

Mangione reportedly had back surgery last year

Anything else?

VIDEO: Erika Kirk makes first public remarks since the death of her husband, Charlie Kirk

He May Have Pulled The Trigger, But Charlie Kirk’s Suspected Killer Didn’t ‘Act Alone’

Liberals spew hatred against moment of silence for Charlie Kirk on Thursday Night Football

'Christ is king!' chants break out at large memorial for Charlie Kirk in London

All The Companies That Advertised On The MSNBC Segment Blaming Charlie Kirk For His Own Death

Hamburglaring our history

Auto pilot

Crimes against coziness

A woman's touch

Keep the curves

You boycotted, Target listened

A counter-boycott

Woke, not Christian

Hold the line

'Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming'

Mangione reportedly had back surgery last year

Anything else?

We’ll keep you informed with top stories for conservatives who want to become informed decision makers.