President Joe Biden on Thursday expressed his frustration with Republican governors sending migrants from the Southern border to Democrat-run cities, calling their actions “Un-American.” “Republicans are playing politics with human beings, using them as props,” Biden said. “What they’re doing is simply wrong. It’s un-American. It’s reckless”
The president spoke at the Hispanic Caucus Institute Gala celebrating the beginning of Hispanic Heritage Month.
Biden reacted to the news Thursday that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis flew a group of migrants to Martha’s Vineyard and that Texas Gov. Greg Abbot sent a busload of migrants to Vice President Kamala Harris’s home in Washington, DC.
He defended his administration’s immigration system, blaming Republicans for getting in the way.
“We have a process in place to manage migrants at the border. We’re working to make sure its safe and orderly and humane,” he said.
Biden spoke quickly and angrily about the situation, although he appeared powerless to stop it.
“Republican officials should not interfere with that process by waging these political stunts,” he said.
The president called for Republicans to join him to pass amnesty for illegal immigrants, calling it “long overdue.” . . .
Biden also noted proudly that schools are reopening after the coronavirus pandemic, reminding the audience that 28 percent of students in public schools are Hispanic.
“You all are going to own the country, man. We better darn well make sure they have every opportunity they have, not a joke,” he said.
That last line caught my eye — Hispanics “are going to own this country” — and I began to think of the headline I was going to write about it, but then I logged onto Twitter and saw Steve Sailer had beaten me to it.
Remember the Great Replacement is a Conspiracy Theory.
Biden addresses the Hispanic Congressional Caucus. Noting that Hispanics make up 28% of public school students, he congratulates the Latino politicians: “Y’all are going to own the country, man."https://t.co/OavmpbxrdT
Exactly. You’re a dangerous far-right extremist if you so much as mention “The Great Replacement,” but here is the President of the United States citing demographic data to celebrate it as fact. And, of course, the “stunt” of flying a few dozen illegals to an elite conclave in Massachusetts exposes the basic dishonesty of the whole thing: Democrats are eager to flood your community with illiterate foreign peasants — that’s “social justice,” see? — but don’t you dare expect them to accept any of these peasants in their community. Why, it’s “un-American” to expect that!
Say hello to 27-year-old Gabriel Charles and, while you’re at it, go ahead and say good-bye, because this criminal scumbag ceased to be a threat to public safety just a few seconds after he shot a Las Vegas cop.
It was shortly after 1 a.m. Saturday when Officer Tierney Tomburo and her partner pulled over a vehicle for a traffic violation. Three males were in the vehicle, including Charles, the front-seat passenger. Officer Tomburo asked all three of the men to exit the vehicle while she investigated and, just after she asked if any of them had any weapons on them, Charles took off running. Officer Tomburo pursued on foot when suddenly, without warning, Charles turned around and fired one shot from a 9-mm Smith & Wesson semiautomatic pistol. Officer Tomburo was struck in the pelvis and knocked down, but she was able to grab her own pistol and return fire. She fired four shots, and Charles was fatally wounded. It turned out that, although Charles’ pistol had 14 rounds in the magazine, the gun jammed after he fired the first shot at Officer Tomburo. Assistant Sheriff John McGrath “called the jam a ‘stovepipe’ where the bullet casing doesn’t eject clear from the handgun’s slide”:
“The gun will not fire when it’s like that, but there were 14 additional rounds in the magazine,” he said.
Bodycam shows Charles shooting Officer Tomburo.
A typical amateur error. We may surmise that, after his gun jammed, Charles tried to clear the “stovepipe” — with the intent to shoot Officer Tomburo again — instead of running away. That meant he was standing stock-still right next to the wounded cop, who had a clear target at close range: Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! R.I.P., criminal scumbag.
Assistant Sheriff McGrath said that “if Charles had survived, he would have been facing several charges including attempted murder with a deadly weapon on a protected person, battery with a deadly weapon, resisting with a firearm, and prohibited person in possession of a firearm.” Oh, wait — a “prohibited person”? So what he’s really telling us is, the deceased Gabriel Charles was already a convicted felon. Officially, however, “Investigators are not releasing details on Charles’ criminal history, and leaving that responsibility to the District Attorney’s Office.” Just gonna guess he had a very lengthy record, and should not have been out on the streets to begin with. The whole scene was captured on bodycam video and Officer Tomburo’s voice after she was shot doesn’t sound very heroic, but the results speak for themselves.
Did I mention that Officer Tomburo is only 24? That she had only been a member of the Las Vegas police force for two years?
One of the great liberal myths of our age is the belief that America’s prisons are full of Wrongly Convicted Black Men. Even in cases where the evidence of guilt is overwhelming, liberals view Systemic Racism is an all-purpose excuse, so that even if he’s caught red-handed and confesses his guilt, no black man is ever really guilty of criminal wrongdoing. In this warped view, every black inmate in America’s prisons is a Victim of Oppression, and therefore — following this Liberal Logic™ to its inescapable conclusion — it is wrong for any black person ever to be arrested, prosecuted or incarcerated. The influence of what we may call the Myth of Universal Black Innocence is obvious in the policies pursued by left-wing district attorneys like Larry Krasner in Philadelphia, Alvin Bragg in New York and George Gascón in LA, as well as in Democrat-controlled states such as Illinois and California that have enacted “reform” policies to turn dangerous criminals loose on the streets.
Democrat soft-on-crime policies also result in lenient treatment of white criminals who get turned loose and become repeat offenders, but that is incidental to the political objective of such policies, which are advocated as a measure of “racial justice” with the intent of ending so-called “mass incarceration” of black criminals. But I digress . . .
I haven’t paid much attention to the Senate campaign in Pennsylvania, or any other Senate campaign, for that matter, because it seems to me that (a) the GOP has a near-certain chance to take back the House majority in the midterms, and (b) winning the Senate would merely be the cherry on top of that result. Also, I wasn’t a huge fan of Trump’s endorsement of Doctor Oz in the Pennsylvania GOP primary, not because of anything particular against Doctor Oz, but just because I would have preferred a candidate with a more typical background, rather than a celebrity with no political record. The more I’ve learned about the Democratic candidate in Pennsylvania, however, the more obvious it seems that conservatives have a duty to rally behind Doctor Oz. Because the Democrat, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, is a very dangerous person, and would certainly be defeated if Pennsylvania voters were fully informed about him.
A few recent headlines about an important controversy:
This is an important controversy, as I say, because it highlights both Fetterman’s policy toward crime and justice issues, as well as his judgment and honest (or lack thereof). The two convicted murderers Fetterman hired on his campaign staff are Lee and Dennis Horton.
Convicted felons Lee and Dennis Horton
Notice the liberal media seek to suggest that the Horton brothers were “wrongfully convicted,” or that, because they were “granted clemency,” somehow their guilt is in doubt. In fact, there is no doubt at all, and it is neither “misleading” nor a “smear” for Oz to call attention to this situation, which speaks volumes about Fetterman’s worldview.
Despite repeated appeals, no court has overturned the convictions of Lee and Dennis Horton, and there is absolutely no reason for anyone to believe that they were “wrongfully convicted.” The most recent court ruling points out that the only new “evidence” Lee Horton offered in seeking PCRA relief was a handwritten note by one of the police investigators, previously not included as part of discovery during the proceedings, which could not possibly have affected the outcome of his original trial. But what about this “clemency”? And what about the original crime for which the Hortons were convicted?
The evidence adduced at trial established that on May 31, 1993, [Lee Horton], his brother Dennis Horton (“Dennis”), and a coconspirator Robert Leaf (“Leaf”) robbed Filito’s Bar located at 5th and Hunting Park Avenue. During the course of the robbery, Dennis, who was brandishing a rifle, shot Samuel Alemo multiple times. He later died from his gunshot wounds. Dennis also shot Luz Archella and her daughter Luz Martinez, injuring both. After leaving the bar, the three men fled in a blue automobile. A passerby was able to supply a description of the vehicle and a partial license plate number. A radio call was sent out, which included a description of the three assailants, their vehicle, and the last four digits of the license plate. A police officer observed the vehicle a short time later only a mile from the crime scene and placed [Horton] and his companions under arrest. Police recovered a .22 caliber semi-automatic rifle from the backseat of the car as well as a black pellet gun under the front passenger seat. Ballistics testing identified the rifle as the same weapon used during the robbery at Filito’s. [Horton], Dennis, and Leaf were taken to the hospital where Martinez and her daughter, as well as another bar patron Miguel DeJesus, identified them as the robbers. . . .
The evidence shows that [Horton] entered the bar with Leaf and Dennis, who were both armed. [Lee Horton] took money from a bar patron while Leaf held a gun to the patron’s head. [Horton] remained present when Dennis opened fire on two other bar patrons and murdered Alemo. He then fled the bar together with Leaf and Dennis, and was arrested with them a short time later. . . . Regardless who opened fire, [Horton] remains liable as an accomplice for any resulting deaths as well as any other crimes committed that night at Filito’s bar during the robbery.
This is the law in most states on capital murder: If you participate in a crime, such as a robbery, that results in someone being killed, you can be charged with murder even if you didn’t pull the trigger, and even if the person who got killed was one of your accomplices. One reason the law is this way is because, when two or more perpetrators are involved in a crime that ends in homicide, it can be difficult to determine which of the criminals did the fatal deed. If Moe, Larry and Curly decide to rob a bank, and a teller gets shot to death in the process, cops may not be able to figure out which one of the Three Stooges pulled the trigger, and Moe might be pointing the finger at Curly or Larry, both of whom insist that it was really Moe that did the killing; however, insofar as all three were involved in the robbery-turned-murder, all of them are equally liable under the capital murder law. Interestingly, in the Horton brothers’ case, while Dennis and Lee were both convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison, their accomplice Ryan Leaf was convicted of third-degree murder and only sentenced to “a term of years,” eventually being released in 2008. Nobody knows where Ryan Leaf is now, but the fact that he had already gotten out of prison was widely cited last year as an argument for releasing the Horton brothers. Among other things, such an argument seeks to void the findings of the jury and the judgment of the prosecutors, who were certainly more familiar with the facts of the case in 1993 than any of the liberal journalists or “activist” types running their mouths about the case in 2022. Regardless of why Leaf was sentenced to less time than the Horton brothers, no reasonable person would find this a reason to believe the Hortons were “wrongfully convicted” or that their life sentences were unjust. A man was killed and two women were wounded in this robbery, and unless you’re the kind of liberal idiot that thinks it’s OK to let murderers go with a slap on the wrist, life in prison is an entirely justifiable sentence in such a case.
The Pennsylvania Board of Pardons meets four times a year to consider the ever-growing pile of applications for a pardon or a commutation submitted by inmates at state prisons across the Commonwealth. There are five people on the board: the lieutenant governor, the state attorney general (Josh Shapiro), and three other members with relevant expertise picked by the governor and approved by the state Senate. Votes on cases involving death sentences and life imprisonment must be unanimous; otherwise, recommendations for a pardon/commutation (the conferring of which ultimately lies with the governor) are denied.
With Fetterman at the helm, the board has been wading through the huge backlog of applications at a determined clip. Shocked and shaken by the overwhelming majority of elderly Black faces among the 5,400 inmates currently serving life sentences in Pennsylvania’s state prisons, Fetterman has made it his mission to shift the emphasis from cruelty to compassion. “We’re making it all about second chances, about redemption and forgiveness and completing the circle,” he says. “People think the face of life in prison is Hannibal Lecter, but sometimes it’s the face of Morgan Freeman in Shawshank Redemption.”
This is from a May 2021 Philadelphia magazine profile and, sweet holy jeebus, are you kidding me with this Shawshank Redemption crap? I mean, really? Hollywood dramas are the basis of your decision-making as chairman of the state Board of Pardons? But wait, there’s more from the Philadelphia magazine profile:
Two people Fetterman deemed worthy of a second chance are Lee and Dennis Horton, brothers from North Philadelphia who, until their release in February, had served 27 years of life sentences as accessories to a murder they maintain they had no part in. In one of the many cruel ironies of the U.S. justice system, the man who confessed to committing the murder was released in 2008.
This is how laziness functions as a servant to bias in journalism. Any reporter diligent enough to look up the court records on the case against the Horton brothers could see that this tale is false. According to witnesses and victims (to say nothing of the jury’s verdict and the various courts that repeatedly rejected Lee Horton’s appeals), it was not Ryan Leaf, but Dennis Horton who shot the three victims. The reporter who wrote this feature profile about Fetterman simply repeats what he was told by the Hortons, without having bothered to check the facts for himself. There is no “cruel irony” to why the Hortons were still behind bars; they were both guilty, but never once have they acknowledged their guilt. Returning to the Philadelphia profile:
By all accounts, the Horton brothers were model prisoners, counseling fellow inmates struggling with incarceration, teaching yoga, convincing their peers to act in and build props for productions of plays they wrote about atonement and restorative justice.
Two wardens and assorted deputies, not to mention the state secretary of corrections, advocated for their release at a Board of Pardons hearing in December of 2020. When it came time to vote on the Horton brothers’ request for a commutation, Fetterman wept openly as the other board members voted “yes”; when his turn came, he was too overcome with emotion to speak. AG Josh Shapiro, who’s locked horns with Fetterman in the past over whom to let out and whom to keep in, answered for him: “I’m a yes, and I think the lieutenant governor is a yes as well,” he said over Zoom. The Horton brothers were watching all of this go down from the warden’s office at SCI Chester, where they were incarcerated.
“This is a man who supported us with everything he had in him; he was all in, emotionally, physically,” Dennis Horton told me back in April, just a few weeks after he and his brother were released from prison. “He gave what he had to help free us from the clutches of a life sentence.” “He saved our lives, because life in Pennsylvania means you die in prison — they call it ‘death by incarceration,’” said Lee. “When he broke down, I was taken aback, because you don’t expect a guy that big to be that emotional.”
“Especially with all those tattoos on him,” Dennis chimed in. Since their release, the Horton brothers have been hired by Fetterman’s U.S. Senate campaign to coordinate voter outreach in Philadelphia.
Perhaps “outreach” to the family of their victims? See, that’s the magician’s trick in this kind of story, where liberal journalists portray criminals as victims, while — abracadbra! — making the real victims disappear. But they should never be forgotten:
The victim’s brother, Reinaldo Alamo, 62, said he opposes clemency for the Hortons. “They took a human life, and they don’t deserve to be out in society,” he said. . . .
Attempts to locate Leaf and witnesses from the 1993 trial were unsuccessful. To Reinaldo Alamo, it was and remains an open-and-shut case, given the brothers were caught with the weapon an hour after the murder. He won’t be speaking at the hearing, but submitted a letter noting his opposition.
“When I heard this it put me in a state of depression,” Alamo said of the commutation hearing. “To think of … the turmoil they caused my family, the pain and suffering that it did to my mother.”
John Fetterman doesn’t care about the suffering of crime victims.
That’s what this controversy is really about. Democrats have become the pro-criminal party, advocating policies that ensure violence criminals are turned loose to commit more crimes, and Democrats like John Fetterman are absolutely indifferent to the impact that these policies have on innocent law-abiding citizens. You must be some kind of racist if you think murderers should be sentenced to life in prison, and even if your own brother gets killed by these monsters, well, tough luck!
Whether or not Republicans win a Senate majority in November, and without regard to what we may otherwise think of Doctor Oz’s candidacy, it seems to me that conservatives have an obligation to do everything in our power to stop John Fetterman from being elected.
The arrest of a Democratic public official in Las Vegas for allegedly murdering a journalist shocked the nation, but news networks went out of their way to bury his party affiliation.
Clark County Public Administrator Robert Telles was arrested on Wednesday in connection with the death of Las Vegas Review-Journal investigative reporter Jeff German, who was fatally stabbed in front of his home on [Sept. 3]. German’s reporting had exposed scandals that plagued Telles, including a hostile work environment and an extramarital affair with a staffer, which was followed by his re-election defeat during a Democratic primary held in June. . . .
While the liberal networks covered German’s horrific murder, they strangely omitted to tell viewers that Telles is a Democrat during Wednesday and Thursday’s coverage.While the liberal networks covered German’s horrific murder, they strangely omitted to tell viewers that Telles is a Democrat during Wednesday and Thursday’s coverage.
ABC’s “Good Morning America” introduced Telles as a “local politician” and later described him as a “Las Vegas county official.”
“CBS Mornings” co-host Tony Dokoupil teased about the “elected official” who was swept up in the murder investigation.
CBS News correspondent Mark Strassmann went on to describe Clark County’s public administrator as “a man named Robert Telles” and said police executed a search warrant “at the elected official’s home.” . . .
Similarly, NBC News correspondent Erin McLaughlin referred to Telles as simply a “local government official” who “lost a primary race in June” during an on-air report on “Today.” . . .
On MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” co-host Willie Geist reported on the “public official” and how police “arrested a man named Robert Telles.”
Try to imagine what the media would be saying if a Republican had murdered a journalist. Do you think the national media would blandly describe him as just a “local official” without any mention of his party affiliation? As bad as this is, however, it got even worse when the local sheriff — Joe Lombardo, a Republican who is running for governor of Nevada — held a press conference to discuss the arrest of Telles:
A Democrat politician in Nevada is accused of fatally stabbing an investigative journalist last week over a series of stories on official misconduct that likely sank the incumbent-turned-defendant’s summer bid for re-election. The local press, however, found a way to pin the blame on former President Donald Trump. . . .
“Sheriff, you said the murder of a journalist is especially troubling. Now is probably not the time to talk politics,” the unnamed female reporter began.
“So why are we talking politics?” Lombardo interrupted.
The reporter continued with her political question. “Do you condemn former President Trump’s normalization of violence against journalists?” she asked.
“No, I think this [is] probably inappropriate to speculate on that or opine on that,” Lombardo said. “It needs to be stated and noted that it is troublesome because it is a journalist… When people take it upon themselves to create harm associated with that profession, I think it’s very important that we put all eyes on and address the case appropriately.”
By the way, the “unnamed female reporter” has been identified as Dana Gentry, who works for Nevada Current, a website that is part of States Newsroom, funded by a “liberal dark-money group.” (Hint, hint.)
A Democrat elected official allegedly stabbed an investigative reporter to death last Friday in Nevada.
At the press conference responding to the incident, a reporter decided to ask the sheriff whether he condemned DONALD TRUMP. pic.twitter.com/g2N6PcAg4q
A doughnut shop in Frederick, Maryland, abruptly shut down last week, and workers said they’re owed weeks in pay.
Glory Doughnuts & Diner on W. Patrick Street felt like home, its employees said. That all changed early Friday; the landlord shut the shop down over months of unpaid rent.
Without warning, 10 people were out of a job. They said they knew the business had been struggling, and some hadn’t been paid for several pay periods.
“They had us working when they didn’t know if they were ever going to be able to pay us,” former general manager Kiska Greenberg said Monday.
Ex-employee Shelby Turner said she was disappointed. “I really cared for them. I felt like they were part of the family,” Turner said. Her paychecks began to bounce in recent months, she said.
(Permit me to interrupt briefly, as I point out the contrast between being “part of the family” and having your paychecks bounce.)
“I was told it was a problem with my credit union, that’s why my checks were bouncing, and it wasn’t until I called my credit union that they told me every single one was for non-sufficient funds,” she said.
Another former employee said she was facing eviction and a move that could put her child into another school district. In a post to social media, Glory Doughnuts & Diner’s owners pointed the finger at the landlord for the abrupt closure. News4 contacted the owners several times with no response.
Greenberg asked the owners to get in touch.
“I trusted you. Please come forward. Please stop pretending to be the victim in these social media posts. You have hurt a lot of people. I believe in change. Please do what is right,” she said.
My curiosity was aroused. “What’s going on here?” I asked myself, with employees speaking of this doughnut shop as “family”? And who keeps working after the first paycheck bounces? The story didn’t actually name the owners of this small-town business, so that was my next Google search — “glory+doughnuts+owner” — and oh, boy!
Glory Doughnuts owners Alissa and Keirsten Straiter
This may shock some readers, but it wasn’t until my brother pointed it out that I realized “Glory Doughnuts” is a double entendre. Meanwhile, I found this 2015 feature profile in the local newspaper:
By 7 a.m., dozens of doughnuts line the counter at Glory Doughnuts in downtown Frederick.
Salted Earl Grey. Blackberry frosted. Double cinnamon toast. Chai tea glazed. Chocolate peanut butter. Not one ingredient from animals, 100 percent vegan. Shop owners Alissa and Keirsten Straiter have always been the bakers at Glory Doughnuts, waking up to get donuts going by midnight or 1 a.m six days a week.
Morning help arrives around 5 a.m. so they can open two hours later. Around that time, Alissa, 25, and Keirsten, 26, become the shop’s cooks.
Their brick-and-mortar store opened at the corner of East Church Street and North East Street in May.
Both women have been in and out of the food service business since they were old enough to work. As a couple, they found themselves hosting friends and dreaming up new foods to serve, a way of life that led them to the obvious question:
“We love doing this so much — wouldn’t it be cool if we could do it everyday?” They started out baking doughnuts in a home-based business – selling through farmer’s markets and other shops, including Cafe Nola and Cakes to Die For in Frederick and Red Emma’s in Baltimore.
Their goal was always to open up a restaurant with a full range of food.
Observe the nothing-to-see-here manner in which readers were introduced to the fact that a lesbian couple owns this small-town business. The word “lesbian” never appears in the article, by the way, as if there is some sort of agreement among newspaper editors that the dreaded “L-word” must be omitted, lest readers in bucolic Frederick (population 71,843) be incited to a hate crime. We continue:
The Glory Doughnuts menu is a tribute to times gone by and the rustic industrial design inside the store complements their outlook of hand-forged food made in small batches.
The Straiters cook up old-school comfort foods, focusing on breakfast because of their “borderline obsession with traditional American diner foods,” Alissa said.
Their menu features dishes like fried tofu “eggs,” Pabst Blue Ribbon pancakes and apple pie-stuffed French toast.
The doughnuts come in all shapes and sizes – and almost always sell out.
About seven or eight flavors are offered each day. Some of the flavors are seasonal. As summer gives way to fall, the floral flavors will melt away in favor of pumpkin, apples and caramel.
So what are their favorite flavors?
Alissa says the salted Earl Grey and raspberry tiramisu doughnuts are “last-meal worthy,” while Keirsten loves a more traditional frosted flavor. “Whenever we make the strawberry-frosted, I have to have it,” she said.
Alissa’s favorite moment is when people are surprised the meal they’re eating is vegan.
“It happens every day,” she said. “We want everyone to give it a try. Everyone is always pleasantly surprised and enjoys their meal.” Alissa and Keirsten decided to become vegan together, when they started dating. “When we met, we actually decided to go vegan together,” Keirsten said.
With new love, they decided to focus on a new way of life. They were motivated by ideas now wrapped into the Glory Doughnuts mission statement, eating a plant-based diet to conserve natural resources, promote health and animal welfare.
(You’ve heard of “Get Woke, Go Broke”? You might say that the ultimate fate of Glory Doughnuts was foretold from the start.)
The appeal of Glory Doughnuts is expanding, drawing customers from Washington, D.C. and Baltimore.
Next week, they will play host to Baltimore Vegan Drinks, a group that hosts regular happy hours and social event for vegans, vegetarians, and the veg-curious.
Alissa and Keirsten just hired their fifth employee and are hoping to expand their weekend hours soon.
The couple lives downtown and has received a lot of support from other city businesses.
“I think this business was built by the community of Frederick,” said Alissa. Friends, family and new friends helped with the store’s construction, people supported the opening by buying fundraising T-shirts, a lucky few serve as tasters in their “test kitchen.”
“Glory Doughnuts is a group of longtime friends who have all been born and raised here in Frederick, who love Frederick to death,” Alissa said. “I want people to know when they walk through the door, we want them to feel like a friend. If you come here and eat and hang out, you are part of the Glory Doughnuts family.”
Being “part of the family” means your paycheck’s gonna bounce.
Glory Doughnuts ‘family’ members in happier days
By the way, don’t let my habitual sarcasm lead you to mistakenly assume I am against lesbian vegan doughnuts. I mean, if you’re looking for vegan doughnuts, why not get them from authentic local lesbians who seek to “conserve natural resources, promote health and animal welfare”? And get yourself some delicious inclusive diversity while you’re at it:
The Straiters have made it their mission to foster an inclusive environment. “Diversity and representation in the industry are vital. Historically, people of color and the LGBTQ+ community haven’t had the same access to opportunities as others have,” says Alissa. “Representation is important because it normalizes diversity, celebrates culture and lifts communities who may need it.”
Maybe it also “normalizes” your bouncing paycheck?
Please excuse my habitual sarcasm, but these jokes just write themselves. The whole saga of Glory Doughnuts is like an extended set-up just waiting for me to arrive with the punch lines. And please don’t get the impression that I would ever wish business failure on anyone, not even lesbian vegans who went all-in on the anti-Trump “resistance” in 2017. However, now that the business has indeed failed, hindsight offers too many tempting sarcasm opportunities for me to resist.
For example, Glory Doughnuts was featured in a 2018 Frederick Magazine article on local vegetarian restaurants that began with this sentence: “Eating out should be a joyful experience.” Ba-dum-BOOM!
How Glory Doughnuts celebrated Pride Month
In case you’re not familiar with Maryland geography, Frederick is 50 miles northwest of Washington and used to be a bumpkin town that some folks called “Fredneck,” but it’s grown a lot in the past 30 years as more and more people who work in the D.C. metro area discover that they get a much better quality of life there, if they can stand the longer commute. And so the town has become more liberal, as the upscale newcomers bring their college-educated values with them, which helps explain why a lesbian vegan doughnut shop stayed in business more than seven years in downtown Frederick. There is some irony in the fact that the Trump years were actually the heyday for Glory Doughnuts, whose anti-Trump owners apparently made their first crucial mistake by changing locations right at the start of the 2020 pandemic. Then Biden got elected, and rampant inflation sort of eroded the disposable income that folks used to have, back when gas was just $2.25 a gallon. Now the lesbian vegans are trying to explain those bouncing paychecks:
Former employees at the recently shuttered Glory Doughnuts and Diner on West Patrick Street are pursuing legal options after they say they weren’t fairly compensated for tips they received or overtime they worked. Workers are searching for a lawyer to represent them, and at least one is planning to file a complaint with the Maryland Department of Labor for unpaid wages.
(Because they’re “part of the family,” remember?)
Alissa Straiter, who owns the business with her wife, Keirsten Straiter, told The Frederick News-Post in an interview on Wednesday that they are speaking with their former crew members and are working to pay them what they’re due.
They are looking into complaints from workers about the way tips were distributed, Alissa Straiter said. She said she and her wife will do “everything in our power” to make sure former Glory employees are adequately compensated for overtime hours.
(Amazing what the threat of a lawsuit can accomplish.)
“We obviously [harbor] no ill or negative feelings towards the former crew,” Straiter said. “We think they are due their wages, and we’re working as quickly as possible to procure those.”
But former employees at Glory say they’re worried the problems with their paychecks won’t be resolved soon.
Five former employees spoke with The Frederick News-Post on Monday about their experiences working at the diner and bakery, which closed Thursday after nearly 10 years in downtown Frederick. It was common for paychecks to bounce when workers tried to cash them, the employees said. Some workers say they are still waiting for paychecks they should have received weeks ago.
Employees say they found out on Aug. 31 that they would be out of a job within the week. Now, as they search for work and file for unemployment, many say they face financial difficulties. They’ve raised more than $10,000 through an online fundraiser to help them through their hardship.
(“We got ripped off by lesbian vegans. Please help.”)
Many of the workers say they feel disappointed by how their time at Glory came to an end and betrayed by the shop’s owners. Some said Glory was more than a workplace. It was their home.
“I think the owners really relied on the fact that we, as employees, felt an obligation to each other, because we felt like a family,” said Jaime Allen, who started working at the diner in April. “No one wanted to quit abruptly or cause problems that would shut the whole place down, because we really, honestly loved working with each other.”
(“We were betrayed! We felt like family!”)
Straiter encouraged former Glory employees who are missing paychecks to reach out to her. She also apologized for the bounced paychecks. That should not have happened, she said.
(Your paycheck bounced? Oops! “Should not have happened.”)
On Monday, the business posted a message to its Facebook page. Glory has been struggling, the message read. The owners thought they might close at the beginning of the year, the message read, but then they made a plan with their landlord to get back on track.
Once they realized they couldn’t keep up under the terms of the agreement, they decided to close Glory. On Wednesday, Alissa Straiter declined to talk further about the circumstances around the business’s closure beyond what the Facebook post described.
Mariana Ehardt, whose company, Ehardt Investments, owns the 162 W. Patrick St. property that housed Glory, said Alissa and Keirsten Straiter were behind on rent by more than four months. She also said she has paid their utility bill for them since they moved to the property two years ago.
Glory Doughnuts previously was at 244 E. Church St. before it moved to West Patrick Street.
Alissa Straiter said she and her wife owe Ehardt less money than Ehardt says they do. Their utility payments are up-to-date, she said. They plan to hire a lawyer to represent them in their dispute with Ehardt, she said.
(Hey, if you can afford to hire a lawyer, maybe you could afford to give your “family” member the back pay you still owe them?)
She and Keirsten Straiter have a message for their former employees, she said.
“We believe all of you and the unintended hurt we’ve caused,” she read from a prepared statement. “You are all valid in your feelings and your concerns, and we’re sorry that we let you down in the end. We apologize for the lack of heads-up and lack of transition out. Everyone who’s able should support your GoFundMe to cover your additional expenses, beyond your pay.”
Former Glory employees are mourning the loss of a space that felt safe and welcoming to queer people, a community many of them are part of.
(Look, it’s not like “queer people” asked for my advice, but if they did, I’d tell them that if they are looking for a “safe and welcoming” space, maybe they should try San Francisco or Portland, instead of a bumpkin town that locals used to call “Fredneck.”)
Working at Glory was the first job former head baker Charlotte Cook had after coming out as a trans woman. She never felt worried that her coworkers would judge her, she said. She knew she was around good people.
For Kiska Greenberg, the former general manager, Glory was the first place she ever worked where nobody asked an inappropriate question about her being gay.
(What constitutes an “inappropriate question”? And in the grand scheme of things, which is worse, having to put up with “inappropriate questions” or having your paycheck bounce?)
Greenberg saw customers walk in the door and start crying because they felt so safe, she said. She was the first person one of her customers ever told they were trans.
“It’s like, we also felt this obligation to all of these people coming in,” Greenberg said. “We felt like we were doing something so important.”
“At least for me,” she later added, “it’s almost impossible to describe the heartbreak I’m feeling about the entire situation.”
This quest for emotional comfort in one’s employment situation — like a commitment to values like “animal welfare” and “inclusion” — is all well and good, until the paychecks start bouncing. If you took a job driving a forklift in a gigantic industrial warehouse owned by a soulless corporate conglomerate, maybe it wouldn’t “feel like family,” and perhaps it wouldn’t be such an “inclusive environment” that “normalizes diversity,” but guess what? Those paychecks don’t bounce.
The Tennessee man charged in the abduction and murder of a woman who vanished Friday as she was jogging in Memphis has a lengthy juvenile criminal record that dates to 1995, when he was 11 years old, court documents reveal.
Cleotha Abston has been charged with various crimes every year from 1995 to 2000, when he was sentenced to 24 years in prison for kidnapping a Memphis lawyer, according to documents obtained by NBC News.
Just two years after he was released in 2020, Abston, 38, is now charged with the death of Eliza Fletcher.
Listed in the documents are multiple offenses, including convictions for a rape charge from 1998, when he was 14, and a kidnapping charge from 2000, when he was 16.
Felicia Hogan, a spokesperson for Shelby County Juvenile Court, said in a statement Wednesday that the court found that Abston “committed rape when he was 14 years old.” She did not provide further details.
“Because of the severity of the crime, the statute says this offense information is releasable even though at the time Abston was a juvenile,” Hogan said. “There is no information being released on when, to whom or where this rape happened. The rest of his juvenile record is sealed and there are no other records to be released.” . . .
Tennessee Lt. Gov. Randy McNally said Tuesday that had Abston remained in jail for the full 24 years [for the 2000 kidnapping], Fletcher would still be alive. “It is simply disgraceful that this individual did not serve his full sentence for his previous crimes,” McNally tweeted.
In fairness, as the story explains, it isn’t as if Abston was the beneficiary of some kind of Soros-funded liberal policy. He had served more than 500 days in jail prior to being sentenced, and all Tennessee prison inmates are eligible to “earn” up to a 15% reduction in their sentences. So subtracting the previous “time served” prior to sentencing and then adding in his “earned time” as an inmate, there wasn’t anything unusual about the length of Abston’s sentence.
What a beautiful person, a school teacher singing to her students.
Eliza Fletcher was killed by a career criminal. Lives like hers are lost because we care more about criminals than law abiding citizens. pic.twitter.com/hdVAXSJGDB
Joe Biden gave a speech last week in which he gave lip service to things that Democrats don’t actually believe in, e.g., the Constitution and the rule of law, as a pretext to accuse Republicans — all 74 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump — of being a “threat to our democracy.”
Biden spoke in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, a gesture by which he attempted to identify himself as defending the founding principles of America when, in fact, he and his party are against those principles and are doing everything in their power to destroy America.
The symbolism of choosing Philadelphia as the site of last week’s speech was perhaps more fitting than Biden realized, because Philadelphia is a city that Democrats have absolutely ruined. The per-capita murder rate in Philadelphia is higher than Chicago’s. Now notorious as “Killadelphia,” the city’s population has declined by about 400,000 people since 1960. In 1980, Philadelphia was still the fourth-largest city in the United States, behind only New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles; now it’s sixth, having fallen behind Houston and Phoenix. It’s no secret who is leaving: Whereas the population of Philadelphia was 57% white in 1980, the city is now just 34% white. Quality of life has plummeted.
Perhaps nothing is more demonstrative of Philadelphia’s decline, and the role Democrats have played in that decline, than the tenure of Larry Krasner as the city’s district attorney. In 2017, left-wing billionaire George Soros wrote a $1.45 million check to Krasner’s campaign. That helped Krasner beat six other candidates in the Democratic primary and, in a city where Hillary Clinton got 83% of the vote in 2016, winning the Democratic primary is tantamount to election. Krasner got 75% of the vote in November 2017, and he was reelected in 2021 with 69% of the vote. So you can’t say that the people of Philadelphia are innocent in what Krasner has done; they voted to destroy their city by turning criminals loose:
Krasner ran as the anti-police candidate, and has made it his official policy to turn dangerous criminals loose on the streets of Philadelphia. One of the beneficiaries of Krasner’s policies, Maurice Hill, had an extensive criminal record — drug charges, aggravated assault, perjury, fleeing and eluding, escape and weapons offenses — before he engaged in a shootout [in August 2019] in North Philadelphia that wounded six cops.
During his speech last week, Joe Biden didn’t say a word about the perpetrators of criminal violence in “Killadelphia,” nor did he mention how Democrats like Larry Krasner have enabled this bloodshed.
According to the Philadelphia Police Department, there have been 364 homicides in the city so far this year, as of Saturday, which is on pace to break the record 562 homicides the city recorded in 2021.
You didn’t hear a word about this in Joe Biden’s speech last week at Independence Hall for the simple reason that Joe Biden doesn’t care. All he cares about is electing more Democrats, and if the result of electing more Democrats is that hundreds of people get murdered because Democrats are turning loose dangerous criminals, so what?
It’s been less than three days since Joe’s speech, and in that short span, five more corpses have been added to the pile in “Killadelphia.” This is a direct consequence of the policies of the Democratic Party, but according to Joe Biden, it is Republicans who are a “clear and present danger.”
A 38-year-old man who spent much of his life in prison has been charged with kidnapping teacher Eliza Fletcher, who has still not been found, Memphis Police announced Sunday morning.
The news of Cleotha “Pookie” Abston’s arrest comes a day after investigators revealed they had located a “vehicle of interest” in the abduction of Fletcher, 34, a married mom of two boys whose grandfather was a wealthy philanthropist. Fletcher was out jogging near the University of Memphis on Friday morning when assailants in an SUV bundled her into the vehicle and drove off.
Abston, 38, was charged with especially aggravated kidnapping and tampering with evidence. He is being held at the Shelby County Jail. . . .
Police said they arrested a second person, apparently a relative of Abston, but do not believe he is connected to Fletcher’s abduction. Instead, Mario Abston, 36, was hit with gun and drug charges.
“Eliza Fletcher has not been located at this time. MPD Investigators and officers, along with our local and federal partners, continue searching for Mrs. Fletcher,” Memphis cops said.
Fletcher graduated from the Hutchinson School in Memphis in 2006 and got a teaching degree from Belmont University. She has been married for eight years.
Her family has offered a $50,000 reward for her safe return. Fletcher’s grandfather ran Orgill, the hardware supply giant started by his family that is now worth over $3.2 billion.
When officers stopped Cleotha Abston, he attempted to flee but was taken into custody.
Investigators then interviewed a person who stated that after the abduction at approximately 7:50 a.m., they saw Cleotha Abston at the home of Mario Abston, in the 1700 block of S. Orleans Street, a report said. . . .
The person stated they saw the suspect cleaning the interior of the GMC Terrain with floor cleaner and stated that he was behaving oddly, an affidavit stated.
The same information was later given by Mario Abston, the suspects brother, who stated that he too saw the suspect cleaning the interior of the car with floor cleaner, records show.
Both the witness and the brother saw the suspect washing his clothes in the sink of the house.
Mario Abston said that it appeared that the suspect was acting very strange. Cleotha Abston declined to provide investigators with the location of the victim, police said.
The other man who was arrested, Mario Abston, 36, was charged with Possession of a Controlled Substance with Intent to Manufacture and Sell Fentanyl, Possession of a Controlled Substance with Intent to Manufacture and Sell Heroin, and Convicted Felon in Possession of a Firearm During the Commission of a Dangerous Felony, police said.
Police said he is currently not believed to be connected to Fletcher’s abduction.
So it appears that the suspect’s brother Mario is also a convicted felon, but the really scary thing is the report that “Pookie” was apparently trying to conceal evidence related to the crime — blood?
Obviously, the police believe they have enough evidence to convict Cleotha Abston of kidnapping Fletcher, and if she turns up dead — which now seems the likely outcome — there is little doubt they’ll be able to convict Abston of her murder. It will be a death penalty case.
