The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

FMJRA 2.0: Let The Robot Do The Suffering

Posted on | September 11, 2022 | Comments Off on FMJRA 2.0: Let The Robot Do The Suffering

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Well, it’s been another miserable week at RFK; we took one out of three from Pete’s Pilots and another one of three from the Red Sox, both behind Juan Marichal. The other four games were the usual frustrating combination of blowouts and games that looked close on paper but really weren’t. At this point, I’m just going to set the team to play on autopilot, because this was supposed to be fun, and it is anything but right now. Did I mention that Larry Dierker managed to get himself suspended for nine games, which means I now have only three decent starting pitchers? Plus, a study of my roster and the picks I’m going to get next season (whether it’ll be 1971 or 1973 is still up in the air) leads me to believe next season is going to be equally miserable. So I think I might save myself the Dynasty Baseball fees and just quit after this season.

Aside from that, it was a pretty good week. Picked up Klaus Schulze’s Dune, which is inspired by the Frank Herbert novel of the same name, of which Schulze was quite fond. It’s pretty good. 

Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

The Symbolism of Philadelphia
First Street Journal
The Universal Spectator
Okrahead
Patriots’ Soapbox
Citrix News
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

Grifters Gonna Grift: Lawsuit Accuses BLM Leader of Swindling $10 Million
The Mad Irishman
The Pirate’s Cove
Moonbattery
EBL
357 Magnum

Suspect In Memphis Woman’s Murder Began His Criminal Career at Age 11
The DaleyGator
Okrahead
EBL
357 Magnum
Proof Positive

In The Mailbox: 09.06.22
Okrahead
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum
Proof Positive

Employees Shocked as Lesbian Vegan Doughnut Shop Goes Out of Business
The DaleyGator
Battleswarm
EBL
357 Magnum
Proof Positive

In The Mailbox: 09.09.22
Okrahead
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum
Proof Positive

FMJRA 2.0: Blessed Silence
A View From The Beach
EBL

Memphis Police Charge Suspect With Kidnapping Billionaire Heiress
First Street Journal
EBL

Late Night With Rule 5 Sunday: Sydney Sweeney
The DaleyGator
Ninety Miles From Tyranny
A View From The Beach
EBL

One Suspect Dead, His Brother Still at Large in Saskatchewan Stabbings
Okrahead
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 09.06.22 (Evening Edition)
Okrahead
EBL
357 Magnum
Proof Positive

White House ‘Targeted Me by Name,’ Says Feminist Vaccine Skeptic Naomi Wolf
The DaleyGator
Okrahead
EBL
357 Magnum

R.I.P., Queen Elizabeth II
EBL

In The Mailbox: 09.08.22 (Afternoon Edition)
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum
Proof Positive

Can the Patriots Exceed Expectations?
EBL

In The Mailbox: 09.08.22 (Evening Edition)
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum
Proof Positive

Ukraine: Better Late Than Never
EBL
357 Magnum

Top linkers for the week ending September 9:

  1.  EBL (17)
  2.  357 Magnum (12)
  3.  (tied) A View From The Beach, Okrahead, & Proof Positive (7)

Thanks to everyone for all the links!

Amazon Warehouse Deals




Category: FMJRA Award

Ukraine Update: Smashing Success?

Posted on | September 10, 2022 | Comments Off on Ukraine Update: Smashing Success?

When I posted Friday evening about the push toward Kupiansk (“Ukraine: Better Late Than Never”), I was determined to err on the side of caution, not to be taken in by overly optimistic claims, but overnight saw more reports that indicate Ukraine has achieved a truly stunning breakthrough. Now, it seems confirmed that advance elements of the Ukrainian force — motorized scouting parties, at least — have reached the Oskil River south of Kupiansk, wrecked one of the bridges over the river, and pushed 40 miles down the west bank toward Horokhovatka, which is just 17 miles northeast of Izyum. If all of these reports are true, it would mean that about 10,000 Russian troops reported to be at or around Izyum are in danger of being cut off and forced to surrender.

Even more than that, it is also being reported that, farther east, Ukrainian forces have crossed the Seversky Donets river and attacked the Russians at Lyman which, if true, would indicate a collapse of Russian forces on a much wider front. Even if the Russians can regroup, fall back to a defensible line and stabilize the situation, their losses in manpower and matériel are likely to be substantial, to say nothing of the damage to their morale, which was already pretty bad. All of this I say while still striving to err on the side of caution, but others are less cautious. For example, Mark Sumner at DailyKos says, “It’s unclear so far if there is any place that Russia has really dug in their heels and put up a solid resistance”:

What’s obvious is that in this location at least, Russia’s line was exactly one village deep. Once Ukrainian forces were able to either capture or bypass locations like Balakliya and Verbivka they were running loose in Russia’s backfield. With a few exceptions, the small Russian forces they’ve encountered have seemed to have one thought on their mind: which way to run. And even when Ukrainian troops did meet some resistance, as at Shevchenkove and Hrushivka, they seem to have cleared away those obstacles in a matter of hours, not days.
What’s obvious is that in this location at least, Russia’s line was exactly one village deep. Once Ukrainian forces were able to either capture or bypass locations like Balakliya and Verbivka they were running loose in Russia’s backfield. With a few exceptions, the small Russian forces they’ve encountered have seemed to have one thought on their mind: which way to run. And even when Ukrainian troops did meet some resistance, as at Shevchenkove and Hrushivka, they seem to have cleared away those obstacles in a matter of hours, not days.

Really, this reminds me of the Battle of Five Forks in 1865 where, once Grant’s army had broken the Confederate line west of Petersburg, everything collapsed, beginning the desperate retreat that ended eight days later with Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House. What is happening appears to be more than merely local, tactical success; rather, it looks like Ukraine has scored a strategic victory.




 

Category: Military, Russia, Ukraine

About the ‘Rings of Power’

Posted on | September 10, 2022 | Comments Off on About the ‘Rings of Power’

There is nothing I despise more than journalistic bandwagons, where everybody is writing about the same thing. Nearly all the greatest pleasures of my career came from going out alone in pursuit of stories that nobody else was covering. Like, in early 2011, I was the only national reporter covering Herman Cain’s campaign, and I could walk right up to him (or “Smoking Man” Mark Block) and just start talking. By October, after a few debates, Herman zoomed to the top of the GOP field, and I was merely another drone in the journalistic swarm, which took all the fun out of it. My instinct is always to find the unreported angle or the offbeat story (e.g., “Employees Shocked as Lesbian Vegan Doughnut Shop Goes Out of Business“) that nobody else has noticed. Therefore, the very last thing I want to do is to become the ten-thousandth conservative pundit to trash the new Amazon prequel series, The Rings of Power.

Alas, my mind was troubled Friday evening, and in seeking something to distract me from my troubles, I clicked over to Vox Day where he quoted “The Woke Pundit” in satirical praise of this travesty:

White males, your time is up. This not a world of men. It is a world of women.
The Rings of Power is not just a television production, but a message to the world that racism is over. Future generations will look back and say this was the defining moment where everything changed.

You get the satire, eh? Blackwashed and gender-swapped and, almost certainly, gay romances planned for the future episodes. A masterpiece of diversity and inclusion, which is probably destined to disappear into obscurity as an overpriced failure, watched only by purple-haired neurotic non-binary weirdos living in their mothers’ basements.

“Amazon bought the television rights for The Lord of the Rings for US$250 million in November 2017, making a five-season production commitment worth at least US$1 billion. This would make it the most expensive television series ever made.”
— Wikipedia

It is to TV what the Hindenburg was to air travel, and words simply cannot express how much I don’t care about it. “Racist backlash”? Something would have to be important enough for me to care about it before I could ever bother to “backlash” against it. Because here’s the thing: I never watched the original Lord of the Rings trilogy, either.

In 1974, when I was a sophomore at Douglas County (Ga.) High School, our English teacher assigned The Hobbit as class reading. And I liked it OK. A few years later, I had a redheaded girlfriend in Kennesaw who convinced me to read the whole Lord of the Rings trilogy, and I liked that OK, too. But I never became what you’d call a Tolkien “fan,” because those people were geeks and nerds, the kind of pathetic dweebs who spent their weekends doing Society for Creative Anachronism stuff at the Renaissance Faire, or playing games that involved 10-sided dice.

Let me spell it out for you: L-O-S-E-R-S.

The whole world of science fiction and medieval fantasy falls into that category, as far as I’m concerned. Juvenile games and make-believe stories — what kind of creep cares about that stuff as a grown-up?

What’s with this Peter Pan Syndrome in our culture? Why are so many allegedly intelligent adults (most of whom don’t have children) obsessing over movies made for audiences of 13-year-olds? Or have these puerile entertainments become like Halloween, formerly a one-night holiday where kids dressed up and got sweet treats, but now transformed into a month-long Season of Ghoulish Horror with adults spending big money to decorate their homes like Haunted Mansions?

People need to grow up, for crying out loud. I’m reminded of the Nostalgia Collectible Bubble of the 1990s. A bunch of Baby Boomers reached their 40s, found themselves with upper-middle-class incomes, and decided to spend it all on baseball cards, comic books and toys from their Eisenhower-era childhoods, telling themselves that their silly collections were actually “investments.” Yeah, your Lone Ranger lunchbox is just like buying artworks at a Sothesby’s auction.

Is the analogy to this Tolkien obsession clear enough? Amazon paid way too much for this new “prequel” travesty, apparently believing there was a ready-made audience of 30-somethings who, having flocked to the local multiplex to watch the original Lord of the Rings movie trilogy as middle-schoolers, are now going to stream the New Tolkien Thing at home, no matter how different the New Thing is from the original. And if the target audience doesn’t buy it? Amazon will end up like that idiot who paid $75 for an old Lone Ranger lunchbox in 1994, thinking it was a valuable “investment” but now discovers it’s worth maybe $50 on Ebay.

My hunch is that Amazon has miscalculated. See, nostalgia only works as a selling point if what you’re selling matches the childhood memory, and the selling-point of the original Lord of the Rings trilogy was its evocation of ancient English folklore — wizards and elves and so forth. That the cultural context of Tolkien’s books was specifically English, and therefore white, was not “racist” except in the kind of weird retroactive worldview of activist types who think every statue should be toppled and every college campus building renamed for the sake of “social justice.”

Amazon probably saw how the Star Wars prequel/sequel spinoffs had been updated with “diversity” and thought, Hey, we can do the same thing with Tolkien, but isn’t it obvious why this won’t work? Even if you thought it worthwhile, as a matter of artistic expression (or political activism), to add “diversity” to Tolkien, in doing so you instantly lose that Ye Olden Days vibe, which was a big part of its original appeal. Furthermore, consider these two points:

  1. The 12-year-olds who were most fascinated with Lord of the Rings circa 2003 were mainly . . . white, weren’t they? Why would anyone imagine that a Tolkien “prequel” series might have broader appeal to People of Color, simply by changing the complexions of the actors? Or why think this product will have a greater appeal to women, simply by substituting women for men in leading roles?
  2. If people want “diversity” in entertainment, they can find that everywhere nowadays. It’s become ubiquitous, and therefore, ordinary. Where’s the actual evidence that making an extra effort toward “diversity” in movies or TV shows actually produces more profit, let alone that it adds any real artistic value?

Well, here I’ve spent more than a thousand words on a subject that I don’t actually care about, and which I think nobody else really cares about, except L-O-S-E-R-S. You’ve wasted your life playing childish games and collecting comic books, and now you want me to get excited about some stupid TV show about Wizards and Elves? Buddy, I’m not a 15-year-old anymore and this ain’t sophomore English class.

Stop expecting the rest of us to care about your adolescent obsessions. Besides, aren’t you falling behind on your Halloween decorating project? Run along, and don’t bother us adults with your silliness anymore.




 

Category: Movies

In The Mailbox: 09.09.22

Posted on | September 10, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 09.09.22

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Hey kids, what time is it? It’s time for the Based Fall Book Sale! It’s your opportunity to pick up some quality reading from authors who don’t hate you, and who would like the opportunity to entertain you instead of preaching at you! Dozens of books are available for free or cheap, including my own short story collection.
It’s also time for the weekly reminder that the usual deadlines are in effect for the usual weekend posts.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: A Good Guy With A Gun Stopped A Bad Guy
EBL: Claire Foy in The Crown, also, Bernard Shaw, RIP
Twitchy: Breeders – Thou Shalt Not Joke! also, Sen. Cortez Masto’s Bragging About Cracking Down On Crisis Pregnancy Centers Goes So Very Wrong
Louder With Crowder: 160 people arrested in Florida during human trafficking sting, includes teachers and Disney employees
Vox Popoli: Remember, Hope is a Virtue, A Comprehensive Failure, and Excess Death in Switzerland
According To Hoyt: Things Fall Apart, also, Winning The Dragon
Monster Hunter Nation: WriterDojo S3 E9: Supporter Spectacular (Round VI)

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Overturn New York Times v. Sullivan
American Greatness: Los Angeles Homeless Population Jumps to Over 69,000, Biden Department of Interior Continues Renaming Historic Federal Lands, and UK Announces it Will No Longer Offer COVID Jabs to Children Under 12
American Power: King Charles’ Television Address to the World
American Thinker: Enough Already: Release the J6 Political Prisoners
Animal Magnetism: Vacation Totty V 
Babalu Blog: Repression in Cuba during August was as brutal as on July 11, 2021, Is Castroism finally falling apart?, and Cuban dictatorship declares official mourning period for Queen Elizabeth, eagerly licks boots of new King Charles III
BattleSwarm: LinkSwarm for September 9
Behind The Black: NASA wants to launch SLS in September; needs range safety office waiver to do it, FCC proposes new regulation requiring satellites to be de-orbited five years after mission end, SpaceX successfully test fires all six engines on Starship prototype #24, and Today’s blacklisted American: Fox blacklists news reporter for not getting jab
Cafe Hayek: Schumpeter Would Not Be Surprised
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday
Da Tech Guy: Five “The Queen is Dead” Thoughts Under the Fedora
Don Surber: Putin as Coldfinger, also, Oberlin continues its slander
First Street Journal:  Oh, the poor dears! Homosexual males are whining that they can’t go to their orgies because of monkeypox!, also, You in a heap o’ trouble, boy!
Gates Of Vienna: Michael Stürzenberger Sentenced to Six Months in Prison
The Geller Report: Don’t Believe The Hype About Democrats in the Mid-Terms
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, How Will We Know If DART Worked?, A Spiral of Stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud, and What’s Your Reputation Worth?
Hollywood In Toto: Podcast Movement’s Apology to Ben Shapiro Reeks of Desperation
The Lid: Bad News For The Climate Change Bug Eating Activists
Legal Insurrection: Carnegie Mellon University Issues Statement After Prof Tweets Vile Message About Queen Elizabeth, Vulnerable Democrats Distancing Themselves From Biden’s MAGA Speech, Will a Rail Strike be the “Black Swan” of the 2022 Midterm Election?, and Justice Sotomayor Stays NY State Court Order Forcing Yeshiva University To Recognize “Pride Alliance” Club
Nebraska Energy Observer: The Queen is Dead
Outkick: BYU Investigation Finds No Evidence Of Fans Hurling Racial Slurs At Duke’s Rachel Richardson, BYU-Duke Volleyball Racism Allegations Fall Apart, But Don’t Expect Apologies From Mike Freeman Or Rest Of Woke Media Mob, MLB To Officially Adopt Pitch Clock, Defensive Shift Limits, and Tennessee Fans Take Over Pirates’ PNC Park With BOOMING Chants Ahead Of Volunteers’ Game Against Pitt
Power Line: Student Loan Forgiveness As Class Warfare, Thoughts from the ammo line, and If You’re Going to San Francisco
Shark Tank: Bilirakis Blames Democrats’ Reckless Spending For Poor Economy
Shot In The Dark: Just Take My Money, also, Trigger Warning
The Political Hat: Firing Line Friday: The Young
This Ain’t Hell: Clown who just wanted to learn to “kill n****s” thrown out, MN governor accused of Stolen Valor, and Valor Friday
Transterrestrial Musings: About Those North Korean Rockets, The Situation In Europe, Occasional Cortex’s Biggest Problem, and The End Game In Ukraine
Victory Girls: Oberlin College Finally Stops Fighting Judgment, also, Gorsuch: SCOTUS Leak Report Coming Soon
Volokh Conspiracy: The Dormant Commerce Clause and Internet User Protections
Watts Up With That: Wall Street Journal Exposes Gov. Newsom & California’s High-Cost Energy and Reliability Debacle
Weasel Zippers: Queen Elizabeth II Died Yesterday So Naturally Leftists Had GOOD Reactions To That, A Democrat Politician Murdered A Journalist In Nevada And Somehow That’s Trump’s Fault, Biden Tries To Claim “America Is Back” Despite Recession And Skyrocketing Prices, and Joe Biden Versus The Teleprompter
The Federalist: GOP’s Unifying Midterm Strategy Should Treat Democrats’ Green Agenda As Culture War, Alaska’s Ranked-Choice Voting Scheme Was A Plot To Save Murkowski, But It Also Doomed Palin, A Democrat Politician Is Accused Of Killing A Journalist. Reporter Blames Trump, and Democrats Aren’t ‘Divisive,’ They’re Desperate
Mark Steyn: Still Stands That Ancient Sacrifice..?

Amazon Warehouse Deals




Category: Linkagery

Ukraine: Better Late Than Never

Posted on | September 9, 2022 | Comments Off on Ukraine: Better Late Than Never

(Click to see full-size map.)

Four months ago, after a Ukrainian counteroffensive drove the Russian invaders back from Kharkiv, I described how this had moved the Ukrainian front line “roughly 45 miles from Kupiansk, a crossroads on the supply line of the Russian forces at Izyum.” At the time, it appeared the Ukrainian advance might continue, but instead they seemed to dig in with the idea of holding what they had gained. Because the advantages of taking Kupiansk seemed so strategically obvious, I subsequently concluded that the otherwise inexplicable stalling of the Ukrainian advance must be due to a manpower shortage — they simply didn’t have enough troops to break through the Russian lines. So a seemingly endless stalemate continued on the front east of Kharkiv until this week, when suddenly the Ukrainians smashed the Russians:

A Ukrainian counteroffensive appears to be progressing in the north, but less so in the southern Kherson region that has attracted greater attention and Russian reinforcements.
Ukrainian officials and Russian military bloggers alike on Thursday described a counteroffensive in the north that has surprised in its speed, the first time since the war began that Ukrainian forces have been able to push past Russian defenses on a more than tactical level. . . .
In the few days since the offensive began with an assault on the town of Balakliya, about 90 km (56 miles) south east of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, units have advanced 50 km into Russian-held territory, taking 20 settlements, according to Oleksiy Hromov, a spokesman for the Ukrainian armed forces.
“The enemy is partially demoralized but continues to put up resistance,” Hromov said in a briefing on Thursday.
In his Thursday evening video address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said soldiers had liberated a total of 1000 km2 (386 square miles) of occupied territory since the beginning of September. Some Ukrainian units have moved so fast they’re beyond the range of artillery support, according to pro-Kremlin Russian military blogger Alexander Kots.
By Friday, Kots was worried that Ukrainian forces already had cut ties with Kupyansk, a key logistics hub for Russian troops fighting in the eastern Donbas region. He said Ukrainian soldiers appeared to have veered north of the town to sever the road to the Russian border. “The situation is difficult,” Kots wrote on his Telegram channel, which has more than half a million subscribers. . . .
By Thursday, however, the Ukrainian attack had claimed Shevchenkovo, the largest remaining town on the road east to Kupyansk. . . .
The latest daily report from the Institute for the Study of War described the gulf between the Russian Defense Ministry’s silence on Ukrainian gains and criticism from military bloggers as the most severe since a disastrous attempted river crossing by Moscow’s forces in May. It also said Ukrainian troops would likely take Kupyansk within days.

Wow! If it is true that Ukrainian troops have taken Shevchenkovo, that’s just 22 miles west of Kupiansk, and the suggestion that they have “veered north” of Kupiansk — toward Kindrashivka or Zapadne — would indicate an imminent threat to the supply route for Russian forces in Izyum. As usual, however, I must caution that I know nothing about the size of the forces engaged on either side, and it is impossible to know whether the Ukrainians have enough strength to continue their offensive, or if on the other hand Russia can bring in enough defensive forces to halt the Ukrainian advance. The fact that it took four months for Ukraine to assemble a force strong enough to break through the Russian lines east of Kharkiv suggests that they don’t have an abundance of trained and organized troops. Of course, even though Russia has a much larger army, their manpower reserves are not inexhaustible, and the reports of Ukrainian forces advancing rapidly against demoralized Russian troops would indicate they’ve been pushed to their limit already.

We will need to monitor the news in the next few days to see if there are reports of Ukrainian forces reaching the vicinity of Kindrashivka, because that would be very bad news for the Russians. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Smashing Success?




 

Category: Military, Russia, Ukraine

Employees Shocked as Lesbian Vegan Doughnut Shop Goes Out of Business

Posted on | September 9, 2022 | 1 Comment

When I first saw this story, the bland headline (“Frederick Doughnut Shop Workers Say Business Shut Down Without Paying Them”) did not prepare me for the wonderfulness I would ultimately find:

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.

Learn to code, kids. Welcome to grown-up world.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!




 

Category: Gays, Maryland

In The Mailbox: 09.08.22 (Evening Edition)

Posted on | September 9, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 09.08.22 (Evening Edition)

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

An obligatory meme

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Did They Expect Crime To Go Down?
EBL: Ukrainian Honey Traps , The Queen Is Dead, God Save The Queen, and Oberlin Starts Paying Gibson’s
Twitchy: Christopher Rufo Takes Garbage Person Uju Anya Apart, also, Jemele Hill Is Being Ignorant In Public Again
Louder With Crowder: ‘She has no idea what she’s talking about’, also, Paging Elon: Former Disney CEO says they passed on buying Twitter over ‘substantial’ number of fake accounts
Vox Popoli: Amazon’s Pants are on Fire, The Real Rebel Alliance, A Clown, Dancing, and The Queen of England, RIP
Stoic Observations: Union Labor

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: The Blob’s Perpetual War
American Greatness: Mayor Bowser Declares Public Emergency to Deal With the 9,400 Migrants Bused to D.C. ‘Sanctuary City’ Since April, also, Biden, Harris Not Welcome on the Campaign Trail
American Power: The Honest Guide to College, also, Michael Shellenbarger
American Thinker: The Strange Case of Ghislaine Maxwell, also, Can the United States Stop the March to Self-Destruction?
Animal Magnetism: Vacation Totty IV
Babalu Blog: Jorge Ramos gives FL Democrat Lt. Gov. candidate ‘Karla Marx’ a pass on her affinity for Fidel Castro, Cuba’s dictatorship continues planting the ‘seeds’ of socialist revolution, and As blatant apartheid intensifies and sky-high prices get higher, Cuban hotels remain 85.6% empty
BattleSwarm: Then: Commercial Investors Are Sucking Up All American Housing! Now: They’re Losing Their Shirts!
Behind The Black: Ingenuity completes 31st flight, Russia confirms Luna-25 delayed till next year, and Today’s blacklisted American: Modern Hollywood now celebrates McCarthyism and blacklisting
Cafe Hayek: No Learning Loss Among Swedish School Children, American Law and Economics Review: Robert Cooter’s ‘The Strategic Constitution’, and Suppression of the Market Isn’t Market Failure
CDR Salamander: Diversity Thursday
Chicago Boyz: Another Texas Road Trip
Da Tech Guy: At Least the North Koreans Didn’t Have The Choices Californians Had, also, The level of demagoguery and disdain for our founding principles from the Biden regime has reached dangerous levels
Don Surber: Biden unravels Nixon’s best success, also, Democrat midterm plan
First Street Journal: Sometimes even The Los Angeles Times has to tell people the truth
Gates Of Vienna: Socialism is the Loser of History
The Geller Report: Lyin’ Biden Ordered the Illegal Mar-A-Lago Raid, also, The Queen Has Died
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, Don’t Know Much Biology, and Embrace the Power
Hollywood In Toto: Panic Over My Son Hunter Shows Left Won’t Cede Culture Without a Fight, also, Clerks III – Time to Close up Shop
The Lid: Biden’s Racist Tax Plan
Legal Insurrection: Fetterman Stalling, Commits to Only One Debate Weeks After Early Voting Starts, Oberlin College “has initiated payment in full of the $36.59 million judgment in the Gibson’s Bakery case”, California Residents Forced to Prepare for Rolling Blackouts as State Leadership Pushes ‘Green’ Initiatives, and DOJ Lawyer Calls Religious Liberty Organization a ‘Hate Group’
Nebraska Energy Observer: I have a problem 
Outkick: ESPN Will Change Monday Night Football Theme This Year For No Reason At All, Stephen A. Smith Makes Epic Blunder About Eagles On ‘First Take’, John Daly Throws Great First Pitch At Cards Game While Rockin’ Sandals, and WWE Superstar Mandy Rose Seen Wearing Nothing But Her Title Belts
Power Line: Return of the Ice Age, Democrats and the F-Bomb, and Art of the deal, Wimpy style
Shark Tank: Taddeo Claims DeSantis Puts Politics Before The American Dream
Shot In The Dark: Renters’ Remorse, also, As Luck Would Have It
STUMP: We Get Results! The Bogus Death Spike of NC and CT are Now Gone!
The Political Hat: Skinsuiting of Marriage, also, Required Wokeness in Academia: Required To Condemn The Constitution; Required Integration Of Racial Consciousness To Teach; Required Pledge To Social Justice
This Ain’t Hell: Not enough Lithium to meet targets – Mining CEO, Democrat official arrested in connection with investigative journalist’s stabbing death, and Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain, dead at 96
Transterrestrial Musings: The Space Cultural War, The “Reality-Based” Party, and Terrible News For The UK
Victory Girls: Mark Cuban to Elizabeth Warren: Screw You!, also, Meet The Newest Sideshow In the Biden Circus
Volokh Conspiracy: Extra Discovery Allowed in States’ Lawsuit Claiming Government “Colluded with and/or Coerced Social Media
Watts Up With That: Green Champion Switzerland: Jail Time If you Heat Your Home Above 19C / 66F, also, British Climate Divergence: Jacob Rees-Mogg Appointed Energy Minister, as Charles is Crowned King
Weasel Zippers: Occasional Cortex Cries: America Hates Women And I’ll Never Be President, Poll: Majority Of CNN, MSNBC Viewers Say “Disinformation” Causing Hispanics To Vote Republican, Poll: Voters Overwhelmingly Want Biden Impeached, and Peter Navarro Blames Trump’s Cabinet For Why He Lost In 2020
The Federalist: California Democrats Pass Colossal Big Labor Giveaway, To Fix Student Debt, We Must Destroy Its Source, Google Keeps Truth Social Banned From App Store Over Content Moderation While Facebook, Instagram Broadcast Shooting Spree, and Voters File Legal Complaint Accusing Wisconsin Election Commission Of Violating Federal Election Law
Mark Steyn: Lights Out in Europe, Stocking Up for the New Normal, and The Longest Reign and a Sudden End

Amazon Warehouse Deals




Category: Linkagery

Can the Patriots Exceed Expectations?

Posted on | September 8, 2022 | Comments Off on Can the Patriots Exceed Expectations?

Patriots linebacker Anfernee Jennings

After a generally depressing off-season, the New England Patriots will kick off Sunday at Miami, and few sports analysts forecast either a Pats victory over the Dolphins or a winning season, for that matter.

Every year, sports writers do a pre-season “power ranking” of all 32 NFL teams and, via CBS Boston, here’s how they rate the Patriots:

Now, 14 teams make the playoffs, so you see that seven of these eight rankings project the Patriots to miss the playoffs this year. And who am I to argue with the experts? However, I am hopeful that despite all the hand-wringing from the Boston sports press over Bill Belichick’s odd choices in assistants to direct the New England offense this year, somehow those wrinkles will get ironed out. Furthermore, there are indications that the Patriots’ defense will be better overall this year. It was the breakdown of the defense at year’s end that doomed New England to be “one and done” in the wild-card playoff game, and if the defense is notably improved this year, that could help compensate for whatever struggles the Patriots endure on offense. Also, for those who credit Belichick as a cunning chess master, there is the suggestion that he’s been hiding his real offensive scheme during the pre-season.

Every time people start trying to prognosticate outcomes in football, my answer is, “We’ll see.” Whatever happens on the football field speaks for itself, and we can’t rule out the possibility that the Patriots will run roughshod over the Dolphins, racking up five or six touchdowns in a one-sided blowout. This could happen, although it’s not likely, but if New England somehow manages to squeak out a win Sunday, no matter how close the final score, it will certainly move them up in the power rankings, considering that many of the experts figure Miami to finish ahead of the Patriots in the AFC East division this season. And then, of course, there are the Buffalo Bills, who open the season tonight against the defending Super Bowl champions, the L.A. Rams. Even though it’s a home game for Los Angeles, the Bills are actually favored by the oddsmakers, which tells you how highly Josh Allen and his Buffalo teammates are esteemed by those who watch the NFL most closely, i.e., the gamblers.

Mac Jones and the Patriots are underdogs this season, and maybe that will give them some extra inspiration. Remember, nobody in pre-season last year predicted the Bengals would make it to the Super Bowl, where they just barely lost to the Rams. Let’s hope the Pats can beat the odds like that this year. Hope is about all they’ve got.




 

Category: Football
« go back — keep looking »