The nation mourns, and vows to change its ways

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Starbucks Employees Nationwide Stop Working (Briefly) After ICE Took Two of Their Union Siblings

Twitchy:

Earlier, our own Amy Curtis reported that some café employees learned that the actual minimum wage is zero after the workers at a small chain of cafés decided they could strong-arm owners into their woke demands. Instead, the owner shut down all four locations in Minneapolis. [It’s a great story: see below - Ed]

We're not suggesting that Starbucks is going to close down because of the woke employees they seek out. People trying to pay off their gender studies degrees depend on Starbucks for a regular paycheck. But the unionized workers of Starbucks did participate in a short work stoppage to protest President Donald Trump and ICE, who recently took two of their "union siblings."

"Whether you're Starbucks or ICE, you mess with us, you mess with all 10,000 of us."

The story passed on in my own family is that my great-granfather Gideon Fountain, who started as a floor sweeper in his Uncle Bill’s carpenter’s shop in NYC at the age of ten in 1838 and slowly built his own very successful building business*, arrived at his shop one morning to discover his workers outside, picketing, and demanding recognition as members of a then-newly-formed builders union. Fountain looked over the scene, sighed, decided that it was time to retire, and turned his carriage around and went home. He never opened the business again.

That anecdote opens the way to this current tale:

Leftist Cafe Workers In Minneapolis Learn the Hard Way the Minimum Wage Is ALWAYS Zero

In Minneapolis, the workers at a small chain of cafes decided they could strong-arm owners into their woke demands.

Instead, the owner is shutting them down:

Last summer, staff at Café Cerés successfully unionized through Unite Here Local 17, winning 88 percent of the vote across the café’s four locations. Their priorities included higher wages, improved health care and PTO, and more consistent scheduling. Workers have been in bargaining for their first contract since August 2024, according to Unite Here, and had four bargaining sessions this month. 

The DDP group says it’s working with Unite Here as the closure proceeds, and that its 'immediate priority is to ensure that our impacted Café team members are treated with the dignity and respect they deserve.' In a statement, Unite Here Local 17 had this to say: 'Café Cerés charges $16 for a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich but refuses to pay its baristas more than minimum wage. The restaurant industry is fundamentally broken, and workers will not stop organizing and demanding more from their employers until they have the basic respect, living wage, and healthcare they need.'

*Great-grandfather Gideon has passed on to that great sawdust pile in the sky, but the family’s residence he built at 153 E. 62nd Street survives. As a church, alas, and worse, no longer in our name.

She’s a modest little woman, and she has much to be modest about

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She was a little less modest then, hiding only half her face, but why is the gesticulating person on her right unmasked? Signaling that whitmer’s telling barefaced lies?

Clement Attlee’s post-war performance as Prime Minister may have justly earned Churchill’s scorn, but Gretchen Whitmer outdid him in ineptitude and oppressive incompetence during her own time in the political spotlight. She was one of the worst of the red state governors during the panicdemic, locking people in their houses, shutting down small businesses while letting her big store donors remain open (but no selling grass seed!), forbidding travel across state lines unless her husband wanted to visit their lakefront home in Wisconsin, and so on. And on. So it’s appropriate that she should hide he face now: she richly deserves the ridicule she’s receiving.

Here's ANOTHER Pic of Gov. Whitmer In the Oval Office With Trump (at Least We THINK That's Her)

Is there NOTHING he can't — and won't do?

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In Florida, a small plane suffers mechanical failure and crashes, and Chinese dupe/collaborator Eric Swalwell knows who is responsible.

NBC 6 South Florida:

What to Know

  • Three people were killed when a small plane crashed in Boca Raton Friday morning

  • The crash happened after the plane, a Cessna 310, had taken off from Boca Raton Airport

  • Officials said there were reports the plane was experiencing mechanical issues before it went down

  • Videos showed a ball of fire and heavy smoke after the plane crashed near roadways and railroad tracks

  • A man who was in a car on the ground was injured when the plane came down next to his vehicle

  • The FAA and NTSB are investigating the cause of the crash

Of course, the nefarious bastard is also working his evil up north on New York City as well, because Donald Trump hates America:

"One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results." Milton Friedman

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“The people who go around talking about their soft heart — I share their — I admire them for the softness of their heart, but unfortunately, it very often extends to their head as well, because the fact is that the programs that are labeled as being for the poor, for the needy, almost always have effects exactly the opposite of those which their well-intentioned sponsors intend them to have.”

birth of a conservative

Bohemian Greenwich Village not so liberal anymore as crime, drugs push residents to beg for more cops

“Enough is enough,” said Village-raised Trevor Sumner, president of the Washington Square Association. “Liberalism is being challenged and people are realizing that our attempts to honor some ideals are leading to worst outcomes.”

The bohemian Mecca made famous for its anything-goes attitude, counterculture musical scene and clashes with police is begging for law enforcement, a shocking new survey found.

The Sixth Precinct Community Council polled 600 neighborhood residents and found 487 of them — 83% — want more cops on the streets.

And 74% of Villagers said the Empire State needed stronger prosecution for drug dealing, while 80% thought New York needed stricter bail laws, according to the first-of-its-kind survey, conducted in February and March.

Sumner says he would have described himself as “quite liberal” up until two years ago, but his personal views shifted when conditions in the park took a nosedive after the pandemic.

But it’s not just in the park. The Sixth Precinct routinely posts on X about nabbing drug dealers plying their trade in broad daylight on Sixth Avenue — something that would have been unimaginable only a few years back.

“It’s very hard for me to unsee the realities of the outcomes on the streets. It’s shifted how almost everyone I know who’s active in the community is thinking about voting,” he said, blaming Albany’s bail reform and discovery changes for the unending cycle of lawlessness.

…. The conservative shift is showing up in voting records too, a Post analysis found. Nearly 13% of voters in the neighborhood backed President Trump in 2024, up from the 8% of 2020 supporters, according to Board of Elections data.

Eli Klein, who runs an art gallery in Greenwich Village, grew up in a very prominent liberal family – his mother Janet Benshoof was the founder of the Center for Reproductive Rights and a champion of the left. But the former lifelong Democrat said the party abandoned them.

“The left has gotten more extreme as opposed to us really going the other way. There’s a lot of recidivist criminals on the streets. The progressives push really soft on crime stuff. It’s hard to believe that a huge section of our population wants career criminals on the streets,” he said.

Longtime village residents say the free-love energy of the past has morphed into something less poetic.

“There’s a lot more crazies, unstable people. It’s just an eyesore, it’s disconcerting,” said Philip Spinelli, 75, who’s lived on Christopher Street since the 1960s.

Back then, they say, they were protesting for a cause. Now, not so much.

“We have literal zombies walking through the streets and framing it as somehow these reforms have given them some kind of dignity – this is not dignity,” said Sumner.

RELATED:

GOODER AND HARDER, CALIFORNIA: Oakland Chinatown businesses say they’re getting fined thousands for graffiti on their own property. 

In Oakland, Chinatown merchants are raising the alarm after many are being hit with thousands of dollars in fines for graffiti on their properties.

Shirley Lou knows how this story goes. On any given day, the supermarket she manages is tagged. They paint over it and then it happens again.

“We cannot control. We clean up and they come again. So many times, but the city — I don’t know why they are charging me money,” said Luo, manager at Won Kee Supermarket.

On Tuesday, she tried to pay the latest fine of $500. The city told Luo she owes $3,000, which includes late fees.

“It’s not my fault. Not our fault. It’s somebody go to the roof and mark so many graffiti,” Luo said.

This is not an isolated issue. Throughout Oakland’s Chinatown, business owners are reporting thousands of dollars in fines for not painting over tags fast enough.

“We close at 4 o’clock when we go home, and we cannot watch people do things like that. We can’t. So, the city has to help,” said Susan Lam, Oakland business owner.

As Lawrence Person wrote in 2023, “Defund The Police + Decriminalize Shoplifting = ‘Food Deserts.’” Oakland’s government attempting to push their grocery stores out of business is also guaranteed to make that happen.

Who do they think they are, the English?

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John Hinderaker @ Powerline

You can’t make this stuff up. In Germany, a newspaper editor has been fined and sentenced to seven months in prison for posting a meme:

The Bamberg district court in Bavaria sentenced Deutschland-Kurier editor David Bendels this week to seven months in prison on probation and a fine of nearly sixty per cent of his annual income, or 210 ‘daily rates’, for posting an image on social media of Interior Minister Nancy Faeser holding an altered sign.

The newspaper editor was convicted of committing “defamation directed against people in political life.”

So, what did the sign say?

The common meme tactic of changing the words on signs held by politicians for satirical purposes was used to make Faeser’s sign read: “I hate freedom of speech”.

thus demonstrating that truth is no defense

Well look: anyone might do this once, by accident, but a repeat bologna smuggler? Really?

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Albuquerque man caught trying to smuggle 242 lbs of bologna into the country

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – An Albuquerque man was caught trying to smuggle 242 pounds of pork bologna into the country Friday morning, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

CBP officials said the 52-year-old man arrived at the Paso Del Norte international crossing that connects Mexico to El Paso, Texas, and presented himself for inspection via the vehicle lanes. The man initially did not declare any fruits, vegetables, or meat products, but was referred for a secondary agriculture inspection.

During the secondary inspection, CBP Agriculture Canine “Harlee” alerted to the rear cargo area of the vehicle. There, Agriculture Specialists found 22 rolls of bologna hidden beneath equipment in the rear of the vehicle.

They also found 60 undeclared Tramadol tablets, a schedule IV-controlled substance, in the center console of the vehicle.

The driver was issued a $1,000 promissory note* for the prescription medication violation. The bologna was seized and destroyed by CBP per USDA regulations.

The bologna smuggling case is being referred to USDA Investigative and Enforcement Services. The man could face up to a $10,000 penalty if found guilty.

“Pork products have the potential to introduce foreign animal diseases to the U.S., which can have a devastating impact to the U.S. economy and to our agriculture industry,” CBP El Paso Director Field Operations Hector A. Mancha stated in a news release.

CBP said this is the second time in two months the Albuquerque man was caught attempting to smuggle bologna from Mexico to the U.S. at the El Paso port of entry.

In January, CBP agriculture specialists seized 55 rolls of undeclared bologna from the man. He was assessed a civil penalty in that case, and the contraband meat was seized and destroyed.

*So, the CBP guards are paying smugglers to bring in tramadol for them? Does Kristi Noem knw about this?

Is there something about military service that makes women willing to kill their career over “principle”, or is the timing of this just coincidence?

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Oh, Shosana!

Let’s hope there are no officers out there whose principles forbid them from dropping bombs, or burning CO2-spewing tanks and armored vehicles.

Wednesday, word broke that Navy Vice Admiral Shosana Chatfield was fired for insubordination: refusing to permit pictures of her Commander in Chief or Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth to be hung in NATO headquarter.

Today anothe TDS sufferer emerged from the ranks:

Col. Susannah Meyers

Space Force Col. Susannah Meyers fired after astonishing mass email about JD Vance’s Greenland visit surfaces

The officer in charge of a US Space Force base in Greenland was stripped of her command after she sent out a mass email that distanced herself from statements by Vice President JD Vance and the Trump administration days after his visit last month.

The Space Force announced late Thursday that it removed Col. Susannah Meyers as leader of Pituffik Space Base “for loss of confidence in her ability to lead.”

“Commanders are expected to adhere to the highest standards of conduct, especially as it relates to remaining nonpartisan in the performance of their duties,” the Space Operations Command’s statement read.

Meyers, who assumed control of the 821st Space Base Group in July 2024, fired off a message to the troops in her command stating that the views discussed by Vance during his visit on March 28 “are not reflective of Pituffik Space Base.”

“[I] spent the weekend thinking about Friday’s visit — the actions taken, the words spoken, and how it must have affected each of you,” she wrote to her subordinates in the email obtained by Military.com and verified by the Space Force.

“I commit that, for as long as I am lucky enough to lead this base, all of our flags will fly proudly — together,” Meyers added.

Meyers sent out the email on March 31, seemingly upset over comments made by Vance about potentially annexing Greenland.

The base-wide message was a highly unusual move, as publicly speaking out again the executive branch is viewed as not falling in line with the commander-in-chief, and signals to the world that the US military is a disjointed force.

Meyers — who spent nearly 20 years as an Air Force officer before jumping branches to the Space Force in May 2021 — oversaw roughly 200 airmen and guardians while in command of the US’s northernmost military installation.

Erin go broke

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Full text:

Ireland is being plundered by a small group of Irish families, banks and foreign investors. They are making billions for housing migrants through a network of shadowy offshore companies.

This industry is backed up by an NGO complex that employs 200,000 people and also costs us billions. Its purpose is to dumb us down and convince Irish people that being replaced in our own homeland is normal.

The police and judicial system are also onboard. Enforcing illegitimate laws passed by compromised politicians who serve the EU. Foreigners even get special privileges under Irish law.

What’s happening to Ireland is completely unnatural. Dumping people from African and Islamic countries into an ancient and homogeneous society is the quickest way of causing that society to collapse.

Trust is low, cohesion is gone and people from the 3rd world are walking straight into our country without even so much as medical screening. HIV, typhoid and diphtheria are becoming more common in Ireland.

None of us are safe.

Plus the added strain these migrants place on our housing market, education and healthcare systems cannot be ignored.

Those of us older than 20 remember the old Ireland. An Ireland with a relaxed pace of life and high trust communities.

We have a responsibility to maintain that version of Ireland and hand it to the next generation.

Elon

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David Strom: Why the Left Began Hating Musk

By now there are a ton of reasons why the left hates Elon Musk. His role in DOGE and defunding the illicit and evil NGOs and threatening the sinecures of leftists like Stacey Abrams tops the list, but Musk turned into their Emmanuel Goldstein long before Elon hooked up with Trump. 

Jonathan Turley, whose current project is reclaiming free speech for all Americans, hits the nail on the head when he points out that Musk's ultimate sin in the eyes of the left was his purchase of Twitter and his release of the Twitter Files. 

The most effective tool that leftists have had in pushing their agenda has been the stranglehold they held on information and the national conversation. With the exception of Fox News and a few independent media outlets that they have warred against--like Hot Air and Townhall--the left owned the intellectual means of production here and abroad. 

Not only did they own Pravda Media, but they controlled all the major social media platforms where people could be silenced if they became a thorn in the side of the lefties. The government funded media they liked through USAID and pushed censorship of media and people they disliked through USAID, the Pentagon, the Intelligence Community, including the FBI, and subsidies to foreign censorship organizations. 

Then Elon Musk broke the social media monopoly by buying Twitter and opening up a free speech public square. 

The left went insane, and it's hard to blame them. Suddenly, their monopoly was broken--and worse, the left had been using Twitter as a primary means of communication through which they coordinated The Narrative. Anybody who was on Twitter in the bad old days could, quite literally, watch The Narrative be formed and honed as Pravda "journalists" tried out potential propaganda tactics, refined them, and then sent them out into the world. 

It's no coincidence that vast numbers of media folks abandoned Twitter for alternatives that reached far fewer people. They made ridiculous claims about rising hate as they flocked to BlueSky, which is filled with literal calls for assassinating conservatives. It wasn't the rhetoric they decried but the fact that conservatives could fight back against their lies and prebunk their narratives before they escaped into the wild. 

Twitter was suddenly filled with those videos that the media claimed were "cheap fakes," and everybody could see for themselves what the media tried to hide. Context suddenly appeared. Ordinary people could challenge and refute what the liars and hoaxers were trying to sell to a previously blindfolded public. 

Suddenly, the Hoi Polloi could get blue checkmarks, and the media lost its monopoly on prestige. Pseudonymous Twitter accounts could gain prominence by being smarter or more amusing than they, and memes could make fun of them with abandon. 

Facebook, Google, TikTok, and all the subservient tools of the left suddenly lost relevance, and the X app became the #1 news app in the Apple App Store. 

It was infuriating. And worse, actively damaging to the brands of the Pravda Media. 

Trust in the media has been declining for years, but after Twitter was freed, it plummeted to levels that make Congress look popular. Child rapists--at least if they are illegal aliens--are more popular than major media folks in some circles. 

Elon Musk emasculated the media even more than Donald Trump. Trump pummeled them and rallied a crowd around him, setting the stage, but Twitter/X provided the tools to chop their nuts off. 

The left tried everything to destroy Twitter/X after Musk bought it--the advertising ban, the threats to use the European Union's regulatory power to fine Musk's companies out of business, and eventually even threats of assassination. They are still pushing all these tools, and Musk has told them f**k you to their faces. 

Their war against Musk still rages, and is still failing. As leftists commit domestic terrorism as an escalation against him, Musk carries on systematically dismantling their most prized possession: control over the means of communication. 

It might or might not be an exaggeration to say that Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter got Donald Trump reelected. There is no one factor to explain such an extraordinary event. 

But it sure made a difference by creating a free speech zone, and depriving the left of the place where they plotted their hoaxes and crafted their narratives. 

FWIW: Here’s Turley on why the release of the Twitter Tapes was so devastating (spoiler alert: because until then, the government and Twitter and Meta executives had all been swearing under oath that they weren’t communicating with each other or censoring users — thousands of emails exposed that they’d been lying all along):