Reality catches up to Starbucks

Posted: July 20, 2022 by datechguy in Uncategorized

Reality: I am going to tear down your safe space, brick by brick I shall smash it with glee.
Cartman: What? Who is that?
Reality: You cannot stop me from getting inside, I am cold and I am hard and my name … is Reality.

South Park Song In my safe space from the episode Safe Space 2015

In a rough economy it’s not unusual for a chain to close stores, but it IS unusual for them to close ones that are still showing a profit.

“There are gonna be many more [store closures].”

The leaked video of Schultz shows him addressing Starbucks employees. He told them that the company was “beginning to close stores that are not unprofitable.”

Schultz said he was “shocked” to hear from employees that “one of the primary concerns that our retail partners [baristas] have is their own personal safety.”

“And then we heard about the stories that go along with it about what happens in our bathrooms,” Schultz said.

Of course what goes on in their bathrooms is due to a woke policy implemented to show the world how wonderful they are.

It seems the liberal owner of Starbucks has had a revelation: Realty doesn’t care how woke you are. This revelation came with a policy tweak:

I also suspect he is smart enough to realize that it is only a matter of time before an employee will be killed or maimed in one of those locations and the company’s national policy blamed and them sued.

I suspect that has a lot more to do with his sudden dawning of knowledge and wisdom than anything else.

Full Circle John Cleese meets the Babylon Bee

Posted: July 20, 2022 by datechguy in Uncategorized

I’m old enough to remember when a place like the Babylon Bee would not be considered a platform for a guy like John Cleese

but he was.

I thought it was interesting at the end that they never considered that Cleese might have wanted to meet Jesus even though he declined their kind offer of conversion.

Slouching toward Philadelphia

Posted: July 19, 2022 by chrisharper in crime
Tags: ,

By Christopher Harper

It’s only been about a month since 73-year-old James Lambert Jr. died–one of the most disturbing murders in Philadelphia’s violent history.

But his death has almost faded from the media coverage and the public conscience as other brutal crimes continue in the City of Brotherly Love.

Here are the pertinent facts: surveillance video shows a teen hoisting a traffic cone above his head before striking Lambert. Then, a girl in her stocking feet with a pair of sunglasses atop her head can be seen retrieving the cone and appears to do the same thing. It looks as if she strikes the older man not once but twice. Another child seems to be holding up a phone to videotape what is happening as another rides his scooter. 

Lambert died while walking in a neighborhood about a mile from Temple University, where I worked for many years. 

Two “children”—a 14-year-old boy and girl—have been charged with murder for killing Lambert with a traffic cone that struck him in the head.

Back in the day, “the neighbors were the village. They policed you. They parented. They would tell your parents if they saw you doing something that you weren’t supposed to do, and before they told your parents, they would say something to you. You really couldn’t get away with a lot,” Christine Brown, director of community services for Beech Companies and who grew up near where the attack took place, told The Philadelphia Inquirer. “Things are just different. Children don’t speak to their seniors, and seniors are afraid to live in their own community, and that’s sad.”

“Back in the day” was a long time ago. Maybe the early 1960s? Since that time, Philadelphia has become a mess, mainly because Democrats have led the city to the brink of despair and disparity. 

Philadelphia isn’t much different from a lot of cities. The school system is bankrupt, and a new superintendent seems more interested in an “anti-racist” curriculum than a formula for learning.

The police chief has neutered her officers.

The district attorney is a George Soros post child.

The mayor has given up even though he has a year left in his term.

The only change after Lambert’s death is a new curfew. Those aged 17 and younger must be indoors and off the streets by 10 p.m.; those 13 and younger must be home by 9:30.

If the schools don’t teach children much, the police chief and district attorney don’t enforce the law, and the mayor has given up, I find it unlikely a curfew, which won’t be enforced, will change Philadelphia’s slide toward anarchy.

A school superintendent who emphasizes learning may make a difference, but school vouchers would be a better solution.

A change in the attitudes of the police hierarchy and the prosecutor would make a difference. 

A new mayor—preferably a Republican—also might make a difference. The Democrats have run the city since 1952, and maybe 1952 was “back in the day” when times were, in fact, better.

Report from Louisiana: Working two jobs

Posted: July 18, 2022 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , ,
Photo by Yassine Khalfalli on Unsplash

By:  Pat Austin

SHREVEPORT – I am no economist and so would have poor skills in predicting where this incredible inflation will end, but man, it has got to end somewhere.

When I retired from teaching a year and a half ago, my pension was comfortable. Now? It doesn’t go nearly as far as it did then. That’s why when my church needed a part-time receptionist in the office, I took it on. I figured the extra money would ease the pain. And then, when they asked me to add another day and work four days a week, I agreed to that, too.  Picking up that extra four or five days a month looked good. Now I’m thinking I need to ramp up my paid writing sideline a bit and earn even more.

We just returned from a trip to Iowa where my husband’s family lives. From Louisiana, we usually spend about $200 to $250 in gas there and back each year. This year it was literally double, costing us right at $100 every time we filled up. On top of that, rising food prices are causing pain at the grocery store, too. Across the nation, more and more people are looking for supplemental income. According to the Washington Post, “the percentage of employed people working multiple jobs in the United States has steadily increased since March 2020 from 4 percent in April 2020 to 4.8 percent in June 2022…”.  That percentage seems somewhat low to me.

In Iowa, where we just spent a week, we were in the south-central region. I know there are very liberal pockets in Iowa, but there are plenty of conservatives, too, and we met a lot of them. I saw one lady in the grocery store wearing a t-shirt that said, “Buck Joe Fiden.” Uh, okay. I saw a lot of Trump flags, and I saw zero Biden signs although I know there are Biden supporters there.

The chatter I heard at baseball games, in the stores, and in the shops were all full of angst at the state of the economy. My husband’s family is a farming family with a generational farm. The cost of fuel to run tractors and trucks is just crippling and many farmers will not make it because of this. It is devastating in the Midwest.

Like I said, I’m not sure where all this will end up, or who will be left standing when it’s over, if it is ever over, but I, for one, am working double time to get debts paid off and sock something back before everything implodes. I have one friend, an older lady who has seen some things in her day, who is selling off assets and putting up cash. She is downsizing, selling off jewelry with no sentimental meaning, putting up cold cash whenever she can. “I’m scared,” she told me. “I’ve never seen it like this, and I’m scared.” She is not usually this reactive.

She’s not wrong.

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