53percenter's Blog

There’s always something inherently enjoyable about watching a liberal individual or entity getting eaten alive by its own constituency.

Take, for instance, when the folks at Facebook were improbably being grilled for throwing the election to Donald Trump by not catching a small group of Russians with a rather modest budget sowing discord during the 2016 election.

Or consider actress Lena Dunham’s rather forceful ejection from the sisterhood of the traveling social media when she decided to defend a white male colleague accused of sexually assaulting an African-American woman.

These are all serious issues, but the point is that each of these assiduously liberal entities ended up getting torn apart by the very people and principles they’ve supported, all invoking at least some level of schadenfreude from conservatives.

And to this list — which is much longer than just the two examples listed above, mind you — one can now add Starbucks.

Yes, the conspicuously liberal coffee chain famous for its anti-conservative politicking and wading into the culture wars more than once is now in a world of viral hurt after a video emerged online of two black men apparently being arrested in a Starbucks in Philadelphia while they were waiting for a friend.

According to Fox News, the two men were taken into custody Thursday after they asked to use the bathroom and were denied access by the manager. They then refused to leave when he told them to.

The manager proceeded to call 911, Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross said. The manager reported the two men for “trespassing.”

When police showed up, the two men were taken into custody, but not without a video of the incident being taken. The video quickly spread on social media, bringing plenty of invective with it.

Ross said the men were asked by police three times to leave before they were arrested but refused. A man who says he was coming there to meet them arrived and backed up their story, but police took them away nonetheless.

The police commissioner, who is black himself, made it clear early on that whatever blame there was lay with the coffee shop.

“As an African-American male, I am very aware of implicit bias; we are committed to fair and unbiased policing,” Ross said.

“If a business calls and they say that ‘someone is here that I no longer wish to be in my business,’” Ross said, officers have “a legal obligation to carry out their duties and they did just that.”

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Things began getting worse for Starbucks. According to The Washington Post, the individual the two men were there to meet, Andrew Yaffe, is the head of a real estate development firm and was there to meet with the two men about investment opportunities.

So, thanks to Starbucks, the two men went for a meeting about investments and wound up spending the night in jail. They were eventually released without charges being pressed.

We apologize to the two individuals and our customers for what took place at our Philadelphia store on Thursday. pic.twitter.com/suUsytXHks

— Starbucks Coffee (@Starbucks) April 14, 2018

Starbucks had a public relations nightmare on its hands, and it wasn’t long before it was groveling before the public.

“We apologize to the two individuals and our customers and are disappointed this led to an arrest,” the statement read. “We take these matters seriously and clearly have more work to do when it comes to how we handle incidents in our stores. We are reviewing our policies and will continue to engage with the community and the police department to ensure these types of situations never happen in any of our stores.”

Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson also issued a statement that was critical of the store’s actions.

“Regretfully, our practices and training led to a bad outcome — the basis for the call to the Philadelphia police department was wrong,” Johnson said. “Our store manager never intended for these men to be arrested and this should never have escalated as it did.”

So basically, the police are blaming Starbucks, Starbucks is taking some responsibility but saying that when the manager called 911 to get the police involved, he never thought they would be, like, arrested — because clearly that never happens when you call 911 on someone.

Johnson also said he hopes “to meet personally with the two men who were arrested to offer a face-to-face apology.” That might be a start, but Johnson’s company will also have to deal with a whole lot of invective heaped on them, especially by their liberal clientele.

What do you think? Scroll down to comment below!

The Republican Speaker of the Georgia House blocked a bill that would help deport criminal illegal aliens, but he pushed through a last-minute bill touted by his lobbyist son, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. 

The paper reported April 12:

Georgia House Speaker David Ralston delayed the end of this year’s legislative session past a midnight deadline so lawmakers could vote on a bill to allow speeding ticket cameras in school zones.

The bill was pushed by Ralston’s son, a lobbyist for an Arizona-based company, American Traffic Solutions, that sells the camera systems to local governments.

…

Ralston and Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, the president of the state Senate, agreed to continue working past midnight to allow the House to approve the bill after it had passed the Senate a few minutes earlier, said Kaleb McMichen, a spokesman for Ralston, a Blue Ridge Republican.

In contrast, Ralston refused to allow a vote on a public safety bill in the GOP-dominated House before ended its annual session on March 30. Corporate-funded anti-borders groups took credit for the defeating the bill, which would have required state officials to notify federal immigration-enforcement officers of illegal migrants in the state’s jails. 

GOP leaders offered excuses for blocking the popular immigration-reform bill

“We ran out of time before we had finished all the bills that were worthwhile,” said House Majority Whip, Christian Coomer. “Other bills took priority and SB452 wasn’t called before the clock struck midnight,” he told the liberal Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper. 

GOP Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle originally backed the immigration enforcement legislation but stayed quiet when the bill was narrowed to exclude migrants who did not commit “serious crimes.” But after the bill was blocked, Cagle issued a statement saying:

Law enforcement agencies at every level of government should work together to make sure that criminal illegal aliens who commit serious crimes are arrested, convicted, deported, and never allowed back inside our nation’s borders.

Cagle is one of four GOP politicians vying for this year’s gubernatorial nomination. 

Ralston faces a May 22 primary election against Margaret Williamson. 

Ralston is an attorney, with clients that include construction companies. Many construction companies rely on black-market labor hired by subcontractors. His website says:

The firm also represents the interests of both home builders and contractors, as well as home owners in litigation issues arising over construction.  With over 35 years of courtroom experience in the construction law area, our firm has successfully litigated and defended against a range of matters in the construction area.

Majority whip Coomer told excused the decision by telling the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the GOP establishment might approve a similar bill in 2019 and – if public pressure continues. 

“If the state’s interest in reasonable law enforcement approaches to criminal aliens and misdemeanor bail issues remains high, then another version of the bill may see movement next year,” he said. 

In its final version, the criminal alien measure required law enforcement to notify federal officials when police detained an illegal alien convicted of a felony, a ‘high and aggravated misdemeanor’ or DUI. Language in the legislation also would have required the state Department of Corrections to post quarterly reports on the immigration status and number of non-citizens in the state prison system.

According to federal estimates, Georgia is home to more illegal aliens than Arizona.

As Breitbart reported, the bill easily passed the Senate in a tougher form but was held up in the House when it was gutted in the Public Safety and Homeland Security sub-Committee led by GOP Rep. Heath Clark, who compared immigration enforcement to “Nazi Germany.” 

Clark later told Breitbart the Nazi term was ‘… definitely, probably a little far.” Clark eventually apologized for his remark to this writer and was reportedly willing to speak in support of final passage of the bill on House floor.

 When asked about the failure of the legislation and the likelihood of Georgians becoming victims of future criminal activity by illegal aliens in the Peach State, Billy Inman, father of Dustin Inman, a sixteen-year-old Georgia youth who was killed by an illegal alien in 2000, told me “one is too many.”

The illegal alien who skilled Dustin Inman and put Mrs. Inman in a wheelchair, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, is living in Mexico.

Inman condemned the lack of action by the Republican House and cited a 2003 book,  ‘A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat’ written by former Democrat Georgia governor and U.S. Senator, Zell Miller. “As Zell put in his book, “no one in a position to do anything about it wants to do anything about it,” said Inman.

D.A. King is the founder of the Dustin Inman Society, which advocates for immigration enforcement in Georgia.