Creeping Mall- ism in my neighborhood, Boston's North End

In my neighborhood, we have within a 5 to 10 minute walk, two Dunkin' Donuts, a Starbucks , a Peet's Coffee, a Thinking Cup coffee shop, Caffe dello Sport coffee shop, Caffe Vittoria coffee shop, Caffe Paradiso coffee shop, plus Mike's Pastry, Modern Pastry, and Maria's Pastry all offer coffee to their patrons. Within my immediate neighborhood, we have My Cousin's Place that offers coffee to its patrons. We have TWO Seven Elevens within TWO blocks of each other that also offer coffee to its patrons

Starbucks wants to put another coffee shop at the entry to Boston's North End. Why? The North End's coffee needs are amply met.

WE DON'T WANT ANOTHER STARBUCKS. WE DON'T NEED ANOTHER STARBUCKS.

From my neighbor, Dave G.:

"Just for the record, there are already 6 Starbucks within a short walk from the proposed NE location: Atlantic Av, Long Wharf, State St, Broad St, two in Govt Center, and one soon to open right across the Greenway in Fanueil Hall! Hopefully the City will do the right thing and deny them a take-out license, which will force Starbucks to break the lease they've already signed." 



PS. This neighborhood is called The North End, not "Li'l Italy, or Little Italy." This neighborhood has been called The North End since Colonial times. We don't want to be renamed "Little Italy. 

We are The North End!

Last Little Italy from Rocco Capano on Vimeo.

File Under:l "Move Along; Nothing To See Here.

From The Week:

Anthony Kennedy's son was Trump's moneylender at Deutsche Bank 

Here's another line you can draw on your conspiracy board: Retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy has a connection to Germany's Deutsche Bank, which has been suspected of allowing Russian money laundering and is President Trump's biggest known lender, 

The New York Times reports. While the Trump administration has waged a long campaign to encourage Kennedy to retire — a not uncommon practice among presidents, as all are eager to fill Supreme Court vacancies — the Trumps and the Kennedys already had a long history of working together: 

Philip Gourevitch ✔ @PGourevitch oh look — Justice Kennedy’s son was Trump’s money lender when others wouldn’t touch him — 

President Trump's glowing reference to Justice Kennedy's son at his address to Congress was apparently an attempt to remind the judge of their connection. As the Times suggests, Trump's months of praise of the senior Kennedy was all part of a campaign to assure him "that his judicial legacy would be in good hands should he step down at the end of the court's term that ended this week."

And this:


North Korea has increased nuclear production at secret sites, say U.S. officials 

Work is ongoing to deceive us on the number of facilities, the number of weapons, the number of missiles," said one U.S. official. 

Trump declares North Korea 'no longer a nuclear threat'

Trump supporters still happily believe in Trump's lies.

Saps.

The Mentally Diseased and Deranged POTUS

Doesn't President Porn Star Shagger understand that every attack he's made on the media has been captured on video for everyone to see and hear?

He's called journalists America's worst enemies (worse than ISIS, North Korea, Al Qaeda?). That means he believes Americans who do their jobs are America's worst enemies.

And his supporters are okay with this


Trump said, “Before going any further, I’d like to address the horrific shooting that took place yesterday at Capital Gazette newsroom in Annapolis, Maryland. This attack shocked the conscience of our nation and filled our hearts with grief. Journalists, like all Americans, should be free from the fear of being violently attacked while doing their job. "


Srsly? President Porn Star Shagger actually uttered those words without the slightes bit of irony. The man who's been advocating violence against journalist since 2015 had the onions to pretend he gives a flying donut about what happened to them in Maryland. 

Trump is first and foremost a lying sack of manure and is not to be believed anytime his lips are moving. Also, when Trump pretends concern over the shooting deaths of journalists after encouraging people to detest and dehumanize them, he does not deserve our polite attention; he deserves this:



via GIPHY








c



And this:





TRUMP SUPPORTERS:




Trump and his supporters advocate killing Americans who do their jobs.

Trump's America

UPDATE:

NRA spokesworman, Dana Louche, had some choice fascist words to say about journalists -- y'know, the people who write about what the NRA promotes, weapons that kill 33,000 Americans each year:


NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch said journalists 'need to be curb-stomped', in resurfaced footage'They are the rat bastards of the earth. They are the boil on the backside of American politics,'



And in case you didn't know or have forgotten, here's the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, joking about shooting reporters:


May 26, 2017 

"Texas Gov. Greg Abbott joked about shooting reporters while visiting a gun range and carrying a target sheet with bullet holes in it. As he was holding the bullet-ridden target, Abbott allegedly said, “I’m gonna carry this around in case I see any reporters,” according to the Texas Tribune." 

*****************************

Yes. This really happened:


Trump has on many occasions called the media, and specifically the press, "America's biggest enemy."

Today 5 people were shot to death at a newspaper facility.

Their blood is on Trump.


Here's one of Trump's biggest supporters:

Milo Yiannopoulos Encourages Vigilantes to Start ‘Gunning Journalists Down’

By Davis Richardson • 06/26/18 12:32pm

 
 
 
 

Right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos. MARK GRAHAM/AFP/Getty Images.

Milo Yiannopoulos has started issuing reporters threatening messages when asked to comment for stories.

“I can’t wait for the vigilante squads to start gunning journalists down on sight,” the right-wing nationalist told Observer over text message, in response to a longer feature in development about an Upper East Side restaurant he is said to frequent.

Milo Yiannopoulos said reporters should be ‘gunned down on sight’ shortly before Annapolis newsroom shooting



On Tuesday, this Trumpista asshole encouraged his crazy-ass followers to kill journalists.  Two days later, his wish came true in Maryland.

Inciting murder?



The Trumpistas went nuts over what Rep. Maxine Waters said about heckling people who worked in the Trump administration, but they won't open their hypocritical maws about this murder that was incited by a Trump supporter.

Trump's America

These are the people who've become emboldened under the leadership of President Porn Star Shagger:




U.S.NORTH CAROLINA GOP PRIMARY WINNER SAYS GOD IS A WHITE SUPREMACIST, JEWS ARE SATANIC

Although the local GOP distanced itself from this white supremacist anti-Semite, he still felt confident in advertising his bigotry, and conservatives in his district happily voted for him.

Never forget that President Spanky told America and the world that Nazis are "nice people." We shouldn't be surprised when people like Russell Walker crawl out of their local sewer to identify themselves as Republicans and then run for local political office.

We've read on conservative blogs anti-Semite sentiments very similar to the rot Walker is touting as good Republican values.

Old saying:  "A fish stinks from the head." And we all know who the head of the Republican Party is:






Neo-Nazi Arthur Jones wins Republican nomination for Illinois congressional seat


Neo-Nazi and Holocaust denier Arthur Jones won the Republican nomination for the 3rd Congressional District in Illinois. 

Jones will seek to unseat Rep. Dan Lipinski, who won a narrow victory over Marie Newman in Tuesday's Democratic primary. 

The state GOP has denounced Jones and says it will try to field an independent to run.

Why do you suppose these neo-Nazis feel so very comfortable with the current Republican Party that, BTW, has to keep distancing itself from these anti-Semite bigots?

Could it be something President Porn Star Shagger encourages in them?  HMMMMMM?




REMINDER:  This video is not from Nazi Germany, it was recorded two months ago -- April 2018 -- in Trump's America:

Meet the new generation of Democrats:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Stacey Abrams

Huckabee-Sanders is a liar, just like her lying liar boss.  

Huckabee-Sanders: "The president in no way, form, or fashion has ever promoted or encouraged violence."

Throw her lying ass out of any restaurant where decent people gather.

The embarrassing creep who mocked an American hero, POW, and disabled journalist...

now whining about the incivility of people who oppose him?

Cry me a river, President Porn Star Shagger and your disgusting cultists.

h/t to Infidel753 for the John Pavlovitz's excellent post:

So Now You Want Civility?

Dear #Resisters,

The Porn Star Shagging Liar currently defiling the Oval Office does not deserve civility. He and his cultists deserve our contempt and revulsion.

The good news is that there are more of us than them, and they will not prevail. 

Chase RobertFollow

18 hrs

Well it’s exciting to finally see this administration creating business in the USA. The Red Hen is booked solid for almost a month.

We all need to be like the owner of The Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Virginia.

Stephanie Wilkinson politely asked Huckabee Sanders to leave her restaurant because her sense of human decency would not allow her and her staff to cater to a woman who, by repeating slanders and lies from Trump and his regime, perpetuates the ongoing debasement of American democracy.

Brava for her and all who continue to RESIST! the evil that is Trump and his miserable tyranny-by-minority presidency.




Jason Sattler of USAToday:

Once you realize that nothing you can say will stop Trump from running a propaganda campaign against immigrants that invites comparisons to Hitler’s early attacks on Jews, you have to ask yourself what you want to do about it. [...] 

You can pretend that all of these things aren’t happening in your name. Or you can do what the owner of the Red Hen in Lexington, Virginia, did. She surveyed her staff, several of whom are gay, and decided to politely ask Sanders to leave.




Goldie Taylor of The Daily Beast:

This administration has been engaged in the mass incarceration of children, some as young as three months old. Now, it now has plans to house tens of thousands of detainees on our nation’s military bases. Trump also says he wants to get rid of due process for those who come to our borders seeking asylum, ending one of the foundational civil liberties that separates this country from authoritarian nations. Who thinks he would stop with asylum seekers? 

There should be a public price to pay for that. There should be a price to pay for propping up and supporting this president’s virulently racist policies and plans.



The public price should be shaming, shunning, and most important, kicking their fascist arses out of office in November. 

Continue the Resistance against Trump's tyranny and his supporters' stupidity.

Here is the Trump cultists' hero, advocating shredding the U.S. Constitution:

via jobsanger




Here's President Porn Star Shagger showing the world what a powerful leader he is:

via jobsanger

THE UNITED STATES OF FASCISM UNDER TRUMP

The Trump Regime ripped children from their parents and placed them in detention camps; and while in those camps, they are forced to recite the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag in English "to show respect." 

To show respect for a country that kidnapped them and placed them in internment camps away from their parents -- the country that took no precautions to have those babies and children returned to their parents, from whom they may be separated for weeks, months, years, maybe even forever, since there is no identification process in place to reunite children and parents.

The innocent are supposed to "respect" a country that does that to them.



Sickening (from Business Insider):

Migrant children are being forced to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in shelters after authorities separated them from their parents. 

The children are forced to recite the pledge in English every morning "out of respect." 

This is occurring at Casa Padre, the country's largest shelter for migrant children, which gained attention for its cramped sleeping quarters and dehumanizing practices.



"Let me make sure I have this straight: babies and children who have done nothing wrong are being ripped away from their parents, locked in cages, and being forced to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in front of murals of Donald Trump, but the biggest crisis of today is 'civility'?" --Julia Conley, staff writer, Common Dreams

Trump calls for fundamentally changing U.S. Constitution

Remember when the 30 percenters screamed at anyone who would listen that President Obama was "shredding the Constitution?"










Now their cult leader, Preznit Porn Star Shagger actually told the American people and the world that he'd like to shred the U.S. Constitution, and his cultists are silent.





Trump advocates depriving undocumented immigrants of due-process rights


"...Trump's attack on the due-process rights of immigrants follows a week in which he has been fixated on the immigration court system, which he has called "ridiculous." The president has balked at proposals from Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and other lawmakers to add court personnel to help process more immigration cases. Democrats and immigrant rights advocates sought to shame Trump for saying he wants to deny illegal immigrants their due-process rights. "

America rules by law," tweeted Rep. Gerald Connolly, D-Va., "not by presidential diktat." 

 Omar Jadwat, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Immigrants' Rights Project, said in a statement:"What President Trump has suggested here is both illegal and unconstitutional. Any official who has sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution and laws should disavow it unequivocally." 

 And at least one Republican lawmaker spoke out against Trump's threat. Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan, a libertarian-leaning Republican who has often criticized the president, responded to the controversy by quoting the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution. 

 "No person shall be ... deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law," Amash tweeted."



Trump cultists are okay with Preznit Porn Star Shagger fundamentally changing America by disregarding the Constitution's guarantee of due process for everyone.



Scholars, activists blast Trump tweets ripping due process for undocumented immigrants

"The Constitution could get in the way of Trump's plans to cut legal corners, says legal scholar Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law.

 "Congressional legislation and the Constitution mandate due process for the people Trump mentions," Tobias told USA TODAY. "

Congress would need to legislate what Trump says he wants, and this seems unlikely. Even were Congress to pass legislation, federal courts would probably find that it violates the Constitution." Trump drew outrage after his tweet Sunday that "when somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came." Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, emphatically agreed with Tobias that Trump's plan is illegal and unconstitutional. 

 "Any official who has sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution and laws should disavow it unequivocally," Jadwat said. Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American Islamic Relations, called Trump's tweet an "affront to our values" and said all Americans should be outraged. 

"This clear call for an end to the constitutionally guaranteed right to due process is symptomatic of an administration that disdains both the Constitution and our judicial system,"


TRUMP HAS TURNED HIS BACK ON EVERY FUNDAMENTAL AMERICAN VALUE --Washington Post editorial



Donald Trump Will Solve Immigration Crisis By Getting Rid Of Pesky Constitution 

It's Friday...

I'll be in the great state of Maine for the weekend, but I'll leave you with this thought from Charlie Pierce, because he always speaks truth to power; and, in these times, it is depraved power headed by a degenerate, morally diseased POTUS:

Pierce:


The president* is gleefully indulging in inhumane practices that would shame a cockroach.. His idea of a “compromise” is a bill that keeps families together in detention camps and funds his stupid boondoggle of a wall. He’s going out of his way to snipe at political opponents who already are dead. He is a fool and a coward, and he’s sounding like he’s half-mad.

Pierce, June 22, 2018
"The country’s head is clearing. The country’s vision is coming back into focus and it can see for the first time the length and breadth of the damage it has done to itself. The country is hearing the voices that the cacophony of fear and anger had drowned out for almost three years. The spell, such as it was, and in most places, may be wearing off at last. The hallucinatory effect of a reality-show presidency* is dispersing like a foul, smoky mist over a muddy battlefield. 

 The migrant crisis is going to go down through history as one of the most destructive series of own-goals in the history of American politics. The establishment of the “zero-tolerance” policy made the child-nabbing inevitable. The president*’s own rhetoric—indeed, the raison d’etre of his entire campaign—trapped him into at first defending the indefensible and then abandoning what was perhaps the only consistent policy idea he ever had—outside of enriching himself and his family, that is. Then the cameras began to roll, and the nation’s gorge began to rise, and the president* couldn’t stand the pressure that was mounting around him. 

Of course, because he knows nothing about anything, including how to actually be president*, he bungled even his own abject surrender. He’s spent the days since signing his executive order railing against what he felt compelled to do and arguing against himself and losing anyway. "




Getting away from the horror of the Trump presidency:

CAPE NEDDICK, MAINE

WTF?????

I checked several sites, including Snopes, to find out if this is true. It is! WTF???






My friend Vicki wrote this:  · Look—you don’t wear a jacket like this if you don’t intend to send a subliminal, or blatantly overt (for that matter), message. Of all the clothing she has and with all the money she has, she could have worn ANYTHING other than this jacket. This is a big “fuck you” to people who actually care about the issue.

*******************************

President Porn Star Shagger said the message on Melania's tasteless jacket is for the "fake" media. FLOTUS wore it on her way to see children held in detention camps. The jacket had no reference to media. FLOTUS appears to be as callous and stupid as her monstrously stupid husband.

How many jackets does the wife of a billionaire own? And why did she wear this one on her way to visit children in her husband's detention camps?

Anyone?

"FACTS ARE STUBBORN THINGS" -- President John Adams

Don't be fooled by what the Porn-Star Shagger-in-Chief did yesterday. Children may not be separated from their families, now, but there's nothing in the E.O. that Trump signed yesterday that makes it permanent. Trump now has made it possible to incarcerate whole familes.

A typical bully, Trump retreated as soon as loud, determined, and strong resistance to his inhumane policy manifested itself and threatened the GOP's chances in the fall elections. I don't believe for one minute that the Porn-Star Shagger-in-Chief cares about the chaos and misery he caused thousands of families. One needs human decency to feel for the families who suffer. We all know that #45 hasn't a drop of human decency in him. 





"On Wednesday, Donald Trump signed an executive order to do what he, and every Trump surrogate who appeared on every form of media, spent the previous week insisting that he absolutely could not do—stop separating kids from their parents at the border. But after claiming that breaking up families was ordained of God, beating his chest over the need to enforce The Law, making careful distinctions between his child-stealing and that carried out by the Nazis, and mostly just blaming everything on the Democrats … Trump found that he could change the policy with a stroke of a pen after all."

[skip]

"But just because Trump signing that executive order was a defeat for Trump—and it was a defeat for Trump—doesn’t make it a victory for immigrant families. Trump still maintains his zero-tolerance policy, and the document decorated with his latest magic-marker contains not even a hint of a limit on executive power. Not even when that power is being used to … separate parents from their kids. The order leaves open the idea that families can still be separated over “concerns,” and unlike the bill that was signed by every Democratic senator, those concerns don’t have to rise to the level of actions that would, in other legal circumstances, lead to the severance of parental rights. In truth, Trump’s executive order declares and preserves his authority to separate families for any reason at all. Or to detain them as a group. What it doesn’t offer is any limit on his power, or hint of judicial or congressional review."

***************************

Trump is a lying bastard, a disgrace to America and all her ideals. Never let the American people forget what the Monster Trump did and is doing to thousands of families seeking refuge from muderous regimes in their countries. Never allow the American people to forget the sounds of children crying for their mothers and fathers. Those sobs will haunt every American's conscience and every American will associate children crying out in fear and agony with the Trump administration. 

#45's supporters bear responsibility for terrorizing children.  

UPDATE

"Stories of children being taken from their parents and images of teenagers in cage-like detention facilities have exploded into a full-blown political crisis for Mr. Trump and Republican lawmakers, who are desperate for a response to critics who have called the practice “inhumane” and “evil.” 



FINALLY

Trump acknowledges his policy is wrong!
He lied to the American people when he said it was "the law" and Democrats needed to come to the table to change it. He lied, as he usually does. All that was need to change HIS policy was an executive order.

America and the world looked in horror at what Trump's policy -- not a law -- was doing to babies and children, and forced the monster to end it!




Trump Retreats on Separating Families, Signing Order to Detain Them Together


Migrant Children Drugged Without Consent At Government Centers


Court Documents Show The allegations center on a mental health facility in Texas that has had problems in the past.  

Staff working on the behalf of the Office of Refugee Resettlement are routinely drugging detained child migrants with psychotropics without their parents’ consent, according to legal filings.




Trump:   An ill-prepared, incompetent lunatic.

Trump's America: "...the kids — who have no idea where their parents are — were hysterical, crying and acting out."

If this doesn't make your blood turn to ice; if this doesn't make you sick to your stomach, then you're not worthy of being called an American -- you're not even worthy of being called a human being.

What have we become under the monster Trump?

City leaders in Houston, Texas -- HOUSTON! Denounce this inhumane cruelty:



Trump administration officials have been sending babies and other young children forcibly separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border to at least three “tender age” shelters in South Texas, The Associated Press has learned.

 Lawyers and medical providers who have visited the Rio Grande Valley shelters described play rooms of crying preschool-age children in crisis. The government also plans to open a fourth shelter to house hundreds of young migrant children in Houston, where city leaders denounced the move Tuesday.

 Since the White House announced its zero tolerance policy in early May, more than 2,300 children have been taken from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border, resulting in a new influx of young children requiring government care. The government has faced withering critiques over images of some of the children in cages inside U.S. Border Patrol processing stations.

[skip]


By law, child migrants traveling alone must be sent to facilities run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services within three days of being detained. The agency then is responsible for placing the children in shelters or foster homes until they are united with a relative or sponsor in the community as they await immigration court hearings. 

 But U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ announcement last month that the government would criminally prosecute everyone who crosses the U.S.-Mexico border illegally has led to the breakup of hundreds of migrant families and sent a new group of hundreds of young children into the government’s care. The United Nations, some Democratic and Republican lawmakers and religious groups have sharply criticized the policy, calling it inhumane.




Miserable coward! The people supporting Trump and Sessions are worse than miserable cowards. They are traitors to America's ideals. Damn them all!

Damn the inhumane law! 

The law, in this case, is a ass! It is immoral! Those who support this immorality are complicit in abusing families and children.

From Daily Kos:

Trump and Republicans are losing on this immigration and child abuse issue. There’s video, audio, pictures. There are five First Ladies. You can’t fight that. Sure, you can dig in. No point in a compassion appeal to someone who lacks the gene, but that’s separate from losing the public, and Trump is losing the public.  

Republicans, your cowardly inhumanity will haunt you to your graves. 

Quinnipiac: Stop Taking The Kids, 66 Percent Of U.S. Voters Say, 

Quinnipiac University National Poll Finds; Support For Dreamers Is 79 Percent