Cavalcade: Autumn Window Displays

Kevin celebrates the return of the fall season with crock pots, stoves, and miscellaneous pots and pans in the earth tones that were so popular when he and I were young.  Which is all very nice and decorative, but there's also a truckload of damn autumn leaves strewn everywhere.  I'm glad I'm not the one who will have to pick them up!

(Leaf raking was never my favorite chore.)

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Cavalcade of Food: Stove Swap

Kevin and Ralph along with their friend Todd replace a range in the kitchen corner of the Cavalcade private museum.  Kevin likes to do this every so often; his place is full of dozens of old stoves and other appliances.  Check out the wonderful sliders they use this time to eliminate the strain of lifting the ranges with a dolly - wow, how easy that is.

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Cavalcade of Food: Cooking Up Christmas Joy

Kevin and Ralph get the Cavalcade storefront windows in Croswell, Michigan, all decked out for the holidays with Christmas trees and vintage appliances.

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Fatherhood

Last week, Pete and Chasten Buttigieg spoke to CBS Sunday Morning about the experience of raising their son and daughter. 

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Christmas Windows

Kevin, the proprietor of Cavalcade of Food, shows off his Christmas window displays at his private museum of vintage appliances and kitchenware up in Croswell, Michigan:

 

Bonus: In another recent video, Kevin shows and tells how to make delicious-looking peanut butter chocolate chip muffins:

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Biden Joins UAW Picket Line

This is so wrong.  Just as wrong as Trump plugging businesses and products he liked while he was in office.  Both are forms of demagoguery - taking sides, appealing to one segment of the population instead of another.

Other Democratic presidents from FDR on down have voiced support for worker's causes - but this is going much, much too far.  It's not leadership - it's electioneering.

 

Biden has done good things too, but he should be called out on this egregious mistake.

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Notes from the Revolution, 5/31/20

Photo by Dan Aasland, via Wikipedia

Wikipedia map of weekend protests with more than 100 participants.
Minneapolis is marked with a red circle.
You can see the interactive map and more at List of George Floyd protests.

I use that title for this post because something has got to change in America - now, for real, for ever:  a revolution of hearts and minds.

While there may be many problems and many issues to consider, the police in this country MUST be reformed immediately. Far too many times in the last ten years or so - since the advent of ubiquitous phone cameras - we have seen white policemen killing unarmed, unthreatening black civilians. And the brutal, deliberate murder of George Floyd, which has sickened every decent American and horrified the entire world - is the last straw. It MUST be the last straw - or I'm afraid the country will simply fall apart, or rather, be torn apart in a terrible way.  We can't let the haters win.

You know, when I was a little boy, my mother - a teacher who had worked with what we would now call "school resource officers" where she taught in a large urban school - used to tell me, "Don't be afraid of the police. The policeman is your friend." Who tells their children that today? And whom can you trust, if you can't trust the police? Of course there are still many good cops - but the bad ones are out of control, it seems to me. That's got to change NOW.

I certainly don't want to live in a country where any sadistic brute with a badge on his shirt can wantonly and openly kill someone, and get away with it scot-free - while his cohorts just stand around watching a man die in prolonged agony, and don't lift a finger to stop it, a scene out of a Nazi concentration camp.

THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR THAT.  NONE.  It might be the black dude down the street today - but tomorrow, it just might be YOU. And apart from any personal considerations it is simply and unarguably wrong - EVIL - by any moral code, no ifs, ands, or buts about it: Thou shalt not kill.  Not even the extensive police power of the state extends to cold-blooded murder for no good reason.

The moral imperative to respect the dignity of human life transcends all questions of race or politics. I believe in one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for ALL. If it's not for ALL, it's not America, and anyone who doesn't stand up for equal justice for ALL is not an American.

That's my considered opinion. And this is me, old, decrepit, and virtually housebound, doing what I can to help. You look at these videos and see what you think you can or should do about it.

CNN's Van Jones tells it like it is, plain and clear:






St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter decries the "incredible insult to humanity" of George Floyd's murder:




On Saturday, Sheriff Chris Swanson in Flint, Michigan, just might have started something big when he laid down his baton and joined the protesters:



Now that's a real man.

Sixth Circuit Upholds Marriage Bans

Two judges of three on a panel of the Sixth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals in Cincinnati yesterday agreed to uphold marriage bans in the four states comprising their circuit: Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton wrote the opinion, which says in part:

What remains is a debate about whether to allow the democratic processes begun in the States to continue in the four States of the Sixth Circuit or to end them now by requiring all States in the Circuit to extend the definition of marriage to encompass gay couples. Process and structure matter greatly in American government. Indeed, they may be the most reliable, liberty-assuring guarantees of our system of government, requiring us to take seriously the route the United States Constitution contemplates for making such a fundamental change to such a fundamental social institution.

Of all the ways to resolve this question, one option is not available: a poll of the three judges on this panel, or for that matter all federal judges, about whether gay marriage is a good idea. Our judicial commissions did not come with such a sweeping grant of authority, one that would allow just three of us—just two of us in truth—to make such a vital policy call for the thirty-two million citizens who live within the four States of the Sixth Circuit: Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee. What we have authority to decide instead is a legal question: Does the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibit a State from defining marriage as a relationship between one man and one woman?

Judge Martha Craig Daughtrey dissented strongly, saying:

These plaintiffs are not political zealots trying to push reform on their fellow citizens; they are committed same-sex couples, many of them heading up de facto families, who want to achieve equal status -- de jure status, if you will -- with their married neighbors, friends, and coworkers, to be accepted as contributing members of their social and religious communities, and to be welcomed as fully legitimate parents at their children's schools. They seek to do this by virtue of exercising a civil right that most of us take for granted - the right to marry.

For although my colleagues in the majority pay lip service to marriage as an institution conceived for the purpose of providing a stable family unit "within which children may flourish," they ignore the destabilizing effect of its absence in the homes of tens of thousands of same-sex parents throughout the four states of the Sixth Circuit.

Instead of recognizing the plaintiffs as persons, suffering actual harm as a result of being denied the right to marry where they reside or the right to have their valid marriages recognized there, my colleagues view the plaintiffs as social activists who have somehow stumbled into federal court.

Full text of the ruling and dissent here. The ACLU has already announced that they will immediately appeal to the Supreme Court, which you may recall declined to make any ruling last month because at that time all the federal appeals courts had upheld same-sex marriage as a fundamental civil right; now the Supremes will have to deal with the question directly, it seems to me.

Freedom to Marry reports:

The decision flies in the face of a nearly unanimous string of 49 rulings issued since June 2013 in favor of the freedom to marry for same-sex couples. Just three lower court rulings in the past year and a half have upheld marriage discrimination.

Click here to see pics and read the stories of several of the plaintiff couples affected by the Sixth Circuit's decision.

Wikipedia makes this observation:

Decisions issued by the Sixth Circuit were reversed by the United States Supreme Court 24 out of the 25 times they were reviewed in the five annual terms starting in October 2008 and ending in June 2013 — a higher frequency than any other federal appellate court during that time period.

Newsbites, 3/22/14

Just getting caught up with the news here after being out of town for a few days.

Clarissa Dickson Wright, fondly remembered as one of the Two Fat Ladies, has died at age 66.   May she rest in well-buttered peace.

Bigot died, age 84.  Not worth remembering.  Come to find out, Time magazine wrote about him as a busybody college student in 1951.  Apparently he was always morbidly obsessed with religion and other's people's sex lives.

The hits just keep on coming:  yesterday afternoon, federal district judge Bernard Friedman struck down Michigan's same-sex marriage ban, approved by voters in 2004, as an unconstitutional violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Judge Friedman brought down the ban with a ringing salvo of the heavy artillery:

The Court is not aware of any legal authority that entitles a ballot-approved measure to special deference in the event it raises a constitutional question. On the contrary, the Supreme Court has clearly stated that if . . . an enactment violates the U.S. Constitution - whether passed by the people or their representatives - judicial review is necessary to preserve the rule of law . . . [t]he electorate cannot order a violation of the Due Process or Equal Protection Clauses by referendum or otherwise, just as the state may not avoid their application by deferring to the wishes or objections of its citizens. . . .

In attempting to define this case as a challenge to “the will of the people,” Tr. 2/25/14 p. 40, state defendants lost sight of what this case is truly about: people. No court record of this proceeding could ever fully convey the personal sacrifice of these two plaintiffs who seek to ensure that the state may no longer impair the rights of their children and the thousands of others now being raised by same-sex couples. It is the Court’s fervent hope that these children will grow up “to understand the integrity and closeness of their own family and its concord with other families in their community and in their daily lives.” Windsor, 133 S. Ct. at 2694. Today’s decision is a step in that direction, and affirms the enduring principle that regardless of whoever finds favor in the eyes of the most recent majority, the guarantee of equal protection must prevail.

Read the full decision here. Unlike other judges who have recently issued similar rulings in several states, Judge Friedman did not issue a stay of his order, so this morning at least four county clerks in Michigan opened their offices to issue marriage licenses and perform wedding ceremonies. Hooray for all the happy couples.

BTW, Judge Friedman, a Reagan appointee, also torpedoed that fatally flawed anti-gay "study" by Mark Regnerus, concluding:

The Court finds Regnerus’s testimony entirely unbelievable and not worthy of serious consideration. . . . While Regnerus maintained that the funding source [i.e., the Republican Heritage Foundation] did not affect his impartiality as a researcher, the Court finds this testimony unbelievable. The funder clearly wanted a certain result, and Regnerus obliged.

Yeow!


And finally, in overseas news:

U.S. Freezes Putin's Netflix Account

CNN Apologizes for Briefly Airing Non-Flight 370 Story


Update, 5:25 p.m.: At the request of Michigan's attorney general, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals this afternoon issued a stay of the district court ruling, but not before dozens of couples had obtained marriage licenses and married at several county courthouses across the state.  The circuit court will hear arguments on Tuesday.


And Rachel Maddow serves up some reflections on the life and death of a hate-filled bigot - worth watching for some truly laugh-out-loud counterprotesters' signs.

Same Love

As I'm sure my readers have long since realized, your Head Trucker has grown up to be a boring old geezer from Nowheresville who is far too antique to appreciate this peculiar fad they call rap or hip-hop or whatever.  Nevertheless, I think the following video is a beautiful and moving work of art. Call me crazy. See what you think:



It so happens that a teacher in Michigan has just been suspended for allowing a student to play this song in class. Justified?

Success! But What about Maine?

I am out of my mind happy to report that your Head Trucker has his broadband connection back.  All praise to geekmeister Albert in tech support at AT&T who walked this old man through the setup of the new modem, plus about a million passwords, code numbers, and other necessary mumbo-jumbo.

And glancing over the election night returns, it appears we have cause to celebrate in most of the nation:  the Washington State referendum on domestic partnerships passed with 51.1% of the vote - just barely passed, but we'll take it; the gay and transgender non-discrimination ordinance in Kalamazoo, Mich., passed with 60-something percent.  Down here in Texas, openly lesbian Annise Parker got the most votes in the Houston mayoral race, which will go to a runoff.

Oh but then there's Maine:  as of 1:04 a.m. in Maine, the Bangor Daily News election site reports our side losing 52.75 to 47.25 percent, with 87 percent of counties reporting.  But apparently our guys and gals up there are refusing to concede, hoping to pull a miracle out of the yet-to-be counted absentee ballots and counties not yet tallied.

Doesn't look good, though:  about the same percentage as defeated marriage equality in California last year.  Still, as Andrew Sullivan says in a late-night post, he's heartbroken over the Maine results, but the fact that the vote is so very close is a huge encouragement when you consider what it would have been just 10 years ago - when no state offered even civil unions, much less marriage for their gay citizens.

We've come a long way, brother.  Whatever the final result in Maine, Onward! must be our motto until the last vestiges of discrimination and inequality are wiped out of the law books and into the dusty pages of history, as they were for all the other groups who had to fight for their civil rights.

We have to work for our liberty and justice.  Nobody's going to hand it to us - and as is all too clear by now, certainly not the President who promised to be our fierce advocate.  It's not him, boys - We are the ones we've been waiting for.  Remember?

But that's okay.  It makes us better people to suffer injustice and struggle for what is right, like so many others have done before us, showing us the way.  For the same reason it makes you a better person to pay your dues and earn your own living, instead of living off somebody else's toil.  And the victory, when it dawns all across this land, will be that much sweeter when we finally taste it. 

So let's get on with it.

Equality: How You Can Help, Today

It's coming down to the wire now in Washington state, Maine, and Kalamazoo, Michigan.  The outcome of these contests will undoubtedly influence voters and legislators in future elections elsewhere.  Here's what you can do right now, today, wherever you live, to help preserve the equal protection of the laws for your fellow Americans - and ultimately, for yourself. 

Please do what you can.  Remember, marriage equality in California was stripped out of the law with a margin of only 52 to 48 percent.  So every vote counts.