A postcard on the way out of town.

I’m rolling out of town as you read this, off on what we used to call “assignment.” (Actually, we still call it that.)

But if you’re sensing this is yet another lame-ass phone-it-in, why…you’re right!

I do have one piece of bloggage, this Detroit Jalopnik roundup of what breaking news is like these days, at least as it pertains to the Detroit fireworks. Long story short: Someone set off a string of ‘crackers at the larger civic explosion-fest. Some spectators thought it was gunfire and set off a brief panic, which TV — always, TV — jumped into with both feet. What, we verify? is the new code of journalism, along with hey, nice tie.

I will post when I can for the remainder of the week, but I don’t know when or what that will be. If I’m not here, enjoy the rest of it. I’ll be back for sure on Monday.

Posted at 12:31 am in Detroit life, Housekeeping |
 

45 responses to “A postcard on the way out of town.”

  1. coozledad said on June 26, 2013 at 7:24 am

    Awww. Ain’t no butt-hurt like Texas butt-hurt. Why do so many Republicans look like Pat Robertson these days? Is it those remasculinizing spiritual retreats?

    http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/tx-lt-gov-accuses-abortion-bill-protesters-of

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  2. coozledad said on June 26, 2013 at 9:32 am

    Bunch of crooks. Ought to be bungholing each other in a jail:
    http://gawker.com/internet-catches-texas-senate-altering-timestamp-on-abo-584135789

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  3. adrianne said on June 26, 2013 at 10:14 am

    DOMA is history. Right on!

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  4. brian stouder said on June 26, 2013 at 10:18 am

    5-4; I’ll take it!

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  5. Deborah said on June 26, 2013 at 10:24 am

    Good for Kennedy.

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  6. brian stouder said on June 26, 2013 at 10:47 am

    Oh, the homophobes hereabouts huffed and harrumphed a little; one can only imagine the howling on the wingnut airwaves that will surely follow.

    I confess, that prospect makes me smile!

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  7. beb said on June 26, 2013 at 10:58 am

    In news today:
    DOMA is dead
    Nelson Mandela is alive
    Paul Deen Wept
    and Barnes and Noble expected to die.

    If B&N goes the way of Borders were are we to go to browse for books? And I can’t browse through books how will I know what books are out there, which books might be interesting? I don’t shop on-line for clothes and I won’t shop on-line for books.

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  8. brian stouder said on June 26, 2013 at 11:03 am

    I understood the B&N news as that they’re out of the Nook production business, and/or looking for a partner there.

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  9. Judybusy said on June 26, 2013 at 11:06 am

    And Prop 8 was sent back! What an historic day!

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  10. Deborah said on June 26, 2013 at 11:16 am

    Can someone explain the Prop 8 decision, I’m confused. Does ” sent back ” mean it could pass again in CA?

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  11. brian stouder said on June 26, 2013 at 11:20 am

    As I understand it, the lower court decision – which struck down Prop 8 – was appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, and the Supremes said that the people who appealed it had no standing –

    so the case was rejected and the lower court’s decision prevails

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  12. Scout said on June 26, 2013 at 11:22 am

    Ding dong DOMA is dead! Now I suppose my honey and I will need to move so we can have those federal bennies. Although, now that about 1/4 of the states have legalized equal marriage laws, it’s probably only a matter of time for the rest!

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  13. Charlotte said on June 26, 2013 at 11:26 am

    Brian — the problem with Borders and B&N is that they already killed off the independent bookstores (in Borders case by getting big and cannibalizing themselves). The other problem is that it’s enormously expensive to stock out a new bookstore — I looked into opening one here a few years ago. Great space, but we don’t have the foot traffic to support it. The figure I was quoted then by the industry types was about $50 a linear foot for inventory costs and then everyone has gotten so spoiled by Amazon using books as a loss leader that no one will pay full price for a book anymore. And since vast swathes of the country didn’t even have good independents to begin with, it means that yes, consumers like you are going to be SOL. It’s sad — I remember how exciting the big stores were back at the beginning, especially Borders before they sold it to KMart — when you could go in and they had *everything,* and in Borders case had really knowledgeable sales people.

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  14. brian stouder said on June 26, 2013 at 11:40 am

    I think we see the formative power of a few good clam-bakes, early on in life

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  15. Little Bird said on June 26, 2013 at 11:43 am

    Another reason to keep the dogs name would be solidarity with Wendy Davis!

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  16. brian stouder said on June 26, 2013 at 11:51 am

    …who was doggedly determined, and successful

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  17. Prospero said on June 26, 2013 at 11:56 am

    Serial arsonist for profit Darrel Issa sets his own pants on fire. I believe this bastard is just plain franking stupid.

    As offensive as DOMA was to anyone of at least average intelligence on the basis of common decency and fairness, it always pissed me off as a perfect example of the Frank Luntzian bullshit line GOPers use to confuse issues and confound dumbass voters. From whom or against what were the aholes sllegedly “protecting” marriage. It’s not what you say, it’s what people hear. And the GOP is positive proof you can fool most of the rubes most of the time. One more in a long line of GOPer exercises in lying their asses off, like “death panels” (how’d that work out for you Goober-nor Brewski? You killed a guy.) and the “death tax”, which is a marginal assessment on estates far bigger than 99% of Americans ever deal with. Maters of the Big Lie.

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  18. alex said on June 26, 2013 at 11:59 am

    Not to rain on the Pride Parade, but one of the shortcomings of today’s DOMA decision is that it says, essentially, that states have the right to define marriage any way they please and that the federal government has to honor those marriages conferred by the states. It’ll be a long time before this country’s most backward jurisdictions, including the one where I reside, will recognize my relationship.

    It’s still a great victory just the same. Looking forward to sharing my husband’s Air Force pension.

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  19. Prospero said on June 26, 2013 at 11:59 am

    I’d like to see LDS church lose its tax exempt status for spending $8million in CALI supporting Prop 8. It’s a bad day for Flat Earthers. And toodledoo to Scott Brown and the GOP MA Senate seat.

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  20. Prospero said on June 26, 2013 at 12:10 pm

    According to a Salon piece, Tejas GOPers tried to gerrymander Wendy Davis’ district out from under her, but were prevented by the Justice Department from getting away with it. Anne Richards is smiling in heaven. It appears that the Lt. Goober-nor acted illegally to claim that a vote had been taken, since the lege ceased to be in session at midnight.

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  21. Dexter said on June 26, 2013 at 12:17 pm

    I am so damn clumsy when I use tablets, notebooks and even laptops, but I keep trying. Now I am using my daughter’s Dell laptop.

    Alex, anything you can enlighten us with regarding this gay meningitis scare? At least in NYC, public health officials are warning anyone going near the Pride marches be vaccinated.

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  22. brian stouder said on June 26, 2013 at 12:24 pm

    I’d vote for Wendy Davis for President of the United States, as against anyone else I can think of, if the chance presents itself

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  23. Bitter Scribe said on June 26, 2013 at 12:26 pm

    The best part for me was Scalia’s whining:

    It is an assertion of judicial supremacy over the people’s Representatives in Congress and the Executive. It envisions a Supreme Court standing (or rather enthroned) at the apex of government, empowered to decide all constitutional questions, always and everywhere ‘primary’ in its role.

    Does this motherfucker ever listen to himself? Has he forgotten who single-handedly elected the most incompetent president in modern American history?

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  24. alex said on June 26, 2013 at 12:36 pm

    I read that there is a meningitis outbreak in New York, and that it was discovered that a lot of the people affected by it are gays who had met via some smartphone app that facilitates sexual hookups, but beyond that I don’t know much. Meningitis, of course, doesn’t require intimate contact to spread, so there is a public health threat when large numbers of people are ill with it.

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  25. Sherri said on June 26, 2013 at 12:40 pm

    Bitter, Scalia “originalism” theory means that the Constitutions means exactly what he wants it to mean and nothing more. Forget Bush v. Gore; try to resolve the majority’s VRA ruling yesterday with the minority’s DOMA dissent today in any kind of philosophical way other than “I don’t like those people.”

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  26. Prospero said on June 26, 2013 at 1:00 pm

    Scalia big whinge for a couple of decades was “activist liberal judges”. I can’t remember the last time he decried judicial activism, since he has been its major practitioner for the last 15 years or so. He should have been impeached for not recusing himself when the Cheney-Enron tea party guest list came before the court two weeks after he accompanied Dickless on their Elmer Fudd Daffy canned Duck hunt.

    Scribe @23: The most recent VRA extension vote was 99-zip in the Senate, with recalcitrant Teabanger bigots providing a mere 33 nays in the House. Seems like a clear indication of the will of the peoples’ representatives to me. Supreme Court justices are not supposed to be hypocritical sacks of horseshit.

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  27. Dorothy said on June 26, 2013 at 1:08 pm

    Charlotte I don’t disagree with what you said about independent bookstores, but I do have to chime in and say it’s not completely impossible. My niece is doing very well more than a year after her launch of Avid, a bookstore in Athens, GA. Who knows how long it’s going to last, but she’s holding her own and we couldn’t be prouder.

    And Lord knows I don’t miss a chance to advertise for Janet anytime the subject of bookstores comes up among us!

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  28. Prospero said on June 26, 2013 at 1:34 pm

    Dorothy, as I understand it, your niece did a lot of work upfront and joined the Athens downtown business community with a lot of promotional ideas and strong leadership. I have seen ads for collaboratively scheduled special events and contests that seem to boost many downtown businesses together. Smart marketing. The shop has apparently become a place to meet and greet. Athens has a history of independent bookstores (Hairy Hobbit, Old Black Dog) and a very strong University Press. I will be up in Athens weekends for football games this fall, and intend to visit Avid without fail. We used to live in that neighborhood. The Old Black Dog used to serve tea, gratis, in the pm, in somebody’s grandma’s Sterling tea service. It was wonderful. Hairy Hobbit was owned by a couple of gay women, who I knew well from tending bar, and was a fixture downtown going back to the early 70s, a very nice place to hang around.

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  29. Prospero said on June 26, 2013 at 1:50 pm

    Village Voice has a pretty thorough report on the NYC meningitis outbreak.

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  30. Dorothy said on June 26, 2013 at 2:21 pm

    Yes she did indeed do LOTS of advance work and planning before she opened her store. It is killing me not to be able to pop in and see the shop in person, but we’re hoping to get there perhaps later this year or next. My daughter has been there and said it’s absolutely charming. I can tell from the pictures and the frequent updates she does via social media that it’s a delightful place. Janet’s smart, funny and expresses herself so beautifully in print and in person. She writes frequently about her migraine disease as well.

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  31. Prospero said on June 26, 2013 at 3:09 pm

    Dorothy, Downtown Athens is a great place to shop. It used to be that we’d see everybody we knew in the week before Christmas. Then some developer built a large mall on the way out of town. The novelty has worn off the mall, and downtown is the main shopping destination again, as it should be. If you make it to Athens, make sure to hit the Taco Stand for Burritos. Made with freshly homemade whear tortillas. Really good.

    This is going to drive GOPers absolutely mental.

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  32. brian stouder said on June 26, 2013 at 3:23 pm

    Speaking of ‘going absolutely mental’, on the way to lunch I tuned to Uncle Rush, and he was in mid-rant about how the sacred and historical purpose of marriage is to have babies….

    and I wondered, how many wives has Uncle Rush had? Three? Four? And how many babies were produced in his various marriages?

    And then I laughed, and changed it back to Rock-104!

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  33. Prospero said on June 26, 2013 at 3:28 pm

    I believe we can all thank God that the answer is zero.

    I knew for sure there would be nitwits claiming that Paula Deen’s 1st Amendment rights had been infringed upon, but nobody can make such an asinine claim with the cretinous flair of Rush’s buttboy Glenn Beck, in an actual Brownshirt uni. What a fracking bozo.

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  34. Prospero said on June 26, 2013 at 3:36 pm

    Some cowardly shit threw a Molotov cocktail through the window of Wendy Davis’ campaign HQ during the last election in her district.

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  35. Mark P said on June 26, 2013 at 4:16 pm

    Prospero, Glenn Beck is a perfect example of how conservatives completely misunderstand the Constitution. Why, it’s almost as if they had never read it.

    And that cowardly shit was almost certainly a Republican. But I repeat myself.

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  36. coozledad said on June 26, 2013 at 5:04 pm

    What is that uniform anyway? I think there’s a can of bug spray and a Hefty bag involved in his clothing choice.

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  37. Deborah said on June 26, 2013 at 5:10 pm

    Today marks the first anniversary of us having a place in New Mexico. Little Bird has lived full time in Santa Fe for one whole year and I’ve been back and forth between here and Chicago during the year. We celebrated with a lunch at El Ferol on Canyon Road, had delicious tapas (it’s a Spanish place) I highly recommend it if you’re ever in Santa Fe.

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  38. alex said on June 26, 2013 at 5:56 pm

    Got stopped by a reporter from the local Fox affiliate as I was walking downtown after work a little while ago. He wanted to talk on camera about DOMA and Prop 8. I felt my chest and throat tighten up and demurred.

    It’s a joyous occasion, to be sure, but this state’s legislature is already gearing up for an amendment to enshrine bigotry in the state constitution.

    Unsure whether we can just go get a license in another state and start receiving our federal benefits or if we’ll have to move.

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  39. David C. said on June 26, 2013 at 6:12 pm

    I think marriages performed in other states will have to be recognized no matter what state you reside in. The entire law was deemed unconstitutional, therefore the portion that lets states not recognize is gone too. The full faith and credit clause of the Constitution kicks in and there isn’t a damned thing a state can do about it.

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  40. Prospero said on June 26, 2013 at 6:51 pm

    Congratulations, Deborah.

    As an Eagle Scout, I’m offended by Beck’s masquerading as a Scout. Shit for brains does seem to have that breathing-malathion syndrome that affected DeLay. He seems in that video to have dressed up as Georgie Jessel.

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  41. Prospero said on June 26, 2013 at 6:55 pm

    Article IV, Section 1 of the United States Constitution, known familiarly as the “Full Faith and Credit Clause”, addresses the duties that states within the United States have to respect the “public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state.” According to the Supreme Court, there is a difference between the credit owed to laws (i.e. legislative measures and common law) as compared to the credit owed to judgments.[1] Judgments are generally entitled to greater respect than laws, in other states.

    I can’t see how a state can refuse to acknowledge marriages performed in other states.

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  42. MarkH said on June 26, 2013 at 7:20 pm

    Thanks, Pros. I now know that my weapon and accompanying Wyoming concealed-carry permit is perfectly valid in downtown Chicago.

    Now, you and I both know that’s not true, just as what you infer in #41 is not true. Read the ruling. Section 2 of DOMA was not struck down, which allows the states to still define marriage as they see fit. The court took no position relating to article IV sec. 1, so that is a gray area at best. Here’s a quote from a Harvard law professor via NBC news on the ruling:

    “Both sides could “draw sustenance” from the DOMA ruling, but it wasn’t clear whether striking down the federal law necessarily meant that the justices would also end state same-sex marriage bans, said Michael Klarman, a Harvard Law School professor and author of “From the Closet to the Altar: Courts, Backlash, and the Struggle for Same-Sex Marriage.”

    “There’s just no way to tell and they very consciously wrote the opinion in such a way that it applies to DOMA but it doesn’t necessarily say that any other state has to go and marry same sex couples,” he said. “All the court is saying is that Congress can’t any longer have its own definition of marriage that excludes same-sex couples … Congress has to treat them (those in states where same-sex marriage is legal) as if they are any other married couple.”

    “There is just no way that one can definitively say whether this opinion would lead to same sex marriage in the states or wouldn’t,” he added. “But one can find a lot of ammunition within it that one could make the challenge at the state level as well.”

    So, congress is out of the marriage definition business. The states aren’t…yet.

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  43. Prospero said on June 26, 2013 at 7:34 pm

    Section 2 of DOMA, if that’s what it says, is as clearly unconstitutional as any of the rest of the idiotic law. No state can constitutionally claim that a marriage performed legally in another state is not a legally binding marriage contract. The Constitution is clear on that, and it’s not surpriseing that Scalito and their gang would try to finesse the Constitution instead of actually being “originalists” about it. Southern states tried desperately to hang on to laws against interracial marriages. How’d that work out for them. There is nothing ambiguous whatsoever about the language in Article IV, Section 1. Of course, there is nothing ambiguous about the language in Article III, Section 3, and that hasn’t prevented GOPer weasels from swearing fealty to King Weasel Grover Norquist.

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  44. Deborah said on June 26, 2013 at 8:10 pm

    I just spoke with my husband on the phone, he’s back in Chicago for work, he told me he knows Wendy Davis. He met her when he was working on the design of the Fort Worth Convention Center. He said she’s an impressive person, he had a lot of respect for her then and even more now.

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  45. Judybusy said on June 26, 2013 at 9:24 pm

    Alex, I’m so sorry, but I believe you’re right in your interpretation. FWIW, Minnesota performed awesome jujitsu on the homophobes who tried to amend our constitution. Not only did we defeat the amendment attempt, we passed marriage equality. I hope your local/state organizers take a cue from our campaign. It was a strategy that had never been tried before, and it worked. Check out MN United for All Families, or OutFront Minnesota. We had a lot of help from the folks who worked against Prop 8 in CA, and I’m certain there will be help for other states facing these challenges.

    On Sunday, I’m volunteering with OutFront to canvass Pride attendees about what’s important to them now. I will be sure to ask the organizer about this issue.

    The TX gov just announced another special sesison. I don’t know for certain what this means, but bad news, I’m assuming.

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