Over the years I've had people occasionally get my food orders wrong. Usually it's a no harm-no foul sort of deal. Of course sometimes you run into unreasonable aggressive insulting people who will not take responsibility for mistakes and/or who will not refund your money or make your order correctly. And on the flipside, although we say that the customer is always right, customers exist who go out of their way to cheat, insult, harass and even assault the people who make their food. People of all types can have quick tempers and resort to violence for no good reason. I don't know the truth of what took place at the China 1 restaurant at Mt. Clemens. I do know that language barriers combined with poor service mixed with impatient, angry or demanding customers can cause tempers to flare. The question that must be answered is who threw the first punch. Or more precisely, who bit whom first?
MT. CLEMENS, Mich. (WXYZ) - A woman was arrested for allegedly biting off part of a man's ear during a fight with the man at a Macomb County Chinese restaurant on Thursday night. According to deputies, they were called to China 1 Restaurant in Mt. Clemens around 9:40 p.m. When they arrived, they found a man with his ear partially bitten off and a woman with a large bump on her forehead.
Deputies say 24-year-old Jade Anderson walked into the restaurant complaining about her order. She was complaining to the owners, who are also the victims in the assault. Due to a language barrier, the victim's son translated what Anderson was saying to his parents. That's when Anderson allegedly pushed the son and threw her food onto the floor. She then started assaulting the female victim, and the male victim stepped in to protect his wife.
Former political prisoners read unpublished letters from South African freedom fighter and later President, Nelson Mandela. It's important to remember that no matter what life throws at you, you can't let it break you.
Unfortunately the world is full of people, who as the character Blade opined, are always trying to iceskate uphill. There is not really a way to reason with such people. They don't understand reason and/or don't respect it. All you can do with such folks is attempt to avoid them. And if you can't avoid them then you must use force to stop them from hurting you or yours.
This is ugly. But this is life. There is a saying that you don't mess with Texas. A would be carjacker named Rickey Wright found this out the hard way, when a mother, unable to convince Mr. Wright not to steal her SUV with her children inside, used a more persuasive argument that ended the confrontation.
DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) – A suspected carjacker is in the hospital after a North Texas woman shot him as he tried to take off in her SUV with her two children in the backseat.
The incident happened just after 10:00 p.m. Wednesday, when Dallas police say the woman stopped for gasoline at a Shell station on Camp Wisdom Road.
The mother, who does not want to be identified, left her children in the SUV while she ran inside the convenience store. Before she returned a man jumped into her vehicle and tried to drive away, but the woman saw what was happening and jumped in the back seat.
I really like most of Joe Tex's work. I also like the Ray Charles-Betty Carter version of the standard "Baby It's Cold Outside". Recently on Facebook a relative posted the Joe Tex song "I Gotcha!" which Joe Tex performed on Soul Train, well rather danced and lip synced, with Damita Jo. I love this song and had never had a problem with it. The character whom Joe Tex is singing about is horny and wants to get down to business. There's no doubt about that. But is he a threat? Is he a would be rapist? Some women I know said they found this song distasteful or even intimidating and offensive. I was surprised. I never saw it that way. But everyone has different perspectives and responses. There's no accounting for taste. There is no right or wrong when it comes to the music you like or do not like.
I always thought that the song "Baby It's Cold Outside", particularly as sung by Carter and Charles, was about two sophisticated adults who were doing the dance that almost every man and woman have done at some point in their life with someone they like. I didn't see any coercion or threat. Unlike with "I Gotcha" I was aware that some people thought that "Baby It's Cold Outside" was a misogynist's how-to guide for rape, but some of the people who think that also seem to be hostile to any hint of male heterosexuality so I didn't pay them too much mind.
In any event by today's lyrical standards in popular music both "I Gotcha" and "Baby It's Cold Outside" are quaint and damn near innocent bedtime lullabies. So it's difficult for me to see how anyone could see these songs as menacing or intimidating. For me that's a reach, but I could be wrong. I'm not a woman. So there's that. What's your call? Are these songs harmless ditties or sexist threats?
Blood Song
by Anthony Ryan
This older novel was the author's debut into a pretty crowded field and the first in a trilogy. I think it kind of stinks that so many publishers and authors shoehorn stories into a trilogy when so many of them would be just as well served by having one stand alone story. However, I do admit that this story left me wanting more, which I suppose is all a reader can ask. The story themes will be familiar to anyone who has read high fantasy; there's not too much that's new here. The book's enjoyment comes not from brand new ideas but in how the author weaves together some classic tropes and storylines.
The author sets the story in a world much like our own High Middle Ages. Countries that are fantastic versions of England, France, Wales, The Ottoman Empire, Songhai, and other Eurasian or West African nation states vie for economic and political primacy. Ryan uses a framing technique in which the person we believe to be the protagonist tells the story of his life to an enemy who will shortly it is believed, oversee his execution.
The protagonist is Vaelin Al Sorna, Sword of the Realm to King Janus of The United Realm, aka Darkblade, Young Hawk, and Hope Killer. Vaelin has been captured by his enemies in the Alpiran Empire and is going to be executed, or so everyone believes. Curious about the life of Vaelin and how he became one of the greatest warriors of the Sixth Order, the caste created to defend and expand the Faith, the Alpirian Imperial Chronicler decides to take down Vaelin's story. Vaelin's story starts when he is just ten years old and is abandoned by his father, the former Battle Lord to King Janus, at the gates of the Sixth Order castle.
Black Detroit: A People's History of Self-Determination
by Herb Boyd
Herb Boyd is a journalist and historian. This book is a sober overview of African-American history in Detroit from its founding to current day, a personal narrative (the author is a Detroit native), and an impassioned love letter to all those various Black people, men, women, and children, famous and anonymous, who made Detroit ground zero for Black resistance to racism in all of its forms from slavery to segregation and beyond.
Although the South was notorious and in some aspects unique in its racial segregation and state and individual terror utilized to enforce white supremacy, the North, including Michigan and Detroit, saw non-Blacks express just as much racial hostility towards Blacks. Blacks had to deal with housing segregation, public and private establishments that excluded Blacks, sundown towns or neighborhoods where Black presence was only barely tolerated during the day as domestic labor, police contempt for and violence against Blacks, and of course ubiquitous employment discrimination in every single trade or career.
Despite all of that or perhaps because of all of that Black Detroiters, their backs against the wall, had no choice but to come out swinging. Because of its proximity to Canada, Detroit was one of the key hubs of the Underground Railroad. Boyd examines this theme of resistance from antebellum days through the present day. I learned that the author is related to one of my high school classmates. That classmates's family was active in the movement during the sixties and seventies. Boyd details their tragic encounter with the Detroit Police STRESS unit which was notorious for harassing, beating and murdering Black citizens. It is indeed a small world.
Anthony Kennedy, who often served as a swing vote on what otherwise would have been a solidly right-wing Supreme Court, is retiring. President Trump will get to make a second nomination to the Supreme Court. Both Kennedy and Roberts have occasionally fallen short of doctrinaire right-wing positions, so expect that conservatives will pressure Trump to select a replacement who is someone more trusted to vote as conservatives might expect a conservative justice to vote. If Kennedy's replacement is in his or her forties or fifties then they could conceivably be on the Supreme Court for another thirty or forty years.
Democrats will make a fuss about this but right now they lack the muscle to stop it. The real shift in the court may come about if Trump is able to replace someone like Ginsburg or Sotomayor. It is a testament to how far the judiciary has shifted to the right that some liberals will be sad to see Kennedy depart.
WASHINGTON — Justice Anthony M. Kennedy announced on Wednesday that he would retire, setting the stage for a furious fight over the future direction of the Supreme Court. Justice Kennedy, 81, has long been the decisive vote in many closely divided cases. His retirement gives President Trump the opportunity to fundamentally change the course of the Supreme Court. A Trump appointee would very likely create a solid five-member conservative majority that could imperil abortion rights and expand gun rights. Justice Kennedy’s voting record was moderately conservative.
He wrote the majority opinion in Citizens United, which allowed unlimited campaign spending by corporations and unions, and he joined the majority in Bush v. Gore, which handed the 2000 presidential election to George W. Bush. He also voted with the court’s conservatives in cases on the Second Amendment and voting rights. But Justice Kennedy was the court’s leading champion of gay rights, and he joined the court’s liberals in cases on abortion, affirmative action and the death penalty.
