Birmingham Blues

Former Sen. Phil Gramm resigned from his position as co-chair of the McCain campaign today, a week after he called the US a “nation of whiners” and declared the current economic troubles a “mental recession”. He blamed Democrats, of course.

“It is clear to me that Democrats want to attack me rather than debate Senator McCain on important economic issues facing the country,” Gramm said. “That kind of distraction hurts not only Senator McCain’s ability to present concrete programs to deal with the country’s problems, it hurts the country. To end this distraction and get on with the real debate, I hereby step down as co-chair of the McCain campaign and join the growing number of rank-and-file McCain supporters.”

I guess it was just too hard to say, “Look, I said something really stupid.  I belittled people who are suffering real difficulties covering the ever-increasing costs of gasoline, utilities, food, and health care while seeing little to no growth in their paychecks.  I’m sorry.”

Oh well, it’s not like I was holding my breath.

I checked Breaking News at al.com this afternoon and saw the shocking and incredibly newsworthy report that Starbucks will be closing the store just down the street from us, as well as several others in the Birmingham area. 15YOD will be sad, but the people who own the local coffee and sandwich place across the way are likely thrilled.

Anyway. The typical breaking news item on al.com might garner one or two comments at most — unless it’s about Larry Langford, and then there will be one after another, some expressing rational concerns, some vehemently defending the mayor from the evil forces raging against him, and some just flat out racist. The Starbucks story is up to 39 comments at current count (leaving off two duplicates). Most of them are of the “Starbucks coffee is TEH SUCK” variety, and I’m right with them there. Can’t drink the stuff, although I love the chai lattes. However, I’ve always been impressed by the friendly, polite staff and quick service, so I don’t feel the need to express any hatred toward the company.

Not so greywool, who left this uplifting message:

I prefer a good cup of Maxwell House or Red Diamond brewed fresh at home and away from all the hippies.

Community coffee chickory blend is the best IMHO.

But until you’ve had a good pot of coffee cooked over an open fire, you haven’t really had a cup of coffee.

Starbucks didn’t serve coffee. They served drinks with drops or two of coffee in them. Mostly made up of sugary, milky, creamy, goo.

Glad they and their Hippie, Seattle based bunch are leaving.

Hopefully the west coast will soon be swallowed into the pacific and that beachfront property in Arizona will become reality.

Ah, al.com — the place to go to read manly men wishing death and destruction for those not like them. I think I’ll skip the coffee and have a drink instead.

Dick Cheney is coming back to town on August 1 to raise money for Jeff Sessions and other Republican congressional candidates. I note he’s going to a slightly snazzier venue this time (Shoal Creek rather than The Club), but he’s cut the asking price in half. Last time those luncheon tickets were $1,000 each, but this time you can see him for the bargain price of $500. Or $2,000 if you want to have your picture made with him.

Seriously? $2,000 for a picture with Cheney? Does he autograph it too? Well, okay, I might have my picture taken with Cheney if he paid me $2,000, but only if could turn around and donate it to Chase Change for Cheney.

The good folks at Left In Alabama have set up this ActBlue page to help counter Cheney’s efforts by raising money for Democratic candidates here in the state. It’s modeled on Burn Bush for Burner, which raised well over $100,000 for Washington state Congressional candidate Darcy Burner last year and is still going strong.

Let’s do the same.  Click here to donate.

I just filled out a survey from kiva, a charity I admire and support, and that got me thinking about something I’ve been half-intending to post about, so here goes. A while back, a friend of mine said a group she belongs to was going to collect pull-tabs from soft drink cans for the Ronald McDonald house. She said she’d heard that the pull tabs weigh more than the can. I said I’d heard that too, but when I got home I thought “that just can’t be true” so I looked it up, and it’s not.

But this where it gets complicated - there’s been an urban legend circulating for years that if you bring sacks of these tabs to the recycle center, the Reynolds people will use them to fund dialysis. Or something like that. You may have seen the emails. So, the Ronald McDonald people decided that if people were going to save the darn things anyway, they might as well get in on it, so now you can drop them in the lid of cute little houses, and the Ronald McDonald people get a little bit of cash, eventually.

There are many sites where this whole confused issue is discussed, but I found this post, and its comment thread, fascinating. There’s the whole issue of the McDonald Houses using the pull tab thing to “build goodwill” since even they have to admit that at $1.49 for 4,175 tabs, they’re not going to get rich off of it. Then there’s the lady staunchly defending her nine-year-old, who led his entire school in the effort to yield $38 for Ronald. Who can put a price on the value of teaching a child to give?! etc.

Okay, this is what I think. (You knew I’d be getting to that.) Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re a Joss Whedon fan in need of a musical fix, or even if you’re not, go watch Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, starring Neil Patrick Harris, Felicia Day, and Nathan Fillion. Acts I and II here, Act III coming on Saturday.

Yahoo News headline reporting on Obama’s June fundraising numbers:”Obama raises $52M in June, setting torrid new pace”.

Okay, I know we’re not supposed to blame the reporter for the headline, but it’s in the article too.

WASHINGTON - Though he’s raking in the cash so far, Barack Obama’s decision to forgo public funds for the fall campaign means he must keep up his torrid pace — a tall order that will tax his time, test his Internet support and require the help of Democratic donors who once wished for his defeat.

I associate the word “torrid” with romance novels, so it struck me as odd in this context. Although I suppose I could insert a joke about that cohort of Obama supporters who love him with such mindless devotion they will excuse him anything *, up to and including trashing the fourth amendment.

Anyway, I headed over to dictionary.com to check the definition of torrid, and here’s what popped up:

1. subject to parching or burning heat, esp. of the sun, as a geographical area: the torrid sands of the Sahara.
2. oppressively hot, parching, or burning, as climate, weather, or air.
3. ardent; passionate: a torrid love story.

So it looks like Obama will have to keep up a parching, burning, oppressively hot, and possibly ardent pace of fundraising. Well, it is summer.

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

****

* If the shoe doesn’t fit, don’t force it on with a shoehorn.

The Environmental Protection Agency published a study today warning Southern states to expect serious consequences from the ongoing effects of global warming. Gulf Coast states are most at risk.

…The Gulf Coast states, in particular, will be hit with more flooding and other problems from more frequent and intense storms and forest fires, according to the federal report. Other effects expected in the South include higher air pollution and a longer pollen season…

Commenters at al.com immediately showed their less than stellar reading comprehension by going on the attack against Al Gore and “bed wetting wackos”. Those are presumably the liberal, environment-lovin’ wackos of the Bush Administration’s EPA. I wasn’t aware they had hired Al Gore.

Read the rest of this entry »

Re: Del’s post below, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) and Patty Murray (D-WA) responded yesterday to the Bush administration’s proposed change in HHS rules that would redefine abortion and chip away (even more) at both Roe and Griswold.

Sens. Clinton and Murray said NO to the proposed policy in the strongest terms yesterday. Liss includes their letter to HHS Secretary Michael Levitt in her post. Here’s an excerpt:

…One of the most troubling aspects of the proposed rules is the overly-broad definition of “abortion.” This definition would allow health-care corporations or individuals to classify many common forms of contraception – including the birth control pill, emergency contraception and IUDs – “abortions” and therefore to refuse to provide contraception to women who need it.

As a consequence, these draft regulations could disrupt state laws securing women’s access to birth control. They could jeopardize federal programs like Medicaid and Title X that provide family-planning services to millions of women. They could even undermine state laws that ensure survivors of sexual assault and rape receive emergency contraception in hospital emergency rooms.

We strongly urge you to reconsider these regulations before they are released. We are extremely concerned by this proposal’s potential to affect millions of women’s reproductive health…

Read the rest of this entry »

Somebody leaked a DHHS rules proposal that would prohibit medical clinics receiving federal funding from discriminating against any provider who has a moral objection to offering abortion — including certain types of birth control. I actually plowed through most of it - you can read it here - but the NYT article is much more digestible.

This seems to mean that, among other things, states wouldn’t be able to enact laws requiring clinics to offer Plan B to rape victims.

I don’t think that this is the first step in a conspiracy to make birth control pills illegal across America and doom women to a Handmaid’s Tale existence as breeders in heterosexual bondage. Because, for one thing, I’m pretty sure that people who believe that birth control pills constitute a monthly abortion represent a very small percentage of the American population.

Maybe–and I hope this is true– the real problem is that the same people who reject contraceptives disproportionately represent health care providers for the poor. Might be time to write a check to Planned Parenthood.

As part of an effort to maintain a three-month operating reserve in the 2009 budget, the Birmingham City Council decided yesterday to give back $9 million in hush money discretionary funds allotted by the mayor .

The Birmingham City Council decided Sunday to make deep cuts in the city’s budget, including money that would give laptops to middle schoolers and $9 million in discretionary funding given to council members by the mayor.

They also agreed to hold spending for most boards and agencies at 2008 levels.

As a result, the city would retain three months of operating expenses, an estimated $105 million, in its reserve fund in the 2009 fiscal year. Council members also pledged to write up a policy that would require such savings in the future.

In last week’s “War on Dumb”, Kyle detailed the big hole in the mayor’s proposal:

Earlier this year, the Finance Department gave the council an analysis of its fund balance. That analysis said that it is the city’s stated policy to “maintain a reserve (fund balance) in the General Operating Fund equal to 15 percent of General Fund expenditures or 3 months of operating expenditures — whichever is higher.”

…Langford’s proposed operating budget is $428 million, a $100 million increase over last year. When you do the math, that means that the city should keep $107 million in its reserve fund. But Mayor Langford’s budget wasn’t going to do that.

The new taxes raised by Langford and the council has brought in almost $31 million that wasn’t spent this past year. These funds were supposed to go for new initiatives, including transit improvements, police and fire protection and scholarships. However, since the city did not spend the money in time, those funds rolled over into the 2008 fund balance, bringing the reserve fund to $119.4 million. That’s $12 million more than the $107 million the city needed to satisfy its policy, and the city should be free to appropriate that money as it sees fit.

However, $12 million wasn’t enough to fill the hole in Langford’s budget, so his staff dipped deeper into the reserve, $24 million deep. [emphasis mine]

Stunning, I know. Actually not, given Larry’s propensity to spend money he doesn’t have. I don’t know why the Council members chose to give back their slush funds, but I’d like to think they (finally) realized that money was nothing but a club to hold over their heads so Larry could get his way. Now perhaps we’ll see real, ongoing oversight and fiscal responsibility.

I can dream, can’t I?