Birmingham Blues

Catholic bishops accept Obama compromise, reject insulin

Del — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 13:28:49 +0000

In an abrupt tack from their previous position, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops announced today that they are willing to accept the “Hawaii Rule” compromise offered by the Obama administration, which will shift the cost of contraceptive coverage to insurance companies. However, they are now opposed to being forced to cover the cost of insulin, an artificial hormone used in the treatment of diabetes.

“The human body is wondrously designed by God to regulate all its internal systems,” stated Michael O’Toole, Bishop of Springfield. “In his encyclical Periculum Medicinae, the Holy Father clearly instructs us that interference in God’s holy creation is a grave error.” The bishops are also opposed to coverage of other artifical hormones, such as thyroid hormone, currently used by millions of Americans to treat underactive thyroid glands. O’Toole added that using such hormones is a “matter of conscience” for Catholics, but that the Church could not be forced to be involved in something so morally repugnant.

Reaction to this declaration was mixed. “Surveys show that millions of Catholic Americans are diabetic and need insulin,” said Sen. Spencer Bronstein (D-AL). “For the bishops to take this position is simply hypocritical. Whether a person uses insulin or not should be between them and their doctor.”

Others disagreed. “You know, if you don’t want to get diabetes, don’t shove a lot of sugar in your face,” said Sharon Mackenzie, a local business owner. “It’s pretty simple. Why should the Catholics have to pay for something they don’t believe in? If you want insulin, buy it yourself.”

Speculation was rampant on the Beltway about how the administration will respond to this latest move on the part of the bishops. “Obama can’t be seen as anti-religion,” predicted one aide, who asked to remain anonymous. “He’ll have to find a way to compromise on this.”

Others were not so sure. “Actually, the longer this goes on, the worse it makes the Republicans look,” said political analyst Bruce Bowes. “Americans are used to insulin, it’s been part of the landscape for a while now. Also, there are many diabetics whose condition isn’t treatable by diet alone. What are those people supposed to do?”

Re: Jolly old elf

Del — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 23:09:49 +0000

We traveled through Montgomery this weekend, and stopped at a lovely little coffeeshop called Cafe Louisa in Cloverdale. While enjoying hot tea and a bagel with smoked salmon, I read this article in the Montgomery Advertiser. It seems that, as if today’s parents don’t have enough to worry about, now those smarty-pants kids are using technology to find out whether Santa is for real. To begin with, there are those commercials advertising robo-Santa calls, emails from Santa, and the like, which one station apparently aired during the Christmas parade (hey, what better time?) But this is the one that made me fire up Facebook:

Kyla Kelim of Alabama, caught her oldest, a 9-year-old boy, on her iPad playing Santa sleuth a week or so ago.”We’re so close with him this year, not believing,” she said. “He was Googling ‘santa,’ and I saw him type the word ‘myth’ when I grabbed it and said no electronics. I’m constantly having to follow my phone and iPad and stuff around right now. We’re trying not to debunk Santa for our 7-year-old.”

Honey, please. To quote my Facebook status: “If your kid can type “Santa” and “myth” into Google, it’s already over.” And as far as the seven-year-old goes, is there some reason you can’t enlist the elder one’s help in “keeping the magic alive”? Cause if your kid relishes destroying joy for his younger sibling, you got a problem even St. Nick may not be able to fix.

I have to admit, I am just not a Santa fan. As soon as the kiddos leave the stage of big-eyed enchantment with any dude in a white beard (somewhere around three) it’s time for straight dealing, as far as I’m concerned. I will never forget a certain almost-five-year-old loftily informing me that it was just fine if we didn’t get her a Barbie car, because she would just ask Santa and he would bring it. (In that moment, I got a taste of what some of my divorced friends’ lives must be like.)

Not to go all Ayn Rand here, but even if a kid isn’t making up a ridiculously long and inappropriate list for Santa—even if, as in those heartwarming stories that appear this time of year, he’s just asking for “a warm Coat and maybe 1 for my baby sister to”—there’s something a little weird about expecting gifts to magically appear under the tree. If they do show up, no need to thank Mom and Dad, who had nothing to do with it. And if they don’t, well…what does that mean, exactly? Did Santa forget you? Were ya just not good enough? Is it true what that kid at school said, that Santa only goes to rich kids’ houses?

And of course, there’s the idea, apparently implanted by that one damned song, that Santa is watching children all the time. ALL THE TIME. I distinctly remember lying down for a nap one December afternoon as a tiny thing and being absolutely effing creeped out. Where would he be watching from? The window on the driveway side of the house, maybe? Sure, he wasn’t there now, but as soon as I fell asleep…yep, Stalker Santa, that was who haunted my sugarplum dreams.

I don’t even want to get into the theological questions here, but it’s sort of obligatory. So many people are still trying to please a Santa God. Yes, there are many whose stockings are full of blessings…but I know a woman who tortured herself for months when her son was diagnosed with cancer, trying to identify her sin or sins that had caused this particular load of ashes and switches to be visited on her child.

So, Kyla Kelim, why not purchase this book, also mentioned in the article? It will help you “share the secret without destroying the wonder.” Because “when you move from the side of believing to the side of becoming, you move from being on the side of the mystery to being a part of the magic.” And who wouldn’t rather be part of the magic, huh? Isn’t that better than asking for stuff? Isn’t that what that guy talked about? You know, what’s-his-name. That other guy with the beard.

Hoping for a magical holiday for all the Blues readers!

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, and Bail Out the Lego Criminal

Del — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 23:19:08 +0000

Okay, so I don’t go to church, and I don’t get all bowed up and write emails to management when a store clerk wishes me Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas. For me, the ever-darkening days herald only one long ordeal of deplorable excess, demands on both purse and calendar, and in general More Work for Mother. But even we hardened Scrooges still experience frissons, however fleeting, of “the Christmas Spirit.” I myself usually manage ten or fifteen minutes’ worth every year — hardly redemptive, but better than nothing.

So Saturday afternoon, I plunged into the fully decorated Galleria Riverchase Mall, determined to get my fix. There were lighted trees, kiosks full of aromatherapy pillows and Thomas Kinkade calendars, and a ding-dinging miniature train that darted in and out of the uncooperative, glassy-eyed shoppers without mowing down a single one. I drank a bubble tea, I smiled at pink-cheeked children, but still. Nothing. After a joyless hour or so, I ducked into the Lego store as a last resort.

It’s so cheerful in there, so bright, so busy. I forced myself to wallow in sentimental visions of the big time our kids, now college-aged, would once have had with the hands-on station that allows you to build 3 tiny Lego people for $9.99, but still—no Spirit. Suddenly, I remembered that Lego Advent calendar we’d had one year. Wow, maybe I could buy an Advent calendar this year! It’ll be like old times! Does Lego even still make Advent calendars? Gosh, are they all sold out? I hope not!

The calendar I remember was a lot like this one (and just think, if we hadn’t opened it it’d be worth ninety bucks now). Okay, not a Nativity scene – I think Playmobil had one of those—but definitely seasonal. So imagine my dismay when, finally spotting the word Advent, I picked up this. Lego seems to have turned its Advent calendar into a re-packaged “City” buildng set, and the 2011 offering is a police station, with a wee holding cell for those Lego people who will be spending the holiday away from their loved ones. To make it officially a holiday-themed item, they’ve thrown in Santa (spy the jolly old elf there, offering a bone to a drug-sniffing K-9 who is clearly awaiting the command to tear Santa’s throat out) and a Christmas tree, which one of the LEO’s is pausing in his grim pursuit of a gift-stealing criminal to decorate. And is the dude on that snowmobile drunk, or what?

Okay, I get it, I really do. And I appreciate Lego’s Danish thrift. If you’re going to pay twenty or thirty bucks for a pile of plastic, why not have the end result be something the kids can add to their (no doubt vast and ever-growing) “City” collection, with hours of role-play fun yet to come? And it can’t be the candy store or the bakery every year. The City needs a courthouse, and a drug rehab clinic, and yes, a police station. But—I don’t know. Maybe I’ve been watching too many pepper-spray videos lately, but there was something deeply unsettling about standing in that crowded, brightly lit shrine to childhood, holding a box picturing an angry plastic cop aiming a vicious kick at a swarthy, unshaven nogoodnik, directly under the banner “Advent Calendar.”

Advent, with the special hymns, and the candle-lit wreath, and those self-conscious purple-cause-it’s-not-Christmas-yet bows. A season of spiritual preparation for the coming of the Christ-Child, the Messiah. Boy, Lego, if anything ever should have been called a “Holiday Calendar,” it’s this thing.

Do What Now?

Kathy — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 19:41:28 +0000

The Associated Press is reporting that two of three people arrested in a Vermont meth lab bust have been sent to live with their fathers in Alabama while they await trial. I read the headline and thought, okay, it might make sense to send teenagers home rather than holding them for a long period of time.

Then I read the story. If these two are teenagers, it’s only of the overgrown variety. One is 30 and the other 33. Isn’t it a little late (not to mention cruel and unusual) to force their parents to supervise them? What are the dads supposed to do if they misbehave, ground them?

I bet Christmas will be a blast. Just hope it isn’t a literal one.

Brownback: A No Free Speech Zone

Kathy — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 18:10:02 +0000

Geez, how thin-skinned can you get? I’d think Gov. Sam Brownback’s staff would have better things to do than trolling Twitter looking for disparaging comments about their boss. Well, okay, actually I can understand them monitoring the word on the street, uh, tweet. But reporting a high school student to the principal because she said this? Really?

Just made mean comments at gov brownback and told him he sucked, in person #heblowsalot

The principal is insisting that high school student Emma Sullivan, who authored the tweet, write letters of apology to pretty much everyone in the western world.

Here’s the thing. Aside from that pesky First Amendment, which protects political speech, I find it extremely unlikely that this young woman actually said, “You suck,” to Brownback’s face. Had she done so, there would have been great uproar at the time. Twitter, with its 140-character limit, lends itself to shorthand. She didn’t have space to elaborate on the political points she made in opposition to Brownback’s policies, so she boiled them down to “told him he sucked”.

Here’s the other thing. Where were Brownback’s staffers when Rush Limbaugh referred to our African-American First Lady as “uppity”, a term fraught with racist and sexist history? Did they miss that one in their rush (ha) to find high school students saying rude things online about the governor?

See, I don’t really think it’s the responsibility of Brownback’s staffers to call out Limbaugh (although the silence from Republican leaders is just embarrassing), but they don’t have any business making a big deal out of a tweet sent by someone who doesn’t have a nationally syndicated radio show either.

Yeah, the language was rude. But Republicans getting their panties in a bunch about it is pretty damn hypocritical when their national spokesperson spews racism, sexism and homophobia on a daily basis to an audience of millions.

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Of course, if Republican leaders did dare to speak out about Limbaugh, they also would find themselves in the principal’s office, forced to apologize for exercising their First Amendment rights.

via Think Progress

It can’t be wrong, if it’s for Our Precious Children™

Del — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 16:30:36 +0000

Because they are our Future. Anyway, this was buried on page 4C, under the weather forecast. Judge Tracy McCooey has decided that the phone company will just have to keep on collecting a fee from all of its customers in order to pay for telephone service aiding the deaf and blind. The only difference is, now that money will go not to telephone service for the deaf & blind—their equipment is all paid up, thanks to careful management—but to the education fund. And this makes good sense, because the education fund sure needs that money! So just shut up, okay?

Says Jay Love (R-Montgomery), who sponsored the brilliant bill transferring the money: “I certainly felt like when we passed that bill that it would withstand any legal challenge, and I’m glad the judge agreed.” Uh-huh. I can’t imagine why the PSC even sued.

The possibilities here are limited only by the human imagination, guys. How about…a fee added to all grocery bills, to pay for those electric wheelchair carts for the disabled—except we’ll use it to pay for court clerks. Or a energy conservation study fee added to your electric bill—hey, that could pay for prison expansion! This is going to revolutionize taxation in Alabama, already the lowest-taxed state in the country. With any luck, we can put off actually addressing our financial shortfall and developing a sensible, fair tax system to deal with it…well, maybe forever.

Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice Launches Campaign Against HB 56 TODAY, November 21st

Kathy — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 13:18:03 +0000

From Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice:

The Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice will kick off the campaign against HB 56 at 2:00 PM Central Time TODAY with a news conference in advance of an Ad Hoc Congressional Hearing being held at the Council Chambers on the 3^rdFloor of Birmingham City Hall. Present will be a number of key members of Congress, including immigration reform champion, Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-IL), who will listen to stories of those who have been affected by the law. Other members of Congress in attendance are as follows:

Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-IL), Congressional Hispanic Caucus Immigration Task Force Chair;
Rep. Terri A. Sewell (D-AL);
Rep. Joe Baca (D-CA);
Rep. Yvette D. Clarke (D-NY), Secretary of the Congressional Black Caucus;
Rep. Charlie Gonzalez (D-TX), Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair;
Rep. Al Green (D-TX);
Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), Congressional Progressive Caucus Co-Chair;
Rep. Shelia Jackson Lee (D-TX);
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Immigration Subcommittee Ranking Democrat;
Rep. Grace Napolitano (D-CA); and
Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-TX)

The members of Congress will hear from a number of people in the community who have witnessed the adverse effects of the law. On panel one, members of Congress will hear from Sheriff Mike Hale, Jefferson County; Dr. Craig Witherspoon, Superintendent Birmingham City Schools; Mary Bauer, Southern Poverty Law Center Attorney; and Mayor William Bell, Birmingham.

Panel two will consist of testimony from Jose Antonio Castro, La Jefa Radio; Y.J., 17 year old student; Angie Baylon, ESL Teacher Woodlawn and Huffman High School; Alma, concerned parent; Trini, undocumented immigrant from Tuscaloosa; Evangelina Limon, an Alabama business owner; and Francisco Garcia, Alabama Business Owner.

Later in the evening, from 7pm to 9 pm, members of Congress will attend a rally at the 16^th Street Baptist Church in Birmignham, Alabama (there’s a map here, in case you don’t know where it is). The event will officially mark the launch “One Family, One Alabama” Campaign to Repeal HB 56.

Eleven members of Congress, including Rep. Terri Sewell (D-AL), along with civil rights leaders from around the country, will speak to express the nation’s solidarity with the people of Alabama. State Senator Billy Beasley, sponsor of the proposed bill to repeal HB56, will also speak, along with people whose lives have been damaged by the law.

Also slotted to speak at the event are Zayne Smith, Grassroots leader at ACIJ;Wade Henderson, National Conference on Civil and Human Rights; Mitch Ackerman, SEIU; Hillary Shelton, NAACP, among others. The speakers will address thousands of Alabamians who will gather to challenge Alabama’s state lawmakers to repeal House Bill 56, the nation’s most vicious immigration reform law.

You can check out the full schedule — complete with all the speakers — here. There’ll be more on the events tomorrow. Keep checking back on our page for updates throughout the day, or follow us on twitter @ALimmigrant – we’ll be live-tweeting, using the hashtag #CrisisAL. Stay tuned!

“Occupy Mobile member arrested”

Del — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 19:21:49 +0000

That headline makes it sound like he was doing something baaaad, right? Like maybe disrupting the peace, or defecating in public, or something. But no. He was going through security down at Gov’t Plaza, in order to file paperwork to appear before the city council.

As the group attempted to pass through the security checkpoint in front of the elevators, the security officer said that only two could go up at a time, Hapkmeyer said.

When Henderson asked why not, the officer told him to “shut up and stop asking him questions,” Hapkmeyer said. When Henderson calmly asked again, the officer arrested him, Hapkmeyer said.

Granted, this is only one side’s version of the story – the chief of court police didn’t respond to his voice mail. But the video the kids took of the arrest itself doesn’t make it look like Henderson was out of control at any point.I’m sure we’ll hear more on this soon.

There are nine pages and counting of comments on al.com. It’s very cheering to see a good number of people saying that although they do not support OWS, they do support free speech, and it sounds like the officer was out of line; but of course there are the usual cranks and bullies babbling about “Barry Soetoro” and insisting that the protestors are all lazy hippies. “nothingbutrecoil,” who claims to be a cop, seemed disturbingly eager to pepperspray him some protestors if they failed to “dispurse.” However, I found this excerpt, from one of “kindablondie”‘s many comments, even more chilling. The topic was whether or not Henderson should have simply accepted the officer’s directive that only two of them could go up:

If an officer of the law tells me something I must obey, then I’ll do just that.

Really? If an officer shows up at your work one day and says you cannot enter, if an officer tells you a hundred dollars out of your bank account has been confiscated, if an officer says your neighborhood is under curfew and you are not permitted to leave your home, you’re not going to ask why? You’re simply going to touch your cap and obey?

This was not a traffic stop; Henderson was not being asked to get out of his car. It was a government building, and he was going through security in order to express his views to the city council. I think most people would want to know why they were being denied access to their rights as a citizen.

I don’t have to recite grammar school history for us all to recall that our country was founded by people who asked “why.” And I don’t have to recite high school history for us to recall what can happen when ordinary people are all too ready to obey “officers of the law” without question.

Unintended Consequences, My Aunt Fanny

Kathy — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 18:45:32 +0000

Apparently Alabama Republican lawmakers have heard from enough angry constituents that they’re now open to revamping the state’s punitive, stupid immigration law:

“I had a military guy who came back from Afghanistan and went to get him a tag for a new truck and he couldn’t, he needed to show his birth certificate,” said State Senator Gerald Dial, who voted for the law but said he would not have if he had known of some of its “unintended consequences.”

Gee, Gerald. Maybe you should have read it first. When you passed a law that makes it a felony for an undocumented person to transact business with any government entity, what did you think would happen?

HB56 needs to be repealed, and the official repeal campaign kicks off Monday, 7 PM, at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Come out to show your support!

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More information here: Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice website and Facebook event.

Spencer Bachus: Let the Fluffing Begin

Kathy — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 21:13:07 +0000

Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL) has made quite a splash in the news recently, as his insider trading was exposed for the world to see. But one would never know that reading Mary Orndorff’s piece for the Birmingham News, posted just now at al.com. Nope, it’s all about Bachus agreeing with ~~everyone in the county~~ Jefferson County commissioners who want to get rid of the sewer system’s $1 million court-appointed receiver. His rationale? The receiver represents the creditors, not the people. Gee, ya think?

“I’d like him probably out of the picture,” Bachus said in an interview on Capitol Hill. “The receiver represents the creditors, not the people of Jefferson County.”

Looks like inside-trader “the regulators are there to serve the banks” Bachus is sucking up to divert attention away from his recent troubles, and Ms. Orndorff (or perhaps her editor) is only too ready to help by omitting any mention of them. Here’s a clue, Spencer: it’s not working.

“I’d like him definitely out of the picture,” constituents said in an interview in Alabama. “Bachus represents his own bottom line, not the people of the 6th District.”

There, fixed that for you.