Busted!

Here's the story!

Sunday Focus: The South Rises Against Obamacare

     Obamacare is rolling forward, with various deadlines arriving and approaching.
    But an AP story this morning details the continued opposition from the states of the old Confederacy, a kind of simmering medical civil war against widening Medicaid in the part of the country that needs it most. Some of the opposition is surely political.

"It is good politics to oppose the black guy in the White House right now..."
                                                                                  (A S.C. lawmaker)

     The AP story doesn't mention Alabama Governor Robert Bentley, a doctor, but he's also insisting this state will stand firm in refusing to provide the expanded insurance for the poor. His argument seems to be mostly economic, even thought he Feds would pay for the majority of the expansion in the initial years.
     I've wondered if Bentley's opposition is formed because of, or in spite of, his medical degree. He built the largest dermatology practice in Tuscaloosa and then sold it. He's told me he never turned down a patient who could not afford to pay, though he also did not have a huge sign outside his practice announcing that policy either.

  
      Republicans pledged they would undo Obamacare when they won the White House and The Senate in the last election. With that goal unmet, the most GOP of the states continue their opposition.

[UPDATE: An AP story about the marketing of Obamacare by the Administration]

Carnival Cruise Lines

Reports on multiple news outlets point out Carnival pays less than 2% tax, yet depends on the U.S. Coast Guard to save it's ships when things go wrong, which they certainly have in abundance recently.

   Even the most dramatic of the cruise line problems...the sinking of the Costa Concordia, is a Carnival event. It owns the ship. And Carnival made $5.3 Billion last year. The Coast Guard spent about 3/4 of a Million dollars taking care of the broken Triumph the ship eventually towed to Mobile's empty cruise ship terminal.

The Baddest Snake of All

You may know I'm not fond of snakes.
 I presume all are deadly and out to kill me given the chance.

Here's a short National Geographic report about one of the deadliest snakes on the planet, and the

creature that managed to make the serpent dinner for its young. I DO wonder though who took the underwater video!

Dolphincide

     It is continuing in the gulf...National Geographic has an update on the apparent attacks on the mammals by the two legged mammals known as man.

Most & Least Religious Metros in US?

The 2nd Most Religious Metro Area in the U.S. is.....

Montgomery, Alabama.

  And note that 3 of the top 5 are in Alabama.
   But if that's the case, then why does Alabama have among the country's highest infant mortality rates,  sexually transmitted disease rates, drug and alcohol abuse rates...etc etc.

And the LEAST religious metros??

Read the Gallup poll with a list of all of the metros here.

All in a Morning's Work...

Heather Vaclav and Terran Kirksey get Yoga instruction from Corena Unpingco

     I know, I know, how come I'm not in there doing the downward dog or something? Well, somebody had to take the pictures! Thanks to Corena from MJ Yoga for coming by on Alabama News Network this morning!

Aiportmess

    

Recommended reading...John Archibald's column in The Birmingham News.
         Storm clouds over the Birmingham Airport. Racism and a willingness to accept political and self-serving decision are hallmarks of the recent accident.

Good Day!

Pleading my case in the Ala. Supreme Ct.

Hi Visitors,
     I'm always looking for ways to expand the reach of my website, so allow me to enlist your help please?
     If you come here now and then, or frequently, please invite your friends to visit?
     The easiest link to use is www.TimLennox.com

Thank You!

Tim

About Your Boat

     If it is 79 feet in length or longer, and neither military nor recreational, the EPA is going to restrict some of your activities near the U.S. Coastline. 
     It's all in the interest of preventing invasive species of fish, animal and plant from invading the U.S. environment.
     Perhaps the most famous of those invaders did NOT sneak in by ship. Kudzu was brought in intentionally to help hold the soil in the South. It's still doing that, and providing a lifetime of careers for Roundup salesmen.
     Another, a grass that is contributing to fires and ruining hundreds of thousands of acres across the South is cogon grass. It DID hitch a ride in the early part of the 1900's and got a foothold in Alabama and other Gulf Coast States. Now it's spreading northward.

The Termites Did It!

     Scientists believe they have determined the source of these mysterious rings in the desert in Africa. Read about it in National Geographic.

Good Morning Curiosity

     The Mars rover has been in sleep mode, more or less, while the earth based controllers worked on some software problems. Now NASA reports he (she?) is back and exploring again.

Hanging around

     Just seven shopping months left till Halloween!
     The folks from The Montgomery Zoo came by this week with a bat...they're promoting Zoo weekend on April 6 & 7.

A batty visitor to Alabama News Network

Jamie Langley talks with the zoo guests, keeping her distance from the bats.

The rich are DIFFERENT...

  So finds a study of wealthy Americans. It says they have more money...and more time...to be involved in politics.
     Also

•       They are less likely to support spending for public education.
•      They are less likey to support spending for National Health Insurance.
•      They have access to elected officials that poorer folks would never experience. 

Well! How Well?

Top of The RSA Tower self portrait. 2012

     What town in your state has the best well-being? Gallup knows. At least they have done the polling and crunched the numbers for a massive searchable data base.
     Montgomery, Alabama, scores slightly below the national average of 66.7
Check out your town's well-being here. Just select a state and metropolitan area.

No eggs

Easter Egg Hunt in North Alabama
      An elementary school in Madison, Alabama, has taken a step that has even the Washington Times

shouting.
      Heritage Elementary School is removing reference to "Easter" from the traditional egg hunts and bunny games common this time of year.   The Times quotes one parent as saying:

“I don’t get upset about too many things, but this upsets me. What is this world coming to? I am a Christian and proud to announce it. But even non-believers enjoy a good egg hunt. Kids need to enjoy being kids.”

 
 

25% of Hale County Working Adults are on Disability

Alabama\s Black Belt is mostly in the 7th District.

     NPR's Planet Money team focuses on Hale County, in Alabama's poor Black Belt region.
They report 1 in 4 working age adults in the county is on disability.
     With the miserable health stats there, I'm surprised they are surprised.

     Hale, and the other counties that make up the region named for the rich black soil, are the poorest counties in a poor state.

     But the report also says fraud contributes to the high rate of people receiving disability checks each month. Banks stay open late on check day.

SCOTUS on Marriage

    Th U.S. Supreme Court will begin hearing two key same-sex marriage cases tomorrow.
     The approval rate for same-sex marriage has increased greatly over the past few years, but vast differences exist by regions of the country:

Here's the full PEW report.

MMMM # 370 -- Back in the day Civil Rights Coverage

TIME magazine has republished an article that was part of its coverage of the Selma-to-Montgomery March in 1965, including this amazing photo:

     The article includes criticism of ministers who took part in the march. The writers falls back on that old  journalistic trick of getting someone else to speak the invectives, and then quoting them, but sometimes they eliminated the middleman:

In their overzealousness, some of the ministers seemed to have left their good common sense back home with their toothbrushes.

      There has been an effort to rehabilitate George Wallace's reputation in recent years. His son has written a book to emphasize his Dad's late-in-life conversion. But the TIME reporting brings back the rhetoric of those days:

"....the proposed march, he (Wallace) declared, was Communist-inspired, abetted by a “collectivist press,” by “propagandists masquerading as newsmen.” He delivered himself of a withering blast against his old Alabama University friend, Judge Johnson, calling him a man who is “hypocritically wearing the robes” of a judge while “presiding over a mock court,” one who “prostitutes our law in favor of mob rule.”

     Just as the men and women who took part in the march are dying off, so are the reporters who quite literally walked the walk to the capitol that year.
 

[ALSO: National Geographic has produced an interesting report on old predictions about the future of newspapers. A great read, whether on your tablet, in the actual printed NG magazine, or in the imagined 1938 device to the right, which printed your newspaper via radio at home.]

[The Monday Morning Media Memo is a regular feature of TimLennox.com]

Midnight Encounter

     I heard the emergency crews rushing to this accident in Montgomery around Midnight Saturday and managed to get these stills. A police information officer says the person on the bike was apparently not seriously injured because their department had not been notified about it. Drive carefully!

Closed Meeting

     An investigation is underway into the death of a 10 year old boy at the Birmingham Airport, killed when a sign displaying flight information fell on him and his family. His mother and some siblings are hospitalized.    
    The Airport authority held an emergency meeting yesterday with the contractor who affixed the sign to the wall, hours after the event. They used an exception in the open meetings law as an excuse to close the meeting to the public. AL.com reports:

Airport board attorney Kem Marks said the meeting was closed under an Alabama Open Meetings Act exception for issues pertaining to "security plans and measures." 

Brasfield & Gorrie representatives were there because of their knowledge of the terminal's construction, Marks said.

The Alabama Open Meetings Act states closed sessions are allowed to discuss "security plans, procedures, (and) assessments," for what federal law calls "critical infrastructure." The law also states owners and operators of the critical infrastructure to be present in closed session.

There is no security issue here.
It's just convenient not to have people inside.
The people paid for the work
The people will have to pay for a settlement with the poor family.
The people need to know what was said in that meeting. 

Yes, have some second thoughts.

 

 

If you are considering spending $150 this "table and stools", and you are going to put it where people can actually see it, you

 

a) have too much money, and

b) have lost your mind.

 

Gnomes are not far behind.

 

Behind The Scenes

     Here's what your friendly fast-food worker is really saying when he or she greets you.
     Someone left their script turned toward customers. Notice there is a "friendly greeting" and a "combo". Maybe the grumpy greeting is #3?

Ouch...

     First sentence of a Huffington Post story:

If you're in a state where cousins can legally marry each other, but home brewers are forbidden to practice their craft, you must be in Alabama.

    Not that Alabama home brewers haven't been trying to get the legislature to approve home brewing. There are local commercial brewers in lots of towns, but if Joe Six-Pack (perhaps the first time that nickname has been truly appropriate) wants to brew some as a hobby at home...he's out of luck.

Montgomery, 1880's

     And "craft beer" is even embraced by the city of Montgomery. The just ended Jubilee City Fest event is being replaced with a combination BeerFest and Concert at the riverfront this year. (Although the event is not new there's no schedule on the city's Parks Department website yet.)
    

Dothan, Tuscaloosa ATC Towers Closing

The Montgomery Tower. NOT on the list, so far.

     The FAA has released a list of towers that will close in April because mandatory budget cuts leave it without the funds to pay the contract employees who operate them.
     In all 149 towers will be shut down, starting on April 7th and ending four weeks later.
    The communities are permitted to come up with the local funds needed to continue the operation.

And Cats too...kill 'em!

.....so suggests a writer in the bird-loving Audobon Magazine.
   Another National Geographic Link this evening....interesting story! The cat people against the bird people and vise versa. Should feral ("free range") cats be killed with a common human pain reliever?

Doggy Joy

Brandy, my 1st, from the Bhm Humane Society. What is she saying?

     An article in the journal Behavioral Processes says humans are pretty good at reading a dog's expression...and oddly enough, people who do not own dogs are better at it than dog owners, though the researchers can't explain why.
    


There's a much more easy-read version of the story in Smithsonian Magazine. Read it here.

2 Birmingham Students Seek Change

     They've begun a change.org petition calling on the state legislature to change state law that requires anti-gay teaching in public schools.
     Specifically, the law that requires teachers to teach that being gay is both illegal and not accepted by the general public in Alabama.
     The state's only openly gay legislator---Rep. Patricia Todd (D-Birmingham)--- has introduced a bill making that change, and the students petition calls on legislators to pass it.
     The petition had almost 79,000 signatures as of early this afternoon.

Not Even Close! U.S.A.!

They're not sheep! They just want to move to U.S. for opportunity!

     More people  around the globe want to move to the U.S. than to any other country. So finds a Gallup report out today. And opportunity is the reason.

Kids and the medicine cabinet.

     I've written about the deaths of three children who would have been my uncle and aunts had they not died under some mysterious circumstances in 1921.
     When I was growing up, I was told they had gotten into a medicine cabinet and died from taking some kind of medicines. While I'm not sure that's what really happened, it turns out that today's kids don't get poisoned by going to the medicine cabinet. They go to Mom's or Grandmother's purse...or take med left laying around.

How Healthy is YOUR County?

     A yearly analysis of health statistics on the County level is out today, and some of the stats are eye-opening.
     In Alabama, for example, the wealthiest county is Shelby, a Birmingham bedroom community. Lowndes, in the state's "Black Belt" is at the bottom of the rankings.

Shelby County, Alabama                       Lowndes County, Alabama

Adult obesity:    28%                               45%

No Health Ins.   12%                               17%

Child Poverty    12%                               40%

Unemployed     6.3                                 16.6

You can check out your own counties here.

MM(*E)MM #369 -- WaPo's Paywall & CNN Blasted

The Washington Post is adding a paywall, charging for access to their online content. They join The New York Times, The Montgomery Advertiser and many other papers in doing so. Read the State of The Media linked in this morning's Spring Break MMMM report for that trend and more!

PLUS: Did CNN go too far in reporting how terrible life will be for the Ohio high school football players convicted of raping a classmate?
     Gawker is out with a critique and there is an online poll is circulating calling on CNN to apologize for their coverage.

[The Monday Morning [and sometimes Evening) Media Memo is a regular feature of www.timlennox.com]

At nine? NINE?

I don't know about you, but I'm not sure if the nine or ten year old Tim Lennox would have known how to dial 911 (had it existed) much less how to perform CPR on an infant.
Watch the story out of Georgia.
 

Ssssssssnakes In The Ssssstudio

One of the Opp Rattlesnake Rodeo folks keeps an eye on our guest on ANN.

We've had all kinds of animal guests on Alabama News Network on CBS 8 and ABC Montgomery in the morning.
    We've had cuddly dogs and purring cats and birds many varieties, all of them more or less friendly.
     But the once-a-year exception is the folks from the Opp Rattlesnake Rodeo.
     Fortunately Marcy did the interview. The rodeo is this Saturday.

MMMM-ZZZZ

 The Monday Morning Media Memo is on Spring Break.
(-:

     However, PEW this morning  releases it's 2013 State of The Media report...enough information to fill two dozen MMMM's. Enjoy!

The Alabama Gulf



On the grounds of The Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts.

Early Bloomers, Montgomery's Garden District