The Zac Brown Band, a nominee for Best Rock Album, performs at the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards…

Nice job, with Chris Fryar from Birmingham on drums and Leon Russell sitting in…

Tim Tebow

Womens’ rights campaigner and attorney Gloria Allred has joined the growing chorus of folks angered at the decision by CBS to allow an pro life group to air an ad during the upcoming Super Bowl on February 7. The ad will feature University of Florida quarterback Tim Tebow and his mother Pam, who claims to have chosen not to have an abortion when she was pregnant with him over the recommendation of doctors in the Philippines.

Allred contends abortion was illegal there and she doubts the story, she says in an interview.

Allred says she will lodge a complaint with the FCC and FTC “if this ad airs and fails to disclose that abortions were illegal at the time Ms. Tebow made her choice.”

Despite resistance from women’s groups, the ad is expected to air. It focuses on Ms. Tebow’s 1987 pregnancy, when she fell ill in the Philippines.

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Looking for the muse, just re-watched this movie about a book, not a song…

A Love Song for Bobby Long, a 2004 American drama film written and directed by Shainee Gabel and based on the novel Off Magazine Street by Ronald Everett Capps, was shot on location in New Orleans and Gretna, Louisiana while I lived in the city from 2000-2004. It was released in December, 2004.

The story combines elements of characters and stories from Tennessee Williams and William Faulkner. It focuses on 18-year-old Purslane Will, who leaves the Florida trailer park where she lives with her abusive boyfriend to return to her hometown of New Orleans following the drug overdose death of her jazz singer mother Lorraine, a free spirit she hadn’t seen for several years.

The girl is startled to discover one-time Auburn University professor of literature Bobby Long and his protégé and former teaching assistant, struggling writer Lawson Pines, living in her dilapidated childhood home. Both men are heavy drinkers who while away their days smoking numerous cigarettes, quoting Dylan Thomas, Benjamin Franklin, and T.S. Eliot, playing chess, and spending time with the neighbors while Bobby strums a guitar and sings melancholy country-folk songs.

The case included John Travolta as Bobby Long, Scarlett Johansson as Purslane Will, Gabriel Macht as Lawson Pines, Deborah Kara Unger as Georgianna and Clayne Crawford .as Lee.

A Southern writers tale if there ever was one…

Here’s an analysis from the BBC on “Why people often vote against their own interests” that should be must reading for Democrats, and everybody else, everywhere.

Summary

Why are so many American voters enraged by attempts to change a horribly inefficient health care system that leaves them with premiums they often cannot afford?

Why are they manning the barricades to defend insurance companies that routinely deny claims and cancel policies?

It might be tempting to put the whole thing down to what the historian Richard Hofstadter back in the 1960s called “the paranoid style” of American politics, in which God, guns and race get mixed into a toxic stew of resentment at anything coming out of Washington.

But that would be a mistake.

Drew Westen argues that stories rather than facts convince voters

If people vote against their own interests, it is not because they do not understand what is in their interest or have not yet had it properly explained to them.

They do it because they resent having their interests decided for them by politicians who think they know best.

There is nothing voters hate more than having things explained to them as though they were idiots.

As the saying goes, in politics, when you are explaining, you are losing. And that makes anything as complex or as messy as health care reform a very hard sell.

Read the entire article and listen to the BBC radio show here:

Why People Vote Against Their Own Interests?

Bob Riley’s war on gambling reached a bizarre climax early this morning when the Alabama Governor’s anti-gambling task force dispatched more than 100 state troopers to raid computer gaming centers at the Victoryland Dogtrack in Shorter, Alabama, and Country Crossing in Dothan near the Florida state line.

According to early morning television news reports, the line of state troopers “was more than a mile long,” but they were stopped at the gates of the country music entertainment compound in Dothan when they failed to produce a search warrant.

Today’s raid is just the latest in the gambling wars in the state that made national news recently when Alabama’s godfather of legal gambling, Milton McGregor, was accused of crossing a legal line when he hired a private detective to follow former task force leader David Barber to an Indian casino in Mississippi, where Barber was spotted winning $2,300.

When that information was disclosed in the media, Barber resigned, so Riley named Mobile County District Attorney John Tyson Jr. to lead the task force.

What has not been widely reported by the mainstream media is that Riley has received as much as $13 million in campaign donations from Indian casinos in Mississippi, and that family members and former staff have gotten work through those casinos, which would obviously raise questions about a conflict of interest on Riley’s part.

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Americans with the most education tend to support President Barack Obama more than any other group, according to survey research.

Obama’s job approval rating, which has averaged 50 percent since Dec. 1, continues to be significantly above that average among Americans with postgraduate education, a group among which Obama enjoys the support of 58 percent, according to a just released Gallup poll.

Among educational groups, only postgraduates show a rating above the majority level.

Postgraduates were a key constituency in Obama’s winning 2008 presidential-primary and general-election coalitions, and have been Obama’s top supporters among educational groups throughout his presidency.

Since July, when Obama last registered an approval rating of 60 percent, the gap in his approval rating between postgraduates and other educational groups has grown, with his support declining proportionately less among postgraduates than among the other groups.

The bottom line, according to Gallup: The support of postgraduates, who tend to be more liberal and Democratic in their political orientation, was important to Obama’s being elected president. Since he has become president, postgraduates have been among his more reliable supporters, backing him at higher levels than do those in other educational groups.

Hmmm. Wonder why?

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by Glynn Wilson

President Barack Obama went before Congress Wednesday night after one year in office and made the case that while times are tough, there is every reason to hope that better days lie ahead because of the American spirit of resiliency.

“It is because of this spirit — this great decency and great strength — that I have never been more hopeful about America’s future than I am tonight,” the president said.

“Despite our hardships, our union is strong. We do not give up. We do not quit,” Mr. Obama said. “We do not allow fear or division to break our spirit. In this new decade, it’s time the American people get a government that matches their decency; that embodies their strength.”

For many Americans, the president acknowledged, “change has not come fast enough.”

“Some are frustrated; some are angry,” he said. “They don’t understand why it seems like bad behavior on Wall Street is rewarded but hard work on Main Street isn’t; or why Washington has been unable or unwilling to solve any of our problems. They are tired of the partisanship and the shouting and the pettiness. They know we can’t afford it. Not now.”

But the Republicans, recently earning the nickname “the party of ‘no’,” did not applaud that line. They looked down in shame.

Economy and Jobs

Mr. Obama focused on the economy in the speech, proposing a new jobs bill, and he said, “if there’s one thing that has unified Democrats and Republicans, it’s that we all hated the bank bailout. I hated it. You hated it. It was about as popular as a root canal.”

“But when I ran for President,” he said, “I promised I wouldn’t just do what was popular — I would do what was necessary. And if we had allowed the meltdown of the financial system, unemployment might be double what it is today. More businesses would certainly have closed. More homes would have surely been lost.”

Lest people forget, the president set the record straight on the deficit, which had been eliminated under the Clinton administration and ballooned under Bush, yet has become the cause célèbre of certain conservative groups.

“At the beginning of the last decade, America had a budget surplus of over $200 billion. By the time I took office, we had a one year deficit of over $1 trillion and projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next decade,” the president said. “Most of this was the result of not paying for two wars, two tax cuts, and an expensive prescription drug program. On top of that, the effects of the recession put a $3 trillion hole in our budget. That was before I walked in the door.”

Read a full report on Obama’s State of the Union Address as well as the full text of the speech below…

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In a sign of Rep. Artur Davis’ shifting priorities, according to the Associated Press, the Birmingham Democrat will be back in Alabama — not at the U.S. Capitol — for tonight’s State of the Union speech by his former Harvard Law School classmate, President Barack Obama.

Glynn Wilson

Rep. Artur Davis

Davis, now running for governor, has returned to the campaign trail, said Addie Whisenant, a spokeswoman in his congressional office. She referred other questions to campaign spokesman Alex Goepfert, who said that the congressman has been clear for some time “that he would be spending more days in Alabama as the campaign progressed.” Davis plans to watch the speech at home in Birmingham, Goepfert said.

Davis’ campaign web site shows that he was in Shelby County for a candidate forum this morning, but does not list any other events today.

Davis is running against state Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks in June’s Democratic primary. Late this afternoon, Sparks issued a statement saying that “apparently, Artur Davis forgets he was hired to do a job in Washington, not in Alabama.”

“The people of his district, and the people of Alabama, expect those they hire to show up to work, vote and represent their interests,” Sparks said. “He should either show up for work or quit. Instead, his constituents are being cheated by the self-interest of Artur. When I’m Governor, I will work day and night creating jobs for working families and always put their interests ahead of my own.”

In related news, former political reporter Taylor Bright is joining Sparks’ Campaign for Governor as communications director, according to the press release.

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What Happened to the Millions from the TVA Coal Ash Contract?

John Wathen/Southwings

Toxic TVA coal ash by the train load is filling up the local landfill only designed for household garbage, not hazardous waste, in Alabama’s Black Belt…

by Glynn Wilson

The Arrowhead Landfill in Perry County, Alabama — where TVA is hauling millions of tons of coal ash in one of the biggest environmental cleanups ever – has filed for bankruptcy protection just days before a major lawsuit was to be filed, sources say.

It is not clear whether this decision will stop shipments of the toxic fly ash to Alabama’s Black Belt, or halt the ongoing cleanup in the Emory River in Kingston, Tennessee.

It is also not clear where the money went from the Tennessee Valley Authority, which contracted with the landfill for millions of dollars to take the waste, although sources say it ended up in New Jersey, not Uniontown, Alabama.

Environmental lawyer David Ludder, who confirmed the bankruptcy petition, said he and other attorneys representing local residents are investigating the options available to those in the community.

He said the filing of the bankruptcy petition automatically stays or prevents any new lawsuits from being filed against the company, Perry County Associates, at this time.

“I see it as an opportunity for any new operator to do a better job,” Ludder said, “and an opportunity for the residents to approach them and demand that they do a better job.”

No one from the company could be reached for comment at the numbers listed in Uniontown or Atlanta on their Website.

But Jeffery Hartley, an attorney for Perry Uniontown Ventures, which filed for bankruptcy in federal court in Mobile, told the Birmingham News it had “no choice given Phillips and Jordan’s refusal to turn over monies to ownership, to make payments they had agreed to make, or to provide a proper accounting of the funds.”

Perry Uniontown Ventures I owns Arrowhead Landfill. Phillips & Jordan Inc., and Phill-Con Services operate the landfill under an agency agreement with Perry Uniontown Ventures.

Hartley said the bankruptcy filing would not affect the operation of the landfill, “which will continue to operate safely and effectively, without interruption.”

Hurricane Creekkeeper John Wathen says the landfill has not been operating safely or effectively, since he has discovered the company dumping liquid waste into ditches along the road in front of people’s houses.

Check out more of this story and the best coverage of this controversy in the country here:

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