Alabama Republicans Can’t Manage the Crisis They Helped Create

Alabama state capitol.

A college classmate (and law school classmate as well) from Mobile shared this piece from an Alabama publication on Facebook which drew a reaction from me, both as a former Republican and a former resident of Alabama, a state for which I developed a fondness.  When I arrived in Mobile for my first job after graduating from law school, in some ways Alabama was more progressive than Virginia, especially in the legal realm where the state's rules of civil procedure had been totally rewritten to lately mirror the federal rules and there was a woman on the State Supreme Court.  Virginia's rules of procedure at the time - and even now - still retain 19th century provisions that seem like something out of a Masterpiece Theater program set in the 1700's or perhaps 1800's. In addition, when I arrived in Mobile, George Wallace was governor (yes, I met him), yet were he living and to seek office today, I doubt he could be elected - he'd be too moderate for Alabama's Christofascists and much more open white supremacists.  Now, faced with the coronavirus pandemic, the Alabama Republican Party and that state's embarrassment of a governor are utterly unprepared for a crisis they and their national party helped create.    Meanwhile, much of the promise and potential the state had when I first arrived has been destroyed.  Here are column excerpts:

On Tuesday, Alabama’s governor called together the state’s media, in the midst of a global pandemic, so they could broadcast pictures of her tying a ribbon around a post to remind people to pray for healthcare workers. 

Surrounding Gov. Kay Ivey at the event were various pastors from churches in and around Montgomery. And they each were given time to speak about the importance of prayer and remembering those who are risking their lives. 

It was a nice gesture. And possibly the clearest indication yet that Ivey and the Republicans that are in charge of Alabama haven’t the faintest idea of how to lead this state through a crisis. 

They have no real plan. They have no ideas for how to address the mounting problems. They have been completely and thoroughly overwhelmed by the COVID-19 outbreak since the start. 

And so, they have turned to what they know best: Pointless pandering.  Except, you can’t folksy your way out of this mess. You can’t blame the black folks and throw money at a few jobs and hope no one notices that you don’t know what you’re doing. 

And that’s a problem in this state. 

Because the ALGOP leadership of this state has built its brand on division and distraction. It has used petty nonsense, like the protection of racist monuments, and emotional ploys, mostly built around religion and false claims about abortions, to seize and maintain control of Alabama’s government, even as they totally wreck the place. 

They’ve gotten away with it because up until now no singular event has simultaneously exposed how their incompetence has negatively affected the lives of so many Alabamians in almost every racial and economic demographic. 

And then along came coronavirus.  It has laid bare all of it. And the devastating reality of this void of leadership continues to grow day after day as the bodies pile up. 

Now, just so we’re clear and so no half-wit starts clamoring on that I’m blaming the ALGOP leadership for the coronavirus, I’m most certainly not doing that. I’m blaming ALGOP’s lack of leadership for the excessive number of deaths that will occur in this state, and for the many thousands of lives that will be forever ruined by the hospital bills that result from this. 

The refusal to expand Medicaid alone has effects that will eventually negatively impact every single person in this state. That purely political decision that makes no practical sense if politics is removed has already cost thousands of lives around Alabama over the last six years. The devastation from the current crisis is going to be staggering. 

Not only are uninsured people who contract coronavirus less likely to go for testing or to seek treatment until the latter stages of the disease (meaning they’ll spread it far and wide), a good portion of people are responding more negatively to the virus because they have underlying conditions that have gone undetected and untreated for years. Because people without insurance don’t go to the doctor.  

Even if the virus doesn’t kill them, many of those uninsured citizens in Alabama will face unmanageable medical bills. A study from the independent nonprofit FAIR Health found that the average cost to treat coronavirus for an uninsured person was around $75,000. If a ventilator is required, the bill jumps to more than $200,000. 

And with a fresh crop of unemployed Alabamians — more than 200,000 claims filed as of Monday — that’s a whole mess of people who are suddenly missing insurance and the ability to pay their hospital bills. 

Which, of course, means that more Alabama hospitals will close. There have already been 14 closures over the past eight years, and there are at least three more small hospitals teetering on the brink of bankruptcy right now. By the time this is said and done, the only cities that will have hospitals will be Huntsville, Birmingham, Montgomery and Mobile. And a few of those aren’t looking so great. 

The news is even worse for black Alabamians — a phrase that black Alabamians know too well. More than half the state’s deaths from coronavirus have been black people. A staggering figure when you consider that only 27 percent of Alabama’s population is black. 

The reason for this, Dr. Selwyn Vickers, dean of the UAB School of Medicine, suggested is that the African American population in Alabama — high in poverty and low in insurance coverage — is possibly more susceptible to the virus due to underlying medical conditions that have gone untreated due to a lack of routine and preventative visits to a doctor. 

So, you see, the mismanagement goes well beyond simply not expanding Medicaid. And that is true even when focusing only on this current crisis. 

From the mixed messages of “folks, we’re not California or New York or even Louisiana” to the insistence on protecting businesses over people to the absurd stay-at-home-unless-you-need-to-go-out-for-something order, Ivey’s responses — when she’s popped out every 3-4 days — have been a disaster. 

But to her credit, I guess, at least she’s doing something. The state legislature, where ALGOP enjoys a super-majority, literally did nothing but adjourn as this virus started to spread. 

As the crisis grows, we have also realized that the ALGOP mission to underfund every government agency so they can issue a press release touting the tax “savings” isn’t really paying off so swell. Thanks to those funding cuts, pretty much every department needed in this crisis is understaffed, poorly trained and poorly equipped. 

But perhaps the best example of just where we are came on Wednesday, in a story reported by al.com. In 2009, Alabama had a pandemic plan, and it had used federal dollars — in the midst of a national recession, mind you — to stockpile ventilators and personal protective equipment for doctors and nurses. We were ready for COVID-19.  In 2009.  But in 2010, ALGOP stormed the state house. And, well, here we are.

Racist Jeff Sessions to Target Marijuana Users

As previous posts have indicated, in my opinion Attorney General Jeff Sessions is an avowed racist despite his protests to the contrary.  Having known the man since the days we were both in Mobile, Alabama (I lived there when Sessions refused to prosecute KKK members who lynched a young black man), Sessions will do anything he can to keep blacks - and gays for that matter - second class citizens.  Moreover, he supports any policy that will help to disproportionately disenfranchise black Americans.  Hence the news that Sessions plans to enforce antiquated federal marijuana laws even in states that have legalized and regulate the sale and possession of small amounts for personal use.  The move comes just as Der Trumpenführer has disbanded his committee to investigate non-existent voter fraud which many believed was a thinly veiled effort to disenfranchise minorities and the poor.  Apparently what could not be accomplished by Trump's farcical committee will now be accomplished through marijuana prosecutions. Politico looks at Sessions' disingenuous move.  Here are excerpts:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is rescinding the Obama-era policy that had paved the way for legalized marijuana to flourish in states across the country, two people with knowledge of the decision told The Associated Press. Sessions will instead let federal prosecutors where pot is legal decide how aggressively to enforce federal marijuana law, the people said.

The move by President Donald Trump's attorney general likely will add to confusion about whether it's OK to grow, buy or use marijuana in states where pot is legal, since long-standing federal law prohibits it. It comes days after pot shops opened in California, launching what is expected to become the world's largest market for legal recreational marijuana and as polls show a solid majority of Americans believe the drug should be legal.

Sessions, who has assailed marijuana as comparable to heroin and has blamed it for spikes in violence, had been expected to ramp up enforcement. Pot advocates argue that legalizing the drug eliminates the need for a black market and would likely reduce violence, since criminals would no longer control the marijuana trade.

The Obama administration in 2013 announced it would not stand in the way of states that legalize marijuana, so long as officials acted to keep it from migrating to places where it remained outlawed and out of the hands of criminal gangs and children.

The pot business has since become a sophisticated, multimillion-dollar industry that helps fund schools, educational programs and law enforcement. Eight states and the District of Columbia have legalized marijuana for recreational use, and California's sales alone are projected to bring in $1 billion annually in tax revenue within several years.

Sessions' policy will let U.S. attorneys across the country decide what kinds of federal resources to devote to marijuana enforcement based on what they see as priorities in their districts, the people familiar with the decision said.

The change also reflects yet another way in which Sessions, who served as a federal prosecutor at the height of the drug war in Mobile, Alabama, has reversed Obama-era criminal justice policies that aimed to ease overcrowding in federal prisons and contributed to a rethinking of how drug criminals were prosecuted and sentenced. While his Democratic predecessor Eric Holder told federal prosecutors to avoid seeking long mandatory minimum sentences when charging certain lower level drug offenders, for example, Sessions issued an order demanding the opposite, telling them to pursue the most serious charges possible against most suspects.

Sit in criminal court any morning and you will witness white defendants with money getting off or light sentences for marijuana possession while poor blacks without resources to hire a private attorney get slammed and receive sentences that put them in prison and deprive them of the right to vote.  Sessions knows what he is doing and it is disgusting.  He might as well wear KKK robes while on the job.  

The Other Alabama - Can It Prevail?

Fairhope pier

Beach below Bayview Avenue, Fairhope, Alabama

I often lament what has happened to Alabama politically in the years since I lived there years ago.  I blame much of the state's political insanity on the rise of the Christofascists within the Republican Party, something that has occurred literally all over the country, but the most toxic in the Bible Belt states and even states like Virginia where the urban areas are finally gaining the ability to out vote the religious extremists of the hinterland in statewide contests.  Sadly, Alabama has not yet reached that point where Birmingham, Mobile, Huntsville, etc., can out vote the lunacy that prevails in rural areas and where pastors preaching hate and division are the norm.  When I lived in the Mobile area, I never lived in Mobile proper.  Instead, I lived first in Fairhope on the east side of Mobile Bay and then latter in Spanish Fort (to lessen the commute to work).  The first home that I owned was a creole cottage on Bayview Avenue situated on the bluff overlooking the beach pictured above adjacent to the Fairhope pier.  Although a member of the Athelstan Club in Mobile through my old line law firm, the more laid back atmosphere of the Eastern Shore as it is called with its many northern transplants was appealing.  I knew many good people during those years and many remain trying to bring Alabama into the 21st century (just this past week, Birmingham passed a non-discrimination ordinace protecting LGBT citizens).  A column in the Washington Post reminds us that there is still good in Alabama and that those who are fighting the good fight and opposing the batshitery of Roy Moore and those of his ilk need to be remembered and supported.  Here are column highlights: 

Fairhope, Ala.

There’s a vast barn and field at Oak Hollow Farm 15 minutes from my house that gets rented out as a party venue. This week it served as the media-thronged site of a rally for Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore, with celebrity guest Stephen K. Bannon, invoking God, guns and making Alabama great. At the same hour, at the University of South Alabama across Mobile Bay, a panel discussion was underway on the topic of inclusion. With more than 600 in attendance, six of us from an array of backgrounds — Jewish, Christian, black, white, Asian American — conversed with moderator Soledad O’Brien, the broadcast journalist, about connecting across lines of race, religion, gender and ideology. Such differences challenge not just those of us in this community but also those far beyond.

That these events went on simultaneously was coincidental, but looking back, I see them as representing the two forces at work in my home state, which now is a bellwether for the nation: coming together vs. staying apart. When O’Brien asked me what our state does well and what it doesn’t, I spoke of Alabama’s famous and often well-deserved reputation for hospitality. Newcomers such as the immigrants of my grandparents’ generation arriving at Mobile’s downtown blocks and speaking little English felt welcomed enough to stay and put down roots. “Come on in, y’all!” But running against that grain, I added, was the counter-impulse of a culture anxious about outsiders and fearful of those who look, act, pray or speak differently, even if they live on the other side of town. “Trespassers beware!”

This push-pull, this embracing change or bracing against it will still be with us whether our next senator, as predicted, is the far-right Moore, a longtime public figure who’s made no secret of his disdain for Muslims, gays and those whose sense of faith differs from his evangelical Christian fervor, or mainstream Democrat Doug Jones, in a possible upset. Either way, I feel strongly that an ever-increasing openness, a cultural diversity, is inching forward, if not evidenced by raw numbers, then in the kinds of people who increasingly call Alabama home. Demagogues can still win at the ballot box, but the opposition — those who yearn for and work toward inclusion, a sensibility that crosses political lines — is growing stronger.

In recent weeks, for example, I have enjoyed being among hundreds of Indian families, all from our area, celebrating the Hindu festival of Navaratri by lighting candles to the goddess Durga. I have visited a Muslim friend who teaches in a Muslim school in Mobile, and I have gone to lunch with a buddy who tells me his daughter, who is gay, stays in Mobile because she loves it as home and does not want to move to some strange, far-off metropolis. . . . I have seen mixed-race couples, if still a rarity here, strolling hand in hand, unbothered, on Fairhope Pier.

These stories, under the radar in the nation’s perception of my home, continue, like the prayers we say at High Holy Day services as part of a small but observant Jewish community in our area. At my temple in Mobile, Moses, with the Ten Commandments in his arms, looks over us from a stained-glass window as we ask forgiveness for our litany of sins.

One of those prayers on Yom Kippur, this weekend, asks pardon for the sin of xenophobia, as well as for the mindfulness to do better in the new year.  I pray it for my fellow Alabamians, too.

Living in the opposition can be exhausting as I know first hand from living in Virginia which remains far from perfect.  In Virginia, like Alabama, gays still have no statewide employment non-discrimination protections, are not protected by public accommodation and fair housing laws, and parts of the southwest part of Virginia remain down right scary.    The choices are to either move or stay and fight for change.  For now, the husband and I have chosen to stay and fight to make Virginia a good place for all to live.  Many in Alabama are doing the same thing.   

Jeff Sessions' Crackdown on Marijuana - Is It Really All About Disenfranchising Minorities?

As previous posts have indicated, in my opinion, U.S. Attorney General Sessions is a foul individual. My view dates all the way back to the late 1970's when he and I were both members of the Mobile, Alabama legal community. Sessions has a long history of racism and, as noted previously, failed to prosecute KKK members who lynched a 19 year old young black man, Michael Donald, while I still lived in Mobile (a photo of Donald's body is here). Now, it seems that Sessions has come up with a new means to assault minority communities: crackdown on marijuana - even legal marijuana - to increase convictions that will often lead to felony convictions that will deprive individuals of their voting rights and make it difficult to ever have successful employment opportunities.  Similarly, Sessions cares nothing about youths ensnared by the often draconian marijuana laws (Virginia's laws are horrific thanks to the GOP control of the Virginia House of Delegates).  Sessions likewise ignores the research that negate his  or the fact that research hows that marijuana is not a serious health threat.  A piece in Salon looks at Sessions ugly agenda.  Here are excerpts:

Soon after his election, Donald Trump announced he would appoint Jeff Sessions as attorney general, sending a wave of panic through the world of activism around legalizing or decriminalizing marijuana. Sessions is an old-line drug warrior who opposes all state-level efforts to liberalize marijuana laws, and it was widely feared he would reverse Obama-era Department of Justice policies recommending that federal authorities not interfere with states that legalize marijuana.
In July, Sessions made his first tentative move toward cracking down on states that legalize pot, sending a letter to Washington state officials in which he expressed skepticism about marijuana legalization, repeatedly singling out the fear that such laws would lead to more pot smoking among minors.
If Sessions is legitimately concerned about high school kids and that’s not just a front for promoting laws that are disproportionately enforced on black people, then he probably shouldn’t worry so much. A new study published in the National Bureau of Economic Research suggests that the effects of liberalizing marijuana laws on the behavioral outcomes of minors are . . . well, nothing. At least nothing of significance. “Notably, many of the outcomes predicted by critics of liberalizations, such as increases in youth drug use and youth criminal behavior, have failed to materialize in the wake of marijuana liberalizations,” the report reads.
In fact, the researchers found the opposite: Marijuana liberalization was associated with “reduced marijuana, alcohol, and other drug use; reduced desirability of consuming these substances; and reduced access to these substances on school property.”
Marijuana legalization or decriminalization apparently doesn’t do much to change young people’s behavior. Getting arrested for possessing or selling marijuana, however, can have a massive impact on a person’s life.
“Arrests prohibit individuals from fully participating in society, inhibiting their ability to get a job, get a loan, go to college, or even have a place to live,” Kassandra Frederique, the New York State Director at the Drug Policy Alliance, argued in a recent study of New York City’s marijuana arrest rates.
This life disruption, in turn, helps reinforce serious racial disparities in our society. Black and white people smoke marijuana at the same rate, but black people are almost four times as likely to be arrested for it. Even after New York Mayor Bill de Blasio enacted policies that reduced marijuana arrest rates in the city, black and Latino people made up 85 percent of marijuana arrests, despite being only about half the population.
Criminalizing marijuana does little or nothing to reduce crime or improve youth outcomes, but it is highly effective at increasing racial disparities, criminalizing young people of color and derailing career opportunities for young Latinos and African-Americans. Sessions is widely perceived as hostile to civil rights and full equality for people of color, so it’s entirely possible that his interest in escalating marijuana crackdowns is not as innocent as he claims.
If Jeff Sessions does begin to roll back decades of progress on marijuana reform, he’s fighting against the political tide: A survey conducted earlier this year found that 57 percent of Americans believed pot should be legal (although only 40 percent of Republicans held that view). Furthermore, Sessions is pursuing this crusade for no good reason. There is simply no evidence that marijuana liberalization leads to bad outcomes for younger people, while the evidence that being arrested for marijuana causes bad outcomes is overwhelming. Of course, if Jeff Sessions is actively trying to send more people of color to prison on minor drug offenses and damage their future prospects, maybe he knows exactly what he’s doing.

Conservative Alabama Newspaper Endorses Hillary Clinton

As I have noted a number of times in the past, I lived in Alabama many years ago and compared to how the state is nowadays, things were far more sane three decades ago.  Now, much to my surprise, even the Mobile Press Register - typically a reactionary newspaper - has endorsed Hillary Clinton and described Donald Trump as too dangerous to be permitted to win the White House.  I agree with the assessment which ought to be read in full by Republicans still waffling and contemplating voting for Trump.  Perhaps there is hope for Alabama after all.  Here are editorial highlights:

Donald Trump must not be president.

Alabama has voted for every Republican candidate since Ronald Reagan, a man that captured our imagination with a hopeful view of America as a shining city upon a hill. Nearly 40 years later, Donald Trump offers a deeply cynical view of an America in ruin, an America that seems to exist only in his own dangerous mind. Even before the revelation of video evidence of Trump making lewd, demeaning comments advocating sexual advances on women against their will, we knew that he was unfit to lead this country. We unite with people across this nation — people of all parties, including an increasing number of Republicans — to reject the pessimism of his candidacy.

But 2016 isn't a normal election cycle, and Donald Trump isn't a normal presidential candidate. Nor is he a normal Republican. He is a man who is frighteningly unfit to be president. And she is his only roadblock.

Any endorsement of Clinton will be a bitter pill to swallow for many in our state. For some, her lifelong record of public service is the mark of a career politician, rather than a public servant. We've all watched her struggle to defend her emails, her charitable foundation and her record on foreign policy. Still, Hillary Clinton is more than qualified to be president, and in winning her party's nomination has reinforced the promise that our democratic process is equally open to all.

Like her husband, President Bill Clinton, she has built a political career out of triangulating to the center. She's less liberal than President Barack Obama and less conservative than President George W. Bush — and after 16 years of volatility, she is likely to maintain the slow growth of the status quo.

We could do worse than four years of a stable hand that understands how government works and is willing to compromise with the Republican opposition. Donald Trump, in contrast, is an unstable force that would do lasting damage to America, at home and abroad.

The list of Trump's disqualifications is lengthy. And he adds new ones daily. 

Clinton has been caught in lies, but Donald Trump trashes truth far beyond the standards that even our broken political system accepts.

He is a narcissistic, childish bully who has mocked women, Americans with disabilities, veterans, Gold Star families, judges, immigrants, the working poor, people of faith, Muslim Americans, Jewish Americans, refugees, people with weight issues and any other group that challenges his inflated view of himself. A Trump presidency could send the Republican Party down a dark, exclusionary path, that would be tough to recover from.

Alabama may have been host to many of Trump's largest crowds during the Republican primary, but it has become clear that his policies would hurt many here.

Rather than bring jobs home, Trump's pledge to break trade agreements such as NAFTA and to implement a tariff on goods coming from Mexico and China could ignite a trade war, crippling port cities like Mobile and stunting growth in emerging economies in Birmingham and Huntsville.

Trump shows a staggering ignorance of world affairs and the issues the next president faces. He dismisses our obligations to NATO; he invites China to "go into" North Korea and settle things in that part of the world, and he has a disturbing infatuation with Vladimir Putin. For all his talk about demonstrating American strength, he constantly undermines our troops.

Trump embodies the worse tenets of disgraced former Alabama House Speaker Mike Hubbard, suspended Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, and humiliated Gov. Robert Bentley. Trump is a man that will ignore the rule of law, use his office for personal gain, and has a history of lascivious affairs and lewd comments caught on tape. Even his campaign is self-serving, with millions in campaign donations spent on his family companies.

The 2016 election is not a choice between two candidates equally fit to serve, or a choice between the ideology of two parties. Trump is a unique threat and in an election where supporting third party candidates splits a national vote, we see but one option.

Clinton may be the second least popular major party candidate in 50 years but she is also one of the most qualified candidates in history. And ultimately, if it isn't her, it's him. And that would be a disaster for America and the world.

Apple's Tim Cook - Amazing, Although Not One of Alabama's Favorite Sons

I happened upon a piece in the Washington Post that looks at Apple CEO Tim Cook - the only openly gay head of a major Fortune 500 company - and his roots in tiny Robertsdale, Alabama, located between Mobile, Alabama, and Pensacola, Florida, on the road to Gulf Shores which is sometimes called part of the "redneck Riviera" although locals refer to the area as "LA" - lower Alabama. It's an area I know form my years with an old aristocratic law firm in Mobile right out of law school, although the entire time I lived on the east side of Mobile Bay and closer to Robertsdale.  The Post piece shows several things, not the least of which is that one's small town beginnings do not necessarily define one's future potential.  The second thing it shows is the animus that gays still face in many parts of Alabama, especially in the more rural and small town regions.  Here are some article excerpts:

ROBERTSDALE, Ala. — There are few clues that this is the home town of Apple chief executive Tim Cook, the place where he said his “most improbable journey” began and where he forged the beliefs that today put him at the center of a national debate over privacy.

His name is not noted on the town’s welcome signs along the main drag, Route 59. There’s nothing in the local chamber’s brochures, and the local paper rarely has anything about him. His old high school keeps a glass case celebrating former NFL running back Joe Childress, Class of 1952, but not the leader of the world’s most valuable company, Class of 1978.

Walking around the town and talking with residents, it can feel as if Cook is a forgotten favorite son.

“I kinda wonder about that sometimes, I really do,” said Rick Ousley, a former classmate who recalls Cook fondly and now runs a computer repair shop in town.

Cook never sought out attention and many here are quietly proud of him, but Ousley suspects the lack of recognition is also tied to Cook’s prominent positions on sensitive social issues. Cook, who is gay, has advocated for gay rights. He once criticized Alabama for its lack of progress in a speech at the state capitol in Montgomery. He also helped fund a gay rights initiative in the Deep South.

“That was offensive to a lot of people down here,” Ousley said. One local pastor even vowed to stop using his iPad because of the Apple leader’s views.

Now, Cook, 55, has taken another risky stand, this time on privacy. He and Apple are fighting a federal court order demanding the Silicon Valley firm help the FBI crack the passcode-locked iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino terrorists. The FBI has accused Cook of only wanting to protect Apple’s brand. But Cook, in his soft Southern drawl, has repeatedly argued the FBI’s request is wrong in moral terms, calling it “bad for America.”

Cook’s experiences growing up in Robertsdale – detailed by him in public speeches and recalled by others — are key to understanding how a once-quiet tech executive became one of the world’s most outspoken corporate leaders. Apple has long emphasized the privacy of its products, but today Cook talks about privacy not as an attribute of a device, but as a right — a view colored by his own history.

For Cook, it was in this tiny town midway between Mobile, Ala., and Pensacola, Fla., that a book-smart boy developed what he calls his “moral sense.”

Cook seemed too aware of the injustices around him.  “I have to believe that growing up in Alabama, during the 1960s and witnessing what he did, especially as someone who is gay, he understood the dangers of remaining silent,” said Kerry Kennedy, a human-rights activist who has met Cook several times and whose father, Robert F. Kennedy, Cook considers one of his heroes.

In the early 1970s, he was riding his new 10-speed bicycle at night along a rural road just outside Robertsdale when he spotted a burning cross. He pedaled closer. He saw Klansmen in white hoods and robes. The cross was on the property of a family he knew was black. It was almost more than he could comprehend.

Without thinking, he shouted, “Stop!” The group turned toward the boy. One of them raised his hood. Cook recognized the man as a local deacon at one of the dozen churches in town, but not the one attended by Cook’s family.  The man warned the boy to keep moving.

“This image was permanently imprinted in my brain and it would change my life forever,” Cook recalled in a speech in 2013, an incident that he also has recounted to friends.

He made frequent visits to the small Robertsdale library, where he found a copy of “To Kill a Mockingbird” – published only a few years earlier — and devoured the story of a trial exposing the dangers of racism in a fictional Alabama town.

Growing up gay in small-town Alabama a generation ago meant knowing the value of privacy, recalled Paul Hard, 57, who was raised in tiny Demopolis, Ala. He doesn’t know Cook, but imagines what he went through, because he went through it himself.

Cook pushed this point even further when he took over Apple in 2011. He advocated for gay rights and to change laws in states such as Alabama, where employees can be fired for being gay. He criticized states with “religious freedom” laws that seemed to him to sanction some forms of discrimination.

Last December, shortly before the fate of a terrorist’s iPhone would explode onto the national scene, he accepted the Ripple of Hope award from the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights.

In his speech, Cook talked about learning to “take a stand for what is right, for what is just.”  And when the terrorist’s iPhone case erupted last month, Cook returned to that “moral sense” he learned back in Robertsdale.

There are many wonderful people in Alabama and just last Saturday evening the husband and I hosted a going away party for amazing friends moving back to Alabama for family reasons. Likewise, many Alabamians are kind and gracious, but more of them need to speak out and refuse to be silent as others in the state continue to tie the state's name to hate and bigotry. 

Trump, Alabama and the ghost of George Wallace

Donald Trump continues to play to the racism that has become one of the strongest undercurrents of today's Republican Party.   Not surprisingly, he found a sizable audience in Mobile, Alabama last night, albeit only about half the numbers Trump had boasted about prior to the event.  I lived in Mobile for four years over three decades ago and in many ways the state is more extreme now than it was back then.  I continue to wonder what is being added to the drinking water.  Perhaps the only good news is that Trumps cavalcade of racism drew a smaller crowd than expected.  Perhaps there is still hope for Alabama.  Here are highlights on the spectacle from Politico:

MOBILE, Ala. — It was immigration, not segregation, that brought some 20,000 southerners — far fewer than predicted — out for Donald Trump on Friday night, but the ghost of George Wallace loomed large.

Wallace, an avowed segregationist, was the last presidential candidate to win electoral votes as a third-party candidate. The threat of Trump doing so, propelled by a hardline immigration stance that many have condemned as racist, looms over the Republican Party now as it did over the Democratic Party then, even as the enthusiasm of his following, for once, fell far short of expectations.

Trump also panned birthright citizenship as a bad deal for the U.S., saying, “We’re the only place just about that’s stupid enough to do it.” Trump’s recently released immigration plan calls for ending birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants, which is guaranteed by the 14th Amendment, according to the legal consensus, though Trump disputes that point.

Trump invited Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, one of Congress’s most ardent immigration hardliners who helped the businessman craft his immigration plan, to the podium, where the two embraced.

He also attacked his favorite punching bag, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, on the issue. “ Jeb Bush, ugh,” said Trump, pausing for dramatic effect, before calling the former governor “totally in favor of Common Core, weak on immigration.”

There were also vestiges of Wallace’s Alabama, including on the sample editions of “The First Freedom” newspaper one man handed out to drivers as they entered the parking lot. The paper’s front page included a story about “black-on-white crime in South Carolina” and an editor’s note about German media’s silence about “the actual programs these peaceful ‘neo-nazis’ stand for.”

The vast majority of supporters where white: of over 1,000 people waiting to enter on the east of the Ladd Peebles Stadium at 5 p.m., eight were black.

Marty Hughes, 47, wore a camouflage hat with Confederate flag detailing and said he liked Trump’s stances on immigration and taxes. He called the removal this year of Confederate flags from government property across much of the South “stupidity” and said he didn’t think a President Trump would stand for it.

[T]he city said it expected 40,000 supporters at the rally, but various media outlets estimated that the total was in the ballpark of 15-20,000, leaving the stadium looking less than half full.

Happy Mardi Gras!

As Hampton Roads comes to a stop due to snow and sleet, in Mobile, Alabama, it is Mardi Gras.  Best wishes to my friends in Mobile.  I hope it's much warmer!  The photo above is of this year's Mardi Gras king and queen.

What's Really Wrong With Alabama

Right now it's a fun time to be in Mobile, Alabama - gay marriages have commenced and this coming Tuesday is Mardi Gras.   It is the height of the Mardi Gras season.  When I lived in Alabama, the Mardi Gras season was perhaps the most interesting and social time of year and, through the law firm I belonged to, we went to many of the balls.  One favorite was the Dominao Ball at the Athelstan Club where I was a member and, were I still in Mobile, we'd likely be headed to the Mystics of Time Ball tonight, and Infant Mystics Ball on Monday night (a full schedule of the many balls is here).  Tomorrow is Joe Cain Day and is part of the story behind the term "raising Cain."  

Behind this fun and revelry, however, there remains a deep sickness particularly outside of the Catholic dominated Gulf coast part of the state.  The sickness?  The embrace of religious based ignorance especially among Baptists and evangelical Christians.  The Mobile Press Register ran an op-ed yesterday by a Baptist minister that crystallizes the ignorance and bigotry that continues to poison Alabama and much of the Deep South.  In the op-ed, Pastor Morris ignores all modern scientific knowledge, ignores the reality that polygamy was the normative form of marriage in the Old Testament, and more or less demonstrates why decent people need to make folks like Morris social pariahs and call them out for their ignorance.  Here are snippets of the batshitery that Morris thinks constitute a reasoned argument against gay marriage:

[M]arriage between one man and one woman is the Biblical mandate for the family.  (Genesis 2:21-24) God not only ordained marriage but performed the first marriage when He brought Eve to Adam. . . . . He did not bring a man to Adam but a woman.  Homosexuality is wrong in the sight of God as is indicated in numerous passages in the Bible.  You may not agree with how God established marriage but there is no doubt about marriage between one man and one woman as being the mandate God established, historically, from the beginning.

The problem for Morris, of course is that the human genome project has confirmed that Adam and Eve never existed. NEVER.    Like most Southern Baptist, Morris cannot accept this truth because it causes the entire Christian story line to collapse.  If there's no Adam and Eve, there's no "Fall" and hence no need for a Messiah.   Then there's also the problem of Morris' reliance on the Bible which in terms of the Old Testament was the work of wandering goat herders who were less than knowledgeable sources on the origin of the planet and mankind.  But Morris' batshitery continues and ignores much of the Bible:

Second, marriage between one man and one woman is the biological mold established for the family. (Genesis 1:27-28)  Not only did God establish marriage but He also created man to be the means of procreation. . . . . Third, marriage between one man and one woman is the building block of civilized society.  (Genesis 1:29-31) 

Never mind that as noted in other posts, in the Old Testament polygamy was the norm.  Morris utterly ignores King Solomon's huge number of wives not to mention concubines.  In short, Morris engages in the all too typical hypocrisy of "godly Christians" and picks and chooses what he wants from the Bible as if he's making selections from column A and column B in a Chinese menu.  And then Morris enages in one of the biggest lies of the Christofascits:

The right side of history records the fact that of all the great civilizations that rose to power and fell many did so because of a deterioration of family values.  Included in that collapse is the history that there was a breakdown in the family as the cornerstone of society.  Rome was one of the most powerful empires to ever exist. 

Morris conveniently ignores that many historians - as opposed to snake oil merchant pastors - blame the rise of CHRISTIANITY and its undermining of the imperial order as perhaps one of the largest reasons Rome feel.  But who cares about facts when one's a charlatan pastor fleecing the gullible.

The real problem in Alabama is that cretins and shysters like Morris are still afforded deference and respect.  They need to be shunned and laughed out of polite and educated society.  Airbus Industries is building a huge plant in Mobile, but an improved economy will not bring Alabama into the 21st century.  That will only happen when politicians cease prostituting themselves to the likes of Morris and when an educated populace look on folks like Morris with disdain.  That day cannot come soon enough. 

Federal Judge Orders Alabama Probate Judges to Marry Gay Couples

Robert Povilat and Milton Persinger being married

Once again Alabama has chosen to be forced into accepting equality and modernity in general.  Yesterday Judge Callie V. S. "Ginny" Granade of Federal District Court in Mobile made it clear that her order striking down Alabama's same sex marriage ban applied to all probate judges in the state and that federal law, particularly the U.S. Constitution, trumps state law - something a high school government student should know, but which is beyond the comprehension of the knuckle draggers in Alabama, especially those in the Alabama GOP.  As a result, same sex marriages began late yesterday in Mobile County and today they will begin in Baldwin County on the east side of Mobile Bay.  A piece in the New York Times looks at the forced change finally coming to what ought to be called the "make me state".  Here are excerpts:

A federal judge here ruled on Thursday that the local probate judge cannot refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, potentially adding some clarity to a judicial quarrel that has roiled Alabama for most of a week.

The order by Judge Callie V. S. Granade of Federal District Court came after a brief hearing and prompted cheers and crying in the halls of the probate court here, where several couples obtained licenses and were married before the license office closed.

While Judge Granade had declared Alabama’s ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional on Jan. 23, the chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, Roy S. Moore, insisted in his own order Sunday night that Judge Granade’s ruling did not apply to the state’s probate judges and directed them not to comply. 

The ruling on Thursday was the first in this case with a probate judge as a defendant — Judge Don Davis of Mobile County — and was seen by lawyers for the gay couples who brought the case as a clear signal to probate judges around the state what their duties were.

In a relatively straightforward order, Judge Granade restated her finding that the state’s ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional and concluded that if the couples before her “take all steps that are required in the normal course of business as a prerequisite to issuing a marriage license to opposite-sex couples, Judge Davis may not deny them a license on the ground that plaintiffs constitute same-sex couples.”

Judge Davis almost immediately began issuing licenses to same-sex couples, but it was unclear whether other probate judges would follow suit. As of noon on Thursday, judges in 23 Alabama counties were issuing licenses to all couples, in 18 counties to straight couples only and in 26 to no couples at all, according to a tally kept by the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights group.

Bill English, the probate judge in Lee County, had been declining to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples this week. Reached by phone Thursday afternoon, he said he had read Judge Granade’s order and interpreted it as applying to him.  “We’ll begin issuing licenses tomorrow morning,” he said, adding that “a number” of same-sex couples had inquired about applying for a license this week.

Chief Justice Moore did not return messages seeking comment on Thursday. In past interviews and in his order Sunday, however, he has argued that lower federal court rulings are not binding on state courts.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs said they would not hesitate to bring legal action in other counties if probate judges continued to deny licenses to same-sex couples.

How widespread that may be in rural counties where the probate courts keep limited hours will most likely not be known until Friday or even next week. But none of that mattered in Mobile, where, a little after 4 p.m., the weeklong vigil at the Probate Court became a party. Couples embraced, lawyers cheered and people began taking pictures with the court police officers whom they had gotten to know over the last few days.

First in line before the marriage license window were two of the plaintiffs, Robert Povilat, 60, and Milton Persinger, 47, both wearing boutonnieres and with tears in their eyes.

Having lived in Mobile and Baldwin Counties, the area is beautiful and many of the people are truly gracious.  The main problem, as is the case with too many parts of America, is the "godly Christians" who are increasingly the driving force behind hate, bigotry, racism and homophobia as they insist that their rights trump those of everyone else.