No-surprise Tuesday

By Jennifer J. Foster

Although today was the day that Kentucky and Oregon took their places among the parade of states that have voted for president in this long, long, LONG campaign for the White House, the only surprises came in a show that involved voting of a different sort.

Hillary Clinton pounded Barack Obama, as expected, in the Bluegrass State, running up a 35-point victory in her latest drumming of him in (for lack of a better term) late, predominately white states. She delivered a lengthy address in which she made clear her intention to—get ready—continue on in the campaign! I will say, though, that this speech was one of her better ones; it wasn’t the content that struck me as much as the pace of it. Usually, Hillary drones on a lot. Tonight, she seemed to have an energy about her. Maybe she had one too many Red Bulls: That would explain her fuzzy, fuzzy math. Clinton now says she has won more popular votes than Obama. Only a few problems with that argument:

No. 1, it’s completely irrelevant. The Democratic (big D) Party selects its nominee through delegates. It is not a democratic process (little d).

No. 2, for Clinton’s claim to be true, she would have to include all the primary states, plus Florida and Michigan, but not caucus states. So much for counting every vote.

No. 3, Clinton couldn’t know the popular vote numbers, anyway, since caucus states don’t release exact vote totals.

No. 4, Florida and Michigan cannot and should not count—at least until the DNC Rules Committee deals with this issue on May 31.

But however strange the logic was behind it, the Clinton cheer was short-lived. Shortly after she spoke, Obama took the stage in Des Moines, Iowa, to soak in the excitement that comes from having won the majority of your party’s pledged presidential delegates. However weak his showing in Kentucky—and it was weak—it put him over that mark. Obama delivered a polished-up version of his general election speech, which he debuted a couple of days ago. It was notable for the conciliatory, even admirable tone toward Clinton (Obama noted that because of what Clinton has done in this election, because of the barriers she has broken and the support she has drawn, the world will be a different place for his two daughters), and then for the way Obama just as quickly changed gears and referred to John McCain as “my opponent.“ Translation: Clinton is no longer his opponent.

The speech sought to shore up Obama’s weaknesses among rural white voters in the wake of the “only-bitter-people-carry-guns-and-go-to-church” flap that dogged Obama last month. But if it was all but repentant in tone where that was concerned, it was downright in-your-face when it came to McCain and his foreign policy.

You know by now that McCain and Obama have been exchanging body blows since the president rang the bell with his comments about appeasement before the Israeli Knesset last week. Pundits can argue all day whether Obama’s strategy—which is to go after McCain with both barrels, so to speak—is wise or reckless. Few people can match up with the personal experiences of a solider who was held as a prisoner of war for more than five years. But Obama is not trying to match it: He’s simply saying he has different ideas, and he’s not backing away from it or trying to minimize it as a campaign issue. What’s good about that is that it shows Obama’s confidence in his position and that he is willing to stand on his belief that his is the right position. What’s potentially bad about it is that if he’s not careful, Obama risks wading into an area where McCain has experience that is just a few years shorter than the entire time Barack Obama has been alive. Obama cannot afford to be seen as a condescending university-type lecturing a wayward military recruit. If he can successfully walk that line, it will be considered a good strategy, one that allowed Obama to stand toe-to-toe with a man who was a POW for five and a half years. It he fails, it will go down as one of the biggest blunders of all time, because Obama will have chosen to engage McCain on what McCain believes are his strongest issues: National security and foreign policy.

Obama needs to remember that there’s a reason home games are desireable. He needs to play on his own field, where he has the upper hand on domestic issues like the economy, rather than volunteering to go out on the road all the time to McCain’s national security and foreign policy yard. Even the best teams get weary of the road.

All in all, I thought it was a solid speech, a good jumping-off point for Obama as he trains his sights on McCain and begins to tweak his general-election message as the race for the Democratic nomination (we hope) dies down.

As for the other voting venue, I cast my vote for David Archuleta after the season finale of “American Idol.“ It was the first time where I genuinely felt that either contestant would make a great champion, but Archuleta brought his A game to the finale, while Cook seemed to struggle with uncharacteristic nervousness.

But fans love David Cook as much as they love Archuleta—and possibly even more. We’ll find out tomorrow at 7 p.m. Central time.

If only the fight for the Democratic nomination could be settled as soon!

Close call

By Jennifer J. Foster

With all the stories about Iraq and Afghanistan taking up an almost ubiquitous presence on cable news, it’s easy to become desensitized to the dangers our servicemen and women face in the field every day.

For a dramatic refresher course, click here (warning: violent images).

According to the story behind the pictures, the six photos show a U.S. Marine in Afghanistan ducking as insurgent gunfire tears through the top of a mud wall he’s using for cover.

Thank God, the Marine escaped the gunfight without injury.

Let us never forget—or minimize—the very real danger facing our Armed Forces.

What is the price of a child’s life?

By Jennifer J. Foster

I just got finished reading this story from CNN on the starvation facing children in Ethiopia.

“A year of drought and soaring food prices” has led to shortages facing tens of thousands of children all across the country, CNN reports.

“We have nothing to feed our children,“ said one elder in Egu Village. “We are losing our children day by day.“

In addition to having more people in need this year because of a lack of rain to plant a second crop, “there is a critical shortfall in the supply of therapeutic foods used to treat children with severe acute malnutrition,“ according to one UNICEF official.

According to the CNN report, “UNICEF estimates six million Ethiopian children under the age of five are at risk and more than 120,000 have only about a month to live.“

Read that again.

One hundred and twenty thousand children have only a month to live ... before they starve to death.

More from the story:

The UN’s children’s agency is appealing for $10 million to pay for emergency needs of more than seven million children under five as well as pregnant and lactating mothers in 325 drought-affected districts.

The World Food Programme (WFP) supplies the emergency food for UNICEF, but rising food prices mean it could not guarantee aid for all the areas in need.

“Unless you get immediate assistance the risk is, you fall into severe malnutrition and eventually death, so unless our supporters come in immediately for this we fear that is what is going to happen in the country,“ said Jakob Mikkelse, the WFP’s nutrition and education chief.

My stomach was already churning from reading that as I sit next to my nine-month-old baby girl, who is munching away on her Cheerios. Then I looked in the CNN sidebar: One of the today’s top stories has to do with that Obama-won’t-wear-a-flag-lapel-pin pseudo-scandal.

Children are starving to death. And we are talking about flag pins.

That makes me sick. 

So what are we going to do about it?

I told you last week about about WorldVision (read the post here). Go to WorldVision’s home page here and click on the graphic that reads, “Global Food Crisis: A Silent Killer.“ You will be able to choose Ethiopia from a drop-down list of WorldVision-served countries where hunger is widespread. One little girl waiting for help is Likyelesh. She lives in a community severely affected by the HIV/AIDS crisis. She is a second-grader whose favorite subject is the national language of her country. She loves to play volleyball. She’s hungry. For $35 a month, you can help her.

Other hungry children are waiting for help in Haiti, Kenya, Lesotho, Mozambique, Rwanda, Uganda and Zimbabwe. You can’t help them all. But you can help one—or two, or more, as your circumstances allow.

Back to Ethiopia: I had another idea. UNICEF says it needs $10 million to save those 120,000 children from starvation. That’s $83.33 per child.

But what if America’s Fortune 1000 companies made this their charity action of the month? Split into 1000 parts, each company’s share is $10,000. Surely each Fortune 1000 company can afford $10,000. Some—like Exxon Mobil, with 2005 profits topping $35 billion —can afford to do much more.

Is it worth $10,000 to save 120,000 children from starving to death?

That works out to about eight and a half cents per child.

So what is the price of a child’s life? Is it $83.33? Is it $35? Or is it eight and a half cents?

Check out the list of Fortune 1000 companies here. Do your part—and demand that they do theirs.

More on the education budget meltdown

By Jennifer J. Foster

OK, so my blood pressure is back to normal—well, normal for me, at least—so let’s talk about what the Senate’s failure to pass the education budget means for your children’s schools and teachers.

First of all, a special session will be required to get the budget passed. As usual, no one seems to know how or when that will happen. Some folks in the know seem to think it will be sooner rather than later; others believe that the governor will hold off on calling the special session until key lawmakers and lobbyists (yes, that’s right, I said it) can agree on the numbers. Who are the key people? That would be Gov. Bob Riley’s representatives, AEA godfather Paul Hubbert, lobbyists for the universities headed by Joe Fine and the chairmen of the House and Senate budget committees: Rep. Richard Lindsey (D-Centre) and Sen. Hank Sanders (D-Selma).

Yes, these are the same people who couldn’t agree the first time. But hey! What’s the worst that can happen? Another special session!

While our legislators and lobbyists haggle away over their BlackBerries in Montgomery, non-tenured teachers across Alabama will begin seeing pink slips on Thursday. The Mobile Press Register’s Bryan Lyman wrote a terrific article about the funding flap; among the quotes he got was this one from Alabama state School Superintendent Joe Morton:

“It won’t be a couple of firings, it will be massive,“ Morton said. “With no budget they’ll have to hedge their bets, and they’ll have to let them go.“

State Sen. Quinton Ross (D-Montgomery) called it a “sad, sad day” and added this no-brainer:

“It’s sad that we’re sending our teachers to Mississippi and Georgia to maintain employment,“ Ross said.

Tuition is likely to be increased to make up the difference at Alabama’s universities. “These are huge, huge cuts,“ University of South Alabama lobbyist Happy Fulford (yes, Happy) told Lyman. “It would seem logical to me that you’d see a tuition increase to cover costs.“

USA alone faces a $16 million cut.

More on how we got into this situation in the first place:

The filibuster that killed the budget lasted from 10 a.m. until 10:30 p.m. Monday. Twelve and a half hours with no resolution, after 59 and a half days to come to an agreement on this issue.

In addition to the grocery sales tax repeal and the PAC-to-PAC reofrm, other bills lost in the education funding meltdown included measures that would remove state taxes on federal stimulus checks and ban smoking in public places.

From Lyman’s story:

Senators seeking to reverse cuts to four-year colleges filibustered the $6.3 billion budget for 12 hours Monday, saying colleges and universities facing $151 million in cuts were bearing too much of the burden of the $367 million in reductions in the proposed 2009 budget.

The universities sought an additional $25 million, saying the cuts would leave the state at a competitive disadvantage with other states ... Senate leadership declined to add $25 million to the budget, citing the fiscal straits of the education budget, and even dared the senators to kill it.

“I’m going to give them a chance to kill it,“ said state Sen. Hank Sanders, D-Selma, hours before Monday night’s vote. “If they want to kill it, we’ll let them kill it.“ …

“My feeling is that if there’s proration at all, and I’m not convinced we’ll be in proration, but if we are, I do not believe a one-third of one percent increase will break the camel’s back,“ said state Sen. Ted Little, D-Auburn.

The $6.3 billion education budget, which goes into effect on October 1, cuts funding for K-12 schools and colleges by $367 million, with K-12 schools ($119 million) and individual colleges bearing the brunt of the cuts.

Read Lyman’s complete article here.

Hey, hey, ho, ho, sen-a-tors have got to go!

By Jennifer J. Foster

The Alabama Senate has one standing job. ONE JOB.

Yes, it’s charged with other things, like confirming Auburn University trustees. But there’s only ONE THING that it has to accomplish each and every year.

And the State Constitution gives senators 60 days each year to do it.

No, it’s not repealing the state’s sales tax on groceries—although you might think so for all the attention that issue has gotten over the last month.

No, it’s not reforming state campaign finance laws and the PAC-to-PAC transfers that make them a joke—although that issue has been around for so long that it would make sense that it would be an annual responsibility.

It’s passing the state’s budgets.

Among them is the budget that funds Alabama’s public education system from pre-K through university level. You know the education budget: That thing that makes it possible for Alabama’s teachers to be paid, for the lights in the schools to come on, for books and other educational materials, for reading programs and computers and science labs and athletics programs and everything else that comprises state schools.

Yesterday was the last day of the 2008 session.

Did they pass the education budget?

NOOOOOOOOOooooo!!!!!!

For that matter, did they pass the grocery tax repeal?

NOOOOOOOOO!!!

Well, certainly they passed that PAC-to-PAC bill, which everyone agreed during election season two years ago needed to pass. After all, they’ve had long enough to consider it, right???

NOOOOOOOOO!!!!

Nor did they pass many of the more than 170 other bills the House of Representatives, with its 105 members and different sets of opinions, managed to agree on and send to the 35-member Senate.

I can’t wait to see the talking points from the majority and minority offices. Let me guess—it will go something like this:

Republicans will say Democrats filibustered and refused to compromise to pass meaningful legislation for Alabamians. They’re at fault, the GOP will say.

Democrats will say Republicans filibustered and refused to compromise to pass meaningful legislation for Alabamians. They’re at fault, the Democrats will say.

But that’s not to say they won’t agree on some things.

They’ll rush to your community groups and club meetings, eager to remind you about all the pork they’ve managed to haul home in previous sessions and promise more from this summer’s special session. They’ll provide you a laundry list with all the good things their party did—or were precluded from doing because of the cowardly obstructionists on the other side—and all the bad things the other party did—or were kept from doing due only to the great courage and tenacity they displayed.

In short, it will be 30 to 45 minutes of the most self-aggrandizing, self-centered self-promotion that you’re likely to see anywhere (except when your congressman comes to town).

It will almost be enough to make you sick.

Almost.

And that’s why most all of these clowns will be back in 2010: Because Alabamians either have a short memory of wrongs they have suffered at the hands of those who govern them, or they’ve just been abused too much to notice anymore.

It’s just my opinion, of course, but I think that if there isn’t one among them with leadership ability enough to put a stop to all this madness in Montgomery, they all need to go. Let’s throw them all out, thoroughly fumigate the building and start all over.

Why not? What we’ll have then can’t be worse than what we have now.

More on what the failure of the education budget means for Alabama, and what’s coming next, in a little bit ...

... When my blood pressure drops.