Aug 05, 2024

Welcome back and happy Monday.

Today is National Oyster Day. As a raw-during-months-ending-in-R oyster consumer, I'll have to catch up in a couple of months.

The Monday report follows, along with the answers to Friday's quiz.

Thanks for reading,

Ike Morgan

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The national Democratic party has finalized the Alabama delegation for the Democratic National Convention, reports AL.com's Savannah Tryens-Fernandes, and not everybody's thrilled about it.

Alabama Democratic Party Chairman Randy Kelley is taking issue with the Biden-Harris campaign's decision to replace many of the delegates that had been selected by the state party. (Of course, Kamala Harris has now moved to the top of that Democratic presidential ticket).

Out of 34 district delegates, the Biden campaign approved only 13. Kelley said he believes the national party overruled the state party's decisions because the state party is heavily Black and that his party is considering legal recourse, although the window for challenges has long passed. The delegates' names were on the ballot in March.

Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison wrote Kelley a letter that said the state party missed deadlines to make delegate selections or challenge them. He argued the selections went according to the state party's regulations and that presidential candidates have rights of review.

The division with the state Democrats appears to be falling along familiar lines. Kelley said he believes former U.S. Sen. Doug Jones was behind the national party's moves to reject the state's favored delegates. Jones said he wasn't behind it but that he did help the Biden campaign pick replacements.

The convention will be Aug. 19-22 in Chicago.

While numerous athletes from Alabama colleges have competed and won medals at the Paris Olympics -- including Auburn gymnast Suni Lee (three medals) and Troy skeet shooter Vincent Hancock (gold) -- on Saturday homegrown swimmer Paige Madden won her second medal of these Olympic Games, reports AL.com's Mark Inabinett.

Madden is from Mobile, where she set seven state records and was an 11-time state champion at UMS-Wright.

Saturday she won a bronze in the women's 800-meter freestyle. Last week she won a silver as a member of the 4X200-meter freestyle relay team.

In Saturday's 800, she posted a personal-best time of 8 minutes, 13 seconds. Among American women, only Katie Ledecky has posted a better time.

Former Alabama football player Terrance Howard died after he was hit by a car last week, reports AL.com's Creg Stephenson.

Howard made the Crimson Tide as a walk-on last season. He had transferred to North Carolina Central and was in the process of moving from Tuscaloosa to Durham when the incident occurred.

According KPRC-TV in Texas, where Howard's from, he was involved in a minor traffic accident on Interstate 85, got out of his car and was struck by a third vehicle. He didn't see playing time last season but was with the Tide during the College Football Playoff semifinal

Here are the answers to Friday's quiz and how well folks did on it:

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, in what Birmingham's Vulcan Materials and U.S. politicians say is an effort to illegally take property away from Vulcan in the Yucatan Peninsula, announced these plans recently:

To designate the property as a naturally protected area. (CORRECT) 72.7%

To designate the entire local coastal area as vital geographically to national defense. 17.4%

To have the entire area zoned for international tourism. 9.9%

To place locals ban on fried chicken, buttermilk biscuits and television access during football season. 0.0%

There are currently three large aluminum "Singing River Statues" of unnamed musicians in Shoals-area cities. They include a jazz trumpeter in Florence, a 1950s-era singer in Sheffield, and one in Muscle Shoals playing this:

Bass guitar (CORRECT) 42.4%

Slide guitar 30.2%

Banjo 20.9%

Keyboards 6.4%

Fined motorists will be refunded after an apparent malfunctioning of this city's traffic speed-detection cameras.

Tuskegee (CORRECT) 55.2%

Demopolis 21.5%

Brantley 15.7%

Ozark 7.6%

Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's widow, Alma, passed away recently at age 86. The Powells honeymooned in this Alabama location:

The A.G. Gaston Motel in Birmingham (CORRECT) 74.4%

The Ben Moore Hotel in Montgomery 11.6%

A cabin outside Fort McClellan 11.0%

Camping on the Chattahoochee River 2.9%

What Alabama waterway is about to undergo a decades-long cleanup process because of its longtime PCB pollution?

Choccolocco Creek (CORRECT) 69.2%

Village Creek 14.0%

Little Choctawhatchee River 16.3%

Buzzard Roost Creek 0.6%

“The only position I’d have an interest in running for when my time is up, and I am term-limited, would be governor.”

Alabama Lt. Gov. Will Ainsworth, whose term ends in 2026 (as does Gov. Kay Ivey's).

In 1934, country singer Vern Gosdin of Woodland.

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