michael o. allen, Author at MICHAEL O. ALLEN

You Say Vote

By michael o. allenHomepageNo Comments

You say vote and someone says:

“Democracy is a sham. Those people don’t speak for me. The system is rigged.”

You say vote. Someone says:

“Well, it doesn’t make a difference. This state is red. Another state is blue. This thing is already a lock.”

You say vote. Someone says:

“Hey, I’m making a statement by not voting.”

And, you say:

Well, I can’t hear it. This is not about the White House. This is about your house. If you’re not registered to vote, you can’t sit on that jury. You can’t choose your mayor. You can’t choose your city council. You can’t even choose your district attorney. You can’t decide which measures will help your family and community and which will put them at risk.

This government was designed to be changed.

You can either make that change or you can take what little they give you. Democracy is not a sham. It’s a job. Our job. And it took too goddamn long to get it to just let it slide.

You say vote because there are people who still don’t want you to.

Go to http://savetheday.vote to get more information.

September 29, 2016

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Baby Bomber!

By michael o. allenHomepageNo Comments

So, at the top of the 7th inning yesterday, the Yankees had scored a run to tie the Tampa Bay Rays at 2-2. There were two runners on base but also two outs and the Yankees’ sensational rookie catcher Gary Sanchez was ambling up to the plate, with Butler following him.

There was frantic discussion on the mound about what to do. If I remember correctly, in an earlier game at Yankee Stadium, a similar discussion had led to a directive to give Sanchez an intentional walk. But the pitcher got the pitch too close to the plate and Sanchez hit the ball very far into the deepest part of the stadium, which was the only reason it stayed in the stadium for a sacrifice fly. Last night, the execution of what was discussed went similarly awry with far more destructive results.

Rays relief pitcher Brad Boxberger’s off-speed pitch floated up to the plate and sat fat and juicy in the middle of the plate. Sanchez smoked it hard and far for a three-run home run.

September 21, 2016

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I am Raw with Rage

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Does it matter that we’ve been saying for a long, long time that there’s a systematic and continuing extermination of a people. Why do people refuse to see our trail of tears and outrage?

Keith Lamont Scott

The Guardian: At the beginning of 2015, the Guardian began a grim task – to record the death of every person killed by American police officers – for a simple reason: astonishingly, the United States government publishes no such record.

The New York Daily News: Ahmad Khan Rahami set off a bomb in New York City, injuring a couple of dozen people. He shot at cops and wounded officers at the time of his arrest. He was still captured alive.

September 21, 2016

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Dunham’s Extraordinary Contrition

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The brouhaha kicked up by the actress Lena Dunham complaining that New York Giants’ Odell Beckham Jr. failed to somehow objectify her is interesting to me because of American history.

The issue of black-male interaction with white females in American history has always been historically problematic—Emmett Till, may God rest his soul, paid for this offense with his life, as have many uppity black men who had to temerity to look at white women and sometimes even talked to them.

Dunham’s apology was as extraordinarily contrite as her initial reaction to Beckham’s apparent inattention to her was obtuse.

Lena Dunham at the 2016 Met Gala

Dunham had published on her website Lenny Letter newsletter an interview with comedian Amy Schumer about an encounter with Beckham that did not go the way she would have wished.

The occasion was the 2016 Met Gala and Dunham and Schumer talked about feeling out of place there. Beckham, too, was there and it seemed that he ignored Dunham. This is how Dunham related the experience to Schumer:

You and I were literally sitting across from each other at the Met Ball, and it was so surreal to get to do that.

I was sitting next to Odell Beckham Jr., and it was so amazing because it was like he looked at me and he determined I was not the shape of a woman by his standards. He was like, ‘That’s a marshmallow. That’s a child. That’s a dog.’ It wasn’t mean — he just seemed confused.

The vibe was very much like, ‘Do I want to fuck it? Is it wearing a … yep, it’s wearing a tuxedo. I’m going to go back to my cell phone.’ It was like we were forced to be together, and he literally was scrolling Instagram rather than have to look at a woman in a bow tie. I was like, ‘This should be called the Metropolitan Museum of Getting Rejected by Athletes.’

September 5, 2016

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The Trials of Hope Solo

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I am still trying figure out what was wrong with what Hope Solo said about how Sweden played in the Rio Olympics soccer quarterfinals.

No, let me back up. I was shocked when I read what she had said. Then, I chucked it to Hope being true to herself. Her team lost a frustrating match. She said what her more tactful teammates felt but wouldn’t say.

Sweden, now coached by former USWNT coach Pia Sundhage, decided to ‘park the bus,’ as the saying goes, essentially playing with as many players behind the ball as it could and only making counterattacking forays. It’s a legitimate tactic to deploy against a team with superior talent but it does not make for scintillating soccer.

Solo called the Swedes “a bunch of cowards.”

Hope Solo answers questions after the USWNT against Canada on 9/22/11 from Chris Singer on Vimeo.

Calling your opponent “cowards” at the end of gut-wrenching loss was, at the very least, ugly, classless and unsportsmanlike. It is also one of the more benign things you could call an opponent in any competition, especially in the cesspool that is the world Olympics movement. Don’t forget this is the same Olympics that featured Ryan Lochte and Justin Gatlin, drugged-up athletes from at least Russia, the same Olympics where an official was arrested for scalping tickets.

The games themselves, all of it, were a disgrace, purchased as they were by scarce resources that should have gone to taking care of Brazil’s much impoverished population.

August 26, 2016

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Trump on Clinton’s Bigotry: Pot Calling Kettle . . .

By michael o. allenHomepageNo Comments

One thing is clear.

Donald Trump does not have a plan to win the office of President of the United States. His intention is to win every news cycle by saying the most outrageous things that occur to him at that given moment.

A short time ago, it was encouraging gun owners to make sure a President Hillary Clinton never gets to appoint a justice to the United States Supreme court who could interfere with their 2nd Amendment rights.

He denied it later but by then it had been covered and covered as breathlessly as possible. I don’t remember which came first, that or that President Obama is the founder of ISIS, with Clinton as a co-founder and the president receiving award from ISIS as their most valuable player.

Again, saturation coverage.

So, why wouldn’t Trump come out and say that “Hillary Clinton is a bigot”?

And this is all part of his outreach to African Americans, people about whom he could care a whit, about whom he has no ideas and very little interest in engaging.

August 25, 2016

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A Tough Time to be Fans of Arsenal FC

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It is the start of another English Premier League season, the beginning of another European Champions League campaign and the Arsenal Football Club is in a familiar spot woefully undermanned and bereft of ideas how to solve problems.

Chelsea and especially the two Manchester clubs have replenished and rejuvenated their teams. The only thing those clubs are doing in the summer transfer market, if anything, is to find complementing pieces to round out their squads.

Chelsea Football Club resolutely recruited Michy Batshuayi and now can be seen in a two-striker set with Diego Costa. N’Golo Kanté has been poached from last season’s EPL champion Leicester City FC to add steel to their midfield.

Manchester City F.C. added German speedster Leroy Sané, Nolito from Spain and another German İlkay Gündoğan. And, any day now, Claudio Bravo will be in City colors.

The much hated Stan Kroenke, who owns the controlling shares in Arsenal F.C.

Don’t even get me started with Manchester United FC. Zlatan Ibrahimović, arguably the best striker in the world, sturdy defencer Eric Bertrand Bailly, and midfielder Henrikh Mkhitaryan were added. Then, for good measure, Man U added the world’s most talented midfield player in Paul Pogba.

I haven’t mentioned Tottenham Hotspurs and Liverpool who also have designs on wresting the title from Leicester or, at least, finish in the top four.

August 25, 2016

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Another Dangerous Trump Idea

By michael o. allenHomepageNo Comments

Donald Trump, the GOP nominee for President of the United States, proves daily that he is not in the race to win it. But he aims to cause as much havoc as he can on the way to not winning the presidency.

How else do you explain his efforts to recruit poll watchers in order to combat “cheating” by the Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party nominee?

Trump is the first candidate for President of the United States to use overtly racist appeals and he has now drafted as his campaign director Stephen Bannon, CEO of Breitbart News, who boasts that his news website is the propaganda “platform for the alt-right.”

Trump's Pledge

What proof does Trump have that Hillary Clinton is somehow planning to steal the election? None but then he’s never needed any to launch charges. His only evidence seems to be that the courts won’t allow some of the various GOP vote-suppression gambits to continue. At least some courts are willing to put a stop to those immoral efforts.

August 23, 2016

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Trying to Derail Obama. Again

By michael o. allenHomepageNo Comments

There have been political cartoons and breathless stories, including blatantly false ones by Donald Trump, the GOP nominee for President of the United States, about how President Obama paid ransom to get the Iran nuclear deal.

Now, along comes a corrective story in the form of a New York Times editorial:

The first thing to know about the latest controversy over the Iran nuclear deal is that the Obama administration did not pay $400 million in “ransom” to secure the release of three American detainees. Yet that’s the story critics are peddling in another attempt to discredit an agreement that has done something remarkable — halted a program that had put Iran within striking distance of producing a nuclear weapon.

The truth is that the administration withheld the payment to ensure Iran didn’t renege on its promise to free three detainees — a Washington Post journalist, a Marine veteran and a Christian pastor. That’s pragmatic diplomacy not capitulation.

A graphic accompanying the editorial in the New York Times

“U.S. Sent Cash to Iran as Americans Were Freed” The Wall Street Journal first blared two and half weeks ago (the story is behind a pay wall), peddling a gotcha that the “Obama administration insists there was no quid pro quo, but critics charge payment amounted to ransom.”

A shame that Rupert Murdoch has turned a once-principled newspaper into another of his disreputable propaganda organs.

Please read rest of the Times editorial to get the background and full story of what happened in this case.

August 23, 2016

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Donald Trump is Such a Kidder!

By michael o. allenHomepageNo Comments

These people. They just can’t take a joke. First, he sarcastically ran for the office of the President of the United States even though he is not qualified to run the country and he has no ideas how to and is not even interested in running the country. Ruin the country, maybe, but run it, no.

I mean, what’s a joker and a con man to do, right?

Trumpy

Ratings challenged @CNN reports so seriously that I call President Obama (and Clinton) “the founder” of ISIS, & MVP. THEY DON’T GET SARCASM?

@realDonaldTrump

Especially when all these people started taking him seriously and started supporting him. They come to his rallies to watch him froth at the mouth and display for all to see that he is unfit to be president.

So, what, he sarcastically called Mexicans criminals and rapists and said he would build a magnificent wall to keep them out of the U.S. And, then, he sarcastically added that, what the hell, let’s keep out Muslims, too. People can’t figure out that he has no idea how to do any of this?

I mean, would a person interested in leading his country demean, denigrate and insult the leader of the country in the crudest and racist manner?

No.

Trumpy Salad And then, sarcastically, he called for gun nuts to kill his opponent for president before she gets a chance to nominate Supreme Court justices who might overturn gun rights.

And, yet, for this and other abominable acts and utterances in between, he cannot get these idiotic GOP leaders to stop supporting him and for people to stop following him.

Donald Trump does not mean any of this. It was a lark and now it’s gone too far. If only there’s a way to stop running for president. He’s done everything he could to show everyone he’s not serious but . . . even Republicans are, like, you are our leader. We support you.

What’s a con man to do?

Maybe he should test out one of the theories he propounded upon earlier on in the campaign by going out and shooting someone on 5th Avenue to see if people will stop supporting him then.

It won’t be the most outrageous thing he’s done in this campaign.

August 12, 2016

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