MICHAEL O. ALLEN

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michael o. allen

Irrefutable

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This kind of infallible logic is exactly how you become a big city newspaper columnist.

Sen. Barack Obama, (D-IL), has won 11 straight Democratic Party primaries and caucuses in the contest with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, (D-NY), for the presidential nomination. During the past month, Mr. Obama has won states big and small, won some of them by landslide. He has won so-called ‘blue’ and ‘red’ states. In other words, he has won in every way imaginable.

This puts Sen. Obama exactly where Sen. Clinton wants him, according to New York Daily News political columnist Michael Goodwin:

You hear it everywhere: Tuesday is Hillary Clinton‘s last stand. If she can’t win Ohio and Texas, she’s history.

True, mostly. But it’s not the whole story. The rest goes like this: This is Barack Obama‘s third chance to knock her out. If he can’t close the deal this time, maybe he can’t close the deal, period.

Either the third time is the charm for him, or it could be strike three against him. Any result tomorrow that doesn’t finish her off lets her argue that Democratic voters’ love affair with Obama was just one of those flings. She’ll say buyer’s remorse has set in, and it’s time to get serious about winning the White House.

This must be a natural extension of the Clinton campaign’s weekend argument that Obama not only has win all contests on Tuesday because he spent more money than she did, but that he has to win all contests by comfortable margins. Why? Because she’s the underdog and he’s spent more money than she did.

Talk about turning weaknesses into strength.

Stories my mother told me . . .

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This is one of them.

My mother was about 15 when she got pregnant with me. My father was 18.

Terrified to go to her own family, she approached my father’s sister and told her of her predicament. The two young women hatched a plan to make the problem, me, go away. They would procure an abortion for my mother.

I forgot to mention this was in Africa and in the early 1960’s.

Just imagine what the practice of abortion was like in this country in the 1960’s and you’ll understand that undergoing the procedure in Africa then would have ended in certain death for my mother.

But my mother’s biggest fear was realized. Her father found out about the pregnancy and ended the talk of abortion.

I was born and my early childhood was spent in my grandfather’s compound in Accra, Ghana. The consequences of those decisions set the course of my life. My mother never finished high school (she was fond of telling I was her high school diploma until I made her stop). Attendant to that was crushing poverty that ruled much of my life.

The good news, however, was that my mother did not die and I lived.

Bates for News

Six-month-old Daniella broke the hearts of New Yorkers everywhere when Sailema claimed she was left in his cab.

I reminisce about this now because of little Daniella, the 6-month-old that a few people are in a whale of trouble for trying to make sure she is safe. Cabby Klever Sailema turned her over to Queens firefighters, claiming a fare had abandoned the infant in his cab. That story turned out not to be true.

Klever Sailema spoke to the Daily News from his lawyer’s office in the Bronx.

Now he’s going to be punished. So will Daniella’s father, Carlos Rodas, 27, when cops catch up with him.

I was taken by the age of the mother, 14, and the insanity of punishing her and any of the people (well, Rodas does deserve sanction for taking advantage of a child) for trying to think of a way to make sure Daniella is safe and cared for. She was not much younger than my own mother was when she faced the same questions. The plan they hatched was, at best, hare-brained.

But, if the hoped for outcome is adoption, what exactly is wrong with that?

This story could have had a tragic ending. We’ve heard and seen too many times little children like Daniella being killed by the hands of their ward?

Maybe Sailema, a 45-year-old father of three from Elmhurst, Queens, does not deserve a hero’s medal but I’m not sure he deserves the charges against him either. What good is served by punishing Maria Siavichay, 21, Daniella’s aunt, who may have cooked up this ‘solution’?

I see this whole incident as a distress call for our community. Our sex education program is sorely lacking. A good sex education program does not, of course, mitigate statutory rape. But Daniella’s 14-year-old mother should have had better information to cope with her situation every misbegotten step of the way. And she should have had better resources after becoming pregnant. Our entire child welfare system failed her.

Here’s another thing: Our society does not aid families. We don’t help young families.

Here’s my question: What should Sailema and Siavichay have done?

These kids . . .

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Alex Moni of New Jersey was working for the Obama campaign in Corpus Christi.

Photo: Michael Stravato for The New York Times

At the end of the day, I like the profile of the Obama Democratic Party. It is young, diverse, resourceful, and self-generating. That bodes well for the future of the party. If Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, (D-NY), ends up the party’s nominee, she is going to have to harness the energy of the primary to govern.

The fear, of course, is that we’re going to be so busy fighting old Clinton wars, including whatever Bill is up to this time around, that we won’t have time to address and of the issues facing the nation.

Anna Scott of Montana, the Bowie County campaign field coordinator for Barack Obama, helped Ruth Blackwell, 83, with her e-mail address last week in Texarkana, Tex.

I have to give Mrs. Clinton props for how well she has fought back in the last few days. It has not been an easy campaign for her and people are so quick to see fault and write her off. Many of the problems are of her making. She seems to be coming back from them, however.

I hope she puts some of the lessons learned to good use if she ends up the nominee.

The people's house

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Last August, a bridge fell in Minneapolis and we learned it would cost $225 billion a year for the next 50 years just to maintain America’s crumbling roadways and bridges.

A new report just out says African Americans still lag behind white Americans significantly in income, education and other measures of well-being.

Healthcare in America is abysmal. Education is even worse. The health index for America’s children is worse than in many third world countries.

Remember that illegal war that we lied our way into? It’s still going on and America’s service men and women are still dying for lack of proper gear.

Another new report says one in every 100 American is now behind bars, a new record.

Every indication is that the American economy is cratering, on the verge of collapse.

And I am sure there are even more serious problems plaguing our nation that I am overlooking. At least I know the men and women that we elected to the United States Senate and the House of Representative are hard at work tackling those problems.

Why, just yesterday, a Congressional subcommittee held a hearing where it threatened to impose on America’s major sports cartel testing for performance enhancing drugs.

A different committee has asked the U.S. Justice Department to investigate whether an athlete lied in his testimony trying to refute allegations of PED use made by a former friend of his, an admitted serial liar.

The greatest show on earth

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News flash! Congress to investigate pitching great Roger Clemens for perjury.

Members of Congress, mostly Democrats, especially Henry Waxman, want the United States Justice Department to investigate whether Clemens was telling the truth when he appeared in a farcical hearing that even Waxman found embarrassing and wished he had not held.

This was a hearing where gas bag politicians, not prosecutors, were questioning Clemens about the testimony from an inveterate liar, a drug dealer, and date rapist Brian McNamee that he had injected Clemens with steroids and other substances. No one has any other testimony other than McNamee’s.

They would seek to use the words of Yankee pitching great Andy Pettitte to buttress McNamee’s shaky testimony.

This is not going to end well. For Congress. And the Justice Department. Also, I have a feeling that this nation faces far more serious problems than this trumped up drama.

Bloomberg's city

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The best Levi Jeans I ever wore as a child growing up in Africa were not the ones sent to me by my father, who lived in Chicago at the time. They were the knock-offs made in the warren of factories in Lagos, Nigeria.

The Nigeria of my youth had a highly educated but under-employed workforce. The situation today is not that different, except that that workforce is even more educated now and even more under-employed.

What brings about this little trip down memory lane?

Action by goons working for New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg in a raid in Chinatown yesterday. $1 million in counterfeit goods seized in NYC raidSo said the headline of the Associated Press story Newsday ran yesterday.

The Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement, after two months of investigation, descended on an area they called the “Counterfeit Triangle” and seized counterfeit Gucci, Prada, Fendi, Rolex and Coach goods.

I am not saying counterfeiters are good for the economy but these Americans trying to work, something to help their families (the government surely ain’t gonna do it) and they get harassed.

First, corporations devalue work and shipped it to overseas sweatshops. Then when some of the people left behind try to do a little work, they arrest them for alleged quality of life violation.Of course, no sooner were the members of this special unit—cops and buildings and finance inspectors—back in their office after this little charade than the hawkers were back on the street peddling the same wares.

This is what I’ve come to expect from the Bloomberg administration. This is the same mayor who promulgated a law against picking up furniture that people have disposed off on city sidewalks. My friend Todd at Yankees For Justice wrote about this a month ago.

Other people’s discards were the only way I furnished my city apartment back in the days. Then Bloomberg not only made that against the law, he confiscated your vehicle if you put the trash you just picked up in your car or van. I did that. I would see something and, if it was too big to carry, I’d run and get my car, hoping no else got to it before I got back.

And when I made the mistake of a putting perfectly good Sony television on the sidewalk, it was gone before I could change my mind and bring it back in.

I did not consider the person who took that television a thief. It’s a time-honored New York City tradition. Until the abomination that is Mike Bloomberg.

Now, his department of Sanitation trumpets how many people they arrest and how many vehicles they seized on a city website.

I know some people think Bloomberg has been great for New York City. I guess anyone coming after Rudy Giuliani has to be considered great in comparison. Bloomberg is a charlatan who didn’t want to be mayor but ran as a lark.

I cannot wait for his nightmare reign to end.

Out of the mouths of . . .

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My wife (Let’s call her LJ) and two boys (Gabriel, 10, and Aidan, 6 years old but turning 7 in five days) were walking on Hope St., by Spring, the other day when they came across a scene that was unusual enough they ran home to get a camera to record it: a Vulture eating a Possum.

On their return, the scene acquired a touch of the surreal. Vulture was still eating Possum. Then a hearse drives by.

This is where I enter. That night, the boys were telling me about their day.

Aidan: That Vulture was cute.

Gabriel (knowing his brother, laughs)

Me: It was a vulture.

Aidan: All vultures are cute.

(Aidan believes all animals are cute.)

Me: Vultures are never cute.

Aidan: How ‘bout the Possum, it was cute?

Me: It was dead!

Aidan: Besides that.

Family feud

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It has come to this.

Sen. Hillary Clinton, (D-NY), needs to throw in the towel before she causes any more mayhem. The Smoking Gun tells us that a supporter of hers viciously stabbed his brother-in-law, a supporter of Sen. Barack Obama, (D-IL), in the stomach during an argument over their respective candidacies.

Come on now, can’t we all get along?

McCain's media relations office

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How fortunate is John McCain, (R-AZ), to have Newsweek magazine in its corner?The magazine’s reporters and writers don’t even pretend to be objective anymore. They see their job as explaining the ‘Maverick’ to an unappreciative nation.

Case in point is their package of stories and columns under the headline Straight Talk Roadblock, which sought to dismiss the recent article by The New York Times about ethical lapses by McCain, including apparent cozy relationship between him and a lobbyist. Despite the fact that their own reporting (by powerhouse Evan Thomas and pit bull Michael Isikoff, among others) confirms the essential facts of the story by the Times, they still called it a non-story.In his ‘Editor’s Desk’ column, Jon Meacham said:

Let us be honest: without the allegations about sex, there was no Times story. (McCain’s FCC efforts and links to the communications company had been previously reported.) No suggestion of sex, no front page; no suggestion of sex, no right-wing rally to McCain’s side against the Times. It is, as Margaret Thatcher used to say, a funny old world.

It’s of a piece with recent Newsweek reporting about McCain, which has been adulatory, even more so than the usual media treatment of McCain. Howard Fineman put in his usual yeoman’s work sucking up to the good senator.As Newsweek says, there’s no scandal here. Everybody run along.