Michael O. Allen

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  • A Recurring Nightmare

    The BP Deepwater Horizon catastrophe is a perfect Republican Party trap: Watch as a Democratic administration and Congress drown in the oil disaster while they clean up at the polls. Then Republicans return to office and begin the cycle by laying the bombs that’ll detonate under the next Democratic administration. Does anyone remember Dick Cheney’s…

  • MLB’s Hall of Shame

    Alright, MLB umpire Jim Joyce stands today appropriately outfitted with goat horns for blowing what should have been the final call of a perfect game by Detroit Tigers Armando Galarraga on Wednesday. Galarraga missed his chance at baseball immortality by pitching the 21st perfect game in baseball history (two earlier this season). That is unless…

  • Aspiration

    Wyclef Jean–“If I Was President [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pq_3OheqzU[/youtube] Election time is coming If I was president, I’d get elected on Friday, assasinated on Saturday, and buried on Sunday. If I was president… If I was president An old man told me, instead of spending billions on the war, we can use some of that money, in the…

  • iPad Nation!

    Alright, there’s no reason for this post other than that I am at the Apple Store in Tice’s Corner in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey and I am writing this post on the iPad. It’s a pretty sweet and magical device! I am just saying, ya know! Anyway, I am home now and my attempt at…

  • A Violent Death

    The Guardian of London is reporting the violent death of one Eugene Terre’Blanche in Rustenberg, South Africa: A notorious white supremacist who once threatened to wage war rather than allow black rule in South Africa was hacked to death at his farm yesterday following an argument with two employees. Eugene Terre’Blanche’s mutilated body was found on…

  • Going ‘Round . . .

    Martin Schilde, my friend in the Northwest, sent the following passage in an e-mail. I guess it’s making the round but I don’t know what to make of it, other than it is charming: A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She lowered her altitude and spotted a man in a…

  • . . . and, War Starts?

    Remember, at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in December no less, President Barack Obama spelled out the conditions under which and reserved for himself the right to wage “Just Wars.”[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3uU_mCNcKM[/youtube] Has Iran, by its nuclear recalcitrance, tripped a condition? This story out of Scotland said some very big munitions are on their way to a…

  • Howell Raines is Neither a ‘Liar’ Nor is He Crazy

    In this Sunday’s Washington Post Op-Ed, he asks questions that have long needed to be asked. Take this one, his first: Why haven’t America’s old-school news organizations blown the whistle on Roger Ailes, chief of Fox News, for using the network to conduct a propaganda campaign against the Obama administration — a campaign without precedent…

  • Check This Out!

    Write It Long, But Well By Michael O. Allen It’s about newspapers and news writing: By all means, get rid of slipshod, encrusted and encumbered conventional political writing (even as I needlessly encumber my sentence). Does doing this necessarily lead to shorter news stories? Shorn of the “conventions that don’t add to your understanding of…

  • Mandela Sworn in as Freedom Reigns

    By MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer | Wednesday, May 11, 1994 PRETORIA—Climaxing his journey from political prisoner to nation builder, Nelson Mandela assumed the office of president of South Africa yesterday vowing that “never again” would racial exploitation be tolerated. In a joyous ceremony that marked the end of the country’s pariah status…