MICHAEL O. ALLEN

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Oct 15
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Point about . . . what?

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A snippet from the middle of the Coen brothers’ “O Brother, Where Art Thou”

Pappy O’Daniel sits smoking a cigar, nursing a glass of whiskey, and
soliciting the counsel of his overweight retinue.

PAPPY
Languishing! Goddamn campaign is
languishing! We need a shot inna arm!
Hear me, boys? Inna goddamn ARM!
Election held tomorra, that sonofabitch
Stokes would win it in a walk!

JUNIOR
Well he’s the reform candidate, Daddy.

Pappy narrows his eyes at him, wondering what he’s getting at.

PAPPY
…Yeah?

JUNIOR
Well people like that reform. Maybe we
should get us some.

Pappy whips off his hat and slaps at Junior with it.

PAPPY
I’ll reform you, you soft-headed
sonofabitch! How we gonna run reform
when we’re the damn incumbent!

He glares around the table.

Zat the best idea any you boys can come
up with? REEform?! Weepin’ Jesus on the
cross! Eckard, you may as well start
draftin’ my concession speech right now.

Eckard grunts as he starts to rise.

ECKARD
Okay, Pappy.

Pappy whips him back down with his hat.

PAPPY
I’m just makin’ a point, you stupid
sonofabitch!

ECKARD
Okay, Pappy.

As he settles back Eckard looks around the table and helpfully relays:

Pappy just makin’ a point here, boys.

Oct 10
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Update: Trumka’s transcript

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This is a transcript of my post a week ago on AFL-CIO’s Richard Trumka speech on Racism and Obama.

“You see brothers and sisters, there’s not a single good reason for any worker — especially any union member — to vote against Barack Obama.

There’s only one really bad reason to vote against him: because he’s not white.

And I want to talk about that because I saw that for myself during the Pennsylvania primary.

I went back home to vote in Nemacolin and I ran into a woman I’d known for years. She was active in Democratic politics when I was still in grade school.

We got to talking and I asked if she’d made up her mind who she was supporting and she said: ‘Oh absolutely, I’m voting for Hillary, there’s no way I’d ever vote for Obama.’

Well, why’s that? ‘Because he’s a Muslim.’

I told her, ‘That’s not true — he’s as much a Christian as you and me, so what if he’s muslim.’

Then she shook her head and said, ‘He won’t wear an American flag pin.’

I don’t have one on and neither do you.

But, ‘C’mon, he wears one plenty of times. He just says it takes more than wearing a flag pin to be patriotic.’

‘Well, I just don’t trust him.’

Why is that?

Her voice dropped just a bit: ‘Because he’s black.’

I said, ‘Look around. Nemacolin’s a dying town. There’re no jobs here. Kids are moving away because there’s no future here. And here’s a man, Barack Obama, who’s going to fight for people like us and you won’t vote for him because of the color of his skin.’

Brothers and sisters, we can’t tap dance around the fact that there are a lot of folks out there just like that woman.

A lot of them are good union people; they just can’t get past this idea that there’s something wrong with voting for a black man. Well, those of us who know better can’t afford to look the other way.

I’m not one for quoting dead philosophers, but back in the 1700s, Edmund Burke said: ‘All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.’ Well, there’s no evil that’s inflicted more pain and more suffering than racism — and it’s something we in the labor movement have a special responsibility to challenge.

It’s our special responsibility because we know, better than anyone else, how racism is used to divide working people.

We’ve seen how companies set worker against worker — how they throw whites a few extra crumbs off the table and how we all end up losing.

But we’ve seen something else, too. We’ve seen that when we cross that color line and stand together no one can keep us down.

That’s why the CIO was created. That’s why industrial unions were the first to stand up against lynching and segregation. People need to know that it was the Steel Workers Organizing Committee — this union — that was founded on the principal of organizing all workers without regard to race. That’s why the labor movement — imperfect as we are — is the most integrated institution in American life.

I don’t think we should be out there pointing fingers in peoples’ faces and calling them racist; instead we need to educate them that if they care about holding on to their jobs, their health care, their pensions, and their homes — if they care about creating good jobs with clean energy, child care, pay equity for women workers — there’s only going to be one candidate on the ballot this fall who’s on their side… only one candidate who’s going to stand up for their families… only one candidate who’s earned their votes… and his name is Barack Obama!

And come November we are going to elect him president.

And after he’s elected we are going to hit the ground running so that, years from now, we’re going to be able to tell our grandchildren that 2008 was the year this country finally turned its back on men like George Bush and Dick Cheney and John McCain.

We’re going to be able to say that 2008 was the year we started ending the war in Iraq so we could use that money to create new jobs building wind generators, solar collectors, clean coal technology and retrofitting millions of buildings all across this country

We’re going to be able to look back and say that 2008 was the year the tide began to turn against the Rush Limbaughs, the Bill O’Reillys, the Ann Coulters and the right wing hate machine.”

 

Oct 09
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That tool, Tavis Smiley

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Okay.

I  went to the 92nd Street Y two Saturday evenings ago to see Tavis Smiley interview Cornel West. I don’t care for Smiley, but I went because I was entertaining a friend’s guest from London (a sister) who wanted to go — real bad.

About halfway through the evening, I noticed she was leaning far way from me, and almost sitting in a seat two spots from me.  I was heckling, Tavis.  She was pretending not to know me.

You know all Tavis did the entire night was bash Obama and talk about how horrible the man is for the country, and how everyone voting for him was basically a “negro.” The audience was smart though . . . they didn’t eat up his rhetoric.

But I couldn’t help myself, so don’t ever take me to anything involving, Tavis . . . I don’t know how to act.

During question and answer a few people politely called him out with thoughtful questions.  And Cornel West finally said what Amiri Baraka has been saying all along to these pseudo-revolutionaries:  McCain is the enemy.  For example,  how about this, Tavis!

The Bush administration this month is quietly cutting off birth control supplies to some of the world’s poorest women in Africa.

Thus the paradox of a “pro-life” administration adopting a policy whose result will be tens of thousands of additional abortions each year — along with more women dying in childbirth.

The saga also spotlights a clear difference between Barack Obama and John McCain. Senator Obama supports U.N.-led efforts to promote family planning; Senator McCain stands with President Bush in opposing certain crucial efforts to help women reduce unwanted pregnancies in Africa and Asia.

This election is serious, Tavis.  Either you’re part of the solution or you’re part of the problem.

Oct 09
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. . . as maverick does

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Rolling Stone magazine writer Tim Dickinson takes the cudgel to John McCain carefully (and fraudulently) crafted image as a maverick, straight-talking outsider in Washington.

In “Make-Believe Maverick,” Dickinson dug deep and excavated many things the public either does not know about Sen. John McCain, or knows it but venerates the man anyway despite all available documentary. As I have been saying in these pages for months now, the magazine says John McCain is a fraud and a hypocrite:

At Fort McNair, an army base located along the Potomac River in the nation’s capital, a chance reunion takes place one day between two former POWs. It’s the spring of 1974, and Navy commander John Sidney McCain III has returned home from the experience in Hanoi that, according to legend, transformed him from a callow and reckless youth into a serious man of patriotism and purpose. Walking along the grounds at Fort McNair, McCain runs into John Dramesi, an Air Force lieutenant colonel who was also imprisoned and tortured in Vietnam.

McCain is studying at the National War College, a prestigious graduate program he had to pull strings with the Secretary of the Navy to get into. Dramesi is enrolled, on his own merit, at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces in the building next door.

There’s a distance between the two men that belies their shared experience in North Vietnam — call it an honor gap. Like many American POWs, McCain broke down under torture and offered a “confession” to his North Vietnamese captors. Dramesi, in contrast, attempted two daring escapes. For the second he was brutalized for a month with daily torture sessions that nearly killed him. His partner in the escape, Lt. Col. Ed Atterberry, didn’t survive the mistreatment. But Dramesi never said a disloyal word, and for his heroism was awarded two Air Force Crosses, one of the service’s highest distinctions. McCain would later hail him as “one of the toughest guys I’ve ever met.”

On the grounds between the two brick colleges, the chitchat between the scion of four-star admirals and the son of a prizefighter turns to their academic travels; both colleges sponsor a trip abroad for young officers to network with military and political leaders in a distant corner of the globe.

“I’m going to the Middle East,” Dramesi says. “Turkey, Kuwait, Lebanon, Iran.”

“Why are you going to the Middle East?” McCain asks, dismissively.

“It’s a place we’re probably going to have some problems,” Dramesi says.

“Why? Where are you going to, John?”

“Oh, I’m going to Rio.”

“What the hell are you going to Rio for?”

McCain, a married father of three, shrugs.

“I got a better chance of getting laid.”

Dramesi, who went on to serve as chief war planner for U.S. Air Forces in Europe and commander of a wing of the Strategic Air Command, was not surprised. “McCain says his life changed while he was in Vietnam, and he is now a different man,” Dramesi says today. “But he’s still the undisciplined, spoiled brat that he was when he went in.”

McCAIN FIRST

This is the story of the real John McCain, the one who has been hiding in plain sight. It is the story of a man who has consistently put his own advancement above all else, a man willing to say and do anything to achieve his ultimate ambition: to become commander in chief, ascending to the one position that would finally enable him to outrank his four-star father and grandfather.

In its broad strokes, McCain’s life story is oddly similar to that of the current occupant of the White House. John Sidney McCain III and George Walker Bush both represent the third generation of American dynasties. Both were born into positions of privilege against which they rebelled into mediocrity. Both developed an uncanny social intelligence that allowed them to skate by with a minimum of mental exertion. Both struggled with booze and loutish behavior. At each step, with the aid of their fathers’ powerful friends, both failed upward. And both shed their skins as Episcopalian members of the Washington elite to build political careers as self-styled, ranch-inhabiting Westerners who pray to Jesus in their wives’ evangelical churches.

Continue . . .

Oct 09
Love0

A call to Change

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I don’t know this writer, Marc Ginsberg, but he had this post calling on Sen. Barack Obama to propose something big to tackle our nation’s economic malaise. I could not agree more. My friend, Todd Drew, and I have talked ourselves hoarse over just this topic.

I believe now is the time for Obama to consider a bolder and more historic approach to the financial crisis by presenting to middle income Americans a step-by-step “big think” FDR-style New Deal program to add greatness and urgency to his economic recovery plan. Tough times call for urgent and big-think measures. Surely, we are in this era, once again.

In 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt unveiled a landmark economic recovery plan that created a “New Deal” for America’s middle class and restored confidence to a hard-pressed nation. It was imaginative, bold and daring and lifted America up by its bootstraps and restored confidence and stability. It took several years, but it worked.

A similar type of “new deal” program aimed principally at the crux of our financial crisis — the falling U.S. housing market — is now urgently needed by our Democratic standard-bearer to create an indelibly understandable and comprehensive framework in the minds of voters that he has the most coherent and bold recovery program that gets at the very heart of what plunged our financial markets into chaos (aside from greedy Wall Street executives peddling credit default swaps, etc.) . Another financial infusion of funds to average Americans modeled after the last economic stimulus proposal may just be too insufficient to meet the emergency that will surely follow us well into 2009.

Oct 07
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A step back in time

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Prior to the debate in Tennessee, C-Span re-broadcast the Oct. 15, 1992 debate between incumbent President George H. W. Bush, then Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, and crackpot businessman H. Ross Perot. Some of you will recall that debate as the town hall style debate where Pres. Bush doomed his re-election by impatiently looking at his watch, as if he had somewhere better he’d rather be.

What the re-broadcast made evident 16 years later is how phenomenal a candidate Bill Clinton was. He was so young but so wise and so brilliant. He played the audience masterfully, like a master violinist playing a rare Stradivarius, connecting many questions he answered that night to many members of the audience.

Carole Simpson, the ABC News correspondent who was the moderator that night, asked a question that I did not remember until I saw it again tonight but which struck me as important:

“We have very little time left and it occurs to me that we have talked all this time and there has not been one question about some of the racial tensions and ethnic tensions in America. Is there anyone in this audience that would like to pose a question to the candidates on this?”

AUDIENCE QUESTION: What I’d like to know, and this is to any of the three of you, is aside from the recent accomplishment of your party, aside from those accomplishments in racial representation, and wit-hout citing any of your current appointments or successful elections, when do you estimate your party will both nominate and elect an Afro-American and female ticket to the presidency of the U.S.?

SIMPSON: Governor Clinton, why don’t you answer that first?

CLINTON: Well, I don’t have any idea but I hope it will happen some time in my lifetime.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: I do, too.

CLINTON: I believe that this country is electing more and more African Americans and Latinos and Asian Americans who are representing districts that are themselves not necessarily of a majority of their race. The American people are beginning to vote across racial lines, and I hope it will happen more and more.

More and more women are being elected. Look at all these women Senate candidates we have here. And you know, according to my mother and my wife and my daughter, this world would be a lot better place if women were running it most of the time.

I do think there are special experiences and judgments and backgrounds and understandings that women bring to this process, by the way. This lady said here, how have you been affected by the economy. I mean, women know what’s it like to be paid an unequal amount for equal work. They know what it’s like not to have flexible working hours. They know what it’s like not to have family leave or childcare. So I think it would be a good thing for America if it happened. And I think it will happen in my lifetime.

SIMPSON: Okay. I’m sorry. We have just a little bit of time left. Let’s try to get responses from each of them. President Bush or Mr. Perot?

BUSH: I think if Barbara Bush were running this year she’d be elected. But it’s too late.

(Laughter) You don’t want us to mention appointees, but when you see the quality of people in our administration, see how Colin Powell performed — I say administration —

AUDIENCE QUESTION: (Inaudible).

BUSH: You weren’t impressed with the fact that he —

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Excuse me. I’m extremely impressed with that.

BUSH: Yeah, but wouldn’t that suggest to the American people, then, here’s a quality person, if he decided that he could automatically get the nomination of either party?

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Sure — I just wanted to know — yes.

BUSH: Huh?

AUDIENCE QUESTION: I’m totally impressed with that. I just wanted to know is, when’s your-

BUSH: Oh, I see.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: When?

BUSH: You mean, time?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yeah.

BUSH: I don’t know — starting after 4 years.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Laughs)

BUSH: No, I think you’ll see —

SIMPSON: Mr. Perot.

BUSH: I think you’ll see more minority candidates and women candidates coming forward.

SIMPSON: We have — thank you.

BUSH: This is supposed to be the year of the women in the Senate. Let’s see how they do. I hope a lot of —

SIMPSON: Mr. Perot — I don’t want to cut you off any more but we only have a minute left.

PEROT: I have a fearless forecast. A message just won’t do it. Colin Powell will be on somebody’s ticket 4 years from now — right? Right? He wanted that said — 4 years.

SIMPSON: How about a woman?

PEROT: Now, if won’t be, General Waller would be — you say, why do you keep picking military people. These are people that I just happen to know and have a high regard for. I’m sure there are hundreds of others.

BUSH: How about Dr. Lou Sullivan?

PEROT: Absolutely.

BUSH: Yeah, a good man.

SIMPSON: What about a woman?

PEROT: Oh, oh.

BUSH: (Inaudible) totally agree. My candidate’s back there.

SIMPSON: (Laughs)

PEROT: Okay. I can think of many.

SIMPSON: Many?

PEROT: Absolutely.

SIMPSON: When?

PEROT: All right. How about Sandra Day O’Connor as an example?

SIMPSON: Hm-hm.

PEROT: Dr. Bernadine Healy —

SIMPSON: Good.

PEROT: National Institutes of Health. I’ll yield the floor.

BUSH: All good Republicans.

PEROT: Name some more.

(Laughter)

SIMPSON: Thank you. I want to apologize to our audience because there were 209 people here and there were 209 questions. We only got to a fraction of them and I’m sorry to those of you that didn’t get to ask your questions but we must move to the conclusion of the program.

Oct 07
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Keating 5 ring a bell?

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The Central Virginia Progressive-The DAVISReport sent us this message:

Dick Cheney with lipstick in her best wink wink, nod nod, curtsy curtsy, wiggle wiggle, bratty girl whine is really desperate to turn this election around on fear and smear politics.

Fact is Obama’s connection to William Ayers has been dissected to death and it comes down to the happenstance of serving on the same board with a university professor who has a criminal history dating back 40 yrs and not relevant to the context of their crossing paths in the context of his life today as a university professor.

Like a good little pit bill she is trying real hard to gain some traction with her flirty little smear and fear act (that is so demeaning to woman) but Americans are a little too preoccupied with real crisis like vaporizing portfolios and melting mortgage houses to engage.

It does seem a bit surprising and arrogant however, that McCain would send her on this witch hunt on his behalf considering his own embarrassing involvement in the Keating 5 scandal. You’d think he’d understand the damage of innuendo and the guilt by association of questionable relationships.

Thing is, he wasn’t 8 yrs old when the crimes occurred. More on the Keating 5 scandal on the link below, courtesy of the L.A. Times

The DAVISReport

Keating 5 ring a bell? – Los Angeles Times

Posted by www.EileenDavis.blogspot.com The Davis Report – The Voice of Central Virginia and the Capital City.

Oct 06
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A liberal in the U.S. Senate

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The Agonist is one of my favorite stops when I’m inclined to read other blogs. It is simply one of the best out there. I stopped reading for a while because I felt their vociferous support of Senator John Edwards blinded them to the good points of other candidates.

In any case, I stayed away too long. For instance, Bob Geiger has a piece that greatly interests me that I might have missed when I was not actively reading the site. The point is that when Republicans hurl the liberal epithet at Sen. Barack Obama, his votes are very much in the mainstream supporting things that most Americans support.

Please check out the piece and the Agonist.

Oct 06
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Calamity John

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The Los Angeles Times today offered details about a previous post of mine that some people have told me is controversial because I deigned to question Sen. John McCain’s heroism during the Vietnam War.

My contention remains that McCain, at least initially, took valuable training and equipment of the American military for granted. But, because he was the son and grandson of Admirals, his carelessness was swept under the rug and he was allowed to become a navy pilot.

His subsequent capture in Vietnam could have easily been predicted, based on his performance during his military training.

The Times interviewed men who served with McCain and located once-confidential 1960s-era accident reports and formerly classified evaluations of his squadrons during the Vietnam War. This examination of his record revealed a pilot who early in his career was cocky, occasionally cavalier and prone to testing limits.

In today’s military, a lapse in judgment that causes a crash can end a pilot’s career. Though standards were looser and crashes more frequent in the 1960s, McCain’s record stands out.

“Three mishaps are unusual,” said Michael L. Barr, a former Air Force pilot with 137 combat missions in Vietnam and an internationally known aviation safety expert who teaches in USC’s Aviation Safety and Security Program. “After the third accident, you would say: Is there a trend here in terms of his flying skills and his judgment?”

Jeremiah Pearson, a Navy officer who flew 400 missions over Vietnam without a mishap and later became the head of human spaceflight at NASA, said: “That’s a lot. You don’t want any. Maybe he was just unlucky.”

Naval aviation experts say the three accidents before McCain’s deployment to Vietnam probably triggered a review to determine whether he should be allowed to continue flying. The results of the review would have been confidential.

The Times asked McCain’s campaign to release any military personnel records in the candidate’s possession showing how the Navy handled the three incidents. The campaign said it would have no comment.

The LA Times story provides invaluable service by digging into some of the details of this sorry affair. What they reveal is instructive because the same pattern would later emerge in Sen. McCain’s political career, especially in the case of the Keating 5 controversy.

Oct 06
Love0

McCain, the pot

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From the Obama campaign:

The current economic crisis demands that we understand John McCain’s attitudes about economic oversight and corporate influence in federal regulation. Nothing illustrates the danger of his approach more clearly than his central role in the savings and loan scandal of the late ’80s and early ’90s.

John McCain was accused of improperly aiding his political patron, Charles Keating, chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association. The bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee launched investigations and formally reprimanded Senator McCain for his role in the scandal — the first such Senator to receive a major party nomination for president.

At the heart of the scandal was Keating’s Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which took advantage of deregulation in the 1980s to make risky investments with its depositors’ money. McCain intervened on behalf of Charles Keating with federal regulators tasked with preventing banking fraud, and championed legislation to delay regulation of the savings and loan industry — actions that allowed Keating to continue his fraud at an incredible cost to taxpayers.

When the savings and loan industry collapsed, Keating’s failed company put taxpayers on the hook for $3.4 billion and more than 20,000 Americans lost their savings. John McCain was reprimanded by the bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee, but the ultimate cost of the crisis to American taxpayers reached more than $120 billion.

The Keating scandal is eerily similar to today’s credit crisis, where a lack of regulation and cozy relationships between the financial industry and Congress has allowed banks to make risky loans and profit by bending the rules. And in both cases, John McCain’s judgment and values have placed him on the wrong side of history.

Did McCain Learn From the S&L Crisis?

The GOP nominee has supported fiscal deregulation and relaxed accounting for 20 years By John Dougherty,The Washington Independent, 9/29/08 5:08 PM

McCain’s recent history by LANNY V. STRICHERZ, the Argus Reader, SIOUX FALLS, SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

Keating 5 ring a bell? McCain’s past collides with the present Wall Street debacle by Rosa Brooks, the Los Angeles Times, September 25, 2008
At one time, John McCain said the worst thing that ever happened to him, Vietnam included, was the so-called Keating 5 scandal. “The Vietnamese,” he would say, “didn’t question my honor.”