MICHAEL O. ALLEN

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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.

October 9, 2008
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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.

October 7, 2008
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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.

October 6, 2008
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New Yorker magazine: ‘The choice’

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In a long article, the New Yorker magazine endorsed Sen. Barack Obama, (D-IL), and made the argument for why Sen. John McCain, (R-AZ), would be the wrong choice to lead the nation at this time:

Meanwhile, the nominee, John McCain, played the part of a vaudeville illusionist, asking to be regarded as an apostle of change after years of embracing the essentials of the Bush agenda with ever-increasing ardor.
*                          *                            *

Since the 2004 election, however, McCain has moved remorselessly rightward in his quest for the Republican nomination. He paid obeisance to Jerry Falwell and preachers of his ilk. He abandoned immigration reform, eventually coming out against his own bill. Most shocking, McCain, who had repeatedly denounced torture under all circumstances, voted in February against a ban on the very techniques of “enhanced interrogation” that he himself once endured in Vietnam—as long as the torturers were civilians employed by the C.I.A.

On almost every issue, McCain and the Democratic Party’s nominee, Barack Obama, speak the generalized language of “reform,” but only Obama has provided a convincing, rational, and fully developed vision. McCain has abandoned his opposition to the Bush-era tax cuts and has taken up the demagogic call—in the midst of recession and Wall Street calamity, with looming crises in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—for more tax cuts. Bush’s expire in 2011. If McCain, as he has proposed, cuts taxes for corporations and estates, the benefits once more would go disproportionately to the wealthy.

In Washington, the craze for pure market triumphalism is over. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson arrived in town (via Goldman Sachs) a Republican, but it seems that he will leave a Democrat. In other words, he has come to see that the abuses that led to the current financial crisis––not least, excessive speculation on borrowed capital––can be fixed only with government regulation and oversight. McCain, who has never evinced much interest in, or knowledge of, economic questions, has had little of substance to say about the crisis. His most notable gesture of concern—a melodramatic call last month to suspend his campaign and postpone the first Presidential debate until the government bailout plan was ready—soon revealed itself as an empty diversionary tactic.

By contrast, Obama has made a serious study of the mechanics and the history of this economic disaster and of the possibilities of stimulating a recovery. Last March, in New York, in a speech notable for its depth, balance, and foresight, he said, “A complete disdain for pay-as-you-go budgeting, coupled with a generally scornful attitude towards oversight and enforcement, allowed far too many to put short-term gain ahead of long-term consequences.” Obama is committed to reforms that value not only the restoration of stability but also the protection of the vast majority of the population, which did not partake of the fruits of the binge years. He has called for greater and more programmatic regulation of the financial system; the creation of a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank, which would help reverse the decay of our roads, bridges, and mass-transit systems, and create millions of jobs; and a major investment in the green-energy sector.

Continue . . .

October 3, 2008
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Hockey moms, Joe Sixpack, aw shucks!

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At some point last, GOP Vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin declared she was not going to be debating:

“I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I’m going to talk straight to the American people.”

I wish they could have stopped the debate at that point and ushered her off the stage. Palin’s performance was audacious, mixing outright lies with distortions to mask ignorance and idiocy. Truly unprincipled, Palin said any and everything that came into her head, whether germane to the question being asked, or not.

Any minute now, John McCain should be suspending his campaign so that they can celebrate Palin’s debate victory.

October 3, 2008
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Unions workers & Obama

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AFL-CIO’s Richard Trumka on Racism and Obama

From David Moberg in The Nation magazine:

On a rainy afternoon in early September, Jeff Ampey, a member of the Communications Workers union, knocked on the door of Frances Brady’s home in Galesburg, part of the historically conservative “Dutch Triangle” in southwest Michigan. He was walking through the neighborhood as part of an AFL-CIO effort to contact union members about the presidential election.

Brady, an 81-year-old former paper worker who retired before most of the area’s many paper mills closed, said she was “not 100 percent sure” about whom she would support. Ampey politely left some brochures–one rebutting common false rumors about Barack Obama (such as that he’s a Muslim), the other about Obama “building an economy that works for all.”

When I called back the next day, Brady had made up her mind. “I’m a Democrat in my heart,” she said. “Last time I voted for Bush, and I said I’d never vote for them again. I’ve got a grandson who was in Afghanistan three years, and they could call him back. On the economy, I think Bush looks the other way. Obama, I’m a little bit unsure sometimes because he doesn’t have experience, but he’s for the average American person and the poor, and I think he’s a very smart man.”

There are a lot of wavering voters, especially older whites like Brady, who lean Democratic but aren’t sure about Obama. In the final weeks of the campaign, the labor movement could play a critical role in winning them over and tipping the race. Despite their dwindling ranks, voters from union households make up about a quarter of the electorate (in this battleground state, that figure is around 37 percent). Organized labor can also reach out to the 2.5 million members of Working America, the AFL-CIO’s new community affiliate, as well as to millions of retirees like Brady (many of whom will learn from the union-affiliated Alliance for Retired Americans that McCain wants to privatize Social Security).

Continue . . .

October 2, 2008
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Palin’s understated brilliance

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I know all of us are holding our breath for Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to wow America all over again during her vice-presidential debate with Delaware’s Sen. Joe Biden Thursday night.

One newspaper has called Mrs. Palin’s debating skills “formidable.” The New York Times says she’s a confident debater. In fact, the Obama campaign, calling her a “terrific debater,” is thinking of suspending the vice-presidential portion of the fall campaign.

I thought, maybe, we should imbibe a little her recent series of triumphant interviews with CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric:

Couric: You’ve cited Alaska’s proximity to Russia as part of your foreign policy experience. What did you mean by that?

Sarah Palin: That Alaska has a very narrow maritime border between a foreign country, Russia, and, on our other side, the land-boundary that we have with Canada. It’s funny that a comment like that was kinda made to . . . cari . . . I don’t know, you know . . . reporters.

Couric: Mocked?

Palin: Yeah, mocked, I guess that’s the word, yeah.

Couric: Well, explain to me why that enhances your foreign-policy credentials.

Palin: Well, it certainly does, because our, our next-door neighbors are foreign countries, there in the state that I am the executive of. And there…

Couric: Have you ever been involved in any negotiations, for example, with the Russians?

Palin: We have trade missions back and forth, we do. It’s very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia. As Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where do they go? It’s Alaska. It’s just right over the border. It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there, they are right next to our state.

Ms. Couric then brought up the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street, suggesting the money could be better spent by regular Americans. Mrs. Palin burst forth in incandescent rhetoric. Her answer was nothing short of historic in its scope and grasp of policy details, mastery of nuance:

COURIC: Why isn’t it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families who are struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries; allow them to spend more and put more money into the economy instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?

PALIN: That’s why I say I, like every American I’m speaking with, we’re ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health-care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the—it’s got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health-care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we’ve got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, scary thing. But one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we’ve got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.

October 1, 2008
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