The Palimpsest

The 2013 State of the Union Address

by Michael O. Allen on April 26, 2013

February 13, 2013 | 1:01:01 | Public Domain

Remarks by the President in the State of the Union Address

U.S. Capitol
Washington, D.C.

9:15 P.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, members of Congress, fellow citizens:

Fifty-one years ago, John F. Kennedy declared to this chamber that “the Constitution makes us not rivals for power but partners for progress.” (Applause.) “It is my task,” he said, “to report the State of the Union — to improve it is the task of us all.”

Tonight, thanks to the grit and determination of the American people, there is much progress to report. After a decade of grinding war, our brave men and women in uniform are coming home. (Applause.) After years of grueling recession, our businesses have created over six million new jobs. We buy more American cars than we have in five years, and less foreign oil than we have in 20. (Applause.) Our housing market is healing, our stock market is rebounding, and consumers, patients, and homeowners enjoy stronger protections than ever before. (Applause.)

So, together, we have cleared away the rubble of crisis, and we can say with renewed confidence that the State of our Union is stronger. (Applause.)

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The 2012 State of the Union

by Michael O. Allen on January 25, 2012

Remarks by the President in State of the Union Address
United States Capitol
Washington, D.C.
9:10 P.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, members of Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow Americans:

Last month, I went to Andrews Air Force Base and welcomed home some of our last troops to serve in Iraq. Together, we offered a final, proud salute to the colors under which more than a million of our fellow citizens fought — and several thousand gave their lives.

We gather tonight knowing that this generation of heroes has made the United States safer and more respected around the world. (Applause.) For the first time in nine years, there are no Americans fighting in Iraq. (Applause.) For the first time in two decades, Osama bin Laden is not a threat to this country. (Applause.) Most of al Qaeda’s top lieutenants have been defeated. The Taliban’s momentum has been broken, and some troops in Afghanistan have begun to come home.

These achievements are a testament to the courage, selflessness and teamwork of America’s Armed Forces. At a time when too many of our institutions have let us down, they exceed all expectations. They’re not consumed with personal ambition. They don’t obsess over their differences. They focus on the mission at hand. They work together.

Imagine what we could accomplish if we followed their example. (Applause.) Think about the America within our reach: A country that leads the world in educating its people. An America that attracts a new generation of high-tech manufacturing and high-paying jobs. A future where we’re in control of our own energy, and our security and prosperity aren’t so tied to unstable parts of the world. An economy built to last, where hard work pays off, and responsibility is rewarded.

We can do this. I know we can, because we’ve done it before. At the end of World War II, when another generation of heroes returned home from combat, they built the strongest economy and middle class the world has ever known. (Applause.) My grandfather, a veteran of Patton’s Army, got the chance to go to college on the GI Bill. My grandmother, who worked on a bomber assembly line, was part of a workforce that turned out the best products on Earth.

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President Obama’s Remarks on the 10th Anniversary of 9/11

by Michael O. Allen on September 12, 2011

The Bible tells us, “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.”

Ten years ago, America confronted one of our darkest nights. Mighty towers crumbled. Black smoke billowed up from the Pentagon. Airplane wreckage smoldered on a Pennsylvania field. Friends and neighbors, sisters and brothers, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters – they were taken from us with heartbreaking swiftness and cruelty. On September 12, 2001, we awoke to a world in which evil was closer at hand, and uncertainty clouded our future.

In the decade since, much has changed for Americans. We’ve known war and recession, passionate debates and political divides. We can never get back the lives that were lost on that day, or the Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice in the wars that followed.

And yet today, it is worth remembering what has not changed. Our character as a nation has not changed. Our faith – in God and each other – that has not changed. Our belief in America, born of a timeless ideal that men and women should govern themselves; that all people are created equal, and deserve the same freedom to determine their own destiny – that belief, through tests and trials, has only been strengthened.

These past 10 years have shown that America does not give in to fear. The rescue workers who rushed to the scene; the firefighters who charged up the stairs; the passengers who stormed the cockpit – these patriots defined the very nature of courage. Over the years we have also seen a more quiet form of heroism – in the ladder company that lost so many men and still suits up and saves lives every day; the businesses that have rebuilt from nothing; the burn victim who has bounced back; the families that press on.

Last spring, I received a letter from a woman named Suzanne Swaine. She had lost her husband and brother in the Twin Towers, and said that she had been robbed of “so many would-be proud moments where a father watches their child graduate, or tend goal in a lacrosse game, or succeed academically.” But her daughters are in college, the other doing well in high school. “It has been 10 years of raising these girls on my own,” Suzanne wrote. “I could not be prouder of their strength and resilience.” That spirit typifies our American family. And the hopeful future for those girls is the ultimate rebuke to the hateful killers who took the life of their father.

These past ten years have shown America’s resolve to defend its citizens, and our way of life. Diplomats serve in far-off posts, and intelligence professionals work tirelessly without recognition. Two million Americans have gone to war since 9/11. They have demonstrated that those who do us harm cannot hide from the reach of justice, anywhere in the world. America has been defended not by conscripts, but by citizens who choose to serve – young people who signed up straight out of high school; guardsmen and reservists; workers and businesspeople; immigrants and fourth-generation soldiers. They are men and women who left behind lives of comfort for two, three, four or five tours of duty. Too many will never come home. Those that do carry dark memories from distant places, and the legacy of fallen friends. [click to continue…]

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Olbermann’s SPECIAL COMMENT

by Michael O. Allen on August 19, 2010

Finally as promised, a Special Comment tonight on the inaccurately described “Ground Zero mosque.”

“They came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for me and by that time no one was left to speak up.”

Pastor Martin Niemoller’s words are well known but their context is not well understood. Niemoller was not speaking abstractly. He witnessed persecution, he acquiesced to it, he ultimately fell victim to it. He had been a German World War 1 hero, then a conservative who welcomed the fall of German democracy and the rise of Hitler and had few qualms the beginning of the holocaust until he himself was arrested for supporting it insufficiently.

Niemoller’s confessional warning came in a speech in Frankfurt in January, 1946, eight months after he was liberated by American troops. He had been detained at Tyrol, Sachsen-hausen and Dachau. For seven years.

Niemoller survived the death camps. In quoting him, I make no direct comparison between the attempts to suppress the building of a Muslim religious center in downtown Manhattan, and the unimaginable nightmare of the Holocaust. Such a comparison is ludicrous. At least it is, now.
But Niemoller was not warning of the Holocaust. He was warning of the willingness of a seemingly rational society to condone the gradual stoking of enmity towards an ethnic or religious group warning of the building-up of a collective pool of national fear and hate, warning of the moment in which the need to purge, outstrips even the perameters of the original scape-goating, when new victims are needed because a country has begun to run on a horrible fuel of hatred — magnified, amplified, multiplied, by politicians and zealots, within government and without.

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“A Tiny Ripple of Hope”

by Michael O. Allen on June 7, 2010

I came across this speech (Facebook, then Daily Kos) and thought I should share:

Mr. Chancellor, Mr. Vice Chancellor, Professor Robertson, Mr. Diamond, Mr. Daniel, and Ladies and Gentlemen

I come here this evening because of my deep interest and affection for a land settled by the Dutch in the mid-seventeenth century, then taken over by the British, and at last independent; a land in which the native inhabitants were at first subdued, but relations with whom remain a problem to this day; a land which defined itself on a hostile frontier; a land which has tamed rich natural resources through the energetic application of modern technology; a land which once the importer of slaves, and now must struggle to wipe out the last traces of that former bondage. I refer, of course, to the United States of America.

But I am glad to come here — and my wife and I and all of our party are glad to come here to South Africa, and we’re glad to come to Cape Town. I am already greatly enjoying my stay and my visit here. I am making an effort to meet and exchange views with people of all walks of life, and all segments of South African opinion, including those who represent the views of the government.

Today I am glad to meet with the National Union of South African Students. For a decade, NUSAS has stood and worked for the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights — principles which embody the collective hopes of men of good will all around the globe. Your work at home and in international student affairs has brought great credit to yourselves and to your country. I know the National Student Association in the United States feels a particularly close relationship with this organization.

And I wish to thank especially Mr. Ian Robertson, who first extended the invitation on behalf of NUSAS. I wish to thank him for his kindness to me in inviting me. I am very sorry that he can not be with us here this evening. I was happy to have had the opportunity to meet and speak with him earlier this evening. And I presented him with a copy of Profiles in Courage which was a book that was written by President John Kennedy and was signed to him by President Kennedy’s widow, Mrs. John Kennedy.

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Souter’s Harvard Talk

by Michael O. Allen on June 4, 2010

Souter signing guest book inside Massachusetts Hall prior to delivering Harvard's 359th Commencement.

Text of Justice David Souter’s Harvard Commencement remarks (as delivered)

When I was younger, I used to hear Harvard stories from a member of the class of 1885. Back then, old graduates of the College who could get to Cambridge on Commencement Day didn’t wait for reunion years to come back to the Yard. They’d just turn up, see old friends, look over the new crop, and have a cup of Commencement punch under the elms. The old man remembered one of those summer days when he was heading for the Square after lunch and crossed paths with a newly graduated senior, who had enjoyed quite a few cups of that punch. As the two men approached each other the younger one thrust out his new diploma and shouted, “Educated, by God.”

Even with an honorary Harvard doctorate in my hands, I know enough not to shout that across the Yard, but the University’s generosity does make me bold enough to say that over the course of 19 years on the Supreme Court, I learned some lessons about the Constitution of the United States, and about what judges do when they apply it in deciding cases with constitutional issues. I’m going to draw on that experience in the course of the next few minutes, for it is as a judge that I have been given the honor to speak before you.

The occasion for our coming together like this aligns with the approach of two separate events on the judicial side of the national public life: the end of the Supreme Court’s term, with its quickened pace of decisions, and a confirmation proceeding for the latest nominee to fill a seat on the court. We will as a consequence be hearing and discussing a particular sort of criticism that is frequently aimed at the more controversial Supreme Court decisions: criticism that the court is making up the law, that the court is announcing constitutional rules that cannot be found in the Constitution, and that the court is engaging in activism to extend civil liberties. A good many of us, I’m sure a good many of us here, intuitively react that this sort of commentary tends to miss the mark. But we don’t often pause to consider in any detail the conceptions of the Constitution and of constitutional judging that underlie the critical rhetoric, or to compare them with the notions that lie behind our own intuitive responses. I’m going to try to make some of those comparisons this afternoon.

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MLB’s hall of shame

by Michael O. Allen on June 3, 2010

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 baseball commish, that disgraceful Bud Selig, does the right thing and instituted a “Galarraga rule” replay of all disputed plays.

Imagine if Joyce could have had a chance to review the play after Detroit Manager Jim Leyland came in to argue the call? Despite the obviousness of Joyce’s error and calls to reconsider, Selig is upholding the call.

Joyce, though a goat, is not an unsympathetic figure here. He readily admitted his error.

“It was the biggest call of my career and I kicked the shit out of it,” he said afterward. “I had a great angle, and I missed the call.” See the rest of the worst umps and referees here.

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Check this out!

by Michael O. Allen on January 12, 2010

http://www.opcofamerica.org/blogs/michael-o-allen/write-it-long-well

It’s about newspapers and news writing

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Where To, Mr. Daschle?

by Zina Saunders on February 3, 2009

Tom Daschle, President Obama’s nominee for secretary of Health and Human services, is facing some hard questions today regarding his failure to pay more than $140,000 in taxes, much of it related to a chauffeur-driven car provided to him by big-time Democratic donor Leo Hindery, Jr.

To make things worse for Daschle, his tax problems came to light just as his financial statement to the Office of Government Ethics was made public. This required report showed that he made millions of dollars giving public speeches and private counsel to insurers, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and other firms with complex regulatory and legislative interests in Washington.

Daschle was also an adviser to the law and lobbying firm Alston & Bird, which paid him $2.1 million last year in addition to providing him with a 401k plan worth between $100,000 and $250,000. During his three years with the lobbying group they earned more than $16 million working on behalf of some of the leaders in the health care industry in their dealings with the government, often before the department he’s in line to lead.

He managed to do all this without ever registering as a lobbyist. But the bottom line is that he got a lot of money from health care, pharmaceutical and insurance companies which have billions of dollars at stake in the regulations from the Health and Human Services.

The Senate Finance Committee has scheduled a closed-door session today to discuss Daschle’s tax problems. I wonder how all his old buddies will view these revelations?

To read a little more, here’s an article in the Washington Post, and another on Politico.

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My friend, Todd

by Michael O. Allen on January 19, 2009

The morning of Friday, Jan. 16, 2009 was one of the worst moments of my life.

It was the first time in all the years that I’ve worked at the American Civil Liberties Union that I’ve come to work knowing that not only is my friend, Todd, not going to be there that day, but that he’s never going to be there.

All the stories I’d saved to tell him during the three weeks he was on the respirator. I will not tell them to him. Not ever again.

Todd Drew (May 13, 1967 ~ January 15, 2009)

Todd was my friend and I loved him. Todd and I, we were ridiculous together. So far as I could tell, I started working at the ACLU and Todd became my friend. And, from that moment on, I could always count on him, a constant, I could set my clock by him, my confidant, my rock to lean on, a big brother who looked out for me.

We fell into an easy friendship.

There were things that Todd and I disagreed about and debated with fierce laughter but we never had an argument.

For instance, Todd supported Ralph Nader and resisted my effort to get him to vote for John Kerry. He planned on voting for Nader again but ended up voting for Barack Obama. I don’t think I had to work too hard to convince him.

Todd was an extraordinary human being, kind, gentle, the most generous person.

I did not deserve nor did I earn the version of myself that I saw reflected back to me when I looked in Todd’s eyes.

He respected me, cared for me too much.

I figured this out: I knew Todd for exactly five years and five weeks. during that time, I could pinpoint where Todd would be at any moment. This is important, you see. I had to know where Todd was so I could reach out to him when I needed him.

So, whether it was a weekend and I was not at a game with him, or, maybe I was on vacation, traveling, when a thought occurred to me, I called Todd and we talked.

Since Todd never once took vacation in the time I knew him and he was always the first person in the building, I could, when I arrived at my desk in the morning, e-mail to him a lame joke and scoot around the corner to Todd’s office in time enough to see him smiling or laughing.

That is, if he didn’t come find me first.

And as we went for coffee in the morning, We talked about Baseball, of course. Politics, without fail. Life, too.

I would tell Todd stories and he would listen.

I told him about the over-the-hill soccer league I play in and Todd and Marsha came to watch me play. I told him stories about my sons, Gabriel and Aidan. Todd loved them, reveled in their foibles and antics.

Todd was as proud of my kids as I am.

He couldn’t come out of a bookstore without a book, or a magazine that he would want me to give to Gabriel and Aidan. Todd and Marsha came to their little league baseball games. Todd and Marsha came to our home and we went to Yankee games with them.

Todd and I, we were wound up in each others lives that way.

Todd and I had another relationship: I was his extra pair of eyes, not an editor, just an extra pair of eyes, on those tone poems — you know them as blog posts — that he gifted us with.

Todd, generous to a fault, would give me credit for untangling a thought, or sentence in a blog post, for editing something.

Yes, I read most of them. But I can tell you that the extent of my editing on practically all of them went something like this:

“Run with it.”

Or,

“Don’t change a word.”

Todd was simply a phenomenal man who wrote with a big heart.

I love Todd. I love him as a friend, as a brother. But I also envied Todd. I envied him as a writer.

Every writer needs a place to call his own,

Steinbeck had his Monterey.

So, too, Todd had the Bronx, specifically, that sliver of heaven called Yankee Stadium and the neighborhoods around it, a place teeming with characters who, although very real, in Todd’s hands, turn into something mythical:

The kids playing baseball in Parking Lot 15 because the city took away their ball fields.

Javier, the ex-pitcher from Puerto Rico, now a pugnacious pontificator about all things Yankees and New York

Henry, a steadfast supporter of Yankee players,

Jose, born in the Dominican Republic, and now living on the Grand Concourse

And that is to name just a few.

As a writer, I covet this place and wish I had such wonderful characters to write about But that’s not what I envied Todd for. What I envied Todd for is his voice, his writing voice.

Besides memories of his gentleness, his kindness, his inspirational presence, this voice, I believe, will be his lasting legacy. Todd’s voice is something else, light and free, compassionate, singularly knowing and tough but with no meanness, no ego, in others words, all Todd.

Todd’s voice belongs to time and, we could grieve that Todd had only 41 years on this earth, that he deserved more time to hone his voice, to see where it would carry him.

But, as Marsha would tell you, that’s not Todd. Todd doesn’t do regrets. For instance, I am heartbroken and angry and frustrated at his death yet I realize Todd’s integrity would not condone such feelings.

How could a man live such a fiercely principled life yet leave such trails of tenderness and kindness?

I miss him too much already.

In “The Record Lives”, which Todd wrote about Phil Rizzuto, he quoted Grantland Rice, who wrote for the New York Herald-Tribune:

For when the One Great Scorer comes
To write against your name,
He marks not that you won or lost,
But how you played the Game?

Lee lays it down for the Guardian Ever since a college project filming riots in New York in 1977, Spike Lee has used his movies to provide an alternative commentary on life in his home country. Here, he tells John Colapinto what the future holds now that Obama has torn up the script for African-Americans [...]

Read the full article

← Previous Entries

The 2013 State of the Union Address

The 2012 State of the Union

President Obama’s Remarks on the 10th Anniversary of 9/11

Olbermann’s SPECIAL COMMENT

“A Tiny Ripple of Hope”

Souter’s Harvard Talk

MLB’s hall of shame

Check this out!

Where To, Mr. Daschle?

My friend, Todd

A little history

“Special relationship” with one side

The Middle East: Rivers of blood

. . . or Mexico

“Enemies of freedom”

When David is the Goliath

Can you call it a war if . . .

Uri Avnery’s peace proposal

A Hero of the Cuban Revolution

Spike Lee: ‘Barack changes everything’

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