Thursday, September 23, 2010

PPS

I left the comment on my last post and decided to respond here, because it is such a good example of the way rightwingers work and think. I've told this one before to leave my family out of his comments. Though we come from the same town, my memories are much different than his. We lived in different neighborhoods and came from different backgrounds, except for the common Irish heritage. I haven't commented on his father or family and don't want him telling me what my father was like or felt or thought.

My father was a staunch FDR Democrat, who despised the kinds of people and ideas rightwingers like this one champion and defend, wherever he found them, and fought hard against them. In fact, he was responsible for turning my hometown from a bastion of Republicanism due to the large number of wealthy people who lived on the hill and in neighborhoods like Tuxedo Park back in the 1950s, into a Democratic stronghold during the years he was the Democratic Party chairman there. And he did that by activating the working people—mostly immigrants and children of immigrants like him—to vote and to fight for candidates who would look out for the best interests of working people, instead of the interests of only the rich.

And as for him being an "entrepeneur," he lost his business twice, the first time at the start of The Great Depression, when as he would say "the big boys bought" everything he owned, his house his business etc. "for a dime on the dollar, or five cents." He and my mother and three older brothers ended up living over a garage.

He started another business under FDR's tenure and bought another modest home in a neighborhood of street cleaners and butchers and mailmen and supermarket cashiers, etc. where I grew up. But after "Ike" got elected, he lost that business in another downturn, and then started the home repair business I grew up working in.

He would tell me that you knew there was a Republican in the White House if there were a lot of "for rent" signs in store windows. And I have found that to be true ever since. Obama inherited one of those Republican administration eras when the rich got richer and the poor got poorer and he's being blamed for not fixing it fast enough, despite avoiding another Great Depression.

My father and many of his generation would have been incredulous over the Reagan and Bush/Cheney administrations' economic blunders that led to the two biggest recessions since he passed, not to mention "homelessness" (of which there was little, especially of children, before Reagan and his union-busting, corporate catering to, completely hypocritical (the two presidents who expanded the federal government since my father passed were Reagan and Bush Jr., the only one who actually made the federal government smaller was Clinton) presidency) and several unnecessary wars, etc.

You want to argue politics on this blog, stick to facts and opinions and leave deceased relatives out of it.

4 comments:

Jamie Rose said...

Go Lals!

JIm said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Robert G. Zuckerman said...

Just came across this for all Lally's Alley followers and beyond - there is hope in this world:

http://my.earthlink.net/article/ent?guid=20100926/368cad63-c671-4331-863f-71e1a9a0ff89

Anonymous said...

Right on, Michael! It makes me sick to see the way so many of our fellow Irish-Americans have gone over to the dark side of American political life, viz. the republican party.
TPW