Dark n Stormy Knight
Dark n Stormy Knight's JournalUPDATED: My father works for FEMA. He is 75 years old and, like many men of his generation,
he doesn't handle not working very well. Also, my parents lost over half of their retirement investments in the crash, so it's not completely by choice that he works.
Also, like many white Catholic men of his generation, he retains vestiges of the racist culture in which he grew up. He balked at voting for Obama in 2008. He said things about how the races were never intended to mix and some other weird race-related negative things about the candidate. Also, he really wanted Hillary.
But my mom and I called him on that racist crap and worked on him leading up to the election. He is a curmudgeonly, generally difficult man, so it wasn't easy. However, as we suspected he would in the end, he did vote for the black man who would become our president.
He has, over the past 4 years, become an ardent supporter. And, he despises Romney with a vehemence that may, however unlikely, surpass my own.
Yet, he still will not answer back to all the RW emails he gets from the Republicans he and my mom play bridge with. He gets mad when my mom does. He will not tell the Rs who start trashing Obama at the bridge table that he disagrees. He hates it when my mom does. Even though she generally just says, "We all don't agree, so let's not discuss politics here."
So, it is with great surprise and pride that I read these recent posts he made on facebook:
1. I came to FEMA in Sept 2011 to assist in the disasters Tropical Storm Lee and Hurricane Irene. My work is with the municipalities - townships, school districts, waste water treatment plants roads and bridges. Tears came to my eyes when the oath of office -- to defend the constitution etc -- was administered. Helping to restore these entities to pre-disaster or better condition has been a high point in my life's work.
I am very much convinced that this work could never, never be done by anything but a national government entity.
Update -- Yesterday, our FCO in Harrisburg, PA exhorted us to extend the same effort in responding to Sandy. Today too, I was very much heartened to see the Governor of New Jersey praise FEMA and to hear an NY congressperson look directly into a TV camera and say "Thank You FEMA". i am very proud to be able to help!
2. I find it utterly reprehensible that a man who has never held a position in the federal Government would stick his nose in the response to the event, and would do so by using it as a way to pretend that he cares. Care Sir, BY DONATING $30,000,000 of your wealth to the relief effort. send several of the Caddys lying around in your closed mansions. Put people in those homes. Stay out of the way of the Federal Government now and on election day.
3. It is slowly coming to me that anyone who buys Romney's BS can only be doing so out of racial bigotry.
Update: It's kind of late to add this, but I just remembered that my dad is on twitter: http://twitter.com/donhennigan
He doesn't post much, but if you want to encourage him with a follow, maybe he will start. (Please don't be misled by the "wealth management" tweet. As I said, he's still working not just because he likes it. And if Iggy tweets his ageist crap at him, my dad will probably tell him to go f*#k himself.) Here are a few of his old ones:
Chuckling at all R's antics to no avail ..POTUS will still be POTUS in Dec 2012 to 16.
@EricCantor Your tactics are BLACKMAIL. Be a man and address spending/revenue issue separately Don't ruin the [Republic] with mafia tactics.
If the R's have, as they say that they do, a plan to create jobs, they must disclose it to POTUS. Otherwise Criminal & reprehensible
Gloria Allred. Not what you think.
I'd had pretty much a negative opinion of Gloria Allred until a friend suggested maybe I didn't know enough about her and referred me to this article:
http://www.elle.com/print-this/gloria-allred-the-avenger?page=all
My opinion of her has improved quite a bit. An excerpt:
THE AVENGER
You know her as the lawyer who represented Tiger Woods’ mistresses and the blond allegedly groped by presidential hopeful Herman Cain. But Gloria Allred has also done pioneering work for women’s rights. Is it possible to be a righteous feminist advocate and a celebrity gun for hire?
BY JENNIFER SZALAI
Allred was admitted to the California bar in 1975, which happened to be the year that Time, in its Person of the Year issue, dedicated to American Women. She started a law practice with two classmates from Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, Michael Maroko and Nathan Goldberg, and they began to establish themselves as specialists in civil rights, including the burgeoning fields of gender discrimination and sexual harassment.
In 1980, she successfully sued the L.A. County Sheriff's Department, which had been shackling pregnant inmates while they were in labor. In 1984, Allred filed a case against L.A.'s Catholic Archdiocese on behalf of a woman who was abused by seven priests and had given birth to one of their offspring; 23 years later, she won. Another client had been asked during a job interview about her menstrual cycle; Allred won a settlement after eight years of wrangling.
Her critics point to these early victories and draw a sharp contrast with her later work, wondering why the same attorney would deign to take on plights that seem more like fodder for gossip mags than grave affronts to justice. But Allred doesn't see the discrepancy in such stark terms—if she sees it at all. In her 2007 book, Fight Back and Win, she has a chapter called "Little Things Start Big Changes" in which she describes bringing suit against everyone from a dry cleaner (for charging more to clean women's blouses) to a kids' salon (for charging more for girls' haircuts).
The sheer range of cases is striking. And to each one—whether the client was a victim of rape or a reality-TV experience gone awry—Allred appends an "Empowerment Lesson." (Sample: "Standing up for integrity has its price, but it's one worth paying."
Allred seems to have taken "the personal is political" rallying cry of the '70s and run with it, finding both victimization and empowerment wherever she looks.
Indeed, Allred still uses the radical vocabulary of an earlier era. "I'm not an academic. I'm not a philosopher," she told me the first time we met. "I'm in the war zone, I'm on the battlefield. Often, there's going to be blood in the water." She concedes that women are "learning their rights, and they're fighting back," but she doesn't believe things have improved much for women in the four decades since she started practicing law.
If anything, she said, young women are prone to greater disappointment, "because they expect to be treated fairly, to be treated on their merits, not sexually harassed, not beaten, not deprived of their child support. 'It's 2012? I didn't think it was going to happen to me.' They're in shock." When pressed about whether she truly believes the situation is as dire as it's ever been, Allred is unrelenting. "It hasn't gotten better in 36 years," she told me, her brown eyes trained steadily on mine. "There are still wounded on the battlefield, and most of them are called women."
Middle of the Night Hello Post that No One Will See...
But I'll post it anyway.
Greetings, DU,
I've been reading DU since the summer of 2008, when I found it somewhat calming to know that not everyone in America thought Sarah Palin was just awesome.
I've resisted the temptation to join DU for at least two reasons:
1. I tend to become obsessive
2. I'm rather curmudgeonly and don't always play well with the other children
Both of which can wreak havoc with me and others. But apparently I've run out of willpower, so here i am.
I've read some DUers disparaging MSNBC, and I don't get that. I think Rachel Maddow does an amazing job of clearly laying out a case for nearly every issue she covers. I feel the same about Chris Hayes, who I think is also a massively impressive ring master.
I also have a soft spot, some may say in my brain, for my fellow loud Irishmen Lawrence O'Donnell and Chris Matthews. I like Ed and Al, as well, and some of the newer ones seem good, too. But, I already watch too much damn tv (usually while doing other things, but still...) to get hooked on any more shows.
In addition to my MSNBC commitments, I have a one-hour-per-day, four-days-a-week session with Jon Stewart and, my hero, Stephen Colbert
Well, that's more than enough about me to start with. Thanks for having me and I hope you don't have to kick me out too soon.
: )
Actually, it IS a FACT that "Hank Williams Jr. says Barack Obama is a Muslim." Here is my email to
Politifact regarding that entry:
Thank you for correcting your decision on the Hank Williams "Obama is a Muslim" Claim. Your initial handling was deeply flawed. And there is still something very important that you don't seem to have considered, which related not just to this particular judgement.
Please keep in mind, what you are dealing with is heavily dependent on the use and interpretation of language. You need to be extremely precise.
Technically, it is a *fact* that Hank Williams, Jr. *said* President Obama is a muslim. However, is anyone actually questioning whether or not Williams said this? No, so why fact check that specific thing.
If you are intentionally fact-checking whether or not Williams said it, it would be you job to clearly point out, to avoid the obvious potential confusion, that despite the *fact* that Williams *said* that Obama is a muslim, that the president is not *in fact* a muslim.
I would be remiss, and perhaps you would too, not to point out that an implication in all this is the idea that there is something wrong with being a muslim. I disagree with that notion.
As Rachel Maddow has pointed out, you have made some huge mistakes recently. Yet many people still look to you for facts. Please take your job more seriously. It is very serious business for our country.
Profile Information
Gender: Do not displayHometown: East Coast
Home country: USA
Current location: MidAtlantic US
Member since: Wed Oct 24, 2012, 09:05 PM
Number of posts: 9,760