Recent events

Hi Everybody (Hi Dr Nick!)

Recent news is sparse. However, biggest by far lately is that I got my Social Security number and Green Card, so I am now fully able to pursue work and do other stuff (like stay here without any trouble), so yay me! I am officially and completely a Permanent Resident, and I can prove it! I’ve been looking for work for a couple of weeks, and I have some good leads, including one job in particular that I really want and hope to get.

In other news, while taking out the trash one evening, my son and I found an adult men’s bike in the dumpster. It’s a Schwinn Caliente, with minor rust damage on the front and rear rims, spokes and a couple of other areas. It looks like it’s been sitting in someone’s garage for years, and it looks like it’s never been ridden. So the Boy and I will be fixing it up for summer, and as he’s nearly as tall as me now, we’ll share it.

Woohoo!

I got my Social Security card in the mail yesterday – dated the 9th December, less than three days after I arrived. I can now work, file tax returns and do all kinds of stuff. Yay me!

A quick update…

As of 6th December 2011, I am a legal permanent resident of the United States 🙂

I’m just waiting on getting my Green Card issued to me, but as of right now, I am legally resident here and happy and content to be with my family once more, without the cloud hanging over our heads of me having to leave.

Jan’s Going To Lose, Steve

Jan’s going to lose, Steve… but we knew that anyway. The Arizona law is un-Constitutional on its face; only the Federal government has the authority to enforce immigration law, and only Congress has the authority to make it. That’s a given, at least among those of us who aren’t crazy wingnuts.

That aside, Steve, your outrage over the Obama administrations immigration enforcement policy is yet another example of a right-wing nutjob not checking his facts before he starts puking out a post:

Click to embiggen

See also here, here and here for more evidence of how Steve’s poor ethics lead him to post a bunch of crap.

Oklazona!

Apparently, Oklahoma has decided that it’s fed up with up with Arizona’s repeated wins at the All-States Crazy Championships, and has decided to run with an illegal immigration bill of its very own. Look out for another Federal pre-emption lawsuit.

Illegal immigration bill allows arrest, seizure without warrant

OKLAHOMA CITY — A sweeping anti-illegal immigration bill that allows police to arrest people they suspect are in the country illegally and seize property used to commit immigration-related crimes has passed the Oklahoma Senate.

The Senate voted 29-15 on Wednesday for the bill over the objections of some members who say the plan is unconstitutional and would be detrimental to Oklahoma’s economy.

The bill authorizes law enforcement officers to arrest someone without a warrant, if the officer has “probable cause” to believe the person is in the country illegally.

It also allows police to seize property, like homes or vehicles, used to knowingly harbor or transport illegal immigrants.

Some members voiced concerns that farmers could risk losing their property and expensive equipment by hiring migrant workers.

It’s worth noting that the Oklahoma state Senate is currently Republican-dominated, and that the current composition is 32:16 in favour of them; the voting being 29:15 for the immigration bill suggests a straight party line vote. In light of that, it looks like Teahadism has infected the Oklahoma Senate; the fact that it’s plainly un-Constitutional might have deflected Republicans in times past, or at least made them think twice, but it doesn’t ever seem to bother the ‘baggers too much.

You know, for a bunch of people who claim to revere the Constitution so much, they sure as shit don’t seem to know much about it. You get the kind half-arsed of knowledge and interpretation from them which come from half-remembered civics lessons mixed with a huge dollop of knee-jerk anti-governmentalism, talk radio propraganda and just plain bigotry.

Give it a bit more of this, and Oklahoma will overtake Arizona; hell, a bit of more this, and it’ll overtake Texas. But the question is, is a race to the bottom the kind of race Oklahomans want to win?

I would snark this…

… but, well, why gild the lily? It’s a self-snarking post. If I didn’t know better from the extensive litany of wingnuttery present elsewhere, I’d assume this were a Poe. That’s a sad state of affairs for any country, though, when a significant fraction of its politically-active citizens cannot be told apart from a joke version of themselves.

Anyway. Herewith, a shorter from some redneck embarrassment to the United States:

Steve Hilton, Get Offa My Front Porch ‘Fore I Get The Shotgun, Boy
Relaxing on Illegals Voting, Here’s the way the Dem’s sneak in…

Those damn Demmycrats want to let brown people vote! What? What they really want is to let brown people who ain’t citizens vote? Lord! That would be just awful in some way to do with citizens! I can’t figure it out right now, but I just know that letting more brown people vote is a recipe for disaster, ‘specially if they ain’t citizens. Hell, even if they are!

Nurse! Come here, I need changing again!

Honestly, that’s not even too far from what he actually wrote, wording and everything…

Le stupid! Il brûle!

So, a few posts back, I spanked someone going by the name of Interested Bystander regarding his conspicuous display of teh stupid about Obama’s citizenship on a conspiracy nut blog called James4America. You can read my snark over here. It are teh funneez.

Well, it seems that IB returned in the meantime, not having satisfied his urge to be bent over and have his bottom reddened, and spewed a whole new deluge of nonsense in response. Apparently, he thought I was just too, too beastly to him, and decided to climb on his high horse attempt to take the moral high ground, by refusing to come over here and play. I, of course, having no self-control when it comes to nom-ing on the tiny living brains of wingnuts, just had to dip in again and give him another dose of the public humiliation he so strongly desires, the naughty little boy.

Pointless, beard-wearing knock-off of a Druid

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, recently called the introduction of sharia courts unavoidable.

For those of you unfamiliar with the story, here’s a short paragraph:

The Archbishop of Canterbury says the adoption of certain aspects of Sharia law in the UK “seems unavoidable”.

Dr Rowan Williams told Radio 4’s World at One that the UK has to “face up to the fact” that some of its citizens do not relate to the British legal system.

Dr Williams argues that adopting parts of Islamic Sharia law would help maintain social cohesion.

First point – we have a legal system already. And while I don’t wish to dent the noble goals of multiculturalism and acceptance of minorities, emigrating to a country whose legal system you despise is just stupid. They don’t relate to the legal system? Fine. Let them stay elsewhere. We should not be altering and changing a system which more or less works simply on the back of extremist immigrants not liking it.

Adopting sharia would maintain social cohesion? My gods, this is what happens when you let the hippies get in charge of anything. Two conflicting legal and ethical systems do not make for social cohesion, and neither does the idea of a minority not only failing to adapt to its adoptive country to some degree but attempting to mould it after itself.

Finally, Sharia law is brutal, cruel and mediaeval, especially in its attitudes towards women. It’s like the Old Testament, without the gloss of embarrassed modern moderate Christians to shuffle their feet and whistle: it is not conducive to democracy and the modern secular state with its guaranteed rights independent of party or religious affiliation.

Sharia law would be a disaster for any country of the West – adopting it to any degree would be to chisel away at the foundations of our liberal, secular democracies, and I rather like living in a culture where personal autonomy and choice are seen as things to be valued no matter who I pray to or don’t, where my right to vote is not dependent upon adherence to a certain religion, where I can get married or get a divorce without religious interference, where I won’t be shunned because I reflexively view my wife as an equal, and where I am in no danger of being stoned to death for being an apostate.

By all means, let Muslims live in the West – it’s a good place to live, and we welcome newcomers. But if you come to live here, no matter how accepting we are, no matter how much we decline to interfere in your lives, you have to bend yourselves at least a little to that standard as well. Otherwise, it all stops working.