Don't it always seem to go...

Just had an email from the immigration attorney's paralegal to the effect that the Permanent Residency applications for Dearest and me have been formally submitted. So the bacon's in the pan, and the scramble to muscle or scrounge supporting documentation resumes in earnest. We're at D-minus-140.

Knowing that the arrow has been loosed has me fighting off a little freakitude, which isn't surprising for someone whose brain waits for the sound of one of life's doors swinging closing behind her to turn around to see what's being lost. Whether what's being lost is actually of consequence is itself inconsequential, but that's not the point. There are any number of people I will miss, and some are guaranteed to drop off my radar purely from inertia as life moves ahead.

Yet one look at the headlines--liberal, conservative, or non-partisan--is enough to tell me that we're doing the right thing. Pathetic that I have to move to another country to find the values that I was raised to believe were the hallmark of democracy. More pathetic still that the target country is, nominally, a monarchy. I read The Toronto Star (week)daily, so I like to think I have some idea of what we're getting into, politically and otherwise. No paradise, certainly, and more certainly not lily-white. But nevertheless politically saner and more fiscally sound than what's below their southern border. And if Putin keeps that crypto-right-winger Harper busy playing Tom Clancy cat-and-mouse games in the arctic, at least that's fewer CPU cycles he has for trying to re-create the rest of Canada in Alberta's image.

But, at any rate, I can officially say it's Game On, after years of ranting and desultorily collecting paperwork. [Deep breath.]

From the B-side

Giving credit where it's due, it's good to see that a few adults are still knocking around the GOP: GOP blasts Idaho candidate's "Obama tags" comment. I will admit I'm impressed and the swiftness and lack of equivocation in Senator Crapo's and Governor Otter's condemnations.

Figures you'd get that kind of self-centered stupidity from a guy who makes his gelt raising wild animals, just so rich, manhood-challenged wankers can have the kind of "hunt" that leaves powder burns on the critter's hide.

Channeling FDR

More completely concocted hysteria from the GOP: Fundraising letter hints GOP health care at risk

While children and adults are dying or having their lives stunted by an insurance oligopoly Every. Goddamn. Day., THIS is the best you can do? Outright lies about death panels and suicide manuals and pulling the plug on Grandma, and now partisan-based health care?

The longer this drags on, the more I keep hearing the echo of FDR: "I ask you to judge me by the enemies I've made." If I and any number of progressives are making enemies willing to lie their faces off--and so preposterously--to keep the unwashed masses from crashing their gated community, I consider it a badge of honor.

Good question

George Carlin on phone plans:

"When did the phone bill become life's most critical document? In a country where you can buy cinnamon dental floss, cheese in a spray-can, and edible womens' panties, are people really breaking their balls to save nine cents on a fucking phone call?"

- "Back in Town"

Irony overload

So I'm on my morning commute this morning, and wind up behind a truck (naturally) driven by an old dude (naturally) that bore three bumper-stickers.

1. The first stated the obvious, that Planned Parenthood was the largest provider of abortions in America. [snark]Really? Whodathunkit?[/snark].
2. The second proclaimed that you can't be Catholic and "Pro-abortion." No-brainer there. Why? Because absolutely no one is "pro-abortion." There is pro-choice and there is anti-choice. That's it. [snark]Good job: You've "framed" yourself into logical irrelevance.[/snark].
3. The third was the familiar ribbon shape, reading "Pray for Our Troops." Somehow I suspect the prayers I was being exhorted to offer were intended to wash the blood of an illegal war from their hands. [no-snark]As much as I prize my copy of Mark Twain's "The War Prayer," I would have happily tied it to a brick to put through the window of that truck, just to make sure this clueless hypocrite got the point. [/no-snark]
   

In other words, the standard "pro-lifer" who doesn't give a rat's backside about the embryo after it's born, and double that if it's not a Christian American, preferably white.