Will They Charter Buses???

[nbcrusader]

Canadians open arms to Americans

The Vancouver, British Columbia, immigration lawyer plans seminars in three U.S. cities -- Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles -- to tell Americans frustrated with Bush's re-election that the grass is greener north of the border.

And that's not just an allusion to Canada's lenient marijuana laws.

"We started last year getting a lot of calls from Americans dissatisfied with the way the country is going," Kischer says. "Then after the election, it's been crazy up here. The Canadian immigration Web site had 115,000 hits the day after the election -- from the U.S. alone. We usually only get 20,000 hits."

Hyperbole or is this how things should work??

 

[verte76]

There has been stuff all over the liberal blogs, etc, etc, that people have been preparing to leave and go to Canada if Bush got re-elected. Apparently the Canadians were ready for the avalanche on their web site, right after the elections they said they expected to get discontented Americans. The Canadian climate would be absolute murder on my health. If I think my arthritis kills me in the Sunbelt, it'd be so much worse in Canada. I'm not sure they anticipated the voume on their immigration web site, however. But it doesn't surprise me at all. An election this emotional doesn't happen without big time fallout--including leaving the country.

 

[nbcrusader]

I wonder how many left in 2000?

But my real question: is emigration the appropriate response?

 

[dandy]

in a nutshell: i think it's a tad overdramatic. if people want to move to canada because they think they could make a better life here, fine. but if they're wanting to leave just because they don't want to live in President Bush's US anymore... i think there are more productive ways to voice and act on their discontent.

what's the point of having free and fair elections if people are just going to turn around and say 'we don't like this result, we're leaving'? seems to undermine the whole point of having a democracy.

 

[verte76]

For some people, yes, it's the appropriate response. This was the most emotionally charged election since 1968, and I understand the feelings that make people want a change in their political environment. For many Americans to the left of the electorate of the U.S. the frustration just got to be too much.

 

[MrsSpringsteen]

I'm still waiting for Alec Baldwin to leave...

 

[kobayashi]

it is overly dramatic. but then, so are many of the things they are running from.

as an aside, i work in a building shared with citizenship & immigration canada. the nature of some of the inquiries they are receiving is quite amusing.

 

[LarryMullen's POPAngel]

 

[MissVelvetDress_75]

 

[pianorocker]

If I'd move anywhere, it'd be to Europe...a better choice of climates and the euro is so much stronger than the dollar.

 

[verte76]

Perhaps it is too dramatic. I know I'm not doing it. I'm not going to get busted for being to the left of most of my compatriots. I'm used to this situation. Sometimes it is really hard to be a liberal in this conservative place because some people just can't accept my views as reasonable. If I were going to leave the country, I'd move to Europe, probably Belgium.

 

[Irvine511]

oooh, i've lived in Belgium. great food, nice (but quiet) people, *terrible* weather. had a good time, was happy to come back to the US.

i do think most of the "i'm leaving the country!" talk is hyperbole, but not totally. my parents are sitting my younger brother and sister down at Thanksgiving so they can work out some sort of plan should a draft be re-instated over the next 4 years. this is a real concern for people with children -- both boys and girls -- between the ages of 18 and 25 (i'm 27, thankfully). you can bet my parents would move us all to Canada or Australia rather than face the possibility that a member of our family be killed in what we all view as an unjust, unnecessary war.

 

[U2democrat]

I wouldn't go to canada because I'd be leaving American politics!!!! It's too much fun for me to leave no matter how bad it may seem.

 

[wolfwill23]

Bye bye!

 

[BAW]

i do think most of the "i'm leaving the country!" talk is hyperbole, but not totally. my parents are sitting my younger brother and sister down at Thanksgiving so they can work out some sort of plan should a draft be re-instated over the next 4 years. this is a real concern for people with children -- both boys and girls -- between the ages of 18 and 25 (i'm 27, thankfully). you can bet my parents would move us all to Canada or Australia rather than face the possibility that a member of our family be killed in what we all view as an unjust, unnecessary war.

My sons are 19 and 17 and we've had the same talk.

 

[A_Wanderer]

There will be no draft.

 

[Dutch Partygirl]

I wonder how many are actually going to leave... And don't come to Europe! In most countries it's not that much better (in Belgium one of the biggest political parties is a right-wing one if there were elections now, in the Netherlands the attacks on islamic targets are going on and on...).

 

[Irvine511]

There will be no draft.

hmmmmm. you're probably right, but it seems difficult to understand how the Bush administration can accomplish all it wants without more troops. and if there were a legitimate crisis in, say, North Korea that required significant American involvement ... it's not too far-fetched an idea.

 

[joyfulgirl]

I know two people, both gay men who don't know each other, who are moving to Canada this month. They both have jobs, relationships, etc. in Canada and their plans have been in the works long before the election, but one of the main reasons is the political climate here. I don't blame them. If I were gay and had the means, I would seriously look into moving to Canada. I can't think of a good reason not to, actually.

 

[verte76]

Oh, gosh, if I were gay, in a relationship and had the right financial situation I'd investigate Canada too. I have a couple of gay friends who are mates, they live in a small town in Alabama and they're managing just fine aside from griping about the election results. They are self-employed, one is a florist and the other is a caterer, and they do alot of stuff together like weddings and stuff. It's kind of ironic that they are in the "marriage business".

 

[Irvine511]

Oh, gosh, if I were gay, in a relationship and had the right financial situation I'd investigate Canada too. I have a couple of gay friends who are mates, they live in a small town in Alabama and they're managing just fine aside from griping about the election results. They are self-employed, one is a florist and the other is a caterer, and they do alot of stuff together like weddings and stuff. It's kind of ironic that they are in the "marriage business".

another reason for gay marriage: who could throw a more fabulous wedding than two gay guys?!?!?!?!

 

[Mr. BAW]

There will be no draft.

Have you noticed the obvious reduction of military ads to hit the air since the onset of the war? all of those commercials luring the kids with College fund education, etc.

Now, the only regular advertiser is The Marines; I haven't seen an Army, Navy, Air Force or Coast Guard ads in quite a while....

 

[Irvine511]

part of an Op-Ed in the Washington Post today, and one of the more sober summations of why many people probably do want to leave the United States. Not because of Bush, per say, but because of exactly how the Bush campaign went about winning:

Here's what Republicans of conscience have to understand about the machinations of Karl Rove and company. Fear isn't some emotion that can be easily bottled back up after it's been -- viciously -- unleashed. It isn't a once-every-four-years vehicle that can be wheeled out for a few months, then stowed back in the garage to be retooled for the next election cycle. Encouraging fundamentalist preachers to pound their pulpits and inveigh against gay people has consequences. It puts men and women in communities across this country at personal and professional risk. There's nothing more despicable than creating a phony political issue (just how many gay couples are clamoring for marriage certificates in the state of Ohio, anyhow?) and preying on people's prejudices.

So now it's up to discerning Republicans to wrestle with this quandary: You won all right, but at what cost? What happened to the party that once shared Abraham Lincoln's faith in the "better angels of our nature"? ...

"Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid," Lincoln wrote in the years leading up to the Civil War. "As a nation, we began by declaring that 'all men are created equal.' We now practically read it 'all men are created equal, except Negroes.' When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read 'all men are created equal, except Negroes and foreigners and Catholics.' When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty -- to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure and without the base alloy of hypocrisy."

There are a lot of Republicans troubled by their party's exploitation of contemporary know-nothingism. You know who you are. And before your party's degeneracy is complete, you ought to do something about it. Because camouflaging the fear and loathing of gay people as "moral values" isn't the base alloy of hypocrisy. It's hypocrisy itself.

 

[nbcrusader]

The writer of this op-ed piece assumes (and essentially bases the entire piece on the notion) that fear drove voters to elect GWB.

Perhaps, just consider, that voters are rational people and had a rational basis for voting for Bush.

To bad this falls into the category of false generalizations that a fear of terrorism and a hatred of gays led to the election of GWB.

 

[Irvine511]

The writer of this op-ed piece assumes (and essentially bases the entire piece on the notion) that fear drove voters to elect GWB.

Perhaps, just consider, that voters are rational people and had a rational basis for voting for Bush.

To bad this falls into the category of false generalizations that a fear of terrorism and a hatred of gays led to the election of GWB.

i think you're missing the point. it makes no such generalizations about the motives of all the Bush voters, but it does say that to play upon fear as one element of the campaign -- which Rove surely did via churches in Ohio and below-the-radar grassroots campigning -- is exceptionally dangerous precisely because playing upon fears of a small (and traditionally despised) minority -- whether or not one actually votes upon them -- creates a palpably less safe environment. already, moralists like James Dobson and William Bennett are demanding their pound of flesh in the legislation of morals as payback for their role in helping GWB get elected. surely the Bush campaign wouldn't have proposed the FMA (or, to address your 2nd point in the last sentence) had Cheney warn of nuclear attacks if Kerry were elected if they didn't think these would be winning campaign strategies?

further, even if your typical Bush voter didn't vote on fear, the campaign used fear as part of their message and thusly changed the climate in the country.



i'll repost the most essential part of the op-ed:

"Fear isn't some emotion that can be easily bottled back up after it's been -- viciously -- unleashed. It isn't a once-every-four-years vehicle that can be wheeled out for a few months, then stowed back in the garage to be retooled for the next election cycle. Encouraging fundamentalist preachers to pound their pulpits and inveigh against gay people has consequences. It puts men and women in communities across this country at personal and professional risk."

 

[Stonewall]

Oh, how Gay!

.....another reason for Gay marriage: who could throw a more fabulous wedding than two gay guys?!?!?!?!

Especially when one Gay male is a caterer and the other Gay male is a florist!! U just can't beat it -- unless U can add that the best man is a hairdresser and the male maid of honor is a seamstress.


See: www.STONEWALLvets.org/businessadvertisers.htm