Obama and the 2012 Election

My sister is planning to relocate with me (and possibly my brother) if romney wins. My sister is a transgendered lesbian who will probably practically be a leper in the U.S. if Romney gets elected.

dru is a wild thing.:

My sister is planning to relocate with me (and possibly my brother) if romney wins. My sister is a transgendered lesbian who will probably practically be a leper in the U.S. if Romney gets elected.

If you're an immigrant you're an actual leper - except everybody expects you to be very grateful for it. You don't get welfare / benefits / state support of any kind, you can't vote / be politically active in any way, random people hate you just because you exist, employers are distrustful of you and won't accept your work experience / references / education as valid, you speak / look / act different from everybody else, you don't understand all the bureaucracy / strange new laws / cultural cues, everybody misspells and mispronounces your name / you have to change your name or write it in a different way, getting in the least amount of legal or medical trouble is complicated / dangerous, you're in a new country where you don't know anybody so there isn't anybody to whom you can turn for support, etc etc I could go on - for some time.

I understand wanting to move because of prejudice, but when you move to another country, you immediately become the target of a different kind of prejudice - which can be just as, if not much more painful. I mean, I do feel safer walking down the street in Scotland than in Romania (and after two weeks of being home and watching the news I just want to run back to Scotland because I hate everyone and everything), but that sense of safety disappears immediately when e.g. I have to talk to a person in authority about any kind of problem I'm having because I always feel like they might go rabid nationalist on me and refuse to help me - or they might be very condescending and act like being a foreigner means I'm extremely stupid - or they won't even be able to understand something I say - or, worse, I won't be able to understand their accent or their references. And this despite the fact that I live in a very cosmopolitan / internationalized place with a lot of immigrants and a lot of organizations willing to help you if you're an immigrant.

Then there's also the fact that there isn't actually that much that Romney can do in the way of passing homophobic legislation besides attempting to undo marriage equality laws - which is already happening anyway. He said he doesn't want impose DADT again and he can't repeal laws protecting people from discrimination based on their sexuality or gender identity because in most of the US there is nothing to repeal, such laws don't exist.

It's still not a hate crime to attack people and to discriminate against them in cases of sexual orientation/gender identity in several states. So if he's not planning on fixing that, then it's definitely less safe for a male to female transgendered person in the United States.

dru is a wild thing.:

It's still not a hate crime to attack people and to discriminate against them in cases of sexual orientation/gender identity in several states. So if he's not planning on fixing that, then it's definitely less safe for a male to female transgendered person in the United States.

So don't live in those states? I don't think Canada is the solution, for all that it's awesome.
Kafka's right, being an immigrant isn't fun... Further, the Harper government is really against unskilled immigrants, or really even any immigration.

dru is a wild thing.:

It's still not a hate crime to attack people and to discriminate against them in cases of sexual orientation/gender identity in several states. So if he's not planning on fixing that, then it's definitely less safe for a male to female transgendered person in the United States.

Yeah, no WAY, Mittens is going to keep the EO that the federal government has been using to protect GSM's. Transgender people are already treated like trash enough as is. *coughCeceMcdonaldcough* The United States and Canada don't have enough major differences for an immigrant to stick out, and it's pretty unlikely would assume any accentless white person is an immigrant anyway.

I swear to God, every time I think I couldn't think less of Mitt Romney as a person, I find out something new that manages it.

Katlight Sparkle:

I swear to God, every time I think I couldn't think less of Mitt Romney as a person, I find out something new that manages it.

This. Honestly. I don't like outright looking down on candidates as people because for all I know they could be decent people with views that just clash against mine, but Romney has proven to be an entirely different monster. The things that are being revealed about him (he doesn't recall making someone's life hell even after three people went into detail about one of his attacks on that person? Seriously?) have just made me fume with anger, and I'm hoping that Obama exploits every single thing that makes him seem like the worst possible presidential hopeful ever.

Because really, as "terrible" as Obama is in some people's eyes, wouldn't Romney be worse? He literally only says what his contributors want him to say, and he's taking political advice from Donald Trump. At the beginning of this mess, I was willing to give the GOP a chance, but now it's all a joke and there is no question in my mind that Obama has to be re-elected in order for America to remain intact. The things Romney wants to do honestly petrify me, and I'd rather that our economy continue to slowly develop rather than be destroyed with the changes Romney would make.

Takanori Matsumoto.:

This. Honestly. I don't like outright looking down on candidates as people because for all I know they could be decent people with views that just clash against mine, but Romney has proven to be an entirely different monster. The things that are being revealed about him (he doesn't recall making someone's life hell even after three people went into detail about one of his attacks on that person? Seriously?) have just made me fume with anger, and I'm hoping that Obama exploits every single thing that makes him seem like the worst possible presidential hopeful ever.

Because really, as "terrible" as Obama is in some people's eyes, wouldn't Romney be worse? He literally only says what his contributors want him to say, and he's taking political advice from Donald Trump. At the beginning of this mess, I was willing to give the GOP a chance, but now it's all a joke and there is no question in my mind that Obama has to be re-elected in order for America to remain intact. The things Romney wants to do honestly petrify me, and I'd rather that our economy continue to slowly develop rather than be destroyed with the changes Romney would make.

Watching him talk about the homophobic attack and then laugh it off was really one of the most disturbing things I have ever seen in real life.

The thing that makes me bang my head against the wall is that the unemployment rate comes from lack of public sector jobs, but we have to cut government spending to fix unemployment? I can't even begin to understand this reasoning. Oh, and the republicans screaming about jobs and how much the dems and Obama suck for not doing anything about it, and today they fast tracked an anti-abortion bill so they could vote on it.

PRIORITIES!

dru is a wild thing.:

If Romney gets elected, I'm not joking when I say I'm leaving the country. In three months, depending on how things look election-wise and politically, I will be applying for my passport and looking for a job/apartment in Canada, just in case.

No joke when I'm saying this; you should come to Sweden. We pay higher taxes when we're working (but it's not like, an extreme amount) and when we get sick we pay up to $165 in a year, and never more. After that we get a 'free card', for the rest of the year. And with medicine, I'm not sure where the top amount is, but it's not much above that. It costs like $14 to go to the emergency room, and you never pay anything on the spot. But seriously, exchange program with Sweden - yes. xD

I so want Obama to be re-elected even though I don't live in the States.

spencer reid.:

No joke when I'm saying this; you should come to Sweden. We pay higher taxes when we're working (but it's not like, an extreme amount) and when we get sick we pay up to $165 in a year, and never more. After that we get a 'free card', for the rest of the year. And with medicine, I'm not sure where the top amount is, but it's not much above that. It costs like $14 to go to the emergency room, and you never pay anything on the spot. But seriously, exchange program with Sweden - yes. xD

I so want Obama to be re-elected even though I don't live in the States.

You guys should really just invade us. A nice progressive Scandinavian take over sounds pretty good to me.

northern european governments for all~

pravda.:

northern european governments for all~

Only if we also get Northern European massive amounts of natural resources, otherwise we won't be able to afford them.

kafka.:

Tentative rebuttal. (It's just an opinion piece.) But countries like Finland do have some of the very best education systems, right? cf. US education / resources / power.

Though there probably does need to be exploitation of other countries happening, to deal with the, idk, credit or capital or something. La la The Netherlands are worth 14 times their actual assets etc I know very little about economics and such.

@ pravda.

Assessing education cross culturally is very difficult. It's true that Scandinavian and East Asian countries do extremely well in PISA, but I'm not entirely sure stuff like PISA accurately measure anything besides how well students have been taught to score high on PISA tests. My brother took the PISA tests three years ago. He did okay-ish, but worse than he usually does on tests - I think mainly because the tests are very ill suited for assessing somebody taught by the educational system in which we both grew up. For example, the maths section was all multiple choice but in Romania, maths tests / exams don't have multiple choice questions and you're graded on how you solve the problem not what answer you get - if you just write the answer without showing how you got to it, you get almost no points (and you probably get accused of cheating too). The reading comprehension questions left even me dumbfolded because it's just nothing like anything taught in Romanian schools and the language of the questions, the texts you were supposed to read and understand, format of the test, etc everything was extremely confusing and I have no idea what the test wanted from me. The Romanian educational system creates students who can engage with literary texts in sophisticated ways, it doesn't create students who can read graphs - and this can be both good and bad (I see it mostly as something good).

Adding on, a couple of weeks ago I read an article about how Eastern European immigrants are unhappy with how 'lax' the British educational system is (you can read it here).

BUT, back on topic - even if I think most countries couldn't afford a whole Scandinavian government / welfare system, I do think the US could afford universal health care - most European countries have some form of it even if they're poor(er) countries.

^ I do remember calculating that the US spends more in Medicare/Medicaid per year than it would if they had an NHS style UHC. I'm assuming that the odd expenditure must be due to the extortionate prices of medication and whatever but even then, it's an educated guess. It's...baffling.

spencer reid.:

No joke when I'm saying this; you should come to Sweden.

Agent Operetta:

You guys should really just invade us. A nice progressive Scandinavian take over sounds pretty good to me.

I'll just tell everyone I'm from Canada so they think I'm cool.

I envy other countries' governments. I get so angry when people say America is the greatest country to live in or that it has the greatest form of government. I may not have any real experience abroad, but if what I read and hear is any indication, it's total bullshit.

I want Obama to stay in office even if I don't live there (I live in the UK). I read a lot of feminist blogs and I hear a lot about the reproductive rights that Republicans would take away, I just can't fathom it. I think that if it happened in the US, it would give the teeny tiny minority here a platform for that kind of thinking here. And I like knowing that I control what happens to my uterus.

Also, I wish people here wouldn't take the NHS for granted! Especially since in Wales we don't even pay the £7.50 (I think) charge for prescriptions that they do in England, we just get our medication for free. I can't even imagine not going to the doctors because I couldn't afford to. I don't know the ins and outs of Medicare/Medicaid, but it can only be an improvement...

Just found out (old news though) that Romney is on two animal cruelty registries.

of dru's being.:

Just found out (old news though) that Romney is on two animal cruelty registries.

Someone who isn't even allowed or capable to adopt a dog is a serious contender for the Presidency.

@ Kurtni
Apparently he tied his dog to the top of his station wagon for a 12 hour car ride...

of dru's being.:

@ Kurtni
Apparently he tied his dog to the top of his station wagon for a 12 hour car ride...

Yeah I heard, and he talked about it like it was a funny "gather 'round the campfire" kind of story.