On Super Tuesday Two: Too Super, Too Tuesday

Last night, as I headed to bed, a storm rolled in. It was one of those occasional Spring storms which lives out its whole course in a single ten minute span, the cacophany and fury of the event being totally unrepresentative of the amount of time it lasts.

I mention this because today is, once again, a huge day in American politics. And like that storm the pressure has been building over the past few weeks for an event that has the potential to be a last stand for at least two of the Republican candidates seeking to delay Donald Trump, or a clearing of the air.

As the primary race starts to shift to the winner takes all states starting with Florida and Ohio, alongside Illinois, Missouri and North Carolina, gone are the days when the votes cast lead to a proportional delegate breakdown; we're now into a situation where one good win can net scores of those crucial delegates in one go.

Last week your retired Third Grade Teacher, Bernie Sanders, scored a major upset over rejected Skynet prototype, Hillary Clinton, by winning Michigan. So far Sanders has been struggling in the more diverse states, despite boasting the endorsement of Killer Mike,one half of rap duo Run the Jewels, and very probably the only non-white person Bernie Sanders has advising him. Despite his weakness among the strongly Democratic African-American base, Sanders has succesfully cornered the market on the kind of white, middle-class, socially conscious liberals whose comfortable lifestyle means they face little real adversity and who are therefore unconcerned about the impracticality of Sander's reform agenda.

In winning Michigan Sanders overturned a 20 point polling deficit to open up the Rust Belt, the states which were once the manufacturing heartland of America, and are now more akin to the Elephant Graveyard in The Lion King.

Not pictured: actual Hyenas.

This upset has the potential to keep the race going at least until the convention, especially if Sanders can pull off further victories tonight (watch Ohio and Illinois, two big states that could unexpectedly swing for Sanders), even though the delegate math still says that he has no real chance of winning.

On the Republican side a torrid two weeks have seen Donald Trump spend a debate reassuring the world's last great superpower that he has a big dick. Opposition to Trump has finally switched to Ted Cruz from Marco Rubio, whose once sparkling campaign got Cinderella syndrome and revealed itself as comprised of a few fat mice and a pumpkin.

For a candidate who was meant to be the Establishment wing's '1812 Overture', Marco Rubio has at times seemed more like he's orchestrating a movement of Sad Trombones. Watching his political aspirations die in real time, to the point where he told his own supporters to vote for John Kasich, the least interesting man in the race, has been sad. Not, admittedly, upsetting sad, but more the kind of sad where someone's trousers fall down, and as they bend to pull them up their underwear splits and they topple over and roll down the stairs, while the Benny Hill Theme plays out. That kind of slapstick sad.

It's left American conservatives to weigh up the evil of two lessers; men who in any typical year would be among those knocked out in the opening rounds of the electoral destruction derby. When the Republican Establishment is forced to swing behind someone who was once described, by his own colleague, as being so disliked that if he were "shot on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the senate" nobody would ever find the murderer guilty (source), you know that they might be in trouble.

The problem is that nothing seems to be slowing Trump down. Even an explosion of violence at his rally's over the last few days has only cemented his position as the 'says it like it is' candidate. The threatening rhetoric, hate speech, and race-baiting he's displayed have only endeared him to the significant reactionary sections of the Republican Party who sincerely believe that conservatism means a return to the days of white's only drinking fountains. There have been better articles than this about the way that Trump uses racially charged language, subtly calculated to appeal to the exact people who he's currently sweeping - here's one, And here's a video.

When Donald Trump deliberately travels to cities that are being torn apart by issues of racial identity, they cannot express surprise when their brutally racist tone causes a reaction.

It's hard to even express at times the utterly shocking way that Trump's vile ideas have suddenly gone mainstream. It's worth remembering that even now Trump is yet to win over a majority of the voters in the Republican Party, and certainly there's an increasingly vocal cross section of Republicans waging a guerrilla war for the soul of their party, with reports of party officials drawing up ways to run Senate and House races campaigning against their own presumptive nominee.

But so far, despite all the back room chatter, disquiet and outright attacks, there have been few Republican leaders prepared to stand up and distance themselves, unequivocally, from Donald Trump. When asked if they would support Trump if he were the nominee, Kasich, Rubio and Cruz all said yes. At this point it's difficult to imagine what Trump has to do for them to say he's gone too far, and that they wouldn't vote for him.

If he wins, as it seems more and more likely he will, it will be the fault not of good men doing nothing, but selfish, hypocritical men choosing their party's interest over that of their country.

On the average Wednesday after Super Tuesday

It may seem strange, but Super Tuesday's result wasn't actually the worst outcome possible for the terrified majority who're currently freaking out about the possible reign of Dystopian future President, Donald J. Trump. Certainly, it was a pretty bad result, until you consider that some advance polls had him sweeping every states available, like the vengeful broom from the Sorcerers Apprentice.

So instead of Trump being the inevitable presumptive nominee, we now have him as just the almost-inevitable, presumptuous nominee. There is, mathematically speaking, a chance that he could be beaten, although considering that there isn't really a viable alternative candidate and he's projected to win in virtually every upcoming state, that hope seems more than a little forlorn.

For everyone hoping that Marco Rubio might have been able to staunch some of the arterial bleeding of the GOP's body politc, there was the last gasp victory in Minnesota, a victory which meant he won a state on just the 15th time of trying. That puts him slightly ahead of the people who haven't won a single state, Ben Carson, John Kasich, and 99% of America. Unfortunately, as our generation's Shakespeare, Taylor Swift, points out, "Band aids don't fix bullet holes", and Rubio undermined his own insistent rhetoric about being the only credible roadblock to a Trump victory by coming third in most of the other states, and not picking up any delegates in nearly every state that required candidates meet a certain threshold of votes.

That delegate math thing is really important, because it means that of 700 or so pledged delegates Rubio has just over 100, Donald Trump has 320, and even Ted Cruz, a man who looks like an anthropomorphic paper bag full of wet garbage has 225.

Ted Cruz, 2016

In the race to amass the 1237 delegates needed Rubio is falling behind, leaving him with less room to lose the states still in play, and without the moral high ground necessary for him to appeal to the rest of the field to drop out and unite behind him to tackle their true enemy.

And that's really important, because the accepted view is that nobody can possibly stop Trump until it becomes a one on one race. There's a indisputable scientific law called the 'Conservation of Ninjitsu' which is used to explain why a single ninja will be able to beat the hero, but as soon as multiple ninja's appear, they're all easily defeated. Under the 'Conservation of Ninjitsu', there is only a certain amount of competence and fighting ability to go around; in one person it's enough to make them a powerful force, but once it's diluted across the multitude, they're all weakened.

The same principle applies to the race to stop Trump, in that the anti-Trump vote hasn't been able to coalesce around a single candidate, with each taking away some of the support from the others. Inevitably, Rubio's people immediately blamed Ohio Governor John Kasich for stealing voters from the demographics most likely to support their man, but unfortunately declined to follow up with the accepted Ninja practice of slaughtering their enemies and eating their still beating heart to gain the strength of their foe. Although there's still time.

Now, though, for the first time, the Republican Party seems to have realized that in order to defeat Trump, they may have to team up with their old enemy, Magneto. Oh, wait, sorry, no, that's the plot of X2: X-Men United.

What I meant to say was that the Republican Party are suddenly looking to the only man they actively hate more than Donald Trump: Ted Cruz. 

The poor man's Magneto

To say that Ted Cruz is an unlikely hero for anyone to look to is really, really underselling how awful Ted Cruz is. If Donald Trump vocalises the populist view from the gutters of American intolerance, then Ted Cruz is the sewer that scum water drains into. Having based his campaign around winning over the kind of white, evangelical voters who're anxious to reject un-Godly concepts such as sex education for teenagers, vaccines for children, equal rights for gays, and taxes for anyone, he's been ignored in favor of the one guy running to the right of him on the hot button issue of immigration, an area where he struggles by being of both Canadian and Cuban descent.

Even his own colleagues in the party are reported to hate Cruz, the man responsible for the disastrous shutdown of the Government in 2013 over whether they should get money to run essential services. In recent weeks though he's been most damaged by the public perception that he's a liar and a cheat, to the extent that he was forced to fire his own head of Public Relations for misrepresenting Marco Rubio's comments that 'the Bible was a good book, with lots of answers', as "you won't find any answers in there."

Still, he's somehow found a place as the choice of voters who don't trust Trump's conservative credentials, and crucially he's won 4 states and 225 delegates, and that alone could be enough for his Party to grudgingly get behind him, however much they don't want to.

On the other side, Bernie Sander's equality and economic justice revolution was derailed by Hillary Clinton's campaign for "some equality and economic justice maybe, although probably not actually, thanks for voting tho anyway guys." Bernie picked up wins in Vermont, Colorado, Oklahoma and Minnesota (yes), while Hillary Clinton won the South by broadening her appeal to include voters who weren't white or under 25, the one demographic that Bernie had concentrated on. If his support in this age group holds firm then Bernie Sander's will almost certainly win the Democratic nomination, and the subsequent Presidential election.

In 2044. When he's 102.

This isn't to at all downplay what he's achieved so far, though, because in pushing Hillary Clinton to actually engage with voters and come up with some policies he may well have pushed her a hair closer to being a genuine liberal candidate, rather than a posessed mannequin with a nice line in pant suits. In reality, there's almost nothing wrong with Hillary Clinton that isn't also wrong with every other American politician. She's simply a disappointing standard bearer for the left, and when you stick her next to Bernie Sanders, a genuine progressive titan, with his own CD of protest anthems, and an ideology that excites people, she looks even less appealing.

I mean, let's face it, nobody is going to be travelling to Vermont to get a free tattoo of Hillary, are they.

A genuine thing that is happening

On Super Tuesday

Today is Super Tuesday, and I am Super Excited.

It may seem like this is an odd post to be writing, considering that my blogging has been so absent for the last year, and there are far more interesting things going on in my life at the moment.

I don't really want to say that this is the most exciting day of the year, because obviously that'll be Election Night. And then it'll be Super Tuesday. Also, Jalyss and I are having a baby so I imagine that'll be in the top 5 or so.

For those of you who aren't aware, Super Tuesday is part of America's horribly convoluted political process, whereby citizens elect their President by first voting on a candidate for each party in each state, which then sends a certain number of delegates based on an archaic algorithm sorted by population, state size, and which states each party finds most important. Each candidate tries to get enough of these delegates to secure the nomination, but delegates can switch to support other people, even if they're only really there on the basis that the people of their state voted for them to support a certain person, and some of them aren't democratically selected but are literally just people whose opinions are considered to be more important.

It's somehow both too democratic, and not democratic at all, culminating in a situation where someone can win the popular vote, or the majority of states, or even more delegates, and still not get the nomination.

And the cornerstone of this hastily built edifice is Super Tuesday, when roughly a quarter of states and a third of the delegates are selected. Basically, it's where campaigns to become to the Presidential nominee live or die. Lose big on Super Tuesday and you should probably drop out; win most and you're likely to win it all.

It's incredibly fascinating, especially because this year it's likely to lead to the coronation of two candidates who will somehow be both the most and least popular politicians running. Donald Trump, a hairpiece with a mouth, is hated by 60% of the population, to the extent that his own party is currently trying to work out how to run against him, while Hillary Clinton is loathed by 59% of the country, including a significant proportion of the population who believe she should be in jail for "crimes" she committed while Secretary of State.

Behind them come Marco Rubio, a young (-ish), Latino Republican running on optimism and compassionate conservatism, who would seem to be exactly what a party with historic difficulties in attracting minorities would want to be able to win an election, were it not for the fact that those difficulties steam from a significant part of the party who are just out and out racist.

That isn't hyperbole, by the way; 31 % of Trump supporters (and 21% of all Republicans) think that White's are a "superior race", a third support banning not just all Muslims from entering the US (74% support that idea) but also all gay people. 38% wish that the South had won the Civil War, and 20% disagree with the Emancipation Proclamtion, Abraham Lincoln's Presidential decree that freed Southern slaves during the Civil War. By any measure, those are pretty extreme and pretty racist, positions - sourced here).

This week, in an amazing display of pandering to racists, Donald Trump refused to disavow the former head of the KKK, then said he didn't know about the concept of 'white supremacy', then blamed a microphone for not immediately distancing himself from them. In fairness to him, this may simply be down to the fact that Donald Trump is convinced of his own personal supremacy over everyone else in the world, and his own skin tone is default Terracotta, with a tinge of Oompa Loompa.

Unsurprisingly, Marco Rubio is struggling despite being the choice of the majority of the establishment Republican Party , because it turns out having million of dollars, dozens of endorsements, and an actual coherent policy platform, as well as wide appeal to a broad base, and a photogenic, articulate charm, doesn't mean much if you're a little bit browner than Edward Scissorhands.

Scissorhands for President, 2016

Behind him, or sometimes in front of him, and this is where it gets difficult, because at some points all three candidates have claimed victory in a state where only one of them has actually won, is Ted Cruz.

There's a bit in Shrek where he inflates a toad to act as a balloon, and Ted Cruz looks exactly like what I imagine that toad to look like now. He looks like someone has deflated a fatter man.

Ted Cruz looks like a cheap rubber Halloween mask of Ted Cruz's face came to life, and is running a Presidential campaign on the platform of unending winter. I would not be surprised to learn that Ted Cruz is actually an animatronic being controlled by a small slug floating inside his watery centre.

Nearly 40% of people can't conclusively tell you that he wasn't a serial killer who operated years before his birth (source), which is a good indication of how little people like him. His own colleagues have refused to endorse him, and he's running on the campaign slogan of 'trusTED' whilst facing charges of sending potential voters fake letters from the state to vote for him or face fines, and of lying about whether other candidates were even in the race anymore.

Tell me, does that this looks like an actual human being? Or does it look like what an alien visitor to Earth might think a human being looks like having intercepted our radio signals for decades.

He's the Christian candidate. Actually, he's one of the Christian candidates, but Ben Carson is so irrelevant to this process as to not warrant anymore mentions than this single sentence.

One the Democrat side, Hillary Clinton has been forced to remember that she's supposed to be on the left of the political spectrum, as uber-Pensioner Bernie Sanders, a Democratic Socialist who joined the Democract's 6 months ago just to run for President, has run a grass roots campaign based around reminding people that Capitalism is a bit shit if you let a few people keep all the money for themselves.

Now, Sanders has about a 0% chance of actually winning the nomination, but it's now got to the weird point of Republicans being able to legitimately call their potential opponent a socialist, a word that's thrown at anyone who's a bit left of Eisenhower in America. He is 'Boy Who Cried Wolf'-ing it, in that it's actually probably part of his appeal that the word socialist has been so undermined by years of using it to describe anyone at all, that now an actual Socialist is running, everybody assumes he's just another liberal.

He's the kind of raging extremist that would look fairly standard anywhere else in the world, what with his calls for such un-American abominations as paid maternity leave, free public education for all, and regulations on banks to prevent future financial crises. The maniac.

So this is what I'll be doing all night - following along with the updates as they come in on who has won what. And probably crying at who has won what.

On Everything That I Haven't Written About Over The Last Six Months

Jalyss and I have now been married a little over ten months. That means we've passed the marker of when we could have had our first baby, which is important to note when you're a young Christian couple in America. Forget cleanliness because fecundity, here at least, is next to Godliness.

In fact, when people meet you and find out you're newly married, they immediately start looking for the baby. "How many babies you had?" is their way of measuring the time you've been married. So now we measure all units of time in terms of how many children we could have had, with actual calendar anniversaries being of significantly lesser importance.

This is all just a long winded way of saying that we're not pregnant yet. Definitively. Jalyss took a pregnancy test on Father's Day, just so I could see whether I needed people to make a fuss of me.

This kind of fertility update is exactly what I imagine most people are interested in about our life, but just in case you were actually hoping for more than a gestational confirmation that we're still without any additions to the family, here's what else has been happening.

Jalyss and I continue to compete to see who can work the most jobs. For a long time she was winning, as I couldn't work legally in the US. I got around that by doing some babysitting and writing reviews of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.; a show with too much punctuation in its title, and too little characterisation or plot in its episodes. Neither of these roles made me the primary breadwinner, as I only earned $2 a article.

Fortunately I am now able to work and the jobs arms-race has really taken off, as we now have three jobs each. I work part-time at a local independent coffee shop, the delightful Mocha Monkey, where my main role seems to be confusing customers who think that I'm Australian. I've just started working two days a week at The Blessing House, which is hard to actually describe other than to say it's someone who has opened her home so that anyone can come in and relax there at any time of the day, and they need volunteers which I'm helping them find.

Finally, I work overnights at a crisis centre for disabled young-adults with behavioral problems. My first day there involved me being locked in the office by other staff to prevent a client from attacking me, so it's got the sort of whimsy that means you can't predict what will happen day-to-day, and frequently don't want to try. Usually, however, it's not that exciting; I'm there solely to support the main members of staff should there be a behavioural or medical emergency, so I go downstairs and sleep in the games room, which is a fair-sized space whose homeliness is undermined by the persistent stench of urine (a consequence of working in a place where people combine their responses to stress, displays of anger, and favorite activity into one ongoing attempt to find exciting new places to piss).

We've started to build some great new friendships with a few local couples which has served us well as through them we've got hold of an air-conditioning unit. This is essential, as I am already starting to wilt from Minnesota's summer. As fierce as their winter is, their less talked about summer is proving more of a burden for someone who is unused to temperatures in the double digits. Actually, it turns out that A/C has an exciting history in Minnesota, as the worlds first in-home unit was installed in Minneapolis in 1914. Of course, there's also the horrible correlation between the rise of air-conditioning and Southern Republican presidencies which is startlingly direct.

The VISA process continues, as glacial as ever. Entire civilisations have risen, fallen and risen again (although, it should be noted, not here in America) in the time it's taken for my four month VISA approval to happen, but I've finally been accepted as a 'Conditional Permanent Resident', an oxymoronic statement which says I'm able to live here indefinitely unless they decide I can't.

This is great news though because it means we are hopefully going to be able to come back and visit the UK this December. I couldn't leave until my VISA was at this point (or rather, I could leave, but I couldn't reenter). I'm looking forward to a real English Christmas; i.e. one without any snow.

On Winter

Forget war and other people, to listen to the people of Minnesota, winter is hell. The French learnt it in 1812 when they invaded Russia, the Germans learnt it in 1941 when they invaded Russia, and Minnesotans let me know all about it from the moment I moved here, months ago,

Minnesotans have a proud tradition of hyperbolic apprehension about the onset of the winter, and whilst they love to emphasise their ability to overcome the obstacles that the treacherous weather will bring, they also want you to know that you will get frostbite and die should you ever step outdoors between November and May. This slightly schizophrenic traits of describing a terrible, all consuming threat whilst also acknowledging that it won't actually make that much of a difference to their day-to-day lives is essentially the opposite of England's approach to the inclement climate.

We, after all, will readily accept that our weather is probably best described as tepid. Our summer is lukewarm but rarely scorching, and our winter is best described as 'nippy'; a word containing all the threat of a teething toddler. The worst we're expecting to face is a day of sleet, followed by three days of ice on the pavement and a national decision to take an ever increasing series of snow-days. Ditching work to go sledging is helped by a transport system that's crippled by a brisk nor'easter, let alone an actual cold front. We're a nation moving around on trains that can't navigate the wrong kind of ice, cars that collapse under a blanket of snow and entire airports abandoned for fear of frost.

But we take a perverse pride in our inability to deal with an annual event, as though every time it somehow comes as a surprise to us that the seasons have changed. The fact that it only happens once each year seems to be enough of an excuse for us to greet every snowfall as an excuse to just surrender to the weather and not go take part in our actual life commitments.

Meanwhile, in Minnesota it snows a foot overnight and nobody even notices.

Wampa Cave, Hoth Minneapolis, MN

Jalyss sent me out to shovel the snow a few days ago, A shovel isn't the same as a spade, I've learnt. You have to scrape the pavement, shattering through the lower layers of permafrost in order to shift the snow above. It's deep, compact stuff, forming the kind of strata usually reserved only for geology. On the top is a fine powder of fresh snow which blows around in the constant gusts, creating an icy fog that drops the line-of-sight to a few hundred metres and freezes the hair on your beard.

A beard is essential in Minnesota. It's not just a hipster affectation (like my record player), but a facial necessity. It constantly astonishes me that women make it through the year, because the extra cover of coarse hair is sometimes the only thing that prevents my face from sloughing away and my entire jaw dropping off, like a sub-zero approximation of the Nazi's at the end of Raiders of the Lost Arc, with less melting and more straight up shattering. When I say that my beard freezes, that isn't hyperbole. In the time it took me to clear the drive, my beard solidified, and the really crazy thing is that I didn't even notice until I came back inside and the heat melted it down the front of my chest. You know you're acclimatising when you no longer feel the need to keep track of whether your facial hair is forming it's own snow cone.

All of this is observed by the locals to be the hallmarks of an exceptionally mild winter, and whilst it's true that I haven't pulled a Captain America and woken up totally encased in ice more than two or three times, I don't especially appreciate the assumption that it gets worse than a wind chill of -40. That's -40 F, by the way. In C, it's - 40. - 40 is the temperature at which temperature conversion apparently just gives up and stops bothering.. Frankly, I don't know how to deal with double digit temperatures in either scale. I didn't even know that temperatures went down like that in anything other than a theoretical way. Meanwhile, everyone here seems quite disappointed by how easy this winter has been, as though all their doom-saying and warnings have been in vain, and the inevitability of my awakening to the harsh reality of life here has been lessened. It's as if I'd gone out on the moors during a full moon and come back the next day without having been attacked by a werewolf, and everyone is bitterly aggrieved about it.

It's like I won't be truly accepted until I've lost at least three digits to frostbite. Fortunately, it's only January, so we still have four more months of Winter to go. So I'm just going outside, and may be some time.

On a Nation of Immigrants

Tonight, as President Obama takes the politically incendiary step of executive action to reform immigration, it seems like a good time to write about something that I've experienced first hand over the past year. America's immigration system is broken.

Let's start off by setting some stuff out. I'm utterly uninterested in how exactly reform happens. Whether by bipartisan dialogue, Senate and House bills, or Presidential decree, the method doesn't really matter. Whether articulated by Republican, Democrat or Independent voices, from politicians, activists or ordinary people, the person speaking doesn't matter. I'm not concerned at all with how reform is delivered. I'm pretty unconcerned about whether the President has the necessary authority to do this alone (because, he does). I don't write in defense of President Obama, with whom I agree with very little, or in defiance of the new Republican majority, with whom I agree on even less.

What matters is that we recognize that those we are talking about are not simply 'immigrants', 'illegals' or 'aliens', but families and individuals. Our shared humanity is more important than nationality, country of origin or label. Whether they look to escape day to day lives defined by conflict, flee economic systems that deny them fair wages and equal treatment, or simply desire a better future, a fresh start and a new home in the US, they seek those most American pursuits of life, liberty and happiness.

Not every immigrant has fled hardship. Not every immigrant has suffered. Not every immigrant is in need of our charity or concern. But every immigrant is a person, and every immigrant deserves the right to be recognized.

It's true that not every immigrant is here legally. Not every immigrant contributes to society, not every immigrant works, not every immigrant obeys the law.

But, those are not every immigrant. Those are individuals. And their misdemeanors are no more real, and no more weighty, than the lives of the average immigrants who quietly maintain themselves and their families, without reliance upon the Government. We have a system already in place to deal with immigrants who break the law, and it's the same system that is necessary for those Americans who do the same.

I am an immigrant. To get here, I spent nearly a year applying for a Fiancee VISA. I followed the process. I did things the right way. I entered the US legally. And I did it that way because I am incredibly fortunate to have the capacity and tenacity to overcome the unnecessarily obtuse barriers of immigration. Along with my now wife I completed the initial forms, and the follow up forms, and the forms that came after that. I attended interviews, submitted to medical exams, and paid thousands of dollars to get here and get through the process.

I am University educated. English is my first language. I had the assistance of others. I had enough time to devote to completing everything. I had enough money saved to pay the fees. I had every advantage available, in other words, and yet I found the process to be confusing, repetitive and stressful. I repeatedly had to clarify or resend forms that had been incorrectly completed. An initial K1 Visa is expected to take four to six months to complete, for us it took ten. Due to the sheer amount of time it takes to get a VISA, and, yes, some administrative delays, I arrived in America just five days before my wedding. 

Usually, when I explain the process and what I had to do to get to my wedding in America, people recognize that it's unreasonable. I've written before about how the expectation is that I should have been able to get in easily, that as an educated, British male, with savings and a decent job, I should be someone who finds it easy to get a VISA and enter the US. There's the thing. It was. My experience was slow, irritating and almost disastrous, but eventually my perseverance paid off and I got my VISA.

The flip side of my experience is not an easy entry into the country; it's exactly the same trials as I've faced, but worse.

Imagine what that process would be like if you were trying to do it with a lower level of education, in a second language, without any help. Imagine that you're trying to escape from desperate poverty or violence, that you have a limited amount of time, that you're worried about your family's safety. Imagine that you don't have the money to pay the fees. And then imagine that every time you submit a form it gets returned to you, or worse, ignored altogether, because you missed a question, or accidentally ticked the wrong box. Imagine waiting months for the system to work for you, without any idea of whether it will.

I have seen first hand what happens when immigration is politicized. It raises barriers and obstacles for all. With the aim of keeping out a few criminals it refuses access to any and all. My VISA application was made more difficult because of an over zealous attempt to keep people who would abuse the benefits of society out. Instead it simply prevents those in most need from accessing the vital opportunity to make a new start.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that people try and dodge this system, not because they are hardened criminals, or are intent on undermining the country, but because the process for legally entering the US is intended to make it as difficult as possible to do so. Every step is made intentionally difficult, and then we act confused when people try to avoid that perniciously constructed difficulty. We punish the people who have got here illegitimately, but attempt to deny them the chance to do so within the law.

The system, as it is, is broken.

President Obama's executive action today is a good start to fixing it, but it is just a start. There are 11 million undocumented people in America. There is no benefit in keeping those who are here already from being able to legally work. There is tremendous harm in maintaining the status quo as it currently is - Jim Wallis at Sojourners has some great stuff to say here. This is not a full amnesty, but a chance for some immigrants to gain some recognition. It's a half-measure couched in qualification.

Eventually it boils down to this; we in America sit on unparalleled wealth, privilege and comfort. Too much of our immigration policy is about denying access to this to others. How often do we hear the language of economic impact used to describe immigration? We worry about loss of jobs, about benefits going to the undeserving, and ignore the plight of those in need because we're concerned about the economic consequences.

One of my favorite political speeches is from Lincoln's First Inaugural Address. In it, he delivers an impassioned plea for the avoidance of secession by the South, and for calm and reconciliation between the two sides. It ends with one of the most famous pieces of Presidential oratory, and a lasting appeal for brotherhood and grace.

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection.

Tonight, President Obama is echoing the sentiments of Lincoln's address, calling not for fellowship between opposing states, but an attempt at recognition, openness and acceptance from Americans towards those who seek entry in. Decriminalization allows already productive workers to become part of society, but it requires society to welcome them in. 

The immigration reform he proposes is imperfect, certainly. There is much for both sides to discuss, But its core principle is an attempt to alter the terms of the conversation we're currently having, to recognize that this is not just an academic debate but one about peoples lives and futures.

This is the most fundamental reality of immigration reform; all immigrants are just people, and they matter.

On October 31st

American Holidays, eh. What are they about? Independence Day, Thanksgiving, Columbus Day. Like all the other made up American holidays which clutter up the year they mostly seem to revolve around the heroic consumption of canned produce and the willful misremembrance of historical atrocities.

Of course October is the 30 day prequel to Halloween; the cheerful holiday about the dead. It's the only holiday which is specifically designed to encourage children to decorate their house, and dress up, as the things we fear the most. Or rather, the things that pop-culture thinks we fear the most, rather than the things that anyone actually fears.

Fear of the Student Loans Service trying to recover the money I blew on '"bettering myself" through "education"

I guess it's because it's hard to market the theme of 'psychologically-crippling existential angst', or 'the fragility of an insignificant life in the face of the uncaring universe's eternal, infinite vacuum', or 'our meaningless day-to-day existence guarantees that most of our dreams will remain forever unachieved'. Which is a shame, because I'd love to see a 6 year old dressed as 'the constant but uncomfirmable worry that my parents may not love me as much as they say'.

Still, I guess it's easier to sell a pointy hat, a mask and a broomstick, and brand a kid as a witch. Monetising our fears is something of an American pastime, which is why Halloween is indelibly linked with the American pop-culture psyche. Ever since FDR said we have nothing to fear but fear itself, America has been busy rewriting that list to 'fear itself (and also the supernatural)' and slapping a pricetag on its likeness.

I freaking love Halloween, you guys. I mean, I love pretty much all the holidays, but Halloween has a special place in my heart, just because of how under-exposed to it we are in England. It just is not a thing, which makes watching any TV show or movie featuring Halloween seem much more glamorous for being so alien. I've been really excited to get a taste of that, and it's been stoked by the massive amount of pre-Holiday lead up America goes in for.

Unlike the UK where Halloween is a strictly one day event, America has decorations appearing from the very start of the month. Pumpkins sprout from lawns, ghosts appear floating in trees, and I'm pretty sure that somebody was probably releasing live vampire bats into the neighborhood, just to add to that holiday atmosphere. When it's still two weeks from Halloween and there's a glow in the dark sarcophagi in peoples front yards, you know you're in for a treat.

In fact, the whole country went full out for the spirit of Halloween, by getting irrationally terrified about Ebola; a disease whose status as disaster du jour belies the fact that, so far it's had about as much of an impact on America as a whole as incidences of people accidentally lighting the black candle and raising their towns witches from the dead.

Threat of Sanderson Sisters returning > Threat of an Ebola epidemic in the US

On the night itself my friends, the neighbourhood Moms, invited us out with their families. The kids were banding together to go trick-or-treating so while the Zapf's went to the movies, JJ and I took Mina out with them. On a float. Meaning that as the kids went door to door the parents sat on a decorated trailer being pulled along behind a four wheeler, drinking Jello shots and beer. This is doing Halloween right. At the end of the evening, we passed a house that was giving out warm apple cider and mini sausages around a house fire. America. you guys. Give them your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, and they'll give out cocktail weiners at Halloween.

Unfortunately, even the offer of sausages and cider couldn't keep us outside much past an hour. Whilst winter hasn't properly come yet, even into November we've not had any of the long promised snow, the temperature has dropped incredibly. I'd reused my Superman outfit from my stag, but was disappointed to find that whatever flammable material it's made out of isn't suitable for withstanding sub-zero degrees. Which is probably legit, because I doubt Superman even notices temperature differentials; dude flies in space, and it gets chilly out there. He's not likely to have a costume that emphasises utility. I also didn't shave my beard, because, rationally, how would Superman do that?

Finding a comics appropriate, weather suitable, scientifically accurate Superman costume is hard.

What it would be pretty easy to do, and definitely something I will consider for next year, is to get a theme costume going with Mina. I wanted to dress him as Professor X, JJ as Jean Grey and find a Cyclops costume, but I've since come up with the much better idea of going as Bane, with Mina as post-Knightfall Bruce Wayne.

May need to work on getting some spherical chest implants first.

This year however, Mina refused to go as Batman, thwarting the 'World's Finest' team up I had looked forward to.

JJ refused to dress up at all, because she hates fun of all kinds.