I'm not losing my county to that fuck and his fucked followers. This is the hill I'll die on. (Actually, it's an eroded plateau. )
But it looks like a hill if you just see it from the ground.
Pretty steep grades for that eroded plateau, so we'll allow it.
My sentiments are in line with Moby's, except that 3/4 of my family are Canadian citizens, so it's not exactly an academic question. Still, to paraphrase Office Space, why should we leave? He's the one that sucks.
I'm not losing my county to that fuck and his fucked followers.
Allegheny County: Always Inspiring!
I sympathize with 1. Although personally I'd prefer you not lose all the counties, not just Allegheny.
We shall fight in Cranberry, we shall fight on the rivers and creeks, we shall fight on the parkways, we shall fight on the narrow interfluves, We shall never surrender'.
"Little America" just seems like wherever the chain stores are, but it's fun to imagine people grouping by region. Little Kentucky. Also just reversing emigration patterns -- possible given the citizenship-by-descent laws -- and having Little Chicago near Warsaw or Little Boston outside Cork. Insanity.
The thing about the other counties, at least the rural ones, is that they are difficult to live in should you need something more than scenery. For most peopleopposed to Trump, logic of migration to Pittsburgh or Philadelphia or other cities is pretty inescapable. Makes it hard to win all counties.
Enough of the counties so as not to lose the republic.
I sympathize with 1 as well but I left in 2015 and have no intention of ever going back to live. I think Trump solidified that for me but that wasn't the only thing. I don't know where I'll end up if/when I take retirement and right now my plans are just to keep working here and die at my desk since the job's a good one and very easy for me with plenty of vacation time.
Not losing the republic would be great. But I think it's a foregone conclusion that much of the county is not going to be comfortable or safe for a great many people. I don't see a good way to stop that in the short term.
I am in the process of leaving a long-time employer that I loved for many of those years that got worse because of new management. I liked the book Exit, Voice, and Loyalty a lot. If Trump seizes power, one eventual effect will be the disappearance of good work opportunities. That's going to drive people's decisions independently of other new problems.
Are there useful parallels in internal migration? Kansas was a place that tried fairly deep cuts to civilization, growth slowed to 3% 2010-2020. Internally, housing costs complicate that assessment.
Yeah, for someone who is capable of having children and of child-bearing age, LGBTQ, PoC, or has loved ones in those categories that totally changes the equation
This raises the interesting prospect of a world were the best-educated people of the US, PRC, and Russia all want to leave their superpowers behind.
17: West Virginia is probably in worse shape. It already had an older population so it needs people to move there to fill jobs. Kansas makes enough babies that it just needs to keep more of them.
I dunno - now that everyone in the US has already managed to get through four years of The Trump Experience, are there really going to be many who leave forever rather than face the prospect of another four? I would be fascinated to see emigration numbers during 2012-2019 (excluding the COVID years) to see if there actually was any effect first time round.
Here's some coverage from last time https://www.theguardian.com/money/us-money-blog/2016/may/12/donald-trump-president-move-to-canada
Those numbers are huge. 28% had considered leaving for good if Trump won in 2016. Of those, 14% said the probability of their doing so was "very high" - in other words, over ten million people.
I don't think that actually happened.
The Russian numbers are tiny by comparison - 300,000 in two years (albeit from a population half the size). And that's fleeing an oppressive autocracy that wants to conscript you to become a meat shield in a major European war.
I'd speculate that any flows that actually materialize would actually be dominated by (descendants of) fairly recent immigrants returning to countries of origin, especially in Asia (except, as noted, the PRC).
I dunno - now that everyone in the US has already managed to get through four years of The Trump Experience, are there really going to be many who leave forever rather than face the prospect of another four?
If Trump is re-elected, there's a real possibility that his second term is indefinite, which will give everyone plenty of time to grapple with this question.
I'll probably apply for some other jobs next year, and that probably will include jobs in Canada, though that's not necessarily the goal.
The UK is kinda more doomed than the US, so I'm not sure it's worth the enormous pay cut even if Trump does get elected.
relocating to another country is an entire huge undertaking for young adults not yet on a career path, no kids, etc. it's an exponentially more difficult proposition for anyone with more established ties & obligations. mass emigration bc of a trump win isn't going to happen. personally i'm relieved the kid is in grad school in canada.
The UK is kinda more doomed than the US, so I'm not sure it's worth the enormous pay cut even if Trump does get elected.
Yes indeed, fears of the dangers of Trump's rule pales into insignificance beside the terrifying prospect of Keir Starmer. You are very smart.
Not worried about Starmer, worried about your economy and the cost of living crisis.
Brexit remains a big big deal, the UK will be poorer than Poland in a decade.
There's also just a lot of insanity in British academic bureaucracy. Like things are getting worse in the US but still no one is proposing anything as dumb as the REF.
Realistically it's hard to imagine me or my immediate family leaving. That's not because of bravery or personal conviction so much as the fact that we're cisgendered, heterosexual, and white.
To the extent that we do have an escape plan, it's to move to Vermont, where I still have family. Not literally fleeing the country but moving to a state likely to be more hospitable than our current location.
Concern about the election is a big part of why we've put of plans to renovate our house. If the country goes fascist, then in addition to all the big concerns, Cassandane probably loses her job due to Project 2025. If that happens after we've renovated in 2028 or whenever, then it sucks but at least we'd have a livable house we could sell or rent out. But if it happens while we're renovating, we'd be really fucked. So we're putting it off until between election cycles. So if there's an economic boom in early 2025, you can thanks us accordingly.
I think any emigration will be miniscule. It's just hard to move to another country, due to family, jobs, immigration rules, the cost of moving...lots of stuff. If there were an open border between the US and Canada, there would probably be significant movement.
But even then, at the level of day to day life--imagine turning off the news and not going online--even very bad regimes often have little effect. Most people just won't be motivated to make such an onerous change.
And I disagree with 1. You get one life, and unless it makes you really happy, you don't have to spend it fighting assholes who want things that you hate. Societies go up and down; find one on the upswing and spend your days there. I suppose this belief is partly due to not having a strong "my country" feel about any place, and also having had family members who fought the Shah heroically, only to succeed and get something even worse.
Last time around I worked for a global megacorp and my team had a presence in Zurich so it was moderately possible to imagine relocating to that office, without even having to change much about my job. Still would have been an immensely difficult project. This time I don't have that option, and nothing in the way of citizenship opportunities elsewhere that I know of.
On the OP's actual question I wonder what places in the US people would flee *from*. Blue-ish cities in red states suddenly much more pressured?
32.3: Retreating from those fucks would make me profoundly unhappy. I'm not doing it to make a better place for others.
Canada is the obvious answer, as it's just right there across the border. Around 1/4 of Canadians are immigrants, and it's taken in around 1 million immigrants in the past 2 years, out of a total population of under 40 million. And assimilation for Americans moving here is typically much easier than it would be almost anywhere else. (Unless they move to Quebec, but that's a different story.)
That said, it's not exactly straightforward for Americans to just move here and get a job, unless they have specific skills or work in a field that has a labour shortage.
"find one on the upswing"
My main question is where is on the upswing now?
Brexit remains a big big deal, the UK will be poorer than Poland in a decade.
There is a difference between being a middle-income country and being doomed, mind. Especially as this is not a case of the UK sinking into potato-laden Slavic gloom, but Poland rapidly becoming rich. I have friends who have very nice lives as academics in countries considerably poorer than Poland.
Anyway, I think Trump getting elected would result in some genuinely bad things happening and would be worse than last time, but I think it'd be much more like Erdogan than Putin.
If Trump is re-elected, there's a real possibility that his second term is indefinite
I guess we don't actually know for sure that he isn't immortal, but I wouldn't put money on it.
The other thing is that the most likely bad effect of Trump being elected will fall mostly on Europe and not the US (Russia winning the war in Ukraine).
39: The explicit goal is to change enough of the rules that it would impossible to elect someone who isn't Trumpian.
1. It's likely an unprecedented number of people would leave.
2. That would still be a very small percentage of the population, even in localities where it was especially common. It takes a lot of resources to pick up & leave! And many with the resources will prefer not to.
3. I don't think it would affect the politically active classes as much.
4. Most people will stay and adapt or fight, either by choice or by necessary.
M and I briefly entertained the idea of leaving. I'm eligible for ROK citizenship, but the ROK does not recognize dual citizenship, and there are a number of reasons why being a subject of the ROK is suboptimal. (For example, when I travel there I could theoretically be prosecuted for having smoked pot while in the US, and would be ineligible for US consular assistance.) M has a number of friends who have moved to Berlin, and he's considered that possibility, but neither of us have any connection to German culture and we do not speak German. M also has some family who have returned to the Philippines, but leaving the US because of Trump for a country that elected Duterte and BBM in succession would make no sense at all.
And also, it would be ridiculously hard. I have no idea how my parents uprooted themselves and moved to the other side of the world to a place where they knew no one and didn't speak the language. Our families and our friends are here, and I live two miles from the hospital where I was born, and ten miles from the high school from which I graduated, and I love it here. Also, my work involves a very narrow area of expertise that is geographically bound to my state.
My mom is considering moving back to the ROK. She doesn't do drugs and doesn't work, so those issues aren't an obstacle for her.
I don't know who Keir Starmer is. I stopped paying attention after I learned that Lord Buckethead changed his name.
it's not exactly straightforward for Americans to just move here and get a job, unless they have specific skills or work in a field that has a labour shortage
Boy howdy. We talked to a lawyer in Canada a few years ago, and we're a (then pre-layoff/GPT) software engineer and a primary care doctor, and it was still going to be very difficult. Higher age really works against you. And the skill preferences tend to be managed by each province, so Nova Scotia would probably have been doable for my wife, but all the other factors, and the relative distance to aging parents, made us give up--we've reconciled to not going anywhere.
43.last: Maybe you should see if your mom wants to try drugs?
46: Honestly it would do her so much good, you have no idea.
I'm thinking of trying them myself.
I think it'd be much more like Erdogan than Putin
Say more -- I think I can guess what you mean, but it's an interesting comparison.
If Trump gets elected again, god forbid, there will be a huge amount of resistance initially. That will slowly dissipate (as it did through 2017, spiking again with the family separation policy in 2018 and then subsiding again into a focus on election results: voter registration, giving obscene sums of money to long-shot candidates, etc. To be clear, that was mostly fantastic and very necessary, and hopefully it will be even more effective this year). I'm not yet sure if Trump and his allies would be focused on making a huge spectacle of anti-migrant policies from day one -- this is the way he talks, and it might be the way to bet, but conspicuous cruelty does draw conspicuous opposition. Trump always and only wants to put on a show, but some of the allies are diehard eliminationists who want to purify the body politic, and it's quicker to do that off camera. Regardless, that is a priority and it's tremendously popular with the base. It's the thing I dread most.
The other big show -- "drill, drill, drill," where hopefully Trump gets his tie caught while dry-humping an oil derrick -- will not have global consequences that are possible to flee.
My husband has British citizenship and is eligible for Irish citizenship. These days I guess Ireland looks better? I applied to jobs in the UK the last time I was on the academic job market, but I kind of can't imagine doing that now. It would involve about a 50% payout for significantly worse working conditions (REF, the teaching certifications, just the wild growth of administrative burden). My field of study is niche enough that I doubt I could get a job in Canada, but my husband is a software engineer so maybe he could? I could probably get an academic job in NZ or Australia but I have a disabled kid so that's out, they won't let us in.
I doubt we actually go anywhere, honestly. The medical system is the dealbreaker for us, and for my kid's particular disabilities, there are very few places that would offer equally good services. South Africa would work and I could get a job there but I'm not sanguine about the future of the infrastructure.
Ireland would be better just because it's EU
Orban is a better comparison than Erdogan
Given that so many of the worst effects are playing out state by state and relocating within the US is more possible for most people, I'd expect those migration patterns to be most significant. There's probably data on this and I'm sure we've talked about it before, but all I have is anecdotal, and here again the problem is that the most vulnerable people have the fewest resources to relocate. California being a better place to be queer seems to be nicely offset by California being fucking expensive.
I admit to not understanding how California works economically. I mean, I can see the numbers and math them. They are just too far from my experience to relate to.
Like I think Trump will do some election shenanigans on the margins, but we'll still have meaningful elections that the ruling party could lose if they're unpopular. Putin can't lose an election he can only be killed, AKP can and does lose elections even though they cheat if it's close.
If they undo Baker v Carr, they'll be able to control things for longer than I'm likely to be active. And they promise to do that.
Also I think federalism would basically keep going, and for a lot of things your state government matters a lot more than the federal government.
Yes border policy (along with foreign policy) is a big exception, and some bad things would happen. But even there I think people are overstating the impact. Venezuelans and Cubans fleeing their government moving to Mexico instead of the US is a little bad for the US (harder to fill some jobs) and a little bad for the migrants (who would be somewhat richer in the US), but Mexico is doing pretty well and is a huge upgrade on Cuba or Venezuela.
That's irresponsibly optimistic. Federalism interpreted by a court with Trump judges will not help many people.
I admit to not understanding how California works economically. I mean, I can see the numbers and math them. They are just too far from my experience to relate to.
I had a date with a Canadian immigrant, an engineer, who had previously worked in Vancouver - I made the local-depreciating comment "And your rent doubled?" and she said no, as a matter of fact her rent in the Bay was similar to Vancouver but she was being paid a ton more.
From the point of view of California needing to be ready to take refugees domestic and foreign, it's unconscionable zoning still exists at this point.
I don't think you need to go to foreign examples. It's Jim Crowish enough that past examples from the United States are right there. I don't think they'll be able to stop every black person from voting in any states, but they'll be able to keep enough people from voting to insulate their power from all but the biggest push.
relocating to another country is an entire huge undertaking for young adults not yet on a career path, no kids, etc. it's an exponentially more difficult proposition for anyone with more established ties & obligations.
To the extent I can direct him, I'm telling Steady to do college in Canada. More for climate reasons than for fascism, but... College is the easiest time to make that move.
58: we've been haunted for years by a description of Vancouver as "you pay San Francisco rent on a Reno salary." (This was before SF rent exerted pressure on Reno salaries, I think.)
Bold prediction: There will not be any appreciable increase in emigration if Trump is reelected.
That said, my wife has been interested in retiring to the Caribbean for a long time, and it may just happen. Better weather, lower cost of living (outside of resorts), etc. U.S. retirees who emigrate are a microscopic part of the U.S. economy but an appreciable percentage of the local population in a few English speaking nations, like St. Kitts, Grenada, Tortola, and the not-quite Caribbean Bermuda, Bahamas, Barbados, and Belize. Apparently Antigua and Jamaica market themselves to retiring middle-class African-Americans.
Bold prediction: There will not be any appreciable increase in emigration if Trump is reelected.
That said, my wife has been interested in retiring to the Caribbean for a long time, and it may just happen. Better weather, lower cost of living (outside of resorts), etc. U.S. retirees who emigrate are a microscopic part of the U.S. economy but an appreciable percentage of the local population in a few English speaking nations, like St. Kitts, Grenada, Tortola, and the not-quite Caribbean Bermuda, Bahamas, Barbados, and Belize. Apparently Antigua and Jamaica market themselves to retiring middle-class African-Americans.
ugh biden must be in town, my bus just got detoured.
ugh biden must be in town, my bus just got detoured.
That was a double of double posts.
The ratchet has turned a number of times since 40% of young women reported wanting to leave the U.S. in 2019. I was a young woman not so long ago, and honestly, given the state of abortion rights now, the Supreme Court and federal judiciary now, and even 5% of the "autocracy tracker" link in the OP, I don't know what plans 22-year-old me would be making. In 2004 (age 24), moving to California seemed adequate. In 2024, given the same starting point, it's dramatically murkier. I don't seem to have the same "almost nothing could make me move" reflex that some of you have shared. I'm much closer to 32.last.
Canadian housing prices are pretty wild.
Halifax prices are ok though.
it is true that sf disruption due to president in town was not a regular problem when trump was in office. also obama's hotel was so of market, biden's old school nob hill preference is personally disgruntling but i will selflessly hold my nose & pull the lever for him!
The worst impacts will probably be nationwide:
Fetal personhood. Abortion illegal everywhere, investigations into miscarriages, no treatment for emergencies like preterm labor or ectopic pregnancies.
Immigration raids. Trump and Miller have said they'll recruit volunteers to raid disfavored regions. The suggested scale (15M people) means it has a huge impact to everyone (10% inflation, loss of various food and construction supply chains) even if you're not targeted and ignoring spillovers of abusing it to target people (you look foreign to me, off to the camp and appeal it from there.) The uniquely American part here is the guns. Will a bunch of gun toting brownshirts march into workplaces?
Climate change- we're all fucked
Tariffs- 10% inflation on top of the above
The problem with emigration is you're still not beyond the reach of the US even if you and your family physically leave. How do you move savings abroad? They can reach into most other jurisdictions if they want to. You're still required to pay taxes unless you renounce citizenship, and an even smaller number of people will do that than move.
My immediate family have Italian citizenship (we did in fact start the process in Trump's first term) so we have an easy out, and we could probably even retire now if we cut back on spending and kids went to international colleges. I just don't know that it avoids the broader fuckedness of the world.
I just don't know that it avoids the broader fuckedness of the world.
Indeed, see 40. I take it Meloni is running for European Parliament?
I don't think he would succeed in deporting anything like 15m people. But achieving 5% of that would still involve jackbooted thugs everywhere, high error rates, & be extraordinarily horrific.
Agree that fetal personhood is the really big wildcard. OTOH Trump is pretty clearly against it and has been trying to walk back to a more publically acceptable position in his campaign, but on the other hand he's an idiot and usually lets congress walk all over him. Also there's a reasonably good chance that Democrats retake the house (and even some chance they'll keep the Senate). Fetal personhood is so wildly unpopular that I do think it would pretty quickly lead to the electoral collapse of the Republican party, especially if Democrats started to care more about winning elections and so managed to run more moderate candidates.
Being subject to our foreign policy isn't always a peach, either, and Canada gets right-wing US-centered blowback. (Me, occasionally to Canadian in-laws in Facebook: you guys don't have a second Amendment! What's with the memes?).
And it's not easy to emigrate to Canada -- one ages out around 45. They do have family preference, but that's not an option for most.
Here's a lesser known risk: reinstatement of the public charge rule, terrorizing undocumented immigrants into avoiding hospitals altogether. It was not issued until 2019 & was tied up in the courts thereafter, but had an impact even in that short term, & his new courts could easily make it a much faster process.
Last comment before I turn Freedom back on: Krugman had a column full of Trump's genius economic proposals:
As a number of observers have noted, some of Trump's policy proposals would surely raise inflation. An immigration crackdown would undermine one of the key factors that have allowed America to combine solid economic growth with falling inflation. Proposals for a wave of new tariffs would raise consumer prices -- and the odds are that Trump would raise tariffs well beyond the 10 percent rate he's been floating if it didn't significantly reduce U.S. trade deficits, which it wouldn't.
What's really worrisome, however, are indications that a future Trump regime would manipulate monetary policy in pursuit of short-run political advantage, justifying its actions with crank economic doctrines.
The Federal Reserve is a quasi-independent institution, not because of any sacrosanct constitutional principle, but because nations have found that in practice it's important to limit partisan influence over interest rates and money creation. But in recent weeks there have been reports that Trump advisers want to take away much of the Fed's independence, presumably so that Trump could juice the economy and the stock market the way he wanted to in 2019 [when he "insisted that the Fed should cut interest rates to zero or below"].
There are also reports that Trump advisers, obsessed with the trade deficit, want to devalue the dollar, which would indeed help exports but would also be clearly inflationary -- raising import prices and overheating a U.S. economy that is already running hot. (In fact, our economic strength is probably the main reason the dollar has been rising.)
And even as they talk about weakening the dollar, Trump advisers are reportedly discussing punishing other countries that reduce their use of the greenback -- which seems both contradictory and to involve a delusional view of how much economic power even America possesses.
That's all vanishingly low-probability stuff, but it is hilarious! (I do not have either the knowledge or the hubris to predict economic consequences of a second Trump term.)
Mostly I just expect that a second Trump presidency, like every other Trump endeavor, would mostly end up being focused on Trump's personal enrichment through scammy corruption and not on the stuff he says he's planning to do.
75 being personally against it means fuck all. He's all in favor of appointing judges who are and has already done same.
Fair enough, but that's just about all Republicans and not about Trump. Furthermore I might expect Trump to push more in a second term for personally corrupt justices rather than ideologues.
As an aside I don't think it's factually true that most of Trump's appointees support fetal personhood being guaranteed by the constitution. I think fetal personhood as a law is more likely than the court reading it back into the constitution. And the most extreme justices on this point aren't Trump appointees.
79. This time he has given Steven Miller, who is interested in details in contrast to his other helpers, four years to prepare sets of actions.
77. One of the guys who survived the Baltimore bridge collapse, who fell into the river, declined an ambulance, preferring to just limp home.
82: he'll throw Miller under the bus within a few months just like every other person he's worked with in his entire life. People are always convincing themselves that they're controlling Trump and every time they're the mark in the end.
What makes you think Miller is better at this than Jeff Seasions?
The thing is we really have no idea how far he'll be able to go, and even if he just clears away everything blocking of his own personal enrichment, that leaves a lot of scope for his staff (which will only get worse as it cycles through to younger BAP devotees) to wreak havoc.
Miller's fate doesn't matter if any plans get implemented. Responding to the claim that the harm will be limited to Trump's unimaginative theft and by his personal sloth. Sessions did manage plenty of administrative damage within DOJ. Whatever Miller has planned for DHS will have Trump's approval.
He's never successfully done anything other than scams his whole life, he's not going to start now. He's going to be focused on personal enrichment and personal revenge, and not on achieving Republican goals or in locking in Republican control after himself.
He will abuse the hell out of the pardon though.
The title of this piece is "Six Years Later, 1,400 Children Remain Separated From Their Families."
83/84: wasn't Miller the one person to remain in Trump's inner circle, other than family members, from day one to the end of the administration? And now he's coming back for more? I don't know what protected him other than a flawless performance of loyalty, but if I had to speculate, i'd say that Trump has a sincere and deep respect for evil. All evidence points that way.
He's never successfully done anything other than scams his whole life
That's great consolation to the hundreds of thousands extra people dead because of how badly he handled COVID.
I haven't taken any active steps to emigrate. I hate to travel, and combined with guilt about CO2, it keeps me from flying anyplace (outside the country; inside the country's a different story -- aside from Chicago, Bos-Wash, where else is there to go ? Sure AF not gonna visit DFW or any other place in a goddamn Red State). But you never know, so I got my passport up-to-date. Just in case. There are lots of countries Americans can visit on instant tourist visas, right? Sure, Canada has strict immigration regulations. But if the worst comes to worst, we're talkin' about a world where you might be requesting asylum, and where the fact that the US tries to tax you worldwide is .... less than relevant.
Also, re: "I'll stay and fight", it'd make great sense, if the local po-po in every jurisdiction weren't already Fascist pigs. We had seven years to clean out the traitors and train up loyal police; we didn't use that time, and I don't see "resistance" as working worth a damn. Maybe TFG is incompetent like last time; maybe he deputizes the military and local po-po to do massive raids on every neighborhood where undocumented immigrants (and hey, why not some documents ones too!?!?!) to round up 11m of our neighbors. I don't think they'll think twice about murdering people who get in their way.
Also, our European commenters should weigh in on the darkening European future too, e.g. migration policies there, which may not be quite at the level of stretching submerged razor wire across the Med, but here's that link again. (What do you mean, it's bedtime? Not that darkening, the other kind.)
I can't do a gift link without Substack displaying my real name? Bah. Here's the full report.
Like I think Trump will do some election shenanigans on the margins, but we'll still have meaningful elections that the ruling party could lose if they're unpopular. Putin can't lose an election he can only be killed, AKP can and does lose elections even though they cheat if it's close.
I am not confident of this at all. I mean, I think this is the most likely scenario, but the doubt is way larger than I'm comfortable with .
Miller isn't going anywhere in a Trump administration. He'll do whatever it takes to remain in his good graces to implement his fascistic plans. He will kiss the Trump annulus like there's no tomorrow
I had friends over a couple days ago who are actively working on these plans. They are already half-way there.
His Dad was Nigerian, and his mother was American black from Louusiana. Not sure where her Mom was from; she was living in South Africa or Zimbabwe (her step dad was in South Africa). Her Dad was here. He had a Nigerian passport. She wants to get one from Zimbabwe. It's tricky, because her Dad emigrated when the country was Rhodesia, and he had a British passport.
He and his sister inherited property in Nigeria when thrir dad died. Their kid's school in Boston went way down in quality because of a principal change. Nigerian private school is less than 1/5 the cost of MA. She's a grant-funded artist, and he owns his own Information tech consulting company. He's been commuting between the US and Nigeria. If they both need to be in the US, his sister goes to Nigeria and looks after the kid. He could probably work on developing business in Nigeria if he needed to.
How many times do we have to say it? Miller doesn't matter! The replacement Republican White House staffer is now a groyper who thinks Hitler didn't go far enough!
Going back to the OP, I don't think mass raids on immigrants, if they happen, will prompt greater exodus among citizens. I think if they start arresting and beating random citizens in some noticeable quantity for dissent, then more young people will start to want out.
I was looking for something else but found this Atlantic article about immigration plans. Miles Taylor, an idiot, says they're really serious this time. You can judge for yourself.
My wife is still a German citizen, my daughter is a dual, and maybe granddaughter too. I think we probably could relocate to the EU. But what happens to our Medicare? What do retired expats actually do about this sort of thing, besides pay out of pocket? Which, for what I've had up to now, isn't the end of the world, but at 65 with some bullshit things wrong with me (high blood pressure, diabetes) there's going to be some medical intervention in my future. (The granddaughter's non-custodial father might well be able to prevent her emigration.)
This is my country. All my life I've known that my ancestors settled New England at the beginning, that different ancestors fought in the Revolution and in the Civil War (northern side). I'm not that excited about leaving it to the Trumpers -- then again, I'll be leaving it for the Great Hereafter before the Trump fever breaks.
This last reminds me: what do people think happens when Trump dies? My brother thinks it'll be like a zombie movie, where everyone just wakes up as if from a bad dream. I kind of think too many will have developed a taste for brains
When I was in grad school the second time, I shared an office with a guy from Pakistan. He said that when Rabin was killed, people in his town passed out candy. Which seems remarkably short sighted in terms of what you want to be celebrating vs their long-term effects. But the concept appeals to me for 100.last.
Buying drinks would sound like toasting his memory.
97: spot-on. The lego-brick-replaceable G(r)OPer speaker of the house is igniting the torch of "noncitizens voting", you just know he'd be down with roundups of the undocumented.
98: TFG has been much more voluble about rounding up and deporting "the 11m undocumented". And he's been clear that he's not gonna hire typical "deep state" Republicans who will say "no Donnie, we can't do that, it's illegal." So let's suppose he does it. 25% of those undocumented have immediate family who are citizens: do you really think those citizens are gonna stand for it? And do you really think they're gonna just stand around waving signs, when their loved ones are put in camps ? There'll be civil disorder, and that shit can escalate quickly.
Donnie: "That's why we have the Insurrection Act".
101,102: Oh, I think there'll be a ton of drinking and celebrating when that ambulatory pustule passes.
100: I'm wiith you, Charley: we have a lotta years of fighting our homegrown Fash, ahead of us.
This last reminds me: what do people think happens when Trump dies? My brother thinks it'll be like a zombie movie, where everyone just wakes up as if from a bad dream. I kind of think too many will have developed a taste for brains
This is why I'm so mad that he's on Ozempic (supposedly).
Varies by country but you can buy into their systems for probably less than Medicare copays/premiums. When we lived in Europe for a year we had to buy our own insurance and it was about $300/month for comprehensive family coverage.
The roundups will of course include citizen relatives of noncitizens. All those illegals vote, obviously they're also forging their citizenship documents.
Well, we didn't get as far as filling up world cities with U.S. expats, except maybe Berlin and Halifax. Gdansk? Dublin? Lisbon? Capitals of West Africa? Mexico City? I can't 100% see Brazil making the list at this point, with on the one hand Bolsonaro and on the other Glenn Greenwald, but it does contain multitudes.
100.2: this really is interesting (you've said it before). I wonder if I'd feel something like this if that were my entire background, and I wonder how common it is.
My wife is not a US citizen, her home country is not exactly welcoming to Americans, and now we have a young baby. Moving doesn't seem very viable. I am not sure what we do if things get to the point that staying also doesn't seem viable. There was a point several years back when we were kind of told we could have jobs in Ho/ng Ko/ng if we wanted them, but that is a dramatically different place now than it was then, even if the offer still stood, which it probably doesn't. I don't know. Burying my head in the sand, for now.
Congratulations on the young baby!
Yes that's great. Old babies are not the same.
When exile comes, my current plan is Montreal. I want to live in one of those rowhouses with the rediculous staircases.
The thing people with new babies might not realize is just how much shit can fit in a baby, especially one that has just started on solid food. It's astounding considering their size.
They don't even eat much, usually.
If Musk is having trouble with Neuralink, maybe he should try someone whose brain has extra room from a wormhole.
What has happened with Neuralink? Has it just been quietly dropped as a failure?
ROK/JP/TW are hitting their demographic implosions with with rapidly mounting severity. They might be more willing to restock with Americans than SE Asians.
But those countries are all poorer than the US in GDP per capita terms, and Japan is even poorer than the UK. Will many Americans be willing to put up with the drop in income?
In exchange for healthcare, transit, safety? Maybe. Also lots of cheap rural land opening up especially in Japan. Little Levittowns in the satoyama. Don't know about ROK.
TBC I agree with various above, total numbers would be tiny.
I think most Americans have no idea how much poorer other rich countries are (even Canada!) and that that's a good reason to be highly skeptical of any kind of significant exodus.
One interesting thing to look at would be how much state-level movement happened after political shifts (eg with states that banned abortion). With states you really can just up and move, and although people do that sometimes for political reasons my sense is that's still relatively rare and the vast majority of people who move states do it for jobs (or to be near family).
For example, far more liberals move to Texas than away from it.
We've gotten a lot of migration in the last decade -- and I suppose we've lost people too. It sorts culturally/ideologically, to an extent. The Flathead is losing young people who go away to college (and then can't find a professional opportunity to come back to) but is gaining fundamentalist Christians from the south (including southern California).
Capitals of West Africa?
Capitals of pretty much everywhere.
I think most Americans have no idea how much poorer other rich countries are (even Canada!) and that that's a good reason to be highly skeptical of any kind of significant exodus.
Well, the deadweight loss of uprooting and moving to a different country is going to be pretty huge anyway. It's not easy even if you've got a job to go to and it's a planned relocation. If you haven't - because you're leaving for political reasons - then it's far more difficult. So whether or not you're moving to a country that is as rich as the US, you personally will probably suffer financially.
One interesting thing to look at would be how much state-level movement happened after political shifts
This is a good way of looking at it. The Great Migration is kind of an ideal case for political migration - black Americans moving from South to North. No language barrier, no legal obstacles to moving, the journey itself is cheap, and if you stay you will be a second-class citizen and risk being murdered so you've got a very powerful motive.
And yet, it was a big population shift, but most black Americans in the south stayed in the south!
In that case the number who moved got pretty close to half.
One big factor limiting people from moving to bluer states for political reasons right now is that many blue states have severe housing shortages.
I have thought of trying to retire to Canada, but I don't know whether they would block me when I'm older. Their long-term care is slightly subsidized on a sliding scale (at least in Manitoba, it was, and there were some public nursing homes) so you don't have to go through all of your assets or hire lawyers etc. and completely impoverish yourself first. More recent reports have been less rosy than what Tim's grandmother experienced in the early 2000's.
I've actually thought for a while that some kind of reciprocity of Medicare and Canadian plans would be great. Like, if you had Medicare and were on vacation in Canada and need to go to an ER, why can't they just pay the bill? Ontario used to pay their rate so you had some coverage in Vermont, even if not the whole amount, but I think they dropped that. * I know that responsible people buy travel insurance. A good Medigap plan covers some international travel, otherwise you can get GeoBlue, though over 85 you are uninsurable for travel. BUT SO MANY people are just not responsible about stuff like that.
A friend of mine is the daughter of a Canadian academic who moved to MA. Her aunt was single and when she was old and in a nursing home, she had zero family in Canada. They would have loved to move her closer to them, but there was just no way to do it, so they had to manage what they could from a distance.
126: True.
But so do some less blue places, e.g. NH.
Here's Texas's growth by year. It doesn't look like Dobbs had any noticeable effect at all.
I can totally see why someone with a trans kid would want to seriously consider moving out of Florida or Texas. But it's less clear why you'd go to Canada or Europe rather than Minnesota, Oregon, or New Jersey. I guess there's the danger of a yet more conservative US Supreme Court upholding federal statutes oppressing trans people,* so even a blue state wouldn't be safe, but the same kind of risk lurks in foreign countries too. Things don't stay the same anywhere.
* Fortunately, the US Senate filibuster is something of a barrier to bad federal legislation of this kind. Rules can be changed, but so can most every other thing.
No, but people moving to Texas are more conservative than people moving away from Texas. At some point, I think I posted a thing about how recent Texas immigrants broke for Trump in 2020, whereas native-born Texans broke for Biden.
129 I wouldn't expect a short term Dobbs bump. And if you get two retiring couple from Ohio for every one young professional liberal couple leaving, your number will be going up while your composition changes.
But anyway, I think comparatively cheap housing is more salient to many people, and they can rationalize how they'd handle a pregnancy scare until it becomes real.
Most of Minnesota is colder in the winter than the populated parts of Canada.
134 I'm sure there are people who think about the fucking weather when they're considering how to keep their kid from being hauled off to jail for using the wrong bathroom, or being taken away from them because gender affirming care is legally defined as child abuse.
I wish the Christian fundamentalists flocking to the Flathead would think more about the weather.
I thought 131 was false. Recent Texas transplants and native Texans both lean Democratic, but people who moved to Texas less recently are heavily Republican.
Here's a recent news story out of the Flathead: https://flatheadbeacon.com/2024/05/03/zinke-demands-deportation-immigrants-kalispell/
I had looked a bit at international retirement options at some point. Enough to see that the UK wasn't reasonable (you couldn't buy into NHS and there just isn't private healthcare in the places I'd want to live). Today I see the UK got rid of retirement visas entirely. Ireland was more plausible, but still difficult. Most of the easy places (like Portugal or Costa Rica) aren't English-speaking, which seems too big an adjustment at retirement age. More plausible to go somewhere for summers, but that's ethically sketchy given all the problems second homes cause for locals.
Just a general reminder that IUDs are now good for 10 years (copper) or 8 (hormonal) and that has made having AFAB kids feel a little safer in a less safe area and might be something for others to prioritize. Though my kids' amazing obgyn who's also a specialist on trans teen healthcare left Ohio for a place where she can practice more safely and fully.
Speaking of people moving states because of having a trans kid, Dwayne Wade sold his beachfront mansion in Miami and move to LA.
Argh, autocorrect, meant Dwyane of course.
25% of those [11m] undocumented have immediate family who are citizens: do you really think those citizens are gonna stand for it? And do you really think they're gonna just stand around waving signs, when their loved ones are put in camps ? There'll be civil disorder, and that shit can escalate quickly.
Yes, in the scenario where they actually mount an operation massive enough to threaten all undocumented people, that would trigger disorder & a lot more exodus. I should have said I was was prognosticating more in my scenario where they wreak a lot of harm but not nearly on that scale, and much more confined to the poorest areas.
If you want to know what a Republican federal government might actually do, looking at Republican states is a good start. A Trump administration would likely do the kind of border and immigration stuff nationally that Texas does now.
So stuff like this: https://www.texastribune.org/2023/12/18/texas-governor-abbott-bills-border-wall-illegal-entry-crime-sb3-sb4/
Obviously that's bad, but as far as I can tell they're not rounding people up and putting them in tents in Texas.
Camps not tents
137: No, 131 is still true - I did post it.
Obviously that's bad, but as far as I can tell they're not rounding people up and putting them in tents in Texas.
The razor wire on the river is mind-bogglingly inhumane.
https://medium.com/@rudnicknoah/debunking-the-texas-transplant-myth-f7c862bbd5a7
"Cruz has an even larger lead among the three quarters of the non-native Texans that moved over a decade again that grows from 15% to a 27% lead but the voters that moved less than 10 years ago were too small of a sample. But given all the other variables, you can do pretty easy algebra to fill in the blanks and you get the full breakdown below, where Beto wins the sample in here of recent migrants by a whopping 23 points!"
You should be a little skeptical of this kind of over-extrapolation of cross-tabs, and you also might want to distinguish people moving to Texas from within the US rather than from outside the US. But at any rate, there's no reason to think recent Texas transplants lean Republican.
147: right, it's very bad, but it's not 103. It doesn't resemble WW2 internment and there's not widespread civil disorder in Texas in response.
On immigration, Trump has tended to fulfill a significant share of his promises (see Muslim ban). So I'm pedantically saying it probably won't be near ten million, but rounding up 100,000 people would realistically be worth the same screaming and unrest.
I kind of think Trump 2.0 would be a lot less restrained on immigration. It's their main issue, and you gotten keep the rubes excited if you're going to keep the money flowing. Also bigger tax cuts. But, yes, giving in to Putin is easy, and totally within executive authority. That'll fuck Europe up.
151: I'll go further: if Putin overcomes Ukraine thanks to Trump before 2026, then they will establish a puppet government by violent or non-violent means in a new European border state (Finland, Baltics, or Balkans) by 2028.
150: my instinct is he'll focus on sadistic cruelty to a much smaller number of people (especially those already in custody) and lawlessness (think pardoning a prominent murderer who killed a migrant), more than increasing the numbers. But at any rate, why hasn't the Texas state government already done whatever you're expecting Trump to do? It's not like Trump is an outlier within the modern Republican Party on immigration, they've all gone crazy. He is an outlier on lawlessness and scamming, and he's an outlier in terms of his Russophilia, but he's mainstream on immigration and to the left of his party on just about any other issue.
148: That link is interesting, but:
1. What the hell is "Born in Georgia" doing there?!
2. Any deep dive going back to the 70s that fails to mention how Southern Democrats then are actually modern Republicans is completely absurd. I'm okay with the portion of the analysis starting at 2000, but he lost credibility with me for that.
3. The Johnson County example - besides being in Kansas - he doesn't say if it's more or less Republican than the rest of the state. Then the very next graph is also a mess, where he doesn't specify if he's back to Texas - but probably he is? He mentions "2020 stands out in the plot" but 2020 is not part of the plot below, and certainly could not refer to the plot above.
I'm taking a break from that post.
How worried is Europe about Trump 2.0?
Texas authorities don't have the authority to look for people without a valid visa in the US, do they? TX incarceration rate is 3x MA today.
I'm about five years from retirement, but working 100% remote makes that date less of gatekeeper if it comes to it. We've given serious thought to getting the golden visa through Portugal, regardless of the election.
155. Official Europe or regular people? My dad is terrified. Reasonable Czechs are pretty unhappy with Scholz currently. Having elected Trump once and our gun laws both make Americans basically incomprehensible politically to Europeans. To me also.
156: The link in 144 is claiming such authority, at list for people who have crossed recently. And if you look at the Texas national guard stuff it's clear that they've been doing stuff that usually would be the federal government's prerogative and getting away with it.
159. Believe what you like. The administrative power to subpoena payrolls, medical records, school records, to conduct door to door checks or set up physical checkpoints at scale is not there now. The current level of persecution is controlled not by personality, but by legal and administrative limitations. Those will change. Feel free to have the last word.
Wait, is the argument that crossing the border is a state crime in TX, but if someone then goes to another state, Texas can demand the other state arrest and extradite them to TX, essentially giving TX nation wide immigration enforcement authority (at least for people who initially crossed the border into TX)? That's fucked up.
It's way outside my area of exeprtise, do I understand right that you're saying that state governments can't subpoena payroll or school records within their own state pursuant to state law but the federal government can?
But at any rate, why hasn't the Texas state government already done whatever you're expecting Trump to do?
Because Homeland will a blank check to hire & spend on ICE/CBP?
I'm puzzled by the implication throughout this thread that a Trump win is likely enough for people to be making detailed escape plans. To me it seems relatively unlikely, though certainly possible. If it does happen I expect the effect on emigration to be about the same as it was last time, which is to say minimal.
What do you think his odds are? If forced to bet I'd guess he has a 1/3 chance.
Yeah. Something like that. Enough to keep me from sleeping well according to my watch. I only got a 77 for sleep last night and I slept for 8.5 hours.
That sounds about right, yeah. High enough to be worrying, certainly, but low enough that the worry is better channeled into defeating him than into contingency plans.
Though with a lot of uncertainty at this point.
Wait, is the argument that crossing the border is a state crime in TX, but if someone then goes to another state, Texas can demand the other state arrest and extradite them to TX, essentially giving TX nation wide immigration enforcement authority (at least for people who initially crossed the border into TX)? That's fucked up.
I haven't seen it discussed this way. I've just seen, "Texas state or local cops can arrest you for suspicion of being undocumented and throw you in jail for a state crime."
That would only be a problem if you lived in Texas.
People have concerns regarding the practical aspects of moving, but I left Trump's America awhile ago and made a seamless transition to the People's Republic of Maryland.
166: 30% chance sounds about right, yeah, based purely on the fact that Biden is running for re election and two out of three re election attempts succeed. I don't worry about polls before August.
170- that's pretty bad too although not as bad as sending Rangers to raid people in other states.
What is probable cause for being undocumented, aside from "not white"? Random "Papers please" stopping still isn't allowed in Texas, is it?
If forced to bet I'd guess he has a 1/3 chance.
On the eve of the 2016 election, 538 gave Trump's odds at 28.6%, so.
The Trib started the day with a picture of lines out the door in the polling places by my inlaws and I knew it was over right then.
I drove to OH for the eclipse, maybe 60 miles on side roads, and only saw one Trump flag. I don't have a baseline for that area, but they were thick on the ground in rural areas other places around 2016.
I was heartened by the Delta County, MI result. Trump 60-35 in 2016, 62-36 in 2020, last week 3 county commissioners recalled by a center/left push, challengers getting about 70% of the vote. Granted, much lower turnout than presidential, but it adds to a lot.
https://www.cnn.com/travel/portugal-american-woman-never-coming-back/index.html
Yeah, I'm at about 20% for Trump this time. Not nothing, but the permission structure is mostly gone. He'll win here, of course.
182: Her husband's hat makes me think they were unreliable anyway.
The most recent swing state data is not encouraging -- https://countdownto2024.substack.com/p/six-months-georgia-moves-towards
I'd say that the odds of a Trump win are about 60% right now, without something significant to change the race. That said, it's hard to come up with a precise estimate because I think there's room for events to push the race in a better direction (but, unfortunately, one of the things I am hoping for (for multiple reasons) would be a ceasefire in Gaza and that doesn't look like it's happening soon).
Idly: my feeling in 2016-20 was that the game-changing thing (beyond judicial capture) would be some sort of novel, organized paramilitary force, and that didn't happen. (Jan 6 did happen.) In Miller's interview about his nefarious deportation scheme, he sketches out a massive operation that would supposedly work by cobbling together DEA/ATF enforcement officers and possibly greater use of the National Guard "from red states." 20th century history would have looked a little different if that had been the level of organization most fascist states employed to secure the homeland.
As far as election results go, the details are always tricky. There are a lot of scenarios where Biden wins with a very narrow margin in battleground states, and that has to play out the way it usually does nowadays, alongside Trump's threats to contest everything and cause trouble. Assuming election integrity no worse than 2020, I have no reason to doubt 30% odds, I guess...
I also agree the current polls do not point to Biden winning, but at the moment I think there are reasons to disbelieve or at least not put as much stock in them as before.
It'll also be a natural experiment in whether political consultants know what they're talking about. Usually both presidential campaigns mount significant boots-on-ground operations in swing states, so you can't see what happens if just one is stripped bare in a competitive race to pay legal bills.
I may have to vote write-in for Biden.
Ridin' with Biden? Write-in with Biden!
. . . at the moment I think there are reasons to disbelieve or at least not put as much stock in them as before.
I agree that there are many reasons for hope. I think that Biden has a strong record to run on, and that the campaign should be playing a good hand. But, I am not feeling happy about the state of the race at the moment.
156: "Texas authorities don't have the authority to look for people without a valid visa in the US, do they?"
Heh. Long before TFG, my mom (lived in the same area since 1975 ffs, retired IRS, DCAA agent) was stopped by a sheriff's deputy who demanded to see her proof of citizenship. Lucky for my mom, she offered to get her lawyer friend on the phone to discuss the legality of that demand. The deputy made himself scarce really, really quick. Someone less connected, less quick-witted, would have gotten different treatment. Obvs. an undocumented immigrant would have gotten much, much worse treatment. That they cannot do it legally, doesn't change that they'll do it. I mean, they can shoot any mudperson they want, why should they balk at merely demanding "yo papiss pleez".
"On the eve of the 2016 election, 538 gave Trump's odds at 28.6%, so"
I mean, yes, that was probably right. No way to tell, of course..
The thing to remember about Trump is that he is provably a very bad candidate. Based on the srare of the economy he should have won the popular vote in 2016 by three points. He lost it by three. He should have won re-election in 2020 based on fundamentals. He lost. Economy is strong this year, unemployment is low, that should improve Biden's chances of re election. Gaza won't hurt him because very few people give a shit about Gaza - it's like nineteenth in the list of issues that American voters say are important to them.
Agree with 187. It's helpful though to distinguish between who is likely to win in November and who would win if the election were held tomorrow. I think there's good reason to think that if the election were tomorrow than Trump would be the odds-on favorite, so it's not as though the polls are exactly wrong, it's just that the election isn't tomorrow. This is compounded by polls changing from registered voter models to likely voter models as we approach the election, because Biden does much better with likely voters. A big question is to what extent unlikely voters prefer Trump because they genuinely prefer him (in which case high turnout could easily swing the election), and to what extent it's just reflective of them not paying attention (in which case the ones who actually vote may shift towards Biden as we near the election).
It's helpful though to distinguish between who is likely to win in November and who would win if the election were held tomorrow.
'
Indeed, this is the distinction 538 used to try to show by putting out a "Now-Cast" as well as a forecast, but it ended up just confusing people so they stopped.
Predictit is offering Biden for 51 cents and Trump for 46 cents.
I don't think I'd want either side of that bet. Trump is in the dock on criminal charges, Biden is a shrewd politician of significant substantive accomplishments, and the race is tied. It seems irrationally optimistic to suggest that people don't know what Trump is like, and that they will find out before Election Day.
On the other hand, Biden really is a shrewd politician, and Trump is giving him plenty of material to work with. There's no reason whatsoever for Biden to be showing his cards at this point.
You hear a lot of talk about how Trump has mentally lost a step. This is nonsense. If you can stand to watch Trump for more than five minutes at a time, you'll see that the insult comic thing is still working just fine for him. Biden was universally lauded for his strong State of the Union address, but you could pull outtakes from that speech that are just as bad as the outtakes you've probably seen from Trump.
That said, did you see the Biden speech at the White House Correspondents Dinner? He was just fine.
I feel no sense of visibility whatsoever. For instance, I'm trying to imagine what the debates will be like, and I am unable to conjure up any kind of plausible narrative for the questions that will be asked or the answers that will be given. I have a strong feeling, though, that there is some crazy, random shit that's going to go down between now and November.
Like, someone's going to actually try the Succession "firebomb an urban vote tallying center in a swing state and oops SCOTUS says with great sorrow those votes don't count" tactic, right?
just one is stripped bare in a competitive race to pay legal bills.
Clinton outspent Trump by a huge margin in 2016. Close to a factor of two IIRC.
Also lots of cheap rural land opening up especially in Japan. Little Levittowns in the satoyama.
Fine, i'll move there, but it had better be just like Totoro promised me.
197: I hope Biden has the nous and the balls to have the National Guard federalized and out protecting the elections. January 6th is more than enough precedent. And resurrecting the meory of that precedent would be good politics to boot.
You don't want people thinking "I could be shot if I go vote" unless you are Trump.
Totoro _is_ so great.
And moving to another country is hard (I did it with my family 13 years ago). And you never understand the politics or the culture as well as your own, so it's unlikely to be satisfying for people who are indignant about bad leadership at home.
Totoro _is_ so great.
And moving to another country is hard (I did it with my family 13 years ago). And you never understand the politics or the culture as well as your own, so it's unlikely to be satisfying for people who are indignant about bad leadership at home.
Remember the Brandy Melville crazy asshole? I'm at the mall with Hawaii, and on the wall at Pac Sun it says
Brandy Melville
John Galt
Brandy Melville
Okay then.
157: Spain is twice the cost of Portugal (500k euros vs 250k), but I always thought it would be an easier transition for a lot of Americans to make because of the language.
I think they intent to just speak English at the natives regardless of where they go.
Unfortunately, not knowing any Catalan makes Spain also a big language adjustment.
208: still feels easier to learn.
I'm up to 52 days of learning Spanish. I'm pretty sure the first time I learned Spanish, we weren't taught "jefa". I think it was "la jefe." But maybe I'm remembering wrong.
Portuguese is notoriously tricky, especially compared to Spanish.
Yeah, Spanish 5 vowels and Portuguese has 14!
Portuguese is notoriously tricky, especially compared to Spanish.
Four thousand irregular verbs!
Yeah, for someone who is capable of having children and of child-bearing age, LGBTQ, PoC, or has loved ones in those categories that totally changes the equation .
G/Q here and I'm staying. In a red state, in fact.
215: did you recently move, by chance?
If you live in a red state now, maybe we can talk about the corn?
Hey, congratulations! I hope the place treats you well, wherever it is.
220: Thanks, I gather my name change is no great mystery. Anyway yes it is weird to be in a red state but I'm much happier.
