I went to bed last night fearing the worst -- a Bush victory. I awoke from unquiet slumber at about 4am to see that my fears were not unfounded. When I heard that the only hope of the Kerry campaign was Ohio, that Bush had a 131,000+ vote lead there, and that there were probably less than 150,000 provisional ballots in Ohio to be counted -- most of which were probably invalid, I knew it was time to end the struggle. When Mrs. Geek stirred and asked what was going on, I told her that Kerry had only one thing left to do: take it like a man and concede. This was a clear win by George W. Bush. The gracious and honorable thing to do was to acknowledge that by not contesting the election. The last thing we needed was another Election 2000.
I was glad to see that John Kerry saw this too and gave his concession speech by mid-afternoon.
That said, Mrs. Geek and I were recently discussing our future options, based on four more years of Bush insanity. One of the wilder scenarios we hit upon was one to obtain dual citizenship in Ireland. Mrs. Geek is the great granddaughter of someone born in Ireland, and still has (distant) cousins there. We had both heard that a lot of Irish Americans actually qualify for Irish citizenship. We figured we could at least see if it was possible. If nothing else, we could travel on Irish passports -- since our United States passports would likely make us the target of scorn in some parts of the world.
Alas, I discovered today that this is not possible. According to the Irish Nationality and Citizenship Acts of 1956-2000, Mrs. Geek's Dad can become an Irish citizen by virtue of the fact that his grandfather was born there. He just needs to go to an Irish consulate with the appropriate documents and be entered in the Foreign Birth Registry. For Mrs. Geek to be an Irish citizen, her Dad needed to be entered in the Registry before she was born. If she was able to become an Irish citizen, I could become one after she was a citizen for three years and we were married for three years. The only other option is to move to Ireland for five years and become naturalized citizens.
said drgeek
on 2004-11-03 at 2:30 p.m.
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