PantomimeGoose

Statistics or facts to the effect that "Whatever your bills are, you can always find a way to cut at least 10 percent"?
My favorite new GOP meme: "The poor are so frivolous with their flashy televisions and cell phones! Don't they know they're supposed to be suffering?" How does someone in this day and age get and maintain a job without having a phone of some kind? Not all cells are expensive high-tech gadgets, and most of the cost associated actually comes from "capitalist" companies locking you into a contract with draconian penalties for leaving it (as opposed to the more common pay-as-you-go schemes Europe favors). A number of people were actually sent into bankrupting overdraft when they attempted to leave DirectTV, after DirectTV enacted a small-print clause that automatically drained up to a thousand dollars from their bank accounts. DirectTV is now in a class action. AT&T is in a similar lawsuit for advertising one price for cell phone service and then charging twice that "just because". When people try to budget, do the right thing, and maybe stop a service if their budget changes, so-called capitalists are sure to seize the opportunity to kick them back down to the gutter they may well be trying to climb up out of. It is a little ridiculous to blame the poor for their poverty simply because it could be a little more abject than it is.
A great quote from Elizabeth Warren (S Mass):
"I hear all this, you know, 'Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever,'" Warren said. "No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own -- nobody.
"You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police-forces and fire-forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory -- and hire someone to protect against this -- because of the work the rest of us did.
"Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless -- keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along."1

Slurs are a matter of colloquial usage, context, and intent. I'm a little ambivalent on the subject myself: we keep coming up with new words to neuter the negative connotations that the old ones have developed over time. If being fat, or having Down's syndrome, or being transgendered is perceived as a negative thing by much of the population, then no matter what new term is developed, it too will take on hurtful connotations as the new word is rubbed in the faces of those who identify with it.
I think the argument I commented on was an example of this: someone purposefully using a more loaded expression than necessary to highlight his/her disdain for a group of people, rather than bothering to think a real argument.

Actually for those of us who know English as well as its origins, "**" means "the same". As in homogenous, homophone, homonym, homolog, homogametic, and of course homosexual. To use the term "**" on its own would more accurately imply that the speaker was referring to one of the genera "**" such as "** sapiens", "** ergaster", "** floresiensis", "** habilis". Or it's a slur, and Why_me is on the same evolutionary trajectory as one of the latter species.

Slurs are a matter of colloquial usage, context, and intent. I'm a little ambivalent on the subject myself: we keep coming up with new words to neuter the negative connotations that the old ones have developed over time. If being fat, or having Down's syndrome, or being transgendered is perceived as a negative thing by much of the population, then no matter what new term is developed, it too will take on hurtful connotations as the new word is rubbed in the faces of those who identify with it.
I think the argument I commented on was an example of this: someone purposefully using a more loaded expression than necessary to highlight his/her disdain for a group of people, rather than bothering to think a real argument.

Statistics or facts to the effect that "Whatever your bills are, you can always find a way to cut at least 10 percent"?
My favorite new GOP meme: "The poor are so frivolous with their flashy televisions and cell phones! Don't they know they're supposed to be suffering?" How does someone in this day and age get and maintain a job without having a phone of some kind? Not all cells are expensive high-tech gadgets, and most of the cost associated actually comes from "capitalist" companies locking you into a contract with draconian penalties for leaving it (as opposed to the more common pay-as-you-go schemes Europe favors). A number of people were actually sent into bankrupting overdraft when they attempted to leave DirectTV, after DirectTV enacted a small-print clause that automatically drained up to a thousand dollars from their bank accounts. DirectTV is now in a class action. AT&T is in a similar lawsuit for advertising one price for cell phone service and then charging twice that "just because". When people try to budget, do the right thing, and maybe stop a service if their budget changes, so-called capitalists are sure to seize the opportunity to kick them back down to the gutter they may well be trying to climb up out of. It is a little ridiculous to blame the poor for their poverty simply because it could be a little more abject than it is.
A great quote from Elizabeth Warren (S Mass):
"I hear all this, you know, 'Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever,'" Warren said. "No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own -- nobody.
"You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police-forces and fire-forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory -- and hire someone to protect against this -- because of the work the rest of us did.
"Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless -- keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along."1

*And* as per the top right, if you fail to marry your brother's widow, she will straight-up take one of your shoes and call you 'the shoeless one'. Word! If you marry her, but fail to knock her up, Yaweh will smite your ####, and then the Catholics will use you as an example to prevent the whole world from masturbating and using contraception. Forever. Snap!
PS ladies...in that situation the correct action is to dress up as a prostitute and ####### yourself out to your father in law. WWJD

A couple of good prep/passing the time things that haven't been mentioned:
This will sound odd but, make a list of grocery store brands for various products that you like/are good value/or are brand-irrelevant for when your spouse is trying to adjust. Include things you like, and things your spouse might like, as well as anything to avoid. One of the most weirdly disorienting things in the world is going into a grocery store to shop and having no brand recognition whatsoever.
A second thing, which helps me with the separation, is learning more about an interest we don't naturally share. Does he/she love cooking or a sport or botany or history or cars? Surf the web. Read some books. Pick up a few facts. Maybe think of a perfect special gift for next holiday. It helps me remember my husband as a unique person, separate from the blanks my memory tries to fill in when he's gone.
A third: start a private book club, take parallel classes, or make the effort to learn about something together. It will be something to dwell on instead of the separation, and a way to keep growing side by side even though you're apart.

"The long wait is part of the test and part of the proof"
I know there's a certain amount of sarcasm in your post, but it still blows my mind that that's how people think the government is handling this, and that that's somehow not unreasonable. How many real relationships fall apart because married couples aren't supposed to spend the first year or two of their marriage squandering their savings on trips to visit their spouse, or working a full time job and then staying up until 2 am every night for a chance to talk with their spouse on skype? How many couples in our situation miss seeing a child born? How many of our number find themselves in the hospital or even die untimely deaths, far away from the person they love while the government is proving the relationship is real? Not every challenge we face in life is some kind of useful, character-building teamwork exercise.
As others have pointed out, processing times have varied over the years. I worked a government job with more intensive clearance than USCIS requires. 2 months to complete a background check was 'lengthy'. Obviously more staff/efficiency would go a long way to fixing the problem of 'shelved' applications, which rumor has it is the main hurdle through USCIS. So what's keeping staffing and/or productivity low at USCIS? Funding? Apathy? Seasonal hiring sluggishness? What can we do to change that?
Is privatization a better solution? Well oddly enough, in the last five years or so I'd say there has come a tipping point, when I find I would rather spend an afternoon at the DMV than deal with my Internet service provider, my private insurer, or the airline that I'm indentured to for an hour. Seems to me that private companies have recently discovered that they don't actually have to engage in capitalism if they can just make sure you can't break some 'contract' you never signed, ensuring that once you put your money into their invaluable service you can never get any portion of it back out, somewhat irrespective of whether or not they ever rendered a reasonable facsimile of the service agreed upon.
I'm not sure what that would mean for visas were the experience translated, but I'm pretty sure it bodes ill on many levels.