The Official Woody Woodpecker Thread
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signing
e-government is taking off ... Had to use it 2 times in the last months. Paper only versions were available but much more elaborate, the online version pulled together information from several official resources, including tax returns and spit out an official attestation you can review or just mail out in go the the relevant party.
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That's pretty cool.
Our e-government services are generally available either with eID or by signing from your internet bank.
So I see no pressing need to update certificates right now. When I'll get a new physical card in 3 years, I'lltry to remember where I put the fucking envelopesave the fucking PIN to a password vault.
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Here you always need the eID (and pin). Even when going to government offices they ask for your eID instead of typing in your name.
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Yeah, ours just started providing the cards with no forethought of what these things will get used for.
My WAG is they just either needed to implement some EU directive that said there shall be eIDs or spend some EU grant money on a cool and awesome civilisation-bringing project.Right now the only real use it gets is people who lost or never had their license and don't want to bring their passport with them anywhere they go can use it to buy booze (or go to doctor's or get their parcel from the post office but those are less funny).
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Of course. Respect
one anotherGreat Leader and anyone who outranks you, or you will be sent to the gulags.That's a little better.
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If you are talking population, you have a bit more of a point, but 22 million is still a fucking lot and not what I'd call a very small country.
We have several states with more people than that. We have some counties bigger than some of those tiny European countries.
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Anyway, I still don't see what was your point. How is politics different based on the population size?
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How is politics different based on the population size?
For one, a bigger pool of candidates.
Techniques for reaching millions (or tens or even hundreds of millions) of voters have to be very different than a few hundred or thousand. Our lower level races (
) are very different than those at bigger scales.
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Uh, maybe.
But then US has just two parties AFAIK - so when you're deciding who to vote for, you just choose which one of them is less bad / more aligned with your interests.
Over here it's usually around 20 parties, some of them ridiculous ones (having like 10 members and then getting like 50 votes, presumably candidates themselves, their moms and friends).
But even excluding those retards, there's still like 6 or 7 that will get over 5%
of votes that is necessary to get into parliament. Out of those, there're some I wouldn't vote for ever but the other ones are meh and they don't really have anything distinguishing going for them.
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Our lower level races
Seeing this phrase, my first thought was "That's racist!".
Then I got what you meant.
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EU grant money
Since e-government gets you a high level of swagger I bet it's something like that ... most likely it is thus funded by my and @aliceif 's tax €.
I use mine as a library pass
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funded by my and @aliceif 's tax €.
Suckers ;) I honestly don't unstertand (but am still glad) why advanced nations would want countries like us in there just to sponsor them.
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Is there a reason why you mentioned me and not @offbyone?
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just two parties
You can't easily compare mainland European and US political parties. They are very different in organisation and role. UK parties lay somewhere in the middle in more then one extend. In most European countries a party goes from structured to being a virtually dictatorship. No such thing exists in the US. It is not because you generally align with donkeys or elephants that the platform of the donkey or elephant candidate actually fills your demands.
In Europe a candidate can't deviate that far from the central party platform.
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@offbyone is not German. Statistically it's more your € then ours that gets waisted by @obeselymorbid
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that gets waisted by @obeselymorbid
And I have a huge waist so I need a lot of your €.
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Germany contributed more than the bottom 19 combined.
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It is not because you generally align with donkeys or elephants that the platform of the donkey or elephant candidate actually fills your demands.
If you are saying what I think you are - yes, but with just two parties it's still easier for a potential voter to choose one of them.
Pick the thing you care the most about - gay rights, abortions, spending, wars, etc. and choose the party that more closely reflects your stance on the issue.In here we have a shitton of parties all saying in their programs they will synergise the economy, collaborate to promote wealth to everyone, work with every group to make sure everyone is included etc.
It's very difficult to actually understand what their position is on any of the issues.
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but with just two parties it's still easier for a potential voter to choose one of them.
that's actually irrelevant because in Europe you choose a party and in the US you need to choose a candidate. The candidate proposed by your favorite party might just represent a part of the party you don't like. Practically: you align mostly with mainstream republicans but don't support the Tea Party candidate or vice versa.
In an European party such a group couldn't exist within an existing party. They would have been expelled and formed their competing party.
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Wait, so I come to vote, say "Hello, I'm flabdablet, I live under a bridge (as us trolls usually do)" and they strike you from the list.Later you come to vote and they arrest you for voting fraud.
For best success, do that early in a polling booth that serves my electorate but isn't the one I will probably go to. That way I will be on the lists in both booths, and we each get to use my name to vote (as long as we both get my address right, or at least can read upside down).
Yeah, it happens. Historically it hasn't happened to an extent that could really fuck with election results much, though that might be changing. It is punishable by imprisonment; most of us tend not to take the outcomes of our elections seriously enough to risk that.
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But this is total sum, right? So it makes sense large countries get more total spending, and thus more total VAT.
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Thanks, that's what I was missing, I guess.
But are there, like, several candidates from each party and you get to choose just one of them?
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That movies were the man just pay the car salesman and leaves driving a new car arent realistic then?
They are realistic. Depending upon financing, etc., you could realistically enter a dealership and leave with a new car within an hour. The dealer can give you a temporary license plate and that is functional as a car registration for 30 days, which gives you time to get the permanent registration.
Some dealerships here in our state can file everything for registration for you while you are there, and GM dealers (probably others also) have insurance offices where you can buy vehicle insurance on premises.
The whole process is pretty streamlined. I once bought a truck on my lunch break and was not that late getting back to work.
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it makes sense large countries get more
Yes, I was just showing how much more that the EU tax euros are @aliceif's than they are @Luhmann's.
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Wow. I expected there to be some caveat and that you'd ridicule me for being too stupid to realise it, but I was actually right?
That way I will be on the lists in both booths
What stops you from going to both and casting two votes? Will they check the lists later on?
With your lax verification (name and address) system you cannot stop determined people from voting in someone else's stead, but you could at least fight multiple voting by just putting each person on exactly one list in one of the stations.
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But are there, like, several candidates from each party and you get to choose just one of them?
I think that would theoretically be possible but US parties do try to limit the internal competition by staging pre-elections e.g. they hold internal elections for the right candidate.
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I'm a little slow so bear with me.
When you get to the voting booth, how many checkboxes do you have? Just two, or can there be more?
I know I could research this myself, but why bother. You are explaining it better than Wiki could, anyway.
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how many checkboxes do you have?
That depends. I think we need a Murican for more details.
For something like the Presidential elections you get to make 1 choice. There will be as many candidates on the paper as there are enrolled in your 'district' (?). I'm not sure about the name anymore. Both large parties have a national candidate who will be a choice in 99% of the cases. Other national parties (e.g. the green nutjobs) have a candidate at some districts in some states. And there are smaller parties/candidates who are only locally available.
The last categories are useless because the votes aren't counted in a sensible way but added up and you can only win by completely winning states. You can lose US Presidential elections even if you have a majority of the total casted votes behind your name.
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Will they check the lists later on?
Yes, they do.
This is one of those problems like credit card fraud, where those running the systems need to make a judgment call about the relative value of inconvenience to the vast majority of system users vs. the negative systemic effects caused by the small minority who do the wrong thing.
As IT people we have a natural desire to design systems that correctly handle all edge cases, and a corresponding inclination toward seeing systems that don't do that properly as horribly broken and the Wrong Thing. We also chronically underestimate the impact of multiple slight inconveniences to the majority of the populace who don't work in IT and don't analyze these things the way we do, and we tend to focus minutely on subsystems we consider to be broken and lose sight of the wider context in which those subsystems operate. These effects are what gives rise to complete clusterfucks like the Myki ticketing system.
In a largely two-party electoral system, genuine organized electoral fraud is generally pretty rare. The fundamental reason for this is that electoral fraud organized in such a way as to give one side a consistent advantage over the other is unlikely to remain undisclosed forever and, once exposed, will do horrendous reputational damage to the side responsible for it. Large-scale electoral fraud is much more common in actual or de facto one-party states.
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For something like the Presidential elections you get to make 1 choice.
For stuff where there's only one office holder, one choice. For things like school boards it can be something like, pick up to 3 (or whatever, depending on the size and whatever the locals have decided to do). No preferences or anything fancy like that.
Most offices will require a majority to win. In some cases there might be runoffs required if no candidate got that. President gets weird due to the fact that technically you vote for electors from your state to go vote in the electoral college. They pretty much always vote the way they stated they would (though they aren't required). And each state decides how the electors get chosen. For most, it's winner take all. A couple (Nebraska, Maine?) go by congressional districts, I think, with the biggest winner getting the other 2 (each state gets 2 + however many seats they have in the House of Representatives).
It's...complicated. If the Electoral College (all those electors) don't have a winner, the House of Representatives decides. That happened once, IIRC, back in the 19th Century.
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Meh. If compulsory attendance at the local Mechanics' Hall every couple of years is the price I have to pay for not having anything like the Trump bandwagon in my country, I'm more than happy to pay it.
Let me tell you what compulsory voting brought to us here in HUEHUEHUE-land. Some of our most voted lawmakers were:
- an illiterate clown, with the saying "it cant get any worse"
- a crazy looking man that wants the military dictatorship back
- a famous football player
- a former president that was impeached
Most of the others are owners of tv and radio stations.
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Let me tell you what compulsory voting brought to us here in HUEHUEHUE-land. Some of our most voted lawmakers were:
an illiterate clown, with the saying "it cant get any worse"
a crazy looking man that wants the military dictatorship back
a famous football playerMost of the others are owners of tv and radio stations.
Meh, here in the US we have had two actors, one pro wrestler, a few comedians, etc. One of those actors went on to be president.
And we don't have compulsory voting.
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Suckers ;) I honestly don't unstertand (but am still glad) why advanced nations would want countries like us in there just to sponsor them.
What politicians would really like to tell people goes something like this:
Look, we have a few rich buddies that paid a lot of money to our parties and thus helped us get the positions we have, and we think we should pay them back. So we made a list of priorities and your kindergartens, municipal utilities, street repairs and shit like that is just way less important than our friends so we have decided to tax you some more, sell some utilities and give that money to them.
It's just that it wouldn't roll. People would get pissed and take to the pitchforks. So the clever solution goes a bit like when the mafia launders money. It just has to change hands a few times. So they promise blooming landscapes to some other countries to get them into a contract that would let the others sell everything they can't produce at competitive prices in "the community" but also the other way round, and because the new guys have too little money, they get "transfers" from the "community"'s taxpayers. That money flows mainly to the aforementioned rich buddies (that's what the "community" has bidding rules for, so you can't just choose your domestic industry because it's yours when others would be cheaper), who sometimes funnel some of it back to politicians of the new countries for an even bigger kickback. The new guys also get a lot of credit because they are "developing economies" and supposed to make shitloads of money RSN. When that doesn't happen because they didn't actually buy much that can make them money—which is pretty hard in the first place if your production costs are higher than the established "community" competition—the credit goes bad. Credit is money that rich people have lent the banks to make more money (of course it also contains a lot of pension funds, which is why the "community" found it important before to privatize pensions so you can point at them and cry "but what about the poor pensioners!!!??"), so they can't be allowed to lose it, and it's the "community" taxpayer's turn again. Finally, because of the bad credit, the community gets to make the rules on how the new guys have to deal with that, and that always involves selling off their industry to "interested parties", which surprisingly enough include the initial rich buddies who've just enjoyed a massive windfall from their own countries' tax money and now have some change to spare for stuff like utilities that they can then use to raise prices and bleed the people who depend on them some more.
I think it's called a win-win-win-win-win situation.
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That reads like the rantings of a loon. I would not be surprised to find such a block of text in something labeled as a "Manifesto".
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Meh, here in the US we have had two actors, one pro wrestler, a few comedians, etc. One of those actors went on to be president.
And we don't have compulsory voting.
Your country can beat mine at most things, but at screwed up politicians you don't stand a chance. Our president has been alleged to be a bank robber:
@Wikileaks said:
The documents also reveal that former US ambassador in Brasilia, John Danilovich, alleged that Rousseff "organized three bank robberies" when she was a member of the organization VAR-Palmares.
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This is too good to not be copied whole:
## Brazil - What the US thinks of Dilma Rousseff, the next Brazilian president The president-elect of Brazil had details of her health status investigated by the US embassy in mid-2009, when she was suffering from lymphatic cancer.
Dilma Vana Rousseff, former chief of staff to President Lula and his hand-picked successor, won the presidential election earlier this year. She is slated to take over the presidency on January 1, 2011.
A socialist during her youth, Rousseff was deeply involved in the struggle against the military dictatorship following the 1964 coup d'état, although she denies being involved in any armed activities at the time. Rousseff was jailed and tortured between 1970 and 1972.
WikiLeaks documents published today show how closely the US embassy followed the trajectory of Dilma and the Brazilian electoral process - which Hillary Clinton. US Secretary of State, described as "Byzantine."
The documents also reveal that former US ambassador in Brasilia, John Danilovich, alleged that Rousseff "organized three bank robberies" when she was a member of the organization VAR-Palmares.
Joan of Arc of Subversion
Rousseff began to draw the attention of the embassy when she took over as Lula's chief of staff. A special report about her was drawn up and dispatched to Washington on May 22, 2005. Although "unclassified" the diplomatic cable raises a number of sensitive issues as well as makes some gaffes. One of the messages is titled: "Joan of Arc of Subversion becomes Chief of Staff" - in a reference to her prison nickname.
In the memo signed by US ambassador John Danilovich, the diplomatic staff dredge up several allegations about Rousseff's past: "Joining various underground groups, she organized three bank robberies and then co-founded the guerilla group "Armed Revolutionary Vanguard of Palmares". In 1969, she planned a legendary robbery popularized as the "Theft of Adhemar's Safe". The operation broke into the Rio apartment of the lover of former-Sao Paulo Governor Adhemar de Barros, netting US$2.5 million that Adhemar had stashed there. Rousseff separated from her first husband, Claudio Linhares, who in January 1970 hijacked a plane to Cuba and remained there."
The embassy fails to note that Dilma has consistently denied any involvement in armed activities. But the cable does mention that Rousseff was in prison for more than three years and endured "22 days of brutal electro-shock torture."
Oddly, the diplomatic cable follows up these allegations with personal details that could have come straight out of a celebrity magazine: "She has a daughter, Paula, in Porto Alegre, where she spends her weekends. She enjoys movies and classical music. She has lost weight recently, reportedly after adopting President Lula's diet."
The document also notes that Dilma "has a reputation as being stubborn, a tough negotiator, and detail-oriented" and reveals that US companies were worried when she became Minister of Mines and Energy, but "now admit that she has done a competent job. In particular, they praise her for her willingness to listen and respond to their views, even when she is inclined to a different conclusion."
How Sick is Dilma Rousseff?
In another report, sent on June 19, 2009, titled: "How Sick is Dilma Rousseff?" US ambassador Clifford Sobel reports to Washington on conversations about the health of the future president, including details of lymphatic cancer that she was suffering from: "She had lymph nodes under her left arm removed and began what was originally scheduled as a four month program of chemotherapy in April."
"By early June she had completed three chemotherapy sessions. In a June 18 meeting with a Washington visitor (septel), Rousseff looked well with good natural color and light make-up, and a top aide told the Ambassador that Rousseff was responding so well to chemotherapy that her sessions would be reduced from six to four, ending in late June.
Sobel writes: "Some analysts have noted that a "victory" over cancer will play in her favor and foster an image of her as a fighter and winner" noting that "Her doctors stated that her cancer was caught early and she has a 90 percent chance of a full recovery."
Sobel also speculates on the consequences of Roussef taking a turn for the worse. "Several possible scenarios could emerge from Dilma's cancer. In one scenario, she and the PT inner circle might already know that she is much sicker than publicly revealed and too sick to be the candidate. In another, she might be well enough now to become the candidate but later be weakened by the illness and unable to campaign effectively."
"There is still a ten percent chance that Rousseff will face this scenario," Sobel writes, concluding that if that happens: "(I)t would probably mean the loss of the presidency for the Workers' Party in 2010."
"Byzantine" Elections
Reports submitted by the US Embassy in Brasilia on the elections were deeply appreciated in Washingon. In a cable dated April 23, 2009, Clinton thanks Dale Prince, US embassy officer for political affairs, for his "unique insights" into Brazil's "Byzantine" electoral system. Clinton noted that this information was used in meetings for briefings with senior US government, including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.
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That reads like the rantings of a loon. I would not be surprised to find such a block of text in something labeled as a "Manifesto".
Thanks for your thoughtful contribution.
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Your country can beat mine at most things, but at screwed up politicians you don't stand a chance. Our president has been alleged to be a bank robber:
You're probably right, but it's not for lack of trying.
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California Senate's Top Gun Control Advocate Arrested In Firearms Trafficking Plot
That's nothing, he even got arrested, and I bet he will stay in prison for a time proportional to his crime.
By the way, our prisons make your federal prisons look like a theme park.
And I'm convinced norwegian prisons are actual theme parks. Is there any online crime that could get me extradicted to a norwegian prison?
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By the way, our prisons make your federal prisons look like a theme park.
Federal prisons tend to be the nice ones. But no way I'm going to try to compete with you guys on bad prison quality.
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Good point. There was a time that I was charged with some administrative duties related to the item database for an MMO fansite, so I guess I could claim to be a DBA with at least as much truthiness as some of the DBA's that have been featured on TDWTF. Or a DBA I heard about at work one time who actually opened up a spam email on his work laptop.
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A hell of a lot of DBA's are actually "DBA's by default". The old DBA quit, they happened to know the most about it and happened to be the last person standing after the music stopped.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
"So how did you become a DBA?"
"Well, I was here when the last guy quit and..."
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Well that's totally reassuring and not at all horrifying.
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Well, I'm sure there's a lot of kickbacks and other shit, as in anything that is remotely linked to politics.
What I'm saying is just: for little countries like mine it's very beneficial to be in EU (economically) and NATO (I'm not entirely certain*, but hopefully they will come to our aid if shit hits the fan).
* The recent stuff in Ukraine is very worrisome to some over here. Ukraine is not a member, still just a potential NATO candidate country, so not really a fair comparison. But if the same stuff were to happen in one of the other ex-Soviet now-NATO countries, I don't have confidence the reaction will be more than some public condemnation and not very effective sanctions.
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So he has hands-on experience with handling large sums of money. I'd certainly vote for him.
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The president-elect of Brazil had details of her health status
She's a chick bank robber. Even more awesome.
I could't tell from the name alone. I could imagine a guy named Dilma as well.
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yellow camaro
I know they wanted Bumblebee and all, but that's pretty much the worst color one could pick for that car. It looks much better in just about every other color.
Mine's black.
that is definitely not on ours
WikiLeaks - What the US thinks of Dilma Rousseff, the next Brazilian president
