Rindo para não chorar

O mais bem-desenhado entre as charges que conheço é o sinfest.net. 
Nesta época, o cartunista, Tatsuya, mexe com os partidos entrincheirados...

Desde 2007 EUA viraram, bem... veja você.

Distance Voting

Another deadline looms. Now is a good time to find out about voting in the November elections. My candidate was nominated much later than the entrenched party candidates, and I was surprised at how little time we have left.

Here's a link:
https://www.fvap.gov/fwab-privacy-notice

The mailing part is kind of a joke. Nobody mails anything in Brazil. The last thing mailed to this address was from the US, and it was delivered to a neighbor a block away. But there is a way to Sedex stuff to a local voter, kind of like proxy voting in a corporation.

Right now we are looking for someone in São Paulo or Porto Alegre willing to drop off ballots at the American Consulates. The Consulate in SP is kind of like a wartime bunker. To approach you have to use their website and fill out forms days in advance. The website only works intermittently, and the place is best approached with your hands raised and empty.

Cheerfully,

Bilingual Voting Machines

Bilingual Voting Machines have arrived--if you can believe what you see in political cartoons.  Locally you can vote for any party you want... provided that party is firmly committed to the initiation of force to get things done. Any party that isn't, ain't on the ballot machine. It's that simple.

Voting is mandatory, albeit not exactly at gunpoint. The idea was cooked up in the People's State of Australia back when populated largely by transportees. According to proponents, the idea was to keep those favoring a gold standard from intimidating (and occasionally shooting) those who wanted a currency backed by the promises of politicians (as in 1923 Germany and 1992 Brazil). Nowadays there is no gold standard currency, thanks in part to Ian Fleming's revelation that gold is easily made radioactive. In Australia and Brazil the League of Non-Voters consists entirely of Orwellian "unpersons." These worthies are not themselves vaporized--just their documents. This makes it impossible to open a bank account, rent anything, operate a vehicle, etc. until they kneel, confess, make penance--perhaps by reciting something akin to the Eisenhower Pledge of Allegiance--and rejoin the fold of the goodthinkful by paying a punitive tithe to The Political State.

With all this nonsense in place to force the sanction of the victim, would it be asking too much to let the victim verify that his or her vote was counted the way it was cast? Anyone with a smartphone can read barcodes or QR codes to look up all kinds of websites and information, just not whether their ballot was switched, trashed or altered. The switching, trashing and forging of ballots has been a constant feature of all elections for the past two centuries, according to newspapers. If this is such a bad thing, does it not make sense to let the voter verify the way his vote was counted? We check deposits using Automatic Teller Machines all the time suing a secret password. Asking for honest politicians is asking too much. So why not have verifiable voting?

Local elections are pretty much what you see. There are 32 or 33 parties--all of them fascist, communist or prohibitionist--and people are forced not only to vote for them but to pay for their teevee commercials. The Geneva convention, fortunately, forbids forcing folks to actually watch those commercials. This business of forcing people to pay for political propaganda ads was invented by Richard Nixon in 1971.
The libertarian party is blocked from ballot access. The blockage comes from a tiny group of very elderly judges appointed by a tiny group of politicians pictured in the cartoon.

Find out how the Prohibition and Income Tax Amendments dislodged the Bill of Rights and collapsed the economy in

Live on Amazon Kindle for price of a pint

Expatriotas--Faloinglês

Ex-pats and other huddled masses rejoice! This is your blog and opportunity to swap yarns about the good old days and the worse ones to come. Anyone who attended the British School of Teresópolis will receive a royal welcome, but we (The Works Department) reserve the right to also admit the riff-raff from  EA, OLM, Ginásio Nelson, the British School and other such benighted establishments of lower learning. 

Special thanks to Winston Carson, who has changed his name to Jim in an evident ploy to evade extradition, for getting in touch and discovering an enclave of BST survivors still trapped within the Iron Curtain satrapy of Zuckerbergia.  This is your chance to go over the wall and break loose into the wild and wooly world of cage-free, free-range and libertarian internet. We are looking for those stories for which you've already gotten rejection slips or that at least resulted in no interrogations. If you have something new and relevant to expat Survival Lore, don't be shy.

Are you aware of the August 16, 2016 importance of the Hague Apostille Convention that is changing the way legal and immigration documents and contracts move between Brazil and the US of A? Brazil is now a signatory but neither the Wikipedia map or the Departments of State stateside are aware of what's up. Where are the best places to find peanut butter? baggies? electrical outlets? letter-size paper? Books by David Dodge? Can you get an RNE with no expiration date on it if the one they won't offer to replace says it's expired? How do you get a ballot from the consulate to vote in the upcoming elections? Are procurações different depending on which country you're in? Will the DHS add The Wall to the barbed wire, German shepherds, snipers and snitches at the Mexican and Canadian borders? Monitor the discussion and toss in your own two bits' worth.

Cheerfully yours, The Works Department