US Politics, March 2024: The house of illuminati will NOT be holding any other event in the foreseeable future.

No worries, a new replacement is on deck! Oh wait.

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:qrllvid7s54k4hnwtqxwetrf/bafkreicvrv4ssuvaehkbgr6jywyqmrotvijcexbyx6yvl3w76ad75zrvyy@jpeg

The easy solution to the GOP House internal divisions: Speaker Hakeem Jeffries! It's the safe call. The Republicans can all unite against him and be a family again. It's what they do best.

Unperson, thanks for that peek into NJ politics

UltraMAGA OK

ill see you boys in November!

you're gay, bro

SCOOP — @RepGallagher has told people that he is planning to take a job at Palantir, I'm told by two sources.

The Wisconsin GOP anti-China hawk announced today that he is leaving Congress next month.

May not be 100% done, but that's what he has told people he is doing next.

— Teddy Schleifer (@teddyschleifer) March 22, 2024

Kinda weird/funny detail from Politico:

Wisconsin law dictates that Gallagher’s seat — in a solidly red district — will stay empty for the rest of his term. Departing before April 9 would have triggered a special election.

(points, laughs)

So to no one's surprise Matt Taibbi finally endorsed Trump today in one of his Racket posts. Somebody shared it in another site I follow, but it's subscription-only.

It's perfectly solvable, but it also means you just created a convenient way for the government and any interested bad actors to track your identity and every single web site that you visit, ever.

Nah, it wouldn’t have to be that at all. More like the equivalent of the age-verified wristbands you get to buy beer at concerts. Only the people who give you the wristband see your ID. Everyone else accepts that the wristband means your ID has been checked. And nobody connects your personal ID with whatever you buy with it.

Again, I’m sure there are problems from programming and security angles, I just imagine somebody could solve them.

An interested 12 year old could easily figure out installing a VPN and connecting to a porn site/whatever from an international IP.

Even setting aside the real reason for these laws (reactionary moral panic), there’s just no point to them. Even if you got Pornhub to follow Texas law globally, there are still going to be a thousand Pornhubski.ru sites without even the oversight of servers based in the west.

Of course any system will be porous. We used to have fake IDs too. But we have models for this, and the ones that don’t involve direct government censorship have been industry driven. MPAA, video game ratings, etc. Just saying there are several industries with an interest in this, they oughta get it together. We do so many kinds of secure transactions online, there’s no way age verification can’t be handled by sufficiently motivated actors.

these private systems already exist, here's one: https://agechecker.net/

No idea who is using them though

and the ones that don’t involve direct government censorship have been industry driven. MPAA, video game ratings, etc.

Those came about because of government censorship or the threat of censorship, though, and were only marginally effective even with in-person transactions. Once things move online (particularly in an industry as diffuse as porn where a majority of the 'business' is on dodgy pirate tube sites), they're not serving a real purpose. It's moral security theater.

Senate passed the spending bill. I'm curious if this:

Yet conservatives said the legislation was insufficiently conservative, citing the $1.2 trillion price tag. They were particularly infuriated to see $200 million in fresh funding for the new F.B.I. headquarters in Maryland, as well as earmarked funding requested by senators for L.G.B.T.Q. centers.

means that Fetterman pulling funding for the center we talked about a little while back was exactly as bad a move as it seemed after all? (quote from NYT)

Nah, it wouldn’t have to be that at all.

But it would be that. Remember the Congress that you'd have to get any legislation mandating this sort of age verification system past and how they work these days. You think they're going to make anonymity a priority? The system wouldn't be designed by NASA in the 50s, it would be given to a company like the aforementioned Palantir and designed from the ground up to primarily siphon marketing data and track the activity of an enemies list. And of course age verification as an afterthought because nobody asking for that really cares if it works or not anyway.

Finally a win for the Liberals! Funding for a new FBI building!

Seriously

we're supposed to take this as a win for the rule of law, except the FBI has never been shy about ignoring the law

Remember the Congress that you'd have to get any legislation mandating this sort of age verification system past and how they work these days. You think they're going to make anonymity a priority?

What I’m talking about is trying to AVOID further gubmint regulation. Hence the industry solution.

Tipsy, you are much smarter than I, but I don't think there's any way to do what you proposes that doesn't leave a digital trail. And again, there are "industry" things like akm pointed out, but I'll be damned if I'm giving a snapshot of my driver's license to whoever the fuck they are.

lol I’m not smarter than anyone I’m just a non-tech guy saying “This technology could exist!”

But to stick with the analogy of the booth that checks your ID at the festival, in that scenario nobody else sees your ID, they see the bracelet. So I’m thinking of like a transferable token — maybe it’s a browser extension, I don’t know — but one that can digitally check the “Are you over age X” box sufficiently for legal purposes (in the same way the wristband does).

Or maybe it looks different than that, I don’t know. But we already convey so much personal information online that I believe whatever’s left of Silicon Valley’s creative thinking could figure it out. And I’m just speculating that these kinds of state crackdowns might provide sufficient incentive. Nobody’s done it yet but there’s been no pressing need to.

it’s doable, but your identity provider would have to be pretty secure and it’d be nice to have it as an open standard

you could have something similar to a passkey where your phone or w/e passes a one-time use token that is then authenticated by the identity provider when a website asks for it. so they’d have to agree to not log who is authenticating tokens, but one site would know who you’re authenticating to, but the many sites would have no idea who you are

What I’m talking about is trying to AVOID further gubmint regulation. Hence the industry solution.

At that scale any industry solution IS a government solution. If it's meant to satisfy laws about age-restricted access, government buy-in will be required. And the temptation to make any verification token trackable is simply not a temptation I believe any company nor three-letter agency can resist. They won't even try to resist it... they will design the system around it. Like, look at the shitbirds that run every single tech company of any meaningful size. They are 100% sociopathic assholes who literally compete with one another in public about who can be the bigger sociopathic asshole. That is who will be cooking up your age verification token system.

Tammy Murphy is dropping out of the NJ Senate race. This, plus Bob "Gold Bars" Menendez effectively dropping out (there's no way he's gonna run as an independent, he's not stupid) is a huge blow to the Democratic party machine in that state. Kim will win the overall Senate race, and/but he'll come in free of any allegiance to the crooks that have run the state for decades. He should be a national figure in no time.

Just read up on this— really wild stuff.

I wonder how much local politics are influenced by whether or not there is a presidential primary for a given party on the ballot. Clearwater municipal elections (supposedly nonpartisan but yeah right) were dominated by the conservative candidates this year, because the voters in Pinellas county were skewed 75% Republican to 25% Democratic- despite registered voters being much more evenly split. This result can be traced directly to the fact that there was a Republican primary election on the ballot and not a Democratic one.

Just bad luck, or was this an intentional effort to make a not-so-conservative city in Florida fall a bit more under the shadow of the GOP?

The more politically experienced officials of both parties are well aware of such nuances of electoral politics and seek to leverage them to their advantage. It's only the novices and amateurs of electoral politics who overlook those kinds of details.

epistantophus! You live in Clearwater?!

I thought Clearwater was also a Scientology stronghold.

I do! And yes, I believe it is.

I moved here from Boston some 4 years ago.

Never thought I’d say I prefer Boston, which I consider to be one of the more malevolent circles of hell

I wonder how much local politics are influenced by whether or not there is a presidential primary for a given party on the ballot. Clearwater municipal elections (supposedly nonpartisan but yeah right) were dominated by the conservative candidates this year, because the voters in Pinellas county were skewed 75% Republican to 25% Democratic- despite registered voters being much more evenly split. This result can be traced directly to the fact that there was a Republican primary election on the ballot and not a Democratic one.

― epistantophus, Sunday, March 24, 2024

It seems like it was a mistake for Florida not to hold a Democratic primary for president this year, and that it suppressed turnout in down-ballot elections

Totally agree. I’m wondering what the calculation was- the benefits of showing unity and support for the incumbent, saving money, allowing Biden to focus on the general, vs. the negative impacts on down-ballot elections.

Or was it more of a calculation on the GOP side? Allow Haley to continue primary efforts until the best down-ballot opportunities were past.

It was a fucking stupid mistake. I'm still reeling.

the Florida Democratic Party has a losing fetish

the Florida Democratic Party has a losing fetish

@unperson

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/24/nj-first-lady-tammy-murphy-to-end-senate-campaign-to-replace-bob-menendez-00148728

Alfred, if there is ever a Florida FAP, I am 100% down to try a Negroni- though my usual cocktail is Bourbon, neat.

we'll invite Neanderthal too.

Oh absolutely- I’m in!

A good piece about what happened in NJ this weekend.

a detail related to the timning of gallagher's resignation that i didn't know:

Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) surprised party leaders and narrowed the House GOP majority to a single vote with his decision to resign from Congress effective April 19. Gallagher had already announced he wasn’t going to run for re-election. His resignation date is one day after the deadline to call a special election, meaning House Republicans will be hamstrung by his departure all the way through the end of this Congress.

The New Jersey article is fascinating. NJ politics is so weird and terrible. And it also reinforces the importance of having really good candidates — it sounds like even with the whole set of circumstances putting pressure on the corrupt system, it still would have prevailed without a strong challenger.

The other thing about Andy Kim is people say they're glad to vote for him. Not "I like my Congressman" or "I'm with X" but "I feel good about this." That doesn't come cheap, and I think Kim knows it.

— Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) March 25, 2024

His resignation date is one day after the deadline to call a special election, meaning House Republicans will be hamstrung by his departure all the way through the end of this Congress.

I don't think this is correct if he's resigning 4/19. See:

Wisconsin election law requires a special election to fill a vacancy if it occurs before the first Tuesday in April of an election year.

The first Tuesday in April is the 2nd.

hmm, i'm not sure! the quote i posted above was from here, and it links to this piece...

https://apnews.com/article/mike-gallagher-resigns-house-republicans-majority-73f1991cc954d865d55ca7949d57dd35

...which says "There also won’t be a special election for Gallagher’s seat. His resignation will happen within a window in Wisconsin law that dictates the seat be filled in the general election."

but obviously i have no expertise! makin' coffee is my expertise

Yeah, there won't be a special election, but he's not resigning ONE DAY after the deadline