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2 yr. ago

  • I thought the Dems might try to save him

    It's his own party that ate him. Dems don't need to anything with them. Dems are trying to keep the country running, they cannot also play mom to every single GOP whiny baby that tosses a fit. The Republicans have got to get their shit together or don't and split into two parties. Because a schism this large that has them sabotaging their own Speaker of the House, like the unity in the party is gone at this point.

    As far as Dems being on the hook about this, this is all I have to say about it:

  • kbin users. If you're wondering why you're seeing this image, that's a feature of Kbin. Weird image caching and what not.

  • Republicans right now:

  • Because the Speaker is elected by the majority. So the removal has to be by some part of that same group that put the Speaker there in the first place. That usually happens only when a schism appears within a party and part of being a well oiled political party is to prevent schisms forming.

    Actual Republican leadership, like the organization that is the Republican party, not the folks that are part of that organization within the US House, has become a complete and utter cluster fuck of unmitigated magnitude to put it in insanely nice terms. Historically it took a lot of backbone to manage former Dixiecrat and Nationalist groups operating within the Republican party. Under Reince Priebus, long story short, all that fucking went out the goddamn window. And Ronna McDaniel, seeing the complete dumpster fire that is the Republican National Committee, decided the best thing to do was to bring TNT inside jugs of gasoline and see what happens.

    I mean, there's not really a whole lot of policy that happens anymore at the RNC, it's mostly become a group that focuses on donor groups and arranging them in... whatever logic it is that they use for priority for promotion. Long standing policy has mostly been delegate to those groups and is largely outside the RNC at this point. Which brings up the question, what the fuck is the RNC even used for now?

    With SuperPACs largely legal now and the pretense of a unified political party gone, the only thing that I can imagine the RNC is actually useful for anymore is that they're enshrined in a lot of local law to allow them to be on the ballot, and that's about it. But yeah, usually political parties have way more control over their group than this. Gaetz just randomly firing off at his own is evidence that the RNC has lost 100% of their power over their members and exists only as a means to funnel money into a group for exchange for a protected right by law to be on the ballot.

  • Bickering like children and they think they can hold impeachment hearings on Biden? They can't even function as a single political party much less navigate complexities like fact finding, legal investigative process, and case building.

    Gaetz has shown that the Republican party has gone so deep into political paranoia that they fear even each other and must resort to extreme measures like a motion to vacate to "test" ideological purity to one another. The GOP is crumbling but in its complete failure, it will provide a larger path for more extreme megalomaniac personas to invade what the GOP once was.

    All this does is ensure that the GOP further descends into madness.

  • A:SPICYMEMESMODEMSOUND.WAV

  • You know that’s one of those really neat things about the world we live in.

    Roughly about 65% of the world has lactose malabsorption. However the United States has one of the highest concentrations of people who aren’t lactose intolerant, with only roughly 35% of the population having lactose malabsorption.

    Has to do with the genetic mutation that allowed people to drink milk much longer was in most of the ancestors who founded the US and those who came to the US eventually got the gene in some fashion mixed into their DNA.

    So that’s resulted in the US being this hyper concentration of people who can drink milk that’s not really found anywhere else. Russia, some European countries, and some related African nations that were once occupied by those European nations have less lactose intolerant folks as well, but not as low as the US has.

    The various parts of DNA code are thought to have developed in Europe but the US served to combine a lot of it and cheap milk from way back helped ensure that the hit of protein helped direct evolutionary processes to heavily favor that combination that allowed for longer ability to drink milk.

  • Rule

    Jump
  • 悲しむなんて 疲れるだけよ 何も感じず 過ごせばいいの

  • In all fairness, McCarthy is the one who changed the rules from requiring a motion to vacate from "on behalf of a political party or caucus" to "any member of the House".

    There was an entire reason there was a stopgap in place. McCarthy's thirst for power brought him to this. So at the end of the day, "a bed was made by someone, and now a few folks are asking that person to head on to bed."

    Also, all this does is really reinforce the GOP mantra of "no honor among thieves."

  • I think the most surreal part is that they’re wanting to impeach Biden on something that Trump very vocally did for Jared Kushner.

    And worse yet, they established no link between Hunter Biden’s actions and Joe Biden outside of, “Of course he knew! He’s Joe Biden’s son!”

    That was literally the maximum extent of connection they established. That they’re related to each other so obviously they’re all in on it.

    The level of projection from this whole affair, especially seeing how the government is about to shut down, really indicates that the GOP in general has lost the entire point of governance.

  • Gaetz accused McCarthy of hiring social media influencers to trash him online

    The Messages people received:

    (Hey {{FirstName}}, g | Howdy! G)ot an advocacy campaign with budget. Do you do paid posts? If so how do you work? By the way, the issue is against Gaetz and government shut down. Let me know asap!

    So it's a paid campaign that's cold calling. Which sounds amateur at best. Most high ranking political folks have campaign lists that have tight contacts that step in line. The cold calling and the automation having few {{FirstName}} values really indicates to me this is someone who hasn't ever done this before or someone scripting out the messages perhaps via Selenium API.

    Either way, no way this was from Kevin McCarthy reasonably. The Speaker has way better methods than just going virtually door to door and asking folks.

    Gaetz is too delusional to grasp that plenty of people hate him enough to trash him without a check from McCarthy

    Bingo. This is very likely the answer and now that it is a story, it at least got the person who was running it attention and verification of which parts of their scheme worked. Sowing discord is a thing and I doubt person messaging had money so likely was to get some whispers out there.

    And they say there's no reason to monitor web traffic for elections. HA! But, I mean I'd expect nothing less from Gaetz to blindly accept anything being feed to him. One time he entered into the record Chinese propaganda without vetting it. And was summarily called out on it. Dude is soft clay and various other nations manipulate him like he's their plaything.

  • I think this might have more to do with the beating that Epic took from Apple in court. The 2021 decision in favor of Apple, of their lawsuit for anti-competitive behavior was upheld this year. That was not cheap to litigate that and was a major loss for Epic.

    I think the Bandcamp sell off is a good indicator of all of this. Epic obtained Bandcamp in March 2022, to explicitly have their IAP system integrated into it. Google shut them down and told them they would start collecting the 30% usual due. Epic filed suit and Google gave them an exception for the time being with the agreement that 10% would be held in escrow until the conclusion of the trail. With many of the arguments in the Apple case similar to Google's case, I'm pretty sure Epic sees the loss coming from a mile away.

    All in all, what I think can be drawn from this. Epic made a big bet on "their store" and that's fading away with mobile devices locking people into a marketplace that is "distinctly not Epic". While putting such a bet wouldn't normally kill a company, Epic sextupled down on it and I think how hard they went for "their marketplace" is what's done them in.

  • Can you explain the timeline that all your evidence revolves around 2017-2020 and Biden was not VP nor President during that period.

    I see you'll just never believe us.

    I loved the snap back the reporter had, I'm open minded, I just need you to explain it to me.

    I cannot pinpoint any one item.

    IT'S YOUR EVIDENCE!! — Literally the NBC reporter saying exactly that.

    Holy fucking shit that was fucking hilarious. The House Ways and Means Committee chairman was fidgeting like an alcoholic at an AA being held in a Las Vegas casino. Holy shit, and what's crazy was the NBC reporter was literally going out of their way to give benefit of the doubt and dude was like two nanoseconds from sweating buckets.

  • Legally the laptop would belong to John Paul Mac Isaac per Delaware's Abandoned Personal Property laws (25 Del. C. § 4001). He would have a right to ownership of the laptop. That said, the data contents of the laptop should have been wiped (that's customary, not a legal requirement) before the transferring of ownership.

    All of that said, 18 USC § 1030 covers the data that is hidden behind a Windows login. Yes you can boot up a system with an unencrypted drive and read the contents of it, but that's circumventing. Now where this and everything else differs, is that in a lot of prior cases a warrant was obtained to gain discovery of the information. In this case, Giuliani just circumvented the login, and post facto indicated evidentiary data.

    It's a good question to bring before the courts. Can someone circumvent a protection, find incriminating data, and then after the fact present it to law enforcement? Because we don't have a lot that goes down this road of questioning. Kind of the reason law enforcement needs to be the one that bypasses those kinds of protections legally is because, your average person, can do things that "tamper" with evidence. And with digital data, can do so without knowing they have done so, like last access timestamps and what not.

    and if so, how is that not illegal access to someone else’s data

    I mean that's the central question of the suit. Which you can find as case 2:23-cv-8032 in the Central District of California. And I can't off the cuff think of a good prior that answers this. And there's parallels that can be drawn for both ways this can go. You cannot just randomly break into a house, discover illegal shit going on, and then report that (I mean you can, but you've also violated the law with your B&E) But if you reasonably suspect something is going on (like you heard a scream from the house), you can break into a house, discover illegal shit going on, and then report that (that is you haven't violated the law with your B&E in some situations).

    Basically the case doesn't negate the laptop as evidence in some other case, it just implicates Giuliani into what amounts to digital breaking and entry. Which given the case, even if Giuliani was found guilty the sentence is usually a fine for first offense when the information obtained is not property of the US Government proper. So even if the courts do find Giuliani should have contacted the FBI before actually attempting to get the data, the most he would be face (if they really wanted to throw the book at him) is one year in prison AND a fine.

    It is an interesting case though, we don't have laptops screaming for help to justify breaking legally protected locks on data. So, it an interesting case to see what the courts lay down as lines for "reasonable belief that an illegal activity is happening" if Giuliani decides to go down that road. But I don't hold much hope for that, they'll likely argue that the data on the laptop is theirs to begin with, which no court is going to accept that. But we'll just have to see.

  • How about instead of establishing this via the regulatory process we have Congress actually pass law that enshrines fundamental rights online? Don't get me wrong, I'll take whatever, but as we've seen rule making can change these things based on who the President has selected to seat on the committee and if they seat just the right person, boom, all those rights are now gone again.

    Bringing back NN via the regulatory process is a step, but as has been demonstrated, even long standing precedent before the courts is NOT an indicator of any long standing policy of the United States. That the only means by which any of us can have any kind of long standing right is via legislation (for the simple fact that usually there's too much confusion to entirely undo anything once passed, but even then every so often the cards come up in just the right combination) and Constitutional Amendment.

    That's it. That about covers all the means by which the US has long standing position on anything. Which that's pretty shitty because having a "direction" is slightly important for a nation, but that is where we are now. So great, glad to hear the FCC wants to implement rule making to add regulation that gives us "Net Neutrality", but that's going to last all the way up till some former Verizon lawyer becomes chairman of the FCC (Ajit Pai), who will unsurprisingly, dismantle all regulatory process of the FCC. And round and round we go.

  • FR. Dude's head looks like something out of the Wii U mii creator.

  • Actually neat thing about the 14th amendment. It gives rise to the doctrine of Incorporation of the Bill of Rights.

    The 14th amendment fundamentally modified the separation of Federal and State governments a bit, which makes sense given the background of the whole “it’s a result of the Confederates losing the Civil War.”

    However all this said, the first amendment doesn’t extend into infinity. No right does that. The various Courts have agreed that speech is not protected in the commission of a crime.

  • Speaker of the House literally indicated he’d do this in his Inauguration speech