US Politics: A Game of Chicken (with Constituents lives)

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Continue.

[Martell Spy]

Kyrsten Sinema slammed "wholly inappropriate" protests that interrupted a class she was teaching.
Activists stormed an Arizona State classroom and followed the moderate into a bathroom over the weekend. 

https://www.politico.com/minutes/congress/10-4-2021/sinema-hits-unacceptable-protest/

Quote

What happened: Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) issued a statement Monday that her students were "unfairly and unlawfully victimized" by a "wholly inappropriate" protest on Arizona State University's campus. Protestors came in as she was teaching and then followed her into a bathroom.

 

[Fez]

Potentially politics-related, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp have all been offline worldwide for several hours now. From the sound of it, they will potentially be offline for quite a while too. The rumor going around is that the system administrators had a major screw-up with an update to their BGP protocol this morning, to the point that it can only be reversed by someone physically at the data centers. And in Facebook's organization, the people with physical access rights don't have software rights, and vice versa is also true; so it's a big scramble. Also, there's stuff like this happening today:

I assume everything will be online again by tomorrow at the latest, but what a boon to politics it would be if Facebook was permanently down now.

[Zorral]

13 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Continue.

Responding to your FB question right previous to reaching end point in previous thread:

I think the reason the FB stock plunged was that last night - this morning? the FB whistleblower was interviewed on television describing how FB pushed political ads for right wing, for anti-vaxxing, how instagram harms adolescents and they know it but prefer profit etc.

Then after stock went down, the hack took place.  I think that's the timeline, but I have no fb involvement at all.

All ye with fb accounts -- all your stuff iz now bean sold on our innernez baze!

And now google and amazon reporting outages too.

 

[IheartIheartTesla]

Does anyone think Sinama and Manchin would vote for a reconciliation-based debt limit raising, or will they use it as 'leverage' to get something out of the other reconciliation bill?

[DMC]

Just now, IheartIheartTesla said:

Does anyone think Sinama and Manchin would vote for a reconciliation-based debt limit raising, or will they use it as 'leverage' to get something out of the other reconciliation bill?

No I don't think they'll use it as leverage.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

4 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Responding to your FB question right previous to reaching end point in previous thread:

I think the reason the FB stock plunged was that last night - this morning? the FB whistleblower was interviewed on television describing how FB pushed political ads for right wing, for anti-vaxxing, how instagram harms adolescents and they know it but prefer profit etc.

Then after stock went down, the hack took place.  I think that's the timeline, but I have no fb involvement at all.

All ye with fb accounts -- all your stuff iz now bean sold on our innernez baze!

And now google and amazon reporting outages too.

 

All FB has from me are two outdated email addresses and my name.

[Mlle. Zabzie]

True or false: the basic status of Congressional negotiations among Democrats right now is an ongoing simulation of the Prisoner's Dilemma.

[Kalbear]

3 minutes ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

True or false: the basic status of Congressional negotiations among Democrats right now is an ongoing simulation of the Prisoner's Dilemma.

False. At least one of the prisoners does not have particular value in selling out.

To me, it's like this: Sinema and Manchin would like to get their bill passed, but their matrix priority is sole bill passed -> nothing -> both bills passed. For Biden, if he gets nothing, that is a massive massive loss, and for progressives, if they get the bipartisan bill passed but nothing else, that's also a massive loss. Manchin does not have that 'massive loss' part to him. And Sinema really should be feeling said massive loss - because she is almost certain to lose her reelection if nothing gets passed, and likely to lose a primary challenge at this point - but for whatever reason she is not behaving that way. 

Ultimately it's not a prisoner's dilemma because rational actors are assumed in that dilemma, and that's completely not true here.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

7 minutes ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

True or false: the basic status of Congressional negotiations among Democrats right now is an ongoing simulation of the Prisoner's Dilemma.

Except the factions in Congress can and should communicate with each other.

[mormont]

Just musing aloud here, but I've always just accepted the low turnout in US elections as a manifestation of the feckless, easily bored American public. But looking at the last few threads, I'm rethinking my stance. Debt ceilings. Reconciliation. Appeals to the Parliamentarian. Arguments about the timing of procedural motions to move the debate out of committee, for pity's sake. It's this sort of pointless procedural arcana that causes voters to just give up. Heck, I've been in student politics all my life and I'm bored rigid reading this stuff.

Have you folks ever thought about instituting a system of government instead of this bizzare mess?

[Kalbear]

3 minutes ago, mormont said:

Just musing aloud here, but I've always just accepted the low turnout in US elections as a manifestation of the feckless, easily bored American public. But looking at the last few threads, I'm rethinking my stance. Debt ceilings. Reconciliation. Appeals to the Parliamentarian. Arguments about the timing of procedural motions to move the debate out of committee, for pity's sake. It's this sort of pointless procedural arcana that causes voters to just give up. Heck, I've been in student politics all my life and I'm bored rigid reading this stuff.

Have you folks ever thought about instituting a system of government instead of this bizzare mess?

Sure, but then we'd have to allow women and minorities to vote, and that just won't do

[Fez]

5 minutes ago, mormont said:

Just musing aloud here, but I've always just accepted the low turnout in US elections as a manifestation of the feckless, easily bored American public. But looking at the last few threads, I'm rethinking my stance. Debt ceilings. Reconciliation. Appeals to the Parliamentarian. Arguments about the timing of procedural motions to move the debate out of committee, for pity's sake. It's this sort of pointless procedural arcana that causes voters to just give up. Heck, I've been in student politics all my life and I'm bored rigid reading this stuff.

Have you folks ever thought about instituting a system of government instead of this bizzare mess?

Disagree. The US system has too many veto points for sure, and that slows things down; but that's a function being a presidential rather than parliamentary system. And in term of the actual mechanics of government, the US is not particularly arcane compared to other democracies. The difference is that we have a media that breathlessly covers every step, and a minority determined to drag out every step.

But if you look at the procedures involved in say, the UK, it's just as complex, with all the different committee reports and readings and so on. It's just that no one every talks about it because it's almost always never in question that if the government wants to push a bill forward it'll pass. But the mess that occurred in September/October 2019 when the opposition had a majority (sort of) over the government in the House of Commons is basically every single day in the US Congress.

[SpaceChampion]

In addition to Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp, people are saying Gmail, Hotmail, Telegram are having issues.

Which is leading to people making jokes about the only social media platform surviving being Parler

 

[DMC]

24 minutes ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

True or false: the basic status of Congressional negotiations among Democrats right now is an ongoing simulation of the Prisoner's Dilemma.

Eh, Kal raises a good point that the preferences of the actors aren't quite aligned with the traditional PD - plus there's more than two actors, I don't think you could boil it down to less than three (Manchema, progressives, president/leadership/rest of the party).  Scot's also right at the conceptual level that the PD assumes no communication between the players, hopefully that's not the case!  (Although, granted, sometimes it seems it is.)

Neither here nor there, but research has employed rational choice models as the theoretical basis to explain congressional behavior, but it's more complex than the PD.  The seminal example would be Krehbiel's pivotal politics:

Quote

The Model

The model assumes that all players can be arrayed along a unidimensional policy space. Parties are not a party of the model, and the status quo is assumed to be exognously given. Furthermore, the game is not repeated (formally).

Players: The most important "pivotal players" are the median member of Congress (not clear which house), the (Senate) filibuster pivot, the veto override pivot, and the president. Although there could be a veto override pivot and a filibuster pivot on either side of the median pivot, the only relevant players are the veto override pivot on the same ideological side as the president and the filibuster on the opposite side.

Sequence of play: Intuitively, it works something like this. The median pivot moves first, choosing either a new policy or the status quo. The filibuster pivot then decides whether to sustain or block a filibuster attempt. Next, the president decides whether to veto. If he signs the bill, the game ends; otherwise, the veto override pivot decides whether to override the veto. Gridlock can occur at any stage; the places where gridlock can be broken are (1) if the president signs the bill or (2) if the veto override chooses to override the veto.

Equilibria: The figure on pg 35 summarizes the general theory. Assuming the president is to the right of Congress, then you have preferences ordered as F - M - V - P. (Note that the veto override pivot and the president might be reversed; if so, substitute "P" for "V" in the discussion below.) As shown in figure 35:

If the status quo is far to the left of F, then the outcome is M (since everybody prefers M to the status quo)

If the status quo is to the left of F but closer to F than M is, then the outcome gets closer to F (b/c M has to make concessions to get F to go along).

If the status quo is between F and V, then you are in the gridlock range and policy will not be changed:

If the status quo is at F, then F uses his "veto power" to prevent any change at all.

Similarly, if the status quo is at M, then M refuses to change things.

Finally, if the status quo is at V, then V refuses to override any vetoes.

As the status quo moves to the right of V, then policy can move again, and it will slowly move back towards M.

Once the status quo is as far from V (to the right) as M is (to the left), M will be the outcome. For any status quo to the right of this point, M is the outcome.

 

[Fez]

12 minutes ago, SpaceChampion said:

In addition to Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp, people are saying Gmail, Hotmail, Telegram are having issues.

Other sites might coincidently be having issues, but it is FB and the sites it owns that are specifically fucked. Those domains straight up don't exist right now (nor do any of FB's internal systems like building security apparently) because the DNS A records are gone. They're trying to physically reset everything...

but there are a lot of challenges to that. And if it turns out this was malicious instead of an accident, who know's what that malicious actor might be up to while everything is down.

[Zorral]

This is the latest info, it seems:

Quote

 

Updated October 4, 2021 at 4:12 PM ET
Facebook and its Instagram and WhatsApp platforms suffered a worldwide outage that has lasting more than three hours on Monday. Facebook's internal systems used by employees also went down. Service has not yet been restored.

The company did not say what might be causing the outage, which began around 11:40 ET. Websites and apps often suffer outages of varying size and duration, but hours-long global disruptions are rare.

"This is epic," said Doug Madory, director of internet analysis for Kentik Inc. The last major internet outage, which knocked many of the world's top websites offline in June, lasted less than an hour. The stricken content delivery company in that case, Fastly, blamed it on a software but triggered by a customer who changed a setting.

Facebook's only public comment so far was a tweet in which it acknowledged that "some people are having trouble accessing (the) Facebook app" and that it was working on restoring access. Regarding the internal failures, Instagram head Adam Mosseri tweeted that it feels like a "snow day."

So many people are reliant on Facebook, WhatsApp or Instagram as a primary mode of communication that losing access for so long can make them vulnerable to criminals taking advantage of the outage, said Rachel Tobac, a hacker and CEO of SocialProof Security.

"They don't know how to contact the people in their lives without it," she said. "They're more susceptible to social engineering because they're so desperate to communicate." Tobac said during previous outages, some people have received emails promising to restore their social media account by clicking on a malicious link that can expose their personal data.

The cause of the outage remains unclear. Malory said it appears that Facebook withdrew "authoritative DNS routes" that let the rest of the internet communicate with its properties.

Such routes are part of the internet's Domain Name System, a key structure that determines where internet traffic needs to go. DNS translates an address like "facebook.com" to an IP address like 123.45.67.890. If Facebook's DNS records disappeared, apps and web addresses would be unable to locate it.

Jake Williams, chief technical officer of the cybersecurity firm BreachQuest, said that while foul play cannot be completely ruled out, chances were good that the outage is "an operational issue" caused by human error.

Madory said there was no sign that anyone but Facebook was responsible and discounted the possibility that another major internet player, such as a telecom company, might have inadvertently rewritten major routing tables that affect Facebook. "No one else announced these routes," said Madory.

Facebook is going through a separate major crisis after whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager, provided The Wall Street Journal with internal documents that exposed the company's awareness of harms caused by of its products and decisions. Haugen went public on "60 Minutes" on Sunday and is scheduled to testify before a Senate subcommittee on Tuesday.

Haugen had also anonymously filed complaints with federal law enforcement alleging that Facebook's own research shows how it magnifies hate and misinformation, leads to increased polarization and that Instagram, specifically, can harm teenage girls' mental health.

The Journal's stories, called "The Facebook Files," painted a picture of a company focused on growth and its own interests over the public good. Facebook has tried to play down the research. Nick Clegg, the company's vice president of policy and public affairs, wrote to Facebook employees in a memo Friday that "social media has had a big impact on society in recent years, and Facebook is often a place where much of this debate plays out."

Twitter, meanwhile, chimed in from the company's main Twitter account, posting "hello literally everyone" as jokes and memes about the Facebook outage flooded the platform. Later, as an unverified screenshot suggesting that the facebook.com address was for sale circulated, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted, "how much?"

NPR editor's note: This story was reported by The Associated Press and posted online by NPR. Facebook is among NPR's financial supporters.

 

 

[ThinkerX]

starting to wonder here...

 

okay, we have a reconciliation bill that is 'stuck'  - progressives want it to be 3.5 trillion, moderates want 1.5 trillion.  More, this stalemate is holding up the bipartisan bill.

Next we have the biannual debt ceiling crisis, with the republicans being jerks and a financial crisis in the wings.

Presumably, a valid solution to the debt ceiling crisis would be a *second* reconciliation bill, focused on just that - raising the debt ceiling.  Presumably, all of the democrats and perhaps a few stray republicans would vote for such.  

What I am wondering, though...

...is maybe, just maybe...a few of the provisions rejected by moderates in the first reconciliation bill could be tacked into the second reconciliation bill, the one with the primary goal of raising the debt ceiling.  Not talking trillions...maybe a few hundred billion.  

[Kalbear]

28 minutes ago, Fez said:

Disagree. The US system has too many veto points for sure, and that slows things down; but that's a function being a presidential rather than parliamentary system. And in term of the actual mechanics of government, the US is not particularly arcane compared to other democracies. The difference is that we have a media that breathlessly covers every step, and a minority determined to drag out every step.

No, we are completely and totally fucked. Completely disagree.

- We have the Electoral College system, which gives points based on statehood and little else. This alone makes it significantly more fucked than like 99% of all other systems out there.

- We have the senate, which combines with the above.

- we have the weird veto rules

- we have the completely self-owning filibuster

 

28 minutes ago, Fez said:

But if you look at the procedures involved in say, the UK, it's just as complex, with all the different committee reports and readings and so on. It's just that no one every talks about it because it's almost always never in question that if the government wants to push a bill forward it'll pass.

That's because they have majority governments formed automatically. The idea that a majority government couldn't pass bills the majority wants is kind of the point of majority governments.

 

[Maltaran]

6 minutes ago, Kaligator said:

 

That's because they have majority governments formed automatically. The idea that a majority government couldn't pass bills the majority wants is kind of the point of majority governments.

 

Also, if for some reason the government wants to pass a popular bill but Parliament is blocking it they can call an early election - no fixed terms here.