US "The Squad" Megathread - Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Talib Derangement Syndrome

I honestly only know about American politics from what I read on the Internet but since we all love shitting on leftists I figured we'd get a kick out of this. Also it's trending on Twitter so you know it's important.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...irect=on&noredirect=on&utm_term=.960552c9ba53

NEW YORK — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old political novice running on a low budget and an unabashedly liberal platform, upset longtime U.S. Rep. Joseph Crowley on Tuesday in the Democratic congressional primary in New York.

The surprise victory by the community organizer in a district that includes parts of the Bronx and Queens came after an energetic, grassroots campaign that mustered more than enough support in a low-turnout race that many had expected to be an easy win for Crowley, a member of the Democratic House leadership.

“The community is ready for a movement of economic and social justice. That is what we tried to deliver,” said Ocasio-Cortez, who has never held elected office and whose candidacy attracted only modest media attention.

She told The Associated Press after her victory that she didn’t have enough money to do polling in the race, but felt in her gut that her message had a chance to connect.

“I live in this community. I organized in this community. I felt the absence of the incumbent. I knew he didn’t have a strong presence,” she said.

Crowley has been in Congress since 1999 and hadn’t faced an opponent in a primary election since 2004, when Ocasio-Cortez was just a teenager. He was considered a candidate to become the next House speaker if Democrats win the majority.

“It’s not about me,” Crowley, 56, told his supporters at a campaign party following his loss. “It’s about America. I want nothing but the best for Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. I want her to be victorious.”

He later played guitar with a band at the election night gathering, and dedicated the first song, Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run,” to Ocasio-Cortez.

Crowley represents New York’s 14th Congressional District, where he is also the leader of the Queens Democratic party.

Ocasio-Cortez was outspent by an 18-1 margin during her race but won the endorsement of some influential groups on the party’s far left, including MoveOn, as well as the actress Cynthia Nixon, who is running for governor. She defeated Crowley by 15 percentage points.

Born in the Bronx to a mother from Puerto Rico and a father who died in 2008, Ocasio-Cortez said she decided to challenge Crowley to push a more progressive stance on economic and other issues.

She attended Boston University, where she earned degrees in economics and international relations, and also spent time working in the office of the late U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy.

After graduating, she returned to the Bronx where she became a community organizer. In the 2016 presidential campaign she worked for U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Among her issues is expanding the Medicare program to people of all ages and abolishing Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. She recently went to Tornillo, Texas, to protest against policies that have separated parents from their children at the southern U.S. border.

Ocasio-Cortez gained some internet attention for a campaign video called “The Courage to Change,” a two-minute spot for which she wrote the script and featured footage from her own home.

Crowley is chair of the House Democratic Caucus, the fourth-highest ranking position in Democratic leadership in that chamber of Congress.

His loss drew the attention of President Donald Trump.

“Wow! Big Trump Hater Congressman Joe Crowley, who many expected was going to take Nancy Pelosi’s place, just LOST his primary election. In other words, he’s out! That is a big one that nobody saw happening. Perhaps he should have been nicer, and more respectful, to his President!” he tweeted.

The Republican candidate for the office, Anthony Pappas, is running unopposed and had no primary. Pappas teaches economics at St. John’s University.

She was a Bernie campaigner, is supported by BLM, and wants to abolish Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. Also this was in a solid-blue Congressional District so you know she's a shoo-in for next Congress.

But hey, we did get to see Trump laugh at Crowley on Twitter.

 

[Sīn the Moon Daddy]

AOC: the peak millennial.

In a way she really is.

We might not quite be ready, maybe we shouldn't just skip straight from boomers to millennials. Generation X might not get cucked out of their chance to rule after all.

 

[bippu_as_fuck_ls400]

The Simpsons Busta Rhymes already did it.

BUSTA RHYMES: I DIDN'T MEAN APOCALYPSE WOULD BE 'LITERAL'
'THE WORLD AS WE KNEW IT DID COME TO AN END IN 2001 ... SO MY MATH WAS CORRECT,' BUS TELLS MTV NEWS HOURS BEFORE FAILED DOOMSDAY.


ROB MARKMAN12/21/2012

OK, so the world didn't end on December 21 (Friday) as the Mayans predicted, but Busta Rhymes insists that his apocalyptic calculations were still correct.

On his 1996 solo debut album, The Coming, Busta warned "there's only five years left" during the fade-out to his single "Everything Remains Raw." From that moment, hip-hop fans started a doomsday countdown based off the Dungeon Dragon's prophecy. Well, five years came and went and we're still here, and we even survived the Mayan apocalypse, but Bussa Bus says it was the fans that got it all wrong — and he was actually right.

"This is what people misinterpret: I never said the world was gonna end in a literal sense, even though that's the way I always gave it up in the music and through the concepts of my albums," Busta told MTV News when we caught up with him on Thursday night.

"When I put out 'Everything Remains Raw' in '96, five years after that was 2001 and, in 2001, the world that we knew changed because of the Twin Towers," he explained of the events of September 11.

Busta pointed to the 9/11 terrorist attacks as proof that a figurative end-of-the-world scenario did in fact happen as he'd predicted. "In America, the laws changed, a whole lot of infrastructure with the laws and our civil liberties being taken from us was actually being put in effect in a literal way," he continued. "So the world as we knew it did come to an end in 2001, when that situation transpired, so my math was correct."

Busta Rhymes: I Didn't Mean Apocalypse Would Be 'Literal' - MTV

archived 13 May 2019 01:52:24 UTC

archive.fo

 

[Bush did USS Maine]

But who gives a fuck about Kosovo anyway?

You're absolutely right but this hinges on people deciding to stop being absolute opportunistic exceptional individuals who live in the now and solely for the EPIC PWN. I wouldn't go so far as to call your approach pie-in-the-sky but I'm not optimistic.

Well, I'm glad we agree. I can't say I'm optimistic either.

You're talking about the kind of person who explicitly doesn't have a problem with their own tactics until they're used against themselves.



Both are extraordinary events, and it's not exactly feasible to expect every Tom, Dick, and Harry who has that shit happen to them to be able to finance a legal battle even if they were to have what happened to Vic or the CC kids happen to them.

I agree with your point regarding lawsuits. These kind of legal actions are definitely difficult to finance, and it takes the right conditions for them to even be workable in the first place. Honestly, I kind of feel they're the hail mary from your one yard line at the end of the game. I mean, maybe it's just the effect of social media amplifying the voices of the loudest, but it seems to me that there are quite a few people willing to ruin the lives of people they've never even met, for political or even nonpolitical reasons. I first really noticed it with the attack on Brendan Eich for funding an anti-gay marriage thing, but I've seen it repeated over and over with others. Everything from some random woman at the Tomb of the Unknown Solider to the guy who taught his girlfriend's pug to do a Nazi salute to Justice Kavanaugh. And a lawsuit certainly can't hit all these people involved, absolute best case scenario you can only hit some of the organizers. Most people can fire off their Twitter post, fuck someone over, and continue their life completely without consequence - just waiting for the next time some outrage brigade needs their hot take. I doubt most people who "cared" about any of those incidents even remember them today. They almost certainly would never even hear the results of some lawsuit months later.

And you're certainly right that these people don't have a problem with these tactics until the tactics that are used against them. As I said earlier, I definitely get the "use their tactics against them" mentality, and I don't even necessarily dispute the effectiveness of that strategy in theory. I just think that if that's what you want to do, it's not effective for those with more conservative or libertarian views if you use out of context or intentionally twisted statements as a line of attack. The game is rigged against us. Even the best lines of attack will be downplayed or ignored. The worst ones just damage your credibility while legitimizing misleading attacks against you.

I mean, ultimately my main objection with the GOP's statement here is that there is a clear context to this statement, and I'm irritated when people ignore context - deliberately or not. It's either ignorance or feigned outrage. I've seen enough people lacking in any sort of ability to discern contextual clues and enough people acting in bad faith to virtue signal that either is possible. I'm just a guy on the internet venting about it, knowing I can't really affect anything.

 

[Unog]

And you're certainly right that these people don't have a problem with these tactics until the tactics that are used against them. As I said earlier, I definitely get the "use their tactics against them" mentality, and I don't even necessarily dispute the effectiveness of that strategy in theory. I just think that if that's what you want to do, it's not effective for those with more conservative or libertarian views if you use out of context or intentionally twisted statements as a line of attack. The game is rigged against us. Even the best lines of attack will be downplayed or ignored. The worst ones just damage your credibility while legitimizing misleading attacks against you.

You'll find that as this goes on, an increasing amount of people on the right are throwing their hands up in the air and going "fuck it, it works for them, it can work for us". When it comes to the idea that it's legitimizing misleading attacks against you, I think it's a complete non-starter. It's like saying hitting the guy who's beating you over the head with a baseball bat is legitimizing his continued usage of said bat against your noggin - it just doesn't even matter if they're "legitimized" in doing it or not, they're going to do it anyway, and didn't give a shit when they started to boot.

I mean, ultimately my main objection with the GOP's statement here is that there is a clear context to this statement, and I'm irritated when people ignore context - deliberately or not. It's either ignorance or feigned outrage. I've seen enough people lacking in any sort of ability to discern contextual clues and enough people acting in bad faith to virtue signal that either is possible.

I can tell you first-hand that I used to feel the same way. I don't anymore. Take that however you will.

 

[SilkGnut]

Israel is kind of a shitty ally and keeps trying to get us to start their wars for them, it's just unfortunate that pretty much every other country in the region are even worse prospective allies.

They are a wonderful ally. America continues to assist them and nothing particularly unfortunate happens to the leaders of the country.

Win win I would say.

 

[Compositesludge]

You'll find that as this goes on, an increasing amount of people on the right are throwing their hands up in the air and going "fuck it, it works for them, it can work for us". When it comes to the idea that it's legitimizing misleading attacks against you, I think it's a complete non-starter. It's like saying hitting the guy who's beating you over the head with a baseball bat is legitimizing his continued usage of said bat against your noggin - it just doesn't even matter if they're "legitimized" in doing it or not, they're going to do it anyway, and didn't give a shit when they started to boot.

I can tell you first-hand that I used to feel the same way. I don't anymore. Take that however you will.

I suppose it just all comes down to a matter of perspective. I'd never say that somebody doesn't have the right to feel frustrated, and ultimately their actions are their own responsibility, but I personally don't want to just sling dirty tricks back at people. There has to be something to differentiate their perspective from ours (or mine, if ascribing my views to a larger swath of the population is unbecoming) beyond just the name of the political ideology we purportedly ascribe to. How can a better society come if all of us act only as people whacking each other with baseball bats? I think you have to take a stand somewhere. Rashida Tlaib's wording was exceptionally awkward and frankly weird, but I can't justify ascribing fake malice to her words.

 

[Sīn the Moon Daddy]

Maybe her words were taken out of context and twisted.

You're absolutely right but this hinges on people deciding to stop being absolute opportunistic exceptional individuals who live in the now and solely for the EPIC PWN. I wouldn't go so far as to call your approach pie-in-the-sky but I'm not optimistic.

Fuck the media

 

[Arcturus]

A Palestinian who hates Jews. Shocking. I'm enjoying this part of the cultural enrichment. Just because it's great watching all of this blow up in people's faces. In many other places, hating the neighboring countries and the filth that resides in them is practically a national pastime. The U.S. was better when we were allowed (and often encouraged) to hate other countries. ):

 

[Ineedahero]

The DNC needs to hire someone to just slap Tlaib every time she opens her mouth about Jews.

 

[AnonAutismo]

Israel is kind of a shitty ally and keeps trying to get us to start their wars for them, it's just unfortunate that pretty much every other country in the region are even worse prospective allies.

Sometimes the only winning move is not to play.

 

[Marissa Moira]

The DNC needs to hire someone to just slap Tlaib every time she opens her mouth about Jews.

Now you see why islamic countries don't allow their women to walk around unsupervised.

 

[thismanlies]

There’s always kind of a calming feeling, I tell folks, when I think of the Holocaust, and the tragedy of the Holocaust, and the fact that it was my ancestors — Palestinians — who lost their land and some lost their lives, their livelihood, their human dignity, their existence in many ways, have been wiped out, and some people's passports, And, just all of it was in the name of trying to create a safe haven for Jews, post-the Holocaust, post-the tragedy and the horrific persecution of Jews across the world at that time. And, I love the fact that it was my ancestors that provided that, right, in many ways, but they did it in a way that took their human dignity away and it was forced on them.

Let's take the politics out of this. I'm going to assume that she meant to compare the Palestinians losing their property to the Israelis to the Jews losing their property to WW2 era Europe. She would have been better off saying that "it was wrong when the Jews lost their shit back then just like it's wrong that the Palestinians are losing their shit today."

What Talib did was stick her foot in her mouth in a way that would make Dan Schneider's penis shoot off of his body at ballistic speeds.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

Because they're connected to each other, like a hive-mind sharing half a brain, I'll post this from Rashida Tlaib, the first Palestinian-American elected to congress.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/rashida-tlaib-holocaust-calming-feeling-house-gop

Tlaib, the first Palestinian-American woman to be elected to Congress, made the comments while discussing the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians during an appearance on the Yahoo News podcast "Skullduggery."

"There’s always kind of a calming feeling, I tell folks, when I think of the Holocaust, and the tragedy of the Holocaust, and the fact that it was my ancestors — Palestinians — who lost their land and some lost their lives, their livelihood, their human dignity, their existence in many ways, have been wiped out, and some people's passports," Tlaib said on the podcast's most recent episode, published Friday. "And, just all of it was in the name of trying to create a safe haven for Jews, post-the Holocaust, post-the tragedy and the horrific persecution of Jews across the world at that time. And, I love the fact that it was my ancestors that provided that, right, in many ways, but they did it in a way that took their human dignity away and it was forced on them."

 

[rocknrollmartian]

Because they're connected to each other, like a hive-mind sharing half a brain, I'll post this from Rashida Tlaib, the first Palestinian-American elected to congress.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/rashida-tlaib-holocaust-calming-feeling-house-gop


View attachment 756969

I truly don't understand what the fuck she's saying here. Is the "calming feeling" in regard to the Holocaust or in regard to the negative (and I suppose in her mind, similar) effects that the Holocaust and Zionism had on the Palestinians? And how do either of those atrocious things elicit a "calming feeling"? I can't even twist her words since she's spewing so much nonsense.

 

[AnOminous]

What Talib did was stick her foot in her mouth in a way that would make Dan Schneider's penis shoot off of his body at ballistic speeds.

In U.S. politics, particularly in Congress, if you have to think even 10 seconds to figure out what the fuck someone just said about Jews, that someone is getting raped.

 

[Coldgrip]

We're going to find out together. She's on the verge of a meltdown.

How long do you think it'll take? I give it a couple more tweets like that and then boom; she goes off the rails completely.

 

[cuddle striker]

she made perfect sense though? her ancestors gave up shit so Israel could even be there.

the world is gone to shit, anyway.

 

[thismanlies]

Because they're connected to each other, like a hive-mind sharing half a brain, I'll post this from Rashida Tlaib, the first Palestinian-American elected to congress.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/rashida-tlaib-holocaust-calming-feeling-house-gop


View attachment 756969

I'll giver her credit, at least she's not saying "I wouldn't even gas the Jews."

 

[Coldgrip]

I can't wait til the Dems primary Rashida and Rashida turns on them. Oh my god, I can see it now.

We can only hope she attempts to run as a republican. The meltdown she'll have would be extraordinary.

 

[Mr. Zed da Robot Poon Fed]

View attachment 756545

https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1127604746066583552

https://youtube.com/watch?v=oHk8nn0nw18
I have no words for her stupidity.

"I was only pretending to be retarded."