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.

 

[Sissy Galvez]

I'm sure it's covered somewhere in this thread, but she got upset about WaPo fact checking her about a month and a half ago:

AOC spent yesterday fighting with the Washington Post's fact-checker, today she (sort of) apologized

"She's wrong. Don't always believe what you see on Twitter."

hotair.com

She’s a charlatan, a snake oil salesman. This is all for show to give her popularity and feed her narcissism.

All of this is classic leftist playbook to discredit someone or facts that hurt their fee fees or their “known truths”.

 

[Maxliam]

I'm sure it's covered somewhere in this thread, but she got upset about WaPo fact checking her about a month and a half ago:

AOC spent yesterday fighting with the Washington Post's fact-checker, today she (sort of) apologized

"She's wrong. Don't always believe what you see on Twitter."

hotair.com

As someone who is under the age of 50 she should realize at this point that while you can bury stuff you said on the net when you're not really famous, when you're a member of the House, your every fucking word is being recorded and analyzed by everyone. It'll never go away. This isn't like the old media where they stop running stories on it and that's it. This is the day and age of the fucking Internet with spergs like us who archive everything.

 

[ObeseScreamingBlackMan]

A screeching autistic meltdown when someone disagrees with her on the interwebs?

Yep, she's the true voice of millenials in our government.

 

[NQ 952]

I can't believe that I have to take the side of Wells Fargo - a company whose executives I want to see executed in public - because this bitch is so dumb, but here we are.

 

[AlexJonesGotMePregnant]

I think it's just an excellent example as to how much of a brainless Socialist she really is. The premise of her entire argument is that Wells Fargo run and control everything because they finance activity through loans. She seems to think that the U.S. is already being run under a centralized control by the banks who "really" control everything, so she's projecting the Socialist model of centralized control onto the entire banking industry because it's the only model she even understands, so she wants to replace the banks with people like herself.

It's like saying that a bank should be held responsible for damages if someone took out a loan for a car and then got into an accident.

It just goes to show even further how poorly she understands finance. Generally we want our financial institutions to be neutral; once banks and financing technologies become politicized from all the moralfagging then elitist/governmental control becomes all the easier. People ignored a lot of the youtube content control that's been ramping up but the patreon and paypal deplatforming woke a lot of the middle class up to just how deep the progressive control has gotten. Unfortunately, statements like this that AOC has made only show just how badly her and her ilk want that control.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

So here's a field report for someone I know who is a big supporter of cortez (Well sort of, the goalposts shifted around a bit)

They were talking about how this green new deal is great and going to fix... something to do with homeless people? Somehow?

I said "Well too bad it costs more money than exists, and is so fucking stupid her(cortez's) own party called the republicans calling for a vote on it a 'trap'".

This person first claimed I was wrong, there was no green new deal resolution proposed to congress, it had nothing to do with cortez, and the republicans were trying to trick the democrats by having them vote on it(After first claiming no such statement was made).

So I pulled up various articles showing the factual basis for my opinion.

This person just shifted around, impossible to nail down on anything specific, as I got a monologue between every statement that touched on every single liberal talking point ever (Seriously, kids in cages came up).

This person has previously told me I'm too much of a stickler about climate change, because when people talk about it they just mean environmentalism in general. They like the green new deal, not because of any element of it (They knew nothing about it) but because it sounded good. They like cortez because she's a woman who a lot of people criticize a lot. They hated Obama putting kids in cages, but since he was black obviously most of the criticism of him was just racism...

This is a person I respect, although clearly we don't see eye to eye on politics, and honestly they're usually a lot better than the typical screaming twitter liberal. But that's what opposition to cortez, the green new deal, climate change initiatives, whatever, all have to go up against. Not the thing itself, but the random shit that thing symbolizes to the people who claim to support it.

 

[AlexJonesGotMePregnant]

So here's a field report for someone I know who is a big supporter of cortez (Well sort of, the goalposts shifted around a bit)

They were talking about how this green new deal is great and going to fix... something to do with homeless people? Somehow?

I said "Well too bad it costs more money than exists, and is so fucking stupid her(cortez's) own party called the republicans calling for a vote on it a 'trap'".

This person first claimed I was wrong, there was no green new deal resolution proposed to congress, it had nothing to do with cortez, and the republicans were trying to trick the democrats by having them vote on it(After first claiming no such statement was made).

So I pulled up various articles showing the factual basis for my opinion.

This person just shifted around, impossible to nail down on anything specific, as I got a monologue between every statement that touched on every single liberal talking point ever (Seriously, kids in cages came up).

This person has previously told me I'm too much of a stickler about climate change, because when people talk about it they just mean environmentalism in general. They like the green new deal, not because of any element of it (They knew nothing about it) but because it sounded good. They like cortez because she's a woman who a lot of people criticize a lot. They hated Obama putting kids in cages, but since he was black obviously most of the criticism of him was just racism...

This is a person I respect, although clearly we don't see eye to eye on politics, and honestly they're usually a lot better than the typical screaming twitter liberal. But that's what opposition to cortez, the green new deal, climate change initiatives, whatever, all have to go up against. Not the thing itself, but the random shit that thing symbolizes to the people who claim to support it.

I used to be a big democratic supporter and it was conversations where i'd find myself slipping all over the place trying to keep my good feelings about an issue/candidate tied to reality that had me start reconsidering. AOC might be emboldening a lot of the loonier, never-gonna-logic-ever progressives but she'll probably end up turning a good number of young, naive bernie-esque progressives back into classic liberals. All the more reason the DNC can't have her eating up too much spotlight as they need the rabid crazies to do all the election gruntwork.

 

[BubbleButt]

In every candid picture I've seen of AOC she looks so fucking upset and angry. Just an ambulatory gravity well of misery.

 

[Super-Chevy454]

AOC new green deal didn't go well with the AFL-CIO union. https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...ory.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.362dcdbc7bc9 ( http://archive.is/R6VpV )

AFL-CIO criticizes Green New Deal, calling it ‘not achievable or realistic’
By Colby Itkowitz and
Dino Grandoni
March 12 at 3:45 PM

The AFL-CIO, the national arm for U.S. labor unions, offered a critical assessment of the Green New Deal, warning that the ambitious plan to combat climate change could adversely affect U.S. workers.
In a letter last week to Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), the lawmakers who introduced a resolution last month detailing the key components of their plan, the AFL-CIO said it could not support a proposal that did not address their concerns.
“We will not stand by and allow threats to our members’ jobs and their families’ standard of living go unanswered,” wrote Cecil Roberts, president of the United Mine Workers of America, and Lonnie Stephenson, president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.
The Green New Deal resolution, as proposed by Markey and Ocasio-Cortez, calls for the federal government to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions with a “fair and just transition” for all communities and workers, including by creating millions of high-wage jobs, health care and housing for all, a sustainable environment and enormous infrastructure investments.
The proposal would make sweeping changes and expand the government’s reach into the economy, and it almost certainly would require tax increases or large-scale deficit spending.

Styx vlog about the schism between the AFL-CIO and AOC.

 

[TowinKarz]

You have to remember, what this woman is doing is not thoughtful, reasoned dissent or discourse. It is verbal tweeting from congress.

In much the manner that SJWs are abhorred when their methods fail in court, due to having to actually prove things, instead of just wail about how triggered they are, they similarly don't understand that being in a legislature also has rules.

 

[George Floyd Sneed]

I know a couple of green new deal supporters and they don’t know shit about how it will work but the only reason why it is being held back is evil greedy corporations and the solution is as simple as slapping a couple of solar panels on everything.

 

[Maxliam]

I know a couple of green new deal supporters and they don’t know shit about how it will work but the only reason why it is being held back is evil greedy corporations and the solution is as simple as slapping a couple of solar panels on everything.

I mean for individual homes it wouldn't hurt to have solar power or you know a windmill that can help with energy but honestly that stuff is supplementary stuff. Unless you are ready to really curtail your electric use, solar and wind for individual homes isn't going to power as much as you'd think.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

I mean for individual homes it wouldn't hurt to have solar power or you know a windmill that can help with energy but honestly that stuff is supplementary stuff. Unless you are ready to really curtail your electric use, solar and wind for individual homes isn't going to power as much as you'd think.

As a supplement it's not a bad idea, though it is expensive and not feasible everywhere. EEVblog did a video about cost and how things have worked out for him after a 5 year period, he's living in Australia so plenty of sun there and after five years he still didn't break even.

 

[Jigglyjogglers]

I mean for individual homes it wouldn't hurt to have solar power or you know a windmill that can help with energy but honestly that stuff is supplementary stuff. Unless you are ready to really curtail your electric use, solar and wind for individual homes isn't going to power as much as you'd think.

Wind and solar have been in general so massively overhyped by environmentalists that they sincerely believe that they're more energy efficient than nuclear but with zero side effects ever, but that they're not used because evil capitalist Big Energy is... I don't know, sucking the magic out of the solar panels or whatever.

I'm curious how they'd explain why socialist countries where the power grid is wholly owned and operated by the government are constantly having brown/blackouts, but I'm sure that's the CIA's fault or something.

 

[IV 445]

Wind and solar have been in general so massively overhyped by environmentalists that they sincerely believe that they're more energy efficient than nuclear but with zero side effects ever, but that they're not used because evil capitalist Big Energy is... I don't know, sucking the magic out of the solar panels or whatever.

I'm curious how they'd explain why socialist countries where the power grid is wholly owned and operated by the government are constantly having brown/blackouts, but I'm sure that's the CIA's fault or something.

If you guys know me for 1 minute you know I love animals. That’s why I hate windmills and I’d never own a wind farm. Imagine having to clean up all the bisected and guillotine’d birdies. Even Bald Eagles.

Plus solar panels? Here is Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California on that: "If we cannot put solar power plants in the Mojave desert, I don't know where the hell we can put it,"

Another pull quote. “It would destroy the entire Mojave Desert ecosystem,"

Feinstein seeks block solar power from desert land

(AP) -- California's Mojave Desert may seem ideally suited for solar energy production, but concern over what several proposed projects might do to the aesthetics of the region and its tortoise population is setting up a potential clash between conservationists and companies seeking to develop...

phys.org

It’s old but it shows how little has changed.

 

[queue-anon]

I know a couple of green new deal supporters and they don’t know shit about how it will work but the only reason why it is being held back is evil greedy corporations and the solution is as simple as slapping a couple of solar panels on everything.

It's super fun explaining to SJWs who are so excited about biofuels that methane (a byproduct of biofuels) is also a greenhouse gas. It's even more fun when they express outrage over biofuels not gaining more traction, like it's the eebbil oil companies preventing it and not the tech, the cost, the energy investment, or the fact that biofuels also pollute the environment.

As a supplement it's not a bad idea, though it is expensive and not feasible everywhere. EEVblog did a video about cost and how things have worked out for him after a 5 year period, he's living in Australia so plenty of sun there and after five years he still didn't break even.

A major problem is still batteries. I haven't looked that much into the tech myself, but much better educated people than I have said that there really aren't enough rare metals to build enough solar panels and batteries to maintain current levels of energy usage (and that's with more than a billion humans still living with very little access to electricity).

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

It's super fun explaining to SJWs who are so excited about biofuels that methane (a byproduct of biofuels) is also a greenhouse gas. It's even more fun when they express outrage over biofuels not gaining more traction, like it's the eebbil oil companies preventing it and not the tech, the cost, the energy investment, or the fact that biofuels also pollute the environment.



A major problem is still batteries. I haven't looked that much into the tech myself, but much better educated people than I have said that there really aren't enough rare metals to build enough solar panels and batteries to maintain current levels of energy usage (and that's with more than a billion humans still living with very little access to electricity).

There's also the hand-wringing of growing a shit ton of food and turning it into bio-diesel instead of shipping it to Africa, unless they don't care about that aspect anymore.

China is sitting on massive rare earth deposits that they're saving for a rainy day, a day where they can essentially control the market. But even if enough batteries are built they would go bad eventually and need replacing, while the rare earth metals could be recovered from them recycling lithium batteries is not an entirely solved problem, there's a lot of waste.

“The phones may be smart, but the system is certainly not sustainable. All the electronic waste we discarded in 2014 was worth $52 billion,” he says. “It contained 300 tonnes of gold and significant amounts of silver and palladium. To get these rare minerals and metals so that all our phone, car and toothbrush batteries work smartly, many poor people are paying a terrible cost, as is the environment. We keep a smartphone or tablet on average for just 26 months and then we throw it away, battery and all.”

IN DEPTH: Lithium Battery Recycling - The Clean Energy Clean Up

With their increasing use by the automotive industry, the need to improve the recycling of lithium-ion batteries is becoming critical.

waste-management-world.com

 

[millais]

I mean for individual homes it wouldn't hurt to have solar power or you know a windmill that can help with energy but honestly that stuff is supplementary stuff. Unless you are ready to really curtail your electric use, solar and wind for individual homes isn't going to power as much as you'd think.

and god help you if it hails and all your solar panels get damaged and you have to replace them all

 

[Stoneheart]

and god help you if it hails and all your solar panels get damaged and you have to replace them all

Thats why you should dry and burn your own shit for heat. Its free Energie!

 

[queue-anon]

I can't even figure out what "recreate the challenger mission" means. Does she mean the launch? The explosion? The deaths? Her weird attempts to seem human and relatable are getting increasingly bizarre; I can't tell if her confusion is just out-of-touch champagne socialism or if she is legitimately a lizard person who was released into the public a few years too early.

I thought a Girl Scout troop recreating that mission was odd, so I looked up details about the Challenger, and something I did not know was that the Challenger was the shuttle used for Sally Ride's mission, so I'm hoping that's what AOC is referring to.