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

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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.
 
Dangit, there's always a catch. Honestly though, it seems like it'd be pretty cool to take part in an urban community garden. Ours keeps getting raided by deer, it'd be nice to not have to worry about those oversized rats.
My garden was always being raided by bunnies. I was pissed that my plants were being eaten but at least they were being eaten by something cute.

Rabbits are known for being stupid but they're just so adorable. I wonder if AOC likes them?

Oh, of course! The academic argument underpinning colonialism is that it's really darn reaching in scope, so the impacts aren't restrained to just financial and power relations, but also to social cohesion and what's considered acceptable or normal within a community. In that sense, it wouldn't be that it was the cauliflower doing it, but what the cauliflower represented as an appendage of a very broad and encapsulating sense of general oppression, that vegetables/fruits more diverse than something like cauliflower simply can't be allowed.


The big problem with this, and I think it's something that she should elaborate on, is what exactly she meant by addressing those colonial legacies with regards to community gardening spaces. I don't think that many folks would be seriously harmed or upset by somebody growing something like Yucca or Dragonfruit, and it doesn't seem like there are many laws restricting or prohibiting the cultivation of those diverse fruits in communal spaces. It almost seems like she's planning on addressing a nonexistent problem. I really want to give her the benefit of the doubt and hope that she clarifies this more in the future, as is, it's just a bit confusing.

You can find people who are big into growing native species. I prefer to grow native, but I'm from an area where that's actually possible because the Pacific NW is a temperate rainforest and you have three or four varieties of everything. But that's kinda the thing, it's a social trend rather than the law.
 
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Hey, no need to get nasty and start calling people AOC fans here. I'm sure composite sludge's handler will be along shortly to clarify what sludge meant by what he said AOC meant.

I know I am a broken record on this, but what in Odin's magnificent beard does community gardening have to do with climate change?
So let me try and riddle this out.

Plants make oxygen, so plants are good. The more we cut down trees and plants the hotter it gets, and that's bad. So therefore planting a community garden will stop climate change by making more clean oxygen and that will keep things cool.

Now I know what you're thinking, "Holy fuck, that's fucking autistic and stupid" but no, no it's not. You see AoC was a bartender once and she once was on some comic book cover beating up the republican party, so she knows what she's talking about.
 
This is a few months old but it is such a great read


"It’s easy to advocate high taxes on successful people if you don’t pay your own tax bills, of course. But I suspect the real lesson is not so much that Ocasio-Cortez is getting rich off of evading the rules, but rather that she is a total failure at anything requiring practical responsibility, attention to detail, and following the law. After failing, she retreated into the gauzy generalizations of socialism. It is so much easier than running a business to appropriate other people’s money -- from the successful ones who do follow the rules and work the 70 hour weeks necessary to make a success of an entrepreneurial venture, juggling the balls, bearing the risk, and ultimately succeeding."

 
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Hey, no need to get nasty and start calling people AOC fans here. I'm sure composite sludge's handler will be along shortly to clarify what sludge meant by what he said AOC meant.

I know I am a broken record on this, but what in Odin's magnificent beard does community gardening have to do with climate change?
So let me try and riddle this out.

Plants make oxygen, so plants are good. The more we cut down trees and plants the hotter it gets, and that's bad. So therefore planting a community garden will stop climate change by making more clean oxygen and that will keep things cool.

Now I know what you're thinking, "Holy fuck, that's fucking autistic and stupid" but no, no it's not. You see AoC was a bartender once and she once was on some comic book cover beating up the republican party, so she knows what she's talking about.

I was going to say that the reasoning I've heard before had something to do with the amount of transportation a lot of foods have to areas and that it reduces the emissions and whatnot if it's closer, but I like @Coldgrip's answer more.

Wonder Woman AOC Variant Cover to Sell For Over $2000 – So Far

There's two ways this can go:

a) Some soyboy DNCbot is going to blow a bunch of Neetbux to get this as the centerpiece of his creepy fetish shrine to Donkey Girl

Or.

b) Some...

No, I was wrong there's only one.
 
It's going to go to some comic book sperg that gives fuck all about politics and just wants it to lord another rare issue over the plebeian sub-dweebs at his local comic book shop. They pay out the ass for shit like this all the time.
 
There's two ways this can go:

a) Some soyboy DNCbot is going to blow a bunch of Neetbux to get this as the centerpiece of his creepy fetish shrine to Donkey Girl

Or.

b) Some...

No, I was wrong there's only one.
I can imagine there’s an ever slight chance some retarded fundie is going to put it through a shredder like that one guy did with the Marylin Monroe Playboy.

But only a slight chance.
 
I can imagine there’s an ever slight chance some exceptional fundie is going to put it through a shredder like that one guy did with the Marylin Monroe Playboy.

But only a slight chance.

Yeah, I considered something like that but I couldn't convince myself it was likely. Maybe her constituents can buy it and pretend she's actually there in her district, the comic would be as much use to them as she is.
 
Oh, of course! The academic argument underpinning colonialism is that it's really darn reaching in scope, so the impacts aren't restrained to just financial and power relations, but also to social cohesion and what's considered acceptable or normal within a community. In that sense, it wouldn't be that it was the cauliflower doing it, but what the cauliflower represented as an appendage of a very broad and encapsulating sense of general oppression, that vegetables/fruits more diverse than something like cauliflower simply can't be allowed.

The big problem with this, and I think it's something that she should elaborate on, is what exactly she meant by addressing those colonial legacies with regards to community gardening spaces. I don't think that many folks would be seriously harmed or upset by somebody growing something like Yucca or Dragonfruit, and it doesn't seem like there are many laws restricting or prohibiting the cultivation of those diverse fruits in communal spaces. It almost seems like she's planning on addressing a nonexistent problem. I really want to give her the benefit of the doubt and hope that she clarifies this more in the future, as is, it's just a bit confusing.

Ok.
...

What she broadcasts about her neighborhood/constituents is really about her using the power to signify someone else, and more importantly, signify something on their behalf. She is a representative but what she is saying is clearly not in line with reality, as has been pointed out with all the latino/hispanic places that serves cauliflower, including a place where she worked. What she's saying is not even in their best interest.
What she is trying to do is presenting and driving home the idea of that area as different and exotic where they want to grow kawa and not cauliflower, separating them from the culture and population of the larger society. This is an insidious type of colonialism where minority populations are forced into a cultural binarism through an imaginary contrast against the majority culture who, in this case, won't know that AOC is full of shit and now thinks that latinx don't care for cauliflower. What she's doing is internal orientalism.

So let me try and riddle this out.

Plants make oxygen, so plants are good. The more we cut down trees and plants the hotter it gets, and that's bad. So therefore planting a community garden will stop climate change by making more clean oxygen and that will keep things cool.

Now I know what you're thinking, "Holy fuck, that's fucking autistic and stupid" but no, no it's not. You see AoC was a bartender once and she once was on some comic book cover beating up the republican party, so she knows what she's talking about.

Plants growing also expends heat through the energy they use to grow, that's why planting tons of tree to suck up CO2 isn't a solution to lower the temperature.
 
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Plants growing also expends heat through the energy they use to grow, that's why planting tons of tree to suck up CO2 isn't a solution to lower the temperature.
You obviously weren't listening. She was a bartender! She obviously knows what she's talking about, you sexist nazi.

Serious answer; I doubt AoC even knew what she was talking about and was just throwing shit out there in an attempt to appear intelligent.
 
Hey, no need to get nasty and start calling people AOC fans here. I'm sure composite sludge's handler will be along shortly to clarify what sludge meant by what he said AOC meant.

I know I am a broken record on this, but what in Odin's magnificent beard does community gardening have to do with climate change?

It wouldn't surprise me if AOC doesn't know what the connection is, but I assume actual experts on these topics promote local farming because big agriculture uses a shit ton of petroleum to grow our food. Although, without those petroleum inputs, a lot of people would starve worldwide.

Plants growing also expends heat through the energy they use to grow, that's why planting tons of tree to suck up CO2 isn't a solution to lower the temperature.

How would plants using energy to grow release heat? Anyway, you're wrong, plants reduce temperatures:
 
It wouldn't surprise me if AOC doesn't know what the connection is, but I assume actual experts on these topics promote local farming because big agriculture uses a shit ton of petroleum to grow our food. Although, without those petroleum inputs, a lot of people would starve worldwide.

Local farming and private gardening have the benefit of ensuring that a blight or drought in one place doesn't starve everyone everywhere. It also allows for fresher foods, a wider variety of crops better able to supply local needs, and a more open economy (small businesses keeping in competition with Big Agri).

Strangely enough, gardening also has significant physical- and mental-health benefits (almost as if we were meant to do it, hmm).

It does help a little with energy consumption, but that's not usually the main concern.
 
Don't get me wrong, fresh veggies you grew yourself are fantastic and it's a good practice. I just don't think it ties into environmental stuff any more than "plants are green, green is good for the environment".
 
Don't get me wrong, fresh veggies you grew yourself are fantastic and it's a good practice. I just don't think it ties into environmental stuff any more than "plants are green, green is good for the environment".
There is a logistical benefit in that if you grow your food locally less carbon is expended to get it from the field to your table. Grow strawberries on the roof and all you need to do is pick them, grow them in a farm close to your house and they need a truck ride to get to you, grow them in Florida when you don't live in Florida and they need a plane ride and a whole fleet of trucks (get to the plane, then away from it to a distribution center, then to individual grocery stores) to eventually be down your gullet.
 
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