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.

 

[TaimuRadiu]

Would be interesting to see how the left would react if Pence were to become president instead of Trump.

They don't think about this, or think Pence is "more presidential ".

 

[X Prime]

The blind NPC sheep will likely abandon their past leftist convictions as they get older, just like the New Left did before them when they went from hippie to yuppie. The more devoted SJW types will likely either commit suicide or live a life of irrelevancy and failure.

I take issue with this characterization.

The hippies only abandoned the economic axis of leftism, because they realized they could get more for themselves by embracing corporatism. However, they never really abandoned the social axis of leftism.

 

[Dr. Geronimo]

So can someone link me an unbiased as possible rundown of the new green deal?


Also breh squad rise up.

 

[MembersSchoolPizza]

The Pendulum will swing back eventually.

The Right will get drunk on power again like it did in the 80s and the Left will restructure and emerge as the "everyman" party like it was under Clinton in the 90s.

I'm honestly not sure how that would work. What would happen to the growing cancer that is the radical progressives? Are we talking a full-on party schism, or what? Because they sure as shit would never migrate over to the right, but they have to go somewhere.

 

[CheezzyMach]

I'm honestly not sure how that would work. What would happen to the growing cancer that is the radical progressives? Are we talking a full-on party schism, or what? Because they sure as shit would never migrate over to the right, but they have to go somewhere.

Same thing that happened to the old RR when the American voter base told them to fuck off, they'll splinter and get curbstomped in elections.

 

[Scandinadian Bacon]

So can someone link me an unbiased as possible rundown of the new green deal?

Yeah it's at the end of the rainbow, left past the unicorns, and if you get to the terminal for Atlantis you've gone slightly too far.

 

[Dr. Geronimo]

Yeah it's at the end of the rainbow, left past the unicorns, and if you get to the terminal for Atlantis you've gone slightly too far.

All the transgendered heterokin Minotaur did was shrug, call me an alt-right libtard and told me to fuck off.

 

[It's HK-47]

So can someone link me an unbiased as possible rundown of the new green deal?

Also breh squad rise up.

Why settle for a run-down? The FAQ is only 6 pages long and the GND is such an insane piece of IDPOL-Hippie fan-fiction that someone else's summary couldn't possible make it look any crazier than it already is.

 

[Matthew216]

Someone needs to point out that Florida not existing is only slightly more of a concern than California not existing. And then only because Florida gives us the nonstop entertainment that is Florida Man.

Hey man! If Florida sinks, i’ll be denied my prime vacation spot!







Also I have some family there.

 

[Dr. Geronimo]

Why settle for a run-down? The FAQ is only 6 pages long and the GND is such an insane piece of IDPOL-Hippie fan-fiction that someone else's summary couldn't possible make it look any crazier than it already is.

So Im at work so I can't give it a full read through, I don't get how it's batshit insane. Overly ambitious and too optimistic sure, but at least it's something. The refusal to use nuclear is fucking stupid though.

 

[neverendingmidi]

So Im at work so I can't give it a full read through, I don't get how it's batshit insane. Overly ambitious and too optimistic sure, but at least it's something. The refusal to use nuclear is fucking stupid though.

Well for one thing, the how we're going to pay for it:

The same way we paid for the New Deal, the 2008 bank bailout and extended quantitative easing programs. The same way we paid for World War II and all our current wars. The Federal Reserve can extend credit to power these projects and investments and new public banks can be created to extend credit.

We're not! We'll just make a bank, give it all the debt we made and it will work. Exactly like magic.

Then there were the more in depth concepts in the full thing, my favorite was bulldozing every building in the country that wasn't up to the highest "green" standards and rebuilding them. Every. Single. Building. And remember, we're paying for it with unicorn farts and pixie dust and the wishes of children!

Though building enough high speed rail, over fucking mountains, to get rid of air travel was also hilarious. They honestly have no idea how many flights there are and to how many locations they travel. Not to mention that even with high speed rail the top speed on a straightaway as a record is 375mph. Generally it's about 200mph at max. From New York to LA the flight time is around 6hrs, counting gate time and such. You only get that if you have a high speed rail doing the record top speed the entire time, never slowing and with some rough estimates with the distance being 2,451 miles between the two cities and using the normal 200 mph, that equals 12hrs of travel time. And that's assuming the sucker can cut straight through the Rockies.

 

[Matthew216]

Have fun guys

https://youtube.com/watch?v=AumNt2aDhnI

Those fingernails!

 

[Dr. Geronimo]

Well for one thing, the how we're going to pay for it:



We're not! We'll just make a bank, give it all the debt we made and it will work. Exactly like magic.

Then there were the more in depth concepts in the full thing, my favorite was bulldozing every building in the country that wasn't up to the highest "green" standards and rebuilding them. Every. Single. Building. And remember, we're paying for it with unicorn farts and pixie dust and the wishes of children!

Ok that part is stupid.

Personally I think the solar subsidies were doing pretty well in getting people to switch to that stuff. I only really see this stuff happening with heavy taxes on heavy polluters. The bulldozing part is stupid as fuck too. Get stricter on new buildings sure, but there's the obvious issues with historical buildings and whatnot.



However, if they do a death penalty for illegal dumping I'll turn into a pinko right this second.

 

[HeyYou]

So Im at work so I can't give it a full read through, I don't get how it's batshit insane. Overly ambitious and too optimistic sure, but at least it's something. The refusal to use nuclear is fucking stupid though.

Hmm.

Economic security for all who are unable or unwilling to work

A Green New Deal is a massive investment in renewable energy production and would not include creating new nuclear plants.

We cannot simply tax gas and expect workers to figure out another way to get to work unless we’ve first created a better, more affordable option. So we’re not ruling a carbon tax out, but a carbon tax would be a tiny part of a Green New Deal

The same way we paid for the New Deal, the 2008 bank bailout and extended quantitative easing programs. The same way we paid for World War II and all our current wars. The Federal Reserve can extend credit to power these projects and investments and new public banks can be created to extend credit.

Promote justice and equity by stopping current, preventing future, and repairing historic oppression of frontline and vulnerable communities

Upgrade or replace every building in US for state-of-the-art energy efficiency

Totally overhaul transportation by massively expanding electric vehicle manufacturing, build charging stations everywhere, build out highspeed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary, create affordable public transit available to all, with goal to replace every combustion-engine vehicle

Make the US the leader in addressing climate change and share our technology, expertise and products with the rest of the world to bring about a global Green New Deal

 

[Weppers]

It depends completely on the socialist fallacy of the Infinite Resource, and here the infinite resource is the government’s ability to declare the existence of trillions of new dollars. This will somehow create enough rare earth metals to build all the solar panels and batteries needed to fill every energy need in the country, while also not impugning on any indigenous land or restricting any citizen’s access to nature, and also the electrical switching equipment and the sulfur hexaflouride it needs to function will also cease to be a greenhouse gas problem for reasons that conveniently go unexplained.

People that know the GND’s contradictions are too quick to get into the LOL unicorn farts economy!! mockery. It isn’t helpful for people that don’t understand why they shouldn’t trust it yet. The GND is loaded with simplistic concepts of the economy and emissions depending on an incomplete and emotionally driven understanding of what is happening, and every goal the GND states is a fantasy wishlist of Good Things that are often mutually exclusive of each other.

 

[TerribleIdeas™]

So Im at work so I can't give it a full read through, I don't get how it's batshit insane. Overly ambitious and too optimistic sure, but at least it's something. The refusal to use nuclear is fucking stupid though.

Lemme give you the 1st and most obvious reason it's absolutely fucking insane -

"Economic security for all those who are unable or UNWILLING to work" (Emphasis mine).

How about no, I refuse to pay more taxes for people that are too lazy to work, or got garbage degrees with no economic value. I especially refuse to pay taxes to wipe clean the debts of people that took bullshit degrees reliant of Critical Theory, the misapplication of Marxist class theory to sex or race, or even the CORRECT application of Marxist class theory to any facet of the economy. I have no end of complaints about how cronyist and corporatist lobbying impacts the operation of the economy, but neither of those things is adequately corrected by empowering the government to inflict themselves further on the average citizen, especially not on behalf of Millennial narcissists that have replaced the Original Sin of Christianity with the New Sin of being a "straight, white, cis male".

And the GND gets dumber, with demands to implement a nationwide high-speed rail system (on infrastructure that can't handle it), abolishing all air travel, overhauling or flattening and rebuilding all structures that don't meet the energy-efficiency codes that are conveniently not listed in the FAQ, and an outright demand for "Climate Justice", which amounts to a new form of indulgences, paid to "Indigenous peoples."

There's nothing in the GND that indicates how they intend to transition from a petroleum-based energy infrastructure to their pie-in-the-sky dreams of "100% clean and renewable energy", but I can promise you that anything that doesn't take advantage of nuclear power and natural gas is a non-starter, and there's stories about how much ecological and habitat damage is required to install massive solar and wind farms, or for hydro. If they were talking about a plan that sees a move towards site-based solar generation where it's an effective means of providing power, I'd at least give them partial credit, but they're not - they want immediate moth-balling of all "non-renewable energy".

As far as pipe dreams of "high speed rail go, Gov. Jerry Brown ran the FIRST time on a ticket that promised to create a high-speed rail system to serve California, and then ran on that same promise AGAIN, and neither time was successful in doing anything but fattening a lot of wallets, while not providing any significant amount of rail service to the residents of California.

The GND talks of trillions of dollars of investment, and admits that every billionaire on the planet couldn't donate enough money to make any of the GND's goals a reality, but they expect the common people to eat bugs, live in sectioned-up shipping containers, bike and bus everywhere, give up their guns, and stop having kids, because somehow, the massive tax increases those common people will see is going to magically pay for all this fancy shit.

There's so much bullshit in that 6 page FAQ, it could be used as a source of methane.

 

[HeyYou]

As far as pipe dreams of "high speed rail go, Gov. Jerry Brown ran the FIRST time on a ticket that promised to create a high-speed rail system to serve California, and then ran on that same promise AGAIN, and neither time was successful in doing anything but fattening a lot of wallets, while not providing any significant amount of rail service to the residents of California.

The GND talks of trillions of dollars of investment, and admits that every billionaire on the planet couldn't donate enough money to make any of the GND's goals a reality, but they expect the common people to eat bugs, live in sectioned-up shipping containers, bike and bus everywhere, give up their guns, and stop having kids, because somehow, the massive tax increases those common people will see is going to magically pay for all this fancy shit.

On top of that, it demands benefits, the ability to strike and organize, and high pay for all the people working on this. They must be beyond insane if they think this won't hamper GND efforts and slow down our already bloated bureaucracy. Look at any country that tried to modernize too quickly, like the USSR and China. They treated their workers like shit and mag dumped anyone who complained.

 

[Jigglyjogglers]

Though building enough high speed rail, over fucking mountains, to get rid of air travel was also hilarious. They honestly have no idea how many flights there are and to how many locations they travel. Not to mention that even with high speed rail the top speed on a straightaway as a record is 375mph. Generally it's about 200mph at max. From New York to LA the flight time is around 6hrs, counting gate time and such. You only get that if you have a high speed rail doing the record top speed the entire time, never slowing and with some rough estimates with the distance being 2,451 miles between the two cities and using the normal 200 mph, that equals 12hrs of travel time. And that's assuming the sucker can cut straight through the Rockies.

Yeah but see these people never leave NYC or DC, except maybe to go to one or two acceptable places in California, so their particularly long rides would be rare. It would suck for everyone else, sure, but those are little people problems and who cares about them? (And besides, you know they'd be handing out air travel exemptions to politicians and their cronies like popcorn.)

It's kind of like the open borders thing, they figure that dealing with the massive waves of illegals will be a problem for those stupid worthless southerners to deal with, and their cities will just get a small trickle of fresh illegals willing to work for slave wages, just how they like it. They don't actually think these things aren't problems, they just figure they're someone else's problems and thus unimportant.

 

[TerribleIdeas™]

On top of that, it demands benefits, the ability to strike and organize, and high pay for all the people working on this. They must be beyond insane if they think this won't hamper GND efforts and slow down our already bloated bureaucracy. Look at any country that tried to modernize too quickly, like the USSR and China. They treated their workers like shit and mag dumped anyone who complained.

Both times Gov Brown's rail project was operational, it was considered "public projects", because I guess California has laws that dictate that ANY project that gets state funding is a "public project", and that means that the jobs must be overwhelmingly staffed by union employees. I don't object to people having the right to choose to work for unions, but what apparently happened for both projects is a ton of "heartbeats in boots", with no appreciable skill or motivation were hired to pad the manpower, dues were collected from said heartbeats, and the dues turned into political donations to candidates that ensure the pork barrel is always full.

And it's been a problem for FUCKING EVER, in California.

 

[It's HK-47]

Not to mention that at no point during this Moonbeam-tier tirade does it explain how we're going to contend with the fact that no other country in the world would ever consider doing something similar because not only is it economically crippling, it would mean that our military would have to switch over to these same, zero-emission policies. We don't exactly have tanks or jet fighters or battleships or missiles that run on solar energy; those would all need to be destroyed and rebuilt into their Flower Child counterparts, which is more than a little ironic if you think about it.

"We demand 100% carbon neutral, environmentally-friendly nuclear war missiles!" - A Fucking Crazy Person

If by some psychotic miracle we went full GND tomorrow, no one else would follow suite and we're not even close to being the top polluter on the planet. America would be invariably crippled during the transition period and would be left completely exposed to hostile, foreign countries both during and after this process. Given that they make absolutely no effort to address this, they seem to assume that countries like China, Iran, and Russia would just leave us be and cause us absolutely no hassles whatsoever while we turn into a nation-wide hippie commune.

This is the same party that's considered Russia to be an existential threat for three straight years, and they offered absolutely no contingency plan for this. That's just incredible.