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.
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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.
 
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Jigglyjogglers said:
Someone ought to append that she can't fundraise on Twitch either, see how fast she wants it dropped.
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I remember that when AOC first became a representative, she did a fundraiser for Mermaids with Hbomberguy. If I were a Republican House member, I’d ask her if fundraising should extend to politicians and bring this up. If she’s against government involvement on streaming platforms, it should extend to politicians too, since they are part of the government as well.
 
MrJokerRager said:


Tucker Carlson responded to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., during his opening monologue Monday after she told viewers during a recent virtual town hall that a community without police would look "like a suburb," reaffirming her support of the "defund the police" movement.

"Here’s something you probably didn’t know," Carlson said. "Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the voice of the street, actually grew up in an idyllic town 45 miles north of New York City. It’s called Yorktown Heights. You never know it from listening to her recent race-baiting but the population of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez' home is over 90 percent white.

"It’s not Queens," Carlson went on. "It’s a nice place. Yorktown Heights is so affluent and so peaceful, in fact, it doesn’t need its own police department. Instead, it relies on the 59-man force that protects the larger town [Yorktown] around it. This is the hood that spawned Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the country’s most privileged revolutionaries.

"She called herself Sandy Cortez back then. She imagined that every place could be just like Yorktown Heights if only we got rid of the police. Apparently, she still believes that."

Ocasio-Cortez made the remark after a viewer asked her about the troubling uptick in violent crimes across New York City.

After suggesting that the crime surge was caused by an increase in shoplifting from residents struggling due to the coronavirus pandemic, the 30-year-old lawmaker declared: "When people ask me 'What does a world where we defund the police look like?', I tell them it looks like a suburb."

"It looks like a suburb ... unfortunately not everyone lives in a suburb as placid and protected the one Sandy Cortez grew up in," Carlson retorted.

"We know very well how it will end. More poor children will die. It will not affect [New York City Mayor] Bill de Blasio, though. His family will remain protected by armed security paid for by taxpayers. So will Sandy Cortez. So will Barack Obama. So will the rest of the politicians calling for taking away our protection. They will never suffer the consequences. That’s why they are for it."

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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign staff has reached a deal to unionize with the Campaign Workers Guild (CWG), finalizing a two-year contract that includes overtime pay above 40 hours per week, a salary floor of at least $4,000 per month for full-time workers and unlimited sick leave, the staffers announced Monday.

Hourly workers for Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign will be paid no less than $18 per hour, a press release said. The agreement includes 12 weeks of paid parental leave, bonuses and stipends for remote-work expenses and even child care. It includes severance pay and health, life, dental and vision insurance.

The contract also includes language protecting immigrant workers and standardizing gender neutrality.

“We're putting into practice so many of the policies this campaign organizes for every day,” said Ariella Schwartz, events manager for AOC’s campaign and bargaining team member.

The lawmaker praised the move.

“Workers’ rights are the cornerstone of an economy that puts humanity first. I’ve lived without health insurance or dignity in the workplace, and I applaud the work our team has done to raise the bar for all workers,” said Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., in a statement.

Meg Reilly, president of the CWG, told The Intercept that the biggest win in the contract was overtime pay. “CWG has negotiated dozens of contracts and we’ve gotten close, we’ve fought for overtime in every contract, we have won it quite rarely and it’s a big cultural shift,” Reilly said. “So for these campaign workers across industries to get overtime after 40 [hours] is monumental.”

The contract also reportedly includes a section on “gender neutrality,” which says the campaign will notify employees that transgender and nonbinary people may use whichever bathrooms they feel comfortable using, as well as standardizing gender-neutral language in onboarding materials.

The Campaign Workers Guild was formed in 2017 by a group of former campaign workers and has represented workers for dozens of campaigns, including the presidential runs of Andrew Yang and Julián Castro.

Ocasio-Cortez won her June 23 primary with nearly 70 percent of the vote and will likely face a smooth path to reelection in her heavily Democratic New York City district.
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I grew up in the kind of suburb that's so tranquil, a scared little old lady could call 911 because FedEx left a package for her at the door, and the cops would actually show up. And you know why that suburb is so tranquil? Because it's full of middle class and rich people who commit relatively few crimes.

This is "why don't poor people buy more money"-tier delusion: "You know what would solve crime? Making everyone rich!"

Meanwhile, those of us who can't afford to live in a fortress would very much appreciate not being murdered for $10.
 
JambledUpWords said:
AOC Introduces Measure to Stop the Military from Recruiting on Twitch

The measure would prevent the military from using funds to 'maintain a presence on Twitch or any video game, esports, or live-streaming platform.'

Archive (Link)

U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) plans to file a measure that would prevent the military from using video games and esports as military recruitment tools.

A draft amendment filed on July 22 to the House Appropriations bill would prevent the military from using funds appropriated by the bill to “maintain a presence on Twitch.com or any video game, e-sports, or live-streaming platform.”


The House Appropriations bill is an early step in setting the Pentagon’s budget and there’s no guarantee Ocasio-Cortez’s amendment will survive the lengthy political process. First, the House Appropriations Committee on Rules has to meet to decide which pending amendments will go forward. Its next meeting is set for the week of July 27.

The House writes one version of the budget that has to go through multiple committees before being voted on by the entire House. And that’s before the Senate gets involved. The Twitch amendment could falter at any step along the way, but the fact that Ocasio-Cortez introduced the amendment at all speaks to the mounting public pressure against the military using video games and Twitch as a recruitment tool.
“It’s incredibly irresponsible for the Army and the Navy to be recruiting impressionable young people and children via live streaming platforms," Ocasio-Cortez told Motherboard. "War is not a game, and the Marine Corps’ decision not to engage in this recruiting tool should be a clear signal to the other branches of the military to cease this practice entirely.”

The U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force all run esports teams and connect with potential recruits via Twitch. The Army and Navy both banned viewers from their channels for discussing American war crimes. The ACLU said the move may have violated the first amendment, and the Knight First Amendment Institute has sent letters to the Army and Navy telling them to stop censoring Twitch viewers.
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LOL good luck passing that, or enforcing it. The military literally has its own game franchise designed specifically for recruitment

Who wants to bet shes never heard of america's army. Who also wants to bet that she isn't aware its been used as a basis to develop other programs that are used as part of training programs for the military. Lets see her say anything negative about any of this:

Government applications
According to game historian Carrie McLeroy, America's Army has "grown in ways its originators couldn't have imagined".[12] Dozens of government training and simulation applications using America's Army platform have been developed to train and educate U.S. Army soldiers.[43]

In 2005, America's Army developers partnered with the Software Engineering Directorate and the Army's Aviation and Missile Research Development Engineering Center in Huntsville, Alabama, to manage the commercial game development process and use the America's Army platform to create government training and simulations. "America's Army has pushed to reuse the same elements for many purposes", said Colonel Wardynski, the originator of the game. "We can build one soldier avatar and use it again and again. When we build something in America's Army, the U.S. government owns it completely ... and [it] can, therefore, be used for any application or use of the game. So costs keep going down." After America's Army went live, requests started coming in to use the game for purposes other than recruiting, such as training.[44]

The partnership with SED, an Army software life cycle management center, allowed the development team to re-purpose the commercial software to meet the needs of soldiers preparing for deployment. SED engineers developed customized applications used by many different Army and government organizations, including the JFK Special Forces School and the Army's Chemical School. They are used to provide training in the use of rare equipment such as PackBot robots, CROWS, and Nuclear Biological Chemical Reconnaissance Vehicles
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Surprise surprise, shes only looking at the surface level, and in a stupid manner at that. She isn't taking into account how such programs, software and tools can be used to benefit the nation as a whole

But nobody should be surprised because cortez is stupider than a bag of decomposing tacos in a barrio dumpster
 
WonderWino said:
But nobody should be surprised because cortez is stupider than a bag of decomposing tacos in a barrio dumpster
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Please don't compare her with the pure and noble taco.

Isn't she one of those crunchy rich liberal bitches who believes all the goofy New Age food woo anyways? A street taco made out of normal ingredients would be like ultra-mega-monsanto poison to her.
 
45b8d262d801a048703a8497f5853dc1.png


Cancel responsibility.
Cancel acting like an adult.
Cancel your Commie ass from ever speaking again.
 
soy_king said:
I could say the same for reading Dostoyevsky or Solzhenitsyn, it needs to be in the original language to get the full context and feeling of the text. The problem with that is noone outside of the most obsessive person is going to spend the time to learn a language just to truly understand its literary works on a native level.
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My advice is intended for someone who already knows/reads Spanish. I learned it as a child but it wasn't spoken with my family; we spoke English. Even if you don't read all the way through its a good way to master a language. And unlike Russian, you don't need to learn a new alphabet so it's way easier to do.

Coldgrip said:
Bet she also pronounces those words like a white suburbanite.

Which would make sense considering she essentially is one.
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It's guaranteed. One reason I decided to really learn Spanish was a recording made for class and I sounded awful. Everything was correct but it was plain I wasn't someone who spoke it naturally. I started watching Telemundo talk shows to learn idioms. It's not easy to speak a foreign language well.
 
Feline Supremacist said:
My advice is intended for someone who already knows/reads Spanish. I learned it as a child but it wasn't spoken with my family; we spoke English. Even if you don't read all the way through its a good way to master a language. And unlike Russian, you don't need to learn a new alphabet so it's way easier to do.
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As someone who's a native Russian speaker but only learned to read in Russian at around 12, the alphabet is pretty easy to master. It's got 33 letters, of which 10 are vowels, and unlike English, almost every single word is phonetic. The real difficulty with Russian is it has six noun declensions and it has a system of prefixes that can be attached to verbs to give them entirely different meanings.
 
ColtWalker1847 said:
Please don't compare her with the pure and noble taco.

Isn't she one of those crunchy rich liberal bitches who believes all the goofy New Age food woo anyways? A street taco made out of normal ingredients would be like ultra-mega-monsanto poison to her.
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Kind of the opposite actually.

It's probably documented here many pages back, but a while ago AOC sperged out about the "whiteness" of community gardens and urban farming, claiming that ignorant white people will tell Latinos to grow cauliflower when what they really want is yucca. She was assuming that Latinos wouldn't know what to do with cauliflower, that yucca is a good crop to grow in the Bronx (I'm guessing the climate makes it difficult), and that Latinos can't/won't adapt to the food that's more easily grown in north North America.

Meanwhile, there are Latino recipes specifically for cauliflower.

Like most white people, she's probably only familiar with the cheap Latino food you can get in restaurants in the U.S. and isn't aware of the high-end food you can get in their countries of origin.

It's HK-47 said:
View attachment 1466859

Cancel responsibility.
Cancel acting like an adult.
Cancel your Commie ass from ever speaking again.
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Cancel the U.S. economy.

And since the U.S. economy still has major global impact: Cancel the global economy.
 
Fuck yucca, it's starchy and make people fat.

I'm sure AOC can't tell the difference between a serrano, chile de arbol or jalapeño, only that they're all "hot"!
 
Man, only someone like AOC with her extreme internalized whiteness could find a jalapeno (no I don't have my keyboard set up for the proper letter, fuck you), "hot". Spicy and flavorful with a mild kick, but not hot. That said, the chile de arbol is fucking glorious for stir fry, although my fav pepper is the bird's eye. We were blessed with some plants down in SoCal thanks to birds, and their fruits proved tasty in stir fry. Of course, the birds ate what they planted, so the whole family was unhappy.
 
Birds don't react to capsaicin.

They must think mammals are so retarded, passing up these delicious sweet fruits.
 

:story:

It's funny that Nancy mentions it because Yoho didn't say anything to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that I haven't said to anyone. He called her a fucking bitch and said that she was disgusting, which are all things that I have said to numerous women throughout the years.
 
Spiteful Crow said:
It's funny that Nancy mentions it because Yoho didn't say anything to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that I haven't said to anyone. He called her a fucking bitch and said that she was disgusting, which are all things that I have said to numerous women throughout the years.
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Can't we just go back to duels when politicians' egos are hurt?
 
Spiteful Crow said:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=2PGFR9Tprpkhttps://youtube.com/watch?v=MeHkNCdARX8https://youtube.com/watch?v=PCNsyNCeOmM
:story:

It's funny that Nancy mentions it because Yoho didn't say anything to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that I haven't said to anyone. He called her a fucking bitch and said that she was disgusting, which are all things that I have said to numerous women throughout the years.
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Yoho, Yoho, a failure's life for me!
I swear and I holler, and then 'pologize 'er,
Cuck up, me hearty, Yoho!
I chopped off my gonads and threw 'em away,
Cuck up, me hearty, Yoho!
 
(CNN)On Monday, Republican Rep. Ted Yoho of Florida confronted Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York on the steps of the Capitol with an aggressive and brazenly misogynistic personal attack. Yoho approached Ocasio-Cortez about her position -- that poverty and unemployment contributed to an increase in crime in New York -- and during a brief discussion said she was "disgusting," according to a reporter from The Hill who overheard the exchange. Ocasio-Cortez responded that he was being rude, and Yoho walked away, saying "f**king bitch" as he descended the steps, according to the Hill reporter, Mike Lillis.


Two days later, Yoho stood on the House floor and apologized for the "abrupt manner of the conversation I had with my colleague from New York." He denied using the expletives. "Having been married for 45 years with two daughters, I'm very cognizant of my language. The offensive name-calling words attributed to me by the press were never spoken to my colleagues and if they were construed that way, I apologize for their misunderstanding," Yoho said. Bob Cusack, editor in chief of the Hill, stood by the reporting, and said, "Our story was and remains 100 percent accurate."

While Yoho said he was "passionate about those affected by poverty," many women -- and quite a few men -- know this confrontation wasn't really about a policy difference at all. First, it's important to note that Ocasio-Cortez is right: the link between crime and poverty has been well-documented. (Ocasio-Cortez has said she was clear in the virtual town hall earlier this month in which she originally drew the connection that she was referring to petty -- not violent -- crimes.)



Second, our political system was designed specifically to foster representation of different political views in Congress, which is why it remains unusual to see a member of Congress denigrate himself and the institution by verbally attacking another member in this way. Ocasio-Cortez said it had never happened to her before and tweeted, "Believe it or not, I usually get along fine w/ my GOP colleagues. We know how to check our legislative sparring at the committee door."
Democratic Reps. Ruben Gallego of Arizona and Dean Phillips of Minnesota highlighted the sexism at play here, tweeting that they had previously expressed the same views on poverty and crime without being accosted in the way Ocasio-Cortez was. By allegedly using the word "bitch" in his stunning breach of decorum, Yoho suggested that what he was really complaining about was that a woman was daring to wield political power at all.


We know this because of his very choice of that word (allegedly) is often used to denigrate women for being (in the eyes of the person wielding the term) malicious, unpleasant or selfish. These also happen to be the characteristics used to describe women who dare seek power, as Kate Manne writes in "Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny." Manne says that when women compete for positions typically held by men, they tend to be portrayed as "morally suspect." That's why, according to Manne, "dislike and hostility are relatively predictable reactions to female politicians aspiring to highest office."

On Tuesday, Ocasio-Cortez responded to the confrontation by tweeting, "Hey, 'b*tches' get stuff done." By reclaiming the word and using it to refer to powerful women in a nod to a famous Tina Fey sketch on Saturday Night Live, Ocasio-Cortez played with Yoho's attempt to use the term to punish her for wielding political power as a woman -- and, brilliantly, refused to let him do it.

On Thursday, a day after Yoho's cowardly non-apology, Ocasio-Cortez took to the House floor herself to address her fellow Congresswomen and Congressmen and cannily shifted the conversation away from the personal attack and onto the wider culture of misogyny that women in this country face. She responded to Yoho while calling out everyone from President Donald Trump to men on the subway for upholding a culture of "impunity, of accepting violence and violent language against women, and an entire structure of power that supports that."

She also broke down Yoho's protestations that he is a family man with a wife and two daughters by turning that well-worn defense on its head. "I am two years younger than Mr. Yoho's youngest daughter. I am someone's daughter too. My father, thankfully, is not alive to see how Mr. Yoho treated his daughter."

She went on to say, "When you do that to any woman, what Mr. Yoho did was give permission to other men to do that to his daughters. In using that language, in front of the press, he gave permission to use that language against his wife, his daughters, women in his community, and I am here to stand up to say that is not acceptable."


Here's something else Americans shouldn't accept: pretending this didn't happen. Rep. Roger Williams (R-Texas) was walking with Yoho during the entire exchange recounted by Lillis. When asked about it, however, Williams claimed he was distracted. "I was actually thinking, as I was walking down the stairs, I was thinking about some issues I've got in my district that need to get done. I don't know what their topic was," he said. A man who doesn't notice a woman being publicly and personally attacked while simply trying to do her job when it happens right in front of his eyes cannot be trusted to look out for the interests of women in general — and therefore has no place holding public office.

Coincidentally, amidst a pandemic, presidential election and looming economic crisis, Fox News host Tucker Carlson decided it was a good use of his airtime this week to report on false allegations that Al Jazeera reporter Kimberly Halkett called White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany a "lying bitch" when she actually said, "Okay, you don't want to engage" -- a comment supported by both audio recording as well as the White House official transcript.

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It's interesting that this baseless rumor spread by Twitter users was picked up by Carlson, who was willing to call out the purported use of a derogatory phrase against a woman — when it was a woman on the right. Carlson, let's not forget, has called women "extremely primitive," and branded a number of female celebrities, at various times "white whores," "c***y," ugly and pigs. (Carlson refused to apologize for his remarks when they resurfaced last year and simply shrugged off the controversy by calling his own comments "naughty.")

In attacking Ocasio-Cortez, Yoho didn't have facts on his side. He didn't wield policy arguments or studies. Rather, he lobbed personal insults at her in a manner both unusual for and unbecoming of a member of Congress. His reported use of the word "bitch" can only be described, as Yoho might put it, as disgusting. But by refusing to accept either the insult and Yoho's half-hearted apology, Ocasio-Cortez issued a badly-needed defense not just of herself, but of all women who seek power.


archive: http://archive.is/TvaAM

Wow, Republicans are just pigs, aren't they?
 
Why are they so worried about people being mean to this little Mexican when the policies that she supports are killing New Yorkers?
 
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