Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

[lpetrich]

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "Republicans are running TV ads setting pictures of me on fire to convince people they aren’t racist.
Life is weird!" / Twitter
Scott Dworkin on Twitter: "ABC can go to hell. Running propaganda with a picture of @AOC being set on fire, with dead bodies & skulls in the background, was absolutely despicable. People need to be fired over this. It’s ridiculous & evil. ABC profited off of it, during the #DemDebate. Shame on ABC. Shame. https://t.co/o7msRtQI3J" / Twitter
Then a picture of some miserable people and "Socialism".

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "Know that this wasn’t an ad for young conservatives of color - that was the pretense.
What you just watched was a love letter to the GOP’s white supremacist case. https://t.co/zvp1EB02c5" / Twitter


Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "GOP’s message: No policy, no facts, just displays of violence + corporations like @ABCNetwork & Sinclair who amplify them.
They profit from burning my likeness on TV. But who pays for heightened security? Who answers the phones for the threats resulting from a violent, false ad? https://t.co/Gr1XhEbwDC" / Twitter
noting
Rashida Tlaib on Twitter: "Exactly my thoughts. The mere act of burning her image is a display of violence. Folks need to stick to facts & policy positions. They need to stop fear mongering & more importantly demonizing members of Congress. FYI: No one puts her residents (and our planet) first, like @AOC https://t.co/K2Qz1N0PeN" / Twitter
noting
Yashar Ali on Twitter: "How the hell did this Elizabeth Heng ad where @AOC’s face is burned up clear ABC network standards and practices?" / Twitter
noting
Jean Ann on Twitter: "@yashar @AOC When Heng describes what happened to her father in Cambodia as “socialism,” she is wrong. What happened to her father is a product of totalitarianism...exactly what the GOP is trying to bring to this nation in the person of DJT" / Twitter
noting
Remus Lupin on Twitter: "@4FLASt @yashar @AOC She's the daughter of refugees who came to the US for asylum. Yet she's a member of the party that is denying asylum-seekers and locking children seeking asylum in cages." / Twitter

 

[lpetrich]

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "To clarify: Rahm Emanuel once mailed the body of a dead, decomposing fish to bully a Dem he disliked.
Then, as a mayor of Chicago, he worked to hide footage of the murder of Laquan McDonald from the public.
Now he’s an investment banker & on TV. And all this is seen as normal. https://t.co/XJgL3lQ8ve" / Twitter

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "Since the GOP will only get worse in their hysteria, let’s remember who we are:
We are fighting to guarantee healthcare in America.
To make education and housing dignified and accessible.
To save our planet.
To set living wages.
To establish justice at home, & peace abroad.
/1" / Twitter

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "And guess what: if you also believe in a free + open democratic society, where people are treated humanely and don’t die over $300 insulin or needless war, they’ll call you a communist too.
Well, they don’t scare us or shake our focus.
We are going to build a better world." / Twitter

She's pinned this tweet:
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "Reminder of what people are calling the “radical, extreme-left agenda”:
Medicare for All
A Living Wage & Labor Rights
K-16 schooling, aka Public Colleges
100% Renewable Energy
Fixing the pipes in Flint
Not Hurting Immigrants
Holding Wall Street Accountable" / Twitter

 

[lpetrich]

The two newsworthy AOC moments that stuck out in my mind were:

1. Her witless knee-jerk dismissal of Trump siding with Kim-Jong Un rather than Bolton

How is it a "witless knee-jerk dismissal"? I agree with her that neither of them is very good.

2. The bizarre ad that played during last night's debate that showed her face being engulfed in flames

That was a right-wing attack ad.

The more I hear from her, the more convinced I am that she has no understanding of the history of imperialism throughout the last century. It's her biggest blind spot, and rears its head every time she tries to talk about basically anything happening outside of the United States. Bernie has a milder version of the same problem. There are actually no mainstream anti-imperialist American political figures; to even suggest that North Korea is anything less than a brainwashed hellworld, that Venezuela is something other than a hole in the ground run by a despot, is political suicide.

I'll pass on Chomskyism. I don't believe that the US is a uniquely villainous nation.

I agree that AOC is rather thin on foreign policy. Late in her primary campaign, she slammed Israel for attacking and killing some Palestinian demonstrators. A little later, she was asked about it, and she struggled with it before conceding that she's not very expert in the Israel-Arab issue. More recently, she has pledged not to go to Israel if her good friends Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar are not allowed to go. She doesn't support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, but she rejects official opposition to it.

 

[PyramidHead]

How is it a "witless knee-jerk dismissal"? I agree with her that neither of them is very good.

She implied that simply meeting with Kim-Jong Un was beyond the pale, which is what people who uncritically accept western propaganda about the DPRK tend to do.

I'll pass on Chomskyism. I don't believe that the US is a uniquely villainous nation.

Imperialism is a problem precisely because the US is not uniquely villainous.

I agree that AOC is rather thin on foreign policy. Late in her primary campaign, she slammed Israel for attacking and killing some Palestinian demonstrators. A little later, she was asked about it, and she struggled with it before conceding that she's not very expert in the Israel-Arab issue. More recently, she has pledged not to go to Israel if her good friends Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar are not allowed to go. She doesn't support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, but she rejects official opposition to it.

Yeah, she's all over the place, which is a shame because the issue is really pretty simple, again, for anyone who understands how settler-colonial imperialism works and has proceeded throughout history.

 

[lpetrich]

She implied that simply meeting with Kim-Jong Un was beyond the pale, which is what people who uncritically accept western propaganda about the DPRK tend to do.

I don't see how she was supposed to have done that.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "And we-oop :
“Comparison of the Dem’s ideology to that of the genocidal Cambodian regime is strongly ahistorical. In fact, the rise to power of the Khmer Rouge was facilitated by a Republican president, Richard Nixon, and his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger.” https://t.co/nrHOvyAFmN" / Twitter
noting
Robert Mackey on Twitter: "An appalling Republican ad during the Democratic debate attacked @AOC for the genocide in Cambodia a decade before her birth, but it was a Republican president, Richard Nixon, whose secret bombing created the conditions for the Khmer Rouge to seize power https://t.co/LSrxd12jG6" / Twitter

That ad was trying to do an assocation: AOC == socialism == Cambodian killing fields

 

[ZiprHead]

She implied that simply meeting with Kim-Jong Un was beyond the pale, which is what people who uncritically accept western propaganda about the DPRK tend to do.

I don't see how she was supposed to have done that.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "And we-oop ??????:
“Comparison of the Dem’s ideology to that of the genocidal Cambodian regime is strongly ahistorical. In fact, the rise to power of the Khmer Rouge was facilitated by a Republican president, Richard Nixon, and his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger.” https://t.co/nrHOvyAFmN" / Twitter
noting
Robert Mackey on Twitter: "An appalling Republican ad during the Democratic debate attacked @AOC for the genocide in Cambodia a decade before her birth, but it was a Republican president, Richard Nixon, whose secret bombing created the conditions for the Khmer Rouge to seize power https://t.co/LSrxd12jG6" / Twitter

That ad was trying to do an assocation: AOC == socialism == Cambodian killing fields

Yeah, I heard the Sinclair ABC affiliates ran some pretty disgusting commercials.

 

[lpetrich]

That awful ad: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Photo Set on Fire in New Republican PAC Ad | NowThis - YouTube

Elizabeth Heng seems like Ayn Rand and Fred Koch, someone who reacted from dislike of Communism to ultracapitalism. She ran for office unsuccessfully as a Republican in California.

Cuomo to AOC attack ad creator: Your fight is with Trump


AOC appears to claim Miami will be gone 'in a few years' because of climate change | Fox News

Ocasio-Cortez was touting her "Green New Deal" program at a NAACP forum Wednesday when she addressed critics who have called her plans "not realistic."

"What is not realistic is not responding to the crisis -- not responding with a solution on the scale of the crisis," she said. "Because what's not realistic is Miami not existing in a few years. That's not realistic. So, we need to be realistic about the problem."

Miami is very close to sea level, and it is in a region that suffers numerous hurricanes. Global warming has been making hurricanes stronger, and a strong one like a Category 5 one could be devastating.

 

[lpetrich]

NAACP | NAACP’s Live Town Hall Set to Explore the Road to 2020 at the 49th Annual Legislative Conference - couldn't find any video on this, so I don't know where that AOC clip came from. But it's been widely circulated in right-wing sites.


Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Best Moments Supercut | NowThis - YouTube - late in it, in the 2019 Women's March, she states "Because this moment and where we are at now is a resurgence from where the civil-rights movement left off." (around 1:03:40). That confirms what I suspect, that she is familiar with the 1954-1968 civil-rights movement, but not as familiar with later Sixties activism or the Sixties counterculture. Feminism revived in the mid-1960's, and gay-rights activism got started in the late 1960's.

Black Lives Matter is an obvious successor to the civil-rights movement, but feminism isn't, either then or now. According to some Sixties feminists, its emergence was provoked by many male activists being very sexist. Much the same thing had happened with abolitionist activism in the early to mid 19th cy.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez 60 Minutes interview: 5 key moments - Vox

“If people want to really blow up one figure here or one word there, I would argue that they’re missing the forest through the trees,” Ocasio-Cortez said when asked about the matter on 60 Minutes. “I think that there’s a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct than about being morally right.”

Ocasio-Cortez, because of her age and gender, often seems to be held to a different standard than other politicians. She clarified to Cooper that being factually correct is “absolutely important” and said that when she makes a mistake she admits it and restates her point.

“It’s not the same thing as … the president lying about immigrants,” she said.

 

[Derec]

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "Republicans are running TV ads setting pictures of me on fire to convince people they aren’t racist.
Life is weird!" / Twitter
Scott Dworkin on Twitter: "ABC can go to hell. Running propaganda with a picture of @AOC being set on fire,

So what's wrong with burning a photo of somebody? It's certainly far less hostile than burning somebody in effigy, like the Left loves to do.

with dead bodies & skulls in the background, was absolutely despicable. People need to be fired over this. It’s ridiculous & evil. ABC profited off of it, during the #DemDebate. Shame on ABC. Shame. https://t.co/o7msRtQI3J" / Twitter[/url]
Then a picture of some miserable people and "Socialism".

Same people who think Trump is literally Hitler are upset that AOC, who is a card-carrying socialist, being linked with horrors of actually existing socialism?

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "Know that this wasn’t an ad for young conservatives of color - that was the pretense.
What you just watched was a love letter to the GOP’s white supremacist case. https://t.co/zvp1EB02c5" / Twitter

Is everything "white supremacism" to the Left? No part of that ad was remotely "white supremacist". But I guess any attack on a "woman of color" (supposedly) AOC is "white supremacism" these days. Just like there are five lights, right?

 

[Derec]

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "To clarify: Rahm Emanuel once mailed the body of a dead, decomposing fish to bully a Dem he disliked.

At least it wasn't a horse head.

Then, as a mayor of Chicago, he worked to hide footage of the murder of Laquan McDonald from the public.

Van Dyke was completely railroaded in that case. Do we forget that Saint Laquan wasn't an innocent, unarmed kid but a knife-wielding maniac [URL="https://www.apnews.com/7696c052e87a49f3ba1e8706bb5871c6"]high on PCP?

A pharmacologist testifying in the trial of a white Chicago police officer charged with murder in the shooting of Laquan McDonald says PCP in the black teen’s system could have caused aggression, rage and hallucinations.
James Thomas O’Donnell said during Van Dyke’s murder trial on Thursday that that someone with as much of PCP in his system as McDonald had in his bloodstream could have a “feeling of omnipotence.” O’Donnell said the person could feel as if he has “superhuman powers.” He says that could put a person at risk of harming himself or others around him.
Other witnesses have testified that McDonald refused to drop a knife as police ordered and that McDonald stabbed the tire of a police vehicle. O’Donnell said such “violent rage behavior” could be explained by having PCP in his system.

Now he’s an investment banker & on TV. And all this is seen as normal.

Stranger things have happened. Like a barmaid getting elected to Congress.

100% Renewable Energy

Completely unrealistic for the foreseeable future.

Not Hurting Immigrants

Define "hurting".

 

[lpetrich]

The AOC attack ad was a complete failure (opinion) - CNN - talk about an own goal.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez endorsement - YouTube - she endorses the re-election of Senator Ed Markey, D-MA. She credits him with taking her seriously, an unknown first-timer, and for sponsoring her big idea in the Senate -- the Green New Deal.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "We have to do more than take back the WH.
We must do so w/ a stronger Democratic Party that fights for working people - & that includes newcomers+longtime fighters.
I’m proud to endorse my #GreenNewDeal co-author + climate champion @EdMarkey for Senate. https://t.co/WrYmTaJrnn" / Twitter

August last year: Ocasio-Cortez visits Maine, praises local ‘democratic socialism’ | Beacon - "Ocasio-Cortez posted a photo to Twitter of her under one of Acadia National Park’s stone bridges within the park’s network of carriage trails, constructed by John D. Rockefeller Jr. — son of Standard Oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller."
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "Back home after a lovely few days off enjoying US examples of Democratic Socialism, like:
- Acadia National Park
- Café Co-ops (Def Top 5 best breakfast sandwiches I’ve ever had )
- Supporting worker-owned businesses
- Bonus: Spotted a @PPact helping people, per usual https://t.co/xmiYXutfpS" / Twitter

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Unlikely Rise: AOC On Her Family, Generational Differences & More | TIME - YouTube (from last spring) - how her father's last words to her were "make me proud" and how a lot of people went to his funeral.

 

[Derec]

I agree that AOC is rather thin on foreign policy.

Which is ironic given that one of her degrees is in international affairs.

Late in her primary campaign, she slammed Israel for attacking and killing some Palestinian demonstrators.

"Demonstrators" is too weak a word. Israel is dealing with violent rioters who do things like launch bombs using their slings.

A little later, she was asked about it, and she struggled with it before conceding that she's not very expert in the Israel-Arab issue. More recently, she has pledged not to go to Israel if her good friends Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar are not allowed to go. She doesn't support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, but she rejects official opposition to it.

Way too straddle that fence, Corporal Sandy!

 

[Derec]

Miami is very close to sea level, and it is in a region that suffers numerous hurricanes. Global warming has been making hurricanes stronger, and a strong one like a Category 5 one could be devastating.

That doesn't mean that it will "disappear" within a few years.

 

[Derec]

Black Lives Matter is an obvious successor to the civil-rights movement,

They are not really a successor to the civil-rights movement but to the black nationalism of the 60s and 70s. Black Panthers, Black Liberation Army, black radicals murdering cops.

feminism isn't, either then or now.

The dominant form of contemporary feminism is an ideological successor of the 2nd wave feminism of the 70s and 80s. Andrea Dworkin, Catherine MacKinnon, Gloria Steinem and the like.

According to some Sixties feminists,

... all heterosexual sex is rape.

Ocasio-Cortez, because of her age and gender, often seems to be held to a different standard than other politicians.

By the left, she is held to a much lower one.

“It’s not the same thing as … the president lying about immigrants,” she said.

This conflation of illegals with all immigrants really infuriates me. There is most definitely a distinction that must be made.

 

[lpetrich]

Miami is very close to sea level, and it is in a region that suffers numerous hurricanes. Global warming has been making hurricanes stronger, and a strong one like a Category 5 one could be devastating.

That doesn't mean that it will "disappear" within a few years.

Miami may not completely disappear, but a big enough hurricane may devastate enough of it for much of it to be abandoned as too expensive to rebuild.

Miami is a huge sitting duck for the next hurricane

How would the region, which continues growing and sprouting waterfront condos, stand up to a massive surge of water like those produced by Hurricane Katrina or Superstorm Sandy?

"It won't survive," Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Craig Fugate says bluntly.

So AOC may not have made a very big overstatement.

 

[Derec]

Miami may not completely disappear, but a big enough hurricane may devastate enough of it for much of it to be abandoned as too expensive to rebuild.

I don't know about that. Cat5 storms are not new. Hurricane Andrew hit very close to Miami in 1991. And Miami proper is somehwhat protected by barrier islands like the ones Miami Beach sits on. Miami Beach will be much more fucked than the city proper.

 

[angelo]

Miami may not completely disappear, but a big enough hurricane may devastate enough of it for much of it to be abandoned as too expensive to rebuild.

Miami is a huge sitting duck for the next hurricane

How would the region, which continues growing and sprouting waterfront condos, stand up to a massive surge of water like those produced by Hurricane Katrina or Superstorm Sandy?

"It won't survive," Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Craig Fugate says bluntly.

So AOC may not have made a very big overstatement.

Hey, now there's an idea! When next elections come around and AOC is shown the door, she could start a new career as a an extraordinary psychic!

 

[lpetrich]

Hey, now there's an idea! When next elections come around and AOC is shown the door, she could start a new career as a an extraordinary psychic!

There are more things in Heaven and Earth, my friend, than are dreamt of in Fox News. Seriously, many right-wingers live in their own intellectual bubble.

“A Message from the Future with AOC”: New Film Imagines World Transformed by the Green New Deal | Democracy Now! - has a transcript of that video's narration.

How Molly Crabapple painted a vision of AOC’s Green New Deal - YouTube - "We wanted to capture the idea that, yes, we can do great things," says Molly Crabapple. "We can be resilient. We can come together."

Molly Crabapple on Twitter: "I love @AOC for many reasons but one of the more personal is her embrace of art and beauty at a time when both are so often devalued
(This aesthetic was often used by progressive American orgs, including trade unions, in the 1910s-30s who were optimistic for a better world) https://t.co/YEPrK6NfM3" / Twitter

Molly Crabapple on Twitter: "@AOC AOC’s posters remind me of this lovely @workmenscircle illustration from 1909.
Workers must have bread and also roses https://t.co/S78xEigAYc" / Twitter

Molly Crabapple on Twitter: "@AOC @workmenscircle And take it from an illustrator- the only way AOC’s posters look “Soviet” is if all political illustration is Soviet
Classic Soviet poster design was either hard, angular, abstract constructivism or painterly, red-flag draped Socialist Realism. Neither look anything like AOC’s" / Twitter

 

[lpetrich]

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Talks Winning Congressional Primary Election in New York - how her opponent Joe Crowley was hardly ever around.

"I was nominated at first by a group called Justice Democrats. They were trying to essentially field non-corporate candidates in the 2018 midterm election,” she says. “They were looking for people with a history of community service and my name had come across their desk, and they called.”

It was the right call, at the right time. “I had actually just gotten off of camp at Standing Rock. I was there with the Lakota Sioux and all of the Native peoples that were really standing up to protect the water supply in the Midwestern United States,” she says. “That experience was very personally important and transformative, and I kind of left feeling like I had to do more, and I didn’t know what that was. When I got that call, I just felt like, 'OK, the universe is telling me something, so I’m going to listen.'"

The universe? A rather odd turn of phrase. Here it is again:
A no-nonsense conversation between Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Kerry Washington

WASHINGTON: I remember reading an interview where you said you believe in working hard and leaving the rest up to the universe, that you didn’t even watch the polls as they were trickling in on election night. What is your connection to God and the universe?

OCASIO-CORTEZ: I really connect with Martin Luther King Jr.’s concept of a moral universe—the idea that we can operate within a moral framework and tap into something powerful. Growing up in a community that’s so diverse, I felt really blessed to see all the different ways that our community taps into that same idea. Among all of these faiths, there’s a shared faith that’s very powerful. So I didn’t watch the polls, because I knew that the best thing we could do is work as hard as we can for what is right and what is good.

She also says:

OCASIO-CORTEZ: I’d have to check this, but I remember reading that the average worker in the United States generates about $60 per hour worth of value. But the average hourly income is far, far lower than that.

That number is pretty much correct for (GDP)/(number of workers) for 52 weeks per year and 40 hours per week. I find $58/hour. For the average hourly income, I checked on the median, since 50% are above it and 50% are below it. It's $23/hour, about 1/2.5 of the GDP value. Not "far, far lower", but still significantly lower.

The wage share of GDP is currently around 62%, and it was more like 72% in the 1950's. The present wage share makes the mean wage $36/hour. Somewhat higher than the median wage, but not much higher.

One of the issues facing humanity is that our material technology is outpacing our moral technology. So I think that moving toward a more morally sophisticated society will allow us to have a more human society—one where people are able to feed themselves and house themselves.

I think that she's correct over a long view of history, and by long I mean all the way back to the invention of agriculture.

I like this: “It’s not enough to say, ‘I’m a good person.’ The question is, ‘Am I doing good work?'”—Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

 

[PyramidHead]

She also says:

OCASIO-CORTEZ: I’d have to check this, but I remember reading that the average worker in the United States generates about $60 per hour worth of value. But the average hourly income is far, far lower than that.

That number is pretty much correct for (GDP)/(number of workers) for 52 weeks per year and 40 hours per week. I find $58/hour. For the average hourly income, I checked on the median, since 50% are above it and 50% are below it. It's $23/hour, about 1/2.5 of the GDP value. Not "far, far lower", but still significantly lower.

The bolded sentence is a non-sequitur. You can't check the average by checking the median. And you can't check the median BECAUSE 50% are above it and 50% are below it; that's just the definition of a median.