All Things "AOC" Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez & the Squad.

[Mr. Sinister]

She's been public enemy no. 1 for 4 years now. Eventually you stop playing nice.

[bearrock]

1 hour ago, Renegade7 said:

If you keep insisting that its okay for her to respond like that because everything prior to it, we are going to need to agree to disagree, we are going in circles about it.

 

But stop misrepresenting my case as simply she should ignore everything they are saying and hope it goes away, I never said that. 

 

Yes, I wish she had ignored this one, it was a weak and petty attempt to get her attention, but fine with her responding if she responded differently.  They are now actively trying to get her to respond to everything they say about her on the internet and its working, she's giving them exactly what they want.  

 

Reasonable people can disagree based on reasonable differences.  I would like to think it's one of those instances here.  But to make our differences clear, it's not that I think you said she should ignore everything.  You said she should've ignored this one.  I disagreed.  That's not because I think you said something you didn't.  

 

With respect to the GOP trolls goading her (which I agree to a certain extent.  But trolls also just need the latest Satan du jour.  If not her, it will be someone else across the aisle that dares speak their mind.   Oh who are we kidding, it's gonna be someone who dares speak HER mind), it's her choice and her life.  I have neither the inclination nor the patience to deal with morons who are behaving like lunatics.  But if she wants to, it's her life.  But I disagree with the notion that she should stop because somehow it's bad for national discourse.  Once some of the people in one party start to peddle that the president staged a false mass shooting at an elementary school for a political objective and those people aren't immediately drawn and quartered by fellow party members, there's no putting the genie back in the bottle after that one.

 

2 hours ago, Renegade7 said:

Ya know, its her job to try to figure this out from a policy standpoint, as was Obama's.  What UK does is they have impartiality rules that lead to UK coming after Fox News and Fox News eventually leaving the UK:

 

It's not her job to try to figure out an end run around the 1st amendment, even assuming such a scenario was in the realm of possibility in the United States.  I think she would have better luck trying to cement a progressive super majority till the end of time (no, I don't think that will happen either).  

 

2 hours ago, Renegade7 said:

Facebook is not a news organization but has completely lost control of their platform.  They are hiding behind needed guidance on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, so fine, give them what they want, and make it hurt.  This will apply to all social media platforms, not jus Facebook, Twitter is at least starting to ban politicians from its platform for continously violating its policies.

 

Couple of things to unravel here.  The minute AOC actually has rulemaking authority over the CDA, we can blame her for that one.  Second, section 230 is an incredibly difficult issue.  You want extremeskins to be held liable for all the idiocy that gets posted here on a daily basis? I'm sure the mods would love that one.  There's a line.  But putting that line into continuously workable standard is even more difficult than defining obscenity.  Lastly, lot of the troll behavior wouldn't be actionable to begin with.

 

2 hours ago, Renegade7 said:

Again, she's an elected official in congress, it is her job to figure out how to resolve this.  Her job isn't to bring attention to issues, its to resolve them. 

 

Her entire party deserves to be taken to task for not coming up with a plan to address this, I jus laid out two of what should be many.

 

Whether it's her job to solve the stupidity proliferating among the American public is a question subject to debate, but I disagree with the notion that there is some policy solution to be had.  I think AOC views her job as highlighting the idiocy of the appeasement policy proliferating the moderate dems and pointing out that whatever solution that can get enough of the psycho GOPers to support will never come close enough to solving the actual problems in this country or the world.  She seems to be doing a pretty good job at it in my view.

 

2 hours ago, Renegade7 said:

It can't jus be the voters when there are huge, powerful people and organizations pouring millions, if not billions, into manipulating them and the information they get about the world around them.

 

Waiting for folks to figure out they are being played isn't going to work here and doesn't work overseas either.  This didn't happen organicly, this was a targeted misinformation attack on our population over a span of decades from the inside and is also now coming from the outside as well (that needs to be addressed as well, dont jus say its happening and "be on the look out").

 

At its core, the stupidity of the voters caused this.  I don't care how many billion dollars are pumped into convincing you that all the insanity peddled by the right is etched on stone tablets from Mt. Sinai.  If you aren't smart enough to think, hmm, maybe I shouldn't inject bleach for covid or maybe I should listen to my doctor on vaccine and safety measures, I'm not sure what more can be done.   You have people who will look for that one paper written by one obscure pseudo academic that's been debunked and discredited till kingdom come to say "Aha!  I knew the libtards were wrong and I was right!"  And if they can't find that one, they'll just make **** up.  The solution is what?  State sponsored communication channels and lock up all the dissidents?  You can't save stupidity.  Not through politeness.  Not through policy.   You just have to hope and pray the sane people outnumber the insane ones.

[Renegade7]

@bearrock you disappoint me.  You know your solution of waiting on folks to snap out of it won't work, but stand by it anyway.

 

I completely disagree with you that it's not her job to figure out how to address issues around free speech in the constitution like Citizens United and corporations getting the same rights as people under the 1st ammendment. 

 

She disagrees with you as well, this is her going off about this and the need for #HR1, an anti-corruption bill targeting that in our elections.

 

https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/19/opinions/ocasio-cortez-identified-the-problem-heres-the-solution-waldman/index.html

 

If you want to argue that Section 230 is too  tricky to bother with, you can have that opinion, I vehemently disagree with you that we should leave it alone and so should AOC and the rest of congress. 

 

They made the law in the first place, how can they have no say in its adjustment with the times? Its from a different century for crying out loud.  Saying she's not on the right committee so there's nothing she can do doesn't make sense to me.

 

She's on the Oversight and Reform committee, im not blaming her for not bringing this up, im pushing back on you saying there's nothing she can do about these larger issues, be it co-sponsering or visibly defending proposed bills like she did for #HR1:

 

https://oversight.house.gov/about/committee-jurisdiction

 

You are ranting right now, do you want to try to solve the problem or not?  Suggesting state-sponsored news is not a serious solution, your anger won't fix anything.

 

These are tough issues and tough questions that the founders left up to us to figure out as times change, not give up, we cannot give up. I thought we all already agreed that thoughts and prayers dont work...

[Spaceman Spiff]

15 hours ago, bearrock said:

What politician doesn't engage in "look at me"?  But narcissism is a pejorative for a good reason.  There's the inflated or grandiose sense of self importance.  But there's also the lack of empathy.  You can probably ascribe the first characteristic to many, if not almost all politicians to some degree.  Lack of empathy is not something I would ascribe to AOC (though whoever would do that, would then view her whole political career as an act, I'm sure).

 

I'm sure AOC is popular for different reasons to different people.  But one of the reason many support her is because when the moderates exasperate the progressives with "why they can't", she is among the group of progressives shouting back "why they must".  Her message was never about "I have all these great ideas that I came up with that will be great for the country" (that's Warren's domain).  She's the messenger that keeps on harping why there are all these obvious policy choices that are essential to be made (and while I frequently disagree, I recognize that she represents the views of not insignificant segment of the democratic party).  I'm sure there are no small number of people on both sides who would like to see her go away.  The problem is that the people she's giving voice to will still be there even if she's not.  Or even worse for the dems, they may decide to tune out with her.

 

Right, as I said it's a profession that allows narcissists to excel.  The lack of empathy thing is important because some narcissists do a great job of hiding it.  Maybe AOC is a deeply empathetic person.  But it also wouldn't surprise me if she'd run over her own grandmother if it meant getting where she needed to go...only if no one was looking, of course.

 

Also, a big part of it, IMO, is the desire to be liked and adored.  I feel like she has a lot of that.

 

You are also right, her message was never about having great ideas.  Warren is more palatable, for sure.  

 

[bearrock]

@Renegade7, why do you twist what I say to fit your narrative?  Why is this shadow boxing necessary?

 

18 minutes ago, Renegade7 said:

You know your solution of waiting on folks to snap out of it won't work, but stand by it anyway.

I'm not proposing what I say as a solution.  I have no solution.  I have zero idea as to how to make one party no longer be crazy.  I just think being measured and proper won't work either (cause I'm not sure anyone can do that better than the Obamas) and I don't know what plan added on top of the Obamaesque tone would flip the switch.  If you have ideas, I'm all ears, cause I have none.  But in the meantime, I'm not really in the mood to throw shade at people like AOC in hopes that more people emulating Obama will somehow make a difference.  I don't think it will.

 

24 minutes ago, Renegade7 said:

I completely disagree with you that it's not her job to figure out how to address issues around free speech in the constitution like Citizens United and corporations getting the same rights as people under the 1st ammendment. 

 

She disagrees with you as well, this is her going off about this and the need for #HR1, an anti-corruption bill targeting that in our elections.

 

https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/19/opinions/ocasio-cortez-identified-the-problem-heres-the-solution-waldman/index.html

 

I think we both know that the problems caused by Fox News and the crazies is not an issue of dark money or campaign contribution.  I would be happy to see Citizens United overturned.  I would be happy to see HR1 passed.  I don't think it makes a dent in the ability of the alt-right to give excuses to the crazy people to keep doing crazy things.  Anti-vax, stolen election, assault on the capital.  These are not the product of dark money campaign contributions.  AOC and Congress can figure out how to get campaign financing back on track (the task unfortunately starts with SCOTUS.  Tall task).  That still leaves free speech protection for all manner of vitriol and ugliness that persists.  You can stop dark money from flowing into elections, but how are you supposed to stop people from flocking to stupid things people post online?

 

30 minutes ago, Renegade7 said:

If you want to argue that Section 230 is too  tricky to bother with, you can have that opinion

 

Dear lord, come on.  There is no way you can read what I said to mean that.  I didn't say too tricky to bother with, I said it is difficult.  The standard is extremely hard to come up with.  It will likely have to fall along the lines of knowlingly publishing false facts or something akin to a takedown notice.  But there is no way to regulate speech on the internet to get rid of all the trolls by making websites and ISPs liable unless you want to open up a flood of unjust litigation.  And in most cases, the abhorent behaviors we are talking about are not addressed by legal liability.  The speakers themselves would not be liable under the 1st amendment, so no tinkling of section 230 will force websites and ISPs to shut down those speakers out of fear of liability.   

 

37 minutes ago, Renegade7 said:

im pushing back on you saying there's nothing she can do about these larger issues, be it co-sponsering or visibly defending proposed bills like she did for #HR1:

 

https://oversight.house.gov/about/committee-jurisdiction

 

Some larger issues have legislative solutions.  The alt-right crazies don't

 

38 minutes ago, Renegade7 said:

You are ranting right now, do you want to try to solve the problem or not?  Suggesting state-sponsored news is not a serious solution, your anger won't fix anything.

Well, I think we both know that I wasn't really suggesting state-sponsored news as a solution.  Merely an illustration to show how far things would have to go to shut down crazy talk.  And I agree my anger won't fix anything.  But then again what will fix the fact that half the politcal system has apparently lost their minds?

 

41 minutes ago, Renegade7 said:

These are tough issues and tough questions that the founders left up to us to figure out as times change, not give up, we cannot give up. I thought we all already agreed that thoughts and prayers dont work...

 

You're right.  These are tough questions.  And TPs probably won't work.  But when it comes to making the alt-right (who are rapidly becoming not-so-alt right) no longer looney toons insane, that's all I have.  Politeness didn't work.  Policies didn't work.  Self interests didn't work.  Experts didn't work.  Facts didn't work.  Hundreds of thousands of deaths didn't even work.  If you got something better, I would love to hear it and I would love for you to be right.  Cause I got nothing.

[Renegade7]

@bearrockto make sure we're on the same page, I want to make clear that policy cannot control how people think.

 

What it can do is address some of the factors as to why people think a certain way.  Racism in this country would be far worse today if we didn't come after segregation the way we did.  That took time, this will take time.

 

We know our own laws are being used against us, that a huge factor in this conversation was the malicious and intentional defunding of public education in red states.

 

This is a modular issue we're talking about, not everything is in our control, but somethings are.  We have to believe that or we are lost. I've given some suggestions to start with, but I think we should take it out of here, its bigger then AOC.

[bearrock]

5 minutes ago, Renegade7 said:

I think we should take it out of here, its bigger then AOC.

 

On that we agree.  I hope for the country's sake that you're right and and I'm wrong.

[TradeTheBeal!]

Just want to point out that AOC is 32 years old.  She’s extremely smart and driven and articulate and hot…and the media across all political spectrums cannot resist that kind of catnip.  But, despite several years now deep in the spotlight she’s stayed a whole lot cleaner than most any of us could manage at that age.

 

Theres nothing in her political or public persona that really warrants “run over her own grandma” scorchers.  
 

And of course Aunt Liz has more gravitas…she’s a 70something policy wizard.  Would’ve been a fine President for these times.

 

But 32 year old Liz was probably spending NYE 81 slamming Budweisers and key bumps and staring at Freddie’s bulge.

 

 

[Hersh]

14 minutes ago, TryTheBeal! said:

 

 

But 32 year old Liz was probably spending NYE 81 slamming Budweisers and key bumps and staring at Freddie’s bulge.

 

 

Yeah, it was “Liz” probably doing that. 😉

[Cooked Crack]

Hey y'all hear AOC was outside without a mask on?

 

 

 

[Cooked Crack]

 

[LadySkinsFan]

Down in Florida amongst the unsafe.

[Larry]

Looking forward to DeSantis blaming her, for Florida's numbers. 

[China]

47 minutes ago, LadySkinsFan said:

Down in Florida amongst the unsafe.

 

To be fair, I don't think there's anywhere safe in this country right now.

[LadySkinsFan]

16 minutes ago, China said:

 

To be fair, I don't think there's anywhere safe in this country right now.

 

True! Numbers are flying around Austin. I was going to go to the grocery store tomorrow but decided to practice creative, culinary arts instead.

[Dan T.]

27 minutes ago, China said:

 

To be fair, I don't think there's anywhere safe in this country right now.

 

At this point I really think NOT catching Omicron will the exception rather than the rule.

[Renegade7]

2 hours ago, LadySkinsFan said:

Down in Florida amongst the unsafe.

 

I really don't understand why of all places to go during the omicron spike she went to Florida.  

1 hour ago, China said:

 

To be fair, I don't think there's anywhere safe in this country right now.

 

True, but some places are straight magma compared to others.

[bearrock]

6 minutes ago, Renegade7 said:

 

I really don't understand why of all places to go during the omicron spike she went to Florida.  

 

Her mother apparently lives in Florida

[Llevron]

11 hours ago, bearrock said:

 

Her mother apparently lives in Florida

 

Stupid. Who goes to visit family? Oh and mom lives in deep red Florida? Why not her District? Cause its too blue and lawless?? What a hypocrite. 

 

Would date 10/10   Her mom too 

[China]

Sarah Palin: Liberals Like AOC Want to ‘Pound, Pound, Pound’ Sex Into People’s Heads

 

A photograph of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and her boyfriend that circulated online led the congresswoman to quip about the “sexual frustrations” of her Republican colleagues.

 

So naturally Fox News on Monday turned to Sarah Palin for her insight into the matter.

 

“It amazes me though, [Ocasio-Cortez] and other liberals—socialists, even—their ability to deflect from what the issues truly are,” the former Alaska governor said, “and [to] hear her obsession [with]—or at least suggestion of—always gender, and sex even.”

 

“Look how the liberals, Rachel, want to pound that into the public’s head: advertising who is attracted to who. What people do in… the privacy of their own bedrooms,” the dismayed former vice presidential nominee said.

 

“All those things that have to do with privacy and sex—the liberals, not the conservatives, are the ones who pound, pound, pound after that. And obviously it’s a tactic so that she doesn’t have to be held accountable.”

 

Click on the link for the full story

[EmirOfShmo]

1 hour ago, China said:

Sarah Palin: Liberals Like AOC Want to ‘Pound, Pound, Pound’ Sex Into People’s Heads

Click on the link for the full story

 

Hey ****head....Maybe take that pounding advice and have a chat with your daughter. Or tell your next husband to call you instead of sending an email when he wants a divorce. 

 

[Ball Security]

14 hours ago, China said:

Sarah Palin: Liberals Like AOC Want to ‘Pound, Pound, Pound’ Sex Into People’s Heads

 

A photograph of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and her boyfriend that circulated online led the congresswoman to quip about the “sexual frustrations” of her Republican colleagues.

 

So naturally Fox News on Monday turned to Sarah Palin for her insight into the matter.

 

“It amazes me though, [Ocasio-Cortez] and other liberals—socialists, even—their ability to deflect from what the issues truly are,” the former Alaska governor said, “and [to] hear her obsession [with]—or at least suggestion of—always gender, and sex even.”

 

“Look how the liberals, Rachel, want to pound that into the public’s head: advertising who is attracted to who. What people do in… the privacy of their own bedrooms,” the dismayed former vice presidential nominee said.

 

“All those things that have to do with privacy and sex—the liberals, not the conservatives, are the ones who pound, pound, pound after that. And obviously it’s a tactic so that she doesn’t have to be held accountable.”

 

Click on the link for the full story

Was Palin thinking about Glen Rice when she said this?

[LD0506]

3 minutes ago, Ball Security said:

Was Palin thinking? about Glen Rice when she said this?

 

Nope

Not one bit

[China]

Squad politics backfire

 

The hard-left politics of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and the so-called "Squad," once a dominant theme for vast numbers of elected Democrats, is backfiring big-time on the party in power, top Democrats tell us.

 

Why it matters: The push to defund the police, rename schools and tear down statues has created a significant obstacle to Democrats keeping control of the House, the Senate and the party’s overall image.

 

"It's what we've been screaming about for a year," said Matt Bennett, c0-founder of center-left Third Way, which launched Shield PAC to defend moderate Democrats.

"It's a huge problem."

The latest sign of the backlash was the landslide (70%+) recall this week of three San Francisco school board members, who were criticized for prioritizing issues like the renaming of 44 public schools — including ones honoring George Washington and Abraham Lincoln — over a return to in-person classes.

 

Other factors like an abrupt admissions change to a prestigious high school were at play (all politics is local).

But the most liberal city in the most liberal state decided that liberal activists had gone too far.

It's part of a barrage of evidence that the progressive activism of the Squad pushed the party's image way left of where most voters are — even most Democratic voters.

 

Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), co-chair of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, told Axios: "What I'm hearing at home — and what I'm focused on — are commonsense, bipartisan solutions — from tackling grocery and gas prices, to cutting taxes and fixing our infrastructure, to investing in law enforcement and fighting crime."

Aides to several Squad members declined immediate comment.

This is a seismic shift from just a year ago. The signs have built steadily throughout President Biden's 13 months in office that Squad politics are problematic when you control everything:

 

30 House Democrats — the most in decades — have announced they'll retire instead of running in November's midterms. They see little hope of keeping the majority in this environment.

Democrats lose poll after poll of generic House matchups, which ask voters if they'd prefer an R or a D if the election were held today.

Republicans' decisive sweep of statewide offices in Virginia was powered in part by Democrats' failure to appreciate parents' skepticism about public schools' mask mandates, policies on transgender rights and approach to teaching about race.

 

Also in November, voters in liberal Minneapolis rejected a proposal designed to radically constrain police.

Zoom out: House Democrats' own polling and focus groups show many swing voters think the party is too "preachy," "judgmental" and "focused on culture wars," according to documents obtained by Politico.

 

Click on the link for more

[tshile]

15 minutes ago, China said:

Republicans' decisive sweep of statewide offices in Virginia was powered in part by Democrats' failure to appreciate parents' skepticism about public schools' mask mandates, policies on transgender rights and approach to teaching about race.

No it wasn’t

it was powered by a manufactured issue to which the response, the only appropriate response, was to point out it wasn’t true.