This is a great article by New Yorker editor David Remnick about Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It is almost funny how she has rattled the GOP. They hate, hate, hate her. Is it her youth, her idealism, her beauty, her brains? Is it because she has a heart and they don’t? Is it because she has a soul and they don’t? She frightens them. I worry for her safety.
David Remnick writes:
Sebastian Gorka, late of the Trump Administration, stood before the annual gathering of the Conservative Political Action Conference last week and made plain the inner frenzy of a party that must place its hopes for 2020 on a President who had just been described before a congressional committee as “a racist,” “a con man,” and “a cheat.” Hence the rhetorical smoke bombs. Wild-eyed Democrats are coming! Gorka declared, “They want to take your pickup truck! They want to rebuild your home! They want to take away your hamburgers! This is what Stalin dreamt about but never achieved!”
The Stalinist nightmare that Gorka had on his mind is the Green New Deal, a still rough proposal that calls on the U.S. government to come to the belated rescue of the planet with the same sense of urgency that it displayed in rescuing the economy during the Great Depression. To Gorka, such a proposal is a communist “watermelon”: “green on the outside, deep, deep red communist on the inside.”
The President, who dismisses climate change as “a Chinese hoax,” also waxed derisive at cpac. “New Green Deal or whatever they hell they call it . . . I encourage it,” he said caustically, in a sweaty, two-hour rant on Saturday. “I think it’s really something Democrats should promote. . . . No planes! No energy! When the wind stops blowing, that’s the end of your electric. ‘Darling, is the wind blowing today? I’d like to watch television, darling.’ ”
The focus of this fear campaign, the nexus of all danger, is a member of Congress who has been in office for two months: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who, at twenty-nine, represents parts of the Bronx and Queens. With Senator Ed Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, she is a co-sponsor of the Green New Deal. Because she questions our habits of fossil-fuel consumption and industrial agriculture, her opponents reason, she can’t possibly be trying to head off global catastrophe. She just wants to steal your Chevy Colorado and your Big Mac.
“Apparently, I am a cow dictator,” Ocasio-Cortez told me. “What’s humorous to me is that we’re finally proposing a clear, ambitious, but necessary and grounded policy on the scale of the problem. And so it’s hard for the Republicans to refute the actual policy on its substance. They resort to mythologizing it on a ludicrous level. Ted Cruz says we want to ‘kill all the cows.’ How far have we slid in our discourse? But that’s what half our political representation is up to.”
Ocasio-Cortez upset a veteran of her own party in a primary race, and came to office as an unabashed idealist. The mocking attacks have been a constant on the right ever since. There are phony memes about her clothes, her makeup, her intellect, her boyfriend, her apartment building, her childhood, her high school, her relatives, her old nickname, her dance routine from her days at Boston University. There is a creepy dimension to some of them. A nude selfie made its way through social media—until it was unmasked as a fraud.
Members of the Republican caucus have been no more welcoming. As Ocasio-Cortez rose to cast her vote for Nancy Pelosi as House Speaker, Republicans booed. In the cartoon being painted of her, Ocasio-Cortez is both ideologically monstrous and intellectually limited. “Every time she opens her mouth, I think she’s kidding,” Jerry Falwell, Jr., the evangelical leader and president of Liberty University, told the delegates at cpac. Ed Rollins, an old Reagan adviser who appears frequently on Fox News, referred to her as a “little girl.” On Fox, mispronouncing “Ocasio-Cortez” is considered hilarious.
“It feels like an extra job,” she said of the attacks. “I’ve got a full-time job in Congress and then I moonlight as America’s greatest villain, or as the new hope. And it’s pretty tiring. I’m just a normal person. I knew that I was not going to be liked. I’m a Democrat. I’m a woman. I’m a young woman. A Latina. And I’m a liberal, a D.S.A. member,” she said, referring to the Democratic Socialists of America. “I believe health care is a right and people should be paid enough to live. Those are offensive values to them. But this ravenous hysteria—it’s really getting to a level that is kind of out of control. It’s dangerous and even scary. I have days when it seems some people want to stoke just enough of it to have just enough plausible deniability if something happens to me.”
The Trump family has attacked her from the start. Because she had the D.S.A.’s endorsement, last December, Donald Trump, Jr., posted a joke on Instagram about how in socialist countries people eat their dogs rather than walk them. (“It’s funny cuz it’s true!!!” he wrote.) Ocasio-Cortez’s office had no comment, but she did, tweeting, “Please, keep it coming Jr—it’s definitely a ‘very, very large brain’ idea to troll a member of a body that will have subpoena power in a month.”
In fact, last week, in her first major appearance as a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, Ocasio-Cortez approached the job of interrogating Michael Cohen with care. Republicans have accused her of being a knowledge-lite performer whose only talent is a mastery of Twitter. But, while most of the Republican committee members and even a few Democrats put on laughably self-regarding performances, Ocasio-Cortez followed a line of questioning that helped tease out important facts and responses from Cohen. Thanks in part to that exchange, we can expect to hear from some essential characters from Trump Tower, Misters Weisselberg and Calamari.
Ocasio-Cortez says that she has tried to keep her focus partly by avoiding watching Trump on television: “He relies and thrives on attention, and so the less attention he’s given, even if it’s just one set of eyeballs, the weaker he is.” She said that watching Trump in the House chamber at the State of the Union address made her feel “sick” and “underwhelmed.”
“He is such a small, mediocre person,” she told me. “I grew up with a real romanticism about America. I grew up in a first-generation household where your parents give up everything, and for me America was the greatest thing ever to exist. To be there on the floor of the House was beyond anything my parents would have ever dreamed of. But the person behind the podium was so unskilled. It was kind of sad.”
Ocasio-Cortez has proposed a set of left-leaning ideas: Medicare for All, a seventy-per-cent tax rate on income above ten million dollars, a guaranteed living wage. At first, she seemed to unnerve Democratic leaders. She supported and appeared at a sit-in outside Nancy Pelosi’s office with an environmental group, the Sunrise Movement. Pelosi was unamused and later referred dismissively to the Green New Deal as a “dream.”
But that was weeks ago. Pelosi has found a modus operandi with Ocasio-Cortez, and posed with her (along with Representives Jahana Hayes and Ilhan Omar) for the cover of Rolling Stone. The idea of a Green New Deal has won endorsement from Democratic Presidential candidates (Harris, Warren, Sanders, Booker, Klobuchar, Gillibrand, Inslee) and a growing number of senators and congressmen. Of course, it is not entirely clear, in detailed legislative terms, what exactly they are endorsing. In general, the idea is to pour government money into transforming the economy in ways that might head off the worst of climate change. At this point, the most salient feature of the proposal is a sense of urgency, its conversation-changing radicalism.
There is enormous value in that. So far, moderation has done nothing to override denialism. In an interview after her primary win, Ocasio-Cortez told me that one of the books she read in college that influenced her most was Martin Luther King, Jr.,’s “Why We Can’t Wait,” which includes his “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” There King wrote, “I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice.”
“I think King had a point,” she told me.
Moderation, to say nothing of science denial on the right, has certainly done far too little to head off the catastrophic effects promised by climate change in our time. Just before Ocasio-Cortez won her seat, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change declared that, if carbon emissions continue to rise as they are, the world will soon experience immense destabilization, with cities and regions with intolerable temperatures creating tens of millions of “climate refugees” forced to escape spreading deserts. Unique ecosystems and entire species will vanish. The Great Barrier Reef, already in dire condition, will die. Whole industries, like fishing, will diminish enormously. We have already seen the rise of extreme storms, floods, heat waves, wildfires. The window for meaningful change is closing. “The next few years are probably the most important in our history,” Debra Roberts, the co-chair of one of the I.P.C.C.’s three working groups, has said.
There is no question that the Green New Deal is more substantial in its sense of urgency and ambition than it is in its fine-grained detail. But what has the Republican Party offered, other than a phony restitution of a coal economy and a withdrawal from the Paris climate accord? The recent spectacle of a powerful Democrat like Dianne Feinstein dismissing a group of earnest schoolchildren and students imploring her to support a Green New Deal was maddening to watch. “I know what I’m doing!” she told the kids.
Agree with Ocasio-Cortez’s solutions or not, it’s to her credit that, in such a short time, she has helped change the terms of the debate. “Radicalism pushes the bonds of what liberals will jump on board with,” Saikat Chakrabarti, the representative’s chief of staff, said. “Every major social movement has worked that way.”
The Republican strategy—to brand the Democratic Party and its 2020 nominee, no matter who it is, a harebrained revolutionary—comes from a familiar playbook. Obama was routinely branded a socialist, even a Kenyan socialist, by the far-right opposition. This time around, Donald Trump, as he made clear in his State of the Union Address, will try to hang “socialism” around the neck of the Democratic Party and describe the Democratic candidate as the second coming of Kim Jong Un. But wait! The President “fell in love” with Kim Jong Un. Whatever. That will surely be the move, and Ocasio-Cortez, who is six years short of eligibility for the Presidency, will surely be a focal point of Trump’s tantrums.
Why? Well, first of all, she comes from New York, but not Trump’s New York. She grew up without great privilege. She is a person of color. And she is a woman. And, “In politics,” as Ashley Reese wrote for Jezebel, “women are often either characterized as hideous harpies like Hillary Clinton or pretty idiots whose ‘craziness’ is bound up with their sex appeal. . . . To her critics, Ocasio-Cortez is firmly in the pretty idiot category.”
When I read that to Ocasio-Cortez, she could only agree. “I feel like I predicted it from day one,” she told me. “The idea that a woman can be as powerful as a man is something that our society can’t deal with. But I am as powerful as a man and it drives them crazy.”
Was that the case with Trump? I asked.
“I can see Trump being enormously upset that a twenty-nine-year-old Latina, who is the daughter of a domestic worker, is helping to build the case to get his financial records. I think that adds insult to injury to him.”
Ocasio-Cortez’s staff members say that they often debate whether she is overexposed—if she is taking on too much or getting too far out ahead of the debate. So far, despite the occasional stumble and the endless attacks, she’s decided that the time demands a headlong direction. “When there is a fire, there are the people who run toward the fire and people who run away,” she told me last year. “I want to be with the people who run toward it.”
When I recalled that line, Ocasio-Cortez said, “It still feels terrifying every time. I am trying to pick my battles, but, until there are more people running toward the fire, it’s hard to take a break. The good news is that there seems like more people are running toward the fire. It’s scary running into a burning building. But what is the choice? It can’t be understated how imperilled our democracy is right now.”
Diane, have you ever written up the event you did with her? I’d love to read about it.
It’s interesting.
How many other progressives have met with Diane Ravitch?
Has Bernie Sanders?
How about Elizabeth Warren?
How about Kamala Harris?
Perhaps Ocasio-Cortez understands something that the Presidential hopefully are missing.
Hopefuls, not hopefully
Self correct strikes again
Or perhaps they just lack the courage of Ocasio-Cortez.
You’re not calling Harris a progressive, are you?
I have not had time. It was Saturday. I just spent the morning doing an oral history interview about my mentor Lawrence Cremin.
“It can’t be understated how imperilled [sic, this is British spelling] our democracy is right now.”
It is so refreshing (or frightening that it has to be said at all) to read that an elected member of Congress has the courage to say this out loud and do something about it.
Another reason to like her, regardless of what you think of her politics:
https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-does-pushups-133011368.html
It’s all an effort by the GOP and the right wing (is there a difference?) to stifle, intimidate and overwhelm AOC with a tidal wave of toxic verbal glop. She’s magnificent and has handled herself with aplomb and incredible intelligence. There’s nothing radical about what she is proposing. The rest of the advanced wealthy democracies already have universal health care and many others have tuition free university, guaranteed 6 week vacations, family leave, parental leave, strong unions and other social programs that we can only dream about.
“knowledge-lite performer” That would be Trump, not AOC.
Exactly, Joe Jersey! What’s radical is that on average, wild vertebrates worldwide have declined by 58 percent in the past 40 years and flying insects by 75 percent. What’s radical are the severe population dislocations, increased disease (from various causes, including ticks and mosquitoes moving north), and disruptions (including our own) of food chains that climate change will bring about. What’s radical is the US paying TWICE for healthcare what the average member nation in the OECD pays and having worse outcomes because of the profiteering by our healthcare insurance and provider rackets. What’s radical is our not learning from the existence proofs of better systems in country after country around the world.
“What’s radical is our not learning from the existence proofs of better systems in country after country around the world.” So true. Very evident in education, & I find myself thinking the same thing in many contexts– especially when I hear a think-tanker coming up with a nutty new free-market ploy to deal with a US problem that is being handled w/success sensibly elsewhere. Also applies to not learning from history.
YUP. Seventy years ago in Canada people had this stupid debate we are now having about universal, single-payer health insurance, and right-wingers were making the absurd claim that it was too expensive. LOL. We are WAY behind the times. Backward, really.
Rhetoric has been weaponized ferociously by the right-wing gop. They and their army of right-wing talk radio blabbers and tv pundits on cable and network use satire, ridicule, innuendo, and misrepresentation to mock and target for character assassination any articulate leader left-of-center. These non-stop word assaults reach their violent fringe. For herself and all of us, AOC has to take security seriously.
And the radio/ TV rw fringe nuts spawn bizarre hate groups on social media, & viral videos w/manipulative captions designed to spread fear and conspiracy theory– unchecked by commonsense censorship of “crying fire in a crowded theater” – type communication.
Ocasio-Cortez says that she has tried to keep her focus partly by avoiding watching Trump on television: “He relies and thrives on attention, and so the less attention he’s given, even if it’s just one set of eyeballs, the weaker he is.”
That alone demonstrates her intelligence.
Far too many Democratic leaders don’t appreciate that Trump gains power every time they reply to something he has said or tweeted. And many of them are almost constantly replying.
And some of them have even been trying to dismiss Ocasio-Cortez.
Pelosi has come to realize that public opposition to Ocasio-Cortez (eg, by dismissing her ideas as dreaming) will only make her (Pelosi) weeker. So Pelosi has recently opted for a less confrontational and less transparent tactic.
“Far too many Democratic leaders don’t appreciate that Trump gains power every time they reply to something he has said or tweeted. And many of them are almost constantly replying.”
I disagree. It is incumbent upon legislators to keep drawing the line between what is acceptable and what is not. I really don’t care if Trump’s 30% base whines. Far more problematic are the 24/7 political analysis channels CNN & MSNBC spending 90% of air time dissecting Trumptweets while ignoring virtually everything else happening in the country & abroad.
To whoever may concern about your own well-being in the near future:
If you have been with Dr. Ravitch’s Educational blog, then please open mind and heart to think about DEMOCRACY and EQUALITY in education
First of all, I will not live long enough to articulate whatever readers take your health, intellect, knowledge, and experience for granted.
One thing is for sure that if you did not live with or in a good life or a misery life, then you would not actually feel for it except read theoretically. In other word, please read and listen to every word that Dr. Ravitch expresses.
The Poor NEVER can have an advantage enough to overcome the Rich. So why does the Rich tries so hard to bully the Poor? Is it because you are NOT truly rich and mart, but CROOKED AND IGNORANT?
IMHO, either the Rich or the Poor, everyone is real winner if YOU are compassionate with a logical mid = before doing harm others, think of the consequence. Back2basic
Who are the hardest-working people in the Untied States today? These have to be the photo researchers at the Trump Propaganda Network, aka Faux News, who are tasked with finding bad pictures of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to put into their Daily smear pieces about her. And, guess what? They are sometimes successful. Even someone like her occasionally, rarely, in the wrong light, from the wrong angle, in the wrong moment, doesn’t look stunning. Quite the revelation, Faux!!!
Fortunately, her beauty is not that superficial. It lies not just in her looks but in her courage and compassion and sense and decency and determination to do something, FINALLY, that other politicians have not been courageous enough to do about climate change and income inequality. By contrast, of course, Don the Con, if he looked like freaking Adonis, would still be a very, very ugly man. Stupid, racist, ignorant, privileged and pampered, venal, dishonest, criminal, treasonous–these aren’t pretty. No wonder he has to write all those 30,000-dollar checks.
Of course, Faux News, like Not-So-Breitbart, must also have a whole team dedicated to scanning the wire reports to find any story about a crime committed, somewhere, by an immigrant to put at the top of the daily feed.
Fortunately, her beauty is not that superficial. It lies not just in her looks but in her courage and compassion and sense and decency and determination to do something,
Yes and thank you. I once had a campus beauty queen as a student. No one though she had a brain. She was an excellent student. She had a long career as a teacher of art and instigator of community art projects.
Also, Fox news displayed a sign functioning as a headline to an oral report about the airplanes being gounded by the FAA. Lou Dobbs was clueless. He babbled on. The sign behind his head read “gronded.”
We could go on and on about our favorite right-wing solecisms. My favorite: Trup’s tweet about “an unpresidented act.” LOL. I certainly would love to see IQ45 unpresidented.
AOC is extraordinarily quick witted, and it’s enormous fun to watch here pick apart illogic on the part of a right-wing opponent, especially in one-on-one situations. It’s especially wonderful to see this from one so young. She is already formidable. In the future . . . wow. She is quite capable of blowing up a lot of idiotic preconceptions with that mind of hers!
AOC is remarkable.
Actually, the hardest-working people in America today are mostly immigrants — especially those who were unable to get the impossible visas.
Indeed! In my book, these folks define nobility. They work astonishingly hard at very low pay in order to support their families, often going without themselves in order to send a few bucks to kids and parents back home. How dearly I would like to see Don the Con sweating all day on one of his construction projects, in a field, on top of a building installing a roof in the Florida sun, making beds and scrubbing toilets in a hotel, and then returning to sleep in a room with twelve other people. These people, above almost all others, deserve honor and respect and dignity and a chance at a good life.
Bob Shepherd: I totally agree with you. Those who get their money from Big Daddy, or those who get $$ from all sorts of thievery don’t have a clue about what really hard work entails. That’s why those ‘at the top’ have no compassion for those who ‘work their butts off’ to survive. That includes not only immigrants but all people who work and get next to nothing for their labors. $7.25 an hour minimum wage is atrocious, and the wealthy think its just fine.
Preach it!
Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington is also coming out swinging on climate change.
Washington state
AOC is a breath of fresh air D.C. She is smart and driven, and this upsets conservatives and threatens the complacent corporate Democrats that have continued to move further to the right in recent years. AOC’s ideas are not radical. They are progressive, and it has been a long time since we have heard from a progressive other than Bernie. AOC should focus on the work at hand and ignore all the detractors and naysayers. She has avoided the gaffes of her other two female junior colleagues. She should continue to serve her district to the best of her ability and challenge Congress with new ideas and a working class perspective. Most people in Congress are millionaires that are out of touch with working families.
She has not so much avoided gaffes as turned them around on her detractors.
Reflections
Reflected in a mirror
The left becomes the right
And what at first seems error
Turns positive, in spite
sweeeet!
AGREE, retired teacher.
“So far, moderation has done nothing to override denialism.”
Yes!!!
And Feinstein’s reaction to those kids was disgusting.
At least Feinstein was honest
I know what I’m doing!” she told the kids.
As on so many other issues, she knows exactly what she is doing.
That should scare people more than anything.
Especially Democrats.
Well said, SomeDAM!
Our right to freely engage in public discourse through speech is under sustained attack, necessitating a vigorous defense against the major social media and internet platforms.
Sean Hannity is promoting this video that claims the Congresswoman is just an actress, and that her staff have unpronounceable names. You’ve got to watch it to see how they’ve spun the fact that a group called the Justice Democrats found and backed candidates for the mid-terms. No one has tried to hide that fact, which was reported in the NYT.
https://t.co/S6z93ywYJV
Better link to the scary video:
Disgusting.
If she is an actress, she is certainly worthy of an Oscario
lol
Oscario Cortez
If acting s the biz
Of AO-Cortez
Then worthy she is
Of Oscar for this
Faux News has been running DAILY pieces on AOC for about three months now, and on the specter of Socialism, as though Denmark were the Soviet Union under Stalin. LOL. They are clearly threatened by her, and words are insufficient to say how much that pleases me.
The brilliant and compassionate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is clearly more than a match for the cretinous, cowardly, racist, treason-abetting, dissembling, meretricious fear and hate mongers at Fox. What Fox has been doing with AOC is, ofc, taking the tried-and-true nationalist, fascist, demagogic tactic–creating enemies, one after another–the invading caravan of terrorist Honduran toddlers, AOC.
The fascists always have to have their Emmanuel Goldstein and their two-minutes hates.
Come to think of it, that’s just about how long a typical Tucker Carlson piece runs.
Conservatives are also passing around the lie that the Finnish government has collapsed because of socialism. The truth is the current Finnish government is stepping down because of their failure to address some of the issues in their social safety net system. The alarmist conservatives continue to make everything a crisis and hyperbole.
No real surprise. Everyone knows that
Finland is finished
Encouraging play
Future’s diminished
On PISA they’ll pay
A while ago, Diane reported her blog had 13.000.000 views. It now has 33,517,416.
The number reflects the compelling information Diane posts and the viewers who refer others to the blog so that they can be informed, enlightened and rallied to action.
Those who diss AOC are shooting themselves in the foot.
If AOC stays true to herself and avoids being corrupted by the terminal cancer that corporate Democrats and most if not every Republican represent (and I’m talking about “EVERY” registered Republican not just the elected ones — even the brain dead, biased, racist GOP voters have been corrupted), then here is my suggestion for paying for AOC’s GREEN NEW DEAL.
Pass legislation that limits U.S. defense spending to twice what the entire EU membership spends on defense.
“In 2016, the EU’s 28 Member States earmarked €200 billion of public expenditure for ‘defense’. This is equivalent to 1.3% of GDP. This is much less than the amount spent on social protection (expenditure equivalent to 19.1% of GDP in 2016), health (7.1%) or education (4.7%), but higher than public spending on recreation, culture and religion (1.0%), environmental protection (0.7%) and housing and community amenities (0.6%).”
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/DDN-20180518-1?inheritRedirect=true
That means the U.S. would only be allowed to spend $453 billion annually on defense and military spending. Trump wants to spend $716 billion on defense for 2019 while drastically cutting all domestic spending including Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
My suggested Green New Deal restrictions on military spending would free up $263 billion to pay for the New Green Deal. That is my answer to all the conservative brainless idiots (and I’m restraining myself when I just call them “brainless idiots”) that keep asking how AOC plans to pay for the New Green Deal.
In 2017, China spent $228.2 billion for its defense/military. Under AOC’s Green New Deal restriction on military spending, the US would still spend 2x what China does if my suggestion was implemented.
In 2017, Russia spent $55.3 billion on defense. Under AOC’s Green New Deal restrictions on military spending, the US would still spend more than 8x what Russa spends if my suggestion was implemented.
Here is a warning from me, my warning, to the GOP and/or all Trumpists that I think is far to stupid and brain dead to even heed this warning. Instead, the deplorables will go into a rage and shout how they are going to get me first. In fact, if this comment reaches the deplorables, they will probably add my name to their list of people to threaten with death.
If something violent happens to AOC, be aware that some people like me will start hunting for people like you, and when one of us strikes, it will be as fast as flipping a light switch and you are the light bulb.
People like me have fought in wars all over the world and we have learned the hard way how to fight using guerrilla tactics where we stay as invisible as possible.
Trump lies and brags that he has the support of the military. No he doesn’t. He has the support of some of the military but not all of the military.
He does not have the support of the majority of officers in the military. More than 70 percent of officers do not support Trump.
And support for Trump is fading among active-duty troops, new poll shows
Trump’s support in the military dropped from 46.1% in 2016 to 43.8% in 2018.
Trump’s overall disapproval went from 37% in 2017 to 43.1 percent in 2018.
At no point has Trump ever had a majority (more than 50 percent) of support from the active military. Trump’s level of support from the troops was linked to Mattis being the Secretary of Defense. Once Trump fired Mattis, he lost that support.
59.6 percent of the troops love (very favorable) Mattis compared to only 23.6 percent that is very favorable to Trump.
When we add the two favorable categories together the final score was:
83.6 percent for Mattis vs 54.4 percent for Trump, and that is only for the troops and does not include the officers. “Officers still have a lower opinion ofTrmps presidency than enlisted troops.”
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2018/10/15/support-for-trump-is-fading-among-active-duty-troops-new-poll-shows/
Military Times also reported that 30% of American troops said they see White nationalism as a bigger threat to national security than the wars in Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
The concentration of wealth created by Gates, DeVos and Charles and David Koch is the causal factor for the deprivation that has led to the rise of fascism.
I like your proposal!!
A Ravitch post like this one about AOC attracts 30 comments in a few hours. Her blog as a whole, 33.5 million views.
A man paid to influence, Rick Hess, what’s his blog comment number on average -zero?
Diane reflects democracy. Hess reflects oligarchy.
No surprise.
From history, Hessian came to be synonymous with mercenary.
The Hessians were hired by the English King against the Americans in the Revolutionary war.
To fight against the Americans
a great label for the public services privatizing game—so clearly fighting AGAINST US citizens
Thanks for the history refresher. The forefathers should have anticipated legal literalists who would use the lack of fine print about democracy’s protection to allow plunder by an oligarchy.
Money can’t buy me love!
Off from school today so I have the opportunity to get some work done outdoors then come in for a break, warming up and reading this blog midday…what a luxury.
Yeah…AOC..she certainly does drive the guys who listen to conservative hate radio crazy. Good for her.
Those guys keep reminding me of the film Duel, made by Stephen Spielberg back in 1971. Dennis Weaver plays the main character, a harried, modern family man. He’s actually a decent guy but he has that sort of talk radio crap going on in the background as he drives on a business trip. Yak yak yak…that trite, know-it-all, mansplaining conservative radio whine. (Why do they like to portray themselves as such tough guys but then spend so much time whining and complaining? I don’t get it.)
Anyway, this nasty looking tractor trailer truck pulls up behind Weaver and then starts to pursue him…..and his whole life is turned upside down. Someone should do a tongue-in-cheek remake of the movie with AOC behind the wheel of the big truck. And, a very different ending. I won’t ruin the original…but it’s worth watching..
Suffice to say, I am SO bored by the typical angry conservative male and his tedious, cliche Fox news /hate radio stoked need to argue just for the sake of arguing.
Go get ’em, AOC.
Back to work cleaning up winter. Have a nice afternoon, all.
This is a good read to understand the constant resentment there to be stoked by Faux News et al: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-birth-of-a-new-american-aristocracy/559130/
One reason that AOC has given the far right conniptions is that so far, their propaganda effort to jump on every small misstep she makes has NOT been reinforced by 1. the mainstream media repeating it over and over again and 2. Democrats who have somewhat different political views jumping on the criticism because they think it makes them look “independent” and 3. other Democrats or progressives who decide that anyone who doesn’t share exactly the same views that they are is clearly a corrupt and frightening politician who will ruin our country if she has any power.
This is also why Obama got elected and why Al Gore and John Kerry did not. With Obama, those who had somewhat different political ideas but still identified as democrats or progressives did not decide to turn every one of his missteps or policy disagreements to mischaracterize him as the most evil person who ever ran for President.
With Al Gore and John Kerry, the media repeated all the propaganda from the right and turned those perfectly acceptable politicians into lying, cheating, exaggerating horrors who had spent their entire lives getting ahead through deception and they had no core values and would abandon every principle and screw over Americans if they voted for them. With Al Gore and John Kerry, the democrats and progressives too often repeated the propaganda, as in “Gore is so awful and no better than Bush/Cheney….Kerry is so awful and no better than Bush/Cheney….HRC is so awful and no better than Trump”. Anyone see a pattern here? That kind of thing was almost never heard when Obama was running.
The far right will always use propaganda and lies to defeat anyone who doesn’t embrace their far right agenda. But the only times that works is when the mainstream media repeats it — with lots of helpful quotes from all the angry democrats and progressives who are mad that their preferred candidate didn’t win the primary and will happily reinforce that notion that the ugly mischaracterization of the Democrat as dishonest, corrupt and evil and no better than the Republican is absolutely the truth.
Notice how Nancy Pelosi relates to AOC. She has policy disagreements with AOC. She will talk about her differences. She will NEVER say that AOC is corrupt, lying or untrustworthy and the only reason she is promoting this policy is because she is secretly a Marxist/Socialist.
Notice how AOC relates to Nancy Pelosi. She has policy disagreements with Pelosi. She talks about their differences. She will NEVER say that Pelosi is corrupt, untrustworthy, and the only reason she wants that policy is that lots of rich people are paying her.
That’s also how Democrats and progressives treated Obama. They criticized him on his policies without turning it into a character assassination by insisting that Obama was the most corrupt, greedy, dishonest person to run for President and absolutely no better than John McCain or Mitt Romney.
That is how the Democrats win. By not helping the right do their character assassinations. Despite the media’s non-stop attempt to try to pretend that the moderate and conservative democrats are trying to destroy AOC, that is simply not true and AOC herself knows it. She is brilliant and gets it. She is a breath of fresh air and one of the wisest politicians – despite her age – that I have ever seen.
The far right can’t destroy her without the help of Democrats and no Democrats are helping them so far which is why she is allowed to make some mistakes — be human — and still be considered an honest, non-corrupt person.
AOC is not trying to character assassinate other democrats and they are not trying to character assassinate her. They have differences in policies and that is okay — they can disagree and fight as hard as they want for their policies based on making good arguments to the American people — not by character assassinating one another.
That’s how the progressive agenda will be won.
Bravo! Well said!
In a similar vein, (ignoring the clickbait headline), this article gave me hope that people of goodwill are trying to defuse divisions fostered by the current political climate.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/jewish-muslim-democrats-seek-to-ease-tensions-amid-omar-controversy/2019/03/17/41bead38-4698-11e9-9726-50f151ab44b9_story.html?utm_term=.254fbc928904&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1
Yes. The right wing wants to pit Jews against Muslims in America and I don’t believe it has worked so far. There are a few anti-Muslim Jews and a few anti-Semitic Muslims but the majority aren’t buying into the division that the far right is trying to sow.
Yes. Love Trumps hate.
NYC public school parent
The reason Obama got elected twice; is that he was able to bring the Black Community out in larger numbers than they traditionally show up in. Something that Trump was able to do in 2018 as well. My district that was Republican since I moved to Long Island 33 years ago flipped a Senate and an Assembly seat. The most energized communities, Minority communities. I should send a thank you note to Trump. Let us hope that Trump has energized the Democratic base to the point that they keep showing up.
As an Edsall piece in the Times said last year; there is nothing like loathing to motivate voters. The Republicans have been running on grievance fear and hate for 50 years since Nixon’s Southern Strategy.
As for AOC and her lefty policies, I may be with her but the majority of the American people are not. Okay so 70% support Medicare for all; until you tell them that it has a price tag then it drops to 35%. The fact that they are already paying for healthcare seems to escape them. NY is a supposedly progressive state; who is opposing the single-payer proposal for NY? Unions.
The Green New Deal; hey I have solar on the roof. But save the planet
only goes as far as not costing anybody anything. And again the fact that a Green economy, in the long run, pays for itself again is over the American people’s heads. Thirteen percent of energy is currently used extracting and delivering energy. But the winter was cold, somewhere.
The Democrats will accomplish absolutely nothing on any substantive issue in this Congress. The Senate will block it. They will accomplish nothing if they take the Senate and the White House The filibuster will
block it. So if I didn’t blame Obama for being who he was and not who we hoped he would be; he would have been stifled if he attempted significant change, as he in fact, he was on the little he proposed. And if by some miracle the Democrats overcome the filibuster the court would reverse it.
So what will it take to reverse these trends, a Black Swan event of “Biblical ” proportions?
The bottom line is AOC has cajones. She is a very courageous young person. I too am concerned about her safety.
This is the deeply troubling thing about the sick game that Faux News has been playing. After years of the Foxies’ ranting about “white genocide,” what happens? Exactly what might predict would happen. It’s sick. And dangerous.
What is wrong with 100% of the nations’s power coming from renewable sources, making all buildings energy efficient and eliminating carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions? There would be massive investments in research to make the US a leader in clean energy technology. It also implements federal jobs guarantee, basic income and universal healthcare. How is this hurting Hoosier farmers? Senator Todd Young [R-IN] is a Trump sycophant so he unfairly claims the New Green Deal would be ‘Harmful to Hoosier Farmers”. I AM A HOOSIER AND I AM FOR THE NEW GREEN DEAL!
Senator Todd Young: The Green New Deal would be Harmful to Hoosier Farmers
Senator Todd Young
Published on Mar 13, 2019
Well worth an hour of your time is this interview with Ocasio Cortes at South by Southwest (SXSW) by The Intercept’s Senior Politics Editor Briahna Gray.
When you teach young people for a long time, you are able to discern rare intelligence. That’s what’s on display here, someone with an exceptional mind.
Briahna is no slouch either.:-)
She is a real journalist who knows how to ask probing questions and is actually interested in the answers, not just in listening to herself.
yes!
The blog has so much good reading today! Just want to throw in a thanks before I even begin to get under the surface.
And by the way, I sure would like it if the public would remember the New Deal part of the Green New Deal instead of just focusing on cows. People need better jobs and better job security. It’s a key component.
The Strange War Against Cow Farts – Can’t ignore the cows.
“The world is home to about 1.5 billion cows, most of them bred and raised for the meat and dairy industry. Each of them has a quadripartite stomach, whose largest section is called rumen. An adult cow’s rumen can hold about 150 to 200 litres, and is populated by a staggering collection of microorganisms (25 billion bacteria per gram of volume), tasked with breaking down vegetal fibres through fermentation. A byproduct of rumen fermentation is hydrogen; a specific bunch of rumen-dwelling microbes, called methanogens, convert that hydrogen into methane. Methane is subsequently expelled through the cow’s front end – through burping – or through the cow’s backdoor – via farting. A cow burps and farts between 160 to 320 litres of methane per day. That is bad news for the environment.”
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/the-strange-war-against-cow-farts
We need an economy that works for everyone instead of the rigged, guilded age economy we’ve allowed to grow in the last forty years.
BTW, the legislation doesn’t mention cows at all. Fox New propaganda based on a draft fact sheet that AOC’s staff put online and then immediately took down and replaced.
They hate her because she doesn’t come from their inner circle (s) so her allegiance does not belong to that circle. It isn’t just the GOP. The Dem establishment is also rattled because she IS what they SHOULD be, but are paid to NOT be.
They hate her for her freedom
They hate her for her freedom
To act and speak her mind
To blaze the way and lead em
While they get left behind
I realize that AOC is not running for president and this discussion is about her. However, there is a lot of talk on this blog about who can lead our country in the face of climate change. I don’t think any presidential candidate so far is sticking her or his neck out as far as Washington Governor Jay Inslee, who deserves our consideration as he makes climate change his number one issue. In fact, according to The Atlantic, he is “the only climate-change candidate” in the presidential race:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/03/jay-inlsee-joins-2020-field-climate-change-candidate/583900/
Here’s a quote from Inslee:
“It is the issue; it is the primary issue; it is the foremost issue. This has to be the organizing issue of your administration,” he said of climate change. “It can’t be one agency; it can’t be check the box. It has to be the priority. I think it will be revealed who’s got the chops, who’s got the passion, and who’s willing to take the risk to run on this subject and say it is a priority.”
And he has the backing of Bill Nye, the Science Guy. 🙂
Bill Nye was the final person to ask a question at AOL’s SXSW interview. She stood and chanted: Bill,Bill, Bill, as did the rest of the crowd.
If Inslee had shown spine relative to the Washington state charter school legislation, he would be an easier sell. He knew democracy’s choice and he punted instead of supporting the citizens.
So, when monied interests want something and it’s not related to climate, what will he do?
If Brazil became the first nation to add new laws aimed at preventing anti-democracy activities and exploitation by “philanthropists”, it would be unexpected. But it’s a possibility.
The new right wing president was elected as a result of the deep seated distrust in the elites. After the election, Brazilians worried about a threat to their civil society freedoms. Yet, a new law may be passed – “Brazil’s New Endowment Law Could Strengthen Democracy around the Globe” (SSIR, March 13, 2019).
Pres. Bolsonaro’s support is made up of “neo-liberals, homophobes, economists, racists, sexists, military men, evangelicals and anti-globalists”.
He’s the Trump of Brazil. Welcome to the land of “neo-liberals, homophobes, economists, racists, sexists, military men, evangelicals and anti-globalists”.
I don’t understand why anti-globalists are lumped in with all those others.
Not sure about homophobes, but globalism is quite often pushed by racists, neoliberals, economists, sexists, military men and or evangelicals.
It is based on the idea that everybody should be like us and adopt our economic and social system. It is also based on the idea of obliterating individual cultures.
Thomas Friedman pretty much sums it up The world is flat.– and if it isn’t, it should be flattened (like Iraq)
I should have said it is about making everyone be like everyone else, not like us, but the globalists in the Us do indeed want everyone to be like us.
The problem with the anti-globalist label is that it means something different from what is often claimed.
When globalists in the US like Thomas Friedman use the word, it does not mean equality for all, but be like us or else.
When Friedman used the word globalism
Propaganda to get votes creates bedfellows. If it’s like Trump’s supporters, the coalition members abandon all principles they held before, e.g. Lindsay Graham and Susan Collins.
This means more charters, vouchers, virtual ‘learning’ and nobody working to bring more money to public schools.
………………….
Indiana has its last elected education leader, as bid to make it appointed job goes to Gov. Holcomb
Arika Herron, Indianapolis Star
Published 2:26 p.m. ET March 19, 2019 | Updated 6:17 p.m. ET March 19, 2019
Beginning in 2021, the Indiana Department of Education will be led by an appointed secretary of education. Throughout the 2019 legislative session, there has been debate about the requirements for the appointment and the appropriateness of appointing, rather than electing, an education chief.
House Speaker Brian Bosma, R-Indianapolis, sponsored the bill and applauded its passage Tuesday. He said it will allow for more consistency in the state’s education policy.
The governor already appoints the majority of the members of the State Board of Education — the body tasked with setting much of the state’s education policy. In leading the education department, the superintendent is largely charged with implementing and administering policy.
Sen. Mark Stoops, D-Bloomington, tried to rally support Monday for an amendment that would keep the position an elected one. That effort failed, though, and the bill was passed without discussion Tuesday…
House Bill 1005 was priority legislation for Gov. Eric Holcomb. In a statement, Holcomb said he has “great respect” for McCormick but believes the state’s chief executive should be responsible for administering education policy and held accountable for the results…
Check out this story on IndyStar.com: https://www.indystar.com/story/news/politics/2019/03/19/indiana-statehouse-jennifer-mccormick-last-elected-education-leader/3213172002/
Indiana, like Ohio, is an oligarchy.
The sheeple of both states find comfort in submission to an authority figure who tells them what is best for them.
They are the ones who would support Donald Trump when he killed someone on Fifth Avenue.
The few alert people voting Republican in the states are racists and
protective of their plunder.