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US Politics: A Feast for Crows


DMC

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what's been fascinating to me is that since AOC won her primary is that the vitriol, ridicule and abuse heaped on her by the right wingers in my facebook feed has been continual, and truly non stop. Every single time she makes news (and most of the times that she doesn't make news) I find out about first from the freaked out right wingers spitting hate of her and sharing it every fucking time. I know her face not because of any newsworthy thing she's done, but because she appears almost daily in a contempt filled image share from some right winger in my feed. 

Now this sort of hate shares and vitriol is typical of right wingers in my facebook feed, and historically occurs regularly generally split 60-20-10-10 (Clinton, Obama, Warren, Pelosi) split of pure right hate involving lies and misrepresentations of the above. to by my estimates it is now the following split since AOCs primary win: 50, 20, 15, 10, 5 (AOC, Obama, Clinton, Pelosi, Warren).  

In other words, amongst the foaming rage breathing typical hate filled republican male that shares these things incessantly, AOC has more or less completely displaced Hillary Clinton as the target of their rage.

For example, today, they're all hate-sharing images of AOC and further lies about the 23 Trillion quote, the gist of which is that as all correct thinking and pure minded white souled republicans know the following: That the pentagon has an annual 23 Trillion dollar budget, and that AOC wants to take away the entire military budget and use it to pay for universal healthcare, but said 23 Trillion would only cover 2/3 of the cost of one year of universal healthcare.

It's amazing what rightwingers can pack into a meme, but todays have been pretty impressive. I'm impressed that she's convinced the rightwingers that the annual military budget is 23 trillion and also convinced them she's going to take away the entire military budget of 23 trillion to give people healthcare.

so sure, whatever she's been misrepresented in the media about not understanding the intricacies of the openly fraudulent accounting practices of the pentagon being unable to account for 23 trillion in money movements (DC media: a woman said something? SHE'S WRONG IGNORE ALL CONTEXT THE BITCH IS AN IDIOT HOW DARE SHE NOT KEEP HER MOUTH SHUT!), but she was using that number the make a point about the numbers proportional relation to the ten-year cost of universal healthcare. So yeah there's a minor an utterly trivial lack of 2000 words of clarifying mealy mouthed language, whatever, I do not give a fuck about that. Because the republicans and media have made errors beyond hers on the same thing that are orders of magnitude greater and completely veered off into the arena of pure lying. 

but sure. she's the one at fault here. I don't think there's an eye roll emoji big enough to include. oy.

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25 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

No, you should probably explain to her what the difference is.  She probably has no idea, great point.  

She probably meant to run for the office of Chief Activist and checked the wrong box.  

Speaking of which, what the fuck is the 'National legislature' (capitalization yours)?  Maybe you should take a civics class or research what you're talking about before you open your mouth.

She should be able to intelligently speak to the structure of the US government understanding that the President isn’t part of the legislature and that the three branches are the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches.  

Speaking poorly about something so basic does her no favors.  When she speaks poorly or with poor information in a public setting she opens herself up to attack.

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17 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

The conventional wisdom that voters get more conservative as they age isn't really backed up by the evidence we're seeing, and as those voters make up a larger share of the total electorate, that is a problem from Trump and any Republicans attempting to build on the wreckage of whatever party is left when he's gone. 

It's not backed up by research either.  There's one article I recall that was panel data asking the same people for 30 years, and there was little change.  Gen X actually was pretty split on partisanship as youths, but once the millennials begin to dominate the GOP is clearly in trouble.

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9 minutes ago, lokisnow said:

In other words, amongst the foaming rage breathing typical hate filled republican male that shares these things incessantly, AOC has more or less completely displaced Hillary Clinton as the target of their rage.

I said as much weeks ago, but no one seemed to think much of it at the time.

BTW, how much of a scam do you think those ads coming from Breitbart that want to help me get rich are? Like, on a scale from 1 to 10, 1 being Trump University and 10 being Bernie Madoff...

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Look, Congress right now is packed with lawyers and business people (and the judiciary isnt all that diverse either, with everyone either from Yale or Harvard, maybe Columbia). In that sense the new batch of members in the House are definitely a breath of fresh air with more scientists and blue collar workers (IIRC, Ocasio-Cortez was a bartender). We need more of those people representing us.

At the same time they dont have the experience to navigate the halls of congress quite yet, and some of the way things work may be new to them. So more leeway and time should be given, but in AOC's case, I think since she is such a big target, maybe she can be a bit more prudent when she speaks out (fact checking etc....maybe hire a staffer to be her social media person and do some basic fact checking).

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12 minutes ago, DMC said:

It's not backed up by research either.  There's one article I recall that was panel data asking the same people for 30 years, and there was little change.  Gen X actually was pretty split on partisanship as youths, but once the millennials begin to dominate the GOP is clearly in trouble.

I think the data that tracks partisan preference in the USA by every individual year;'s birth cohort shows that the first few years of "Generation X" are definitely more Republican-leaning than later cohorts within that age range. People born in the 1960s (the tail end of the Baby Boom and the start of Generation X) are the Reagan-era counterpart to the "Eisenhower" effect that makes the Silent Generation so Republican. 

People becoming more conservative as they age is not backed up at all on social issues like racial justice and GLBT rights. I think there is a little evidence that people become a bit more "conservative" on security issues like crime and the military, but that is actually not mostly a factor of age itself but instead is a consequence of becoming a parent -- childless people don't move much on those issues. 

Interestingly, I have seen data from the UK that there is some measurable tendency for people there to be more likely to vote for the Conservative Party as they age, but I don't think that works with the Republicans in the USA to the same extent.

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29 minutes ago, lokisnow said:

what's been fascinating to me is that since AOC won her primary is that the vitriol, ridicule and abuse heaped on her by the right wingers in my facebook feed has been continual, and truly non stop. Every single time she makes news (and most of the times that she doesn't make news) I find out about first from the freaked out right wingers spitting hate of her and sharing it every fucking time. I know her face not because of any newsworthy thing she's done, but because she appears almost daily in a contempt filled image share from some right winger in my feed. 

Now this sort of hate shares and vitriol is typical of right wingers in my facebook feed, and historically occurs regularly generally split 60-20-10-10 (Clinton, Obama, Warren, Pelosi) split of pure right hate involving lies and misrepresentations of the above. to by my estimates it is now the following split since AOCs primary win: 50, 20, 15, 10, 5 (AOC, Obama, Clinton, Pelosi, Warren).  

In other words, amongst the foaming rage breathing typical hate filled republican male that shares these things incessantly, AOC has more or less completely displaced Hillary Clinton as the target of their rage.

For example, today, they're all hate-sharing images of AOC and further lies about the 23 Trillion quote, the gist of which is that as all correct thinking and pure minded white souled republicans know the following: That the pentagon has an annual 23 Trillion dollar budget, and that AOC wants to take away the entire military budget and use it to pay for universal healthcare, but said 23 Trillion would only cover 2/3 of the cost of one year of universal healthcare.

It's amazing what rightwingers can pack into a meme, but todays have been pretty impressive. I'm impressed that she's convinced the rightwingers that the annual military budget is 23 trillion and also convinced them she's going to take away the entire military budget of 23 trillion to give people healthcare.

so sure, whatever she's been misrepresented in the media about not understanding the intricacies of the openly fraudulent accounting practices of the pentagon being unable to account for 23 trillion in money movements (DC media: a woman said something? SHE'S WRONG IGNORE ALL CONTEXT THE BITCH IS AN IDIOT HOW DARE SHE NOT KEEP HER MOUTH SHUT!), but she was using that number the make a point about the numbers proportional relation to the ten-year cost of universal healthcare. So yeah there's a minor an utterly trivial lack of 2000 words of clarifying mealy mouthed language, whatever, I do not give a fuck about that. Because the republicans and media have made errors beyond hers on the same thing that are orders of magnitude greater and completely veered off into the arena of pure lying. 

but sure. she's the one at fault here. I don't think there's an eye roll emoji big enough to include. oy.

If there are people misrepresenting what she said, or spreading lies, sure, call them out.

But why go so far as to imply that she isn't at fault? Why be so defensive? Why call the fact that she was wrong "minor and utterly trivial lack of 2000 words of clarifying mealy mouthed language"?

It is not at all trivial. She is an elected representative, don't you think people have a right to criticize her when she is making such a mistake? Because it was a mistake, not just some lack of clarification. She did believe all that money exists and it could be spent on healthcare. I think it's not unreasonable to expect her to be aware of the reality of these matters.

And why on Earth bring sexism into this? You KNOW that a male politician would have received the same backlash, because we see it happening all the time. How do you explain all the constant criticism and ridicule that Bernie has received? This has nothing to do with AOC being a woman.

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2 hours ago, DMC said:

The only people it pissed off were people that are already trying to demonize her - or the people that get their information from such people.  The "stunt" was a coordinated effort to get the 'Green New Deal' into the news cycle:

Anyway, I don't care that Ocasio-Cortez got the tweet wrong - mischaracterizing budget estimates is a rite of passage for a politician - but it is symptomatic of what she should be concerned about:  over-exposure.  She's like catnip to both sides right now and it can get to be a little much really fast.

And over-hype.  Which was going on the moment she won that primary, and which left me, at least, fearing that she would be destroyed before she ever learned to be actually, you know, effective.  It takes an extremely mature, experienced and seasoned character not to get taken in by constantly invoked as the Second Coming of the Divine, and she's way too young and inexperienced -- and without any accomplishment at this point than winning an election.  I'm all for this young woman, but she needs some severely good counseling going forward for a while.  The more seasoned on both side will eat her up in a minute if she doesn't.

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47 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

She should be able to intelligently speak to the structure of the US government understanding that the President isn’t part of the legislature and that the three branches are the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches.  

Speaking poorly about something so basic does her no favors.  When she speaks poorly or with poor information in a public setting she opens herself up to attack.

Maybe stay in your lane and talk about the Carolina legislators that suck. I suspect you could easily find many times when they've done so. Why pick on AOC? 

 

3 minutes ago, SweetPea said:

And why on Earth bring sexism into this? You KNOW that a male politician would have received the same backlash, because we see it happening all the time. How do you explain all the constant criticism and ridicule that Bernie has received? This has nothing to do with AOC being a woman.

See above. Point of fact, we do not see this kind of backlash. We certainly didn't see it when Bernie Sanders did even more stupid accounting mistakes. We only see it when it's a Democrat, and a woman. If it's a Democrat male like Biden or Sanders, it's just an honest mistake or a slip of the tongue or whatever. If it's a Republican, it'll be turned into whataboutism, and their people will back them up.

It's only the combination of sexism and antitribalism that gets this kind of thing going. 

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2 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

See above. Point of fact, we do not see this kind of backlash. We certainly didn't see it when Bernie Sanders did even more stupid accounting mistakes. We only see it when it's a Democrat, and a woman. If it's a Democrat male like Biden or Sanders, it's just an honest mistake or a slip of the tongue or whatever. If it's a Republican, it'll be turned into whataboutism, and their people will back them up.

It's only the combination of sexism and antitribalism that gets this kind of thing going. 

This is simply not true. The suggestion that Republicans will hold off critique from a socialist and explain it away as a slip of the tongue if he is a male, is bizarre. Honestly, I don't see how you can say we didn't see the same thing with Bernie. I don't think I could go a day without seeing someone make fun of Bernie during the 2016 elections. 

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8 minutes ago, SweetPea said:

This is simply not true. The suggestion that Republicans will hold off critique from a socialist and explain it away as a slip of the tongue if he is a male, is bizarre. Honestly, I don't see how you can say we didn't see the same thing with Bernie. I don't think I could go a day without seeing someone make fun of Bernie during the 2016 elections. 

The criticism is coming from both sides, which is what I said. Republicans will criticize anyone who isn't them; Democrats will go along with it when they are women. 

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1 minute ago, Kalbear said:

The criticism is coming from both sides, which is what I said. Republicans will criticize anyone who isn't them; Democrats will go along with it when they are women. 

Ah, I see. I don't pay enough attention to know, you may be right.

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Kalbear,

I like AOC.  I’d like to see her do well.  If no one offers criticism when she makes a mistake how would she learn?

I’m not blowing up the internet or calling her stupid.  I’m suggesting she should gain more experience and knowledge before she jumps on twitter.

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Just now, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Kalbear,

I like AOC.  I’d like to see her do well.  If no one offers criticism when she makes a mistake how would she learn?

I’m not blowing up the internet or calling her stupid.  I’m suggesting she should gain more experience and knowledge before she jumps on twitter.

These calls for more experience are hilarious.  When is she allowed to tweet again? 2020?

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54 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

These calls for more experience are hilarious.  When is she allowed to tweet again? 2020?

Personally I don't think ANY politician should ever be allowed to tweet :)

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I don't really care that AOC is not perfectly polished and point-perfect, she has a point of view that people liked enough to vote her in. She's their representative, not anyone else's. Just as Steve King is representing a very different viewpoint, but he does speak for the people who voted him in.

As someone ahead of me said, we need more people to represent us instead of packing the house with lawyers and professionals and their worldviews. Iowa also has a 29 year old woman we just elected. I know some older people who are upset to be represented by 'a child', but screw that because I hate being represented by a geezer. The House is exactly where we need a wide variety of people - gender, age, ethnicity, religious beliefs, etc. I trust there is enough collective experience to guide the younger members and the younger ones will challenge the system in ways the older generation will have gotten used to as 'just how things work'. We need a good blend to balance everything out.

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