Obviously, this post won’t be about creationism. You probably recognize that as a picture of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the newly-elected member of Congress from a district described by Wikipedia as: “the eastern part of The Bronx and portions of north-central Queens in New York City.” She is commonly referred to by her initials — AOC.
We copied that image from this article at Fox News. We never read their article, but we couldn’t resist the picture. We hope that using it here doesn’t create any copyright problems.
No one is neutral about AOC, but in order to maintain our blog’s lofty linguistic standards, we won’t tell you what we think about her. And it isn’t necessary — you already know your Curmudgeon’s political views. But we would like to hear from you.
We therefore declare this post to be an Intellectual Free Fire Zone. Aside from AOC, we’re open for the discussion of pretty much anything — science, politics, economics, whatever — as long as it’s tasteful and interesting. But beware of the profanity filters.
Okay, the comments are open. Have at it, dear reader.
Copyright © 2019. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
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The Sensuous Curmudgeon 
Here’s why analogy on her since I’m in the software business:
She reminds me of that that new college grad Computer Science major who walks into his first job and has enough of an ego to start bitching at all the senior people how they do things.
It does happen, and they are rarely right, they just haven’t understood the reasoning because they lack experience.
🙂
IMHO we could pop up a mug shot of Congressman Gaetz and we’d have the other end member of this spectrum of human extremes.. Priveliged, pampered, convinced of his superiority. Arrogant. You can say alot of things you could attribute to Cortez’s pics but arrogance of the traditional sort is definitely not there. Gaetz is just as far to the right as Cortez is out there on the other end. Cheers !!!! It could be worse however. We could be in Scotland( instead of the good old USA ), trying to decide on what to do regarding the eventual Brexit outcome insanity down south. I trust the Scots (big s) to use logic, reason and science to determine what’s best for them.
Idjits not permitted.
Yeah, I know what you mean.
The new boss comes in, and tells everyone that he knows more than all of us.
Unfortunately, before long, it turns out that becomes apparent that he is not a reliable surce of information. About anything. And he isn’t just an annoying junior employee, but the boss.
I doubt that the wisdom dispensed by barmaid AOC was not nearly as insightful as that of Jesus and Mo’s barmaid. Congresswoman AOC’s lies are guppies compared to the POSPOTUS’s blue whales, and are generally the result of shallow leftist ideology whereas the Orange Draft Dodger is incapable of distinguishing his lies from facts.
I watched almost the entire Cohen hearing yesterday, missing only the last few minutes. The Republicans, to a man (or woman), did a fantastic job of diverting attention form the damning information that Cohen was giving about Trump. One would think they would be more interested in hearing what he had to say, and actually ask questions to shed light on what Trump may have been hiding from Congress.
Unfortunately, having a President Trump makes a hard swing to the left a more likely outcome in the future. True, close to 90% of Republicans support him, but I suspect that’s because there aren’t too many people left who self-identify to pollsters as Republicans. If Trump wasn’t so divisive, the best chance for the Democrats to beat him in 2020 would be with a centrist candidate, but such a candidate will now have a tough time getting through the Democratic primaries. In other words, Trump is making it more likely that someone from the Left will win in 2020. Personally, I’d prefer a centrist, but I didn’t see one coming — unless a Republican steps forward to challenge Trump in the primaries.
Of course, we won’t need to worry about AOC — too young. But if the Republicans keep going further and further to the right, she will definitely be a force in the future. She is very smart and very articulate.
retiredsciguy says: “I watched almost the entire Cohen hearing yesterday”
Yuk! I watched bits and pieces of it. Quite the sleaze-ball. Hey — Cohen and AOC would make quite a couple!
Joe Biden.No Question. End of Story. You Lose….But ! Thanks for playing the “Who Will Be the Next President” game. Creationists ! You are hosed.
“Quite the sleaze-ball.”
Agreed. Imagine how sleazy you’d have to be to hire him as your lawyer!
I know damn-all about Ocasio-Cortez. I’m just an ignorant foreigner. But the picture made me laugh, anyway.
I interpret this sentence as you equating Ocasio-Cortez to Cohen as a “sleaze-ball” (as opposed to merely being an upstanding person who has political and economic ideas that are in opposition to your libertarian dimwittery.) Could you please point us to some evidence that she is in fact a “sleaze-ball”?
I like AOC! She reminds me of another bright, arrogant, young gunslinger – me! She’s educated, smart, street smart, articulate and she listens to educated advice. She’s been talking with actual economists and scientists. OMG! Pull up the video where she describes and confirms with ethics officials being questioned in a House committee how congress critters can get bought and do the bidding of corporations and special interests, and it’s all legal.
Watch how she laid the groundwork for getting Trump’s taxes based on his random inflation/deflation of the value of his assets – and she got names into the record.
I hope she doesn’t burn out, but dog help anyone who tells her to make them a sammich!
I have never heard of her.
“But we would like to hear from you.”
Oh come on, dear SC, you very well can guess what my view on her is. She serves the interests of people like me. That’s something I’ll never expect from people like you. You want to use my tax money against my interests, like affordable health care.
What’s hilarious is your pathetic attempts to sell me the stupid idea that your political views are somehow in my interests.
@Och WIll observes: “as Cortez is out there on the other end”
Poor, poor USA. No wonder so few people take the effort to vote. In Europe she would be moderate.
@FrankB
You won’t understand US politics until you realize that there is a sizable proportion of the US which has an authoritarian, anti-democratic tradition. Not a majority, but can control the electoral process so they can get their way. Ideas which are unquestioned in countries with representative democratic systems are considered radical to the authoritarians.
I do notice that FOX news treats her as someone who they feel is dangerous to their political an economical interests, unlike someone like Elizabeth Warren.
That makes her a good woman!
“there is a sizable proportion of ….”
That only confirms my poor, poor USA. This proportion has caused what OW calls the centre to shift so much to the right that he (and not only he) calls AOC an extremist. That means that I fall off his political spectrum.
But I hope you won’t underestimate the proportion of the authoritarian tradition in The Netherlands either. Never forget that this guy, a one-man political party (he’s the only member) has 20 seats in Dutch parliament out of 150.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geert_Wilders
I am far from the only one who has noticed that the shift of the centre to the right. Social-liberal Jan Terlouw
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Terlouw
only a few years ago said a few years ago that he’s much further from the political centre than 45 years ago, without his views having changed.
What I think both encouraging and frustrating is that the pushback in the USA is much stronger than in my native country. There is no AOC in Dutch parliament, only one in Amsterdam city council.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bij1
Unfortunately I can’t vote for this party next elections:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States-Provincial
as there are no candidates where I live.
@FrankB
The Economist, a respected conservative magazine from the U.K., publishes a Democracy Index, which one can read about in Wikipedia. The Netherlands is in the lower part of democracies at #11. The USA is “flawed democracy” at #25.
AOC is young unrefined but she has good potential to be a political force. The GOP fears her because she is an intelligent woman who won’t take their guff. The GOP is accustomed to dealing with meek and submissive white women.
@Och WIll observes: “as Cortez is out there on the other end”
Actually, AOC represents what used to be the middle: fairness, education, desire to serve, ethics, empathy, self-sacrifice.
Look at what the GOP has become following the adoption of the “Moral” Majority and Tea Party: anti-intellectualism, politics of greed, self-interest, suppression of women and minorities, fear over substance, racism, xenophobia, homophobia and, especially, Anatidaephobia.
Take Texas (please!) for example. Beto ran on a platform of grass-roots support, championing local interests, working for opportunity and leveraging inclusiveness. Ted Cruz, on the other hand, ran on fear of socialism turning Texas into Venezuela, an invasion over our southern border, raising taxes to pay for “government give-aways” like women’s healthcare and “far left” politics, whatever that is.
Take Texas (please!) for example. We have all sorts of challenges from water management to flood control to infrastructure improvements to growth and jobs, but the legislature has been consumed with non-existent voter fraud, voter suppression, transgender bathroom bills, school vouchers and anti-vaccination legislation. It’s crazy!
Sorry, but I’ll take Beto and AOC over Cruz and Louie Gohmert any day!
SC watched a ten-year employee/confidant of POTUS testify and present several items of evidence against him. What better time to post about AOC.
Wow. Just wow.
SC should get a kick out of this:
https://news.yahoo.com/republican-attack-on-cohen-over-paperwork-falls-flat-191506454.html
Fox news loves her, for example there are 434 other representatives, why her? She gets a lot of attention, unwarranted for her position. No such thing as bad publicity though and you can tell a lot about a person based on who their enemies are. By placing her in the Fox news pillory, no doubt this will inadvertently spread her democratic-socialist agenda. She is naive, no question, but weren’t we all at that age? Contrary to the Fox news caricature, she is neither vapid nor stupid. I’d characterize her as the valedictorian type, smart or book smart but not a specialist or a nerd. She won 2nd place in an international science fair about a fairly technical topic (longevity in a specific nematode). This also led to getting an asteroid named after her, which is kind of cool, but doesn’t make her a polymath since the honor has nothing to do with astronomy, and a sizable number are now named after such low level science winners.
And she is quite good looking. Much more interesting to look at than anything else on C-SPAN.
And a comment on Cohen. Sure he is a sleaze ball. He has been working for the best and most sleaziest of them all for over 10 years. He has learned well Obi Wan.
The Curmudgeon calls Michael Cohen “Quite the sleaze-ball”
Yes — it seems his former boss has a propensity for surrounding himself with such characters. You never see one single maggot by itself; the slimy critters always work as a team. Manafort, Stone, Bannon, Pruitt, Flynn, Sessions, Zinke, et al. ad infinitum.
Be that as it may, Republican members of the Congressional Oversight and Reform Committee notwithstanding, Cohen had nothing to gain and much to lose from lying during Wednesday’s hearing. As it stands, he’s sentenced to three years’ incarceration for crimes that could have gotten him seventy. If he gets caught lying about Trump in the hearings, he’d probably wind up spending the rest of his life behind bars.
And yet, rather than taking the opportunity to ask meaningful questions during the hearing that might lead to reforms that could actually help the country, the Republican committee members did nothing more than bloviate about the obvious. After all, Cohen had already admitted to lying. The ferocity of the Republicans’ attacks just highlighted how damaging they considered Cohen’s testimony to be.
And speaking of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, consider this Op-Ed by Caroline Fredrickson, the president of the American Constitution Society, appearing in today’s print edition of the New York Times:
Stephen Kennedy, MD:
“I have never heard of her.”
You will. She is now Fox News’s new favorite Boogywoman, replacing Hillary Rodham Clinton.
@rsg, my point exactly: except for Fox news promoting her she’d be just another member of the House. For example, I’m sure no one else knows my Rep Elissa Slotkin.
@retiredsciguy
Why would one think that bloviating is a sign of losing?
Consider the creationists.
Remember the Rocky and Bulwinkle story about Goof Gas. In one incident, Boris and Natasha intend to attack the US Congress with Goof Gas, but Boris realises when they visit Congress that there is no point in the attack, saying to Natasha, “It IS Goof Gas”.
As long as people are exposed to Goof Gas from Wasington or on television news, the population shows the effects of Goof Gas. Bloviation is mistaken for thinking, and that makes it far easier to convince. Good for all sorts of advertising.
@TomS – I just looked up the Democracy Index: New Zealand is no.4 after Norway, Iceland and Sweden. I am surprised that the US made it to no.25.
I don’t know very much about politics in the US, but enough to regard AOC as somebody who can do a great job in exposing ‘sleaze-balls’ at every level of the political hierarchy.
@hans435
About the USA, there is a score of 9.17 for “electroal process and pluralism”. This is interesting, given that
1) there is no voting representation for about 1% the citizens – with the Cinstitution blocking, because they are not residents of the 50 states
2) gerrymandering is approved by Supreme Court rulings
3) the Senate is not approtioned “one person one vote” – in fact, in some cases, a senator is appointed, not elected The skewed representatin in the Senate is impossible to change, by Constitutional mandate.
4) the absurd “first past the post” system is used. I am aware of Arrow’s theorem, which shows that a perfect system is not possible. But “First past the post” may be the worst possible system in actual use.
and all of those are imbedded in the system and legally recognized. And then there are many ways of making it difficult or impossible for undesireables to vote. Of course, elected officials don’t want to change a system which got them elected. If voting were fair, there would be an immediate takeover by centralist politics and things which are wanted by the clear majority would not longer be considered “controversial”. Not to mention the possibility that lots of people would decide to vote who don’t see the point of participating in a rigged system.
I thought she did a great job in her 5 minutes at the Cohen hearing. Her questions were very precise and she knew Cohen was the right person to answer them. She’s going to make a compelling argument that he need to see Trump’s tax returns since they will definitely reveal multiple cases of fraud.
She’s uppity.
hey doc. Good post. I was out there knocking on doors for Beto in the Texas US Senate race against Cruz. I think Cortez is way left of Beto. And Beto isn’t exactly a centrist. Cheers
OWMVA –
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/02/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-republicans-ignorance
As long as this is a “Free Fire Zone:
A thought just occurred to me. The USA has difficulties in exporting meat to Europe because of treatments used on farm animals in the USA. This has been in the news recently.
Do the antivaxxers campaign against treatments given to farm animals? After all, if they are poisonous when given to humans, wouldn’t it be dangerous to eat animals that are given similar treatments? Aren’t farm animals given vaccinations, hormones, antibiotics, and who knows what else?
I like AOC and go with the ‘extreme left’. I recall (and I am old enough to recall) that there was a 90% upper tax bracket when commie-marxist Dwight Eisenhower was president, the war debt got paid off fast, and not too many years later our government put Americans on the moon. Conservative capitalist ideology (IMHO), social and economic, tethers what can be accomplished, and may be the death of us.
There is very little of an “extreme left” in the USA.
Is today’s Doonesbury comic, in making a reminder of an earlier incident, relevant to our discussion?
https://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/2019/03/03
See the Wikipedia article on the key phrase in the comic.