Showing posts with label aoc. Show all posts
Showing posts with label aoc. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 14, 2021

AOC

Actor Michael Rapaport calls out AOC over Met Gala dress AOC has repeatedly called for increased taxes on the wealthiest Americans ....... Tickets for the famed event can fetch at least $30,000 and it attracts some of the most influential players in fashion, movies and culture. Rapaport seemed to take particular offense at a politician—who he said should be a "public servant"—hobnobbing with the glitterati. ......... She has repeatedly called for increased taxes on the wealthiest Americans to pay for progressive policy initiatives, such as climate-friendly infrastructure and expanded access to free health care.

Saturday, November 07, 2020

In The News (6)

Schumer: ‘Now we take Georgia, then we change the world’ Two runoff elections could decide the balance of power in the Senate ..........  Republican Sen. David Perdue will face off on January 5 against Democrat Jon Ossoff after finishing ahead 49.78% to Ossoff’s 47.9%. Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler will compete against Democrat Rev. Raphael Warnock. Loeffler finished with 25.94% of the vote and Warnock finished with 32.89%. Loeffler was sharing GOP votes with the well-known Rep. Doug Collins and fended off three other Republican candidates. Warnock topped six other Democrats who also competed for the seat. ................  After the Democrats maintained control in the House and won the presidency, Republicans are framing the Georgia races  as the last stand between the country and a socialist Democratic agenda. ................. Meanwhile, Democrats have made the pitch that in order for Biden to be effective in fighting the coronavirus, improving health care and rebuilding America's economy, he'll need Democrats in charge of both the House and Senate.  


Democrats are in position to 'take a sledgehammer' to the South's red wall: Juan Williams 'This is radical,' he said ........ After the 1964 Civil Rights Act, President Lyndon B. Johnson famously said that the South was going to be Republican "for a generation.” ......... Southern politics has been solid red for most of the last 50 years. But thanks to the implosion of the Republican Party under President Trump, Democrats are in position to take a sledgehammer to the red wall that has been the basis of Republican strength in Congress. Over the last month, polls put Democrats within striking distance of flipping U.S. Senate seats in Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, and even Mississippi (Mississippi!)." 

Juan Williams: Democrats rise in the New South Southern politics has been solid red for most of the last 50 years. .......... Trump’s history of stirring racial division is also a driving force in getting moderate white voters to be open to supporting black candidates. ........ Those white voters, often younger people who have moved to the South in recent years, are more likely than older white southerners to know Blacks, Latinos and Asians as neighbors and co-workers. ......... The glue to bind this new political alliance is a message of racial peace coming from moderate, educated candidates, both black and white, who can’t be easily caricatured by Republicans as crazy left-wingers. ........... “White residents now make up fewer than three in five voters in Georgia, and a wave of migration to the Atlanta area over the past decade has added roughly three quarters of a million people to the state’s major Democratic stronghold.” 

Jill Biden will be historic first lady: Just call her ‘Professor FLOTUS’  she continued teaching at Northern Virginia Community College during the eight years she served as second lady ........... She intends to be the first FLOTUS in the role's 231-year history to pursue her career and keep a paying job while living in the White House and serving as first lady. ............. “The beauty of (being FLOTUS) is that you can define it however you want," she told Vogue in July 2019. "And that’s what I did as second lady – I defined that role the way I wanted it to be. I would still work on all the same issues. Education would be right up there, and military families. I’d travel all over this country trying to get free community college.” .............. "I don’t like to see my son attacked, and certainly I don’t like to see my husband attacked, but to me, these are distractions," she said. “This election is… about the American people....The American people don’t want to hear these smears against my family.” ............. Biden, 69, has a bachelor's degree and two master's degrees, and a doctorate of education from the University of Delaware, which she earned in 2007 under her original name, Jill Jacobs. ............ "Teaching is not what I do. It's who I am," Biden said in a pre-speech tweet. .................... At least initially, most of her students were unaware of the full identity of "Dr. Biden" as either a U.S. senator's wife or as second lady, according to an interview with Vogue in March. She asked Secret Service agents to dress like college students and sit unobtrusively out in the hallway, on laptops, and it worked. .................. Biden, born in Hammonton, New Jersey, and raised in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, was getting divorced when she met her husband (she married Bill Stevenson after graduation from high school but they had drifted apart by their junior year at the University of Delaware). .............  According to the story, the then-U.S. senator from Delaware, a widower with two young sons who had lost his wife and baby daughter in a car accident, saw her picture in an ad (she did a little local modeling), and sought her out; their first date was in spring 1975. ............. “Jill is always grading papers,” Obama said. “Which is funny because I’d forget, ‘Oh yeah, you have a day job!’ And then she pulls out her papers and she’s so diligent and I’m like, ‘Look at you! You have a job! Tell me! Tell me what it’s like!’"





Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Biden’s Win, House Losses, and What’s Next for the Left The congresswoman said Joe Biden’s relationship with progressives would hinge on his actions. And she dismissed criticism from House moderates, calling some candidates who lost their races “sitting ducks.” ..............  we aren’t in a free fall to hell anymore ............. Every single candidate that co-sponsored Medicare for All in a swing district kept their seat. We also know that co-sponsoring the Green New Deal was not a sinker. Mike Levin was an original co-sponsor of the legislation, and he kept his seat. ...............  the thing is, I’ve been unseating Democrats for two years. I have been defeating D.C.C.C.-run campaigns for two years. That’s how I got to Congress. That’s how we elected Ayanna Pressley. That’s how Jamaal Bowman won. That’s how Cori Bush won. ............. if you’re not spending $200,000 on Facebook with fund-raising, persuasion, volunteer recruitment, get-out-the-vote the week before the election, you are not firing on all cylinders. ............. If you’re not door-knocking, if you’re not on the internet, if your main points of reliance are TV and mail, then you’re not running a campaign on all cylinders. .................. We need to do a lot of anti-racist, deep canvassing in this country. ............ There’s a lot of magical thinking in Washington ............ So the D.C.C.C. banned every single firm that is the best in the country at digital organizing. .................  this anti-activist sentiment .............. Before the election, I offered to help every single swing district Democrat with their operation. And every single one of them, but five, refused my help. And all five of the vulnerable or swing district people that I helped secured victory or are on a path to secure victory. And every single one that rejected my help is losing. And now they’re blaming us for their loss. .................  the history of the party tends to be that we get really excited about the grass roots to get elected. And then those communities are promptly abandoned right after an election. ..............  so it’s going be really hard after immigrant youth activists helped potentially deliver Arizona and Nevada. It’s going to be really hard after Detroit and Rashida Tlaib ran up the numbers in her district. ..............  If the party believes after 94 percent of Detroit went to Biden, after Black organizers just doubled and tripled turnout down in Georgia, after so many people organized Philadelphia, the signal from the Democratic Party is the John Kasichs won us this election? I mean, I can’t even describe how dangerous that is. ................. The last two years have been pretty hostile. Externally, we’ve been winning. Externally, there’s been a ton of support, but internally, it’s been extremely hostile to anything that even smells progressive. ............... Or are they going to just kind of double down on this smothering approach? And that’s going to inform what I do. .............. Is there a universe in which they’re hostile enough that we’re talking about a Senate run in a couple years? ..............  the odds of me running for higher office and the odds of me just going off trying to start a homestead somewhere — they’re probably the same.



I had the privilege of being part of a volunteer team who phonebanked Nepali-speaking registered voters in swing states...

Posted by Anil Jung Shahi on Saturday, November 7, 2020

Saturday, August 15, 2020

My 127 Words For AOC's Alloted New York Minute At The Virtual DNC

We can have all the resources in the world, but if we have failing leadership like we do now, America is a House of Cards, as we have seen for a few months in a row now. A strand of DNA has exposed Donald Trump for who and what he is: an utterly incompetent man who squandered his father’s inheritance and has now squandered the Obama-Biden economic recovery. A daughter of immigrants carries the torch of criminal justice reform. How befitting. I do not apologize for dreaming big. If this pandemic is a sneeze, the climate catastrophe is going to be a full-blown fever. And the time to start acting is now. Vote Biden Harris and give us the Senate so we can get the work done.

(127 words ....... compared to 272 for Lincoln's Gettysburg address)

AOC Accosted by Rep. Ted Yoho on the Steps of the Capitol

Lincoln's Gettysburg Address - YouTube

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

A Triangular Ticket

 

If you did not hear what AOC had to say about that yahoo from Florida, you have been hiding under the rocks. If Donald Trump's mother can come over from Scotland, AOC's mother can come over from Puerto Rico, why not? And Puerto Rico is not even a foreign country. If you think it is, the Pacific is a lake near Chicago. AOC is slated to speak like Obama spoke in 2004, except the country already knows AOC. This political supernova has her signature on the bedrock of the Democratic platform. That was two years ago. The planet faces a not even 12-year deadline before a climate catastrophe fever hits. This pandemic is but a sneeze. All solutions have to be looked into including market solutions. If this pandemic is worth three trillion, the climate catastrophe is worth 30. AOC is the vital center, the animated center. The political spectrum is ablaze. She is a natural political talent fit for the giant task of climate and social justice. 


 Image

Thursday, July 23, 2020

Coronavirus News (190)


 



What if nuclear power had taken off in the 1970s? How would the world look today if more countries had adopted nuclear power after the 1973 oil crisis? A look back on an alternative history from a rather different 2020 The World If Jul 4th 2020 edition Jul 4th 2020 Editor’s note: This scenario is set in a different 2020 from the one we now inhabit, on a timeline that diverged in 1974  ............  March 6th 1974 may have been a turning-point in human history. ..........   Messmer’s announcement was a plan to construct 80 nuclear-power plants over the following decade, and 170 by the turn of the century. ..........  Even two degrees would be enough to bring heatwaves and droughts and to melt polar ice, raising sea levels. Six degrees would turn much of Earth’s surface into a desert.




Coronavirus: Oxford vaccine triggers immune response  A coronavirus vaccine developed by the University of Oxford appears safe and triggers an immune response. Trials involving 1,077 people showed the injection led to them making antibodies and T-cells that can fight coronavirus. ......... The UK has already ordered 100 million doses of the vaccine.  .......  The vaccine - called ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 - is being developed at unprecedented speed. .........  Nearly all effective vaccines induce both an antibody and a T-cell response. ...........  Levels of T-cells peaked 14 days after vaccination and antibody levels peaked after 28 days. The study has not run for long enough to understand how long they may last ........  The study showed 90% of people developed neutralising antibodies after one dose. Only ten people were given two doses and all of them produced neutralising antibodies. ............   but there are side-effects. ........ There were no dangerous side-effects from taking the vaccine, however, 70% of people on the trial developed either fever or headache. ....... More than 10,000 people will take part in the next stage of the trials in the UK. .. There will be a large trial involving 30,000 people in the US as well 2,000 in South Africa and 5,000 in Brazil. ........... It is possible a coronavirus vaccine will be proven effective before the end of the year, however, it will not be widely available. Health and care workers will be prioritised as will people who are deemed at high risk from Covid-19 due to their age or medical conditions.   










Wednesday, June 24, 2020

My Favorite Congresswoman Just Won A Slam Dunk

 

I had no idea even Trump was a fan. He is like, run for the Senate, you will win.

She would win!' Trump says AOC could take Chuck Schumer's Senate seat


Jamaal Bowman, AOC Wins Show Progressives Are Ascendant in NYC

Did AOC Tweet That Businesses Should Be Shut Down Until the Election?
 
Ocasio-Cortez overcomes Wall Street foes to win primary  Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman and David Solomon of Goldman Sachs were among the finance industry leaders who backed Ms Ocasio-Cortez’s challenger, former CNBC journalist Michelle Caruso-Cabrera.  ....... Hanging in the balance were the political futures of two of the most powerful New York Democrats on Capitol Hill — Eliot Engel, 73, chair of the House foreign affairs committee, and Carolyn Maloney, 74, chair of the House oversight committee.......   In the 12th congressional district, which includes Manhattan’s Upper East Side and parts of Queens and Brooklyn, Ms Maloney was leading narrowly with 41.5 per cent of the vote, compared with Suraj Patel’s 40 per cent, with all of the precincts reporting  ......  Mr Biden ahead by 14 points. 



Saturday, April 18, 2020

Elizabeth Warren Would Be A Great Choice

In some quarters they are talking about Elizabeth Warren as being the VP pick for Biden. I think that would be a wonderful choice to make. It would certainly be the most democratic choice. There were two clear streams this primary season. Biden represents one. The other can be represented by Warren. She is a progressive who is clearly not a socialist. And she goes low when Trump goes low. She goes toe to toe. Politics is war by other means.

Picking Warren would be great to bring about party unity. And we can expect to see AOC back on the campaign trail with Warren. She will do for Warren this Fall what she did for the B man last Fall. Warren wanted AOC to do that for her last Fall, but then B man went ahead and had a heart attack. That tugged at AOC's heart. Besides, Bernie only popped up because Warren refused to run in 2016. Hillary was the Biden of 2016.

If Warren is on the ticket no lefty will be talking about if Biden went far enough for them or not. You get Warren, all such anxieties are soothed. Besides, this pandemic makes Bernie look like a Wall Street don.

Biden should pick Warren. Wait, the names even rhyme. I just noticed.

They both can retire and make room for AOC in 2028.



Warren hits Trump: He's trying to turn a health crisis into 'a political rally for himself'

Wednesday, April 01, 2020

The Virus And The Politicians



Something that is the Great Depression and World War II combined is going to be a tall task for anybody, let alone mediocre politicians elected to high office, but the scale and rapidity of the spread of this pandemic, now virtually gone to all countries and spreading fast still has particularly exposed deficiencies in leadership, both of individuals and political systems. This is no argument against democracy, for South Korea seems to have done pretty well so far. It is said the genius of the US constitution is that even an idiot can run the country. I never fully bought into that.

But those who doubted Trump's ability to deliver from the get-go now find themselves uncomfortably with front seats to the unfolding tragedy. And Trump is not alone. There is this guy in Brazil basically inciting riots. He is a Trump clone. Modi's three weeks closing down of the country was not a bad idea, but the implementation was so shoddy, there was no implementation, there was just an announcement; as if the demonetization disaster was not enough. India finds itself with crowds of people moving around reminding many of a similar phenomenon during partition. Instead of being inside homes, people are clogging the roads.

The NYC Mayor has been missing in action while he takes to the cameras like he were some opposition leader demanding action. NYC has become Italy and it still is not seeing lockdown.

It is always easier when you are not actually running a country. Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown went on record asking to set up a world government from scratch. That is the most sense any politician has made during this pandemic so far. Gordon Brown should rally as many former heads of state as possible to the idea and make it happen.

Angela Merkel is a chemist by training. And it showed.

Both China and South Korea, and also Hong Kong and Singapore, all with diverse political systems, have done a pretty good job.

Coronavirus News (22)
Coronavirus News (21)
Working Remotely Permanently To Solve Global Warming
The Police: Don't Stand So Close To Me
AOC Is Joshua?
Coronavirus News (20)
Make Believe
Coronavirus News (19)
Imagine FDR Delegating World War II To Governors

Thursday, January 09, 2020

A Glass Of Water Can Be A Lot Of Water

Hello Nancy
But
A glass of water
Can be 
A lot of
Water
Depends on
If
The Glass is
Full
Or Half Empty
If
It
Is
Half full
Well, 
That is 
A lot of water
At the 
Bottom 
But
If 
It
Is
Half
Empty
That is
Still
Whole
Lot of
Water
At
That 
Bottom. 








Could It Be Bernie?

Monday, January 06, 2020

Could It Be Bernie?



If Bernie wins both Iowa and New Hampshire, he will be the nominee. And it will be a watershed moment for US politics. I do think he stands a chance to win in November. His thoughts are no longer considered fringe.

Bernie Sanders will emerge like a Ronald Reagan for the left and left of center. He will realign US politics for a generation. The Republican Party could spend a generation being defensive about the climate crisis.

I think the turning point for Bernie 2020 was when AOC basically became his running mate. That changed things. AOC 2028?

Bernie has moral clarity, and his time perhaps has come.

It is interesting that America wants to become more like China, and China wants to become more like America. That is a reference to the Hong Kong protests. That middle ground exists in Finland.

Where does it say in Marxist thought that the president of a country can not be directly elected by the people? Where does it say that free speech is a problem? The Chinese Communist Party needs to look at the data out in the streets of Hong Kong.



Finland ends homelessness and provides shelter for all in need

Bernie, Cybersecurity, Pete, TV, Warren
Trump: Morally Lost And Confused?
Impeachment Maneuvers Expose America
"Extreme Inequality Is Like Economic Pollution"
Finland: Capitalist Paradise?
History In Fast Forward Motion Right Now



President: Bernie Sanders
Vice President: Elizabeth Warren
Shadow Vice President: AOC
Attorney General: Kamala Devi Harris
Secretary Of Urban Affairs (and 2028 AOC running mate): Pete Buttigieg
Secretary Of Labor: Andrew Yang
UN Ambassador: Tulsi Gabbard

Inequality And Climate Change Are Existential: A Blueprint For Survival
Towards A World Government
AOC 2028  





One Year in Washington Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez reshaped her party’s agenda, resuscitated Bernie Sanders’s campaign, and hardly has a friend in town. ...... The corridors of Capitol Hill are a marbled monotony, with Oxford heels clacking around corners indistinguishable from one another, white walls, oaken doors, and a steady rhythm of rectangular congressional nameplates. ........ Except for one. At the very end of a hallway in Cannon Office Building is an explosion of affirmation cribbed onto thousands of Post-it notes, a neon-green-and-pastel-pink flower bursting outward. Go there at the right time, Hill aides say, and you can see groups of people, usually women, often young, weeping at the sight of it........ “I love you from Maine! Keep on with your fierce, informed queen of a self!,” wrote Mikala from Bangor on a pink Post-it. “AOC! Seeing you is seeing me! I live in Michigan, but you are my representative. Adelante!,” says one on white signed (with a heart) from Kristen on August 1. “Dear AOC. Continue to scare old white men,” adds another.......

She was recently ranked the fourth-most-tweeted-about politician in the world, beating out every Democrat running for president.

It’s not that there is already a children’s book about her, The ABCs of AOC. It’s that there is already a comic-book series about her, a young-adult biography of her, a wall calendar of her, a book of her quotes, a collection of essays about her, and even, this holiday season, a Christmas sweater with her face on it........ Ocasio-Cortez’s staff didn’t know what to do with the Post-its when they first started appearing after she was inaugurated in January 2019. It seemed possible they broke a House rule — and if not an official violation, it was a practice that, at the least, would mark her as different from the rest of the incoming class. Staff took the first batch and framed them in her office, but the notes kept coming. If anyone writes something negative or nasty, one of the myriad devotees who make the pilgrimage takes the errant note down before it can spoil the mood........ Ocasio-Cortez isn’t the first politician to become a cultural sensation, but she may be the first to do so at the very beginning of her career, when she is occupying the lowest rung of political power........... Congressman Joe Crowley’s polling had him up by more than 30 points. The weekend before the election, when typically campaigns go all-out with volunteers and visibility, Ocasio-Cortez skipped town — not something somebody who hopes to win an election does. She went to the border, where news was just emerging that the Trump administration was locking up migrant children and separating them from their parents. The visuals of the candidate, dressed in all white, pleading with border guards through a fence to remember their humanity, were striking. Two mornings later, Ocasio-Cortez woke up anonymous for the last morning in her life. ...... “I can’t go outside anymore. I miss being able to go out to dinner. I miss anonymity. I have to send my boyfriend out to get groceries. There has been a shift in chores.” ........ The Congressional Black Caucus, in particular, was put off by her association with Justice Democrats, the young campaign operatives — co-founded by Ocasio-Cortez’s then chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti — who powered her win and have made it their mission to replace the Democratic Party’s moderates with a younger and more liberal group of lawmakers. Black lawmakers believed (not entirely incorrectly) that this meant the group was coming for some of them. In the press, CBC members accused Justice Democrats of being privileged gentrifiers with little respect for what it had taken them to gain political power. ...... She said that her colleagues consider her an unseen force in every primary this cycle, when in fact she has made endorsements in just two races. Meanwhile, it is the moderates who have put up more challengers to liberal incumbents than the other way around. “As a consequence of my victory, many people are inspired to run for office, and in a body where 70 percent of the seats are safe red or safe blue, that de facto means a lot more primaries. A lot of members think I’m like a Koch brother.” ....... House leadership sees the past summer as having been a turning point and believes that Ocasio-Cortez is now sufficiently chastened. She’s showed up for the job she was elected to do — coming prepared to committee meetings and hearings (like when she cornered Mark Zuckerberg on running misleading ads on Facebook), sponsoring 15 pieces of legislation (most notably the Green New Deal), and missing only two of 701 roll-call votes. ........ I spoke with dozens of House and New York City governmental officials, some of whom disagree with her politics and have reason to dislike her personally, and they all said that she shows up to meetings unusually attentive, taking notes and asking detailed questions and writing personal follow-up emails. That even in House caucus meetings, as members call one another “Congressman this” or “Congresswoman that” but casually call her “Alexandria,” she gets to know her ideological enemies’ home lives and interests...... I think people are surprised at how not-strident she comes off.” ...... The Green New Deal, for all its vagueness — it was a resolution and a statement of principles and not a piece of legislation — set up a new tentpole in the debate. More than a hundred Democrats signed on as co-sponsors, including a handful of moderates whom House progressives have been trying to push left for years, as did every major contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, including Joe Biden...... a statewide run, probably for the Senate, is likelier. That would mean challenging Chuck Schumer in 2022 or Kirsten Gillibrand in 2024........ She and her advisers are aware of her almost unprecedented situation: a wildly popular woman of color with the confidence of Pete Buttigieg, if not his demographic advantages. If she ran for president, they say, she would run to win ...... 80 percent of young people think the federal government should address climate change, that over 70 percent say the wealthy should pay higher taxes, and that some of the highest percentages ever recorded call their politics far left or liberal ...... Post-millennials are majority nonwhite in 13 states and in nearly 40 percent of the nation’s largest metro areas; they are close to majority nonwhite nationwide....... And Ocasio-Cortez is all of these things: Latina, liberal, “authentic,” fluent in social media and popular culture. Outspoken lefties have come and gone before, but often they were like Bernie or, before him, Ralph Nader: rumpled, grouchy, hectoring. For leftists, politics used to be something to avoid, a corrupting drag on the purity of activism. Ocasio-Cortez has changed that. ...... Ocasio-Cortez is still in regular contact with leaders of the Democratic Socialists of America, and she has quiet dinners with the volunteers who worked on her campaign, the people who called her Alex until they were told, after the election, that it would be better if they stuck to Alexandria — dinners in which they promise to not Instagram anything with her. So far, no one has.......

a political supernova

..... her effort to abolish ICE is central in a district where half the population was born in another country. ...... “Here’s this guy in a then-Republican state, a quite conservative state, and he wins by a handful of votes to become mayor of Burlington. And by the time he becomes senator, Vermont is crazy-blue. And a lot of that has to do with his time there. And I said, ‘So how’d you do this?’ And he said that he and different grassroots movements in Vermont spent decades doing political education. And they took on the long-term project of turning a red state blue.” ..... I think if a state like Tennessee or West Virginia can go from blue to red in our lifetime, I think it can go back,” she told me