The new darling of progressives and Democrats, New York Democratic congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is uninformed and currently, if not permanently, unqualified for office, and not just because she embraces the proven fraud of socialism. Two recent quotes suffice to make the case:
“Unemployment is low because everyone has two jobs. Unemployment is low because people are working 60, 70, 80 hours a week and can barely feed their family.”
This is redolent of Yogi Berra’s famous line about nobody going to a famous restaurant any more because it was too crowded. Does she really think that if one person worked 327 million jobs, the stats would show full employment? Apparently so. Aw, unemployment, underemployment, what’s the difference? Capitalism BAD!
Now this ominous exchange…
During an interview on PBS’s “Firing Line” on Friday, Ocasio-Cortez said, “I also think that what people are starting to see– at least in the occupation of Palestine– is just an increasing crisis of humanitarian condition and that to me is just where I tend to come from on this issue.”
Asked what exactly that was supposed to mean, Ocasio-Cortez responded, “Palestinians are experiencing difficulty in access to their housing and homes. Oh I think — what I meant is that the settlements that are increasing in some of these areas and places where Palestinians are experiencing difficulty in access to their housing and homes…”
Asked, in essence, “Huh?”, the new Democratic star said, “I am not the expert at geopolitics on this issue,” as she giggled. “I am a firm believer in finding a two-state solution on this issue, and I’m happy to sit down with leaders on both of these — for me, I just look at things through a human-rights lens, and I may not use the right words. I know this is a very intense issue.”
This is the kind of not-ready-for-prime-time stuff that made Sarah Palin such an easy target. Of course, Saturday Night Live would never dare mock a Latina Democrat, but what her comments demonstrate is that the rising Democratic force is, at the moment, primarily a young and pretty face that represents a fad ideology—yes, she’s cuter than Bernie—and little else.
Will the Democrats respond to the confounding success of a GOP Presidential candidate who did nothing to hide his ignorance on a wealth of issues by concluding that such candidates are the secret to ballot box success?
Let’s hope not. Let’s also hope that Ocasio-Cortez realizes, as Palin never did, that since she had been given an opportunity she was not ready for, she now has an ethical obligation and responsibility to become qualified for office, and that it’s going to take more than saying the first thing that pops into her head.
It is a positive sign that she admitted when she didn’t know what she was talking about.
Imagine if other politicians had the courage to do that.
Ethics Alarms 
Unqualified in the way Trump is unqualified (uninformed), but qualified in the way Trump is qualified (elected). Is this right?
Well, she hasn’t been elected yet, and Palin was never elected to national office. But yes, if you are elected, you are qualified by definition.
Ah, I see. She only won the primary. My mistake.
But in that district it’s as good as…. There’s about a 0 percent chance for them to swing R, or even I.
I think we need to make her pass the Gary Johnson test for public office candidate ignorance, with the following questions:
1. What is Aleppo?
2. What world leaders do you admire?
3. What is the current North Korean ruler’s name?
4. Some rudimentary geographic questions.
We’ll never know if Hillary would have passed the Allepo test. She gets the questions beforehand so she can study. That way she looks like the most knowledgeable candidate out there.
She is running for office for New York’s 14th congressional district. She knows that the two-state solution is controversial. She has issued anti-Israel statements in the past (traditional talking points). For instance, she has criticized the Israeli Defense Force’s use of force on May 14, 2018, tweeting, “This is a massacre. I hope my peers have the moral courage to call it such. No state or entity is absolved of mass shootings of protesters. There is no justification. Palestinian people deserve basic human dignity, as anyone else. Democrats can’t be silent about this anymore.” Her district is 46.9% Hispanic, which she is counting on to carry her over the line on election day.
Considering that her district has a large Jewish constituency, she should know that the Israel-Palestine issue would be a major issue for that district. She should have been prepared for the question and the answer. Telling an interviewer that she does not know about the issues but is a “humanitarian” (whatever that means) demonstrates that she is either unprepared or cynical enough to believe that her ethnicity will carry the day.
Her
Ironically she condemns Isreali encroachment on the West Bank, which is part of Isreal to my knowlege, which she calls an occupation, but sees no problem with the incursion across our southern border and criticizes anyone opposed to illegal border crossings.
Perhaps the settlers on the West Bank are simply wanting a better life.
If she was a humanitarian she would know the issues, because we research them to discuss them. Her lack of understanding of the issues is flagrant disregard for the principles She professes by that statement.
From Wikipedia
Humanitarianism is an active belief in the value of human life, whereby humans practice benevolent treatment and provide assistance to other humans, in order to better humanity for moral, altruistic and logical reasons. It is the philosophical belief in movement toward the improvement of the human race in a variety of areas, used to describe a wide number of activities relating specifically to human welfare. A practitioner is known as a humanitarian.
To be concerned for all that is stated. You would have to research both sides of the issue. Not just look look at your already filled out dance card from the dnc.
Good point, Rip.
The rub has always been in the how on strives to improve human welfare. If that is in the form of ‘give them money to sit on the couch’ (“welfare”) then that has been disproved many times.
Humanists must recognize human nature. Those that attempt to modify or contradict human nature fail. Every time.
That said, there is nothing wrong with ‘a hand up.’ We are supposed to look out for our neighbor.
I enjoy your interaction here at EA.
If human nature is to find it irresistible to attempt to modify or contradict human nature, then where does that leave us?
I am just asking – not developing any argument in any direction. I wanted to ask that, plus, state that I am unsure that all humanists (or humanitarians), or persons who self-identify as humanists (or humanitarians), are of a school of thought that even acknowledges that there is such a thing as human nature.
I will say that I believe that it is an irrepressible tendency of my own consciousness – which may or may not be a reflection of my “human nature” – to be wary of people who communicate and act in ways that seem to deny or disregard that there is a human nature.
The congresswoman-to-be seems to talk around, not about, the social and political issues in and near “Palestine” in a way that disregards the “natures” of the peoples in conflict. Like someone with a keyboard who doesn’t know how to type, she seems to be hunting-and-pecking to spell words that she has never learned, to express a particular view without having ever even formed a complete thought in her mind about the conflicts in the Middle East. Word salad, indeed. TRUMP-ish, indeed. “Wise Latina”…not so “indeed.” Her votes in office will make clear her thoughts – or, lack of them, or their constructiveness or destructiveness – soon enough. That is, only after it’s too late.
I keep waiting for conflicts over access to water, and “water rights,” to blow up among the swelling populations of diverse peoples in the lands nearest the eastern and southeastern shores of the Mediterranean. Again, I am just asking: Has any Islamic sect ever waged a jihad against water scarcity?
Based on the Wikipedia definition of Humanitarianism one would be hard-pressed to find a MORE humanitarian country than Israel.
Whether in response to a natural or man-made disaster, Israeli volunteers from the government, army and nonprofit NGOs have been quick to respond, often reaching the disaster area before relief teams arrive from other nations.
Tiny Israel is also involved in long-term educational, agricultural, environmental and healthcare missions in countries including Kenya, Nepal, Japan, China, Vietnam, Peru, Argentina, Brazil, Turkmenistan, Haiti, and Papua New Guinea.
Israel even helps the citizens of some enemy nations, treating refugees across the world, helping Syrians wounded in the civil war, or bringing Gazan children and adults to Israel for lifesaving surgery.
I actually feel really bad for her…. She’s a young adult that’s had a typical life, including a typical post secondary education, where she was fed a steady diet of progressive rhetoric with little to no opposition context. She was told that she could do anything, and that the best way to fix the system was to get involved, so she did. What could have, and should have, been a good life lesson in well intentioned failure was instead turned into what’s going to be a personal nightmare for her over the next few years before possibly finding her feet, inflicted upon her by an electorate to stupid to think about what they were doing, or too disillusioned to care.
She won with a tiny fraction of registered Democrats voting.
You have a point. She’s going off what she’s been indoctrinated with. Her stance on Israel was my spoon-fed stance at 28. I believe she also mentioned she was looking at the issue through an activist lens, which means a quasi-socialist lens, which means pro Palestine lens regardless of not really being informed about both sides. When you’re just going off the emerging Intersectional Doctrine, knowing how to actually define Palestine isn’t as important as adhering to groupthink.
We saw this for example with NOW when the OJ Simpson trial was going on & the NAACP pressured them to stay mum on the issue of domestic violence against women or Simpson’s misogyny. In 1996 Patricia Ireland (former NOW president) noted her organization “must offer a clear understanding of what it means to be a feminist organization concerned with ending discrimination based on race, class, and other issues of oppression that come from a patriarchal structure. Democratic Socialist Gloria Steinem followed with To be a feminist, we have to take on the entire caste system.”
That was a key turning point in the then emerging SJW program of one minority group having to sign off on whatever the other minority groups believe to be injustice. Ocasio-Cortez is just being a good foot-soldier. Her being able to think in a nuanced way or being well informed about issues out of her wheelhouse isn’t important. Making noise is and going along with the Doctrine is what matters, and I’m sure she has plenty of followers doing the same thing.
May I nominate John Brennan as Incompetent UNelected Official of All Time? Isn’t there a Dr. Suess book titled “John Brennan Won’t you Please Go Now?”
Ditto.
However, John lied to Congress, among other crimes. He may end up in jail.
If the same rules that apply to me were used.
Were I of cynical disposition (perish the thought!), I might suggest that the Democrats have decided on a new strategy: impenetrable word salads seem to get you elected POTUS, so let’s prove that we can be incomprehensible, too. I do have to admit, however, that the first quote would become a sensible argument merely by substituting the word “but” for “because.” The chance of a mere slip of the tongue exists. Not likely, but at least possible.
Come on, Jack, what did you expect? We’re talking about somebody who firmly believes socialism is a viable economic system, even as Venezuela comes unraveled before our very eyes. Did you expect her to be better informed about unemployment or Israeli-Palestinian relations than she is about economics?
”I might suggest that the Democrats have decided on a new strategy: impenetrable word salads seem to get you elected POTUS,”
I agree with the new strategy part. C’mon, even Lefties (most, not all) would find their results of late hilarious, in a supremely ironic sort of way; welp, they would if they had senses of humor leastways.
I think they’re tacking, incuriously hard aport, toward what’s polled as the Next Big Thing making young’uns pierced nipples hard: Democratic Socialism.
And to your ”impenetrable word salads/incomprehensible” point, I bet barely 1 in 50 could define, even loosely, the term without invoking Herr Google.
Look how its current Poster Boy Feel The Bern did against the juggernaut that was the powers-that-be, the Clintonista Machine, in the primaries.
Heck, even numb nutz extraordinaire Michael Moore took note of how many people voted for a self-styled Socialist. Put the Democratic in there, and you have, despite loooooong odds, a fighting chance.
Democratic NY Gubernatorial hopeful Cynthia Nixon has even, if you’ll forgive me, come out: NYPost 07/10/2018: Cynthia Nixon announces she’s a ‘democratic socialist’
IMHO, one of the biggest reasons The Donald is sitting in the Oval Office is because of rage against the machine. Candidates identifying as Democratic Socialists are trying to catch that same wave, or at least avoid getting swept away by the establishment Lefty tsunami.
To no one’s surprise, the Left Coast, after holding a well-manicured finger to the wind, has taken note.
https://www.thewrap.com/hollywood-supports-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-congress-cynthia-nixon/
Flavor-Of-The-Month; I believe it’ll blow up, with stark clarity, in their faces; or fade away quietly.
Nothing in between…
“Waking up to this woman gives me a lot of hope for the future of our party and for the future of our country,” Chelsea Handler tweets
Ho boy.
I take it as a positive and negative. If she actually does something about her ignorance, than it’s definitely a positive. Otherwise, it’s an admission that she doesn’t have to know much about it, because hey, she’s a star.
I fear the latter is far, far more likely.
Look at the bright side: she hasn’t claimed to be named after Hernán Cortés, wiped anything clean…like with a cloth, or landed under fierce sniper fire…yet.
Ouch…
Or debated on the meaning of the word ‘is’
Wouldn’t being not only dead broke but in debt, a Socialista feature, juice her street cred?
Perhaps the saddest part of this is that she apparently graduated fourth in her class with a Bachelor’s degree in economics and international relations. What the fuck is going on at Boston University, if one of their top graduates doesn’t understand basic concepts in her degree fields?