Most folks with fame develop what might be called personal characteristics. They may be exaggerated, but they seem to define the person. These traits are usually grist for the comedic mill. President Ford was considered to be clumsy – and comedian Chevy Chase became famous for his pratfalls when impersonating the President. President Trump is pugnacious – and Alec Baldwin revived his career doing the President on Saturday Night Live.
Now cometh Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. (I refuse to engage in referring to her with a monogram.) So, what is her peculiar trait that provides material for mockery? I suggest a lack of knowledge and logic: stupidity.
It is not usually my nature to brand people with pejoratives. It is one of my criticisms of President Trump. However, the lack of Ocasio-Cortez’ basic information is astounding. She is right up there with Congressman Hank Johnson, who feared that Guam might capsize if we put too much military equipment on the island. You just cannot comprehend that much ignorance in a member of Congress.
Of course, you will not see Johnson or Ocasio-Cortez mocked like all those other targets of the so-called “late night comedians” because they are minorities and members of the radical left – the untouchables in our world of progressive identity politics.
I came to realize that her unfamiliarity with basic knowledge is something more than an occasional slip-of-the-tongue. She appears to be one of those people who not only does not KNOW a lot, does not even SUSPECT very much. The fact that she is a graduate in economics from Boston University raises more questions about the curriculum at the school than Ocasio-Cortez’ lack of economic knowledge.
She first stumbled in anticipation of being a New York congresswoman. She said that she looked forward to “signing” bills after her “inauguration.” Members of Congress get “sworn-in” but not inaugurated and they never sign bills. That is the exclusive role of the President. Now lest you think my pointing out these faux pas is being a bit petty, just hang on. This is only the beginning of her stroll down ignorance lane.
A discomforting level of cluelessness has been a common thread in many of her statements. I concluded that it is a bona fide trait with her latest venture into vapid verbiage. Ocasio-Cortez said that she could see no difference between the Berlin Wall and the wall along America’s southern border – especially the proposed additions to the existing barrier walls. Whaaat?
I am not optimistic that she is educable, but …
Memo to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
The Berlin Wall was constructed by a brutal occupying Russian regime as a means of keeping captured people from leaving the oppression of socialist communism. The walls that currently exist and are being proposed are for the purpose of regulating the flow of legal immigrants INTO our country so that they can be properly vetted. The Berlin Wall kept good people in and the southern border barriers are to keep bad people out. If you tried to breach the Berlin Wall, they gunned you down on the spot. If you breach the American border, we give you welfare, medical care, an education for your children, a driver’s license and even the right to vote in some elections. Get it?
One stupid statement is not a character trait, but Ocasio-Cortez seems to offer up serial stupidity.
Her lack of understanding of international affairs and her tendency to overstate the plight of the migrants at our southern border had Ocasio-Cortez sending out this tweet.
“Asking to be considered a refugee & applying for status isn’t a crime. It wasn’t for Jewish families fleeing Germany. It wasn’t for targeted families fleeing Rwanda. It wasn’t for communities fleeing war-torn Syria. And it isn’t for those fleeing violence in Central America.”
She also is ignorant of history, failing to know that Democrat President Franklin Roosevelt turned back a shipload of Jews fleeing Hitler. They were not looking for better pay but escaping deadly oppression on a massive scale.
She fails to appreciate that those from Rwanda, Syria – and others like the Hmong escaping the Laotian killing fields – were people in real danger of death. Comparing them to the migrants at our southern border – with the possible exception of Venezuelans – creates a false and offensive equity.
You will recall that she proposed paying for all her pie-in-the-sky proposals – which are themselves rather … shall we say … ill-informed – with money from the Defense Department. There might have been some rationality to the redistribution along philosophic lines, but her proposals cost more than the ENTIRE Defense Department budget.
On another occasion, she offered the funding plan for her socialist agenda.
Does this economics major realize that we paid for the 2008 bank bailout by putting $18 trillion in debt on to our future generations? Obama policies piled up more debt than all the presidents since George Washington.
In addressing Medicare specifically, Ocasio-Cortez makes this claim off the top of her head.
“You know in a Koch Brothers-funded study–if any study’s going to try to be a little bit slanted, it would be one funded by the Koch brothers–it shows that Medicare for all is actually much more–is actually much cheaper than the current system that we pay right now.”
The uber liberal Washington Post gave her “three Pinocchios” for this bit of nonsense. Thinking off the top of her head may not be accessing the best depository of accurate information.
She defended the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) with this bit of misinformation.
”And let’s not forget that the reason that the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act is because they ruled that each of these monthly payments that everyday Americans make is a tax.”
Wrong! The Supreme Court ruled that the Penalty was a tax. The premiums – which soared higher than promised – is just a payment.
Ocasio-Cortez tried to include the cost of funerals as one of the burdens of private healthcare. Of course, Obamacare – and no proposal to replace it – covers funerals. If she wants Uncle Sam to pay for funerals, she failed to account for that in her excessively expensive socialist proposal.
In another statement questioning the value of her economics degree, Ocasio-Cortez claimed that unemployment was down only because people were taking two jobs. You just cannot make this stuff up. That one earned her the “pants on fire” award from Politifact.
When CNN’s Chris Cuomo asked Ocasio-Cortez about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, she had this response.
“She [Pelosi] is, she is the leader of, of– no no, she, I mean, um, um, Speaker, or rather Leader Pelosi, hopefully, um, you know, we’ll see, she’s uh, she’s the current leader of the party and I think the party absolutely does have its leadership in the House, we are leadership in the Senate as well.”
At the time Ocasio-Cortez offered up this concise response, Pelosi was not yet elected Speaker for the incoming Congress and “no” her party was not in “leadership in the Senate as well”
The New York Congresswoman (and ex-bartender) sees no comparison to the socialist disaster in Venezuela under ex-bus driver Maduro and claims her policies would not lead to that – but offers no convincing evidence as to why not. For this – and her overall socialist policies – Economics Professor Steve Hanke of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore tweeted:
”@Ocasio2018 is left stumbling in her socialist incompetence. When asked how to pay for a left-leaning estimated $40 trillion price tag for her policies, she babbles nonsense. It shows that she has as much real-world knowledge as former bus driver & current Venezuelan Pres Maduro.”
Ouch!
If you want to know how bad Ocasio-Cortez reputation is getting, you have to understand why she is the butt of jokes like this. Seems she purchased a television with a label that said, “built-in antenna.” She complained that nothing is built in America anymore and corporate America should stop taking advantage of cheap labor in places like Antenna. Or … the reasons she wants to abolish ICE is to make the roads safer. Or … she says we have to support veterans because they take care of our pets.
So, there ‘tis.