The growing tension between Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has suddenly exploded into open warfare over race. Ocasio-Cortez has accused Pelosi of attacking her because of her race. Race has been regularly raised by Democrats against President Donald Trump and the Republicans, including Pelosi’s recent attack that Trump wants to “make American white again.” I considered that attack to be inciteful and reckless and beneath the office of the Speaker. Now she is the subject of the same type of attack. I have often been critical of Pelosi but I do not consider her to be a racist. Yet, this is an example of how it is difficult to confine race-based attacks once you use them for political ends.
I have not been one of those heaping criticism on Ocasio-Cortez. She has been unfairly in my view portrayed as an intellectual lightweight or incompetent legislator. I believe that she is wrong on many points but I view many members as having poor understanding of the law or economics. She has succeeded in challenging the establishment and, while I disagree with her policies, I do not see the justification for many of these attacks.
However, it was Ocasio-Cortez who was unfair in this latest criticism. She stated that Pelosi was focusing her ire on new female members of color. Ocasio-Cortez said:
“When these comments first started, I kind of thought that she was keeping the progressive flank at more of an arm’s distance in order to protect more moderate members, which I understood . . . But the persistent singling out . . . it got to a point where it was just outright disrespectful . . . the explicit singling out of newly elected women of color.”
Ocasio-Cortez added to The Washington Post on Wednesday that the “persistent singling out” by the Speaker may be more than “outright disrespectful.” She has also accused Pelosi of burying her in work to try to keep her out of the public eye.
It is said that Revolution like Saturn “devours its own.” The same can be said about race-based politics.
Posted behind a paywall, Peggy Noonan shines in her WSJ article on AOC and Pelosi.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/i-come-to-bury-biden-not-to-praise-him-11562885072
I Come to Bury Biden, Not to Praise Him
Ocasio-Cortez emerges as a one-woman Committee to Re-Elect the President.
– Peggy Noonan
Three small points we labor mightily to connect:
Joe Biden has me thinking about . . . Julius Caesar. The political class of Rome wanted Caesar gone and successfully dispatched him with 23 wounds. But the conspirators themselves came to unhappy ends—Caesar’s base hated them and chased them out of town! Nobody loves an assassin. The only political survivors were Caesar’s designated heir and the leaders who didn’t join the conspiracy.
That is the predicament of the 23 contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination who are not named Joe Biden. They want the front-runner gone. But they don’t really want to be the one who does him in. Pete Buttigieg doesn’t want you saying he has a lean and hungry look! Amy Klobuchar doesn’t want it said she really is mean. The safe course for them is to let someone else do it, then mourn, with poignant words, the end of an epic 20th-century career.
Kamala Harris got a boost from wielding her switchblade in the debates, but that’s a moment, not a sustainable primary lifestyle, and it left a mark, not a fatal wound.
So how are they thinking? If in time they feel they have to, they’ll do what Caesar’s foes did and all join together and take a stab. But again, that didn’t work out well. So for now they’ll make small feints on Mr. Biden’s statements and record, have their people be as poisonous as possible off the record, and wait for him to stab himself to death. Which in his previous presidential primary races he’s tended to do.
What they’re banking on is self-sabotage and deteriorating cognitive abilities, as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sweetly suggested in an interview with the New Yorker’s David Remnick: “I think there are some folks that are of a certain age where you can kind of question their capacity.”
Donald Trump, she said, is an example. And Joe Biden? “I think . . . his performance on the stage kind of raised some questions with respect to that. But I don’t want to say, just because someone is 79, they can’t or shouldn’t run for president.”
“Just because he’s 79.” Well done, missy.
And so to Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s public fight with Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and the three other members of “The Squad”—Reps. Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley. I gather many on the left are lauding their cool defiance, but to me they look surprised, flummoxed and resentful.
Shortly after being elected, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez seemed to think she had Mrs. Pelosi under control—she’s the future, after all, and Nancy’s the past and surely knows it. She curled her hand around the speaker’s arm in the famous Rolling Stone cover, as you might with a grandma to whom you enjoy showing particular warmth and who happens to have a big estate and no designated heir. Someone has to inherit it!
What do I suspect The Squad may know now that they didn’t know then? That grandma has been observing them and sees what others see. She doesn’t mind that they’re hot, aggressive and ideological, but they don’t confine their fire to outside the tent. They attack moderates as sellouts, racists, child abusers.
And no one who disagrees with them ever operates in good faith. There is a disrespect there. They’re tough, they’re bringing it, not winging it; but they’re so immersed in ideology that they never give a thought to mercy. With Ms. Omar and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez especially, it’s all identity politics and the accusing finger—you’re criticizing me because you’re greedy, misogynist, classist. And they always claim victimhood—they receive death threats and are called bigoted things, people are mean to them.
People are mean to everybody.
AOC especially is not without skill and talent. She is energetic, determined, verbally fluid, has a gift for acting, for seeming ingenuous. She weeps when she hears tragic testimony at committee hearings. She feels for everyone. Well, for some people. Not for Mrs. Pelosi. “I think sometimes people think that . . . we have a relationship,” she said, slyly, to Mr. Remnick. “I was assigned to two of some of the busiest committees. . . . Sometimes I wonder if they’re trying to keep me busy.” Oh Einstein, they may be!
The more serious Democratic Party problem with Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and Ms. Omar is not that their great talent seems to be for political manipulation, or that they constantly set fires, portray the universe as consisting of angels and demons, and put people off with their arrogance while exciting them with their ferocity—though all these things are true.
It is that in doing these dramatic things, and amplifying them through their impressive social-media skills, or compulsions, they have fully broken through and made their mark. In their fame and celebrity they altered the face and feel of the party into something that appears more radical, more hissing and accusatory, more hard-left.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s success last June scared fellow Democrats across the country into thinking she is the future, that they must get aboard and get with her program, which many of the party’s presidential nominees have. She has very effectively changed the ideological shape of the Democratic Party with her de facto open-borders policy and other extremisms.
Mature liberals and moderates know this will come back to bite them.
She does this from a completely safe district. She can’t be primaried from the left. She feels a job security no Democratic moderate can feel. Nancy Pelosi said a glass of water could be elected in her district if it were a Democrat, and it’s true.
For all these reasons Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has been destructive to her party’s chances in 2020. She is a one woman Committee to Re-Elect the President.
The way I read it now, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has been dunked on by a pro and schooled by Big Mama. If she were capable of observing, reflecting and absorbing, as opposed to aggressing, reacting and accusing, she could learn something.
She will not learn a thing. And, a prediction: AOC may look for richer fields back home in rising lefty New York, where mayoral candidates can’t possibly be too progressive and where the revolution will be won!
Here I quickly note what others often tell me: Nancy Pelosi is usually not very clear in public. You listen and walk away uncomprehending. When she takes questions from the press, she is almost never not confusing. Here is a favorite: “I don’t support it, but it’s not, you know—in other words, there is an emergency. There is a burning building. We have to put out the fire. I’m not having to have a conversation about the color of the buckets that the water is in.”
Observers tell me this is not inadequacy but strategy. Publicly she benefits from murk—it gives her a place to hide as she plans her next move. (Eisenhower was like this: He enjoyed vagueness; it maintained his freedom.)
But in private, Pelosi couldn’t be clearer. To her caucus’s progressives at the closed-door meeting Wednesday morning: “Some of you are here to make a beautiful pâté, but we’re making sausage.” “You got a complaint? You come and talk to me about it. But do not tweet about our members and expect us to think that that is just OK.” On attacks on moderates: “Think twice. Actually, don’t think twice. Think once.”
Really, this is a clever woman.
Hyphen–Cortez won the genaral election with over 75% of the vote. And she defeated the Democratic incumbent by about 15% in the primary.
Given that her district is about 50% Hispanic, I think her constituents will keep sending her back to Congress for years.
In a quandary here, having to give Pelosi a gram or two of respect for banishing the spoiled brats of Congress to the corner with the Dunce cap on.
17 months and counting until Occasional-Cortex is looking for her next bartending gig.
I found what I need. It is you who is lacking. Find that husband quick for you need stability and calmness. Almost everyone recognizes that.
If black is a color then so is white! Are we all not colored people?
If the women who disagreed with Nancy Pelosi were white would they be women of non color?
A sure sign Ocasio-nally is on the ropes and using too much mmmm lets make it hope. Reverting to bigotry, racism or sexism ia sure sign of pending failure. Only a matter of time before she and three othes are run out DC for failing to become a real State delegate but she acts like shes number one instead one of fifty seven.
what you didn’t know the four requirements? Age, Citizenship, Votes and ‘taking/signing the Oath of Office .
The mindless accusations of “racism” were effectively satirized nearly 30 years ago in the film version of Tom Wolfe’s “The Bonfire of the Vanities.” At the time of the movie’s release, the mainstream media critics uniformly panned it. Their alibi for doing so was that the movie version was different from Wolfe’s novel, when novels and their film versions are nearly always different. But what really irked the mainstream media critics about this entertaining movie was that it exposed the lies, manipulations, and hypocrisy of the media representatives (and politicians and others) and their efforts to divide America along racial lines. The following scene and its message near the end of the movie illustrates what so irked the mainstream media critics.
Good video. I didn’t recognize Mr Freeman
Want to stop racism? Stop talking about it
The liberal MSM is reporting lies once again about President Trump hosting “right wing extremist” social media groups to the White House while Twitter, Facebook and Google were not invited…Thankfully.
The Catholic periodical “Crux Now” reports on the encounter with a truthful perspective
Makers of ‘Unplanned’ say social media shutdown among hurdles film faced
https://cruxnow.com/church-in-the-usa/2019/07/10/makers-of-unplanned-say-social-media-shutdown-among-hurdles-film-faced/
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The directors of “Unplanned,” the life-affirming, true story of a Planned Parenthood clinic director turned pro-life activist, described a White House summit on social media as a needed opportunity for conservatives to discuss how Facebook, Twitter and Google and other outlets are shutting out their voices.
Those popular online social networking services were conspicuously invitationless for the July 11 summit.
Writers and directors Cary Solomon and Chuck Konzelman, who talked to Catholic News Service ahead of the event, are the creative team behind “Unplanned.”
…
Nothing about making the film was easy, from casting, to funding, to advertising, to screening, Hollywood and the country vehemently bucking this film’s pro-life position.
In an April Senate hearing on free speech and online censorship, Konzelman gave example after example of media bias against his film. First the Motion Picture Association of America burdened it with what the filmmakers considered an unfair R rating for two scenes: One shows the sonogram portrayal of an abortion and one shows Johnson herself taking an abortion pill and experiencing bloody hemorrhages.
The MPAA cited no other reasons for its rating decision, according to a letter Johnson released in an appeal to parents to not let the rating discourage them from taking their children to see it. This R rating meant that its previews could not be shown before non-R rated movies without special permission. That permission was denied.
Further, Google and most cable network stations refused to play ads for “Unplanned,” and Twitter temporarily suspended the movie’s account.
Now comes the White House social media summit. Along with Solomon and Konzelman, members of other conservative groups including the Heritage Foundation and Turning Point USA were expected to attend.
Solomon and Konzelman both said that this summit needed to happen to give conservative groups an opportunity to speak about the media bias they are suffering, though they didn’t know exactly what to expect from the meeting.
“I think it is an extension of back several months (being) called to testify before (Sen.) Ted Cruz subcommittee on questions of conservative thought,” Konzelman told CNS.
Currently the pair faces a similar battle to release the film in Canada. After top Canadian distributors rejected their film, they worked, alongside New Brunswick pastor BJ McKelvie to get the film into the country.
Canadian media outlets are dubbing the film “propaganda,” claiming it propagates bias and lies about abortion and abortion clinics. The Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada released a statement in opposition to the movie.
“The film’s vicious falsehoods against providers could incite hatred and violence against them, including here in Canada,” Joyce Arthur, the coalition’s executive director, said.
Meanwhile, two independent theater owners in Canada have received death threats from abortion supporters. Backlash against the film is so violent that some theaters decided to hire extra security for the film’s opening July 12, while other theaters have decided retroactively to pull the film from their offerings.
“I think it is straight out of fascism 101 playbook,” Konzelman said. “Pro-choice advocates claim we are creating a dangerous environment for abortion supporters. Meanwhile they have created death threats to the point that two theaters have pulled out of exhibition, one has hired security, one has said they won’t pick it up. … They create this controversy and blame the victim.”
However, both Solomon and Konzelman are certain that God’s providence will guide “Unplanned” and its pro-life message, not only into Canada but across the world.
Backlash in Canada is just one of the many roadblocks the directors faced in the process of creating the film. First, they had no lead actress, only to serendipitously discover their leading lady, Ashley Bratcher, five days before they were scheduled to begin shooting. Then, they ran out of money. They needed another million dollars to complete the movie, and they needed it soon, or the production would shut down.
“At 4:30 on Friday, we are sweating, all the people are coming in screaming, ‘What are we going to do?’ We had put every dollar we had into this,” Solomon said. “A couple minutes later, the phone rings a voice on the other end says, ‘Give me your routing number’ and I’m like ‘that’s an unusual request.’ Then he said, ‘I am flying over in a jet, and Kendra’ – that was his girlfriend – ‘and I have been praying to Jesus. Four times and he told us to give you a million dollars.’ Then I’m watching my screen and my screen went from 13.71 to $1,000,013.71.”
So this latest hurdle is just that; something that, with God’s help, they will eventually overcome.
“When you see miraculous healing and profound doors being opened. God wants to end abortion,” Solomon said. “We are seeing an end to it. This is the beginning of the end for the devil and his grinding machine who slaughters children. This is God doing a divine act of mercy.”
Despite the public outcry against the film, “Unplanned” has a staunch base of pro-life supporters. It has enjoyed success at the box office, grossing $18.8 million total, with $6.4 million during its opening weekend. It was the No. 4 movie in the box office that weekend. Now, with its upcoming DVD release Aug. 13, it already tops the Amazon best-seller list in preorders alone.
“The Lord is doing mighty work here. The forces against us are trying to prevent that mighty work. People should pray, fast and do penance, because this message needs to get out,” Solomon said. “People will be accorded blessings for fighting this fight and we ask everyone out there to continue to pray. We are taking this out to the nations and we need help.”
The Dems are devouring each other. I love it.
Not really. What’s distressing is that the trio in question are the Democratic Party’s Id. What’s also distressing is that the periphery of the Democratic Party seems to have no reaction to their antics.
Americans have the right, freedom, privilege and immunities that allow then to be as racist as they choose. Under the Constitution, the American Founders owned racially different slaves and they did not find it to be unconstitutional or otherwise illicit or illegal. I would place the most validity, veracity and confidence in the decision of the American Founders as to what is or isn’t constitutional. According to the men who wrote the founding documents and the fundamental law of America, racist perspectives, opinions and racism itself are all fully and irrefutably constitutional.
Would someone please cite the Constitution wherein considerations of “race,” acceptance or rejection of “race,” separation or disassembly by “race” and any other mandate to integrate or accept by “race” is articulated. It looks to me like compulsory integration, forced busing, affirmative action privilege and other benefits assigned by race are unconstitutional. The American Founders provided freedom and security and did not come close to legislating morality, etiquette, manners, civility, courtesy, acceptance, rejection, love or hate in their Constitution and Bill of Rights. Compulsory redistribution of wealth and social engineering are principles of communism and communism is the exact opposite of and anathematic to the American thesis of freedom and self-reliance and the freedom of the American Constitution and Bill of Rights – communism is the direct and mortal enemy of America and its Constitution.
Racism is good. The success or failure of any idea, product, individual, group or race is not guaranteed by the Constitution. The “pursuit of happiness is.” Opponents of the freedom to be racist and to engage in racism are traitors committing treason, denying constitutional rights to Americans and direct and mortal enemies of America and its Constitution. Why are opponents of freedom, free enterprise and self-reliance allowed to enter and remain inside the United States of America?
Accusations and criticism of consideration, acceptance or rejection of race and positions and opinions based on race seem more akin to the Communist Chinese Social Credit System:
“Discipline and Punish: The Birth of China’s Social-Credit System”
https://www.thenation.com/article/china-social-credit-system/
This isn’t going to play well at all.
———-
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/mass-immigration-raids-set-begin-sunday-n1028681
Mass immigration raids set to begin Sunday
The mass raids, to be conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, are set to target roughly 2,000 families in major cities across the United States.
WASHINGTON — Nationwide immigration raids that were postponed three weeks ago are now scheduled to begin Sunday, two senior Department of Homeland Security officials told NBC News.
The mass raids, to be conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, are set to target roughly 2,000 families in major cities across the United States — the same 10 cities that were revealed under the previous plans, the officials said. The previously named cities were: Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, New York and San Francisco, but a source said that two of those cities may change.
Indeed, Estovir. “Mass Immigrations Raids Set To Begin Sunday” sounds utterly bleak. It almost suggests that agents are going to intercept families on their way to mass.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/07/11/tucker_carlson_rep_ilhan_omar_has_contempt_for_americans_blame_the_left.html
Here’s an immigrant they can send back.
“Omar responds to Carlson’s claim that she hates America”
CNN Tonight
‘After Fox News host Tucker Carlson said Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) “hates this country more than ever,” ‘Omar responded to the claim saying Carlson is a “racist fool.” CNN’s Brian Stelter reports.”
https://www.cnn.com/videos/media/2019/07/11/tucker-carlson-ilhan-omar-fox-news-immigration-stelter-dnt-ctn-vpx.cnn
Anonymous, it sounds like you are a supporter of Omar. That would make you an anti-Semite and anti-American.
LOL
Just providing a little balance to the extreme views that some of you espouse.
“That would make you an anti-Semite and anti-American.”
Allan and his ridiculous leaps of logic. Crayzee, with a capital C.
What extreme views do I have? That countries have borders? Do you have a front door? Do you have a bedroom door?
As far as you being an anti-Semite or Anti-American, just read your own words.
“As far as you being an anti-Semite or Anti-American, just read your own words.” -Allan spouting his typical nonsense.
Allan IS Crayzee, with a capital C.
He’s N-U-T-S.
Anonymous your best defense against being known as an anti-Semite or an Anti-American individual is to explain to others that what you write has no credibility.
Allan IS Crayzee, with a capital C.
He’s N-U-T-S.
Say what you will Anonymous, but it is quite clear who and what you are. Get yourself a husband so that you can calm down. Consider relocating to to a place you would be happier to live in like Venzuela or Cuba. Maybe you would prefer Somalia.
Allan, I think you’re confused where you suggest that Anonymous would be happier to live in a place like Venezuela, Cuba, or preferably Somalia. Anonymous supports the aspirations of those people who want to move to the United States to escape from the oppression they experienced in Somalia. But Anonymous also wants to fundamentally transform America to make it more Somalia-like, so that the Somalian transplants will not feel like strangers in a strange land, and things will be more like they were back home. Hopefully, I’ve clarified things for you.
Take your own advice, Allan. Find whatever it is that is clearly missing in your life and “calm down.”
And keep fishing in your teeny, tiny pond.
He is stupid not crazy.
YNOT, I see you have finished mopping the room. Go mop another one.
YNOT,
He is both. IMO.
Anonymous, you are not to bright to begin with but it sounds like your goal in life is to be as stupid as YNOT.
Allan,
Is there a reasonably explanation for the image next to this anonymous name and your name being the same?
And predictably…the chuckleheads appear.
And that would be the chuckleheads Allaninny and OiLY.
Why does this Anonymous have the same image next his name as Allan?
The image troubling you is a generic image for all those without an address.
Good to know. Thanks.
Ummmm…she’s a Semite herself. Go look up the definition.
Rachael, Do you know what a dictionary is? Use one for that will give a recognized definition of an anti-Semite. Omar is Semitic but that has little to do with it.
It’s going to play just fine. Pelosi begged for a week or two to get something done, Trump acquiesced, and absolutely nothing happened.
Delay tactics, albeit less effective than the ones my kids use to get out of going to bed on time.