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Remember last week when Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez revealed her ‘Green New Deal’? The GND would save the world by getting rid of airplanes and cow farts. It would guarantee income for all Americans — even those who were “unwilling to work.” And we all pointed our fingers and snickered at AOC’s brain droppings. Good times, good times.
Apparently Ocasio-Cortez and her minions took umbrage at such mockery. So on Thursday her office quietly removed the GND proposal from her Congressional website. Then AOC trotted out one of her policy advisers, Cornell University professor Robert Hockett, to appear on Friday’s Tucker Carlson Tonight. Hockett explained that no, all those silly proposals weren’t really in the GND. We were all reading the wrong version, it was a joke, or Republican dirty tricks, or something. Yeah, that’s the ticket!
Did you buy his lame excuses? Neither did I. Those explanations were as convincing as that Turbo Toupé atop his head.
Then, on Saturday morning, AOC’s Chief of Staff Saikat Chakrabati tweeted out his explanations:
“We did this in collaboration with a bunch of groups and offices over the course of the last month. . . Some of these early drafts got leaked.”
“There separately IS a doctored FAQ floating around. And an early draft of a FAQ that was clearly unfinished. . . got published to the website by mistake. . . .”
Then AOC herself later added to their cover story when she tweeted to a Washington Post reporter about “doctored” documents “floating around:”
“There are multiple doctored GND resolutions and FAQs floating around. There was also a draft version that got uploaded + taken down. There’s also draft versions floating out there.”
Lots of fake documents out there, wafting on the internet like, well, cow farts.
However, a techie Twitter user checked the PDF properties of the GND document that National Public Radio received. Lo and behold, Chakrabati indeed wrote it:
Mystery document authored by *checks PDF properties*… AOC's Chief of Staff. https://t.co/MBdZkdqNM7 pic.twitter.com/btvMr8HO6y
— Jon Lech Johansen (@jonlech) February 9, 2019
On top of that, AOC’s goofball adviser, Robert Hockett, sent an email on Saturday to the Daily Caller News Foundation, admitting that he was wrong during his appearance on Tucker Carlson. But still maintaining the “different documents” narrative, of course:
“I regret that we seem unknowingly to have ended up speaking about different documents for a minute during our longer and otherwise ‘on-the-same-page’ conversation last night.”
Well, that’s their story and they’re sticking to it. Even if it makes as much sense as Ralph Northam saying he was in a blackface picture before he wasn’t in a blackface picture.
Now, are you wondering what AOC’s official website is now saying about the GND? Did they revise and post the correct proposal and FAQs?
As of this writing, here’s what my search turned up:
Screenshot of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez website.
Nope, no results of any astute proposal that would save the planet and make life in these United States a paradise on earth. And if you click on her page that discusses “energy” issues, you’ll see a picture of an oil rig, and a link to “contact our office.”
However, because the internet is forever, you can still read the GND proposal here. And yes, “economic security for all who are unable or unwilling to work” is still there, as well as “get rid of farting cows and airplanes.”
Can you imagine any of these bozos being in charge of a major Federal department? I shudder to think.
Credit: giphy.com.
But you must admit, between AOC’s Green New Deal and the kerfuffle in Virginia, it’s been fun to watch Democrats step on rakes all week, hasn’t it?
Featured image: altered from Carl Glover @ flickr. Attribution CC by 2.0.
GWB says: to appear on Friday’s Tucker Carlson Tonight.
I know you think “Oh, it’s just Fox News” but … that hair? I know Occasional can’t afford an apartment yet, but she could use campaign money to spring for a new rug for you. That one looks like a groundhog crawled on your head and died. Definitely a shadow, so SIX MORE WEEKS OF RIDICULE!
all those silly proposals weren’t really in the GND
Uh huh. Now, I believe it might have been a draft. Someone put it on the website and published instead of keeping it a pre-publish state. Because the whole crew is millennials, probably, and they don’t know nearly as much about coding as they like to think they do. Nor energy generation. Nor economics. Nor… pretty much anything.
Lo and behold, Chakrabati indeed wrote it
Mind you there ARE doctored versions floating around the internet. Those are usually called “memes“. But, see how he can fib without fibbing? That’s something Democrats have always been good at doing.
Maybe they should use coder language? Just call it “Agile Policy Development”. Agile Development’s philosophy is “fail early”. (Yes, it actually is. The idea is to find the bugs early rather than wait to test for them once you’ve got everything finished.) To that, I would add “and often”. Have fun storming reality, AOC!
Wfjag says: We’re watching a repeat of The Dan Rather School of Journalism.
Claims are made raising the issue of the source and credibility of documents. Using easily applied and understood tests of technology, whether the documents are true or phony and their likely source, can be determined. But, The Narrative is Too Good To Not Be True, so no reporter or editor makes even a simple inquiry. Even a call to your IT system administrator would raise red flags.
For The-Documents-Are-Fake-But-The-Narrative-Is-True, anyone familiar with word processing knew that proportional spacing fonts didn’t exist in the late 1960s-early 1970s, when the documents were “dated”, which showed them to be fake.
For AOC’s GND FAQs, the metadata shows when the document was created and revised, and whose computer was used for each. You can trace the history of the document from initial draft to final, approved for posting document. And, if there was an attempt to scrub the metadata, that can be detected, too, so you will know to ask questions about who, when and why that was done. But, if The Narrative is that the vast right wing conspiracy is sabotaging AOC, this simple line of inquiry isn’t made. Dan Rather would be proud.
ThewlynOh says: it’s just beyond me how this woman got elected…the only thing I can think of is that she was hand-picked by Soros’ cabal and pushed somehow into office, willing to parrot anything to get elected…
she’s fiery, enthusiastic, and completely bonkers, ignorant, and BSC
Icepilot says: AOC is the gift that keeps on giving.
She’s going to guarantee President Trump’s re-election by her own little lonesome.
Michael D Zorn says: The “New Green Deal” has been traced back to Formerly Great Britain, where it seems to have emerged around 2007. Jill Stein was one of the “early adopters”.
Others trace it back to ” Ocasio-Cortez has been labeled an innovative thinker for offering the allegedly visionary Green New Deal, but the truth is that most of these ideas have been floating around socialist circles since at least the early 2000s, and there is strong evidence to suggest that much of the draft text of Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal is merely a revised version of the “Leap Manifesto,” a socialist green-energy plan pushed by far-left environmentalists in Canada.”
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