There are plenty of truly appalling things about the Green New Deal and why it should (and will) never make it into anything resembling law, at least in the form it’s been proposed in.
However, if you wanted to find the greatest absurdity associated with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s baby, you’d have to look outside of the text of the bill or even any of alarmist speeches given by its proponents. Instead, you’d have to look at a FAQ Ocasio-Cortez’s office put out regarding the legislation that quickly got pulled off the web.
There were plenty of nuggets in there, from that part about providing an income to those who happen to be “unable or unwilling to work” to plenty of inconsistencies.
However, two words seemed to crystallize these issues more perfectly than any others could: “farting cows.”
In part of the now-infamous FAQ, it’s discussed how the authors of the Green New Deal “set a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, in 10 years because we aren’t sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast.”
Ocasio-Cortez’s office quickly attributed the whole kerfuffle to an error:
“An early draft of a FAQ that was clearly unfinished and that doesn’t represent the GND resolution got published to the website by mistake,” Saikat Chakrabarti, Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff, said of the controversy, according to The New York Times.
But Ocasio-Cortez isn’t letting go of the whole “farting cows” thing so easily. No, much like your inebriated friend who has to go back into the bar one more time because he’s sure his latest zinger will really make the bouncer think twice about letting him back in, the Bronx Democrat used an appearance Thursday on Showtime’s “Desus & Mero” late-night show to try and put a good face on those flatulent bovines.
“In the deal, what we talk about, and it’s true, is that we need to take a look at factory farming, you know? Period. It’s wild,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
“And so it’s not to say you get rid of agriculture, it’s not to say we’re gonna force everybody to go vegan or anything crazy like that,” she continued.
“But it’s to say, ‘Listen, we gotta address factory farming. Maybe we shouldn’t be eating a hamburger for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Like, let’s keep it real.’”
Ocasio-Cortez defends wanting to regulate cow farts: “Maybe we shouldn’t be eating a hamburger for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”pic.twitter.com/X3WBz7wWhO
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) February 22, 2019
“Slow down,” Desus responded to the hamburger-rationing suggestion.
“But we have to take a look at everything, and what we need to realize about climate change is about every choice that we make in our lives, you know?”
This is coming from a politician whose district is in New York City and works in Washington — easily the one route in America where you can not only get by on rail travel but where it makes more sense — and she’s spent seven times more in terms of campaign expenditures on air travel than on Amtrak.
I could safely spend my work day at a diner, instruct the wait staff there to shove two triple cheeseburgers down my gaping maw every two hours, and have profoundly less negative impact on the environment than Rep. Ocasio-Cortez had during her campaign for Congress. Has anyone heard her apologizing for that?
But therein lies the point, which is that this will never be the point.
Liberal elitists will always find a reason to justify their own behavior. This is really about forced scarcity for the rest of us, about how we need to get to net-zero emissions in 10 years because it’ll reduce the global temperature by a whopping 0.14 degrees. Everyone’s going to have to suffer a bit more, but we’ll all be better off because this’ll create jobs. Or something.
Except, last we heard, this was just a draft. This was just a stupid mistake, right? That’s what Saikat Chakrabarti said when the FAQ got released to the public. Now Ocasio-Cortez is standing up for it again — and lo and behold, it still sounds terrible.
In this case, it would have been a lot better to simply let farting cows lie.
Via WesternJournal
