Politicians and political parties that smear and lie about others find themselves in a dilemma that begins with the fact that there doesn’t seem to be much electoral punishment for lying.
Ted Rall’s Latest Books:
Medical Status Symbol
With ACA subsidies expiring and neither party serious about creating a real medical insurance system, healthcare is becoming as much of a luxury status purchase as a Rolex or a Rolls-Royce.
Droned in the Hamptons
The United States has used drones to assassinate political opponents overseas all around the world, including, most recently, alleged drug traffickers from Venezuela in the southern Caribbean.We get away with it now because we are a superpower. But what if, as will almost certainly happen someday, the situation is reversed?
Whole Paycheck
A century ago, workingmen often returned to their long-suffering wives to confess that they’d blown their entire paychecks on demon rum. Now that good organic food is so extravagantly expensive — not to mention groceries in general — spending everything on booze seems like the responsible choice.
What Democracy Looks Like
Republican leaders casually admit they undemocratically wield power by acting illegally and ensuring any court challenges come too late, while deliberately keeping voters in the dark through the collapse of the media and information suppression.
Threat Under the High Seas
The U.S. Department of Defense has assassinated at least 87 Venezuelan nationals, alleging that they were drug traffickers, by blowing up their vessels on the high seas. In one incident, two out of eleven crew members survived the initial attack. Forty-one minutes later, U.S. forces decided to kill the survivors. The Trump administration claimed that, even though the two men were in the middle of the ocean clinging to debris and not even wearing shirts, they still posed a threat to the United States and its national security interests.
Relying on The Other
As we’ve seen in other examples of mass disruption, there’s a general assumption by employers who fire workers en masse to replace them with automation that somehow it’ll all work out because someone else will hire the discarded workers. In a consumer-based economy, this is a dangerous assumption.
Who Will Keep the Drones Safe?
Trump’s deployment of ICE goons into American cities feels a lot like the lore about the Bermuda Triangle, in which lost planes are searched for by more planes that also get lost, which then prompts another round of planes to look for them.
What If They Gave a War and Nobody Ever Heard About It?
What if they gave a war and nobody ever heard about it? That’s what the Trump administration is trying to pull off in its military campaign against Venezuela. Trump has made no effort to convince the American people to support regime change. And he’s inventing a fake non-organization, like SPECTRE from the Bond films, to declare as evil terrorists.
What About?
Especially on the Internet—but also in the real world of politics—whataboutism has become the standard approach to denigrating a valid argument or criticism. Rather than address the point head-on, people simply accuse the other side of failing to care about something the accuser claims they should have cared about but didn’t. Or, if the other side did care, the accuser just pretends they didn’t in order to prove that they’re hypocrites.
“The Stringer”
graphic novel
by Ted Rall & Pablo G. Callejo
“Political Suicide: The Fight for the Soul of the Democratic Party”
by Ted Rall
“Bernie (Revised 2020 Edition)”
by Ted Rall
We’re Workers Too
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From an economic standpoint, governments look at citizens as workers, consumers or both. Most people, of course, are both: we work and earn, and we spend. Our dual economic roles inform the core of the affordability discussion at the center of current politics. For as long as everyone but the oldest of us can remember, both major parties have focused on and messaged to the individual as homo consumerus. Clinton promised that tariff-eliminating ‘free trade’ pacts like NAFTA and the WTO would improve our living standards by making imported goods cheaper. On that point, if the prices of imported stuff at Wal-Mart is a good indicator, he seems to have been mostly right. But Clinton had no good answer to protectionists who worried about offshoring the good manufacturing jobs that propped up the economy of the industrial Midwest. Cheaper prices are well and good, but the unemployed can’t buy anything. Trump promised to and claims to have reduced not only…
Read MoreBrown and MIT Shootings Linked | DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou
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Political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM EST. Today we discuss: • Trump reacted to the news that the alleged shooter at Brown and MIT by suspending the Green Card Lottery the suspect used to enter the U.S. Meanwhile, Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan found guilty of felony obstruction. • Lessons Unlearned: DNC Chairman Ken Martin quashes its 2024 election autopsy. • Trump reclassifies cannabis as a less dangerous Schedule III drug. • More than half of $18 billion in taxpayer funds spent on 14 Medicaid programs in Minnesota were probably stolen since 2018.
Read MoreBig Border Patrol is Watching You | DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou
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LIVE 9:00 am Eastern time, Streaming Anytime: Political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM EST. Today we discuss: • Orwellian, much? The U.S. Border Patrol is monitoring millions of American citizen drivers nationwide in a secretive program to identify and detain people whose travel patterns it deems “suspicious.” A secret network of cameras scans and records your vehicle license plate information, and an algorithm flags cars based on their route. Federal agents then flag local police. Cops cite speeding, failure to signal, the wrong window tint or even a dangling air freshener blocking the view. • Trump delivered a prime-time address to the nation and promised $1,776 checks to troops. The same day, the White House attached a predecessor-trolling Walk of Fame to the outside of the building. • Centrist Republicans revolt, join Democratic discharge petition on ACA subsidies. • Farmers block roads in Brussels to protest EU-Mercosur…
Read MoreBlockade! | DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou
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LIVE 9:00 am Eastern time, Streaming Anytime: Political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM EST. Today we discuss: • Declaring the Venezuelan government a terrorist organization, Trump imposes a naval blockade of sanctioned oil tankers. • D.C. is talking about Chief of Staff Susie Wiles’ candid assessments of her White House colleagues, including the president, in Vanity Fair. • WarSec Pete Hegseth is refusing to release that controversial double-tap killing by the US military of boat-bombing survivors. What’s he hiding? • Citizens of 35 countries are now restricted from travel to the U.S. 5 are banned entirely. Will they retaliate? • Who shot a prominent nuclear physics professor at MIT and why?
Read MoreFly the Fiendish Skies | DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou
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Political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM EST. Today we discuss: • A JetBlue pilot accuses the US military of recklessly flying over Venezuelan airspace without active transponders, endangering thousands of civilian air passengers and causing a near miss. • Running against crime and illegal immigration, rightist José Antonio Kast defeats a communist candidate for the Chilean presidency. Argentina, Paraguay, Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador are all governed by right-wingers. • Trump designates street fentanyl as a WMD. Meanwhile, the US military blows up three alleged drug boats in the Pacific, killing eight unknown civilians. • Blaise Metreweli, first female head of MI6, emphasizes threat from Russia and the war in Ukraine alongside high-tech/AI intelligence. JOIN US LIVE ON RUMBLE! https://rumble.com/c/DeProgramShow FOLLOW TED: https://rall.com/ https://x.com/tedrall FOLLOW JOHN: https://www.instagram.com/realjohnkiriakou https://x.com/JohnKiriakou LISTEN ON SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/2kdFlw2w8sSPhKI8NRx8Zu LISTEN ON APPLE MUSIC: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deprogram-with-john-kiriakou-and-ted-rall
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