Donald Trump committed countless crimes without being held accountable. So it’s a weird reflection of our societal priorities that the one offense for which he is being held accountable is a relatively trivial paperwork charge.
DMZ America Podcast #116: Bidexit, UAW Strike Deadline, Autonomous Assassination Drones
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Editorial Cartoonists Ted Rall (from the political Left) and Scott Stantis (from the political Right) discuss breaking news and politics.
This week, Democrats are finally focusing on and starting to become alarmed by President Biden’s stubbornly-low poll numbers. 67% of Democrats say they don’t want him to be their candidate next year. Democratic senators say that even voters who think he has done a good job think he is simply too old to run again. Now mainstream media outlets are starting to float the possibility that he may decide to step aside, and either open up the Democratic primary process or anoint a successor. Scott and Ted handicap the various scenarios for Bidexit.
Four days away from their strike deadline against the big three Detroit auto makers, the United Auto Workers union is still far away from the latest offers on the table. In agreement that a strike currently looks likely, Scott and Ted discuss the state of negotiations, the future of the auto industry and the economic impact of a walkout.
Reuters has published a shocking expose of the advanced state of autonomous AI weapons currently in development and available for sale on the international arms marketplace. From drones to trucks to submarines to fighter jets, the dark vision of the Terminator movies is upon us. Will the world act to ban these dystopian killer robots?
Watch the Video Version of the DMZ America Podcast:
DMZ America Podcast Ep 116 Sec 1: Bidexit
DMZ America Podcast Ep 116 Sec 2: UAW Strike Deadline
DMZ America Podcast Ep 116 Sec 3: Autonomous Assassination Drones
Whoever Said Life Was Cheap?
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A 23-year-old man was the latest mass shooter to make the headlines, this time at a bank in Louisville, Kentucky, where he was an employee. As usual, Democrats called for increased gun control. Republicans blamed the mental health crisis. Both parties have a point. But we also shouldn’t ignore something unique to America, a brutal culture of violence that permeates our politics, pop culture and our everyday lives.
America Clutches Its Pearls, Balloon Edition
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No country in the world invades the sovereign airspace of other nations as brazenly or extremely as the United States with spy drones, assassination drones, spy satellites and outright invasions. So it’s beyond rich to see U.S. officials whine so much about China’s survelliance balloon.
Here’s What a Progressive Platform Looks Like
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“Be realistic. Demand the impossible.” —Situationist slogan, 1968.
Demand #1: The $30-per-hour Minimum Wage.
Not phased in over so many years that today’s $30 is worth $20 by the time it takes effect. $30 an hour for all workers, no exceptions, now. This is an eminently reasonable demand. If anything, it’s too little to ask. $7.25 is a sick joke. Congress’ abdication of its moral duty to reward American workers for their extraordinary productivity by increasing the minimum wage at or faster than inflation has eroded the base salary since the Vietnam era. Corporate profits have soared as workers’ wages have stagnated.
The federal minimum wage was $1.60 in 1968. Adjusting for the official inflation rate, that’s $30.00 today. Let’s party like it’s 1968.
Demand #2: Free national healthcare.
Not market-based, not a hybrid—we need real, actual, universal healthcare. Every nurse and every doctor becomes a federal employee. Health insurance vanishes as a business sector. Every check-up, every test, every doctor’s visit, every medication, every surgical procedure is fully covered, no questions asked, as long as it’s approved by a physician.
This is not too much to ask. Germany, where only 0.5% of the population is uninsured, pays only 10.7% of GDP for healthcare, compared to 16% here in the U.S. Norway, where hospitals are operated by the government, has a $210 per citizen per year deductible after which the government picks up the tab for everything; like Germany, overall healthcare costs in Norway are about 60% of ours.
Throw in dental, vision and mental health.
Demand #3: Slash military spending by 80%.
We’re not the world’s policeman. We’re its deranged serial killer. The U.S. squanders $800 billion a year to invade, occupy, assassinate, intimidate and bomb people who mean us no harm and destroy their infrastructure. That’s more than the next nine biggest-spending militarist nations combined. And those countries total 10 times our population.
Slashing the Pentagon budget would make the world safer. Fewer U.S. wars and proxy wars would reduce anti-Americanism and thus reduce the chance of another terrorist attack, save thousands of American lives and millions of people overseas, not to mention massively helping out the environment.
Those savings would easily cover…
Demand #4: Free four-year college.
Young Americans have long been coerced into a devil’s bargain: without a college degree, they’ve been told, you won’t land a decent-paying job. College is insanely expensive so you’ll have to accept the burden of student loan debt. If you don’t make enough money after graduation due to bad luck or a bad economy or a changing workplace, too bad, you still have to pay. You can’t even discharge the loans in bankruptcy.
If the corporations who own our politicians require job applicants to have a college degree, a college degree should be free. 39 countries have free college. We deserve, and can afford, the same as Kenya, Iceland and Panama.
Demand #5: Leadership to ban the most frightening weapons.
As the world’s most aggressive militaristic nation and its biggest international arms dealer, only the U.S. has the standing and power to stop the arms races we’re starting. The U.S. should forswear its currently-stated, insane option of launching a nuclear first strike and invite all other nuclear powers to make the same commitment. It should join the 80% of the world’s nations that have pledged not to use landmines. It should ban drone-based weapons in its military, police and civilian sectors and demand that other nations do the same. The world must come together to ban lethal autonomous weapons; the U.S.’ early lead in this technology gives it leverage to lead the way.
More to come.
(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis. You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)
Biden Writes a Check He Will Never Have To Cash
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President Biden has been running around saying that, if Democrats make sizable gains in the midterm elections, they would codify abortion rights at the federal level. Of course, this is a promise that he will never have to keep because the precondition is not going to happen.
On This One Thing We Can Agree
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After months of denial and censorship, main stream media is finally admitting that Hunter Biden’s laptop is a real thing. But will it really matter?
Now Those Guys Are Really Scary.
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President Biden delivered a primetime speech that was marketed as an appeal to protect American democracy but directly targeted President Trump and his Republican supporters as the main threat to that noble institution. Gravely undermining his antiauthoritarian message was the stagecraft of the event in Philadelphia, which featured dystopian lighting and the ominous sight of two US Marines standing at attention.
Next Terrifying Military Threats
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Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has prompted American political leaders and media outlets to constantly speculate about other countries’ military aggression, whether it be the possibility that China would invade Taiwan or that Russia would next turn to the Baltic states. Rarely do they ever consider the fact that they themselves live in the most militarily aggressive country in the world, and that the world should be more afraid of us than we should be afraid of them.
Terror Comes to America
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America’s use of drones against foreign countries is the epitome of might-makes-right policy. It’s extrajudicial, it’s an act of war, it’s brazen murder without justification. The US gets away with it for one simple reason: no one can stop it. And American citizens never put themselves in the position of being the victims, only the perpetrators. What if that were to change? One day it no doubt will.
