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The Final Countdown – 3/11/24 – When It Rains, It Pours: Legal Probe Hits Boeing

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Ted Rall
On this episode of The Final Countdown, hosts Angie Wong and Ted Rall discuss top news from around the globe, including the DOJ investigating Boeing. 
Steve Gill – Attorney  
Dan Kovalik – Human Rights Lawyer 
Mark Sleboda – International Relations and Security Analyst 
 
The first hour begins with Steve Gill who shares his perspective on numerous topics, including Biden’s MSNBC interview, the situation at the Southern Border, Trump’s opposition to banning TikTok, and the DOJ’s investigation into Boeing. 
 
The second hour starts with Dan Kovalik, a human rights lawyer, talking about the unfolding situation in Haiti, including Americans fleeing the country. 
 
In the final segment, The Final Countdown spoke to Mark Sleboda about the recent claim from CNN and The New York Times about the accusation that Russia was on the verge of using nuclear weapons in 2022. 
 
 

The Final Countdown – 7/12/23 – NATO Renews Long-Term Vow to Back Ukraine Against Russia

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Ted Rall
On this episode of The Final Countdown, the hosts Ted Rall and Manila Chan discuss breaking news including the latest out of the NATO Summit. 
 
Nebojsa Malic: Serbian-American journalist
Ian Smith: Health & Fitness Entrepreneur 
Tyler Nixon: Army Infantry Veteran   
Ruben Navarette: Syndicated columnist, Podcast Host 
 
The show kicks off with Nebojsa Malic, a Serbian-American journalist, to discuss the latest out of the NATO Summit. 
 
In the second half of the first hour, the hosts speak with Health & Fitness Entrepreneur Ian Smith, to discuss MSNBC’s comments on working out. 
 
The second hour begins with Army Infantry Veteran Tyler Nixon to discuss Trump’s request for a trial delay. 
 
The show closes with Ruben Navarette, a Syndicated columnist and podcast host, joins to discuss the BBC sexual misconduct case and Vice Media retention bonuses. 
 
 

The Final Countdown – 6/16/23 – Pentagon Leaker Indicted on Six Counts

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Ted Rall
On this episode of The Final Countdown, the hosts Ted Rall and Manila Chan discuss top news, including the indictment of Jack Texiera.  
 
Dr. Adrienne Pine: Medical Anthropologist, Professor  
Dr. David Bell: Former WHO Physician and scientist  
Daniel McAdams: Executive Director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity 
KJ Noh: Journalist, Political Analyst, Writer & Teacher 
 
The show kicks off with Dr. Adrienne Pine, Medical Anthropologist and Professor to discuss Texas Gov. Abbott dropping off migrants in L.A. 
In the second half of the first hour, the hosts spoke to Dr. David Bell, Former WHO Physician, and Scientist to discuss the new COVID vaccine recommended by the FDA. 
 
In the first half of the final hour, Daniel McAdams, Executive Director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity joins to discuss Rachel Maddow and the indictment of Discord leaker Jack Teixeira.  
 
The show wraps up with Journalist and Political Analyst KJ Noh to discuss the new NATO liaison office in Japan, and the country supplying weapons to the U.S. for Ukraine. 

The Unpersoning of anti-Biden Democrats

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Ted Rall

            “Am I real?”

            “Do I exist?”

            “Do you see the real me?”

            Humans have always asked themselves these existential questions. These days, Marianne Williamson and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. have more reason to wonder about their corporeal status than most.

            Earlier this week, because I felt that I deserved to suffer, I tuned into a political horse-race discussion on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” Why, host Joe Scarborough wondered aloud about Joe Biden’s oxymoronic announcement that’s he’s not announcing (“I plan on running, Al, but we’re not prepared to announce it yet”), isn’t the President actually, you know, announcing that he’s running for reelection? The April the year before the election ere, ’tis the season for such communiqués.

            Front and center in Scarborough and co-host Mika Brzezinski’s speculation was that Biden wouldn’t have any pesky primaries to deal with before the general election; thus he can take his time before declaring. This would come as news to Williamson and Kennedy, both of whom have formally declared their candidacies for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination and have filed the requisite paperwork.

            Given how early in the race it is, Biden’s rivals already pose a surprisingly significant threat to the incumbent: 10% of Democrats say they’ll vote for Kennedy, 4% for Williamson in a Morning Consult poll. Kennedy does even better among some key demographics: women and voters over 65, both of whom turn out in heavy numbers. An Echelon Insights poll shows Williamson surging, now at 10%.

            When I sat down with Bernie Sanders to research my bestselling graphic biography, it was June 2015–two months later in the race—and the Vermont senator was polling 1% to 2% of Democrats. Yet he went on to nearly defeat establishment favorite Hillary Clinton; he might have succeeded if not for the DNC putting their corrupt thumbs on the scale. At this stage, 10% each for Kennedy and Williamson is impressive.

            Kennedy is political royalty and Williamson is a well-known author and previous Democratic primary candidate. Yet media outlets like MSNBC are lying to their viewers, pretending that they don’t exist and that Biden is running (or might run) unopposed. Resistance is futile. Get used to it.

            Unpersoning is the latest tactic of the Democratic Party establishment and their media allies, including MSNBC. If you don’t admit to the existence of a rival candidate, then you certainly don’t have to cover them or their campaign — so voters will never learn about that alternative option. They’re not real, therefore they’re not serious, therefore they don’t get any votes, therefore they’re not serious, therefore they’re not real.

Beautiful, infantile, effective.

Bear in mind: Scarborough didn’t say Biden wouldn’t face a serious primary challenge (which, in any case, is far from certain based on those polls, and Biden’s own poor ratings.) That would be subjective. Scarborough said there wouldn’t be any primary whatsoever, which is plainly untrue.

But this, as you probably know, is nothing new. Bernie received terribly unfair news media coverage—and in such small portions!—when he ran in 2016 and 2020. My favorite moment was MSNBC’s Chris Matthews comparing Sanders’ candidacy to the Nazi invasion of France.

John Edwards, the progressive candidate in the 2008 Democratic primaries, suffered the same phenomenon. USA Today’s dismissal of Edwards was typical: “The Democratic contest is a two-person race, dominated by Clinton and Obama. That leaves Edwards, a former North Carolina senator who is a close third, and Richardson, New Mexico’s governor who is a distant fourth, waiting for a stumble or a political earthquake to create an opening for them.” How can it be “a two-person race” if there’s a “close third”?
            In 2004 the media piñata was another progressive with anti-corporate message, Howard Dean.

Basic pattern recognition indicates the evolution of an increasingly aggressive approach toward erasing political challenges to the corporate establishment. A quarter century or so ago, third-party candidates like Ralph Nader were routinely ignored, starved of press coverage and threatened with arrest when they tried to attend a presidential candidate as an audience member. Candidates Dean, Edwards and Sanders were insulted (angry yeller, lightweight pretty boy, cranky old commie) and subjected to DNC skullduggery intended to marginalize them.

The unpersonings of Williamson and RFK Jr. elevate old-school shading to the level of Orwell: No one has ever opposed Joe Biden. No one will oppose Joe Biden. Joe Biden will run unopposed—especially when he is opposed.

(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.)

Ideological Consistency Is so Boring

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Ted Rall

Liberal-leaning media outlets love Republican turncoats like Liz Cheney. They will lionize them to the end while ignoring lifelong loyal liberal Democrats.

Andrew Cuomo Faces Accountability

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Ted Rall

Disgraced farmer political figures like New York governor Andrew Cuomo follow a familiar pattern after they leave office. They disappear for 6 to 12 months and then reappear as paid analysts on cable TV or wind up in academia.

President Trump Neither Needs Nor Deserves Our Thoughts and Prayers

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Ted Rall

Salem • View topic - Know Your Enemy.

            I don’t give a damn if Donald Trump lives or dies. I don’t wish him well. I don’t send him thoughts or prayers. If COVID-19 or green men from Mars or liopleurodon take him to his despicable maker, so be it. Everyone dies. Being famous and or a billionaire and or President of the United States does not entitle you to universal goodwill.

            Neither do I wish Trump ill. That’s how little I care.

            Republicans, members of the self-proclaimed Party of Personal Responsibility, ought to acknowledge that this man has been asking for this. I’m not talking about karmic retribution for the 200,000+ Americans who died on his watch while he plainly didn’t much care. Trump has been cruising for COVID-19 spring, summer and fall, avoiding masks and social distancing the way he dodges the construction contractors he chisels out of pay. If you drink like a fish, you’re cruising for liver disease. If you like to run red lights, don’t whine if you get broadsided by a semi-truck. Trump wanted this virus and he got it.

            What’s fascinating and enlightening though is the semiotic contortions that liberal Democrats twist themselves through in order to simultaneously dogwhistle their glee at the President’s medical misfortune while patting themselves on the back for their phony compassion.

            MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, the former progressive to whom I point whenever I’m trying to instance the term “sellout,” tweeted a watered-down liberal version of “hearts and prayers” in response to the big news: “God bless the president and the first lady. If you pray, please pray for their speedy and complete recovery — and for everyone infected, everywhere.” Atheists, thank the Lord, are apparently off the hook.

            Maddow continued sympathy shaming for Trump on her nightly TV show.

“If you know someone who smoked for years and years and years and never even tried to quit despite knowing the risks of lung cancer from smoking and then that person who you know got lung cancer, how do you react to that?” she asked. “Well, part of the way you react is that you understand why they likely got it. Your instinct might even be to blame them for getting it. Go right ahead. Enjoy that schadenfreude.” Internet searches for schadenfreude soared over the weekend.

“But also, you’re a human being in this situation,” Maddow went on. “If your friend has lung cancer now, regardless of what you feel about how he or she, how he or she got it, once you find out that they’re ill, you wish and hope and try to save them, right? You get them into treatment. You help them try to survive it. You move heaven and earth to cure them. That’s how we do as humans, right? That’s how this works!”

Well, yes. The keyword is “friend.” If your friend screws up, you are there for them. But Trump is not my friend.

Trump made excuses for and let Saudi Arabia off the hook for butchering Jamal Khashoggi. Trump bombs innocent people with drones. Trump kills the poor in Yemen. Trump coddles neo-Nazis and cops, who are often the same people. Trump doesn’t care if I die due to lack of healthcare. Trump doesn’t care about all the homeless people sleeping outside tonight.

So Trump is my enemy.

He’s probably yours too.

And when your enemy suffers, you have no obligation whatsoever to care. You are allowed to laugh. Pretending that you care about your enemy, especially when they are a mass murderer—every American president is—is the pinnacle of psychological alienation. Make no mistake: your enemy would do the same to you. That is, if he even knows you exist.

            It’s interesting that Maddow used the F-word. I don’t know if she is friends with President Trump the same way that Ellen DeGeneres chills with George W. Bush, but there’s an important similarity: both men and both women belong to a privileged class of ruling elites for whom rules and laws do not apply as stringently as for the rest of us. Maddow earns $7 million a year and is worth $20 million. The rich are different from you and me: they don’t care about us.

            From a class perspective, Trump and Maddow might not be friends. But they are part of the same clique. And if anything makes these insanely wealthy people nervous—aside from succumbing to a mysterious disease or getting strung up by an angry mob of revolutionaries —it’s their suspicion that we might not like them. That we might not consider them “friends.” Not only that we might not give a damn about them, but that we might actually take pleasure in their suffering.

            40% of Democratic voters told a poll that they were happy that Trump had COVID-19. I was surprised that anyone took such a poll and that any media organization published the results. That wouldn’t have happened 40 years ago.

There isn’t much historical data to compare to but it’s a fair bet that most Democrats felt sympathy for Ronald Reagan when he was shot in an assassination attempt in 1981. I was a leftist and I hated Reagan. His financial aid cuts forced me to work multiple jobs through college and pushed many of my classmates to drop out of school. But I was glad he recovered. At the time, an attack on the majesty of the presidency was shocking.

            The presidency no longer has much majesty; I’m not sure that’s a bad thing.

            The liberal Democrats who fall over themselves in order to shed crocodile tears for a man they excoriate every day and every night showcase the nature of the system under which we live and the separate class interests that divide the American people. While talking heads on CNN and columnists for the New York Times virtue-signal their concern for the latest murderous president, policemen are shooting unarmed people of color in their cars and in their homes with impunity, renters who lost their homes to the COVID-19 lockdown are being evicted, unemployment benefits still haven’t been renewed, people in the Middle East are getting blown up by Hellfire missiles and cultural gatekeepers have nothing to say.

            We might not have internalized the fact that they are our enemies.

But they know we are theirs.

(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of the biography “Political Suicide: The Fight for the Soul of the Democratic Party.” You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)

 

Lincoln v. Douglas – 2020

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Ted Rall

The 1858 debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas over the issue of slavery were notable for their erudite discussion of an important policy matter. Now we don’t talk about issues, we talk about political viability in terms of how much the candidates have to spend. Ideas? Not so much.

Billionaires and Corporations Love anti-SLAPP Laws. Why Does John Oliver?

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Ted Rall
Image result for austin beutner
Why does this multibillionaire need a cartoonist’s money?

            John Oliver recently dedicated his HBO show to why we need a federal anti-SLAPP law. Like most of his stuff, the episode was witty and engaging. It was also sloppy, thoughtless and poorly researched. From now on, I’ll wonder whether I can trust anything he says.

            An anti-SLAPP motion is a powerful legal maneuver available to defendants against libel and defamation lawsuits. In the 27 states that have them, the filing of an anti-SLAPP motion brings everything to a halt until a judge — not a jury — decides various issues about a case. Does it involve a matter of public interest? Is there a chance the case would succeed at trial? If the judge rules for the defense, the case is thrown out and the plaintiff pays the defendant’s legal fees.

            Liberals and conservatives alike like anti-SLAPP. Supporters say they protect activists, whistleblowers and average individuals from being bankrupted if they get sued by deep-pocketed corporations and wealthy individuals who use the courts to harass their victims. In his show Oliver described his experience being sued by a coal baron who wanted to chill criticism. HBO, Oliver said, spent $200,000 to defend him because the suit was filed in a state without anti-SLAPP.

            It’s easy to see why someone like Oliver, targeted by a frivolous defamation claim designed to tie him up in court and waste his employer’s lucre, would yearn for a federal anti-SLAPP law. His must have been a frustrating experience.

            There is, however, an inherent design flaw in anti-SLAPP: the United States Constitution. Under the equal protection clause, you can’t give rights to one class of defendant and not another. You can’t limit anti-SLAPP protections to impecunious individuals and small businesses; rich people and giant corporations have to get the same legal prerogatives.

            Which is what has been happening. Billionaires and corporate conglomerates use anti-SLAPP to crush legitimate libel and defamation lawsuits filed by ordinary individuals and whistleblowers. Happens a lot. Why don’t you hear about these cases? Because media companies love, love, love anti-SLAPP.

            In 2016 The National Enquirer published a cover story about fitness headlined: “Richard Simmons: He’s Now a Woman.” He wasn’t. “Secret Boob & Castration Surgery,” the tabloid screamed, “Yes, This Photo Shoot Is Real!” It wasn’t. The cover photo of “transwoman” Simmons was Photoshopped.

            Thanks to anti-SLAPP, what should have been an open-and-shut defamation case turned a travesty of justice into a farce. While acknowledging that the paper lied about Simmons, Los Angeles judge said that letting Simmons’ case go forward was tantamount to saying that it is bad to be trans. Simmons was an innocent victim and the Enquirer knowingly lied. Yet the court ordered him to pay American Media, owner of the paper, $130,000 in legal fees. So much for anti-SLAPP as being a tool for the little guy! AMI brought in $310 million in revenues last year.

            In 2018 MSNBC host Joy Reid [disclosure: I have appeared on Reid’s show] retweeted a photo of a Trump supporter yelling at a high school student at a Simi Valley, California city council meeting. Reid added the following text: “He showed up to rally to defend immigrants…She showed up too, in her MAGA hat, and screamed, ‘You are going to be the first deported’…’dirty Mexican!’ He is 14 years old. She is an adult. Make the picture black and white and it could be the 1950s and the desegregation of a school. Hate is real, y’all. It hasn’t even really gone away.”

            Hate is real. The story was not. The kid said that Roslyn La Liberte, the woman in the photo, was trying to keep things “civil.” She never said that stuff.

            La Liberte’s son emailed to inform Reid of the truth. Reid nevertheless reposted the image, this time alongside a black-and-white image of pro-segregation protesters in Little Rock in 1957 with this caption: “It was inevitable that this image would be made. It’s also easy to look at old black and white photos and think: I can’t believe that person screaming at a child, with their face twisted in rage, is real. B[ut] everyone one of them were. History sometimes repeats. And it is full of rage.”

            La Liberte was wronged. Rather than settle or plead guilty, MSNBC’s lawyers hit the working grandmother with an anti-SLAPP motion. Ignoring the fact that Reid’s posts easily qualify under as “reckless disregard for the truth” under the landmark libel case Sullivan v. New York Times (1964), the judge wallowed in pro-corporate sophistry: “the juxtaposition of the photographs does not ‘make clear that [La Liberte] is alleged to have engaged in specific racist conduct akin to that demonstrated during desegregation.’” La Liberte’s case was thrown out, denying her justice. Adding injury to insult, she has to pay MSNBC’s legal fees. MSNBC is owned by NBC Universal, a $203 billion company.

            President Trump used anti-SLAPP against Stormy Daniels, the porn actor who sued him for calling her a liar. Trump is worth $3 billion. Daniels owes him $293,000 for his legal fees.

            My readers are familiar with my case against the Los Angeles Times. No one disputes the fact that they lied about me, fired me as a favor to the LAPD (which owned them at the time) and tried to destroy my journalistic reputation in order to send a chilling message to journalists who criticize the police. My anti-SLAPP case is still working its way through the court system—and things currently look good—but there is already a $330,000 judgment against me. They want me to pay that money to two billionaires, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong and LA schools superintendent and former Times publisher Austin Beutner, with a combined net worth of $16 billion.

            Bill Cosby has been using the anti-SLAPP statute against his rape victims.

            Faced with these cases, anti-SLAPP apologists sometimes say that the law isn’t bad, that it is simply being abused. If a law is written in such a way that it can be routinely abused, it is bad by definition.

(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of “Francis: The People’s Pope.” You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)

Can We Blame Moderate Politics for the Next Mass Shooting?

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Ted Rall

Every time there’s a mass shooting, partisan members of the media scour social media and public postings to see if the perpetrator had a political agenda that they can blame as extremist and therefore responsible for the latest massacre. What’s going to happen when they find that the killer is a boring centrist moderate swing voter?

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