Where’s Commander?

President Joe Biden’s dog was involved in dozens of biting incidents in the White House yet he refused to get rid of him. Finally now he’s gone too far and he’s been sent to live with unspecified relatives. The dog, not Biden.

The Final Countdown – 7/5/23 – Russia’s Nuclear Authority Warns of Potential Ukrainian Attack on Power Plant

On this episode of The Final Countdown, the hosts Ted Rall and Manila Chan discuss top news including the latest out of Ukraine. 
 
Angie Wong: Journalist
Elijah Mangier: Veteran war correspondent and political analyst
Robert Inlakesh: Journalist, writer, and political analyst
Nebojsa Malic: Serbian-American journalist, blogger, and translator
 
The show starts with Angie Wong, a journalist who joins to discuss a scandal at the White House. 
In the second half of the first hour, the hosts spoke to Veteran War Correspondent  Elijah Mangier to discuss the French rebellions. 
 
The second hour begins with Veteran War Correspondent and political analyst Elijah Mangier on the France protests. 
 
The show closes with Nebojsa Malic, a Serbian-American journalist to discuss the Zaphorizha nuclear false flag. 

DMZ America Podcast #85: Pence’s Classified Documents, Ukraine Slog, Parents Rights & Trans Kids, the Fight to Save Downtowns

Editorial cartoonists Ted Rall (from the Left) and Scott Stantis (from the Right) break down another interesting week in news and current events. Former Vice President Mike Pence, it turns out, also had classified documents left over from his time in office. Is it time to admit that (a) everyone has classified documents and (b) way too much stuff is overclassified and we should just stop caring about this? Now Ukraine wants tanks. But it turns out many of President Zelensky’s top officials were corrupt, so he fired them. Should the U.S. establish a war aim to define what victory looks like? If so, what should it be? Angry parents, including some liberal Democrats, say schools should tell them if their kids are identifying as a different gender in the classroom. Do parents have a right to know that their boy is really a girl? Finally, downtowns are dying as a result of workers no longer going into the office. Why do Americans hate commuting so much?

 

 

Haiti Is in Big Trouble. Are We Going to Help?

It’s understandable that American policymakers would be reluctant to intervene militarily in Haiti given the dismal history of the United States making bad situations worse there. But the country is effectively a failed state and starvation is rampant. Certainly what’s going on there is far more relevant and important to the United States than what is happening in Ukraine. The US should help put together an international force to provide food and medical assistant to the population.

Hanging on the Flimsiest of Hopes

Joe Biden’s latest approval ratings for president Joe Biden are 33%, which is pretty much a deal killer for a reelection campaign. Two out of three Democrats don’t even want the president to run again. He is changing his hopes on the fact that 92% of Democrats would vote for him over Donald Trump, but of course, 92% of Democrats would vote for a rutabaga over Donald Trump. Besides, who are these 8%?

Good Uses for Red Flag Laws

The epidemic of mass shootings has prompted some lawmakers to call for “red flag laws” that would allow people to report those who seem to be getting unhinged before they have the possibility to become a mass shooter. It’s hard to think of a law that could be more easily abused.

Shelter in Place

The evacuation of embassy staff, US citizens and Afghans who worked for the US government from Kabul went slowly and incompetently.

SYNDICATED COLUMN: By Law the President Should Have to Give Daily Press Conferences

Image result for jfk press conference

News conferences are a double oxymoron. Pressers aren’t conferences; conferences involve back-and-forth communication. Nor do they have anything to do with news. News is neither created nor conveyed at a press conference.

The one place in the world where news is least likely to happen is a press conference. If I were in charge of a media organization the last thing I’d spend money on would be a White House correspondent whose role is to sit politely holding up his or her hand, hoping like a compliant schoolchild to be called upon, begging for the privilege of being lied to.

Though there was that time an Iraqi journalist tried to bean George W. Bush with his shoe. Muntadhar al-Zaidi. He’s a journalist. And that was a news-making press conference.

Whatever CNN paid Jim Acosta to transcribe Donald Trump’s BS was too much. Even so, we owe Acosta for pushing the president so far that he yanked his reporter’s press pass in a fit of pique. With a brusque instruction to his despicable minister of propaganda Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump simultaneously exposed his authoritarian personality so that none could deny it. Even Fox News was alarmed, joining CNN’s (probably doomed) lawsuit against the president. “Secret Service passes for working White House journalists should never be weaponized,” quoth Fox’s Chris Wallace.

Trump threatened to revoke more White House press passes should his journalistic stenographers displease him.

The Acosta affair has convinced me of something I’ve been mulling for a long time: the president of the United States should be required to hold an hour-long daily press conference. Unless there’s a national emergency like 9/11. Then he can skip a day.

Why, if press conferences are total BS—and they are—should the president have to do them? Because this a democracy. Trump is not a king.

Roman emperors and generals rode through their triumphs next to a slave who whispered “remember you are mortal” in their ears lest their success convince them they were gods. Presidents should be required to host press confabs so they remember that they are not the people’s boss. Presidents are our servants. They are our slaves. They are accountable to we, the people or, the next best thing in this case, the people’s scribes. Presidents owe us answers.

The death of press conferences reflects the dedemocratization of America’s politics and the rise of an imperial attitude that belies the country’s moral and economic decline. During Donald Trump’s first year in office he held just one old-fashioned solo press conference.

The trend has not been a straight line but the overall track is unmistakable. Obama held seven during his first year, Bush 43 had four, Clinton 11, H.W. Bush 27, Reagan six, Carter 22.

JFK held an average of 23 press conferences a year. Track them down on YouTube; the witty banter and jovial self-confidence is a sad reminder of what we’ve lost.

Trump is not a king, American presidents are not kings, but even that comparison of accessibility is unfair—to hereditary monarchs. In many societies kings and queens were expected to clear their schedules for royal audiences where subjects could lodge petitions and plead grievances. These events are depicted in the alt-medieval fantasy series “Game of Thrones.” In India medieval kings, and then Mughal emperors appeared at their balcony for the Jharokha Darshan, a daily audience where the public griped, groused and begged for royal indulgence.

There will be those who argue that the president is too busy to meet the press. Fortunately, there is ample proof that Donald Trump, like Barack Obama and George W. Bush before him, have more than free time to make themselves available. He, like most former presidents, play the hours-long, fake sport of golf.

(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.)

 

Trump’s Maniacal First 100 Days

Trump’s political genius is centered around his manic style. He issues one outrageous statement after another, so that the media and critics can only begin to respond to each before it gets eclipsed by the next one, with the net effect that nothing ever gets fully processed. If elected president, he’ll probably do the same thing. Hey, it worked for George W. Bush!

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