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.
Ted Rall’s Latest Books:
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.
Cartel of the Imagination
President Trump laid the legal groundwork for war and/or covert action against Venezuela on the basis that the Maduro regime is part of the “Cartel de los Soles.” As the New York Times reports, however, no such organization exists. It’s a derisive term invented by Venezuelan journalists to describe the corrupt generals—those with stars on their uniforms—who traffic drugs.
“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
Blockade! | 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
Read MoreBloody Weekend | 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: • Bloody weekend: Australia Bondi Beach massacre claims 15 at Hannukah event, gunman kills 2 Brown students and injures 9, director Rob and wife Michele Reiner killed at their L.A. home. • “Dewoked” coins commemorating the 250th anniversary of the US canceled Frederick Douglass and shackled and unshackled hands, women’s suffrage and a “Votes for Women” flag and the civil rights movement and desegregation. Instead, we’ll get the Mayflower Compact, Pilgrims, Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and the Gettysburg Address with Lincoln. • A tale of two presidential libraries: Awash in donations, Trump will probably use a foundation to avoid National Archives scrutiny. Biden has raised enough money to purchase a modest home on the beach. • Dude, Where’s My Nuke? A CIA nuclear device loaded with plutonium has been missing…
Read MoreCall-In Friday | DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou
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Got a question for CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou and/or political cartoonist Ted Rall? Today’s your chance to bend their ear about the news of the day or anything else you feel like! It’s a Rumble-only exclusive where you can call in live. Be pithy, be quick, be brilliant on DeProgram! It’s here.
Read MoreEveryone Must Get Droned
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The Achaemenid Persian Empire. Byzantium. The Ottomans. Ancient Rome. All these regimes wielded immense power relative to their contemporaries. They dominated militarily, economically, culturally and globally in ways comparable to the United States’ current superpower status. All collapsed or were destroyed. We Americans often forget that nothing lasts forever. And we always ignore the playwright Wilson Mizner’s advice to be nice to people on your way up because you’ll meet them on your way down. I am terrified of what will happen to us on the way down. Whether or not you approve of U.S. actions overseas, there’s little dispute that our policymakers routinely flout international norms, violate treaty obligations and ignore the law—our own and those of other countries. We have provided billions in military aid and weapons to Israel despite its documented violations of international humanitarian law in Gaza, making us complicit in war crimes and violating the Leahy Laws, which prohibit aid to entities guilty of gross…
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