By most objective standards of quality of life, the United States has become one of the worst advanced countries in the world to live in. And things are only getting worse.
Ted Rall’s Latest Books:
When Your First Term Is Going to Be Your Last
Largely unspoken by Democrats is the open secret that Joe Biden is suffering both physically and mentally from the effects of aging. He seems unlikely to finish his full term and vice president Kamala Harris is an extremely ambitious person. How long will he last?
Cold
Any society that fails to care for human beings who are sleeping on the street is sick. That fact becomes even more obvious when you compare it to the way we treat our pets.
Ask Not What Your Country Can Do for You
If and when Joe Biden becomes president, something that is not certain due to the machinations of the outgoing President Trump, he will be stymied at every turn by Republican Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell.
If Trump Launches a Coup D’état to Try to Stay in Power
Trump hasn’t only refused to concede to Biden. He is challenging election results, hoping to trigger the 12th amendment, and firing key officials who might resist his orders to impose martial law if he refuses to leave. What would the resistance look like? Not much.
What, Exactly, Isn’t an American Value?
After refusing to concede, shaking up the Pentagon, firing key staffers at NSA and Homeland security, it looks like Donald Trump is setting up a possible coup d’état. That couldn’t happen here? Why? Because it’s against American values?
You Never Forget Your First Girl
Democrats might like to think that there was a huge difference between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. But for people overseas being destroyed by American drones and bombs, the difference will be hard to detect.
President Skeletor is My Co-Pilot
Everyone knows that Joe Biden is probably too old to be president. However, Democrats pointed out that he would have Kamala Harris to step in and spot him if he ever falls down on the job. Would you get on a plane with Joe Biden as a pilot?
Joe Biden Will Be a President for All Americans
As one would expect, President-elect Joe Biden told the nation that he plans to be a president for every American, including Republicans. Does that unifying message apply to progressives? Not if rumors about his agenda and cabinet are true.
You Can’t Be Disappointed If You Don’t Have Expectations
President Obama had every advantage when he started out his first term yet he disappointed us. Joe Biden, on the other hand, won’t have any advantages at all so he will have every excuse not to do a thing. Hey, that’s great, no disappointment.
“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
December Will Be Very Dangerous
•
It’s too early to celebrate, back-to-brunch Democrats. Liberal voters are counting Biden’s corporatist cabinet picks. But we still don’t know for sure that Trump will let them hatch. There’s still a significant chance — I would put it at 50-50 — that the “outgoing” president will engineer a coup d’état in order to remain in power. Democratic-aligned media outlets are promulgating wishful thinking. They’re crowing about a routine, peaceful transfer of power. They’re making fun of the Trump campaign’s losses in court challenges to the election results and making light of the president’s hope that faithless electors will trigger the 12th Amendment scenario by causing Biden to fall short of 270. The mainstream pundit class points to the bureaucracy’s granting of access to Biden’s transition team and to excerpts from a recent Trump interview as evidence that he has accepted defeat. (In fact, Trump said that if the electoral college votes for Biden, they will have “made…
Read MoreHey, Joe! These Are Our Demands
•
Progressives and other leftists promise/threaten to pressure/take to the streets to make demands of Joe Biden if/when he falls short of our expectations. We on the left don’t want to be one of those bad bosses who tell you your work isn’t good enough but never say what they expect from you in the first place, so you’re reduced to fumbling around in the dark. Because there isn’t a political party or other formation that can credibly speak for a broad base of the American left, and because the left is divided between work-from-inside AOC-Bernie types and street-level activists, no one has defined a clear metric to judge the Biden Administration’s personnel, policy and legislative actions. As we saw under Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, vague demands foment the unaccountability that allows Democrats to wiggle away and take us for granted. We need a clear set of demands. I think our demands should look something like…
Read MoreWhy Democrats Lost and Will Keep Losing Elections
•
Why, Democrats have been asking, do so many poor white people vote for a Republican Party that doesn’t care about or do anything for them? The most common reply is: Democrats are snobby coastal elites who talk down to them. Classic example, courtesy of Obama: “They [voters in the Rust Belt] get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” Democrats know their arrogance pisses off the working-class whites they need to win national elections. Yet they persist. Every day sees some op-ed Ivy-educated columnist opining that voting for Trump means you’re a Klansman and another DNC-fed talking head pontificating about the masklessness at the president’s rallies with the bloated tone of a Roman tribune announcing stunning news that no one had ever heard before. Now the Democrats are at it again, setting the stage for yet…
Read MoreTrump Tees Up a New Type of Coup: In Plain Sight
•
Donald Trump revolutionized political campaigning. It was by accident. Because he was too lazy to prepare for or memorize a stump speech, he ad-libbed his rallies; TV networks gave him $2 billion worth of free airtime because something he said might prove newsworthy. Because he was cheap, he made appearances at any random dump that would have him for free; he used the money he saved on big data research that paid off handsomely. Now the president is attempting to revolutionize the art of the coup d’état. Leaders of broad-based movements who want to overthrow an existing government usually agitate for revolution in plain sight. The activism of a popular front attracts new recruits. A coup is the opposite of a revolution. Unlike revolutionaries, who need the masses to succeed, coup plotters require secrecy. A coup is usually carried out by a very small group of insiders. Coup schemers are not interested in, or have concluded…
Read MoreBoth Parties Lost the Election. Now the Real Trouble Begins.
•
My liberal friends are relieved. I am terrified. Democratic voters got what they wanted last Saturday: the electoral defeat of Donald Trump. By this time next year if not sooner, Joe Biden’s win will look like a Pyrrhic victory. Rather than pushing an affirmative platform of policy proposals, Biden’s entire campaign boiled down to opposition to Trump. This is the first time that a purely negative campaign has unseated an incumbent president. I was skeptical of Biden’s decision to target disaffected anti-Trump Republican swing voters rather than shore up the progressive base, but it worked. That’s why he won personally, yet didn’t have coattails in the House (where Dems lost seats), Senate or state races. Many Republican voters, tired of Trump’s tweets and disgusted by his COVID buffoonery, voted straight red except for crossing party lines for President-elect Biden. Going forward, there are several reasons to be scared. First: Trump isn’t gone. He isn’t…
Read More