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Guest Post: Who’s Behind the Shutdown?

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Susan Stark

Susan here. It comes as no surprise to me that the Koch Brothers are one of the groups behind the government shutdown. The national parks have been closed to visitors, and there is no doubt in my mind that the brothers are trying to get federal lands sold to them at cut-rate prices.

How do I know this? Because they tried this stupid stunt in Wisconsin in 2011, when they tried to get the state-controlled properties sold to them. But they failed as soon as it became evident to the public how much Governor Scott Walker was in bed with them. In other words, they got caught with their pants down, and had to retreat.

Our national parks and other federal properties are not for sale either to the highest bidder or the lowest. And I can’t believe the brothers think they’re gonna get away wih this. But they might, if no one is paying attention.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/us/a-federal-budget-crisis-months-in-the-planning.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Live on BBC

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Ted Rall

I’m going to be on the BBC world service radio program at about 4:15 PM Eastern time today. We will be discussing the government shutdown and how cartoonists and other humorists are covering it and analyzing it – or not.

Obamacare’s Disastrous First Week

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Ted Rall

Watching the Sunday morning talk shows, it is striking how Democrats and members of the Obama administration are spinning the disastrous launch of the healthcare marketplace exchanges as glitches that they had anticipated.

They didn’t anticipate this. If they had, they would’ve told people a week before not to bother to sign up right away. It is unbelievable what a crappy job they did to get these things ready.

If I were Pres. Obama, I would be furious. How hard is it to set up a website? What do they mean, they didn’t expect millions of people to sign up? Why not? When you know that millions of people are uninsured, and then you open a website that purports to solve that problem, what do you think is going to happen?

Over 8 million people attempted to sign up for healthcare this week, but we have no idea how many of them succeeded. Probably fewer than a few hundred thousand. I wonder, how many people will just simply throw up their hands and decide to pay the $75 fine next year? I wouldn’t be surprised if as many as 1 million Americans decide to go uninsured because they were unable to get anywhere this week. Studies have shown that people get discouraged very easily online. People tend to leave a website if they can’t load it up within five seconds or less.

And that is completely Obama’s fault. What an idiot. Maybe if he spent a little bit less money droning Muslims and a little bit more money on his top legislative priority…

Isn’t surprising that they can’t hit the right people with drones. Maybe the Republicans are right when they say government can’t do anything right.

Guest Post: Sinnead O’Connor is Lying

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Susan Stark

Susan here. Sinnead O’Connor recently gave Miley Cyrus some “heartfelt” advice in the Guardian. But Sinnead is lying in two ways here:

1) She says that Cyrus has talent. If Sinnead really cared about her, she would tell Cyrus that she has no fucking talent whatsoever, and that she needs to get out of the entertainment business and do something else with her life.

2) Sinnead says Cyrus’ body belongs to “her and her boyfriend only”. Not true. Cyrus’ body belongs to her alone, to have sex with whomever she pleases. If she wants to “pimp herself”, that’s her choice. Sinnead needs to be more conscious of sex-workers’ rights, along with polyamorous people’s rights.

Sinnead O’Connor is still a kick-ass musician, but unfortunately, she’s no longer the radical truth-teller she once was.

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/oct/03/sinead-o-connor-open-letter-miley-cyrus

SYNDICATED COLUMN: Ted Rall Signs Up For Obamacare, Part I

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Ted Rall

Here’s How It Went

My pre-October 1st cartoon about the then-impending launch of the Affordable Care Act (henceforth to be referred by the initially insulting, then appropriated, now drolly cute Obamacare) anticipated that the websites for the 50 states’ “healthcare marketplaces” would immediately crash.

Even after all these years and all this crap, there are still Obama defenders and they jumped down my virtual throat. Faithless! They cried. They were right. I am faithless. And I was right about the crashes. Though the pro-Obama media made excuses for the Administration’s lack of preparedness: “But it remained unclear whether the array of problems — many people received messages saying the system was down, and others were unable to create accounts to buy insurance — stemmed more from heavy traffic or from flaws in design,” reported The New York Times. I’ll pick “(b) flaws in design.” Cuz, like, it shouldn’t have surprised anyone that millions of people would check out those sites yesterday.

Which is why I waited until today.

Here’s how it went.

Step one: Find the site. Not a problem for an English-speaking, web-savvy, former computer programmer who went to an Ivy League engineering school (though they did kick me out). To the Google! Honestly, though, I shouldn’t have had to do this. Everyone should have received a mailing containing the basics, including the URL. I get a postcard every year telling me where to vote. Why didn’t the government do the same thing for Obamacare?

Here’s what came up:

The website came right up. So far, so good. Yes we can! O-ba-ma! O-ba-ma! But then…an Error Message. Actually more of a You Might Get an Error Error Message. Which is even more confusing than an Error Message. It’s a like a store that puts a sign on its window reading “Maybe Closed, Maybe Open.”

Come back later? That’s not the American way! Did Chris Columbus come back later? (Basically, yes, but shut up. Telling people who know facts to shut up is the American way!) Did the Conquistadors come back later? (They were Spanish. SHUT UP!)

I need healthcare today, not tomorrow. Well, I do need it tomorrow, but you know what I mean. I hope, because clearly I don’t.

Anyway: onward!

What is an “insurance assistor”? Does it involve anal probes? I’m not asking and I’m not telling. “Get started” — that’s me!

Now I am not so happy. Registering for anything online sucks. Can’t I just log in with Facebook or Twitter or Klout like I do for everything else? Apparently not.

Let’s create an account:

Good news! The User ID I wanted is available. I’m ready to go on a mad shopping spree for some awesome Obamacare!

Or not so much.

I have to wait for the confirmation email to arrive.

Waiting…waiting…waiting…there it is.

I can click. I will click. There — I clicked.

A new browser window opens.

Untitled-26

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OK, President Obama, you’ve got me back. Drones forgotten! Bankster bailouts a thing of the past. Who could resist the charm of a government program whose Secret Question Options include “first concert ever attended” (Sid Vicious solo) and “favorite comic book / cartoon character as a child” (Peanuts / Popeye)?  The “band poster” (Blondie, or was it The Clash) question is — dare we say it? — hip!

Let’s not dwell on the “last 5 digits of your favorite rewards card.”

 

I picked a password.

Untitled-12

 

 

 

 

There’s a lot of clicking “continue” to do. But I’m American. Like Coronado!

Untitled-13

 

 

 

 

Back to the first screen:

 

 

Obamacare is a metaphor for the Sisyphean metaphor for life: back to the beginning, under the virtual rock of the Sort of Error Message.

“Click Here to Login”? Sure. But then:

Untitled-14

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ooo, minimalism. I’ll reload.

Did you know, an artist once defined minimalism as an empty room containing one cat. I think he did. Or she.

Reload.

I tried to factcheck the cat line online, but I couldn’t find it. Maybe I dreamed it up. I slept a lot during art class. Reload. 9 am class with the lights off to show boring slides, what did they expect? Reload.

Untitled-15

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Whoa, there it is!

I don’t need no stinkin’ “invitation code.” I’m me. I invite myself in, yo!

Hm. Rules of Behavior.

Untitled-16

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Whatever. Not reading them any more than I’m reading the 57-page Terms and Conditions for updating to crappy new iOS7 on my phone.

Next up: a form where I’m asked to enter my full legal name (if you have a suffix bigger than “V” you’re out of luck), Social Security Number, gender, date of birth, address, phone number, email address, language preferences — can’t they get this stuff from the NSA? — and my consent to a General Privacy Attestation (the DMV? really?).

Untitled-17

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But if I were blind, I couldn’t read the notice…

Next: some freaky Facebook-style (after you get locked out) identity verification questions that prove they already know all about you.

Reload…reload…reload…

Reload

It’s taking forever. Fifteen minutes so far. I’m afraid to hit reload. What if I lose all the work I put in so far?

The website moves glacially. Reminds me of that time I tried to buy train tickets in India online. I only got through at night New York NYC time because, it turns out, there’s actually someone processing the tickets manually on the other end, and they only work during the day.

So.

It’s been two hours. Deadline time is upon me.

That was interesting. All I need to get me some Obamacare is to:

  • Finish confirming my identity with creepy Facebook-like questions
  • Enter info about my family
  • Do something called a “Public MEC”
  • Enter my income details
  • Summarize my income, which apparently means something other than income details
  • Other stuff, whatever that is
  • Shop for a plan

As the Aetna insurance company says: “Exchanges are new and easy to use.”

If I’m ever able to access one, I’ll surely be able to confirm that.

(Ted Rall’s website is tedrall.com. Go there to join the Ted Rall Subscription Service and receive all of Ted’s cartoons and columns by email.)

COPYRIGHT 2013 TED RALL

P.O. Box 2760, New York, NY 10163; (917) 864-6545 / TED RALL ONLINE: rall.com

RALL     10/2/13

 

Book News

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Ted Rall

So there’s quite a bit going on on the book front.

Coming out on March 25, 2014 is “After We Kill You, We Will Welcome You Back as Honored Guests: Unembedded in Afghanistan.”  The book will include prose chapters, comics, graphic journalism, and photographs from my 2001 and 2010 trips to Afghanistan. The theme of the book is comparing and contrasting Afghanistan at the beginning of the US occupation with the end: what got better, what got worse, and what didn’t change at all. It’s a look at America’s longest war and the folly of rampant interventionism abroad. People who supported my trip to Afghanistan in 2010 will receive copies in advance. As always, I will offer signed copies here through the website, and you can order them directly through me. If you prefer, you can also order the book online as a pre-order. That also helps me. So it’s really up to you.

If you enjoyed my graphic novel “The Year of Loving Dangerously,”  you will soon have a chance to help support another collaboration between me and Spanish cartoonist Pablo G. Callejo.  Pablo and I have a new project: a fictional graphic novel that comments on the state of journalism and war correspondency in particular, and the desperate ends that some journalists will go to – well, at least one – to save himself and maybe go a little further than that. It’s kind of like Breaking Bad meets To Afghanistan and Back. It’s a very cool project, and one that I look forward to finishing, but unfortunately there’s no way to get this thing off the ground without asking your support through Kickstarter. There will be some pretty cool incentives, so hopefully when the time comes, you’ll be interested. Watch this space. Probably looking to do this within the next month or so.

I have a number of possibilities for what comes after that.  And I’m very much interested in your opinion. Which of the following appeals most to you?

  • A book-length editorial cartoon about drones?
  • A book targeted to the young adult market about young people, modeled on Occupy Wall Street but more militant, who succeed in overthrowing the government of the United States?
  •  A sequel to The Year of Loving Dangerously?

I am discussing the possibility of collaboration with two extremely funny writers about wildly divergent projects.

ANEWDOMAIN.NET COLUMN: NSA PRISM Social Network: Why I’d Quit Facebook

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Ted Rall

Here is my latest column, not syndicated but exclusively for ANewDomain.net.  Since she will ask, and since I appreciate the fact that you care about such things, yes, they pay and they pay a decent rate. But that won’t keep happening unless they get a lot of click throughs from people like you. So please check out the piece and if you like it please forward it. And if you don’t like it please forward it anyway.

The topic is the latest revelation by Edward Snowden: the NSA has developed the world’s most sophisticated social network to track your movements. Congratulations! You’re already a member and you’ll never even know it.  Which is too bad, since the more big data you have access to the easier it is to create a great social network. The least the NSA could do is let us be active participants.

A Cartoonist Called It

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Ted Rall

Two days ago I published a cartoon, Get Ready for ObamaCare, that predicted that the websites for the new Healthcare Marketplaces would crash.

Here’s what happened.

Countless Obamabots slammed me over that cartoon, saying I was wrong. Shall I hold my breath waiting for those strident suck-ups to admit they were wrong?

Guest Post: The Everlasting “Iranian Fatboy” Cartoon

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Susan Stark

Susan here. There is a cartoon that I’ve seen played over and over again, for more than ten years now, and I’m sick of seeing it. And that’s a picture of Iranians working on a “Fatboy bomb”. And it always only one bomb, which they never seem to finish, even after ten years of working on it.

C’mon, cartoonists. This is getting old. If it takes Iranians ten years to make one Fatboy, and they’re still not finished with it, then they are not a credible threat to anybody.

http://www.cagle.com/2013/09/obama-and-iran/

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