TMI Show Ep 74: War Against Greenland

Live at 10 am Eastern/9 am Central time, and Streaming 24-7 Thereafter:

Professor Kristian Nielsen of Aarhus University in Denmark joins “The TMI Show” to discuss the possibility of a US invasion of Greenland. Setting up a confrontation with NATO, Donald Trump says the Danish territory—where the US has a Space Force base already—is essential to American national security. It also has rare earth minerals and an opening to new Northwest Passage that has been created by climate change and the melting of the Polar Ice Cap.

What are the possibilities of an American war against Greenland? What’s the status of the American nuclear facility there? Why has the polar north become strategically important? Ted Rall and Manila Chan give you Too Much Information about the great white north.

TMI Show Ep 73: What’s Next for DOGE?

Live at 10 am Eastern/9 am Central time, and Streaming 24-7 Thereafter:

Chief Trump consultant Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have hit the ground running, shocking Washington’s Inside-the-Beltway bureaucratic infrastructure by following the Silicon Valley approach of “move fast and break things.”

Musk is moving to shut down US-AID. He offered bullying buyout offers to 2.3 million federal employees. He and his team of very-young assistants has been granted access to confidential government data, including those of the Treasury Department payment systems, NOAA, Medicare and Medicaid, and more.

Musk says DOGE is thoughtful and deliberate. But the speed with which he is moving worries critics who think he’s endangering essential government services and might have nefarious designs on Americans’ personal data. What’s next for DOGE?

On today’s “The TMI Show,” Manila Chan and Ted Rall speak with financial expert and political analyst Mitch Roschelle.

TMI Show Ep 72: Trump Endorses Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza + Did Trump Choke on Tariffs?

Live at 10 am Eastern/9 am Central time, and Streaming 24-7 Thereafter:

A shocking (but not surprising) turn of events prompts a special edition of the show today.

First: As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu smiled next to him like the cat who ate the canary, President Trump brazenly endorsed the forcible expulsion of at least 1.7 million Palestinians from Gaza so that the bombed and bulldozed site of Israeli genocide can be occupied either by U.S. real estate interests or by Israel. Manila Chan and Ted Rall break down the implications for the Middle East.

Second: Trump said that Canada and Mexico couldn’t do anything to stop his 25% tariffs on goods. “We’re not looking for a concession,” he said. Three days later, Trump paused the tariffs on both countries for 30 days, citing concessions they had made.

Trump’s tariffs threatened to increase inflation and spooked the stock market. Did Trump’s pullback have more to do with that looming economic pain than with the concessions? What happens in a month?

On today’s “The TMI Show,” Manila Chan and Ted Rall discuss the future of tariffs under Trump with wealth management and finance expert Aquiles Larrea.

TMI Show Ep 71: Democrats: Is There a Road Back?

Airing LIVE at 10 am Eastern time this morning, then Streaming 24-7 thereafter:

Dispirited and depressed, the Democratic Party doesn’t have a target audience, a message to send it, or a strategy to opposing Trumpism. Highlighting their dismal situation, new ideas were notably missing at a recent election for new DNC chair, where party insiders insisted that Biden and Harris ran great campaigns that failed to get their great message across to the voters and that nothing should fundamentally change. Meanwhile, Trump’s MAGA Republicans are manic and energized, running roughshod over institutional and constitutional norms, and capturing our national attention.

Can a major political party survive without a core constituency or firm ideological underpinning? Is waiting for Trump to overreach, provoke a backlash or die a feasible strategy? Will Democrats go the way of the Whigs?

On today’s “The TMI Show,” Manila Chan and Ted Rall discuss the future of the Democratic Party. Does it have one? If so, what does it look like? Joining is guest Scott Stantis, editorial cartoonist for The Chicago Tribune.

TMI Show Ep 70: Tariff Terror!

Live at 10 am Eastern/9 am Central time, and Streaming 24-7 Thereafter:

Trump made good on his threat to slap tariffs on China, Mexico and Canada over the weekend. All imports from China now face a 10% duty. It’s 25% on imports from Mexico and Canada. Canadian oil, natural gas and electricity, will be taxed 10%. Trump’s order includes a mechanism to escalate the rates charged by the U.S. against retaliation by the other countries, raising the specter of an even more severe economic disruption. Trump demanded that the three nations to stop the manufacture and export of fentanyl and that Canada and Mexico reduce illegal immigration into the U.S.

The tariffs could cause inflation to worsen. They are likely to cause turmoil in supply chains and have an impact on financial markets, though not immediately.

On today’s “The TMI Show,” Manila Chan and Ted Rall discuss Trump’s tariffs and their impacts on your life.

DMZ America Podcast Ep 191: Political Potpourri

LIVE at 12 noon Eastern today, Streaming 24-7 thereafter:

It’s Trump’s second week as president and he’s a busy boy. He’s expanding Guantánamo Concentration Camp to accommodate as many as 36,000 migrants in perpetuity, working on ways to get a third term, firing the inspectors general and running roughshod over the hapless Democrats who still seem to think they shouldn’t change a thing.

Editorial cartoonists Ted Rall (on the Left) and Scott Stantis (on the Right) could talk about all that and more. And maybe they will. But this is a Political Potpourri episode in which they’re going to roll open mic style: whatever comes to mind is what will come up.

 


TMI Show Ep 69: Video Games Are Good For You

Live at 10 am Eastern/9 am Central time, and Streaming 24-7 Thereafter:

Video games have long been considered a waste of time and even a pernicious influence by many educators and political leaders in the establishment. In 2019, Gaming Disorder was even listed in the 11th Revision of the International Classification of Diseases. Gaming Disorder is “characterized by impaired control over gaming, increasing priority given to gaming over other activities to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other interests and daily activities.”

Not everyone was buying it. During the pandemic, new studies found that owning a game console and increased gameplay reduced psychological distress and improved life satisfaction among participants. The study found that spending just one extra hour each day playing video games was associated with an increase in mental health and life satisfaction.

On today’s “The TMI Show,” Manila Chan and Ted Rall ask gaming developer V.K. Samhith whether gaming ought to become part of psychological self-care.

 

TMI Show Ep 68: Trump To Send Migrants to Notorious Torture Camp

Airing LIVE at 10 am Eastern time this morning, then Streaming 24-7 thereafter:

Guantánamo Bay concentration camp, the American human-rights disaster made infamous by the Bush Administration when it sent Muslim detainees to be tortured there out of reach from the law, is about to radically expand. Donald Trump has ordered the camp to prepare for the arrival of 30,000 migrants, many of whom have never been charged with a crime.

On “The TMI Show,” co-hosts Manila Chan and Ted Rall discuss the morality, practicality and political implications of Trump’s latest move in his war against illegal immigrants.

TMI Show Ep 67: You’re (Self-) Fired! Trump Threatens Federal Workers

Live at 10 am Eastern time/8 am Mountain and Streaming all the time after that:

Bearing the same subject line as a downsizing memo sent to Twitter employees by Elon Musk, an ominous mass email was fired out by the Trump Administration to millions of federal employees offering them a buyout if they voluntarily agree to resign within a week. There is a fist inside the velvet glove: most federal agencies will probably be slashed and a substantial number of employees will be furloughed or reclassified to “at-will status,” making them easier to fire. Most remote workers will have to go back to the office. And many will have their offices moved elsewhere.

On “The TMI Show,” co-host Manila Chan is out sick. Filling in for Manila is Robby West, alongside co-host Ted Rall. Robby and Ted will discuss whether Trump has the power to pay buyouts, the possibility of court battles, the pros and cons of remote work and whether this disrespectful treatment of government workers is fair.

Democrats Want a Divorce

          When a marriage is in crisis, a point often occurs when constant bickering, arguing and fighting yields to detachment and hopelessness. The yelling stops. It’s quiet.

But it’s not peace. Exhausted, dispirited and contemptuous, one or both partners give up trying to convince the other that they’re wrong or ought to change. They accept that improvement is highly unlikely and check out emotionally.

Some psychologists call this uneasy calm a “silent divorce.” Dr. Ridha Rouabhia describes a silent divorce as “a state of being legally married but emotionally disconnected from one another, thus carrying within it a relational breakdown that is very often imperceptible but deeply damaging.” By the time you and your spouse are fighting your own personal cold war, odds of divorce are high.

Couples who fall in love and dedicate themselves to long-term committed relationships tend to fit into one of two categories. There are the soulmates who share important values and personality traits. Then there are the complementary types, a.k.a. “opposites attract,” where—hopefully—one partner’s strengths make up for the other’s weaknesses and vice versa.

Complementary couples can have successful marriages. But these relationships work only if each partner appreciates their partner’s contributions and is cognizant as well as grateful that their own failings are generously overlooked. As time builds familiarity and familiarity breeds contempt over the course of a lifetime, that can be challenging.

Years ago, I was close to a classic complementary couple. The wife, whom I met in college, was married to a man ten years older than her. A tight-cropped salt-and-brunet WASP from the Midwest, he was politically and temperamentally conservative, preppy and stuffy. A fluffy-blonde Buddhist-come-lately from the West Coast, she leaned left and was loud, bubbly and unfiltered. Everyone who met them instantly understood their mutual attraction. Wild, sexual and adventurous, my friend dragged her uptight husband out of his shell. She made his life fun and interesting. Organized and always planning for contingencies, he bailed her out and cleaned up her frequent messes. He made her feel safe. They were a cute couple.

Over the years, the mutual gratitude that drove my friends’ Lucy-and-Ricardo marriage ceded territory to sneering contempt. She got tired, and then angry, at always having to initiate sex. He grew weary of the drama from her never-ending series of crises. They fought. Then, they didn’t. They had fought to a stalemate.

Their “silent divorce” lasted a few years before giving way to the real thing.

Everyone thought it was a shame.

They needed one another.

The American political union between partisans of the two major parties is a complementary marriage. Though frequently fractious, for much of the 20th century there was a tacit understanding between Democrats and Republicans that each brought something to the union, to the country, that the other needed even if they weren’t good at verbalizing their appreciation.

Like my friend’s husband, Republicans were America’s stolid, responsible, national caretakers. Based in the countryside (and until recently in the boardroom), they were boring and hated the hippies and their rock ’n’ roll and never would have supported civil rights and other liberation movements had they not been forced upon them. But conservatives also provided and protected virtues like military strength, national pride and deficit hawkishness that, deep in their pot- and LSD-infused souls, many liberals knew were essential to the republic.

And my friend’s wild-and-loopy wife, Democrats were reckless tax-and-spenders who hung out on the coasts and in big cities and tried and failed at social engineering schemes like welfare and affirmative action. But some of those schemes, like Social Security and Medicaid, saved the country, and drove almost all the progress that improved people’s lives and thus staved off revolution. Though they didn’t like to admit it, Republicans knew in their stock-portfolios-for-hearts that liberalism saved them from their rapacious selves and forced them to admit when their wars didn’t work out.

The national marriage started to unravel under Reagan, enjoyed a rapprochement under Clinton and turned ugly under Obama. As with any failed romance, it’s hard to pinpoint a specific moment that marked the beginning of the end. I’d pick 2010, when Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said that “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” McConnell’s idea of trying to win back the White House wasn’t wild. His formulation, emboldened by the rise of the proto-MAGA Tea Party, was remarkably contemptuous of Democrats. As an opposition party, the GOP was expected to articulate its own set of policies while paying lip service to its willingness to work with the president on issues where the two parties had common ground, rather than center its messaging around pigheaded obstructionism.

            Republicans, having failed to prevent Obama’s reelection in 2012, doubled down in 2014 when McConnell pledged not only to block Democratic initiatives just because, but to threaten to shut down the federal government every time the other party tried to push through a bill.

            Now everything is going their way. White House, Congress, Supreme Court, big tech and a compliant news media—Trump and the Republicans control it all. There was scarcely an echo of the riotous protests in response to Trump’s first inaugural in 2017 in the streets of Washington for the second one last week. Democratic leaders and their allies are despondent, disorganized and silent. “Far from rising up in outrage, the opposition party’s lawmakers have taken a muted wait-and-see approach,” reports The New York Times. Liberals are actively tuning out of politics, canceling their subscriptions and turning off MSNBC, televised organ of the DNC.

            After sounding Defcon-4 at volume 11 every time Trump issued an obnoxious tweet during his first term, incessantly shrieking about the January 6th Capitol riot, unleashing ferocious partisan legal warfare against him and hysterically characterizing a Trumpian restoration as an existential threat to democracy that would bring about real and actual fascism, the post-electoral silence of the liberal lambs is deafening.

            You may feel good about all this, if you’re a Republican.

            Don’t. As the Tacitus quote currently circulating in response to Israel’s flattening of Gaza goes: “They make a desert and call it peace.” The sounds you’re not hearing—leftists marching and chanting down the block, liberals bleating in the comments section, Democratic politicians hollering about Trump’s unprecedented awfulness—are not acquiescence, much less acceptance. They are the disgust of silent divorce.

            Democratic voters (of whom I am not one, I am to their Left) have given up on the Republicans with whom they share a country. Democrats still live under the same roof as their Republican spouses—for the time being, there’s no way for them to move out—but their anger has devolved into a cold contempt from which there is rarely any way back. Those people—Republicans—can stay in their Electoral College-inflated flyover states and watch Fox and NASCAR and vote however they want, including against abortion, and we (the smart people) will keep to ourselves in our urban enclaves. They’re not worth yelling at.

            They’re not even worth talking to.

            This marriage is in trouble.

(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 and The TMI Show with political analyst Manila Chan. His latest book, brand-new right now, is the graphic novel 2024: Revisited.)

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