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SYNDICATED COLUMN: How To Talk To An Obama Voter (If You Must)

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Ted Rall
In 2012 Politics Is In The Streets—Not the Voting Booth The Occupy movement is lying low. The Tea Party has been completely absorbed into the Republican Party—just another interest group. The only politics anyone talks about is the presidential horserace. Don’t be fooled. This is temporary. Spring will come. Robins will sing. The Occupations will return, bigger, energized and more militant. Don’t be surprised if movements more militant, further to the Left than Occupy, begin to emerge. What passes for politics—Democrats, Republicans, vacuous debates over mini-issues (flag burning, taxes, deficits, gays) as the big issues go ignored (jobs, income inequality, militarism)—will be finally, totally and irreversibly exposed as the irrelevant, distracting farce they are. Politics is about to move into the streets. Where they belong. Where they live in countries whose citizens are engaged in the fight over their destinies. There will be primaries and party conventions and debates. All part of a ridiculous sideshow. Get ready. 2012 is set…
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SYNDICATED COLUMN: Who Polices Political Cartooning?

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Ted Rall
An Art Form in Crisis Ignores the Rot Within “Ted Rall, mop-headed antiestablishment political cartoonist, has abundant talent, a 1,400-drawing portfolio, seven years’ experience, the acclaim of peers and the approval of newspaper editors who, every so often, print his work. What he lacks is someone who will hire him full-time.” That’s from The New York Times. In 1995. Editorial cartooning, a unique art form whose modern version originated in 18th century France and has become more pointed, sophisticated and effective in the United States than any other country, was in big trouble back then. Newspapers, the main employers of political cartoonists, were closing and slashing budgets. Those that survived were timid; cowardly editors rarely hire, much less retain, the controversial artists who produce the best cartoons, those that stimulate discussion. Things are worse now. Much worse. Hard numbers are difficult to come by but the number of full-time professional political cartoonists now hovers around 30. In 1980 there were…
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SYNDICATED COLUMN: Obama’s “Mission Accomplished”

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Ted Rall
Wars and Prisons Move, Wars and Torture Never Ends Most Americans—68 percent—oppose the war against Iraq, according to a November 2011 CNN poll. So it’s smart politics for President Obama to take credit for withdrawing U.S. troops. As it often is, the Associated Press’ coverage was slyly subversive: “This, in essence, is Obama’s mission accomplished: Getting out of Iraq as promised under solid enough circumstances and making sure to remind voters that he did what he said.” Obama’s 2008 campaign began by speaking out against the war in Iraq. (Aggression in Afghanistan, on the other hand, was not only desirable but ought to be expanded.) However, actions never matched his words. On vote after vote in the U.S. Senate Obama supported the war. Every time. As president, Obama has claimed credit for a December 2011 withdrawal deadline negotiated by his predecessor George W. Bush—a timeline he wanted to protract. If the Iraqi government hadn’t refused to extend immunity from prosecution…
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SYNDICATED COLUMN: Democrats Occupy Occupy

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Ted Rall
MoveOn Co-opts OWS Rhetoric, Dilutes Its Message If Democrats were doing their jobs, there wouldn’t be an Occupy movement. The last 40 years has left liberals and progressives without a party and working people without an advocate. The party of FDR, JFK and LBJ abandoned its principles, embracing and voting along with Reagan and two Bushes. Clinton’s biggest accomplishments, NAFTA and welfare reform, were GOP platform planks. These New Democrats were indistinguishable from Republicans, waging optional wars, exporting jobs overseas and coddling corrupt CEOs while the rest of us—disconnected from power, our needs repeatedly ignored—sat and watched in silent rage. Barack Obama is merely the latest of these phony Democrats. He’s the most recent in a line of corporate stooges going back to Jimmy Carter. The Occupiers revolted under Obama’s watch for two reasons. The gap between the promise of his soaring rhetoric and the basic indecency of his cold-blooded disregard for the poor and unemployed was too awful to…
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SYNDICATED COLUMN: 7-7-7

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Ted Rall
Jobless? Face It: Obama’s Not That Into You Forget Herman Cain’s 9-9-9. The battle cry for every American ought to be 7-7-7. 7-7-7: for the $7.7 trillion the Bush and Obama Administrations secretly funneled to the banksters. Remember the $700 billion bailout that prompted rage from right to left? Which inspired millions to join the Tea Party and the Occupy movements? Turns out that that was a mere drop in the bucket, less than a tenth of what the Federal Reserve Bank doled out to the big banks. Bloomberg Markets Magazine reports a shocking story that emerged from tens of thousands of documents released under the Freedom of Information Act: by March 2009, the Fed shelled out $7.77 trillion “to rescuing the financial system, more than half the value of everything produced in the U.S. that year.” The U.S. national debt is currently a record $14 trillion. We knew that the Fed and the White House were pawns of Wall…
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SYNDICATED COLUMN: Revolution Versus Reform

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Ted Rall
The Rift Within Occupy Editors and readers expect pundits to weigh in on the brutal eviction of Occupy Wall Street from New York’s Zuccotti Park. People will ask: Does this mean the beginning of the end for the Occupy movement? No. Now that we’ve dispensed with that, let’s discuss a major rift within the movement: Reformists versus revolutionaries. Revolutionaries want to overthrow the government. They want to get rid of existing economic, political and social relations and create new ones. Both the Republicans and the Democrats are enemies. Reformists want radical changes too. For example, Occupiers want to eliminate the corrupting influence of corporate money on politics. Unlike revolutionaries, however, they are OK with the basic structure of the system: the Constitution, Congress, 50 states, capitalism, and so on. They are willing to work with establishment liberals (MoveOn.org, Amy Goodman, The Nation, Mother Jones, etc.) and the Democratic Party. You can see the reform-vs.-revolution split whenever Occupiers discuss actions and…
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SYNDICATED COLUMN: Our F— You System of Government

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Ted Rall
Anti-Occupy Crackdowns Highlight Lack of Services Governments are supposed to fulfill the basic needs of their citizens. Ours doesn’t pretend to try. Sick? Too bad. Can’t find a job? Tough. Broke? Can’t afford rent? We don’t give a crap. Forget “e pluribus unum.” We need a more accurate motto. We live under a f— you system. Got a problem? The U.S. government has an all-purpose response to whatever ails you: f— you. During the ’80s I drove a yellow taxi in New York. Then, as now, there were no public restrooms in the city. At 4 in the morning, with few restaurants or bars open, the coffee I drank to stay awake posed a significant challenge. It was—it is—insane. People pee. People poop. As basic needs go, toilets are as basic as it gets. Yet the City of New York, with the biggest tax base of any municipality in the United States, didn’t provide any. So I did what all…
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SYNDICATED COLUMN: You Want a Job, Right?

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Ted Rall
Herman Cain and the Criminalization of Poverty Pizza baron Herman Cain leads in the polls. Yet nobody believes he can win the Republican nomination. The fact that the #1 candidate doesn’t stand a chance is an improbable truism emblematic of our broken-down political system. Partly it’s that he’s black. Republicans are racists. Partly it’s that the nomination was promised to Mitt Romney. He’s been waiting. It’s Willard’s turn. It’s not the accusations of sexual harassment. Republicans are sexists. For the GOP touching the hired help (or wannabe hired help) is the droit du CEO. The reason Cain isn’t allowed to be president is money. Romney is spectacularly wealthy. Cain is merely rich. As of October Romney had used his white-male Wall Street connections to raise $14 million. Cain had a paltry $700,000. After reports surfaced that Cain had groped Susan Bialek, a woman who asked him for help landing a job, Cain received $250,000 in contributions in a single day.…
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SYNDICATED COLUMN: The Occupier’s Choice: Violence or Failure

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Ted Rall
Don’t Know What They Want, But They Know How To Get It Here’s how U.S. state-controlled media covered events at Occupy Oakland: “A day of demonstrations in Oakland that began as a significant step toward expanding the political and economic influence of the Occupy Wall Street movement, ended with police in riot gear arresting dozens of protesters who had marched through downtown to break into a vacant building, shattering windows, spraying graffiti and setting fires along the way,” reported the AP. Then they quoted an Occupy Oakland member: “‘We go from having a peaceful movement to now just chaos,’ said protester Monique Agnew, 40.” The lede of this November 3rd AP story frames a larger narrative. “Political and economic influence” cannot be achieved through violence. Ms. Agnew’s quote is used to support that framing. The move from “peace” to “chaos” represents a setback for the Occupy movement. Violence = tragedy. Considering that recorded history does not include a single instance…
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AL JAZEERA COLUMN: U.S. Double Standard: Gaddafi Bad, Karimov Good

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Ted Rall
The US shows its hypocrisy by accusing “tyrants” of human rights abuses while not owning up to supporting dictators. “After four decades of brutal dictatorship and eight months of deadly conflict, the Libyan people can now celebrate their freedom and the beginning of a new era of promise,” President Obama said last week. The capture and death of Moammar Gaddafi prompted him and other U.S. officials to congratulate the Libyan people on their liberation from a despot accused of terrible violations of human rights, including the 1996 massacre of more than 1200 prison inmates. The kudos were as much for the U.S. itself as Libya’s victorious Transitional National Council. After all, the United States played a decisive role in Gaddafi’s death. First President Obama put together the NATO coalition that served as the Benghazi-based rebels’ loaner air force. When the bombing campaign was announced in February, Gaddafi’s suppression of the human rights of protesting rebels was front and center: “The…
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