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SYNDICATED COLUMN: Obama’s Weasel Words

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Ted Rall
On Iraq, Antiwar Candidate Delivers More Carnage Obama won the Democratic nomination and the presidency by speaking out against the Iraq War. Now that he’s packing for Washington, however, the old Chicago lawyer is using Harvard Law weasel words to make sure the war goes on for years.Germans are organized. The French are snotty. Americans have a national character trait, too: inattention. It’s now obvious that Obama exploited our hard-wired inability to read between the lines to lay the groundwork for what many of his supporters will soon view as a terrible betrayal. Right there, in a July 14th op/ed, is Obama’s triumph of plausible deniability: “The differences on Iraq in this campaign are deep,” he wrote in The New York Times. “Unlike Senator John McCain, I opposed the war in Iraq before it began, and would end it as president.” Seems clear. End means end. Finito. No more. But there’s an interesting phrase in Obama’s promises to pull out,…
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SYNDICATED COLUMN: LBO No Mo

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Ted Rall
Stop Speculators From Ruining Strong Companies The Crash of ’08 offers the incoming Obama Administration a rare chance to rein in the excesses of our economic system. I can think of few better places to start than banning leveraged buyouts. Leveraged buyouts (LBOs) are Wall Street’s solution to American capitalism’s dirtiest secret and biggest problem: no one has any money. Really. Working as an investment banker during the 1980s, I was repeatedly astonished when deals would fall apart because would-be buyers of major corporations didn’t have enough cash on hand to buy a house in the Hamptons. Many of the wealthiest people in the world, it turned out, have zero or negative net worth. According to The New York Times, for example, one of Donald Trump’s biggest sources of income was his job hosting the TV show “The Apprentice.” Those buildings with his name on them? He leased his name to developers who liked his brand. It’s true: the rich…
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SYNDICATED COLUMN: Smells Like Bob Dylan

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Ted Rall
Why Obama is Just Another Boomer Barack Obama, people are saying, is the first Generation X president. Are they right? And if so–does it many any difference? “The battle for the Democratic nomination in the U.S. presidential election,” reported Agence France Presse wire service nearly a year ago in January, “is as much about ‘Generation X’ wresting power from Baby Boomers as it is a battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton…Most significantly, analysts say, it is the first time someone from the so-called Generation X has run for the White House.” A Gen X president is, or would be, a big deal. Xers’ major concerns–student loan debt, underemployment, age discrimination against the young, the environment–have never gotten much attention in the media or in mainstream politics. But is Obama Gen X? Membership requirements for Gen X have long been fungible. Demographic purists say Generation X began with those born after 1964, when a sharply dropping birth rate marked the…
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SYNDICATED COLUMN: The Rest and the Rightest

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Ted Rall
Obama’s Center-Right Cabinet Foreshadows Center-Right Presidency A bunch of Clinton- and Carter-era hacks. George W. Bush’s leftover defense secretary. Of the dozens of Obama’s top appointments announced to date, there’s only one liberal: David Bonior, who ran John Edwards’ primary campaign, as secretary of labor. Maybe. Remember the Democratic primaries? Among the top three presidential contenders, Edwards was the liberal. Hillary Clinton, she of repeated votes for war against Afghanistan and Iraq (and Iran!), was to Edwards’ right. Obama, who also voted for war but didn’t commit to Clinton’s bigger healthcare plan, was even more conservative than she. “Mr. Obama,” David Sanger writes in The New York Times, “is planning to govern from the center-right of his party.” If nothing else, I had guessed, the U. of Chicago egghead would appoint a team of the Best and Brightest. We’re getting the Rest and the Rightest. Asked by a reporter how his center-right coalition of Republicans, pro-war Democrats and other assorted…
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SYNDICATED COLUMN: What’s with the Somali Pirates?

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Ted Rall
Strange Inaction in the Indian Ocean I’m the loudmouth pundit. I’m supposed to have the answers, or at least pretend to. This week, however, I’m baffled. Confused, even. So I’m turning the tables to ask you, dear reader: Why aren’t we bombing the crap out of Somalia’s pirates? I don’t get it. You can’t build a house in Waziristan or throw a wedding in Afghanistan without drawing a blizzard of Hellfire missiles. We bomb aspirin factories, hospitals and schools. We employ bad-ass Special Forces types and psycho mercenaries who set up freelance torture operations and supervise mass executions. We Americans have our faults, but wimpy pacifism isn’t one of them. So what’s with these pirates? In June 2007, a French warship witnessed the Danica White, a Danish merchant vessel carrying a crew of just five men, being hijacked by pirates off the coast of Somalia. The French, reported the Navy Times, “could not cross into Somali territorial waters to offer…
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SYNDICATED COLUMN: Republicans, Not Conservatives, Are In Trouble

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Ted Rall
A Philosophy Without a Party * Conservatives betrayed by GOP* Traditional conservatism still popular* Rigid laissez faire dogma rejected by voters Conservatives think the election results prove that conservatism is in trouble. Actually, conservatism is fine. It’s the Republican Party that’s in trouble. To be sure, the GOP got killed in Congress. But the presidential results aren’t nearly as alarming. The difference between Bush’s “big win” in 2004 (51 percent of the popular vote) and McCain’s “stunning defeat” in 2008 (46 percent) was that 2.5 percent of the electorate changed their minds. Besides, it remains to be seen, says Montclair State University political science and law professor Brigid Harrison, whether the “high level of young voters, African-Americans, highly educated white voters and a disproportionate amount of women forming a new kind of coalition” will come together in future elections to support Democratic candidates more typical than Obama. For the sake of argument, however, let’s posit that Obama represents a dramatic…
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SYNDICATED COLUMN: Will Obama Wuss Out on Gitmo?

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Ted Rall
Prez-Elect May Ratify Bush’s Torture Trials The accused terrorist appeared before the military tribunal, charged with conspiracy in a plot against national security. Because state secrets were involved and because harsh interrogation techniques were used to extract information, the defendant was deprived of a look at the evidence. Also denied were the defendant’s traditional right to a lawyer, to face accusers, even to see the judges–they wore hoods. No, this wasn’t at Gitmo. This “court” met in the military dictatorship of Peru. And the defendant wasn’t an Afghan or Arab turned over to U.S. troops by a warlord out for the $10,000 bounty. She was Lori Berenson, a 31-year-old American citizen accused of aiding the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, members of whom she befriended. The Washington Post and New York Times condemned Berenson’s 1996 trial, calling the tribunal and the brutal circumstances of her detention a mockery of justice. In the U.S., most American liberals agreed. Now President-Elect Barack Obama–a…
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SYNDICATED COLUMN: No We Didn’t

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Ted Rall
Obama Win More Hysterical Than Historical There is less here than meets the eye. Yes, the election results are notable. But they don’t mean as much as people think. First, the important stuff: The first black president has been elected. And not just elected by a majority of voters, many of whom were black and/or first-time voters, but by nearly half of white voters. Twenty-eight years after the Reagan Revolution, the electorate has repudiated Republican inaction—on Iraq, in New Orleans, most of all on the economy—to an extent not seen since Watergate. Americans delivered a proxy impeachment of George W. Bush, holding McCain less to account for his policies than his association with a (cough) leader they blamed for their troubles. It isn’t quite fair. George W. Bush, lest we forget, had a 90 percent approval rating during the fall of 2001. Now that Bush’s support is down to a Carrot Top-like 22 percent, it’s only fair to remember that…
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SYNDICATED COLUMN: Don’t Think About Reelection

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Ted Rall
Why Obama Should Consider Himself a One-Term President Barring some unforeseen cataclysmic event, Barack Obama will be elected president Tuesday. Please allow me to be the first to congratulate you, President-Elect Obama, on an historic victory following an extraordinarily disciplined campaign. Are you sure you’re really a Democrat? Enough BSing. As a student of history and the American presidency and a guy who plans to vote for you despite serious doubts, here’s the best advice I can give you: Starting on Inauguration Day, consider yourself a one-term president. This isn’t exactly an original idea. When John McCain launched his own run for the Republican nomination, he originally planned to center his entire campaign around a promise not to seek a second term. “Less than a day before he was set to speak in New Hampshire on April 25,” The Atlantic magazine reported, “McCain ordered his aides to excise…the pledge.” But McCain was on to something. Voters want a president who…
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SYNDICATED COLUMN: President Obama—Shut Down This Camp!

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Ted Rall
Next President Should Shut Gitmo on January 20 * Camp has become its own raison d’être* Hundreds locked in legal limbo* Jerking around detainees and their families* Gesture would resonate around the globe François Mitterand brought civilization to France. One of his first acts as president was to end the death penalty. A guy named Philippe Maurice had his date with the guillotine cancelled. Amazing but true: the country that gave the world “The Rights of Man” was still lopping off heads in 1981. Fortunately, things change. Other countries followed France’s lead. Today, just a quarter century later, fewer than a quarter of the world’s nations still carry out capital punishment. Nations that do can’t get into the European Union. Our next president–probably Barack Obama–has a similar opportunity to create a transformative moment toward a fully civilized United States. I’m not talking about abolishing executions, though that is long overdue. President Obama (or McCain) should close Guantánamo. Not after appointing…
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