Granted, Obama isn’t doing anything to improve the economy. Rather than watch it slowly disintegrate, perhaps we should just get it all over with and let Romney burn the bastard down.
Burn It Down
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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Ted, did you finally give up and sell out? Come on now, we both know the difference between Romney and Obama is probably gay rights and abortion… oh wait, Obama clearly doesn’t like gays, and is only pandering to them to get votes, and Romney’s record is actually more supportive of Abortion than Obama’s… well uh, Obama did the whole Healthcare reform… that Romney enacted in his state first… errr On the economy Obama wants to raise taxes, and wait so does Romney, just depends if its the Ultra wealthy, or just the super wealthy will avoid the tax increase? Hmmm, Really democrats and republicans should both be happy, regardless of who they vote for the current policies will be continues, and no matter if you loved Bush or Obama the same policies will continue.
Ted, Ted, Ted-
Ive told you, when you post demonstrably false crap like this, you are hurting the causes you claim to care about and making your brand of liberalism look bad in the process. In fact, I’d say around half the reason there’s been no more stimulus is that the left keeps unloading their guns at the wrong targets- which allows the Republicans to continue to get away with damaging the economy scot free.
As for the ridiculousness of your proposal: Is your life that bad that going on a mass murder/suicide spree seems that viable an option? Because that’s what the Romney Presidency is the equivaent of- putting a bullet in the brain of everyone you care about, ending with yourself.
If you’re that miserable, you certainly have my blessing to remove yourself from the equation. Just leave the rest of us out of it.
@Whimsical: ‘demonstrably false’???
Ted is saying that Obama is pretty bad, but Romney would be a total disaster, that voting for Romney would be suicide.
If that’s ‘demonstrably false’ is it because a) voting for Romney would be great for the US, or because b) Obama is so great that anyone who says he’s less than absolutely perfect is just a Birther?
Or is it that that both a) and b) are clearly and obviously TRUE: that no one can possibly get nominated by the American people unless he is absolute the best person on earth to lead the greatest nation on earth in its unending pursuit of freedom, justice, and prosperity for the entire world?
@michael
Actually, it’s the claim that “Obama isn’t doing anything to improve the economy” that’s demonstrably false. You can claim that enough isn’t being done (though I would certainly argue that the Republicans own 100% of the blame for that and not even MENTIONING that fact only helps and encourages Republicans to obstruct and damage the economy more)- but “isn’t doing ANYTHING” is fact-free crap, and all spewers of fact-free crap do is make themselves look bad.
I whole-heartedly agree that a Romney presidency would be mass murder, capped off by suicide. The difference between Ted and I is that he seems to feel that that’s a viable option. I do not.
I don’t know what point you’re trying to make though, as you’ve quite clearly missed mine.
Whimsical makes a crucial error. The difference between Obama, who is letting the middle class fumble along like a half-dead insect, and Romney, who will cheerfully impoverish everyone who doesn’t make at least $5,000,000 a year, is irrelevant. It’s like the Facebook IPO. If it starts at $45 and drops $5 a day, it’ll hit the bottom in nine trading days. If it starts at $45 and drops $45 in a day, it still hits zero. The difference is trivial.
Whimsical’s theory, as far as I can parse it, is that, somehow, slow, incremental reductions of everything that makes the middle class the middle class will, somehow, eventually lead to a restoration of the middle class. We need to back Obama because, even though he’s almost as bad as Romney, he isn’t quite as bad as Romney.
Get it over with everyone. Because once it drops low enough, none of us will be safe, regardless of whether it’s from three more terms of Democrats who are too craven and egg-suck to do anything or one term of a Republican who’s too sociopathic to care.
And I still can’t get my bet covered about Romney. I still say it’ll be a triple-win for the Republicans: Senate, House, and Presidency. Obama, thank God, will be okay. And, thank you Jesus, his wife and daughters will never want for anything. And that’s really all that matters, isn’t it?
&^%*! those guys, Ted. I thought this was one of your best in a while and I don’t even agree with you that we actually *should* burn it it down. But it was concise, funny, and it’s to the point regardless if where you stand on the *should* part.
Also one of your nicer looking cartoons, simple and well composed.
@Alex
No, Whimsical’s theory is that as long as you’re alive, you fight. As long as you’re alive, there’s a chance you can turn it around (And I do think it could be turned around if the left would get a freakin clue).
Once you take the coward’s way out and put a bullet in your family, and then in yourself (and make no mistake- if you advocate for a Romney presidency, that is EXACTLY what you are advocating for) you have entered that dread veil from which there is no return. Ever.
I’ll tell you the same thing I told Ted: If your own life is that miserable, you have my blessing to take yourself out of the equation. Just leave the rest of us out of it.
As for your bet, what terms do you want? Cause I’ll tell you right now, no way in hell they pull off the triple- there aren’t that many suicidally stupid Americans. Most likely, they flip the Senate by a small margin-think 51-49, they lose the WH (You keep underestimating how goddamn awful Mitt is as a candidate) and they lose the House- or at worst, keep it by a margin of less than 5 seats.
@Whimsical,
Again, we seem to have a dispute on application rather than fundamentals.
“Whimsical’s theory is that as long as you’re alive, you fight. As long as you’re alive, there’s a chance you can turn it around (And I do think it could be turned around if the left would get a freakin clue).”
This is my theory too. However, as you state, it requires that the left get a clue, and the left isn’t/doesn’t/can’t. The only way I see that would trigger a clue-getting moment by the left would be for things to become very bad, very quickly. Romney and pals will jam up the gears in six months, tops.
I notice you — falsely, I think — associate “my” way with cowardice. (E.g.: “Once you take the coward’s way out and put a bullet in your family, and then in yourself …”) If you want to start lobbing these sorts of John Wayne terms around, which sounds more cowardly: Continuing to accept less and less while your wait for your “chance” (my God, that sounds an awful lot like Battered Wife Syndrome — “If I just try harder, he’ll change!”) or deciding that the only way to actually force the resolution of issues is to give the other side — a side wholly incapable of handling the complexities of running a real-world system — complete control and letting them crash everything. “Class, please turn to page 205. As we were discussing last time, the final Republican president, Mitt Romney, led a four-year term in office that can, as one historian described it, only be described as a farce mixed with tragedy.”
As for “leave the rest of us out of it.” That’s the rub, Whimsical. We’re all in this together. I’m trapped with half-wits who think Obama is a Kenyan socialist Nazi. I’m stuck with people who watch Fox News. Ever watch people watch Fox News? The most interesting part is how their heads nod while they watch. I can attempt to live a correct life all I want, and my tax dollars still go to bail out the banks, to fund wars, to pay Dick Cheney’s medical bills.
“As for your bet, what terms do you want?”
Simple bet. Simple terms. $25 to the charity of the winner’s choice. I say that the results of the 2012 elections will be that the Republicans will win the White House, the Republicans will hold at least 53 seats in the Senate, and at least 260 seats in the House.
Whimsical has a point: the Obamabot press, including Politifact, say that Obama has done a lot for the economy. So he says this cartoon is ‘demonstrably false’.
But not everyone believes the Obamabot press.
As a concrete example, the New York Times wrote that Anwar Awlaki had posted thousands of calls to jihad, so every patriotic American, in fact, every decent person in the world, must cheer that Obama managed to bring him to justice.
So I tried, but failed to find even one of Anwar Awlaki’s postings that called for killing ANYONE!
Later, the New York Times wrote that the US government worked with Google to make it impossible for anyone except US government law enforcement officials to hear or read any of these hypnotic calls to jihad, but we MUST believe the US government when it assures us that thousands of them were out there, and we must agree that Obama did the right thing. Even an acquaintance who claims to be a rabid Marxist said I MUST believe the New York Times and the US government.
But I still don’t believe them, and I don’t cheer the murder of someone whose speeches urged Muslims to follow Islam, without ever (and I listened to a lot of them) saying that following Islam meant killing anyone.
Given that statistics says that, if there were so many of Anwar Awlaki’s jihadist speeches out there then it’s 99.9999% certain that I would found at least one of them, I am skeptical of the US press in general.
And, in particular, I’m skeptical that Obama’s economic policies are helping anyone other than his Friends, disirregardless of what the Obamabot press (and Whimsical) says.
***
And I don’t have $25, but if I did, I’d say there’s about a 70% chance the Republicans will control the Congress, and a 55% chance Mitt won’t manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
As a statistician, these are NOT uncorrelated, so there’s about a 55% chance of a Republican sweep, and a 45% chance Mitt WILL snatch that defeat from the jaws of victory and foist the Whitehouse back on Obama, who, as I’m watching the race, doesn’t really seem to want it.
@michael:
You didn’t look very hard, did you? 30 seconds with Google led me to these:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkG36EL4NFU
Here’s a link to Al-Awaki’s speeches on Jihad, in which he calls for Jihad.
Or if you don’t want to sit through them all, like I did, there’s this:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/30/anwar-al-awlaki-video-blogs
It includes a link to a video blog in which you can actually see Al-Awalaki say that jihad is binding on all Muslim’s including himself.
And its a British paper, so unless you’re going to try CT black helicopter stuff, you cannot possibly claim hat they are “obamabot Media”.
Which brings me to my second point- “Obamabot media”, my ass. If anything, the media here is totally in the tank for Romney and the Republicans. You know how many times I heard Obama’s “the economy is fine” speech taken out of context on the traditional media? Seven. You know how many times I heard about Romney blasting Obama for “thinking we need more firefighters, teachers and policemen?” If you guessed ZERO, give yourself a cigar.
So don’t even try to tell me that there is such a thing as “Obamabot press”, and if even-anti Obama press has to admit he’s done stuff to help the economy then Ted’s claim that he hasn’t remains, as I said, demonstrably false.
So, now that your irrelevant, unrelated, straw man example has been fairly thoroughly debunked, do you have anything to say that’s germane to the topic at hand?
Juxtaposing the need to fight with the specter of Pres Pathological Bipartisanship as our last defense against a congress (officially) controlled by the radical reich immediately explains, verifies and confirms the gist of Ted, Ted, Ted’s current cartoon.
Great cartoon, Ted – it made me laugh, which in the current state of the world, both politically, economically, and militarily, is no easy task. Keep up the good work !…
Henri
Things have to get a lot worse in order to return to the days of
the 1930’s when the potential for a revolution caused the New Deal to be enacted.
The best way to get there quickly is to keep the Republicans in charge of the government.
With the Democrats in charge, or the government split between
the Republicans & Democrats, it’s gonna be a long, slow death.
@Alex
“Romney and pals will jam up the gears in six months, tops. . .a side wholly incapable of handling the complexities of running [this] real-world system.”
Oh, I agree. But what you’re not grasping is that they KNOW that. In fact, that’s the PLAN. They understand perfectly that they are incapable of running the system as it currently exists, so they’re going to deliberately crash it and use the resulting chaos to transform the system into one they CAN run.; “Good Morning class. Now that our state-mandated prayer is over, it’s time to take out your BP history books. Today we will learn about Mitt Romney and how he brought the disastrous experiment of letting the unworthy rabble participate in government to an end. What’s that, Bobby? -‘How do we know they’re unworthy?”. Simple question silly, boy- if they were worthy, God would’ve made sure they were in here with you instead of living in the work camps. Goodness, there’s the bell- is it Lunch already? Don’t forget to put on your oxygen to go outside, its God’s will the pollution is bad today. After lunch we’ll be discussing how God designed every organism on Earth and how evolution is a hoax- like that fake Global Warming scare.”
That’s why your battered wife analogy is inaccurate- its not that we’re going to get treated badly if Romney wins (though that’s inevitable), its that Romney is the figurehead of a movement that seeks to transform the entire political, legal, and economic system -at the risk of going Godwin, I think a much better analogy would be France in WWII. Now, what’s more cowardly- helping the invading government make life miserable for your fellow citizens, or fighting them with every fiber of your being until you die? I know what I (and history) would answer. YMMV.
“As for “leave the rest of us out of it.” That’s the rub, Whimsical. We’re all in this together. I’m trapped with half-wits who think Obama is a Kenyan socialist Nazi. I’m stuck with people who watch Fox News. ”
Yes, you are. And you still do not have the right to make things worse for anyone other than yourself.
As for the bet- one last clarification question- what about things like the ACLU or Amnesty International? Not exactly charities, but I’d view them as worthy recipients of your $25. Cause you are gonna lose. 🙂