Radical problems call for radical solutions. Sadly, Obama is obsessed with the centrists who’ve gotten everything wrong every single time.
Sorry, Sir, Your Seat Has Been Taken
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication, WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, 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 "The Stringer."
14 Comments. Leave new
I agree with the guy in the last panel saying "kooks".
DOWN WITH PEOPLE!
yeah whatever… i'm bored of the obama character already. el busho was way more entertaining.
Don't you get Ted?! Obama is the best honest man money could buy! 🙂
Seriously, there is going to be soon one quite painful choice for Americans to be decided.
Either try to continue with this one huge 300+ million nation plutocracy/pseudo-democracy or start thinking about forming much smaller and much more independent states of America.
No more empire, no more War On Something, no more superpower status but much more democratic governments, a lot of them actually…
Hi Ted,
You've repeatedly leaned on this axiom that racidal problems call for radical solutions; it sounds like rhetoric to me. Similar to "We're fighting them there, so we don't have to fight them here".
Can you back that up with some logic? Why can't a conventional, proven solution be scaled to the meet the nation's current set of problems.
Or maybe Timo…..we just get Balkanization, America style? Ted, your logic here is sloppy. It's easy to say that the people who aren't in power would get it right. I'm sure there are a bunch of white supremacists somewhere sitting around jabbering about how if only people would see things their way, everything would be great.
I'm sure the Gingrich revolution types who talk about how they set out to change Washington and Washington changed them (but notice how they don't actually acknowledge wrong doing, it's all passive voice) thought that they had it right until the world realized that they didn't know how to govern.
No wonder these chaps haven’t been given a seat at the table – after all, nobody likes people who say «I told you so», particularly when thousands of millions of dollars in profits and bribes depended on not heeding their advice….
Henri
I think liberals and progressives are always going to be on the outside of any Democratic administration. We need to be independent and fight to get real change.
Your logic is so quaint Ted, cute even. Let me ask you, since when did being right ever get anyone a seat at the table? Anyone who has ever lived a day know that those who get rewarded are those who are loyal, toe the line, and always adhere to official policy.
Thanks to Barak's invasion force in Iraq, 11 more were in Iraq today. US Forces killed two Iraqi policemen.
aggie,
it may be irrelevant that the powerless were right. I don't see how it is sloppy, though.
Still, I like your implication:
Talk is cheap
"You've repeatedly leaned on this axiom that racidal problems call for radical solutions; it sounds like rhetoric to me. Similar to "We're fighting them there, so we don't have to fight them here".
Can you back that up with some logic? Why can't a conventional, proven solution be scaled to the meet the nation's current set of problems."
Well, for example, the economy. We need a $3T stimulus package to fill a $4T hole; we're getting a
"moderate" compromise of $150B. We need a total repudiation of torture and Gitmo; Obama is keeping renditions to torture camps.
Need I go on?
Macy's is cutting 7,000 workers because of the Hussien Obama economy.
Macy's is Obama's fault??? Dude , you got short term memory loss. Dorme bene…
Ted, I think it's important to recognize that solutions are only radical because we've been trained to believe they are. What's radical, to me, is the idea that it's OK to treat human beings different based on arbitrary social constructions like "nationality, citizenship, socie-economic status, gender, race, religion, ethnicity…" Want me to go on? One is no worse than the other, really, we just legitimize them and then people fall in like.
50 years ago people accepted Jim Crowe segregation…it was "legal," 100 years before that slavery was legal. Now cutting an old man's heat off in the dead of winter is legal and telling someone they don't have the same rights because of their national origin is legal.
These are radically incomprehensible atrocities in my mind. The most effective solutions are extremely conventional, and that's why it takes such an elaborate propaganda machine to talk people out of them.
As soon as democracy resurfaced in society, the Monarchists and economic elites did everything they could to castrate the impact of democracy. Someone like Dick Cheney has no interest in democracy, he is actually against it. He wants to be in charge, period.
We need common sense, conventional solutions to all the stupidity….like telling Banks to stop kicking families out of their homes just because the economy went south for a few years.
The world is really pretty simple when you have your priorities straight.