President Obama defends the new, aggressive tone of his campaign, which in no way, shape or form reflects any substantive change in his suck-uppery to corporate interests.
New and Improved
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."
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Ted,
Shouldn’t Obama be under the table? Or at least his left hand?
And this helps how, exactly?
True, True
Ah Whimsical, on we go…
Ted’s body of work speaks for itself. He wants to wake people up to the fact that our political system is broken, and that we need radical solutions to massive problems.
Whether or not Ted is successful, he is right. What is says is the truth. It’s not the truth that we should have, or that we want to have, or that we had to have; it’s just the real-live honest-to-goodness truth about the current social and political situation in the
Ah Whimsical, on we go…
Ted’s body of work speaks for itself. He wants to wake people up to the fact that our political system is broken, and that we need radical solutions to massive problems.
Whether or not Ted is successful, he is right. What is says is the truth. It’s not the truth that we should have, or that we want to have, or that we had to have; it’s just the real-live honest-to-goodness truth about the current social and political situation in the United States of America.
Truth has it’s own value. Whether we ultimately win or not, at least we can know that we studied the reality of our times and understood what was happening.
The system being basically just a series of interchangeable politicians who do whatever their corporate masters say, it’s functioning exactly as required.
This is why I take hope that the Republicans will sweep all three branches this election. I see it as something like what AIDS was like back in 1980 or so. Anyone remember that? When both St. Ronnie and the New York Times wouldn’t even mention the disease, no one was gay, and young gay men started dropping dead?
And as young gay men started dying in the thousands, the gay community woke the hell up. They saw how the government wasn’t addressing the problem, they saw how the media wasn’t doing their job either, and the gays organized. They forced the issue into the public discussion. They engaged in EFFECTIVE propaganda. And they started demanding things, like more research and cheaper drugs for the disease. Not a lot of people are aware of how few people — relatively — AIDS led to the death of, compared to other diseases. About 600,000 people have died from AIDS in the U.S. That’s 20,000 a year, about 5% of annual fatalities. It’s about the number of people in the U.S. who died from cardiac disease in a single year. How many cardiac disease benefits and silent auctions do you see? I don’t see the actors who win the Oscars wearing cardiac disease in 30 times more fatal than AIDS ribbons.
And if wasn’t for how the Republicans and the mainstream media simply ignored the issue and marginalized attempts to discuss it, who knows, maybe the gays never would have gotten angry enough to start something.
So I’ve got my fingers crossed for the elections, because only a face-eating, kill-you-in-your-prime cancer like the lunatic fringe of the Republican Party (these aren’t rational Republicans anymore, those started going extinct right around Reagan’s inauguration) is going to wake up people in any useful fashion.
@Alex
Yes, because letting the bad guys win is always the surest route to success. Not.
@Aaron
Ted is focused on the fantasy of tearing down the system and implementing something “radical” in its place. He’s using that as a crutch to avoid dealing with the decades of hard work that will be necessary to repair and improve the system, IMO.
Tearing down the current system is a bad idea. It merely guarantees that the right will be able to put something much worse in its place.
Don’t feel the troll named Whimsical. He’s a troll, nothing more. He makes the same exact comment over and over on every thread, no matter the context. That’s trolling 101. Don’t feed him, it just encourages him to repeat his inane one comment.
@ Alex, I agree that the Repubs winning and running amok is the only thing that will enlighten their Joe Sixpack Jesus and Rush base to the fact that there God Bless America Don’t Tread on Me leaders do not have their, or the nations, best interest at heart. I was trying to explain this position to my sister a while back, but not nearly so eloquently as you have done here. Thanks! Now I can just link her here.
@ exkiodexian
Roger.
@ Whimsical
It is you, Sir Troll, who live in a fantasy world. If only we were more patient, tried harder, thought happy thoughts; then everything would work out fine. They gave all that a good hard try in the 60’s and 70’s. They beamed their love all over the place. It didn’t work. Sorry.
Whimsical,
As to the “bad guys.” Drowning because Politician X forced your head under the water vs. drowning because Politician Y “couldn’t” help because Politician X wouldn’t allow it? They’re both bad guys. The most powerful person on the planet isn’t doing things solely because he’s being “forced.” He’s doing them because — quite simply — that’s what his masters in the corporations are telling him.
Alex_the_tired is correct ; the system is indeed functioning as designed, allowing the plutocrats to get on with the business of governing, while providing hoi polloi with the illusion that their votes – or refusals to vote, as the case may be – matter. However, just as no two «Joe-sixpacks» are created equal, no two plutocrats are either, and it may be just the case that the difference between the Koch brothers and Sheldon Gary Adelson, on the one hand, and George Soros and Warren Edward Buffet, on the other, has important policy consequences, perhaps even affecting H sapiens sapiens’ prospects for making it through the present century. Things don’t seem to be looking up, precisely….
Henri
1. “If Voting Changed Anything, They’d Make It Illegal” — Emma Goldman
2. R&R are following the lead of Republicans since St R, all of whom promised to solve America’s most persistent and painful problem, but all of them failed; however, R&R now have a good chance of success. Mr Rall’s readers probably won’t vote for R&R, but, by not voting for President Obama, they might be helping R&R to win. And I think R&R will finally be able to solve that horrible, painful, persistent problem that has so plagued all decent, hard-working Americans from across the entire political spectrum. I mean, of course, the servant problem: most of President Clinton’s appointees had that problem, and Mr Romney himself has faced that problem. And I’m confident that the proposed agenda of R&R will finally solve it!
3. In 1968, Humphrey promised to continue Johnson’s failed policies in Vietnam, while Nixon promised a ‘secret plan’ that would guarantee an unconditional American victory, a victory Nixon wrote that he was very close to achieving when the Commies hounded him from office. Nixon’s victory in ’68 led to Ford, Carter, and Reagan. Had Humphrey won, according to Whimsical, the US would have moved marginally to the left and Reagan could never have gotten nominated. I have the uncomfortable feeling that Whimsical might very well be correct.
4. President Obama is centre right. He has promised to protect the bankers and to prosecute those scammed into taking out sub-prime loans that they could not possibly repay. He has fought for, and won, the right to strip anyone, anytime, for any reason or for no reason (I just hope they’re good looking, and the strip searches are televised). President Obama has taken, and then been given, the permanent Presidential right to kill anyone, anytime, anywhere, for any reason or for no reason, and uses that right to kill dozens of people every day (mostly harmless goatherds, but the US newspapers report their deaths as the deaths of fierce terrorists–men, women, and children terrorists–who were hours away from an attack on the US that would have killed far more than the toll on 9/11, and so every American must be grateful that President Obama is keeping them safe). And left, right, and centre newspapers all agree on this, the difference being that the ‘left’ newspapers say Obama is killing the optimal number of terrorists, while the right-wingnut newspapers say Obama is doing far too little and is endangering the lives of every US soldier and citizen by releasing this Top-Secret information to the entire world, thereby giving it to the enemies of the US.
5. So Whimsical sees ’12 as another ’68, with the same consequences. A vote for Obama keeps the US centre right. A failure to vote for Obama moves the US permanently to the right. And, again, Whimsical may very well be correct.
6. But, for those of you who are working very hard, successfully convincing the gullible to hand you their money for nothing and thereby making yourselves rich beyond the dreams of Croesus, doing whatever you can to ensure the election of R&R should finally solve all your servant problems.