Support Ted’s Work

The Resistance to Trump Mostly Entails A Lot of Waiting Around for Someone Else to Actually Do Something

•
Ted Rall

Democrats and wimpy pacifist progressive insist on calling their complaints about president Donald Trump “the resistance.” But what exactly does this militant sounding political action entail? A lot of waiting around. Waiting for Democrats to take back the House of Representatives and the Senate. Waiting for impeachment. Even though Nancy Pelosi says the Democrats will never impeach Trump. Waiting for the special counsel to come up with something against Trump even though there’s not much evidence that he has anything. Waiting for some future election after more people are registered to vote, presumably after the Democratic Party starts to allow progressives to be nominated to high office. Waiting for the Russia collusion stuff to catch fire. Whatever this is, it ain’t resistance.

They’re Testing Driverless Cars Against Clueless Pedestrians? Come With Me If You Want to Live.

•
Ted Rall

A woman in Tempe, Arizona recently became the second victim of a fatal car accident between an innocent person and a driverless car. Advocates of driverless cars say that in the aggregate they will be safer. But the fact remains, there’s something incredibly creepy about automated driving, especially when it’s being tried out in area is full of oblivious pedestrians. Technology is heading toward more and more automation, including pilotless planes and drones that choose their own targets for assassination. How will the human race survive the new paradigm? Very, very carefully.

Nice Apology, Mark

•
Ted Rall

The Cambridge Analytica scandal has Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on the ropes. It turns out that the rogue company probably used questionnaire data in order to provide metrics for the Donald Trump For President campaign in 2016. After many years of privacy concerns, Facebook and other social media companies are finally facing the realistic possibility that they will face actual government regulation to protect consumers’ privacy. But can a leopard really change its spots?

Gina Haspel Is About To Make History As The First Woman And Torturer To Run The CIA

•
Ted Rall

In a saner country, someone like Gina Haspel would be in prison. Haspel personally supervised the waterboarding and torture of several suspects at CIA “black sites” in the Third World during the Bush Administration during its vicious torture program that followed the 9/11 attacks. Several of these waterboarding sessions were videotaped. However, she also ordered the video evidence destroyed. So she isn’t only a torturer, she violates the law in other important respects. However, in February 2009 President Obama traveled to CIA headquarters in Langley Virginia to assure agents like her that they would not face any kind of prosecution because the United States needed to “look forward, not backward” relative to torture under the Bush administration. She managed to rise to the number two position at the CIA, and now that the current CIAdirector Mike Pompeo is being transferred up to Secretary of State to replace Rex Tillerson, she will become the first woman, and the first known torturer, to run a federal agency. It’s true the Democrats might decide not to confirm her. But history suggests that they will be satisfied with asking a few pointed questions during her confirmation hearings and then signing off on her.

Enlist in Donald Trump’s Space Force!

•
Ted Rall

Donald Trump once again blew up the Internet by riffing on something insane. This time: Space Force! Trump appears to believe that the galaxy is under threat by alien invasion and that the United States military will be creating a Space Force to defend humanity. Given Trump’s obsessive xenophobia, one assumes that there will of course be a Space Wall to defend too.

Democrats Know Know Know They’re Gonna Win

•
Ted Rall

Democratic voters think that the only way they can get rid of Donald Trump is for Democrats to impeach him. And that can only happen if Democrats retake Congress. Never mind the fact that Nancy Pelosi has said that there is no way that Democrats are going to impeach Donald Trump. Democrats desperately want the big win this fall in the midterm elections that would allow them to take that both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Toward that end, they are carefully studying “special elections” in districts that voted for Donald Trump to see if they can get Democrats elected in areas where they lost in 2016. They’ve been looking with optimism at districts in Virginia, Alabama, and now Pennsylvania where Democrats were able to squeak out victories against incumbent Republicans. However, most of those races have a little in common with the vast majority of the races that we will see this November. The split between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton continues to divide the Democratic Party and until the mainstream corporate types who run the party open up the party to the activist progressives on the far left, odds are that many Progressives will sit out the election this fall.

The Coffee Stirrer is the Ultimate American Thing

•
Ted Rall

Give some thought to the trash you never think about: the humble coffee stirrer you use for, like, three seconds max and casually chuck into the trash. You could use a spoon. And not lick it. And leave it for someone else to use. But that would be too icky. Though not as icky as the billions of stirrers in the oceans. I used to draw cartoons like this for the Sierra Club. Unfortunately, today’s environmental organizations don’t get or understand the power of cartoons to convey these ideas. Otherwise I’d do a lot more of these.

What’s Better? A Right-Wing Congresswoman or a Left-Wing Congressman?

•
Ted Rall

More than 500 women are running for Congress! That’s big news demographically. But will the victorious women really change the system? History suggests no. From awful female leaders like Margaret Thatcher and Indira Ghandi and Hillary Clinton to the historical precedent of groundbreaking black leaders like Charles Rangel and Barack Obama, it’s clear that identitarianism serves the system as a distraction from its essential nature. Policy matters. Symbolism, not so much. What we need are leftist Congressmen and Congresswomen, not just Congresswomen.

In America, Only a Madman Tries to Make Peace

•
Ted Rall

It took Richard Nixon to go to China and to start the Environmental Protection Agency. Now it seems that it’s going to take another right-wing president, Donald Trump, to come to terms with North Korea over its nuclear missile program. It’s tempting for Democrats to mock everything Donald Trump does, but let’s face it, this is exactly the kind of dealmaking America needs if it works out.

keyboard_arrow_up
css.php