Ted Rall cartoon skewers recent news to lay bare American political double standards. In early May 2025 Qatar dangled a shiny four hundred million dollar luxury jet for the United States to use as Air Force One. President Trump shrugged off the Constitution outright ban on federal officials grabbing foreign gifts without congressional consent claiming it modernizes travel. Democrats clutched pearls over ethics while ignoring their own past indulgences. Meanwhile 2024 saw scholars grumble that the Constitution cannot handle today governance messes. The cartoon mocks how the United States drools over Qatar extravagant toys while mulling a rewrite of its dusty old rulebook. Clearly flashy perks trump sacred values in this absurd game of priorities.
Qatar Gifts America Lavish Prizes
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 TMI Show" talk show. 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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Did AI write the summary? I mean, “AI doublegood writing am at summary stuff and junk.”
Does Qatar have universal health care? Maybe we could all look the other way as Trump accepts that?
I wondered the same thing about the summary. Maybe Ted hired an intern?
Yes, of course Qatar has Universal Health Care for all Citizens (of course, only a tiny fraction of the people in Qatar are Citizens, most are ex-pat workers/slaves for the Citizens).
Your analogy of the alternate gift being the WH is excellent. It helps bring home the absurdity of what DJT is asking us to overlook. Your summary about the Democrats having their own, similar, problems misses the mark, though. A difference in quantity makes a complete difference in kind. A 747 is beyond even Menendez with his itty bitty gold bars.
Trump is alleged to have personally bagged $ 1bn a month last semester, according to CNN.
“Did AI write the summary?”
Obviously. And probably the post too, since it lacks all usual stale flavours (Nazis, the Left, French Resistance, Dem’s vs. Rep’s, democracy, etc…). Didn’t you know that Rall was already considered obsolete by ChatGPT?
For the human animal, LLM’s are THE perfect technology: It’s conflating memory and intelligence, undertaking a task they positively hate: Thinking. Most would rather die than cogitate, a wish that will soon be granted thanks to their actions…
Besides, there are so many billions already invested in it -and more to come-, all begging for some big ROI, that AI HAS to take over.
Ted remains incommunicado about the peculiar language in the commentary. I like this ‘toon, but I’m not going to share it unless I have an explanation.
OK, the reason for the peculiar language of the accompanying paragraph is gonna remain a mystery for now, so I’ve changed my mind about sharing it.
Guilty as charged! I have been using AI to generate metadata, keywords and other metadata for the toons. They don’t get much traction on social media, so I’m wondering if optimizing for SEO via AI might address that. Of course, it could just be shadow-banning. This week’s stilted language doesn’t work, though, as you’ve noticed, so I’m moving back toward humint.
I’d bet my bippy it’s shadowbanning. Facebook “abandoning censorship” is like the government “giving up cointelpro.”