DMZ America Podcast #127: Beginning of the End for Ukraine, Dumbest College Presidents Ever, Abortion Could Hit Republicans Hard

Political cartoonists and best friends Ted Rall (on the Left) and Scott Stantis (on the Right) discuss and debate the week in politics on the DMZ America Podcast, where disagreement never has to end up in pointless yelling and talking over one another.

In the first segment of the DMZ America Podcast for December 12, 2023, Scott and Ted note the radical reversal of fortune in the war between Ukraine in Russia. The second fighting season has ended with the undeniable conclusion that it is highly unlikely that Ukraine will be able to prevail. Should the U.S. nevertheless continue to finance this lost cause?

In the second segment of the DMZ America Podcast, Scott and Ted debate the debacle following the incompetent congressional testimony by the presidents of UPenn, Harvard and MIT. What should be the penalty for failing to deliver a dull-throated denouncement of anti-Semitism? Should students be expelled for opposing Israel?

In the third segment of the DMZ America Podcast, Scott and Ted consider the political repercussions of a Texas woman who was denied the right to an abortion despite the fact that both her fetus and her life were severely threatened unless she received the procedure. Can abortion move the needle in next year’s election for Democrats, and if so can Democrats pull it off?

Watch the Video Version of the DMZ America Podcast:

DMZ America Podcast Ep 127 Sec 1: Beginning of the End for Ukraine

DMZ America Podcast Ep 127 Sec 2: Dumbest College Presidents Ever

DMZ America Podcast Ep 127 Sec 3: Abortion Could Hit Republicans Hard

DMZ America Podcast #124: 2023 Election Results and Gaza War (with special guest Marshall Ramsey)

Editorial Cartoonists Ted Rall (from the Left) and Scott Stantis (from the Right) are joined by special guest, fellow editorial cartoonist Marshall Ramsey of Mississippi Today to discuss the news and politics of the week.

First up: Democrats sweep the 2023 off-year election. Abortion rights win a landslide in the red state of Ohio, sending up warning signals to Republicans. What, if anything, does this portend for the 2024 presidential election?

Second: Israel’s bloody conflict in Gaza is already splitting Americans politically. Will this proxy war affect the domestic scene?

Watch the Video Version of the DMZ America Podcast:

DMZ America Podcast Ep 124 Sec 1: 2023 Election Results (with Marshall Ramsey)

DMZ America Podcast Ep 124 Sec 2: 2023 Election Results (with Marshall Ramsey)

DMZ America Podcast Ep 124 Sec 3: The Hamas-Israel War in Gaza (with Marshall Ramsey)

Sanity Is Back

After three weeks of chaos and uncertainty, the Republican House of Representatives finally settled on a speaker, right-wing Louisiana representative Mike Johnson. All they wanted was a warm body; what they got was a loose cannon.

The Final Countdown – 5/22/23 – Ukraine to Receive F-16s After Loss of Bakhmut

On this episode of The Final Countdown, hosts Manila Chan and Ted Rall discuss hot topics, such as Ukraine’s loss of Bakhmut. 
 
Mark Sleboda: International Relations and Security Analyst
Steve Gill: Attorney and CEO of Gill Media 
Melik Abdul: Co-host of Fault Lines 
John Kiriakou: Cohost of Political Misfits, Former CIA Analyst 
 
In the first half hour, the hosts were joined by International Relations and Security Analyst Mark Sleboda to discuss Ukraine’s loss of Bakhmut and the U.S. wanting to supply F-16’s to the country. 
 
In the second half of the hour Attorney and CEO of Gill Media, Steve Gill joins to discuss the latest out of the debt-ceiling debacle. 
 
In the last hour, The Final Countdown talked to Co-Host of Fault Lines Melik Abdul to discuss the latest abortion bans and how it affects the 2024 elections.
 
The Final Countdown wrapped up with John Kiriakou, Cohost of Political Misfits about the Greek and Turkish elections.

First, Do No Harm to My Legal Status

Many states with abortion bans point out that those restrictions have exceptions for protecting the life of the mother. In practice, however, doctors believe they have to wait until the mother is actually dying before they can intervene to perform an abortion. There have been several cases where mothers nearly died as a result.

Democrats and Republicans Agree: Better to Lose Than to Shut Up

 “When you surround an army,” Sun Tzu counseled in The Art of War, “leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard.” Partisans on both sides of America’s everything-looks-like-a-hammer politics have forgotten this basic tenet of strategy—and are likely to pay for it.

            Donald Trump announced that he expects to be arrested in New York and indicted in connection with charges that media reports say are about to be filed by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Democrats greeted the news with characteristic gloating.

            “[Trump] cannot hide from his violations of the law, disrespect for our elections and incitements to violence,” tweeted former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The New York charges concern the allegation that he misappropriated campaign funds in order to pay hush money to Stormy Daniels, who says she had sex with the former president. They have nothing to do with denying the result of the 2000 election or the January 6th Capitol riot.

            Former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann tweeted: “ARREST TRUMP TODAY! ARREST TRUMP TOMORROW! ARREST TRUMP FOREVER!”

            “I’ll throw a watch party when it happens,” Alyssa Farah Griffin said on ABC’s The View. “Lock him up! Lock him up!” Joy Behar responded, echoing the anti-Hillary chant at Trump’s rallies.

            Schadenfreude is wicked fun, but gleeful Trump-bashers might want to consider the consequences: Grievance-mongering is one of Trump’s main political schticks. Revel in the T-shirt of the presidential mugshot but remember, MAGA nation will use it to rile up the GOP base—and bring back some 2016 Trump voters who became Never Trumpers as well. In a Trump perp walk (I’d advise him to demand one), conservatives will see maddening injustice where liberals see just desserts.

            Indeed, even Trump’s primary challengers are coming to his defense. What doesn’t kill Trump makes him stronger; an arrest coupled with liberal gloating thereabout plays into his narrative that he receives unfair and disproportionate opprobrium while swampy mainstream pols get away with murder, hardens his supporters’ resolve, and increases his chances of being restored to power. “If this happens, Trump will be re-elected in a landslide victory,” Elon Musk predicted.

            Meanwhile, Republicans are overplaying their hand on abortion.

            Pro-lifers have launched a novel legal challenge to FDA authorization of the abortion drug mifepristone in a federal court in Texas, a case that will probably be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. Wyoming recently banned medication abortion. A South Carolina bill would define abortion as murder punishable by life in prison or capital punishment. Considering that 85% of voters favor legal abortion in all or some circumstances—a record high since 1976—they might ask themselves whether they’ve blown up a bridge too far.

            One-third of American women now live in a state where abortion is illegal due to the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Most abortion-ban states have exceptions for rape, incest and the life of mother on their books, but in practice very few exceptions are ever granted. A lawsuit filed by five women in Texas who nearly died because they were denied abortions to which state law said they were entitled highlights that reality.

            When widespread demand encounters legal prohibition, people generally resort to a workaround—legally if possible, underground if not. There are roughly a million abortions annually. Medication abortions using mifepristone to block hormones that support pregnancy and misoprostol to empty the uterus accounted for 53% of U.S. pregnancy terminations in 2020, a portion that has almost certainly increased with the spread of telemedicine during the pandemic and the Dobbs decision.

            The mifepristone option has served as a socio-political pressure-release valve since Dobbs. Red-state women get still obtain abortions without traveling hundreds of miles. Red-state politicians can pander to pro-life voters, pointing out that abortion is far more difficult to obtain without looking like full-fledged Handmaid’s-Tale despots. The loser has been the pro-choice movement, which lacks the galvanizing effect of a 100% abortion ban.

            If SCOTUS overrules the FDA and kills mifepristone, the pressure-release valve gets closed—and not just in the 28 states that currently ban abortion. Medication abortion, the easiest and therefore most common type of abortion, vanishes in all 50 states. In an election year, the mere effort to ban mifepristone may be sufficient to enrage liberal voters. If it succeeds, watch out. Abortion rights aren’t currently a top issue for left-leaning voters, but an actual ban could spur even disgruntled progressives to turn out for Democrats about whom they otherwise might not have felt enthused.

            What should the two parties have done instead?

In an ideal world, Democratic prosecutors and investigators would have coordinated their efforts, bypassing novel legal theories like AG Bragg’s that are politically flimsy and unlikely to lead to conviction in favor of rock-solid charges like business fraud and instigating a riot. Now that an indictment appears to be forthcoming, Democrats could have assumed a sober mien, pointing out the sad necessity of having to book a former president like a common criminal. They shouldn’t be jumping up and down like overstimulated infants.

            Republicans, on the other hand, should have taken a breather on their fight against abortion. Had they waited a few years to let the new bifurcated legal normal to take hold, the pro-choice movement would have lost momentum as dispirited partisans drifted away having accepted defeat. Eventually, with Americans accustomed to abortion as less legal and rarer, they could have moved forward to ban all forms of abortion nationwide. Slow and steady, the same way economic conservatism was built up from the grass roots over decades following Goldwater’s 1964 rout, might have won this race.

(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis. You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)

DMZ America Podcast #91 (Now with Video!): Abortion Bans Kill Women, France’s Fight for Retirement, “Liberal” Media Companies Line Up Behind Fox News

American political cartoonists Ted Rall (from the Left) and Scott Stantis (from the Right) discuss the hottest issues of the week. Abortion is at the top of the news again in the week of a landmark lawsuit filed by five Texas women who almost lost their lives because Texas Republicans have banned abortion in the state. As the 2024 presidential campaign heats up, pro-choice sentiment hits a record high in the polls—what does this mean for Republicans? French President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to increase the national retirement age from 62 to 64 has united the French people against him. Biden and the Democrats think they have a winning issue here with Social Security and Medicare, given Republicans’ previous messaging on the entitlement programs. Corporate media lawyers fret that defamation defendants could be vulnerable to accountability for their newsroom decisions should Dominion Voting Systems prevail in their $1.6 billion libel claim against Fox News. Would that be so terrible?

Watch the Video Version of the DMZ America Podcast:
Ep 91 Sec 1 – Texas Abortion Lawsuit
Ep 91 Sec 2 – France’s Retirement Fight
Ep 91 Sec 3 – Dominion vs. Fox News Defamation Lawsuit

 

 

Why Are Women Falling Behind?

            Why do women keep getting pushed to the back of the line?

            The sociological history of the United States has been defined by struggles for equality with the landed white males, presenting as straight, who founded the republic. Though it’s still a continuing effort, the abolitionist movement and the fight for racial civil rights scored the first major triumph, emancipation in the mid-19th century.

            Gender equality and feminism achieved the second big win with the ratification of women’s suffrage in 1920. Since then, however, equal rights for women have frequently taken a back seat to other liberation struggles that got off the ground later. The Equal Rights Amendment was never ratified, putting the United States among the tiny minority of nations that do not specifically guarantee equality between men and women in their constitutions. The Dobbs decision made the U.S. one of just three countries in the world to have rolled back the federally-guaranteed right to an abortion since 1994.

            The worrisome stalling of women’s progress is highlighted by the bipartisan passage in the Senate of a bill that will codify same-sex marriage at the federal level. The bill is now headed to certain passage by the Democratic-controlled House and will be signed into law by President Biden.

In this era of extreme polarization, it’s newsworthy that 12 Republicans crossed the aisle to vote alongside Democrats. What’s really interesting is that the Respect for Marriage Act addresses a theoretical threat to liberty over one that is extant. In the Dobbs opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas argued that the Supreme Court’s newfound skepticism of a constitutional privacy right undermines the case law used to legalize contraception and same-sex marriage, and invited petitioners to bring test cases to the high court. But there was no indication gay marriage was on the judicial chopping block. Nor did the incoming Republican House leadership signal it wanted a ban—not that one would have survived the Senate or a presidential veto. This was a “just in case” move.

Abortion rights, on the other hand, were actually eviscerated by Dobbs. Half the states, comprising most of the area of the country and nearly half its population, ban abortion. Only 15 states allow the procedure without restrictions. Yet there is no possibility that the incoming Republican House will consider codifying Roe v. Wade at the national level. Even Democrats, packing their bags, offered only tepid lip service. As with the ERA, women will have to wait.

As seen with the progress on same-sex marriage, the movement for LGBTQ equality keeps moving forward—and at an impressive rate.

It’s harder to identify a discrete official start of the transgender rights movement, but media and political consciousness began to focus on the T in LGBT in the 1970s and 1980s. There still isn’t a federal law designating transgender as a protected class but the Supreme Court’s 2020 Bostock decision prohibits employment discrimination against transgender people. By way of comparison, it remains legal to fire someone because they are too young, specifically under age 40.

Stonewall augured the rise of the gay rights movement 121 years after the Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York did the same for women. Why does the women’s struggle, which got off the ground so much sooner, seem to have stalled, or even lost ground compared to more recent movements?

Barbara Jordan, the trailblazing congresswoman from Texas who won national attention during the Watergate hearings, said that she found it even more challenging to be a female politician than a Black one. In a country built on slavery and cursed by racism still embodied by racist policing every single day in every single town, that’s saying a lot.

Yet evidence that women are stuck is everywhere to see. Looking ahead to the 2024 presidential campaign, the growing buzz around Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, coupled with the poor approval ratings for Vice President Kamala Harris, raises the possibility that we might see a gay man become president before a woman—and remember, it’s been 36 years since Geraldine Ferraro became the first woman on a major party presidential ticket. Progress in closing the pay gap between men and women has stalled at 84%, with no sign of improvement in sight.

It is ironic that women, who comprise the biggest demographic of any of the traditionally oppressed minorities in the United States, are having such a hard time compared to smaller groups who got started later.

Hell, women aren’t even a minority at all.

(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis. You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)

Lies Begin at Political Conception

Which Joe Biden should voters believe? The one who, for many years, was a pro-lifer who was so extreme that he voted against federal funding for abortions even in the case of rape, incest and the life of the mother? Or the current one who says he would codify Roe v. Wade if he got the chance — which, of course, Obama chose not to do while Biden was vice president.

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