BIbi’s Big Ride

Biden told Israel the US would stop supplying bombs to Israel if it insists on bombing “population centers” in Rafah in the Gaza Strip.

No Place for Violence

Even as he funnels tens of billions of dollars in weapons to Israel to help it bomb the Gaza Strip, President Biden lectures college students about being too violent as they try to protect themselves from riot police.

DMZ America Podcast Ep 146: Biden Cuts Off Israel, Stormy Daniels Rages, Our Weird Economy

Political cartoonists Ted Rall (from the Left) and Scott Stantis (from the Right) debate the week in news and culture as friendly adversaries to bring you spirited debate and smart insight.

First up: President Biden’s patience with the war cabinet of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has expired. After warning Bibi not to enter the southern Gaza city of Rafah, Bibi went ahead and did just that, cutting off aid trucks at the border to boot. For the first time in memory, the president put a “pause” on the delivery of 3,500 bombs that were set to be delivered to Israel for use against Gaza. How significant is this? Is this a rupture or just a temporary squabble between allies?

Second: Porn actor Stormy Daniels testified in the Donald Trump’s hush-money trial in Manhattan. It says a lot about the current state of politics that the first-ever criminal trial of a former President of the United States, in which he faces jail time, is not a huge story. Yet the implications, both legal and political, are significant.

Finally: American voters continue to be dissatisfied with the state of the economy. Scott and Ted dissect the good, the bad and the ugly in the current situation.

Watch the Video Version: here.

Last Supper

At the same time the Biden Administration sends another $60 billion to Israel to help it kill Palestinian civilians in Gaza, the US Air Force drops food aid into the beleaguered occupied territory. If you must die, don’t die hungry.

The Final Countdown – 4/30/24 – Trump’s Hush Money Trial Heats up as He Receives Fines for Violating Gag Order

On this episode of The Final Countdown, hosts Angie Wong and Ted Rall discuss a wide array of topics, including Trump’s hush money trial. 

Mitch Roschelle – Media Commentator
Ajay Pallegar – Criminal Attorney
Jeremy Kuzmarov – Managing Editor of Covert Action Magazine
Esteban Carrillo – Ecuadorean journalist
 
The show begins with media commentator Mitch Roschelle providing an analysis of the anticipated presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. 
 
Then, criminal attorney Ajay Pallegar delves into the complexities of the Trump hush money trial and the related Supreme Court case over Trump’s claims of immunity.
 
The second hour starts with the managing editor of Covert Action Magazine Jeremy Kuzmarov discussing the growing student movement in solidarity with Palestine.
 
The show wraps up with Ecuadorean journalist Esteban Carrillo analyzing the latest out of Gaza, including Israel’s military decisions.
 
 

DMZ America Podcast #145: Mass Graves in Gaza, Imperial Presidency, Menthol Madness

Political cartoonists Ted Rall (from the Left) and Scott Stantis (from the Right) debate the week in news and culture as friendly adversaries to bring you spirited debate and smart insight.

First up: The Israel-Hamas War seems to be entering some sort of tipping point in terms of international public opinion. As the International Criminal Court weighs issuing an arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over his government’s policy of blockade and mass starvation in Gaza and student protests over America’s support of Israel spread from Columbia University to college and university campuses around the nation, the disturbing discovery of a pair of mass graves containing the bodies of hospital patients and personnel apparently summarily executed in areas under IDF control prompt Scott to say that, if this is confirmed to be an Israeli war crime, he would be done with Israel after supporting the Jewish state for many years.

Second: The US Supreme Court hears oral arguments in a case with ramifications both for Donald Trump’s January 6th insurrection case and the separation of powers under the US Constitution. The court is asked to answer the question of whether a president enjoys absolute immunity for acts committed while in office, whether immunity might be partial, and whether it’s possible to separate those acts committed as an individual from those performed as an officeholder. At stake: the nature of the nation’s top political job.

Finally: In an act that appears to reek of cynicism, the Biden Administration has paused a long-planned ban on menthol-flavored tobacco products, which are popular among Black Americans, because of concerns that Black voters might be annoyed at the President when they go to the polls this November. Vote for us before you die, please.


Watch the Video Version: here.

DMZ America Podcast #144: USC Censors Its Valedictorian for Being Palestinian, Trump on Trial, Biden’s Weird Steel Tariffs

Cartoonists Ted Rall (from the Left) and Scott Stantis (from the Right) are back at their respective abodes in New York and Alabama. As always, Ted and Scott put friendship first in their spirited but civilized debates and discussions about the issues at hand.

First up: The University of Southern California denies this year’s valedictorian Asna Tabassum

her right to deliver the commencement address because she is Palestinian and might have had the audacity to call for Palestinians to stop being slaughtered en masse by Israel in Gaza. If ever there was cause for people of all ideological stripes to be appalled albeit for different reasons, here it is.

Next: Donald Trump becomes the first former president to face a criminal trial. Scott and Ted dissect the nature of the charges, related to the payment of hush money to Stormy Daniels, and explore the disturbing trend of prosecutors letting members of the public that they’re so out to get them that they’re willing to campaign on it.

Finally: Joe Biden imposes brutal tariffs to protect America’s steel industry, which is now owned by Japan, from China.

Watch the Video Version: here.

Your Right To Choose What We Tell You

Democracy, they say, is on the ballot this year and it’s really important to go to vote against Donald Trump. But the election itself has already proven itself to be anything but democratic. Third parties aren’t allowed on the ballot or to vote and the parties decided the choices in the primaries.

What Will Be Left of Gaza for Trump To Make Worse?

Democrats argue that Trump, who was very in favor of Israel during his presidency, would be even worse for the people of Gaza than Biden, who has totally enabled Netanyahu to do whatever he wants. However, by the time the election rolls around, there won’t be anything left of Gaza for Trump to make worse.

Biden’s Secret Border Agenda: Migrants Fill Our Baby Gap

           I didn’t question the incoming Biden Administration when they rolled back the Trump era’s stricter border control policies in 2021. There’s nothing unusual about reversing a previous president’s approach, especially when he belongs to the other party and the policy in question is roundly criticized.

You didn’t have to be a proponent of open borders to feel discomfort about Trump’s zero-tolerance stance toward both economic migrants and political asylum applicants, which led to kids in cages, his draconian family separation policy, which caused nearly a thousand children to get disappeared into the system and were never reunited with their parents, or his Remain in Mexico scheme, which subjected immigration applicants to gang and cartel violence. By the time he left office, Trump’s handling of undocumented people who attempted to cross the U.S.-Mexico border was viewed as inhumane and highly unpopular.

As we see so often in American politics, we have gone from one extreme to the other. President Biden has swung past the status quo ante toward immigration policies more liberal than anyone alive today can remember. Slightly fewer than two million people illegally crossed the U.S.-Mexico border during Trump’s four years in office; there have been well over six million under Biden, who still has nine months left to serve. Biden has deported more than half of these.

Where the two administrations’ policies really differ is their handling of applicants who present themselves to border patrol agents and followed the federal government’s legal application process for asylum. Fewer than 200,000 asylum seekers were paroled, i.e. admitted into the U.S. pending the resolution of their claim, under Trump. Biden has paroled nearly 500,000, and he still has a year to go, with big spikes over the past two years. Between those people and others allowed into the U.S. under Biden’s special refugee programs for people fleeing conflict zones like Ukraine, Afghanistan and Venezuela, more than 1,000,000 are now in country.

Now it’s Biden’s turn to feel the heat of popular discontent in an election year. More than two-thirds of voters disapprove of the president on immigration (68%) and border security (69%), according to the AP-NORC poll conducted on March 29th. After the economy, healthcare, crime and guns, immigration is tied for fifth with abortion among the issues voters care about most right now.

Like other leftists, I long assumed that Biden’s “open border” approach was driven by a pair of common well-intentioned albeit shortsighted liberal impulses: opposing all things Trump just because and opening America’s doors to the poor and oppressed masses desperate for the chance to make new lives here, à la Emma Lazarus in homage to our history as a Nation of Immigrants.

Now I think something else is going on.

Biden and the Democrats read polls; they know their border policies aren’t playing well with the swing voters they need to win this fall. Trump’s fearmongering seems to be landing punches. So why is the Administration staying the course? Why are they just standing by and watching as cities like New York and Chicago reel under the financial stress of hundreds of thousands of new arrivals they can’t handle?

As James Carville famously observed in 1992, it’s the economy, stupid. It’s always the economy, especially in an election year. And you can’t hit the ideal GDP growth rate of two or three percent a year if your population—your consumer base and your labor pool—shrinks.

But Team Biden is looking far beyond November.

The developed world is facing a fertility crisis. For the population to remain stable, the average woman needs to have 2.1 children. (The fraction over two accounts for disease, accidents and mortality in general.) A study published in The Lancet finds that the fertility rate for Western Europe, 1.53 rate in 2021, is expected to drop further to 1.37 by 2100. A major population drop-off could cause a crisis as a smaller workforce is unable to support an older, larger cohort of retirees. Demand for homes and other trans-generational products could collapse, dragging down consumer goods and leading to a deflationary doom loop.

Fortunately, report co-author Natalia V. Bhattacharjee says, there’s a solution: liberalizing immigration from places like the Global South, where birthrates remain high. “Once nearly every country’s population is shrinking, reliance on open immigration will become necessary to sustain economic growth.” She told Al Jazeera that “sub-Saharan African countries have a vital resource that ageing societies are losing—a youthful population.”

            Here in the U.S., our fertility rate has dropped from 3.65 in 1960 to 2.08 in 1990 to 1.66 in 2021. At the same time, population has risen from 181 million in 1960 to 250 million to 333 million in 2021. Immigration, legal and illegal, has filled the void created by our failure to make enough babies.

            Under Trump, not so much.

            I am increasingly convinced that, behind securely locked soundproof doors in the White House and other corridors of power, top Biden officials are staring at demographic charts that show the rate of population increase leveling off toward even, and dripping sweat over the fact that the current economic model, which is predicated on consistent expansion, is imperiled by a fertility crisis neither they nor the media ever talk about. Where Republicans see an uncontrolled flow of people from Central America and elsewhere pouring across the border with Mexico as threats to American jobholders, possible criminals and perhaps cultural harbingers of a Great Replacement theory, Democratic economists view them, like Bhattacharjee, as a convenient solution to the intractable demographic issues of Americans getting married later and in fewer numbers and thus having fewer children than required to keep growing the economy.

            There are ways to encourage American citizens who already live here to have more kids. One city in Japan, whose economy has struggled against a fertility crisis since the 1990s, has succeeded in growing family sizes by investing free medical care for children, free diapers and, most effectively, free daycare. Other places have achieved similar results. There is a direct correlation between low birth rates and expensive child daycare. But there’s no sign that Washington cares about the issue, much less is about to act.

That leaves immigration. Given the stakes and the undeniable capitalistic logic that necessitates throwing open the floodgates, President Biden might want to take a shot at something he seems both to hate and is not good at: explaining the facts to the public.

(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.)

 

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