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The Final Countdown – 9/11/23 – Georgia Grand Jury Recommends Charges Against Trump, Graham, and Dozens More

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Ted Rall
On this episode of The Final Countdown, hosts Angie Wong and Ted Rall discuss top news, including the latest developments in the Trump Georgia case. 
 
Alan Grayson – Former U.S. Representative 
Scott Stantis – Cartoonist for The Chicago Tribune 
KJ Noh – Journalist and Political Analyst 
Thabiso Lehoko – Sputnik Correspondent in South Africa 
 
The show starts with former U.S. representative Alan Grayson sharing his perspective on the Fulton County grand jury recommending charges against 39 people. 
 
Then, Cartoonist for The Chicago Tribune, Scott Stantis, talks about how a recent ruling against Biden could impact government interference in social media companies.
 
The second hour begins with journalist and political analyst KJ Noh joining The Final Countdown to share his perspective on takeaways from the G20 summit, and how global South nations are standing up to Western nations. 
 
The show closes with Sputnik Correspondent in South Africa Thabiso Lehoko shares his perspective on the situation in the Sahel, including Niger accusing France of intervention, and terrorist attacks in Mali and Burkina Faso. 
 

Democrats Are Beating Up RFK Jr. Over Vaccines. Why THIS Issue?

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Ted Rall

           Within the Democratic Party, however, a quirky single issue has become the focus of opposition to primary challenger Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: his reputation as an anti-vaxxer.

            For the purpose of this discussion, let’s set aside the question of whether or not the criticism is accurate. RFK Jr. denies being against vaccinations in general, says he is up-to-date on all vaccinations except for COVID-19, and claims the real problem is big pharma, not vaccines. Let’s also ignore the obvious motivation of Democrats’ attacks: Kennedy had the temerity to challenge Biden in the primaries, and opened strong with nearly 20% of the Democratic vote.

            But why is this the anti-RFK Democrats’ single issue? Why are they single-mindedly raging over the fact that he’s (assuming for the sake of argument that it’s true) anti-vax?

            The coverage has been brutal and sharply focused. “Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,” an NBC profile of the candidate begins, “is a conspiracy theorist running for president as a Democrat.”

            “Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine activist and scion of one of the country’s most famous political families, is running for president,” the Associated Press opened its wire-service piece announcing his 2024 bid.

            Kennedy is so irredeemably anti-vax, his critics say, that he’s not even worth engaging with. “There is no point in debating RFK Jr. on vaccines,” Time magazine wrote. “He’s wrong and has been proven so many times before.”

            The playing field of this particular political battle is, well, weird.

First, the issue is moot. Even assuming that RFK is objectively a wacky anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist who was wrong about the safety of the COVID-19 vaccine (for the record, I’ve received eight COVID shots and plan to get a ninth), the pandemic is over. The Biden Administration has officially declared the end of the coronavirus emergency. If RFK was wrong, the key word here is “was.” The controversy concerns what has now become, due to the passage of time, a non-issue. Would you vote against someone due to their (incorrect) position on the Franco-Prussian War?

            If the underlying issue is that RFK subscribes to conspiracy theories, it’s going to be hard to find other politicians to support. President Biden, for example, believed that “Saddam’s program relative to weapons of mass destruction” was an actual real thing, even though the director of the CIA told him there was no evidence whatsoever at the time. Hillary Clinton said “there’s no doubt in my mind” that Russia cheated her out of the 2016 election; Russiagate, we all knew then and we all know now, was a fever dream born of self-delusion. Whatever you think of RFK’s statements about vaccines, the consequences of the Iraq WMD and Russiagate conspiracy theories were over a million people killed and recklessly risking World War III.

            Perhaps RFK’s real sin is science denialism. If so, there isn’t a single American politician you can support with the possible exception of Al Gore, if he’s still interested in the job. Climate science is clear; the Earth is heating rapidly and the future of humanity hangs in the balance in the immediate future. Democrats and Republicans alike are talking about jobs, the economy, censoring books, how the history of slavery should be taught, whether children should become transgender, anything but the most pressing important problem facing Americans and their fellow humans around the globe.

It doesn’t get any more denialist than these distractions.

            I’m not inherently opposed to the idea of single-issue voting. I would never vote for anyone who supported the invasion of Iraq. I would never vote for anyone who wants to keep Guantánamo open or is willing to tolerate it. I would never vote for anyone who doesn’t support a $20-an-hour minimum wage. My vote only goes to someone who would stop persecuting Julian Assange. These are, to me, basic moral filters that tell me who someone is.

            I would also not vote for someone who, like RFK Jr., pledges “unconditional support” to Israel, or any other country. Unconditional support for another nation is stupid. If a U.S. ally decides to pick a fight, I want the right to decide whether or not to get involved.

            RFK Jr. has stumbled into lifestyle identitarianism, a retrograde political tendency motivated not by identification with or support for a minority group or other historically marginalized population, but tribal symbolism. For a certain kind of lifestyle liberal in San Francisco or Manhattan, being pro-vax makes a statement: you are, or might be, One of Us. You shop at Target, not Walmart. You follow tennis, not NASCAR. You watch “Barbie”—ironically. RFK Jr. elicits ire because, as a Kennedy and thus heir to the last liberal dynasty, he has committed the ultimate heresy: class treason. Here, class is not (strictly) about money. Cultural signifiers—your electric car, your vacation to Europe, your take on vaccines—determine who’s out with the in crowd.

            Extracting himself from this pit won’t be easy.

(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.)

 

The Joys of In-Person Worker Collaboration

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Ted Rall

Many employers are increasingly upset that workers don’t want to return to offices or to endure long unpaid commutes from their homes. They keep talking about the possibilities for collaborating in person, ignoring the realities of open floorplans, in which stressed-out workers avoid one another under their headphones.

The Final Countdown – 6/20/23 – Judge Sets Trial Date for Trump’s Federal Charges

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Ted Rall
On this episode of The Final Countdown, the hosts Ted Rall and Manila Chan discuss breaking news, including Trump’s federal charges. 
 
Mitch Roschelle: Media Commentator, Public Speaker 
Angie Wong: Journalist 
Mark Sleboda: International Relations and Security Analyst 
Esteban Carrillo: Ecuadorean journalist and Editor for The Cradle
 
The show kicks off with Media Commentator and Public Speaker Mitch Roschelle talking about RFK Jr. challenging a doctor to debate him about vaccines. 
In the second half of the first hour, the hosts spoke to journalist Angie Wong to talk about Trump’s federal charges.
 
In the first half of the final hour, International Relations and Security Analyst Mark Sleboda talks about the latest out of Ukraine. 
 
The show wraps up with Esteban Carrillo talking about the political situation in Palestine. 

Biden’s Reelection Campaign Begins Unimpressively

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Ted Rall

           Coupled with leaks from inside his campaign, President Joe Biden’s announcement video indicates the general tenor and strategy of his upcoming reelection bid.

            Biden’s messaging is especially notable for what it’s missing.

            Absent from the voiceovers and images is a reference to the COVID-19 crisis. Biden was arguably elected in the first place in large part, if not primarily, in reaction to Donald Trump’s inexplicable attacks on science and common sense in the face of the coronavirus. Biden took office after hundreds of thousands of Americans had died, presided over distribution of vaccines and billions of dollars in federal aid to employers and workers who might otherwise have been financially obliterated, and declared an end to the emergency. You’d think he’d take a wholly-justified victory lap. Perhaps his team believes a mention of the American Rescue Plan would trigger accusations that the stimulus package triggered inflation.

            There’s still time. Anyway, like it or not, Republicans will make the economy their top issue. If I were Biden, I’d have a simple response to the inflation question: which would you choose? Losing your job and therefore 100% of your earning power? Or dealing with inflation and losing 10%? Republicans wouldn’t have done anything to help you. Thanks to me, there are “help wanted” ads all over the place instead of bread lines. You’re welcome.

            Trump, of course, was also silent about the best part of his record in 2020. A President Hillary Clinton would have been far more cautious and slower, dotting every I and crossing every T with the FDA and so would have fallen short of the remarkable achievement of Trump’s Operation Warp Speed. Trump’s decision to play exclusively to his right-wing base, running away from his big win, cost him votes even among people whose lives were saved by his gamble.

            Also missing from Biden’s rap is Ukraine, where he is fully vested in that proxy war to the tune of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars. No doubt, falling support among voters for arming and funding Ukraine is responsible for that omission. Americans like a winner and hate a loser; results of this summer’s fighting will impact the race.

            The most glaring absence, of course, is any indication of what Biden will do to improve the lives of voters and the people they care about should he win reelection. In the old days, we called these statements “campaign promises.” Are Democrats worried that Biden wouldn’t be able to fulfill his pledges because Republicans might control one or both houses of Congress after 2024? Do they want voters to forget the promises he flaked out on last time—a $15-an-hour minimum wage, a legislative push for student loan forgiveness (as opposed to the half-hearted, clearly doomed-from-the-start executive order), a legal path to citizenship for undocumented workers? Whatever the reason, substituting vague pabulum like “I’d like to finish the job” in place of an actual platform violates Electoral Politics 101. Why should people vote for you if you aren’t promising anything new and improved?

            Biden has one thing right: abortion will be a good issue for Democrats. 85% of Americans, a record high, now support, abortion rights with or without exceptions. Republican actions following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, reek of right-wing overreach, making even evangelical Christian conservatives uncomfortable. Pregnant women—including those who spent tens of thousands of dollars undergoing in vitro fertilization—have nearly died since the Dobbs decision prompted doctors to wait to abort their fetuses until they were coding. Each case like this makes for a potentially devastating Democratic attack ad—just wait until the first death.

            Perhaps the biggest misfire in the 2024 cycle thus far has been Biden’s hammering away against “extreme MAGA Republicans,” often in conjunction with footage from the January 6th Capitol riot. American elections are always about the future, never the past, and in a country as ahistorical as this one three years had might as well be an eternity. January 6th was a shameful and embarrassing chapter in history, but it’s no more worth wallowing in than were the September 11th terrorist attacks, which we have finally managed to put behind us. It wasn’t a coup d’état, it wasn’t an insurrection, we weren’t close to dictatorship and Biden looks silly when he says otherwise.

            To the extent that January 6th offers red meat to the Democratic voting base, its negative potency is stronger still. The tiny subset of protesters who invaded the Capitol building cannot reasonably tarnish the thousands more attendees who attended and did not go inside, much less Republican voters or Trump supporters as a whole, yet it’s impossible to interpret the implication any other way. The problem for Biden is not that a base strategy turns off swing voters—there are so few of them, it’s high time for Democrats to start ignoring them anyway—but rather that refusing to shut up about January 6th energizes the GOP by feeding their narrative that they are beleaguered by evil coastal elites and demoralizes progressive voters, who yearn for a party that fights for significant policy change rather than bickering over symbolism.

(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 #82: Two Hosts, Two Cases of COVID! McCarthy’s Bosses’ House. Biden’s Pilfered Docs.

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Ted Rall

Political cartoonists Ted Rall and Scott Stantis may come from opposite sides of the political divide, but they have something in common: both of them currently have COVID-19. But they also have a work ethic! So here’s the brain-fog edition of the DMZ America podcast, complete with live Covid swab tests, a look at the House of Representatives in the Kevin McCarthy era, or more accurately the era of those who own Kevin McCarthy, and the entertaining prospect of watching Democrats explain the subtle differences between Joe Biden’s decision to take classified documents from the White House home with him, and Donald Trump’s decision to do the same thing.

 

 

Work Remotely As a Cop

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Ted Rall

Police departments are having trouble recruiting new members. Many unemployed people prefer to work from home. Now there’s a solution: work as a cop, from home!

Biden is Giving $40 Billion to Ukraine. Here’s What That Money Could Do Here.

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Ted Rall

            On top of the $2 billion it already sent to Ukraine, the Joe Biden Administration has asked Congress to ignore its previous request for a $10 billion to pay for updated COVID-19 vaccines for American citizens (pandemic? what pandemic?) and send an additional $33 billion to Ukraine instead. The House of Representatives not only obliged, but authorized more than Biden wanted, $40 billion.

            The U.S. Congress does this with military spending all the time. They live to please!

            Every Democratic congressman voted “yes” to send weapons to a country that has “several hundred monuments, statues, and streets named after Nazi collaborators,” according to The Forward. That even includes AOC’s “Squad,” who claimed to be progressive.

            In the Senate, a rare voice of opposition was raised by libertarian Republican Rand Paul. “We don’t need to be the sugar daddy and the policemen of the world,” Paul remarked. For his trouble, Paul was bizarrely accused of “treason” by online commenters who suggested that his surly Kentucky neighbor should assault him again. All Paul wanted was a week to go over exactly where all that money is going.

            Whatever you think of the crisis in Ukraine, Paul has a point. A week isn’t going to make any difference. We should distrust bullies who tell us there’s no time to think, hurry up, shut up, do what we tell you. The total lack of debate in Washington, and in the news media, over the quick transfer of $40 billion to a country that is not a U.S. ally, has a grim human rights record and recently banned a bunch of political parties and opposition cable news channels, ought to prompt some sort of discussion. First and foremost, we ought to consider just how much money $40 billion is and what it could do here in the United States, for Americans.

            The $40 billion we are sending to Ukraine will not change the outcome of the war. The United States would never commit enough money or ground troops to do that because it would risk World War III with Russia. The $40 billion will buy a lot of weapons and ammunition that will kill Russians and Ukrainians—nothing more, nothing less.

            So how much, exactly, is $40 billion?

Here in the United States, here are some of the things that $40 billion could do:

            A $2,000 scholarship for every college student.

            A $6,000 scholarship for every college student who is officially in poverty.

            $72,000 to every homeless person.

            $2,400 to every veteran.

            $410,000 to every public school.

            $1.3 million to every public high school. It could be used to buy books and other equipment, fix broken infrastructure, build something new for the kids. $1.3 million would pay the salaries of 20 new teachers for 10 years.

            $500 to each American family. I pledge to use my $500 not to kill any Russians or Ukrainians.

            $420 to every cat. That’s a lot of kibble and litter. Cats don’t kill Russians or Ukrainians.

            $2 million each to every person wrongfully convicted of a murder they didn’t commit.

            Give a new, fully-loaded car to a million people.

            Give a sweet, fully-loaded Macbook Pro laptop to 10 million people.

            Give a sweet new TV to 100 million people.

            Everyone who currently subscribes to Netflix gets three years for free.

            Every adult gets a free subscription to the Washington Post digital edition for three years.

            Every adult gets 15 free tickets to the actual, real, in-person, not-at-home movies.

            $40 billion would repair almost all of the 220,000 bridges in the United States that need to be repaired and replace all of the 79,500 that need to be replaced. Add the $2 billion we already sent to Ukraine and you can delete the word “almost.”

            $40 billion would buy Twitter.

            $86,000 for everyone raped over the last year.

            $7,000 to help the caregivers of everyone suffering from dementia.

            It would hire 50,000 journalists for 20 years. There are only 6,500 now.

            $4,000 to every self-identified Native American and Alaska Native. It’s not nearly enough considering what has been done to them, but it’s better than the current nothing.

            What if, for some strange reason, we don’t want to use that $40 billion to help our own people right here at home, one out of nine of whom is officially poor—some of whom are actually starving? While the inclination to shovel money at other countries while so many of our own citizens are suffering is nearly impossible to understand, some people (the President, several hundred members of Congress) have such a mindset and therefore must be addressed.

            If we’re looking for a country in dire need of, and richly deserving of, $40 billion, we need look no further than Afghanistan.

            Afghanistan, which the U.S. brutally occupied for 20 years after invading without just cause, is suffering from the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world. Half its population—20 million people—is suffering from “acute hunger,” according to the UN. The nation collapsed because the U.S. pulled the plug on the economy when it withdrew, imposed draconian economic sanctions in a fit of spiteful pique and seized $7 billion in Afghanistan government funds. Biden has promised a little aid, though none has shown up in Kabul.

From the Intercept: “A senior Democratic foreign policy aide, who was granted anonymity to openly share his thoughts on the Biden administration’s actions, said the policy ‘effectively amounts to mass murder.’ According to the aide, Biden ‘has had warnings from the UN Secretary General, the International Rescue Committee, and the Red Cross, with a unanimous consensus that the liquidity of the central bank is of paramount importance, and no amount of aid can compensate for the destruction of Afghanistan’s financial system and the whole macro economy.’”

Democrats recently joined Republicans to vote no on a modest proposal to study the effect of U.S. sanctions against the Afghan people.

            Then again, we really do need that COVID money.

(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of a new graphic novel about a journalist gone bad, “The Stringer.” Order one today. You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)

When It Cares, the U.S. Government Is Extremely Efficient

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Ted Rall

           As the COVID-19 pandemic has made painfully clear, our healthcare system is a disaster. 12% of Americans are uninsured and 21% are underinsured. Many counties have zero or just one healthcare plan on offer through their local ACA marketplace, so there is no price competition whatsoever. Due to the lack of competition, and price gouging, by for-profit insurers, the average family of four who buys insurance through Obamacare pays a whopping $25,000 a year in premiums and deductibles—more than a third of their income after taxes.

            More than 18,000 Americans die annually due to lack of medical insurance.

            This is very sad, especially for them and their families. But nothing can be done about it. Lame as it is, the Affordable Care Act is as good as it gets. Until the Republicans get back in charge, when they will try to get rid of it again. Political dysfunction, amirite?

            When they care about something, however, the U.S. government can be incredibly efficient.

The U.S. government really cares about war.

Just two days after Russia invaded, President Biden signed a memo authorizing the transfer of $350 million of weapons to Ukraine. Within three weeks, almost all the antitank weapons, kamikaze drones and other war materiel had arrived in Ukraine. That’s less time than it takes first-class mail to get to some places within the United States.

            If you are sick and uninsured, consider a move to Kyiv. As we saw in Afghanistan, U.S. weapons have a habit of disappearing and being sold for profit in war zones. If you still have enough energy and a little luck, you might be able to pilfer one of those American-made radar systems or a few boxes of grenade launchers to finance your chemotherapy. Even if not, Ukraine offers something the United States probably never will: a universal healthcare system.

            Out-of-control college tuition costs have pushed 9 million young borrowers and their families into default on $124 billion in student loans. 80% of these young men and women came from families with total incomes under $40,000; so they’re not deadbeats, they’re poor. The burden of student loan debt hobbles America’s best and brightest just as they are starting out their adult lives. They defer or never purchase homes and cars, and are unable to save for retirement. This hurts the real estate, automobile and durable-goods businesses and turns many talented people into future welfare recipients.

            This is highly unfortunate, especially for them and their families. But nothing can be done about it. Lame as it was, President Biden’s campaign promise to cancel $10,000 in student loan debt was as good as could be hoped for. And he never followed through. Responding to pressure from Republicans and right-wing Democrats, Biden’s latest federal budget, for 2022, doesn’t contain any provisions for student loan forgiveness. They said they were too worried about the deficit.

            Republicans and right-wing Democrats, on the other hand, only worry about the deficit sometimes. Liberals, conservatives, Democrats, Republicans and every other strain of American House representative and Senator quickly approved an additional $13.6 billion in military aid to Ukraine less than a month after the first shipment of cash. There was strong bipartisan support for the measure, which was immediately signed into law by President Biden. Yay, America!

            So don’t despair if you are broke, defaulting on your student loans and unable to escape poverty because even under bankruptcy you can’t get rid of student debt. Scrape up whatever money you still have and hop a plane to Ukraine. Even for non-Ukrainian citizens, total cost of tuition, housing, food, books and other fees at colleges and universities in Ukraine rarely exceed $4000 a year — and they’re usually cheaper. Alternatively, you can try to pass yourself off as Ukrainian at Texas A&M or Hampton University in Virginia, both of which now offer free room, board and tuition to Ukrainian nationals. Americans, of course, need not apply.

            One out of six American children, 12 million total, officially live in poverty. Neither political party seems much to care, and child poverty has not been a major campaign issue in decades. So the problem continues to worsen.

            This is a total bummer, especially for the kids and their families. But nothing can be done about it. Republicans and right-wing Democrats vote against child tax credits, citing the need to balance the budget and concerns that some parents might not use the money to take care of their kids.

            But the budget doesn’t always matter. Nor is careful stewardship of public funds always a priority. When the need is great, both parties come together and overlook such trivialities. President Biden, with the support of Republicans, liberal Democrats and right-wing Democrats, just announced an additional $800 million in military aid to Ukraine, bringing the total to more than $2.5 billion. Who cares if some of that gear winds up in the hands of neo-Nazis? In $100 bills, the cash would weigh 25 tons.

            Those who criticize the United States government as inefficient couldn’t possibly be more mistaken. Congress and the White House are lightning quick and incredibly generous—when it matters.

(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of a new graphic novel about a journalist gone bad, “The Stringer.” Order one today. 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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