Ted Rall for August 25, 2023

Yup. The end of the current total dysfunction of the political system in the USA. I remember when the parties’ candidates were both… good enough. And they would say that about each other. They called each other “honored opponent” and they (mostly, at least sorta) MEANT it. I think it was Newt (The Reptile) Gingrich that pushed the right wingers into thinking of it as a battle with winners and losers… but I also think he was telling them what they wanted to hear.

That ain’t the way I heard it. Joyce Reid was talking about being a black teenager in NYC and people like Trump and Rudy used them like hate toys. Trump and Rudy are partly being prosecuted in Georgia because they slandered poll workers. Republican karma is long over due.

I don’t know if Ruby Freeman will feel any better today, but the man who harassed Freeman to make false statements about election operations on election night in 2020 is now DETAINED in the Fulton County Jail! Yes, Harrison Floyd, the head of Black Voices for Trump, has no bond agreement, so he is now a guest of the filthy, lice, scabies, and bed bug ridden Fulton County Jail. And before anyone feels the least bit of sympathy for Floyd, he has already been arrested in Maryland for assaulting an FBI agent!

The assault of the FBI agent occurred during the serving of a subpeona from Jack Smith’s grand jury.

‘Booked like a common criminal’: MSNBC’s Joy Reid blasts Trump as ‘king of scandal and disrepute’

Donald Trump is being blasted Thursday evening ahead of being booked at the Fulton County, Georgia Jail. As Donald Trump exited his private plane with “TRUMP” emblazoned on the sides after touching down in Atlanta to be arrested and booked on 13 charges, including racketeering, related to his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election he lost, MSNBC’s Joy Reid delivered strong criticism of the ex-president.

Trump “produced” this event, Reid explained, “in the sense that he could have just accepted the peaceful transfer of power. It’s what every other president did. Hillary Clinton – I’m sure was devastated at losing an election to this guy, who was the most inadequate human being who has ever been President of the United States. But he accepted it. She congratulated him,” Reid said.

“All 45 previous Presidents have managed to do that very simple thing. George Washington didn’t even have to do it, they didn’t even ask him to do it, before there was a 22nd amendment, everyone did it.”

Trump, Reid charged, “created this in the sense that we did not have to be here. Our democracy didn’t have to be here. We didn’t have to be in a position where the former President of the United States is now going to be booked like a common criminal and have a mug shot. That is his fault. He did it. He wanted the spectacle of being President for life. He wanted to not leave office. He wanted to be this. He decided to be king. And now he is the king of scandal and disrepute.”

Ted, I guess you refuse to acknowledge that democracy in America is in severe danger of being eliminated and voting is the only way to prevent that elimination. For the foreseeable future, every election is the most important in history.

Sucks, but it’s true.

Once democracy is gone, it ain’t coming back.

I just got done taking to an insurance salesman who tried to convince me that I could die tomorrow and then my family would starve in the street unless I bought live insurance today. Politics are akin to insurance sales.

Nobody says this

Except for the line about end times this is a perfect Ted Rall cartoon.

The frightening part is there are people who believe that voting 3rd party makes perfect sense.

I still haven’t given up hope that it will be possible to see a third party and their candidate worth voting for in my lifetime.However, the problem is not the weakness of the republican candidate, the problem are the 74 million voters apparently ready to support the fascist takeover of power.

How’s about we take away all the power we’ve given the federal government over the last 50 years and give it back to the states and the people? That way, psychos like Trump wouldn’t want to be president and couldn’t do any harm if he were.

At least, let’s move away from the Cult of the Presidency that’s made the POTUS way more important than the constitution allows.

The problem with Mr. Rall is that he does not understand the American Public. I suspect if Mr. Rall and I sat down and discussed politics we would agree on most things. However, most Americans would not. Americans seem to be firmly in the middle of most issues. I suspect that a third party made of the more liberal Republican and the more conservative Democrats would clean up in elections and probably get much more done.

I doubt Mr. Rall would vote for that, however.

I think it sucks that voting for liberals these days is more about ameliorating the damage that can be caused by conservatives, than moving forward in a constructive way…but the situation is what it is. I prefer to vote pragmatically rather than risking having total conservative Republican domination. But I recognize I am biased. As a gay man, conservative rule is especially terrifying. Mistreating and marginalizing me and people I care about would be high on their “to-do” list.

Wonderful DMZ yesterday, got to enjoy a general goto by the wondertwins of false equivalencies between right-wing populism dysfunctions and those of the Left. Ted and Stanti have a problem with the Left being happy about the orange idiot getting his comeuppance, too much glee or something. Ted thinks Lincoln was wrong for trying to keep the country together, not enough in common between the North and South. My question to Ted is, would Ohio and Indiana be switching conferences to the SEC (Ted don’t know no football). Ted, I think aptly noted that the orange idiot will not go to jail. I agree, and am ok with that concept, especially since I believe he is hampering right-wing populism’s cause.

A long time ago, republicans realised that if they were true to their beliefs (corporations uber alles, plutocracy is the only true rule) they’d never hold any office. So they started to include people and issues they don’t care about but they could convince they were on “their” side: religious groups, socially divisive issues, and so on, to get a majority. None of the groups they absorbed, no matter how abhorrent, will inconvenience the real conservatives so they don’t care. They just want power (and money).

Longest Berniebro tantrum ever…what did those horrible Dems say in 2016? They warned that all the things that happened would happen if the orange colon polyp were elected. The right keeps creeping towards total fascism and that does make every election the most important up until now. Your lack of foresight doesn’t mean they’re wrong. So cross your arms, pout, stamp you little feet, and hopefully you will hold your breath until you turn blue.

What “Dem Talk” is this? I’ve not heard any say anything like that. Voting 3rd party would only cost the Republicans more votes.

I wonder if Ted would have supported George Wallace in 1968?

I like the flying pig.

The two-party system, is busted. “Vote your choice” works in an idealized system, in which we perceive ourselves as sufficiently organized to make our third party choices actually matter, rather than just acting as spoilers. Someone else said it better. Your vote is not a marriage, it is, for better or worse, a strategic choice. Don’t make the Perfect the enemy of the Better. You’ll just be shooting yourself in the foot, and taking the rest of us down with you.

I drank the 3rd party kool aid in 1992, never ever again. RFK Jr is a great option for dissatisfied liberals though.

Not dangerous. Then neither is a shark. Or a rattlesnake. Or a funnel-web spider from Australia. Or a loaded assault rifle. Or the atom bomb. Or…

What I think is missing in this discussion is the recognition that effectively we do have a third party. It used to be called the Dixiecrats and is now called MAGA. Before the Civil Rights Act, this party cooperated with the Democrats because of the party of Lincoln was an anathema to them. Then the Democrats went and supported civil rights and became the new anathema to that fraction of the party. When the Republicans invited the Dixiecrats to cooperate with them, there was a stampede to change party registrations. When Democrats and Republicans have worked together, it has mostly been by end runs of the two segments from each party around the MAGA/Dixiecrats.

Any third party in America has to start at the city and state level, then move on to electing congresspeople, and only then aim for the Presidency. Build people trust in a third party first.

SOMEWHAT O/T

And on another note, Deutsche Welle is suggesting that the video of the burning-aeroplane falling from the sky is an old, archived vid being repurposed, that that vid was of a shootdown over Voronezh in June(?), and that there is no solid evidence that Prigozhin was on the aircraft that really crashed, or perhaps even that there was a real, fatal crash at all.

“Hardly anything that comes out of Russia these days is credible,” said Peter Stano,a European Commission spokesman for foreign affairs.

I do wish Florida and Texas would secede.

If only we had a 2nd party.