Recent Comments

1. over 15 years ago on Ted Rall

   Well, how’d you like THAT election?!

2. over 15 years ago on Ted Rall

   IF by defining winning you mean propping up a Shia client state of Iran, yea team! Nevertheless you didn’t address the cost of a war which has to be paid for by SOMEBODY. Forget economics, this is simple thermodynamics. This is the first prolonged war for which no taxes were increased, they were cut for oil companies, and now we need stimulus out the wazoo (“We are all Keynesians now!”) because refinancing debt is the only leg left under our financial foundation. The interest on the national note (something “conservatives” used to obsess over) is now about equal to the Pentagon budget. I hate paying taxes too but I’d at least like to think SOMETHING is being done with my money. Now that Fannie/Freddie are in government receivership, the debt has essentially doubled overnight (it took Reagan a whole term to do that!), and now we get to fork it over to cover the losses of great folks like the Chinese central bank, holding over $300 billion of the GSE’s securitized obligations alone. As for taxes rising because of UHC, going in hock for the rest of your illness-shortened life for being underinsured is simply a tax by any other name. Six o’ one… I’ll take a healthier (financially and medically) nation over a sick foreign policy any day.

3. over 15 years ago on Clay Bennett

   Four decades ago, on average CEOs made about 31 times more money than their lowest paid employees. Now they make about 350 times more. Not everyone is slipping economically because of their work “ethnic”!

4. over 15 years ago on Ted Rall

   Hey Bob, Continuing from yesterday: “The five U.S. Army brigades committed to Iraq as part of the surge were 2nd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division: Deployed to Baghdad, January 2007 4th Brigade, 1st Infantry Division: Deployed to Baghdad, February 2007 3rd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division: Deployed to southern Baghdad Belts, March 2007 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division: Deployed to Diyala province, April 2007 2nd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division: Deployed to the southeast of Baghdad, May 2007 This brought the number of U.S. brigades in Iraq from 15 to 20. Additionally, 4,000 Marines in Al Anbar had their tour extended.” Al-Anbar did not receive any new troops as a result of the “surge”. The Awakening Councils, financed by the US taxpayer, and the dispersement of Shi’a out of Al-Anbar, contributed more to the lull than show of force. And as for your assertion that massive taxes would be needed to finance UHC, we could have had all that and more by skipping out on a needless $700 billion war in 2003. Thank God the Chinese haven’t pulled the paper we sold them yet. When they do, explain to your great-grandchildren why they’re still paying your taxes in 2100.

5. over 15 years ago on Ted Rall

   Frank Herbert wrote in Dune that the first step to avoiding a trap is knowing of its existence. As FUBAR as things will be when Büsh leaves office, electing Lincoln, Roosevelt, Jefferson and Washington put together wouldn’t be enough to straighten things out. Nice setup, boys.

6. over 15 years ago on Ted Rall

   I get it! The Republican party is so exclusive, you have to be in power to be considered a member! So you’re not a Republican either? How un-self-informed. Guess all my other points stand without dispute then. “In certain Diluvian elephants that were the terminal members of dying collateral lines, the tusks reached enormous lengths, completely out of proportion to the skull and body, clearly exceeding by far the optimal size relationship. Furthermore, since in the mammoth these teeth curved sharply upward and in the the American Elephas columbi begin to spiral backward and inward, they could no longer serve their orginal purpose … They had become a heavy burden, an impediment, for these animals.”

   Otto H. Schindewolf Basic Questions in Paleontology 1950

7. over 15 years ago on Ted Rall

   Mghslldke&)((*h, 1) Even after dismissing our accusation of racism, you can’t help stepping in it again. “I just figured” all blacks eat soul food as is silly as saying Tiger Woods hangs out at country clubs because he’s part white. 2) If by socialized health care you mean universal HC, this is something every citizen of an industrial western democracy is already entitled to, EXCEPT the USA. Go ask any 10 Canadians if they would trade their system for ours, and watch their reaction. Half of GM’s assembly didn’t move there because they know how to operate a drill press better. 3) As your command of the language and keyboard (too loudly him receding the waters? said siad? 2 1/2 of tough?) is as good as your command of facts, maybe a link to this segment would be helpful, as I’m skeptical of any interpretation by people who believe NPR and Atlanta newspapers are Marxist propagandists. Sad to say, Obama wishes to sell national security cred as being able to fix the Cheney administration’s monumental strategic blunders, and the surge is now hopelessly mixed in with all that. Bottom line: the surge was only a small part of the downturn of violence in Iraq, and the tactic of looking the other way as Baghdad was ethnically cleansed of Sunnis is the biggest part of that “success”. 2.5 million refugees, the 10% of Iraq’s populace who aren’t returning home anytime soon, would love to tell you all about it.

8. over 15 years ago on Tom Toles

   Hey, just for the record, Todd Palin was a card-carrying member of the Alaska Independence Party, founded by one Joe Vogler. The AIP advocates secession. Joe Vogler was murdered in what his killer described as a plastic explosives deal gone bad, his body dumped in a Fairbanks gravel pit to rot for over a year. He was buried in the Yukon territory to fulfill his wish that he not lie in rest under the American flag. By the GOP’s standards, Todd Palin hates America. As a liberal, however, I’m willing to cut the bastard some slack. I just think he’s a lousy dad.

9. over 15 years ago on Ted Rall

   Dear Friend MNFKDZWCS*%DSKJ69, Nothing makes me laugh harder than an attempted refutation that only PROVES my point. After insulting me, you wave me off any further insulting. After accusing me of vagueness, you proceed to wander, including in no particular order, conflating Obama with Marxists (he’s gotten more love from the Wall Street boyz than McW!), dismissing any source of corrective information as left-wing (an Atlanta paper?), claiming without even one example that Bill-O exposed Obama’s supposed wrong-headedness, and finishing with a weak stab at a racial slur. Thanks also for bringing up hypocrisy without me having to mention it first. Half the people in the Republican party only seem to belong because membership works like a get out of jail free card.

10. over 15 years ago on Ted Rall

    Uninformed Bob, Start with Bill-O the Clown O’Lielly. Add Rush Limbo. http://www.ajc.com/printedition/content/printedition/2008/09/03/tucked.html Pinhead!