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Good news for Obama

Skeptic

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Ted Rall is disappointed with him.

I'm no fan of Obama, but I admit that if you piss off Ted Rall, the talentless, idiotic anti-American "cartoonist" (I use the word in quotes because I don't think he has enough drawing talent to qualify as a cartoonist, political "message" aside), you must be doing at least something right.

As I said before the elections: Obama was partially elected because the support of idiots on the "hard left" who were sure he is one of them. The more they were for him before the elections, the more they'll be against him now -- and neither their hysterical support before, nor hysterical disappointment after, the election means much about Obama.

Then again, I admit that wasn't a hard prophecy to make. No fair getting prophecy points for predicting the obvious.
 
Skeptic said:
I'm no fan of Obama, but I admit that if you piss off Ted Rall, the talentless, idiotic anti-American "cartoonist" (I use the word in quotes because I don't think he has enough drawing talent to qualify as a cartoonist, political "message" aside), you must be doing at least something right.
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I'm no fan of Ted Rall, but I admit that if you piss off Skeptic,
Edited by locknar: 
Rule 12 breach
you must be doing at least something right.


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Post edited. Attack the arguement, not the arguer.
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Locknar
 
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Rall voted for Obama, and that's about it. If you were even slightly familiar with his work, you would know that it is neither surprising nor new for Rall to be criticizing Obama. Rall has been harshly criticizing Obama for a long time now.

Here is the archive of his syndicated cartoons. I've gone through a few dozen from recent weeks, from around the inauguration, and from just after and just before the election. I haven't found a single one that is supportive. You can go back a lot further and find that the same thing is true of Bill Clinton.

Obama hasn't "lost" Ted Rall any more than he's "lost" Newt Gingrich. The mistake is in thinking that Rall is a "leftist" or a "liberal" and also thinking Obama is a "leftist" or a "liberal," and that therefore there's something unusual about Rall criticizing Obama. The problem is in failing to see that Rall doesn't see Obama has a "leftist." This is neither new nor surprising to those who are familiar with Rall.
 
I would agree with you, linusrichard -- if it wasn't for the fact that Rall, before the elections did support Obama. True, he "parted ways" with him sooner than most loony left-wingers -- to judge from Rall's incoherent rants, probably because Obama didn't use the inaguration speech to declare all Republicans can now be shot on sight, or something similar. But that's because Rall is an uber left-wing loony, and therefore, even more quickly disappointed at Obama's "betrayals" than the regular left-wing loony.

As someone sarcastically noted, paraphrasing the famous Vietnam-era quote about Walter Cronkite, Obama's political career is over: when you lost Ted Rall, you lost the anti-American loonatic fringe. Oh, what will Obama now do without his support, I fail to imagine...

My more general point is that there seems to be a rebellion simmering on the far left against the Obamessiah, as THE ONE turns out to not be THE ONE, after all. But, unlike some conservatives who noted this trend, I do not see this as something that means anything about Obama -- either good or bad -- since the small, if very noisy, section of the left which saw Obama as a Messiah before the elections is made of precisely the kind of loonies that Obama really doesn't want support from anyway.
 
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Rall's more than disappointed; he wants Obama to step down:

From health care to torture to the economy to war, Obama has reneged on pledges real and implied. So timid and so owned is he that he trembles in fear of offending, of all things, the government of Turkey. Obama has officially reneged on his campaign promise to acknowledge the Armenian genocide. When a president doesn’t have the nerve to annoy the Turks, why does he bother to show up for work in the morning?

Obama is useless. Worse than that, he’s dangerous. Which is why, if he has any patriotism left after the thousands of meetings he has sat through with corporate contributors, blood-sucking lobbyists and corrupt politicians, he ought to step down now — before he drags us further into the abyss.
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Interestingly, the flashpoint for this particular screed is the preventive detention idea that Obama floated a week or two ago, which got surprisingly little pushback from the civil libertarians around here when I mentioned it (with a few notable exceptions: Gumboot, Architect, Linusrichard, INRM and Little Hulkster).
 
Brainster said:
Interestingly, the flashpoint for this particular screed is the preventive detention idea that Obama floated a week or two ago, which got surprisingly little pushback from the civil libertarians around here when I mentioned it (with a few notable exceptions: Gumboot, Architect, Linusrichard, INRM and Little Hulkster).
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The others didn't care because it couldn't be used to blame the eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil Bush (TM).
 
Rall is suffering from the delusion that just because voters rejected Bush they are ready to go to the far left.
 
Skeptic said:
My more general point is that there seems to be a rebellion simmering on the far left against the Obamessiah, as THE ONE turns out to not be THE ONE, after all. .
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So McCain was right after all: Obama was "That One" not "The One."

How droll: Rall makes McCain's humorous quip into a curious bit of prophecy.

Oh, and Rall is a moron:
From health care to torture to the economy to war, Obama has reneged on pledges real and implied. So timid and so owned is he that he trembles in fear of offending, of all things, the government of Turkey
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The man has been on the job less than six months. For the love of all that is tequila, you can't fix health care, nor the economy, in six months.

As to Turkey, Rall would be a fool that tried to hustle the East, if this expectoration of his represents his world view.

DR
 
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Darth Rotor said:
The man has been on the job less than six months. For the love of all that is tequila, you can't fix health care, nor the economy, in six months.
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Our internal economist at my job predicts inventories will deplete enough by september that production will start to increase. None of that has the slightest to do with Obama, but the script is already written.

When we start producing again and things start to get better, it will be attributed to the stimulus bill and the megabudget, even though most of those dollars won't have been spent yet.

I have a feeling we need to get ready for many FDR comparisons and misplaced credit. It won't pass the sniff test, but the american voting public is easy to deceive.
 
While I don't agree with Rall, he does have a point that is hard to dismiss:
US urges rejection of Guantanamo Uighurs case

President Barack Obama's administration has asked the Supreme Court to reject a request by Chinese Uighurs held at the Guantanamo Bay prison and cleared of all charges to be released on US soil.

The petitioners "have already obtained relief. They are no longer being detained as enemy combatants," wrote US Solicitor General Elena Kagan in the administration's filing to the Supreme Court Friday.

Kagan wrote that the men, members of a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority who fear persecution if returned to China, "are being housed in relatively unrestricted conditions given the status of Guantanamo Bay as a United States military base."

Four years ago US authorities cleared the 17 imprisoned Uighurs, but they are stuck at the Guantanamo prison due to fears that Beijing would torture them if they returned to their homeland in northwestern China's remote Xinjiang province.

At the prison, the Uighurs are held at "Camp Iguana," a special area for detainees cleared for release. They have more freedom and greater privileges than most other prisoners, including a recreational space and a library, according to the Pentagon.
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Essentially they are arguing that men who have been "cleared of all charges" should nevertheless continue to be held. The only reason I can think of is fear of a political backlash. Honest civil libertarians should be upset.
 
Of course, if Rall thinks that Obama is a "monster," presumably he thinks the same thing about every previous president including Washington and Lincoln. So in that sense, Obama's in pretty good company.
 
I can't stand Rall. The sooner the left realizes what a cancer he is the better.
 
I'm pretty hard left, and I'm disappointed by Obama, but not surprised. I never thought he was anything other than a moderate (for the US).
 
About ten years ago Ted Rall had a Sunday show here on KKKFI, a lone lefty-voice on a leading right-wing station. He used J Church's "My Favorite Place" as theme music, which meant he was cool. Unfortunately, he did not have a voice for radio; he sounded effeminate, not even close to a firebreather. I had an e-mail correspondence with him once.

"Skeptic" writes:
My more general point is that there seems to be a rebellion simmering on the far left against the Obamessiah, as THE ONE turns out to not be THE ONE, after all.
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Who are these people on the "far left"? Go ahead, name names.

The problem is not that Rall is so far to the left, but that our country has so many demented conservatives in the mainstream. By any normal standard, Obama's a moderate, not the "socialist" desperate conservatives would have people believe.

He was never going to be very good on health-care, but he's failing even by the low standards we would expect. Torture and Guantanamo.

Darth Rotor:
For the love of all that is tequila, you can't fix health care, nor the economy, in six months.
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This is an unfair reading. Obama says he's going to accomplish Q by doing X, Y, Z. Rall isn't criticizing Obama's failure to accomplish Q, but his failure to follow through on the promised policies. Yes, it would be unreasonable to expect Obama to somehow fix the economy by June. It's not unreasonable to demand the administration moving forward on promised policies.

Obama's a big wimp. The Democratic Party can't even stand up for gay marriage and pot legalization, so how where will they find the courage to push back against their corporate masters? And now that they're back in power they can make empty promises to the public while raking in ungodly amounts of cash from the usual players who pay the party in power.
 
Cain said:
"Skeptic" writes:


Who are these people on the "far left"? Go ahead, name names.
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I can't really think of anybody who claimed he was messianic other than repubs and supporters of opponents, and that was only because some of Obama's supporters were passionate (oh noes!).
 
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