Cartoon for March 1

Republicans are accusing Barack Obama of not being patriotic. Their reasons include his decision to stop wearing an American flag lapel pin because the symbol had been hijacked by right-wing neocons, his failure to place his hand over his heart during the National Anthem, and his wife's comment that she was proud of the United States for the first time during her adult life.

Cartoon for February 28

The New York Times accused John McCain of having an affair with a lobbyist for whom he did special favors, thus dishonoring his office. If the Times was wrong, and imperiled both his marriage and his run for the presidency, why didn't McCain file a libel lawsuit?

TED RALL COLUMN: HOPE YOU CAN'T VOTE FOR

Ralph Nader Appeals to Disenfranchised Liberals

"What," editorializes U.S. News & World Report, "does Ralph Nader bring to the political dialogue this year? Answer: nothing except for his own inflated ego." Dimestore psychoanalysis was the standard reaction to Nader's third third-party presidential bid. "An ego-driven spoiler," the Des Moines Register called him. "He seems to have a pretty high opinion of his own work," jabbed Barack Obama.

You see, other politicians who seek the presidency are like the Dalai Lama, humble and self-effacing. Obama and Hillary? Two sweeties. Not an ounce of ego between them.

Even our former colonial masters put in their two pence. Nader's "egotism and cult of left-wing purity has been an utter disaster for the values he affects to espouse," railed the UK Independent. Nader's values would fare better, apparently, were he to shut up and keep them to himself.

Is Ralph really a spoiler? To answer "yes," you have to buy three assumptions:
First, that the two-party system is written in stone. But it's not. There's nothing in the Constitution about two parties, or about parties at all. (The Founding Fathers were dismayed when parties emerged around 1800.) Besides, the Democratic-Republican stranglehold ill serves a diverse population of 300 million. Because parliamentary democracies offer voters a wide selection of parties representing almost every conceivable ideology, voter turnout in Europe typically exceeds 80 percent. In the U.S., most registered voters stay home.

Assumption two: voters ought to vote strategically, i.e., for the lesser of two evils. Even for those who accept this curiously alienating concept, however, evil often comes in pairs. Most citizens think the U.S. has lost more than it has gained under NAFTA; neither Obama nor McCain want to repeal it. Most people want the U.S. out of Iraq; both men have repeatedly voted to prolong the war. How shall anti-NAFTA, antiwar voters divine which will prove least anathematic as president? Should they resort to a ouija board?

The third leg of the Nader=Spoiler tripod relies on a belief that opinions espoused by a small minority of a population are inherently worthless. But, as anyone who has successfully gambled on a business can attest, today's fringe thinking becomes tomorrow's conventional wisdom. After 9/11, nine percent of Americans thought George W. Bush was a lousy president. Seventy-two percent feel that way now. America's greatest political achievements--emancipation, women's suffrage, the 40-hour work week--were first espoused by tiny voting blocs led by figures on the political fringe.

But that's not why Ralph says he's running. His platform seeks to promote causes that are popular with an overwhelming majority of American voters, yet have been sidelined by the two major parties and their allies in the media.

Fifty-five percent of Americans believe that Bush deserves to be impeached, according to a November 2007 American Research Center poll. (Considering Iraq, Guantánamo, domestic surveillance and torture alone, it's surprising the number isn't higher.) But "impeachment is off the table," Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced as the Democrats recaptured Congress in 2006, and they haven't mentioned it since. America's pro-impeachment majority obviously can't expect Republicans to prosecute their own guy. Aside from most voters, only Ralph Nader wants impeachment proceedings against the "criminal recidivist regime of George Bush and Dick Cheney."

So who are the fringe weirdoes: the out-of-touch media elite, or the guy who agrees with most of the people?

The two remaining major Democratic presidential contenders think that repeatedly name-checking John Edwards is sufficient to draw votes from his liberal Democratic supporters. But liberals "don't like Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama--for them, he sold out even before he was bought in," the Independent mocks. Only Nader offers "left-wing purity."

And what's wrong with that?

While McCain, Obama and Clinton repeatedly vote for funding the Iraq War, at the same time calling for expanding the war against Afghanistan--a doomed effort that was lost years ago--Nader wants to slash defense spending, the number-one cause of our skyrocketing federal deficit.

Americans favor "socialized medicine" (43 to 38 percent, says the February 14th Harris poll); only Nader agrees with them. Nader would repeal the Taft-Hartley Act, which destroyed labor unions; the other candidates haven't said squat about the single biggest reason real wages are shrinking.

What's wrong with that, say Democratic Party officials, is that Nader's first run attracted 2.7 percent of the vote in 2000. Nader drew support from liberals who didn't think Al Gore had enough "left-wing purity."

"This time I hope it doesn't hurt anyone," said Hillary. Nader "prevented Al Gore from being the 'greenest' president we could have had."

Maybe the Dems and their pundit pals ought to get their story straight. If Nader's "left-wing purity" is so fringe and wacky, how can he hurt them?

COPYRIGHT 2008 TED RALL

Cartoon for February 25

The media bemoans the psychological problems suffered by U.S. troops returning from Iraq. What about the people they killed?

Cartoon for February 23

Even Democratic commentators confuse Obama's name with another guy who's incredibly famous and charismatic (though not exactly as much of a charmer). Name recognition matters!

Cartoon for February 21

Bush Administration officials refuse to confirm or deny that they torture prisoners of war (or, as they call them, "detainees"). The reason for this vagueness, they explain, is national security: If they confirm that they torture, future victims could prepare themselves against it. If they deny it, no one will be sufficiently terrified of us.

This cartoon is a riff on the parenting book "What to Expect When You're Expecting."

Dear Albanians: You're Screwed
posted by Susan Stark



These past few days mark what American State-Controlled Media are calling the "independence of Kosovo" from Serbian control. And from all appearances, it appears to be so. Kosovar Albanians certain believe it. They even have a beautiful, bright, shiny new flag to prove it.

There's just one eensy, weensy, little problem with this. In fact, quite a few little problems with it.


This independence, unlike many other independences, i.e. Estonia, Lithuania, etc., is not accepted by a good number of people. Some major powers, such as Russia, China, and Spain, and quite a few other countries, do not recognize this little independence cocktail party, mainly out of fears that it will embolden separatist groups in their own countries.


Yet, somehow, this doesn't seem to matter to the American, UN, and NATO geniuses who decided to bitch-slap Serbia by unilaterally stripping it of it's terrority. Unilaterally meaning, nobody negotiated with Serbia about this, or even sent them a memo.


Some people would say that Serbia deserves this, but much of what Serbia has been accused of over the years has been grossly exaggerated, particularly what they supposedly did to the Albanians. Remember those 100,000 "mass graves" of Albanians that supposedly existed during the NATO bombing back in '99? It turns out there were less than 3000 graves, and they were multi-ethnic. So much for genocide. And what about the Serbs driving out the Albanians from Kosovo? No less than the distinguished MIT professor Noam Chomsky stated that before the time of the NATO bombings, there were NO Albanian refugees. In other words, it can be said the the Albanians were fleeing NATO more than they were fleeing Serbs.


The arrogance with which the Bitch-Slappers have declared that it is only a matter of time before world-wide acceptance of this farce as inevitable is exactly the same arrogance that existed right before the Invasion of Iraq, when the US would be greated as liberators and flowers given to US troops.


And for the 200,000 Serbs who still live in Kosovo, the ones not kicked out by the fascist KLA thugs? Why, to put it in Dick Cheney's terminology, they're just "dead-enders" and "Milosevites". They won't be a problem, will they? Oh, they will, when the bombing starts. And it's already started. Already, Serb fighters from the North are creeping into Kosovo as I write this. And much of Kosovo is bordered by Serbia proper, so coming in isn't as hard as you think.


But enough about the Serbs. Let's get back to the Albanians. The Albanians, unlike the Iraqis, have greated the US with cheers and flowers. God, that must feel like a fresh snort of blow for Bush Jr. after the mess he made in Iraq and Afghanistan.


Yes, the Albanians are throwin' a party! They're jubilant! And I feel the most profound pity for them. Because the slave who is the most enslaved is the one who thinks he's free. There are 17,000 NATO troops in Kosovo, the number of which can be expanded at any time, and a good number of KFOR troops. And now there is a nice puppet Prime Minister that will do NATO's (read, the US's) bidding. And I guarantee you that, if Wal-Mart starts invading Kosovar villages and putting the town shopkeepers out of business, or if Starbucks starts shutting down the local coffee-holes in Pristina, the Albanians will realize they've merely exchanged one master for another.


As the Native Americans here in the United States historically know, the US doesn't give something without taking either the same or more in return. That is where the term "Indian Giver" comes from. Ironically, the Serbs know this. If and when the Serbs start fighting back vigorously, there might actually be Albanians with them. Now that would be a delicious irony.

THIS WEEK'S SYNDICATED COLUMN: TALK NO, VOTE YES

How do Sleazy Senators Get Away With It?

A weird new tactic is highlighting the troubling extent to which the news media fails to hold our elected officials accountable. First, a politician calls a press conference where he issues a strident declaration for or against a bill. Big headlines follow. Then, when the matter comes up for a vote, he votes exactly the opposite of what he had said he would. And no one pays attention.

Ten years ago, not even the most outrageous legislator would attempt such brazen perfidy. Back then, "flip-flopping"--changing one's mind about an issue, voting one way and then the other--was the worst sin a pol could commit. Now he can take to the Senate floor, shout about a proposed law being a threat to mom, God and apple pie--and the next day vote "yes," secure in the knowledge that no reporter will call him on it. Thus can a reputation for courage and integrity be built. It's just that easy.

John McCain pulls this neat trick all the time. He even did it on the same issue twice: torture.

In 2005 the Arizona senator grandstanded in favor of an anti-torture amendment to a defense bill. Bush signed it, but then took it back with one of his notorious "signing statements." NYU law professor David Golove, an expert on Congressional politics, explained that Bush would continue to order torture in U.S. prisons and concentration camps. "The signing statement is saying 'I will only comply with this law when I want to,'" he said.

Senator McCain earned media plaudits for trying to stop torture. But he didn't try hard enough. He was too afraid of losing the backing of Bush and the GOP establishment for his 2008 presidential big. Bush conned him, and he shut up.

Then, on February 13th of this year, the Senate passed a bill that would ban waterboarding and other types of torture. This time, McCain came out and voted "no".

In its typically sloppy Orwellian style, The New York Times gave McCain credit for opposing torture--in his imagination--even as he voted in favor of it in the real world, on the Senate floor. "The leading Republican presidential candidate, Senator John McCain of Arizona, a former prisoner of war who steadfastly opposes the use of torture, voted against the bill," scrode The Times. "Steadfast"? "Formerly opposed" is more like it. Better yet, "sort of formerly opposed."

Everyone knows that Senator Barack Obama was against the Iraq War since the beginning. He's been blasting it in speeches since October 2002. He was still at it a few days ago, telling supporters: "John McCain and Hillary Clinton voted for a war in Iraq that should've never been authorized and never been waged. A war that is costing us thousands of precious lives and billions of dollars a week."

Nice talk. But less than a year ago, on March 27, Senator Obama voted to fund the Iraq War to the tune of $122 billion. On April 26 he voted yes again, for a $124 billion version of the same bill. On November 16, he voted for another $50 billion. Billions of dollars a week...

Reporters don't ask Obama why he keeps voting for the war if he's against it. Former President Bill Clinton did: "...there was no difference between [Obama] and George Bush on the war and...there's no difference in [Obama's] voting record and Hillary's...This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen." He was absolutely right.

The media pressured Clinton--not Obama--to apologize.

Obama built his career on headlines that portray him as a hopeful proponent of personal liberty and opportunity. Then, when no one is paying attention, he votes like a fascist.

Passed without debate in the grim months following 9/11, the USA-Patriot Act violates our basic privacy rights by allowing the government to spy on us. "Obama's Stand Against Patriot Act Cheered," declared a June 26, 2005 Associated Press story that appeared in hundreds of newspapers. Finally! Civil libertarians were happy. Many would go on to support Obama's presidential campaign. Indeed, any reasonable reader would infer that he was, as the story said, against the Patriot Act. Did he try to repeal it? No. He voted to renew it.

At a January 5th Democratic debate Senator Hillary Clinton confronted Obama: "You said you would vote against the Patriot Act--you came to the Senate and voted for it." It takes a hypocrite to know one. Hillary voted for it twice.

One of the most accomplished big talkers/vote wimps in the Senate is Clinton's fellow New Yorker Charles Schumer. On issue after issue Schumer, a notorious publicity hound, loudly lambastes the Republicans and their works. "The most dangerous place in Washington," Bob Dole once quipped, "is between Charles Schumer and a television camera." When push comes to a roll call vote, however, the Democrats' attack dog turns into a teacup poodle.

In January 2006 the Senate held confirmation hearings for Samuel Alito. "70 percent of all Americans," Schumer told CNN, "say they do not want a Supreme Court justice who will vote to overturn Roe [v. Wade]." If confirmed, he said, Alito "would vote to overturn." Since the right to an abortion is a key Democratic platform plank, everyone read his statement as a declaration of jihad against Alito's nomination.

On the first day of the hearing Schumer called Alito a right-wing extremist: "In case after case after case, you give the impression of applying careful legal reasoning, but too many times you happen to reach most conservative result. You give the impression of being a meticulous legal navigator, but, in the end, you always seem to chart a rightward course...Under your view, the President would...have inherent authority to wiretap American citizens without a warrant, to ignore Congressional acts at will, or to take any other action he saw fit under his inherent powers."
Schumer voted against Alito's confirmation. But, as a powerful member of the senate leadership, his support for a liberal-led filibuster could have kept Alito off the high court. He did nothing.

Eighteen months later, he issued a rare apology. "Every day," he said, "I am pained that I didn't do more to try to block Justice Alito...Alito shouldn't have been confirmed."

National news organizations chose not to cover Schumer's apology. You see, the news media doesn't merely refuse to call out say-one-thing-vote-the-opposite politicians. It won't even let them call themselves out.

COPYRIGHT 2008 TED RALL

Book Review: "The Age of American Unreason"

My review of Susan Jacoby's new book is in the San Diego Union-Tribune today.

Cartoon for February 18

The government wants to use "evidence" collected during waterboarding to execute Guantánamo POWs.

Since waterboarding sometimes kills, this prompts a strange yet obvious question: Can evidence gathered through waterboarding be used to retroactively convict a detainee murdered through waterboarding?

Generalissimo El Busho!

Please click here.

Cartoon for February 16

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says torture—specifically slapping suspects during interrogations--is, or ought to be, legal. This is justified, he explains, as part of the Meme That Won't Die: the absurd, totally impossible, "ticking bomb" scenario popularized by the TV series "24."

Cartoon for February 14

In perhaps the most bizarre attempt to exploit the weird GOP's Cult of Reagan to date, John McCain claims he was "inspired by [then California governor] Ronald Reagan" in 1967, while he was rotting in a Hanoi shithole.

Flashback: May 3, 2007

I was looking over my cartoons from last year. This one still makes me laugh. As a cartoonist, I definitely want Obama to win.

"Quit Your Job, Work is a Sham," Might Magazine, June 1995

Frédéric's blog has taken the trouble to transcribe my famous 1995 essay for Might Magazine. He made quite a few typos, but it's difficult if not impossible to find this online. (There's a different version of it in "Revenge of the Latchkey Kids.")

Rereading it 12 years later reminds me what a great editor I had in the person of Dave Eggers, who has since become known as a memoirist and founder of a literary journal named McSweeney's. He questioned everything, suggested important changes, and helped make my voice more articulate. Now that I do some editing, I know how difficult that can be.

Greg Palast on "Silk Road to Ruin"

Author and kick-ass investigative reporter Greg Palast writes about "Silk Road to Ruin". Stay tuned for a coming comics journalism mash-up between Greg and yours truly.

THIS WEEK'S SYNDICATED COLUMN: THERE SHOULD BE BLOOD

Liberal Democrats Left Out in the Cold

"The truly undecided voter is rare, say those who study the psychology of voting," Joe Garofoli wrote in The San Francisco Chronicle. "Since neuroscientists say 90 percent of thought is unconscious, an undecided voter may have already decided--he just hasn't revealed his pick to himself yet."

Whether I'm a rare bird or a typical victim of self-denial, I didn't know how I was going to vote until election day--or, to be more precise, a election minute. Roughly 15 to 20 percent of 2008 primary voters have had similar trouble getting their unconscious to talk to them.

Most of the electoral procrastinators are conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats--party loyalists whose influence has been diluted by independents who vote in their primaries. As has been widely discussed, conservatives were unhappy with the entire field of Republican presidential contenders. Less noted but no less significant has been the effect of John Edwards' departure from the Democratic field.

Lefties don't have a candidate.

Like most hardcore liberals, I had planned to vote for Edwards. I'm a registered Democrat. I live in New York, a "closed primary" state. That left Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

I studied the printed grid inside my mechanical voting machine, a steel beast from the 1950s. New York keeps threatening to replace the classic booths. I hope they keep them forever. Old-school machines have a feature I treasure: you flip a switch to make an "X" appear next to your choice. You're not committed until you pull the lever to open the curtain; you can flip the switch back and go with someone else instead.

I moved the switch to Hillary, to see how it looked. Hillary. Ted Rall votes for Hillary. I asked myself my usual test question: If she won, and I watched her being sworn in next January, how would I feel?

Bored. And slightly depressed.

I thought about the experience issue, her biggest advantage. "I am offering 35 years of experience making change," she says. Though way overstated--35 years of what? being a lawyer?--living in the White House has to have left her with some insights. Unlike Obama, Hillary wouldn't lose her way searching for the restroom. But political dynasties suck. Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton would be a sad statement. A nation of 300 million people shouldn't keep turning to the same few families for leadership.

A woman president is a couple of centuries overdue. But issues matter more than affirmative action. I couldn't overlook Clinton's votes to go to war and to waste hundreds of billions of dollars on the never-ending horror show of Iraq. Thousands of people are dead because of her.

Hillary Clinton didn't think Iraq had WMDs. No one smart did. The polls were running for the war, and so was she. She pandered. It was disgusting. But I was even more appalled by her lousy political skills. It ought to have been evident, even then, that (a) the war wouldn't go well, (b) Americans would turn against it, and (c) this would occur before she was up for reelection in 2006. It was obvious to even me at the time, and it took me ten years to get a bachelor's degree.

She was wrong. She had bad judgment. And her September 2007 vote for possible war against Iran proves she still does. I moved the lever left. The "X" disappeared from Clinton's box.

I made an "X" pop up next to Obama's name. "I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of..." I wasn't feeling it.

For what will soon have been eight long years, I reflected, left-of-center Americans have endured an illegitimate administration of morons, thieves and bullies. "[The press secretary's] job is to help explain my decisions to the American people," Bush once said, describing how he interacts with people who disagree with him. Bush stacked the Supreme Court by appointing right-wing extremists to replace moderates. Compromise was an alien concept to the Bushies. They did whatever they wanted--wars, torture, tax cuts for the superrich, tapping political dissidents' phones--and Democrats did nothing to stop them, even after they regained control of both houses of Congress.

After 9/11 Republicans repeatedly screamed that liberals were pro-Islamist, anti-American traitors. Right-wing opinion mongers--Ann Coulter, Andrew Sullivan, James Taranto of The Wall Street Journal, William Kristol of The Weekly Standard (and now The New York Times) accused me of treason. (Hey, I'm not the one trying to get rid of the Bill of Rights.)

Former GOP presidential candidate Alan Keyes suggested that I be imprisoned or shot. And "mainstream" Republicans indicated their tacit agreement with cricket-chirping silence. Not once did a Republican Congressman demand that their neo-McCarthyite allies apologize for their statements. Not once did a Republican opinion columnist take issue with equating the Democratic Party with anti-Americanism. Not once. Compare that to the Democratic practice of "Sister Souljah-ing" lefties who annoy the conservative hyenas.

I can't forget the last eight years. Here's why: they will happen again. Whenever Republicans control the White House and Congress and too many media outlets--as occurred under Eisenhower/McCarthy in the 1950s, Nixon in the 1970s, Reagan in the 1980s--they spew the same disgusting crap about the left. Lord knows Democrats have their flaws, but they don't say that their opponents belong in concentration camps.

"I want the Republicans to feel the way I did in 2004," an Iowa Democrat told The New York Times. So do I. I want them to watch everything they care about disassembled. Take Reagan and Bush's names off the airports, nationalize major corporations, demolish Gitmo, gay marriage--anything that pisses them off.

I want revenge. Obama preaches reconciliation. "I will create a working majority because I won't demonize my opponents," says Obama. The Illinois senator is an interesting politician and might make a good leader. But not yet. Give me eight years of Democratic rule as ruthless and extreme and uncompromising as the last eight years of Bush. Then we can have some bipartisanship.

Obama's let's-tiptoe-through-the-tulips-with-the-GOP shtick amounts to bargaining with yourself. If a vendor at a flea market offers to sell you a lamp for $10 and you're willing to pay $8, you don't offer $8. Demonize, Barack, demonize!

Oh, and Obama says he wouldn't have voted for the Iraq War. I say he's lying. So do his votes for funding the war since he joined the Senate. His voting record on Iraq is the same as Hillary's.

Hillary, no. Obama? Nobama. What to do?

"Hundreds of thousands of Democrats and independents who were motivated enough to go and vote on February 5 did so for Edwards, knowing full well that he was out of the running," reports The Nation. I was one of them.

COPYRIGHT 2008 TED RALL

Cartoon for February 11

Attack them here before we have to fight them there! (The intro about the study is true.)

I'm particularly happy about my Ameri-Islamic flag and the Saul Steinberg/New Yorker Iraq poster on the wall in the first panel.

A Special Thank You
posted by TheDon

Thank you, Congress, for giving Chimpy his "surge". One year ago, after Democrats swept into power, a debate was raging on just how quickly troops could come home from Iraq (although withdrawal from Afghanistan was not seriously considered). Instead, legislation was passed giving the "president" more money for more troops, but just for a temporary "surge" to allow Democracy to bloom and Freedom to be given by God to every Iraqi.

During the six-month long "surge", eighteen different benchmarks would be met, and the "war" part of the "war" would be concluded. A year later, almost none of the benchmarks have been met (or ever will be met), and the surge will end with a whimper, having killed almost a thousand more of our soldiers and a large, but obscured and unknowable number of Iraqis. The number of troops will be basically the same as before the "surge", and the military has announced that they won't withdraw any more troops.

The current administration has successfully extended their occupation of Iraq until the end of their term, at the highest level of troops possible.

Heckuva job, Demmies!

Cartoon for February 9

After I drew this cartoon, I realized that it's really true: tens of thousands of young American men and women have spent their entire adult lives in Iraq. This also ties in to the fact that we have no U.S. troops in the U.S.--you know, to defend the U.S...

Subscription Service Reminder

I'm about the close the door on this year's Ted Rall Subscription Service. Here's the deal again: get my cartoons, columns, and assorted freelance goodies delivered directly to your email box, in many cases days before they go online or appear in print. The cost is $25/year, which goes to support this website.

If you're interested, contact chet@rall.com and let me know whether you would prefer to pay by PayPal or check/money order.

Thanks!

Flash: MittBot2008 Deactivated

Mitt Romney is dropping out of the GOP primaries.

At first glance, this appears to make McCain the de facto nominee, and I think that's how it'll play out. That said, Huckabee may galvanize the anti-McCain vote now. If religious fundamentalists rally to him, he might still end up as the nominee. Might. Probably won't.

This does slightly screw up my cartoon for Monday. Damn you, MittBot!

Cartoon for February 7

Barack Obama says he wouldn't have voted for the Iraq War. Yet he voted, over and over and over, to waste billions of dollars to prolong the very same war. Now he's running on his theoretical voting record.

COLUMN: INTEGRITY LITE

Puffing Up John McCain, POW

"A proven leader, and a man of integrity," the New York Post called John McCain in its editorial endorsement. "A naval aviator shot down over North Vietnam and held as a POW, McCain knew that freedom was his for the taking. All he had to do was denounce his country. He refused--and, as a consequence, suffered years of unrelenting torture."

This standard summary of McCain's five and a half years in the Hanoi Hilton, repeated in thousands of media accounts during his 2000 campaign and again this election year, is the founding myth of his political career. The tale of John McCain, War Hero prompts a lot of people turned off by his politics--liberals and traditional conservatives alike--to support him. Who cares that he "doesn't really understand economics"? He's got a great story to tell.

Scratch the surface of McCain's captivity narrative, however, and a funny thing happens: his heroism blows away like the rust from a vintage POW bracelet.

In the fall of 1967 McCain was flying bombing runs over North Vietnam from the U.S.S. Oriskany, an aircraft carrier in the South China Sea. On October 26, the 31-year-old pilot was part of a 20-plane squadron assigned to destroy infrastructure in the North Vietnamese capital. He flew his A-4 Skyhawk over downtown Hanoi toward his target, a power plant. As he pulled up after releasing his bombs, his fighter jet was hit by a surface-to-air missile. A wing came off. McCain's plane plunged into Truc Bach Lake.

Mai Van On, a 50-year-old resident of Hanoi, watch the crash and left the safety of his air-raid shelter to rescue him. Other Vietnamese tried to stop him. "Why do you want to go out and rescue our enemy?" they yelled. Ignoring his countrymen, On grabbed a pole and swam to the spot where McCain's plane had gone down in 16 feet of water. McCain had managed to free himself from the wrecked plane but was stuck underwater, ensnared by his parachute. On used his pole to untangle the ropes and pull the semi-conscious pilot to the surface. McCain was in bad shape, having broken his arm and a leg in several places.

McCain is lucky the locals didn't finish him off. U.S. bombs had killed hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese civilians, many in Hanoi. Ultimately between one and two million innocents would be shredded, impaled, blown to bits and dissolved by American bombs. Now that one of their tormentors had fallen into their hands, they had a rare chance to get even. "About 40 people were standing there," On later recalled. "They were about to rush him with their fists and stones. I asked them not to kill him. He was beaten for a while before I could stop them." He was turned over to local policemen, who transferred him to the military.

What if one of the hijackers who destroyed the World Trade Center had somehow crash-landed in the Hudson River? How long would he have lasted? Would anyone have risked his life to rescue him?

An impolite question: If a war is immoral, can those who fight in it--even those who demonstrate courage--be heroes? If the answer is yes, was Reagan wrong to honor the SS buried at Bitburg? No less than Iraq, Vietnam was an undeclared, illegal war of aggression that did nothing to keep America safe. Tens of millions of Americans felt that way. Millions marched against the war; tens of thousands of young men fled the country to avoid the draft. McCain, on the other hand, volunteered.

McCain knew that what he was doing was wrong. Three months before he fell into that Hanoi lake, he barely survived when his fellow sailors accidentally fired a missile at his plane while it was getting ready to take off from his ship. The blast set off bombs and ordnance across the deck of the aircraft carrier. The conflagration, which took 24 hours to bring under control, killed 132 sailors. A few days later, a shaken McCain told a New York Times reporter in Saigon: "Now that I've seen what the bombs and the napalm did to the people on our ship, I'm not so sure that I want to drop any more of that stuff on North Vietnam."

Yet he did.

"I am a war criminal," McCain said on "60 Minutes" in 1997. "I bombed innocent women and children." Although it came too late to save the Vietnamese he'd killed 30 years earlier, it was a brave statement. Nevertheless, he smiles agreeably as he hears himself described as a "war hero" as he arrives at rallies in a bus marked "No Surrender."

McCain's tragic flaw: He knows the right thing. He often sets out to do the right thing. But he doesn't follow through. We saw McCain's weak character in 2000, when the Bush campaign defeated him in the crucial South Carolina primary by smearing his family. Placing his presidential ambitions first, he swallowed his pride, set aside his honor, and campaigned for Bush against Al Gore. It came up again in 2005, when McCain used his POW experience as a POW to convince Congress to pass, and Bush to sign, a law outlawing torture of detainees at Guantánamo and other camps. But when Bush issued one of his infamous "signing statements" giving himself the right to continue torturing--in effect, negating McCain's law--he remained silent, sucking up to Bush again.

McCain's North Vietnamese captors demanded that he confess to war crimes. "Every two hours," according to a 2007 profile in the Arizona Republic, "one guard would hold McCain while two others beat him. They kept it up for four days...His right leg, injured when he was shot down, was horribly swollen. A guard yanked him to his feet and threw him down. His left arm smashed against a bucket and broke again."

McCain later recalled that he was at the point of suicide. But he was no Jean Moulin, the French Resistance leader who refused to talk under torture, and killed himself. According to "The Nightingale's Song," a book by Robert Timberg, "[McCain] looked at the louvered cell window high above his head, then at the small stool in the room." He took off his dark blue prison shirt, rolled it like a rope, draped one end over his shoulder near his neck, began feeding the other end through the louvers." He was too slow. A guard entered and pulled him away from the window.

I've never been tortured. I have no idea what I'd do. Of course, I'd like to think that I could resist or at least commit suicide before giving up information. Odds are, however, that I'd crack. Most people do. And so did McCain. "I am a black criminal and I have performed the deeds of an air pirate," McCain wrote in his confession. "I almost died and the Vietnamese people saved my life, thanks to the doctors."

It wasn't the first time McCain broke under pressure. After his capture, wrote the Republic, "He was placed in a cell and told he would not receive any medical treatment until he gave military information. McCain refused and was beaten unconscious. On the fourth day, two guards entered McCain's cell. One pulled back the blanket to reveal McCain's injured knee. 'It was about the size, shape and color of a football,' McCain recalled. Fearful of blood poisoning that would lead to death, McCain told his captors he would talk if they took him to a hospital."

McCain has always been truthful about his behavior as a POW, but he has been more than willing to allow others to lie on his behalf. "A proven leader, and a man of integrity," the New York Post says, and he's happy to take it. "All he had to do was denounce his country. He refused..." Not really. He did denounce his country. But he didn't demand a retraction.

It's the old tragic flaw: McCain knows what he ought to do. He starts to do the right thing. But John McCain is a weak man who puts his career goals first.

COPYRIGHT 2008 TED RALL

Cartoon for February 4

The 2008 presidential primary season began promisingly. But it now seems clear that big political changes--much needed after eight years of do-nothing Clinton and do-too-much Bush--are not in the cards.

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As If the Primaries Had Never Happened

The blog PunditFight notes that, in a year when everyone says that all the pundits were wrong, there was an exception: me. They quote the hosts of Air America's "Majority Report":

Marc Maron: What we'll find out in the next few months is if the big "fix" by the big "they" is really in. We're gonna find out in the next couple of months.

Sam Seder: Yes! Ted Rall came on the Majority Report, this must have been over a year and a half ago. And he said that he believed that McCain and Clinton were gonna win, were gonna be the nominees because they had the most money and there had never been a time where somebody had had that much money that far out and hadn't won. So it'll be interesting to see if that comes around.

Yes, I do happen to be right most of the time. But it's not because I'm a magician. I study history. Most of the time--almost all of the time--past performance IS a good indication of future returns. This year's election, in which the two best-funded candidates are once again emerging as their party's likely nominees--is no exception to the rule.

Meanwhile, the New York Times hires William Kristol for its Op/Ed page--not me. Of course, it's not his fault he's usually wrong. Have you ever noticed that he rarely, if ever, refers to historical precedent?

McCain Revisited

Reader Kim asks:

now that mc cain is starting to really move in the repug primaries, i was wondering if you would consider re-running a column you wrote a couple (few?) years ago about why he really isn’t the independent’s friend. You remember the one? i think it would be a good service to remind people, ASAP, i guess, at it is nearly “super tuesday”.

Indeed, there's some stuff here, especially toward the last half of the column, that independent voters may want to think about as they head to the polls on Tuesday (or whenever). I hope you enjoy this trip back to 2004...

Column from 6/15/04: How Democrats Are Their Own Worst Enemy

Now we know what John Kerry has been up to this spring. Other politicians, having wrapped up their party's nomination early in March, might have devoted those extra months to honing their stump speech, shaking down contributors and strategizing for the long slog to November.

Not Kerry. Kerry, it seems, spent the last three months begging Republican John McCain to run as his vice president. He didn't ask officially (whatever that means) but he asked seven times. "I don't want to formally ask because I don't want to be formally rejected, but having said that, would you do it?" an aide who ran messages between the two senators quoted Kerry's approach to The New York Times. Each time, each of seven times, McCain's answer was the same: an unequivocal no.

Hey, John, wanna be my veep?

No thanks.

I'm gonna pretend I didn't hear that. So. Shall we print up some buttons?

No.

Come on, man. I need you.

Nope.

You're kidding! You know the Republicans will never nominate you for the presidency! They hate your ass!

Whatever. I said no.

Dude! Don't be like that. Yes is such an easy word to say. Say it.

Get a life, John. Don't contact me unless it's about legislation. Got it?

Look, I'll be honest. The CBS poll says you'll give me a 14-point boost if you join the team. I gotta have you. I can't take no for an answer.

No means no, John. No. No. No.

Hey, thanks, I appreciate it. I'll call a press conference for noon. Kerry-McCain 2004!

I'm getting a restraining order against you, you jowly bassett-hound-eyed freak!!!

Seven times. Has John Kerry lost his mind?

The last time Americans elected a cross-party ticket was 1796, and with good reason. President Adams, a Federalist, feuded over matters personal and political with vice president Jefferson of the Democratic-Republican Party. The resulting spectacle was so appalling that Congress amended the Constitution to minimize the chances of such a fiasco reoccurring.

Not since 1932 has it been so important for Democrats to win the presidency. George Bush, a dangerous, deranged demagogue, has got to go. Anybody But Bush: I coined the phrase, and I still mean it. But it would be the height of folly to brush off the implications of the Kerry-McCain dalliance. The Democratic nominee-apparent's judgment, and that of his advisors, has been grievously compromised.

Liberals believe that McCain is a soft-spoken moderate Republican. The shabby treatment he received in 2000 at the hands of Bush and Karl Rove, whose operatives falsely claimed that he had fathered an illegitimate daughter with an African-American hooker, earns him sympathy from the left. So does the maverick style he employed to push for campaign finance reform.

But McCain isn't what people think he is. "At the end of the day," said the chatty aide, "he's a Republican." His campaign finance reform banned soft money contributions, a much bigger source of funds for Democrats than Republicans. Later in 2000 he played Bush's bitch, campaigning for the man whose staffers had smeared him. By all accounts his understated tone quickly rises to accommodate a sharp temper. Most of all, McCain's Arizona constituents vote for him because his conservative politics match theirs.

"I am pro-life," McCain wrote on his 2000 campaign website. "I oppose abortion except in the case of rape, incest or when the life of the mother is in danger. I support the constitutional amendment to prohibit the physical desecration of the American flag. [I will] curb the gratuitous violence in the media that is desensitizing our culture to violence. Bearing arms is a constitutionally protected right."

How could liberal voters support Kerry-McCain knowing that a pro-life, flag-burning-obsessed, pro-censorship gun nut was a heartbeat away from the big leather chair? Why should anyone trust a candidate or a party so uncertain about their principles that they're willing to sell them out for a short-term jump in the polls? Kerry should thank McCain for turning him down; in doing so a Republican may just have rescued the Democratic Party from suicidal oblivion.

Both parties, and Democrats in particular, are in trouble. The last few decades have witnessed a rise in ideological blurring. Aping the Republicans has made the Democratic Party less appealing to increasingly apathetic liberals. This has occurred during a period of unprecedented polarization, when swing voters have all but vanished. As I prescribe in my book "Wake Up, You're Liberal!: How We Can Take American Back From the Right," the key to Democratic success this fall is motivating the long-neglected left-wing base. That means stronger, not weaker, party identification. Democratic Congressmen who vote along with the Republicans should be thrown out of the party. Democrats must act like Democrats. And you don't do that by nominating, or running with, Republicans.

Cartoon for February 2

The rise of the cute-ocracy continues!