Ted Rall: The Time-to-Make-the-Doughnuts Candidate

The Time-to-Make-the-Doughnuts Candidate
by Ted Rall | Nov 6 2007 - 9:30am |


"The fact that a lot of people dislike you is troubling," says the director of the Quinnipiac University poll, talking about Hillary Clinton (D-Carpetbagger, Slept Her Way Into National Prominence, NY). She scores 47 percent of likely Democratic primary voters, leaving Barack Obama (21 percent) and John Edwards (12 percent) in the dust. This is supposed to make her inevitable. Why bother to hold primaries? But a funny thing happens when Democrats and Republicans talk about 2008: they find common ground.

"I can't stand Hillary," the Republican opens.

"She's disgusting," the Democrat agrees. At last, a Uniter.

Half the electorate hates her--and not just members of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. She's a juggernaut, at least in a Howard Dean-in-November 2003 kind of way. Liberals will vote for her if she's the nominee. But it'll be a chore. She epitomizes joylessness. Win or lose, who cares?

She's the time-to-make-the-doughnuts candidate.

Every voter has his or her limit, a moment or an act or just a general sense about a politician that makes the idea of voting for them feel so unpleasant they'd rather cross party lines, or stay home on election day. For me, and for a lot of people, it was Hillary's vote to declare Iran's Revolutionary Guards a "foreign terrorist organization," unleashing new sanctions and U.S. military "instruments"--a step toward war--against Iran.

I forgive easily. I could have let Hillary off the hook for supporting NAFTA, screwing up healthcare in 1993 and voting for the proto-fascist USA-Patriot Act. I could have overlooked her Reaganesque cluelessness about the lives of ordinary people. (Reneging on her "baby bond" proposal that Americans receive $5,000 at age 18, she now wants to give everyone a 401(k) and have the government match it "up to $1,000." Thanks to this windfall, she says, "they will be able to access it to go to college or maybe they will be able to make that down payment on their first home." Lame idea, obviously. What I want to know is: Where can you buy a house or a college education for $1000? On the moon?)

I might have even have forgiven Hillary's vote to authorize Bush to start the unprovoked war against Iraq, though she never apologized for a cowardly (and miscalculated) act of triangulation that contributed to the deaths of more than a million Iraqis. As Tim Grieve wrote in Salon: "She has gone from 1) voting for the use-of-force resolution, to 2) questioning the intelligence that formed the basis of that vote, to 3) arguing that the Bush administration distorted the intelligence, to 4) saying she didn't regret giving Bush authority to use force but did regret the way he used that authority, to 5) saying the resolution never would have come to a vote if Congress knew then what it knows now, to 6) saying that Congress wouldn't have voted for the resolution if Congress knew then what it knows now, to 7) saying that she wouldn't have voted for the resolution if she knew then what she knows now."

more...

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/10851

"Slept her way to the top?"

Add misognynism to his list of offenses.

agree with everything writers write either.

He mocked 9/11 firefighters too.

Honest to God, he's the easiest President to caricature since Lincoln. And what do you do? You draw some flat-faced oaf with a mouth that looks nothing like his, stubble where none exists, and pointlessly sharp teeth. It doesn't even resemble him.

Ted Rall is basically parroting my miserably vicious right-wing ex-boss, who liked to claim Hillary had married Bill for political power. Yeah, marrying the elder son of a divorced nurse from Hot Springs is a sure route to power. I can make a stronger case that Arnold Schwarzenegger and Laura Welch and Andrew Cuomo married for political connections.

So yes, the jury is back, and we know just what Rall is.

He routinely challenges your own thinking; I know of no one who reads him regularly and agrees with him 100%.

everywhere--if we did one thing: 1) read the post carefully.
2) Is the infomation true? or 3) Is the information false?

Then 4) Make an argument about the information.

For example: The information may be true but it is the type
of information that will or will not affect votes and why.

The candidate is so strong on ABC that this sort of information
does not count all that much.

Just attacking the writer of the post does absolutely no good.
In fact it affirms an accusation by the Right. They say the Left
will not or cannot debate on the issue. They can only name
call.

If the writer has a known bias, sure we should point that out.
This is not name calling.

I submit this with the utmost respect, because DU has some very
talented and thoughtful people. This will help us in future
campaign.

I love you all.

Ah, yes. That's how we'll combat Hillary's false charges of misogyny on the part of her opponents. We'll throw some honest-to-God misogyny out there.

"President Hillary won't close Gitmo. She won't stop torturing. She won't stop listening to our phone calls. She won't stop the war in Iraq, much less in Afghanistan. Heck, she might even start a new one.

Fool you once, shame on Bush. Fool you twice, I stop thinking how cool it would be for the United States to finally elect a woman president"

They have, on more than one occasion, compared him to the Jew-hating Nazi propagandist, Julius Streicher.

It's a bit hysterical, to say the least.

Insulting Pat Tillman was one thing, but the latest cartoon posted in a thread here last week had him calling volunteer soldiers "idiots"

He's like the monkey at the zoo flinging his shit around, hoping somebody notices and there's a big controversy around him. Fuck him.

A multi-million dollar industry has been created to spread lies about the Clintons. Ted Rall's only problem here is that he's doing it for free.

So many lies, so little cyberspace

"supporting NATA" - Rall ignores the fact that her position is identical to all of the other candidates but one, DK

"screwing up healthcare in 1993" - That was Byrd, who killed UHC in 1993 by ruling that the legislation could not be included in the budget, making it impossible to pass.

"voting for the proto-fascist USA-Patriot Act" - as did the other candidates (who were in Congress at the time) but one DK

"Reneging on her "baby bond" proposal" - an outright bald-faced lie. There was no reneging

"Where can you buy a house or a college education for $1000? On the moon?)" - Umm, 1000/year over 18 years plus interest/gains on investments that go tax free, not a simple $1000

and that was just from the portion the OP posted