Ted Rall: Obama Should Resign

It’s been years since I’ve quoted Ted Rall here. He hasn’t appeared in a post title since September 2005’s “Rall: Charities are for Suckers.”  The man’s eminently quotable, if in a train wreck sort of way, but constantly pointing out that some commentators are crazy attention whores really doesn’t advance the debate much.

But you’ve got to hand it to Rall:  He’s a consistent loon.

We expected broken promises. But the gap between the soaring expectations that accompanied Barack Obama’s inauguration and his wretched performance is the broadest such chasm in recent historical memory. This guy makes Bill Clinton look like a paragon of integrity and follow-through.

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.

Take that, Rush Limbaugh!  In your face, G. Gordon Liddy!

For what it’s worth, while I didn’t vote for Obama and will quite probably* vote for his Republican opponent in 2012, I neither think Obama has done anything to merit resignation nor think he’s sold out to lobbyists any more than the next guy.  Being president is much harder than being a pundit, in that actions have consequences.

For example, I simultaneously believe the Turks committed genocide nearly a century ago and that the United States Government should refrain from rubbing their noses in it.  Whatever satisfaction an individual might get from Speaking Truth to (Middling) Power, Turkey is an important ally at the nexus of several of our most pressing foreign policy hotspots.  Alienating them over something that happened generations ago is foolish.  The President Obama, faced with that reality, is more cautious than was Candidate Obama, is a feature, not a bug.

___________

*There are a handful of plausible nominees that could put me off the reservation.

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James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Comments

  1. steve says:

    We could kill a lot fewer trees and use a lot less bandwidth, if the far right and far left just reduced their complaints to, “Their Guy Sux”. I automatically assume that anyone who refers to the other guy as The One or Shrub is not serious and usually not interested in fact based discussions.

    Once again, hats off to you for having a a reason based site that uses real data when appropriate. (Now if I can just get Steve V. to look at all of it and not just selected bits. 🙂 )

    Steve

  2. Eric Florack says:

    Rall?
    (Snicker)

    “We expected lies?”

    So, he knew Obama was a liar. Supported him anyway.
    And only now admits what a sleaze Clinton was?

    Yeah, THAT makes sense.

    There’s one of two ways we can play this.

    Either Ted Rall is simply an extraordinarily bitter individual, whose bitterness served the purpose of the Democrats for a while, (See “Willing Idiot” ) and now finds himself with no further purpose for his bitterness now that the Democrats he snarked for, for so long, are in power, or else he’s simply a fool who has finally figured out how foolish he’s been.

    Either way, with this complaint from him, the question becomes whether or not he’s going to have the intellectual integrity to work against the reelection of Obama, or will start making excuses for him again, come election time. Given his integrity as shown us the last decade or so, I rather expect the latter, don’t you?

    Oh… and is Rall really campaigning for President Biden, and Vice Presdient Pelosi? I I question his mental stability, if that’s the case.

  3. John Burgess says:

    Rall, the failed social worker, the crappy cartoonist, the puzzled pundit? Who gives a rip what he’s up to? He’s found a niche in the wacko-left, his own rock whose undersides he can call his own.

    Leave him to it.

  4. Steve Plunk says:

    No one should pay attention to Ted Rall. Irresponsible hack is the term that comes to mind. How about not funny? Sick? Narcissistic?

  5. Bithead says:

    @Plunk…
    Yeah, true enough. Thing is, he still has enough of a leftie following, I think, to be a significant barometer of what’s going on on that end of the political spectrum. His scream of ‘betrayal’ so closely match my own preditions of the matter from last January, I must admit being surprised, myself. So, I wonder if we can’t take his tirade as a leading indicator.

  6. Michael says:

    We could kill a lot fewer trees and use a lot less bandwidth, if the far right and far left just reduced their complaints to, “Their Guy Sux”.

    Even better, if you have nothing substantial to add to the conversation, simply type “1” to show your blind support, or “0” to show your blind opposition. I suspect that for most partisan sites, this would allow very effective compression.

    Of course OTB would be highly inefficient in this regard.

  7. Michael says:

    Thing is, he still has enough of a leftie following, I think, to be a significant barometer of what’s going on on that end of the political spectrum.

    Now you know I’m pretty consistently liberal, but I’ve never heard of the guy. Also, I think you may be confusing followers of the message with followers of the messenger. If Rush came out tomorrow in support of Obama, I doubt very many of this current followers would follow suit.

  8. An Interested Party says:

    So, I wonder if we can’t take his tirade as a leading indicator.

    Awww, keep hoping, sweetie…

  9. ck says:

    Even better, if you have nothing substantial to add to the conversation, simply type “1” to show your blind support, or “0” to show your blind opposition. I suspect that for most partisan sites, this would allow very effective compression.

    This is quite possibly the most brilliant idea ever to grace the internet, probably deserving of a Turing Award.

  10. floyd says:

    It seems that we have calls for resident Obama’s resignation coming from both ends of the spectrum, let’s not make the mistake of thinking this places him somewhere in the middle of the political spectrum.

  11. floyd says:

    ck;
    Isn’t every thing on the screen , ultimately only a bunch of 1s and 0s?? or was that your point?

  12. floyd says:

    Pardon me,That last post should have been addressed to Michael.

  13. Eric Florack says:

    Awww, keep hoping, sweetie…

    Not a matter of hope, at all. Rather, it’s a matter of several years worth of historic patterns with this guy, and the remainder of the leftie echo chambers.

  14. Eric Florack says:

    Now you know I’m pretty consistently liberal, but I’ve never heard of the guy.

    And to my memory you’ve only been active around here for a year or two. I suggest doing a little research on the name, and the history.

    If Rush came out tomorrow in support of Obama, I doubt very many of this current followers would follow suit.

    That would be because his listeners know him well enough to know that he’s making a rhetorical point of some sort. As has been amply demonstrated with David’s comment on Sotomayor, the fine art of rhetoric is lost in a lot of situations with the left of today. Rall being among them I think.

  15. Michael says:

    Isn’t every thing on the screen , ultimately only a bunch of 1s and 0s?? or was that your point?

    <tangent>On an LCD yes, on a CRT not quite, but that wasn’t my point anyway. My point was that a comment with no substance and only “Person X (Rules|Sucks)”, can be stored as simply “Rules” or “Sucks”, those being the only differing parts, saving >9 bytes (assuming 8-bit characters) of data per worthless post. Storing these as a single 1 or 0 saves 4 bytes of data on top of that. Furthermore, sites there 90% of the comments are the same, an entire comment thread can be compressed into possibly just hundreds of bytes.</tangent>

    <notangent>No.</notangent>

  16. Herb says:

    Thing is, he still has enough of a leftie following, I think, to be a significant barometer of what’s going on on that end of the political spectrum.

    That might be true of the lefties’ spectrum, but it tells us nothing about what’s going on in the moderate Obamasphere.

  17. An Interested Party says:

    Not a matter of hope, at all. Rather, it’s a matter of several years worth of historic patterns with this guy, and the remainder of the leftie echo chambers.

    How sad that you are placing your hopes of some kind of damage to the president on the ramblings of Ted Rall…whatever gets you through the day, I guess…

  18. Pug says:

    Thing is, he still has enough of a leftie following…

    Sure he does. Very few people have even heard of this guy.

  19. John Burgess says:

    Rall’s been around quite a long time, at least since the late 80s. I first started (then stopped) butting heads with him back on BBSs. I learned to stop trying to change the substance of granite. He’s continued to be granite, except when he’s shite.

  20. Eric Florack says:

    That might be true of the lefties’ spectrum, but it tells us nothing about what’s going on in the moderate Obamasphere.

    Moderate? Obama?

    BWAHHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

    Never mind. I doubt you’d understand it.

    Sure he does. Very few people have even heard of this guy.

    Ummm, you may want to do a little search on the name before making such pronouncements. I am reminded of the Reagan years, where more often than you might think, I heard liberals saying: “Nobody I know voted for Reagan”….

    How sad that you are placing your hopes of some kind of damage to the president on the ramblings of Ted Rall…whatever gets you through the day, I guess…

    Rall never had an original idea in his life, AIP. Whatever he’s coming up with is reflective of what’s already happening out there. It’s not, therefore a hope. It’s a done deal.

  21. anjin-san says:

    So, I wonder if we can’t take his tirade as a leading indicator.

    No reed to slender to grasp…

  22. anjin-san says:

    It’s a done deal.

    Sure thing. And tell us again how you called the inevitable McCain landslide, we can all use a laugh.

  23. anjin-san says:

    Actually, its not surprising that bit should put so much stock in an idiot blogger. Water tends to seek its own level…

  24. Matt says:

    I for one have never heard of this chump to today.. I would advise against painting him as a barometer or anything..

  25. Matt says:

    “barometer of anything”

    doh..

    Been a lurker for many years and only recently started posting relatively..

  26. anjin-san says:

    Whatever he’s coming up with is reflective of what’s already happening out there. It’s not, therefore a hope

    What we have in the case of Rall is a loser making outrageous comments to get attention. Its hardly a shock to find that he is carpooling with bitsy on that road…

  27. floyd says:

    “”Actually, its not surprising that bit should put so much stock in an idiot blogger. Water tends to seek its own level…””
    “””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””

    To think I sat in rapt anticipation, awaiting the next word to proceed from your keyboard!
    BTW;Does that second sentence make the idiot blogger a “literary artisan” or an “alliteral artesian”?

  28. Eric Florack says:

    I really liked some of Ted Rall’s longer stories as well, but I don’t recall the names. I do remember one about a bully who used to torment him. I want to say it was called My Life with Brian. -Anjin,- CHUD.com

    Somehow, these comments don’t mesh well with the statements Anjin’s made in here. What do you say to this, Swifty?

  29. An Interested Party says:

    Rall never had an original idea in his life, AIP. Whatever he’s coming up with is reflective of what’s already happening out there. It’s not, therefore a hope. It’s a done deal.

    I’m sure the Obama Administration is quaking in its collective boots…

  30. John Burgess says:

    In addition to his innate bitterness (don’t ask him about his growing up!), Rall also got canned from his current job identifying budding cartoonists.

    I sure wish there were a word for taking pleasure in someone’s discomfort as I’m just oozing that sensation right now. I think the word might be found in one of those agglutinative languages…

  31. sam says:

    I sure wish there were a word for taking pleasure in someone’s discomfort as I’m just oozing that sensation right now. I think the word might be found in one of those agglutinative languages…

    Schadenfreude

  32. Zelsdorf Ragshaft III says:

    Anjin, water finds its own level but then there is the scum that exists on the bottom of that level. There we find you and your ilk. Alway rationalizing the leftist lie. Go live in Tibet.

  33. G.A.Phillips says:

    What in the over stimulused bloated pinkish red purple hell, don’t any of you gimps listen to music at all?????

    ANJIN!!!! I NEED HELP…best songs of 2008!!!!!!

  34. G.A.Phillips says:

    Oh ya the Sith don’t resign, DarthObama for Dark lord 2012 and beyond…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

  35. G.A.Phillips says:

    Best songs for Obama worshipers 2009!

    here is mine<

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trazFMQO72I

  36. G.A.Phillips says:

    Your children have more brains.. then your drug infested remains…California dreaming…as the earth dies screaming…..( Bruce Dickinson, Dave Murray).

  37. Pug says:

    …I am reminded of the Reagan years

    Ah, nostalgia again. Is there anything that doesn’t remind conservatives of the Reagan years?

    Reagan years or not, hardly anyone has even heard of Ted Rall. He’s a non-entity.

  38. anjin-san says:

    I really liked some of Ted Rall’s longer stories as well, but I don’t recall the names. I do remember one about a bully who used to torment him. I want to say it was called My Life with Brian. -Anjin,- CHUD.com

    Somehow, these comments don’t mesh well with the statements Anjin’s made in here. What do you say to this, Swifty?

    Uhhh. I go by Anjin-san, not Anjin. But, as I have observed about you many times bitsy, you are easily confused. Like I said, no reed is to slender for you to grasp…

  39. Eric Florack says:

    Right, Swifty.

  40. anjin-san says:

    Whatever you say Flounder.

  41. anjin-san says:

    Is there anything that doesn’t remind conservatives of the Reagan years?

    Whatever one thinks of Reagan, there is no denying that he was a basically warm hearted and generous man with a sunny disposition. Most of today’s “conservatives” are pompous assholes. I doubt Regan would have the time of day for them.

  42. G.A.Phillips says:

    Most of today’s “conservatives” are pompous assholes.

    lol, and most liberals are?