The following is our take on Rall's latest diatribe, GUILTY, DISGUSTED, AMERICAN

How interesting, Democrats and Republicans across the heartland watching the liberal reporters' responses to Kerry's loss commented, that the media elite and citizenry of New York lay sole claim to the understanding of terrorism. The whole country felt the terrible impact of 9/11 yet some reporters think they not only know better but that somehow the heartland is wrong in concluding that Iraq IS a part of the war on terror. New Yorkers and other big city-small minded liberals felt the opposite, motivated by sheer hate of doing the right thing--literally, as they oppose taking out all the likely sources of terrorism, and this includes war with Iraq, a war that was NOT waged for oil. Ignoring the looming threat of terrorism, a number one world-wide concern, the liberal elite chose to supported an candidate for whom the war on terrorism was nothing more than a marketing slogan.

Such astonishing gall! Only women are affected by the abortion debate; unless of course you take into consideration the unborn child AND the father of the child, yet folks like Ted Rall think that only women ought to be allowed to vote on it. The same goes for war--only the young who fight and die in war enjoy the moral right to declare it, unless you consider that the parents who send their children and grandchildren make a far more difficult decision- but I suppose this would never be considered by a narcissist like Ted Rall. Terrorism? Please, if you are a narrow-minded, narcissistic, ultra-liberal, elitist reporter, don't presume to lecture the heartland, much less write another mind-numbing story about how you "know better" than everyone else. The heartland rarely lectures you. Almost never, really. Don't tell us that the security of America is strictly "your business" Or at least have the grace to follow the lead of the CLEAR MAJORITY of this country, which has decided, using history and logic, that terrorism and morality should be top concerns.


"Some New Yorkers, reported the New York Times, said they didn't even know any people who had voted for President Bush... which is astonishing when you consider that 1 in 4 New York City voters voted for Bush and that 4 in 10 New Yorkers voted for Bush. (In one of the 5 boroughs, Staten Island, Bush won with 57% of the vote.)"


A few minutes before midnight, a young woman took the microphone where Hillary Clinton, who hilariously believes she has a date with presidential destiny, had tried to pump up the crowd. "Of course they send me up here to deliver bad news," she began. Ohio was not in play, except in the minds of the most disillusioned of democrats, and since the Democratic Party had rented the ballroom and its big projection televisions for only a few hours, the Kerry supporters were thrown out. Disenfranchised and disinvited, Kerry Victory Party attendees aimlessly scattered along East 42nd Street in search of alcohol and cable news coverage. Kicked out into the cold. It was a grand night for metaphor.

The morning after, life went on.

To the losers, it must have felt disgusting.

(Ted Rall is not a very good writer, so I apologize if this seems to be disorganized ramblings)

Guided by a list of chores, Ted Rall made his way through the subway station at Times Square and came across a man with silver skin, standing perfectly still, who entertained a crowd by doing nothing. People stared at him, fascinated, smiling. A few clapped. "How dare they stand there and grin?" Thought Ted Rall. "Days after the British medical journal The Lancet had published a study showing that American taxpayers had financed the bombs that murdered more than 100,000 innocent Iraqis in just one year, the morning after a majority of their fellow citizens re-hired the butchers who ordered the genocide, how dare they enjoy their lives?" Poor Ted Rall never stopped to think that the 100,000 figure might be a little inflated, that many of the dead were NOT Iraqi's and that many are probably terrorists who entered Iraq from Syria and Iran who were slain in battle, on the battle field, and not "murdered" in "genocide." Simple minded Ted Rall, seemingly unconcerned with the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi's who were found in mass graves, the victims of true genocide by a real dictator, Saddam, instead chooses to believe that Bush, not Saddam, was the Butcher of Baghdad. Ted thinks that the 100,000 figure is solely the fault of the US coalition, never considering that over half of that could be contributed to the enemy forces who are murdering Iraqi's for working with the Americans. Every time the terrorists try to kill a US soldier and end up killing a hand full of Iraqi children, the number of Iraqi dead rises... and Ted sees this as solely the fault of the US, and does not blame the terrorists at all. Ted watched the approving smiles and applause. The silver guy still hadn't made a move. Oddly, that was the point. "Someday the silver guy will become president," thought an angry and bewildered Rall.

Ted found a quiet spot and fired up his laptop. Many people have wireless connections in Manhattan. Not all of them are password-protected. So Narcissistic Ted stole their bandwidth and read e-mail from "gloating scum."

Reading one email Ted thought, "In any other country, people would take to the streets." "If only Ted were in another country," many others thought, "then he could be happy!"

You see, Ted sees any president who he disagrees with as "a dictator" - a charge no doubt made stronger in his mind by the fact that Bush had lost the popular vote in the first election. We shudder to think what Ted would have called Kerry had Kerry pulled out the electoral college win while losing the popular vote by millions. Ted believed that Bush, in his election bid, had "declared war on gays and pregnant teenagers." Of course, Ted sees any opposing viewpoint as dangerous and violent; warlike. Ted believes that the Bush administration's views are Hitler-esque, that Bush 'lied us into two wars' - what was that lie again? Ted thinks Bush 'fleeced the treasury' by cutting taxes on the rich. Ted is enraged at the thought of four more years, instead irrationally opining that the Bush administration should get 40 to life. In Ted's scattered, fragile mind, Florida 2000 became Ohio 2004 - despite the fact that in only 18 hours after the polls closed, Kerry stated:

In America, it is vital that every vote count, and that every vote be counted. But the outcome should be decided by voters, not a protracted legal process. I would not give up this fight if there was a chance that we would prevail.

But is now clear that even when all the provisional ballots are counted, which they will be, there won't be enough outstanding votes for us to be able to win Ohio.

And therefore we cannot win this election.

Ted saw in Kenneth Blackwell, an African-American male Republican Sec. of State of Ohio, a new Katherine Harris, who, in Ted's Mind was responsible for, "Jim Crow-style assaults on blacks" Ted thought he could smell something fishy... to him "the whole thing stunk." He was probably catching a whiff of his logic.

"Successive waves of the national exit poll in the afternoon and evening reported that Kerry had a two- or three-percentage-point lead over Bush nationally and in several key states, including Ohio," wrote the Washington Post. On ABC, Charles Gibson said: "The exit polls got it flat wrong."

"If so, that would be a first," thought Ted, who is seemingly unaware that exit polls are not good at predicting voter tallys, that they were devised to spot trends in why people voted the way they did, and that women in big city's were disproportionately polled over men and people in rural areas were not polled at all.

Grasping at straws, Ted thought, "That's what they said back in 2000, when exit pollsters called Florida for Gore." Ted seems to think that somehow, some way, Gore had won Florida by several thousand votes. Ted cannot back this up with any sort of proof whatsoever, but what does that matter? Ted is free to be wrong and spout lies... they are just labeled "opinions" instead of facts. Gore lost in every Florida state-wide recount; time and again, counting dimpled chads, and hanging chads, and every other type of 'chads' Even with thousands of Democrat voters in Florida voting in two states, also known as voter fraud, Gore still lost. Despite all the facts that can be garnered from reality, Ted continued to pontificate, "The exit polls were right last time. This year, I trust them more than Ohio's Secretary of State." Of course, Ted. They are telling you what you wanted to hear. Who cares if they are accurate, they told you what you wanted to believe and you choose to believe them... it MUST BE a conspiracy... yeah... lets stick to reality... there is a massive conspiracy...

(again, this post must shift in style... Ted seems to write as a stream of conscoiusness kind of guy... not very structured")

Ted wrote in his oppressively long and pointless diatribe, "The day after a shady election handed to a maniacal buffoon, New Yorkers whose dead remain scandalously unavenged were in the streets. Civil strife, rage, the fight for decency and democracy--they were nowhere to be found." Ted, no-one handed the election to Kerry. Kerry conceded, remember? And you say that the day after ... New Yorkers... were in the streets, then you say "they were nowhere to be found" Ted, you are making no sense

People looked up at the sky, taking in the sun on a crisp fall day. They streamed in and out of the Disney store. They lived their lives. Ted lived his. "Half a world away," Ted thought, "AC-130 planes and tanks bought by American citizens and dispatched on the orders of criminal goons busily declaring themselves a mandate dropped bombs and shot shells into a city called Fallujah." Ted believes the military and its leadership is comprised of "criminal goons".

Ted read a military statement that read "Marine Expeditionary Forces will continue to conduct operations and will not cease until Fallujah is free of foreign terrorists and insurgents." Ted also read that Issam Mohammad, spokesman for the Fallujah hospital, said that a woman was "badly wounded" and a young girl lost her leg. Apparently Ted thinks the costs to the innocents outweigh the alternative. Ted would rather see another 9/11 than read about a woman and child being injured in a just and necessary war.

Ted, there is a difference between collateral causalities and targeting innocents. The difference between us and them is that we do everything we can to prevent their women and children from being hurt. They target our women and children and use their own as human shields. Facts are facts, Ted.