Rall -- The Evil of Two Lessers: Two-Party System Is Not Democracy

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/ted-rall/36364/the-evil-of-two-lessers-two-party-system-is-not-democracy

We get the government we deserve.

:snip:

The two-party system, a political mutation unanticipated by the Constitution and dreaded by the Founding Fathers, mainly relies on the “lesser of two evils” argument.

Next year, for example, many liberals will hold their noses and vote for Obama even though he has not delivered for them. They will do this to try to avoid winding up with someone “even worse”: Michele Bachmann, Mitt Romney, etc.

Conservatives will do the same thing. They will vote for Michele Bachmann, Mitt Romney or whomever—even though they know full well they won’t come through with smaller government or a balanced budget—because Obama is “even worse.”

More at the link --

:shrug:

affected his line work. Of course it could just be distorted due to his spittle landing on the paper as he sketches.

I do artwork. I know how tough it is, even in a simple cartoon format. It seems as though you're expecting a cartoon to be on the level of a Monet. I couldn't care less if you hate the guy for his rants and beliefs, but as an artist it bugs me when people harp on someone for a talent they themselves usually lack.

I've just been complaining to him that switching from oils to acrylics has been really frustrating for me. There are so many good reasons to make the switch. But I miss the qualities of oils and the smells associated with that medium.

I don't really even feel comfortable with colors at all unless it's an abstract piece, and I rarely use color unless it's digital. I love the fine detail of pen and ink with a passion, so I tend to stick to that when I actually do art by hand (which is rarely, as most of my stuff is digital these days). Getting a new easel next month though so I may pick up the pencil again more often.

I love the stark black, white and gray. I do faces really well. And funny but I use color with abstracts, too. Right now I'm trying some portraits in the expressionist mode, trying to combine my love of faces with some very definite outlines in an abstract sort of way. I love bold whether in black and white or with jewel tones.

smudging it with the edge of my palm

What I do is use a very dry piece of paper under my palm to avoid the smudging, and change it every 15 minutes or so if it's hot and my hand is sweaty. Doesn't stop it entirely, but it you're careful you can avoid most smudging.

walk in, see me at my easel, with black smudges all over me. They also know that I'm pretty happy that way. :)

I just bought a bunch of charcoal sticks/pencils last month but haven't busted them out yet. I remember as a kid in 3rd grade art glass our teacher handed us a charcoal stick and piece of paper with a solid white box on one side and a solid black one on the other. In between were 10 empty boxes and we had to fill them in so it was a gradual change from white to black. Discovering all the shades in between was amazing to me, and I remember that was when I really started to get into art.

With the abstract stuff the color usually seems to dictate the image. I'm really into burnt reds and oranges, and they turn up a lot in my digital stuff. I love the "hot" colors. I'm also a major sucker for symmetry and have about 90 symmetrical pics. Fairly quick and easy to do (about an hour on average), and very pleasing to me to have that symmetrical order, probably because my life is such chaos. :)

and a few dashes of hot color here and there. And the easel and black piano and 2 guitars. Today I'm getting a round black carpet to put under my easel so that all the little drips of pain show up. It might look interesting in a year or 2. Or it might just be what keeps paint off the hardwood. :shrug:

That painting is gorgeous. Much better than what I can do, so far anyway. OTOH, normally I use paint to get rid of emotion so there's no rhyme or reason to it. Was it Van Gogh who said that he learned how to paint like a child when he was old or was it Picasso? I can't remember. Anyway, that's something I'm trying to do - enjoy the feel and messiness of charcoal and paint, and think outside the box. Like why can't a person's face be green or red if I feel like making it so? And if I just want to splash color all over the place and put my hands in it, why can't I?

Thanks for the compliment either way though.

I started in Bryce, where you work in 3d wireframe world, and created a sphere and applied a colorful, oily rainbow type of texture to it, then moved the camera inside of the sphere and rendered the picture. I then took the rendered pic into Photoshop and used the Liquify tool to smear it all around. I then made a second Bryce pic like the first, but with different texture and colors, and repeated the process in Photoshop. Then I layered the two images together, cut the pic in half and mirrored it for the symmetrical effect. Took all of 40 minutes or so. I never could have actually painted it. I can barely finger paint. :)

I hear what you're saying about enjoying the feel, and it's something that abstract art really allows me to experience. If you had asked my opinion of abstract art 20 years ago I would have laughed in your general direction. I was an anal retentive detail freak, and wanted my art to be more along the lines of graphic art and comic book art. Doing the abstract stuff is relatively new to me, but it's a lot of fun, where as the fine detail stuff feels like work. I love hyper realism, but to achieve it is a chore, and I'm not really known for my patience. The end result is worth it (usually), but it's not as free and fun as the abstract stuff is.

Brushes of any type intimidate me. I just never found a comfort zone with them, and it doesn't really fit my style anyways, so I've never busted my ass to get better with them. I did some stuff with them in Art School but never really took to them. I loved sculpture though, and wish I could afford the materials for it. At this point though I can barely afford Playdoh.

One of the reasons I moved to more digital stuff was that my friend gave me Photoshop, Bryce, Corel Illustrator and the old Ray Dream modeling program (which I never figured out). I had all these sitting here and just started messing with them and found I could do some pretty neat things that would have taken me forever to draw. As I have the patience of a ferret on crack I found this very exciting.

I know some artists have mixed, or outright negative feelings on digital art, but I really enjoy doing it, and I have no doubt that many old masters would have loved to have that option. This took me about 12 hours to do, but doing it traditionally would have taken waaay longer. This is all Bryce, with just the butterflies added in Photoshop (and no, I don't usually do nice pictures, this was for someone's birthday ;) )

No......

Color me shocked. He's an avowed, admitted Communist, so I don't understand why he doesn't relocate to one of the few utopias in the world. It isn't like his comics would need to change at all.

there isn't one.

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So we do have a say.

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That means President McCain or President Palin or some other hare-brained alternative. If we start holding Democratic officials to the promises they make and the platform they run on, we'll all be, like, totally doomed and stuff. It's far more sensible to just go along with whatever our Wise Leaders deem is achievable, and accept that it's the very best that can be done. Or even hoped for. Anything else is just asking for President Bachmann!

It is what is achievable. For instance now. We have a Republican Congress. How did they get there? People voting?

It's other people who do not vote the way that you do that set this up.

At least your vote prevented them from having both houses and Congress and the Presidency.

He had a non-political feature in Men's Health about "guy stuff" and they canned him for fear of pissing off right-wingers.

I don't always agree with his criticisms of Obama, but the fact is that most editorial cartoons, across the spectrum, about Democrats or Republicans, tend to be negative. Throwing rocks at someone is usually funnier than praising them.

It's not as if Obama is Rall's only target. He's merciless toward the leaders of capitalism.

... almost every politician in DC sucks ass in BOTH parties. And those of you that haven't figured that out yet, give it a couple more years.

Sid

:rofl:

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Otherwise you'd do so instead of attacking the messenger.

Classic right wing tactic.

and, oh yeah, i'm afraid of him, too....
:rofl:

And I'll ask again, do you do any art yourself?

Seriously, the fact that not one of them has made a comment on the piece and just trashed Rall for his artistic ability and other stuff should embarrass them. Of course, I'm willing to bet this month's rent money that the ones trashing him never even read it, just saw his name and got that knee a-jerking. Reactionaries do their party no service, and probably damage it more than Rall ever could. Rall hasn't turned me off to the Democratic party, but seeing so many knee jerk reactionaries in my own party has.

to distract us from the truth of Rall's message-that's all he's got. No argument. Zip.

it proves that the messenger has a very valid point that you have no strong argument against.

"Lack of drawing ability"? What is this? Middle school?

The only exception I know about is the Working Families Party, which owes its success to fusion voting.

WFP ticket, they get some federal dollars.

--in New York. And people keep ignoring success in favor of IRV, for reasons I can't figure out.

Or run as an independent?

Then if he wins a majority of the electoral votes- we don't have a 2 party system any more!

Two parties leads to massive criminal activity in the govt. We all know that. Goodluck getting a 5 party system in place. I will be long, long dead by then.

It's funny to me. I deal with depression and suicidal thoughts on a fairly regular basis, and if people find out they freak out and want me to stay alive and take care of myself because suicide is such a terrible choice (their words more than mine, trust me). Yet if we commit suicide slowly as a species barely anyone bats an eye. It's like when we're told as kids that all life is precious, when it's clear to anyone with a brain that this isn't the case at all, or even close.

As Alexei Sayle would say, "It's a funny ole world."

Change we can believe in.

And since he dares to cast aspersions against Democrats, whoops! Under the bus he goes.

Predictable, pathetic.

It's that simple. There's lots of multi-party systems that avoid this, and we have some on the local level. State and federal election laws are currently written so as to make it impractical.

And I don't get what's so set in stone about election laws. Of course we can change them. The two-party system isn't embedded in the Constitution, though the electoral college is.

All Mr. Rall does, like the "professional left" the corporate Democrats like to decry, is point out the Emperor has no clothes. It's okay, though: keep pretending the candidates who give lip service to liberal causes actually will stand up for the things you believe in when it counts.

And he's angry.

And has no sense of humor.

If you can't see how that makes him wrong then you must be some kind of Obama disliker or something.

;)

:hi:

He doesn't like either of the two current parties and is particularly pissed at the Dems for not being as liberal as he wants them to be.

Sounds like lots of folks here agree with him. If so, there is the core of your 3rd party.

:rofl:

So rather than urge the party to move to the left a bit you'd rather that those who would prefer that form yet another party to siphon votes away from Democrats?

Interesting how I have not seen yet on this thread one single substantive criticism of the actual points that Rall made.

Every single negative post is either an ad hominem against Rall or a distraction.

The sauce, it is weak.

Seems like I have to ask this daily, as 3rd parties seem to be the only reply you ever come up with.

No?

oh wait ... better is to bitch and moan that one of the parties is not what you want it to be. Because THAT path will work.

Not so much.

Better to bitch and moan at people in your own party for not grovelling sufficiently enough and tell them to join a third party, because THAT path helps Dems so much. :crazy:

You think that a Dem in a red district will win by running as a far left liberal?

If you HATE the 2 party system, which the OP clearly does, and YOU seem to agree that the 2 party system sucks ... then what choice do you have?

Or what ... you only hate the 2 party system because it does not work the way YOU want? But if it did, you'd be fine with the 2 party model?

You need to pick.

You think that a Dem in a red district will win by running as a far left liberal?

Scott brown won here in Mass, a solidly blue state, as a Teabagger, so why not? Nothing ventured nothing gained. Constantly settling for less, or not even having the courage to try in the first place, is a rather sad way to approach life, don't you think? As Wayne Gretzky once said, "100% of the shots you don't take don't go in."

If you HATE the 2 party system, which the OP clearly does, and YOU seem to agree that the 2 party system sucks ...

Talk to the OP. I don't hate the the two party system, I just no longer believe it's the best way to achieve a better country for all of us. The more voices heard the better the chances are that a good answer will come of it. We're limiting ourselves to a very narrow band of opinions in the two party system, and that's not good in any aspect of life, especially politics. I don't hate it, I think it's outdated and no longer the best option for this country. Why is it set in stone that only two parties are acceptable? When you buy a TV or a car do you only want two brands to choose from, or would you like a wider range of options so you can choose the one you feel is best? Don't you like having those multiple options to choose from? I bet you do, so why so afraid of it politically?

It's funny, you talk of me only wanting to be agreed with, yet how often have you told others here to join another party because they didn't agree with you? I'm a Democrat. I've never once told someone to join another party. You do it all the time. Which of us two only wants people who agree with us? It's not me, Joe.

you only hate the 2 party system because it does not work the way YOU want?

Do you only love the 2 party system because it works the way YOU want?

But if it did, you'd be fine with the 2 party model?

But if it didn't you'd be fine with a multiple party model?

You need to pick.

The tea bag dopes voted for a run of the mill moderate GOP candidate against a terrible Dem candidate.

So you do think that the 2 party system stinks ...

I don't hate the the two party system, I just no longer believe it's the best way to achieve a better country for all of us. The more voices heard the better the chances are that a good answer will come of it. We're limiting ourselves to a very narrow band of opinions in the two party system, and that's not good in any aspect of life, especially politics. I don't hate it, I think it's outdated and no longer the best option for this country.

I'm not sure how to read that except to see it as a call for "more parties" ... 3, 4, maybe more. Am I wrong?

Personally, I'd be fine with 3, 4, 5 parties ... and if I disliked the current two enough, I'd get involved with the creation of another.

But I don't have a reason to do that.

I think that the GOP is totally and completely crazy, and that the Democratic Party is far more representative of the sane people in the country. Depending on where you live, and the nature of the people there, your Dem candidate may be more moderate or more liberal, but usually reflecting the people they represent.

So, I have no problem with more parties. But I don't feel the need to create one. Some sound like they do. And I encourage them.

He is a moderate dope, but he didn't run as one at all. He played up to the Teabaggers, and tossed a couple of minor bones to the moderate Repubs here.

As for the call for more parties, yes, I would like to see more, for the reasons I explained above. More choices is always a good thing. Always. However, I like the Dems the best and would rather encourage those dissatisfied with us that we're worth their vote instead of pissing on them and driving them away as you elect to do. How can you say you support your party when you encourage people to leave it? It's doesn't even make sense. You're just cutting off your nose to spite your face, so instead of taking the time to evaluate the merits of the criticism, some of which is very valid and would make us a stronger party, you instead choose the option that weakens us. If you really care about the party why not work to get more people enrolled in the Party instead of asking people to leave it? It makes it awfully hard to take your arguments seriously that the Dems are better when you don't seem to feel that they're worth getting people to join us, and encourage them to leave instead.

offices and getting out the vote. They act like they are entitled to have the votes delivered without working for them.

So much irony in that my head almost exploded.

and adamantly insist on voting against their own self-interest. It's a failure of the voting public, and ultimately it's a failure of persuasion on our part. (Not that it's easy to persuade people whose minds are already brainwashed, and closed.)

The public could vote to fix whatever's wrong pretty quickly, if they could recognize their own self-interest and vote that way, but not enough people can do that anymore; not enough people can recognize what is a fact and what is a fiction. Until that situation turns around, not much will change no matter what.

The public enables the parties, the corporatists, the lobbyists, all of it. We don't have to do that, but we do.

I just think it's more effective to fix what IS the problem, than what is NOT the problem.

It came about naturally. Both parties are coalitions to some extent.

We don't have a parliamentary system, so it is difficult for third parties - but there have been shifts in which parties were on top.

The requirements for getting a third party candidate on the ballot are onerous. Getting funding for a third party candidate is impossible. Getting a third party candidate national exposure through debates rarely happens. The two party system has indeed conspired to lock out a third party candidate.