[GPSCC-chat] Report from the University Ave. Fair

[Brian Good]

There was a crafts faire downtown today in Palo Alto, I found by accident, with a 
big Voter Registration for Obama tent, and life-sized cardboard image of the 
president. People were getting their pictures taken with it.  

So I went home and got better clothes and took my "The Audacity of War Crimes"
sign and stood in front of their tent.  

A woman came by and said she was generally sympathetic to my point of view but
that though she was torn she felt that she ought to vote for Obama on pragmatic
grounds.  I said that if I were young like her I would probably feel the same way,
but I saw Germany 20 years after WWII and I saw what happens to countries
that think that international laws don't apply to them, and that I was bound by the
Nuremberg Principles not to be complicit in war crimes.

A couple of the Democrats came out from the tent to parley and the first guy asked 
me if I thought it would be better under Romney than Obama.  I told him that Karl 
Rove wants Obama re-elected, because if Romney were elected he would be 
expected to 1) balance the budget, 2) win the war in Afghanistan, 3) demonstrate 
that trickle-down works and 4) outlaw abortion, and he can't do three of those things 
and he won't do #4 because that would kill redneck indignance.

The second guy listened quite respectfully for a long time while a woman in American
Indian jewelry who claimed to be African American ranted very cogently.  When he 
finally got a chance he said he understood the problem the Democratic left has and 
he thinks the party needs to find a way to address this.  I suggested ranked-choice
voting, pointing out that we could vote our conscience on ballots 1 and 2 and then
vote pragmatically only on ballot 3 and then we could have it both ways--voting to
make a statement without throwing our votes away.

For the woman in Indian jewelry I gave references to "What's the Matter With 
Kansas" and "Words that Work".  After I got there with my sign I didn't see
anybody getting their picture taken with the cardboard image.

Brian 









 






 		 	   		  
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