<html>
<head>
<style><!--
.hmmessage P
{
margin:0px;
padding:0px
}
body.hmmessage
{
font-size: 10pt;
font-family:Tahoma
}
--></style></head>
<body class='hmmessage'><div dir='ltr'>
There was a crafts faire downtown today in Palo Alto, I found by accident, with a <br>big Voter Registration for Obama tent, and life-sized cardboard image of the <br>president. People were getting their pictures taken with it. <br><br>So I went home and got better clothes and took my "The Audacity of War Crimes"<br>sign and stood in front of their tent. <br><br>A woman came by and said she was generally sympathetic to my point of view but<br>that though she was torn she felt that she ought to vote for Obama on pragmatic<br>grounds. I said that if I were young like her I would probably feel the same way,<br>but I saw Germany 20 years after WWII and I saw what happens to countries<br>that think that international laws don't apply to them, and that I was bound by the<br>Nuremberg Principles not to be complicit in war crimes.<br><br>A couple of the Democrats came out from the tent to parley and the first guy asked <br>me if I thought it would be better under Romney than Obama. I told him that Karl <br>Rove wants Obama re-elected, because if Romney were elected he would be <br>expected to 1) balance the budget, 2) win the war in Afghanistan, 3) demonstrate <br>that trickle-down works and 4) outlaw abortion, and he can't do three of those things <br>and he won't do #4 because that would kill redneck indignance.<br><br>The second guy listened quite respectfully for a long time while a woman in American<br>Indian jewelry who claimed to be African American ranted very cogently. When he <br>finally got a chance he said he understood the problem the Democratic left has and <br>he thinks the party needs to find a way to address this. I suggested ranked-choice<br>voting, pointing out that we could vote our conscience on ballots 1 and 2 and then<br>vote pragmatically only on ballot 3 and then we could have it both ways--voting to<br>make a statement without throwing our votes away.<br><br>For the woman in Indian jewelry I gave references to "What's the Matter With <br>Kansas" and "Words that Work". After I got there with my sign I didn't see<br>anybody getting their picture taken with the cardboard image.<br><br>Brian <br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br> <br><br><br><br><br><br><br> </div></body>
</html>