Two nasties, a slobbering drunk and lots of thumbs up

It was an interesting night, standing on a street corner holding two Ron Paul signs and a cache of slimjims in the middle of this month's street party event. This particular event was larger than normal due to a Harley motorcycle group who was touring the area, complete with a downtown parade and group-sponsored blood drive. It was an excellent opportunity for alot of face time in heavy but casual foot traffic.

I hooked up with David, a fellow Paul devotee and write-in candidate for a city council seat who was tagging along to advance his own campaign, around 6:30pm and we wandered up the block a ways to settle on the most heavily traveled corner at Third and Cherry, right there at the hub of the busiest intersection in the multi-block street party.

The crowd was very diverse, lots of colorful leathery biker types, whole families from kids in strollers to seniors navigating the crowded sidewalks surprisingly well for their apparent ages, blacks and whites alike all enjoying the atmosphere in and around the numerous sidewalk-seated eateries lining this particular street. The weather this evening was perfect after the month-long scorching heatwave we just had, with a nice steady breeze that kept the air from stagnating in the slowly-milling throngs.

I much prefer this environment for politicking as opposed to a busy intersection in rush hour traffic. This particular scenario allows plenty of opportunity to engage the curious, inspire the oblivious, and close the deal with multiple fence sitters. I probably fielded about two dozen "who is Ron Paul" inquiries, graciously accepted about the same number of thumbs-up kudos, and put a slimjim directly into the hands of over 100 people who showed even the most subtle interest in comprehending my purpose for being there. The majority of the crowd however simply smiled as they meandered past with not a care in the world.

And of course, we had a few interesting and shall we say unsupportive encounters. About an hour into it, a man whose attire announced his unquestionable affiliation with the biker group, stepped away from his party and approached me, looking me dead in the eye as he slowly withdrew his hand from his front jeans pocket. Stopping about 10 feet away and suddenly leaning toward me, he flipped a quarter at my feet and avowed, "Not a Chance." Not immediately grasping the entirety of his intention, I continued to smile at him as he stomped back into his own party of friends, turning only once to scowl at me as if I'd somehow just insulted his dog. Ahh, ok, I get it now. I broadened my smile and nodded to bestow my best blessings on the poor lost coward of a man who has probably never even read the first Ron Paul writing, let alone knew anything of his actual positions on the issues.

Next up, about a half hour later, a chubby white haired man attired to exude a certain affluence stared intently at the sign I was holding, racking his brain to recognize the familiar name in front of him. Just as I slid the slimjim from my stack toward his semi-outstretched hand, his look of pained concentration immediately leveled into disgusted contempt as he felt it necessary to utter, "I'm a republican.." while snapping his hand into his ribs to keep my offering from even making contact with his ascribed personal body space. Unaware of the cusses emanating from this man's body language, my friend David took this utterance as his cue to engage the man on the more proximate issue of asking for his vote in the upcoming city elections. The man would have none of it, nearly issuing his own fatwas as if to purge the streets of myself, David, Ron Paul and every other freedom-loving soul inhabiting his planet earth.

Not too long after that David needed to seek out the source of a particularly appetizing aroma that had pervaded the breeze for almost the entire time we'd been there, since he hadn't stopped to eat beforehand. We quickly finalized our plans for more campaigning the next day and we bid our adieus for the night. As it was nearly dark at this point I resolved to stay in this nice visible spot as long as the people remained amicably sober.

Along comes a man very intent on having a conversation with me by first indulging my desires to discuss what I find so appealing about Ron Paul. He listened attentively throughout my explanation, and merely offered his affection for Huckabee, albeit somewhat uncommitted. When I acknowledged that I too liked Huckabee, he began to explain the basis of his appeal, being the Huckster's alleged moral compass that will essentially put God back into everything we do. My smile remained steady, fueled by the comedy of my mind's presentation of eyes rolling at the dreaded church/state argument I was convinced was about to ensue. But at the first mention of the ten commandments, this man abruptly stopped to ask if I could name them. I'm sure I can, I thought, having discussed this issue hundreds of times recently. But, being caught off guard at the man's inquisitiveness, I suddenly drew a blank, succeeding in naming only 4 (honor parents, no lying, stealing or coveting) while struggling to find the rest of them hiding away in inaccessible retreats of the mind.

At this point the man had fully embarked on his well-rehearsed spiel in an attempt to save my soul from damnation. If you've worked in any capacity involving crowds of strangers over the last few years, I'm sure you've encountered similar which always starts off with the stranger offering you something you believe to be of value, such as a (fake) $1 million dollar bill or (fake) golden chain. The purpose of this ploy is to lead you into temptation then guilt you into holy repentance. The first time it was tried on me, a man offered me a million dollar bill. I immediately told him there's no such thing so I didn't care for it, thus undercutting his approach and throwing him off balance. Well in tonight's challenge to list the ten commandments, he offered me the ten commandments engraved on a penny as if it were a highly prized valuable keepsake.

Overall we had a nice conversation that lasted about 20 minutes, but I want to believe that I managed to sway him from his Huckabee attraction, using his own "God needs to bless America again" logic. I told him I did not agree with Huck's position that we remain united even to the point of the entire nation going over a cliff. I tried to explain that God will never bless this country as long as corruption permeates all levels of government, our entire economy is based on the successful inducement of covetous behavior, and trickery and deceit are employed to justify our aims at conquering the world by force. In light of the current state of affairs in this country, there's no way any one of God's children in our right minds should drop our principles and morals and remain silent and subservient to a horribly lost and broken government just to keep the country united. Where is the honor in that?

I could have talked longer because I really enjoy that level of intensity in civil conversation, but I felt I was neglecting the first priority of introducing people to Ron Paul so I stopped rebutting his remarks and allowed him to wind down to his conclusion so he would leave and let me get back to it.

No sooner had I recomposed myself to embrace the crowd when a slovenly fat drunken man put his putrid breath about 6 inches from my nose and insisted that I stop this nonsense and vote for Hillary. Ignoring all internal alarms shooting danger signals so strongly into my frontal lobes that my jaws tensed rigid immediately, I foolishly asked the man "why do you want Hillary?" "Because we need (hic) change. We need a change," he said. Still ignoring my inner guidance I replied, "yes we do need change. Drastic change. And this man's going to do it by putting this country back in touch with its constitution." Coming off such a satisfying conversation with Mr. Salvation, I was stupidly unwilling to shut down on the next conversation that arose. When this creature got 2 inches from my face and told me, "you're a woman. Give Hillary a chance. Vote for a woman so we can have a change," I nearly puked in disgust at the man's obnoxiously drunken sexism. FINALLY, my body shut down and ceased all voluntary responses to this vile stimuli invading the deepest levels of my personal space. This paralysis apparently worked to motivate the man to back off and go on about his night, but one more wreaking molecule of this man's toxic emissions penetrating my olfactory membrane was going to cause a scene to which the dozens of officers onhand would have gladly responded to justify their presence at this heretofore uneventful night.

And with that, at 9:18pm I dropped the signs to my side and left without so much as a nod to the next mass of cheerfully approaching revelers. What a terribly sour note to end an otherwise amazingly fulfilling evening on the streets for Ron Paul.

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Time for an update

Well, after being ramrodded into Google's blog system when trying to sign into my blogger account, the first thing I'm obliged to say is that I don't appreciate having my blog forced into the folds of Google's global internet hegemony. If it makes me so angry to have my choices shoved down my throat like that, I could always just relocate to another blogging service, and probably will before my time on earth is done. That is, if there are any blog sites remaining in the tubes that don't have Google's hooks in them.

Now, an important Ron Paul update:
He's introduced several pieces of legislation recently that merit your consideration.
HJ Res 23 (2/7/07): Proposing an amendment the Constitution of the United States relative to abolishing personal income, estate, and gift taxes and prohibiting the United States Government from engaging in business in competition with its citizens.

HR 1009 (2/13/07): To amend the Controlled Substances Act to exclude Hemp from the definition of marijuana.

Next up we have Rep. Ron Paul's floor speech during the Iraq escalation debate (2/14/07):

This grand debate is welcomed but it could be that this is nothing more than a distraction from the dangerous military confrontation approaching with Iran and supported by many in leadership on both sides of the aisle.

This resolution, unfortunately, does not address the disaster in Iraq. Instead, it seeks to appear opposed to the war while at the same time offering no change of the status quo in Iraq. As such, it is not actually a vote against a troop surge. A real vote against a troop surge is a vote against the coming supplemental appropriation that finances it. I hope all of my colleagues who vote against the surge today will vote against the budgetary surge when it really counts: when we vote on the supplemental.

The biggest red herring in this debate is the constant innuendo that those who don’t support expanding the war are somehow opposing the troops. It’s nothing more than a canard to claim that those of us who struggled to prevent the bloodshed and now want it stopped are somehow less patriotic and less concerned about the welfare of our military personnel.

Osama bin Laden has expressed sadistic pleasure with our invasion of Iraq and was surprised that we served his interests above and beyond his dreams on how we responded after the 9/11 attacks. His pleasure comes from our policy of folly getting ourselves bogged down in the middle of a religious civil war, 7,000 miles from home that is financially bleeding us to death. Total costs now are reasonably estimated to exceed $2 trillion. His recruitment of Islamic extremists has been greatly enhanced by our occupation of Iraq.

Unfortunately, we continue to concentrate on the obvious mismanagement of a war promoted by false information and ignore debating the real issue which is: Why are we determined to follow a foreign policy of empire building and pre-emption which is unbecoming of a constitutional republic?

Those on the right should recall that the traditional conservative position of non-intervention was their position for most of the 20th Century-and they benefited politically from the wars carelessly entered into by the political left. Seven years ago the Right benefited politically by condemning the illegal intervention in Kosovo and Somalia. At the time conservatives were outraged over the failed policy of nation building.

It’s important to recall that the left, in 2003, offered little opposition to the pre-emptive war in Iraq, and many are now not willing to stop it by de-funding it or work to prevent an attack on Iran.

The catch-all phrase, “War on Terrorism”, in all honesty, has no more meaning than if one wants to wage a war against criminal gangsterism. It’s deliberately vague and non definable to justify and permit perpetual war anywhere, and under any circumstances. Don’t forget: the Iraqis and Saddam Hussein had absolutely nothing to do with any terrorist attack against us including that on 9/11.

Special interests and the demented philosophy of conquest have driven most wars throughout history. Rarely has the cause of liberty, as it was in our own revolution, been the driving force. In recent decades our policies have been driven by neo-conservative empire radicalism, profiteering in the military industrial complex, misplaced do-good internationalism, mercantilistic notions regarding the need to control natural resources, and blind loyalty to various governments in the Middle East.

For all the misinformation given the American people to justify our invasion, such as our need for national security, enforcing UN resolutions, removing a dictator, establishing a democracy, protecting our oil, the argument has been reduced to this: If we leave now Iraq will be left in a mess-implying the implausible that if we stay it won’t be a mess.

Since it could go badly when we leave, that blame must be placed on those who took us there, not on those of us who now insist that Americans no longer need be killed or maimed and that Americans no longer need to kill any more Iraqis. We’ve had enough of both!

Resorting to a medical analogy, a wrong diagnosis was made at the beginning of the war and the wrong treatment was prescribed. Refusing to reassess our mistakes and insist on just more and more of a failed remedy is destined to kill the patient-in this case the casualties will be our liberties and prosperity here at home and peace abroad.

There’s no logical reason to reject the restraints placed in the Constitution regarding our engaging in foreign conflicts unrelated to our national security. The advice of the founders and our early presidents was sound then and it’s sound today.

We shouldn’t wait until our financial system is completely ruined and we are forced to change our ways. We should do it as quickly as possible and stop the carnage and financial bleeding that will bring us to our knees and force us to stop that which we should have never started.

We all know, in time, the war will be de-funded one way or another and the troops will come home. So why not now?
(video link)

What more can be said, except Vote for Ron Paul for President, 2008!

Daily Minutia Update:
What would Jesus do? The builder of a church in Macon Georgia has drawn protests from property owners because of the negative impact the church will have on property values due to commercial development in the area. So the only logical way for the builder to force property owners into accepting God's work is to threaten to build an hispanic gay nightclub instead. What would Jesus do, indeed. Is this really how God operates?

On to more exciting news: The Virgin Earth Challenge is a challenge to develop and demonstrate the ability to remove significant levels of CO2 from the atmosphere. The prize is a whopping $25 million reward for the first group to demonstrate a commercially viable design which will remove at least 1 billion tons of atmospheric carbon dioxide per year for at least ten years without harmful effects.

I don't know about that 1 billion tons thing, but there is a company out there who claims to be able to capture CO2 at the source and break it down into its carbon and oxygen components. GS-CleanTech, a subsidiary of Greenshift, offers the technology primarily to ethanol plants, who produce astonishingly high levels of CO2 during the fermentation process. From their website:

GS CleanTech’s C0₂ Bioreactor is an enclosed structure with the ability to convert a concentrated supply of C0₂ into oxygen and biomass. The biomass can then be converted into fuel through traditional means.

Should GS-CleanTech accept the Virgin Earth Challenge? If their technology can meet the judges' requirements, you'll likely see their stock hit the moon! I'm not aware of other companies touting this technology. Tell me in the comments if you've heard or seen any others advancing these kinds of claims.