"Yes, but will Nuking Iran really make us safer?"

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060417fa_fact

"One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that “a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.”

And Here's Phase Two of Our Leader's Glorious Plan:

San Francisco Yesterday

Record rainfall here in San Francisco, so I haven't been freewayblogging as much as I should. I put these up yesterday just to keep in practice. Lately I've been taking care of a dear auntie who's been going through chemotherapy and will pretty much confined to the Bay Area for at least a few more weeks. Hopefully though I'll be able to move around a bit after that and start visiting you all in the north and south west.

Now that some of you are getting introduced to each other, we should start seeing more signs like these in more places. Remember: paint on cardboard, cardboard on freeway.
That's all there is to it.

Harry Taylor: American

Q You never stop talking about freedom, and I appreciate that. But while I listen to you talk about freedom, I see you assert your right to tap my telephone, to arrest me and hold me without charges, to try to preclude me from breathing clean air and drinking clean water and eating safe food. If I were a woman, you'd like to restrict my opportunity to make a choice and decision about whether I can abort a pregnancy on my own behalf. You are --

THE PRESIDENT: I'm not your favorite guy. Go ahead. (Laughter and applause.) Go on, what's your question?

Q Okay, I don't have a question. What I wanted to say to you is that I -- in my lifetime, I have never felt more ashamed of, nor more frightened by my leadership in Washington, including the presidency, by the Senate, and --

AUDIENCE MEMBERS: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: No, wait a sec -- let him speak.

Q And I would hope -- I feel like despite your rhetoric, that compassion and common sense have been left far behind during your administration, and I would hope from time to time that you have the humility and the grace to be ashamed of yourself inside yourself. And I also want to say I really appreciate the courtesy of allowing me to speak what I'm saying to you right now. That is part of what this country is about.

Full Transcript/Video Here:
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/04/06/bush-event-goes-off-script/

Thank You Harry Taylor:

http://www.thankyouharrytaylor.org

From Sea to Shining Sea...

The Cities Project:
Listed below are the cities where two or more of you have
written me expressing a desire to start posting signs.
For the past two weeks I've been e-mailing you each
other's addresses, either directly or through regional
coordinators, with the hope you'll start getting together
and Doing It. Please send pictures if you do.

Remember though that the beauty of signposting is that it doesn't really require any organization and can be easily managed, in just a few minutes, by one person.

Just paint a sign and put it up where people can see it.

Fayetteville
Mesa
Tempe
Scottsdale
Phoenix
Douglas
Tucson
Glendale
Berkeley
Burbank
Costa Mesa
Fresno
Hollywood
Huntington Beach
Irvine
Long Beach
Los Angeles
Marina Del Rey
Marin
Oakland
Richmond
Oxnard
Pasadena
Paso Robles
Petaluma
Rancho Cucamonga
Sacramento
San Bernadino
San Diego
El Cajon
Oceanside
Encinitas
San Francisco
San Jose
San Luis Obispo
Santa Barbara
Santa Cruz
Santa Maria
Santa Rosa
Studio City
Ukiah
Ventura
Walnut Creek
Aurora
Boulder
Colorado Springs
Denver
Hartford
Meredin
Mystic
Washington DC
Wilmington
Clearwater
Daytona
Fort Myers
Fort Lauderdale
Gainesville
Jacksonville
Orlando
Miami
Palm Harbor
Sarasota
St. Petersburg
Tampa
Atlanta
Athens
Boise
Pocatello
Naperville
Chicago
Evanston
Springfield
Bloomington
Indianapolis
Mishawaka
South Bend
Iowa City
Des Moines
Spirit Lake
Edmunton
Lexington
Louisville
Kansas City
Concord
Norwood
Boston
Cape Cod
Duxbury
Baltimore
Rockville
Silver Spring
Bethesda
Portland
Ann Arbor
Flint
Grand Rapids
Detroit
Lansing
Saginaw
Traverse City
Minneapolis
Red Wing
St. Paul
Joplin
St. Charles
St. Louis
Missoula
Asheville
Charlotte
Chapel Hill
Durham
Raleigh
Dover
Portsmouth
Manchester
Hoboken
New Providence
Princeton
West Orange
Newark
Albuquerque
Santa Fe
Las Vegas
Reno
Albany
Binghamton
Buffalo
Long Island
Ithaca
Brooklyn
New York City
Akron
Cincinnati
Cleveland
Columbus
Oklahoma City
Tulsa
Eugene
Portland
Chester City
Erie
Pittsburg
Philadelphia
Reading
Wilkes-Barre
Providence
Charleston
Memphis
Nashville
Knoxville
Austin
Dallas
Fort Worth
Pflugerville
Houston
San Antonio
Provo
Salt Lake City
Arlington
Charlottesville
Falls Church
Fairfax
Norfolk
Richmond
Roanoke
Burlington
Bellingham
Richland
Seattle
Spokane
Tacoma
Vancouver
Fond du Lac
Madison
Milwaukee
Morgantown

New South Dakota State Motto Contest!

http://southdakotamottocontest.cf.huffingtonpost.com/

South Dakota passes legislation outlawing almost

all abortions, even in cases of rape and incest: News Item.

Eugene, El Cajon, Tacoma

Eugene, OR

Aw Gee... I Thought This War Would Be Fun

I put this sign up about three years ago, in the first weeks of the war. It was inspired by hearing one of the talking heads on cable say "Of course, now that troops are in harm's way, you can't be sarcastic." Really? I thought to myself, I hadn't heard that one before... once troops are in harm's way an entire branch of rhetoric is off limits to the public? What utter bullshit.

So I painted this sign and hung it on a retaining wall next to I- 5 in Mission Viejo, right in the heart of Orange County.

The story during that particular news cycle was this woman: Shoshana Johnson. The videotape of her interrogation by the Iraqi Army was being played relentlessly on cable news: a young black woman, scared out of her wits, trying to answer questions like “Why did you come here?” “Why did you come to kill Iraqis?”

She was practically beside herself with fear, her eyes darting and moving around constantly, waiting for the shot or whatever it was that might kill her at any moment, while the news anchors clucked and gasped at the human drama and spectacle.

Of course, as Americans we knew damn well what people staring death in the face looked like, and it was nothing like this. If we’d learned anything from years of watching television, it was that people faced death with incredible stoicism - jaws set firmly with a steely gaze in the eyes and perhaps one slight swallow or lump in the throat to betray any sort of fear. So what was this? What in the hell was this this twitching, stuttering, pop-eyed freak show doing on our TV sets?

For possibly the first time our TVs were showing us what it looked like when someone was genuinely in fear for their lives, and we didn't like it. Not one bit. And something in the tsking, headshaking and hollow, practiced gravity of the newsanchors voices describing this one scared woman made something inside me snap. Suddenly the whole stupid fucking infotainment media spectacle that constituted the lead up to the war was lain bare: All the charts and graphs and speculation from experts and pundits, the dramatic music and big graphic arrows spreading over maps... all of it exposed for the bullshit that it was in the eyes of this one frightened woman. And then they had the gall to tell me I couldn't be sarcastic? Fuck You.

The sign took about half an hour to make and about ten seconds to hang once I figured out how to get there. While not exactly easy, getting to the wall from the backside required little more than a few minutes of driving around, a quick scamper down a hillside and trudging through some brush.

I don't know how long I expected the sign to stay up - a couple of hours maybe - but when I drove by three days later and saw it was still there, I couldn't believe my eyes. Three days. Three days perfectly visible to five lanes of heavy traffic, over 150,000 cars per day, and nobody, but nobody had taken the ten or fifteen minutes it would've required to go take it down.

I'd hung plenty of signs before that one, and seen a lot of them stay up for days, but seeing that one - a great big 8 by 10 foot "Fuck You" up for three days in the darkest heart of Republican Orange County - became a defining moment for me. Those of you who've hung signs and seen them stay up know what I'm talking about: it's incredible. The only explanation for it is that everyone driving by thinks someone else will take them down, and nobody does.

Unfortunately though, the same "Not my job..." mindset that keeps signs up may well be what dooms this art to being little more than a novelty act. If you see a sign you don't like, it's your job to take it down. If, on the other hand, you don't see any signs at all, it's your job to put them there. The next guy ain't gonna do it for you.