Peace Tour Continued

“When everybody in America knows the name of the Secretary of the Treasury, that’s not good.” –Will Durst

(Signs made with cardboard, paint and lettered with an overhead projector. All are safely and lawfully placed on public property in accordance with the first amendment right to free political speech.)

"Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live.” ~ Dorothy Thompson

“Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.“ - Peter Ustinov

"Now if the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms comes to disarm you and they are bearing arms, resist them with arms. Go for a head shot; they're going to be wearing bulletproof vests. ... Kill the sons of bitches." –G. Gordon Liddy (Terrorist, Felon, Friend of John McCain)

"When the pupil is ready to learn, a teacher will appear." – Zen Proverb

“I do what I like.” – Errol Flynn

YTD - 732

Phoenix/Tempe

Signs made with cardboard, paint and an overhead projector. They were lawfully placed on public property in accordance with the first amendment right to free political speech.

Number of times the word "also" was used during the vice-presidential debate:
By moderator Gwen Ifill: 2
By Joe Biden: 3
By Sarah Palin: 47



Endless War Ribbon



Operation Peace on Earth.

Telegraph Hill Blogging

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Do you have any doubt that Barack Obama shares your sense of patriotism?

SENATOR MCCAIN: I'm sure he's very patriotic, but his relationship with Mr. Ayers is open to question...how can you countenance someone who was engaged in bombings which could have or did kill innocent people?

-Interview with ABC News, April 2008

It's Fleet Week in San Francisco, and the Blue Angels are in town. Otherwise perfect afternoons have been punctuated by the heart-rending shriek of F/A-18 Hornets flying fast and low over the City, making Baghdad-by-the-Bay seem more like Baghdad.

Putting up messages for jet pilots is a lot like freewayblogging only you've got to make the signs bigger and put them higher up. Given that your target audience is moving at hundreds of miles per hour, it's best to keep it short.

Although plenty of attention's been paid to John McCain's years as a POW and its effect on his psyche, I'm more concerned with the possible damage done during the minutes he spent over Hanoi than the years he spent inside it. Obviously this is guesswork, but I think I'd rather live through torture than the knowledge I'd killed a bunch of innocent people. I know for a fact which I'd rather look back on.

A friend of mine flew A-10 Warthogs for the Air National Guard in the first Gulf War. This is how he described the last three days of battle: "We'd load up with everything we had, fly for about twelve minutes and then just unload it on them. Everything. Then we'd fly back, load up and do it again. Over and over. Those poor fucks didn't stand a chance."

When I asked him how many people he thinks he killed he said "Hundreds." And he said it in a way that didn't mean two or three hundred, but some number in the unthinkable beyond.

My friend is, and always was a good guy. He joined with the Air National Guard because he wanted to fly. He knew that it might require him to kill, but he had no idea he'd end up killing so many. The result, as he put it, was "I'll never be happy again. Not like you, or other people... not like I used to be. I'll have good days, better days, good things can happen. But happiness... no. That's never really gonna happen again."


Although they were in retreat, at least the people killed by my friend were men: soldiers in uniform. He doesn't have to live knowing he'd killed a bunch of women and children too, at least as far as I know. I wonder how John McCain feels about it - those few minutes over Hanoi - and what it feels like to push a button knowing it's probably going to blow a whole bunch of people to pieces. Defenseless people: men, women and children. After all, the people who determine what is and isn't a legitimate military target aren't the ones who have to push the buttons.

I think it's a fair question, and its honest answer would tell us a lot about John McCain as a President and Commander-in-Chief. Trust me though, it'll be a cold day in hell before anyone in the media ever asks it.

(Signs placed in San Francisco Thursday and Friday.)

New York, Rhode Island, Canada

ABC Party (Anyone But Conservative)

East Bay/SF

"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive." ~ Thomas Jefferson

Signs placed today in Berkeley, Richmond, El Cerrito and San Francisco.
Quotes from here.

"Be happy while you're living, for you're a long time dead." ~ Scottish proverb

"Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority." ~ Thomas Huxley

"The ink of the scholar is holier than the blood of the martyr." ~ Prophet Muhammad

"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich." ~ Napoleon

"You exist only in what you do." ~ Federico Fellini

"We've got to pause and ask ourselves, how much clean air do we need?" ~ Lee Iacocca

Protesting Blackwater

"There is no place in the American force structure, or in American culture for mercenaries, they are guns for hire; No more, no less."
-Marshall Adame, former State Dept official in Iraq


"Blackwater appears to have fostered a culture of shoot first and sometimes kill, and then ask the questions." -Rep. Elijah Cummings

Section 4 - COALITION PROVISIONAL AUTHORITY ORDER NUMBER 17 (REVISED)

3) Contractors shall be immune from Iraqi legal process with respect to acts performed by them…

"I saw them shoot people, I saw them crash into cars while I was their passenger. There was absolutely no reason, no provocation whatsoever." -Marshall Adame, former State Dept. official in Iraq

"I think that what needs to happen is that Erik Prince needs to become a more frequent visitor to Capitol Hill than his industry lobbyists have been over the past several years, and his visits should always begin with his right hand raised and cameras in front of him." -Jeremy Scahill

"I think this election really sends a strong message," Lutz said. "This is the first time the public has been able to stand up and say no to this group (Blackwater)."
-Raymond Lutz

"When used with cardboard and paint, an overhead projector is like having a printing press for billboards." -Scarlet P.

Pretty Pictures From San Diego

I finished up the Peace Tour in San Diego on Monday, a beautiful day for driving around and taking photos. After a little less than a month and 2700 miles of driving I’ve put up 171 peace signs between San Diego and Seattle and back. I don’t know what, if any effect this might have on people, but I’d like to think it helps calm them down a bit.



Mostly what I’m trying to do with these signs is let people know that, just like the flags that went up after September 11th, it’s not just our right to put signs up, it's our patriotic duty. If it’s not our right explicitly, then it's our job to test the system and make it our right, and the easiest way to do that is to just do it.


So far this year I’ve put up 711 signs, making for a grand total of 4,607 since this blog began in November of 2005. In this time I’ve been stopped by cops seven times with little or no consequence other than to take down the sign. The other 4,600 signs went off pretty much without a hitch.


My Modus Operandi is to travel with a lot of signs of various shapes and sizes, and post them along the freeways as I see fit. The best spots are those that can be easily seen from traffic but not so easily reached. I also try to minimize the time and effort it takes for me to reach the posting spots personally: few of these required more than a fifty foot walk from my truck, or more than ten seconds to post.






I was taught that when it comes to political expression my rights as a citizen are practically limitless Not just in the content of the speech, but the range of it as well. If I'm allowed to hang up one sign, I'm allowed to hang up a thousand of them.
Being able to use public property for the posting of political speech isn’t just our right, but one of those rights that's supposed to make this such a great country... one of those things we're supposedly so proud of. But how often do we ever actually use it? And how many people see us when we do?

Apart from the 171 I put up, the only handmade political signs I saw between San Diego and Seattle were two in Oregon that said "Nobama." God Bless whoever put them there.


How To Make A Large Sign In Five Minutes

Handy Posting Tips