Monday, January 30, 2006

Arsenals of Democracy



This is all you need...








To Turn This...















Into This...



White and black paint, duct tape, marking pen, boxcutter, an overhead projector and transparencies are all the tools you need to turn cardboard into high-quality, easy to read political speech. Finding a water heater dump (where plumbers dump the new boxes along with the old heaters) will assure you an endless supply of sturdy, easy to work with cardboard, much of it already white. Some garage space, a couple of CDs and you're set...

Once you've hung a couple of signs and seen them stay up for awhile, you're no longer an ordinary citizen, you have officially become a pundit.

Saturday, January 28, 2006

Freeway Blogger on the Radio

Hey, this is Dr. Laniac. The Freeway Blogger's out hanging signs in SoCal and I'm passing on this bit of news for him.

You may have been listening to The Young Turks "Filibuster for the Filibuster" marathon broadcast this weekend. Saturday evening, while the Turks were catching a nap, Brad Friedman was doing a fill-in stint. Brad had on the Freeway Blogger as a guest. It's a nice segment and you can give it a listen.


Call/Fax/Email some Senators and encourage them to filibuster Alito. Georgia10 at DKos has phone numbers and info. Also, VichyDems.Blogspot.com is gathering local office numbers as well as the DC numbers.

And you might make some "Veto Alito" signs.

Marin, Sonoma, East Bay, SF
















These signs appeared yesterday on the 80, 280, 580 and 101 Freeways.
Busy Day.

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Dear Senator Santorum



Dear Senator Santorum,

I'd really like to thank you and tell you how deeply I was moved by your speech asking us to "step up" and support the troops by putting bumper stickers on our cars. Believe me, I'm with you 100% and if it were just as simple as that I'd be the first in line to stick one on. Unfortunately though, bumper stickers tend to weather badly, making uneven the finish on my car and reducing its overall market value. I'm sure you understand.

As a patriotic American, however, I am proud to show my support for the troops by displaying the non-damaging, easily removable magnet shown above.

Thank You For Your Courage, Freewayblogger

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Six Letter Word

Happy Birthday Granny D!


Granny D, otherwise known as Doris Haddock, celebrates her 96th birthday today. Wish her the best at http://grannyd.com/

At the age of 90 she walked across the country to raise awareness for campaign finance reform and last year ran for Senate in New Hampshire.

She was the third person to write me to say she'd put up her first freewayblog: two arrows pointing in different directions reading "Bush" and "Truth". She was 93 at the time.

Despite her sweet demeanor and novel persona, she is by no means someone to be discounted as a novelty act. Her speeches and writings are some of the sharpest and most eloquent of our time, and her dedication to the spirit and principles that founded this nation put the self-proclaimed "patriots" in our government and media to shame. Happy Birthday Granny.

Be sure to check out her own Do It Yourself Impeachment site http://tarandfeathers.org

Monday, January 23, 2006

When Fence Meets Fence

Lots of highway infrastructure uses this fence-on-fence construction, and there's nothing better for the Freewayblogger: No bungees, no wires, no tape - just slide that puppy in there and you're done. Takes two seconds... literally.





Here's what it looks like from the other side:

Sunday, January 22, 2006

Letter from Kentucky







Dear Freewayblogger,
Living in a small (less than 1600 population) town in southern KY, I've long felt helpless in terms of influencing politics here. During the buildup to the Iraq war, I could only walk the floor and nearly drive myself crazy, knowing we were heading into an illegal war and there was nothing I could do to stop it. That all changed when I learned of the Freewaybloggers.

My first sign was a simple one: a small piece of posterboard reading "What Noble Cause?" on the overpass of a local Parkway. It hung till it faded out in the sunlight and I took it down myself when I replaced it with "2 K - Why?" Since then I've hung more than I can count. While I've not yet seen any recruits because of my actions, it gives me great satisfaction to know that people see them, if only by the fact they take the time to remove them. Someone saw it!

Last weekend, I enlisted the aid of my office staff, young women who are being enlightened now, when it matters, to hang the "Bush: Above the Law?" sign. While they only drove the "getaway" car, it made all the difference just having someone to take the car on down the road while the sign was being hung. They too felt the rush, the exhilaration after it was completed. They're 'in' for more!

This weekend, I'm going to do my part to add this area to the latest campaign by hanging several signs saying “Impeach”. It may be a small part, but it's MY part! I'm doing something instead of nothing.

-Southern Kentucky

Friday, January 20, 2006

I Make Alan Colmes Sick

Reprinted from Fun With Hate Radio

Fox News Live with Alan Colmes:

The topic was the Catholic church and the war in Iraq and Alan's guest was a Father Donahue, a stridently pro-war Catholic claiming that the war in Iraq adhered to the Church's notion of a "Just War."

I am Jason from Oceanside, with a mild midwestern Nascar-dad accent.


Warning: This text gets very graphic.

Jason: "Thanks for having me on Alan - I consider myself to be a god-fearing Christian and a big supporter of my country and I just wanna tell you about the sermon I listened to yesterday in church. The subject was "Who would Jesus Bomb?" and the answer was pretty much 'nobody.' The major point the priest was making was that bombing, ALL bombing... was just plain cowardly, and it didn't matter if it was us doing it or anybody else, but what it all boiled down to was that bombing is cowardly and Jesus wouldn't support it. And he said his inspiration for the sermon had come from the Pentagon itself - when they said the reason they thought the Iraqi Army folded so quickly was because they were mostly just conscripts, y'know... just kids pulled from outta their villages... So I gotta wonder why, y'know... why we gotta kill all these kids who had nothin' to do with it...

Alan: So what do you say father? This is what's being said in some churches.

Father Donahue: Uhhh yeah, I think they should find another religion - why don't they become Quakers? My religion, Roman Catholicism, rejects that totally and that's why they have the most sophisticated understanding of what a Just War...

Alan Colmes: This is priests who are saying this... Catholic Priests!

Father Donohue: That's right and you'll find, uh, no end to the number of nuns in this country who are pro-abortion and nobody wants to talk about that - all I'm telling you is they don't represent the teachings of the Catholic Church. The teachings of the Catholic church are found in the catechism, the ministry of the Pope and...

Alan Colmes: Alright Jason, thanks for your call...

Jason: May I? May I just interject one more time?

AC: Yes.

Jason: The most striking thing that he talked about was something called "overpressure", which is not the explosive force of the bomb but the pressure wave that radiates around the bomb... and that what that does is that it implodes the sinuses and the eardrums of the people who are there...

AC: Yeah, bombing isn't good for ya...

Jason: And that what happens is your cerebral spinal fluid - your brain fluid - leaks out through your nose and through your ears...

AC: Right...

Jason: And that you don't die right away... You're as good as dead, but you don't die right away...

AC: (Uncomfortable) Right, right... right.

Jason: And that these are just kids... That was the point he was really trying to make - these were just kids pulled outta villages! and they don't have a chance! They didn't have a chance to fight back... And they just gotta lie there - starin' up at the sky and prayin' to whatever God they got to pray to...

AC: (Throughout) Uh, yeah, right... right, uh right...

Jason: While their brain fluid is drippin' out through their nose and through their ears...

AC: Uh Jason I gotta move on...

Jason: And it's our tax dollars that are payin' for this...

AC: Uh, Jason, thank you for your call, I thank you very much.

Thursday, January 19, 2006

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Suicide Note




Like most of you, I get a lot of mail that begins with "send this to everyone you know." For what it's worth, I wrote back to Doug encouraging him to consider condensing his message and using his right to free speech by public signposting. I should've just printed the letter.

I'm publishing it now because he just killed himself.


Spc Douglas Barber: PTSD- Every Soldier's Personal WAR!
1/9/05

By Doug Barber

In the last month I have been working with Jay Shaft, the editor of Coalition For Free Thought in media regarding my experiances in Iraq and since coming home from the war. We have only touched on some of the struggles of being a soldier, however we have not dug deeply into the personal war that Operation Iraqi Freedom has caused for returning soldiers.

Donald Rumsfeld and President Bush do not want to reveal to the American people that this war is a personal war. They want to run the war like a business, and thus they refuse to show the personal sacrifices the soldiers and their families have made for this country.

My thought today is to help you the reader understand what happens to a soldier when they come home and the sacrifice we continue to make. This may be lengthy, it may be short; but no matter how long it is, just close your eyes and imagine a flag drapped coffin.

Inside that coffin is the body of a man or woman who will never get to live their life to the fullest, yet they bore the total cost so that we could live free. Their soul is somewhere else and all we have is their memory which over time will be forgotten by other everts of greater importance. The families of these soldiers have a hole in their hearts that will never be replaced, even though they have pictures and happy memories.

Some families will refuse to believe they are gone, but still their sons and daughters are the heros of a country that sent them to war. This war on terror has become a personal war for so many, yet the Bush Administration does not want journalists or families to photograph the only thing that is left of our soldiers who have died. They do not want the people to remember that image of a flag draped coffin as the last memory this country will ever have of our fallen men and woman.

They say that America will raise their voices and demand a stop to the war, but my question is why should we not show the results of war? For us as a country, we send these soldiers to war and we see their faces while they are alive. I say let their memories live on in every photo, even when they do come home in a flag drapped coffin. Let their sacrifice be forever etched in the memory of America. We owe their families this at the very least.

All is not okay or right for those of us who return home alive and supposedly well. What looks like normalcy and readjustment is only an illusion to be revealed by time and torment. Some soldiers come home missing limbs and other parts of their bodies. Still others will live with permanent scars from horrific events that no one other than those who served will ever understand.

We come home from war trying to put our lives back togather but some cannot stand the memories and decide that death is better. They kill themselves because they are so haunted by seeing children killed and whole families wiped out.

They ask themselves how you put a price tag on someone elses life? The question goes unanswered as they become another casualty of the war. Heros become another statistic to America and they are another little article relegated to the back of a newspaper.

Still others come home to nothing, families have abandoned them: husbands and wives have left these soldiers, and so have parents as well. Post Tramatic Stress Disorder has become the norm amongst these soldiers because they don't know how to cope with returning to a society that will never understand what they have had to endure to liberate another country.

PTSD comes in many forms not understood by many: but yet if a soldier has it, America thinks the soldiers are crazy. PTSD comes in the form of depression, anger, regret, being confrontational, anxiety, chronic pain, compulsion, delusions, grief, guilt,dependance,loneliness, sleep disorders, suspiciousness/paranoia, low self-esteem and so many other things.

We are easily startled with a loud bang or noise and can be found ducking for cover when we get panicked. This is a result of artillery rounds going off in a combat zone, or an IED blowing up.

I myself have trouble coping with an everyday routine that deals with other people that often causes me to have a short fuse. A lot of soldiers lose multiple jobs just because they are trained to be killers and they have lived in an enviroment that is condusive to that. We are always on guard for our safety and that of our commrades. When you go to bed at night you wonder will you be sent home in a flag draped coffin because a motar round went off on your sleeping area.

Soldiers live in deplorable conditions where burning your own feces is the order of the day. Where going days on end with no shower and the uniform you wear gets so crusty it sometimes sticks to your body becomes a common occurence. We also deal with rationing water or even food for that matter. So when a soldier comes home to what they left they are unsure of what to do being in a civilized world again.

This is what PTSD comes in the shape of--soldiers can not often handle coming back to the same world they left behind. It is something that drives soldiers over the edge and causes them to withdraw from society. As Americans we turn our nose down at them wondering why they act the way they do. Who cares about them, why should we help them?

Talk show hosts like Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and so many others act like they know all about war; then they refuse to give any creadence to soldiers like me who have been to war and seen the brutality of war. These guys are nothing but WEAK SPINELESS COWARDS hiding behind microphones while soldiers come home and are losing everything they have.

I ask every American who reads this e-mail to stand up for the soldier who has given their everything for this country to stand up to these guys in the media; ask them why they don't pick up a weapon and follow in the steps of a soldier. Send this e-mail to as many people on your e-mail lists and ask them to do the same.

There needs to be a National awareness for every Veteran who has ever served in any war. Send e-mails to the Big Mouths on TV and ask them to have soldiers like me on their programs. I am asking you as Americans to BOYCOTT every TV show or host/journalist that refuses to tell the real truth.

THIS IS A PERSONAL CHALLENGE TO BILL,SEAN AND RUSH TO HAVE ME ON YOUR PROGRAM TO SET THE RECORD STRAIGHT. Other wise you are nothing but dirt under every soldiers boot!


Spc Douglas Barber