I wasn't aware of the Yes Men before reading about them today but their website is fantastic and now they have a movie opening in a few cities. Some of the pranks listed on their site include creating "Smokey the Log", passing out their USA Patriot Pledge document at the GOP Convention and adding an oil derrick to their "Yes, Bush Can!" tour bus.
Be sure and check out their blog as well which includes a Bush-Cheney announcement regarding Smokey the Log. Here's a bit of it:Bichelbaum and his partner in "identity correction" crime, Mike Bonanno, spent three years impersonating World Trade Organization spokesmen at business conferences.
"We are campaigning for Bush actually. We have a 'Yes, Bush Can!' campaign bus with a quote 'I'm telling the truth' on the side and we are traveling around the country making his policies a little more clear than he cares to make them himself," Bonanno told Reuters.
"For example we are campaigning in favor of global warming, in favor of cutting down the forests and in favor of invading more countries.
"We're taking all the double speak and spin that comes out of the Bush administration and saying it frankly. Our goal is to get people to react badly, but we can't get them NOT to take us seriously," he said.
To popularize this approach, the Bush campaign has unveiled a new mascot for the USDA Forest Service: Smokey the Log. Smokey the Log is a replacement for Smokey the Bear, as bears have little use and are therefore not appropriate in the modern forestry context. On a recent canvassing tour, Smokey the Log collected numerous signatures in favor of logging Yellowstone and Yosemite, and received a hearty hug from Congressional Candidate Jim Feldkamp and much appreciation from Oregon governor Victor G. Atiyeh (www.CheneyBush.com/smokey/atiyeh/).
