Heh. (Hat tip: DrawingDead.)

No real confirmation of this, but there is a video going about the Internet (pretty hard to fake unless someone took the trouble to repaint a 747?) seems to be of Air Force One being vandalized in a daring — perhaps stupid — late night raid. The admitted perpetrator is a man named Marc Ecko, whose stated reason for tagging the plane was to “open a dialogue” (although I think that if it hasn’t happened already, some Secret Service agents will be giving him ample opportunity for that soon). Not that I condone such behavior, but his act certainly took a brass pair to pull off.

Video available here, here, and for the time being at the original site StillFree.com.

Update: OK, so it’s a fake. Turns out they probably used the plane from the movie Air Force One (Harrison Ford, Gary Oldman). More from the Snopes.com page. Still pretty good though. Any bets on when some dumbass will get shot trying to have life imitate art?

No, I haven’t dropped off the face of the earth… just the face of the blog. :) Many thanks to the guestbloggers for keeping things fresh in my absence! I love how the blog is now practically a self-sustaining entity. It doesn’t need me, it stays up-to-date all on its own! [Cue Twilight Zone music.] Heh. Anyway, I’m having a good time in Buffalo. Here are a couple of pictures from yesterday:

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Rolling Stone has a wonderfully edifying article this week: The Worst President in History?. Which is really quite interesting in light of today’s poll numbers. But also in its presentation of a number of important criticisms of the Bush administration…

All and all, an interesting read. Andrew, I look forward to your contortions.

Here's The Shirt

The Shirt for next year just came out today, and it’s navy this year. It’s not my favorite, but it certainly is an improvement over last year’s pee shirt.

I just read the comments section of Amazon for Ann Coulter’s new book, Godless. Some idiot said that separation of church and state is not in the Constitution. It, in fact, comes from Communism!

Nepal's King Gyanendra vows to return political power to the people of Nepal. Visit CNN for the latest.

President Bush’s ever plummeting approval ratings are currently at 33%. Another percent and it can snow in Washington D.C.!

Sorry all you Bush fans, can’t blame this one on the “liberal” media, this one comes straight from Fox News.

Prequel :) — for Archivally-minded readers :), here are R.N.E.W. Parts I, II, III and IV. Despite the deliberately-misleading Come-hither series Title :> they are far more about Elections (i.e. the Sacred) than Politics (the Profane :). But this Present Part is regular red meat to all you ravening carniverous Politicoes out there :), who might Also See Katrina: the mother of all reapportionments for a Background refresher.

OK, here we Go: the mayor of New Orleans may well be a political genius on his way to re-election. ;>

…to the astonishment of some who had assumed that his missteps and post-Katrina despair would doom his reelection bid, Nagin the laughingstock is also counted as a front-runner as voters head to the polls on Saturday.

Nagin and others credit his post-storm performance for his standing, and many still fondly recall him telling federal authorities to “get off their asses” as the city slipped into chaos. But one of the reasons for his recent appeal, and by some estimates the most powerful force in this historic election, is race.

“People had written me off — because of Katrina, because of some remarks I’d made,” an upbeat Nagin said after a recent campaign event in the city’s Algiers section. “But now the poll numbers are waking people up, and here I am standing and getting stronger as time goes on.”

…While black and white voter turnout on Saturday is difficult to predict, many here are assuming that the number of black and white voters will be about equal. Before Katrina, about two-thirds of the city’s voters were black.

When he was elected in 2002, Nagin won large majorities in the city’s white neighborhoods, but lost in majority black precincts. But then he was running against another black man, Police Superintendent Richard Pennington.

Now that Nagin’s two chief foes are white, including Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, brother of Sen. Mary Landrieu, his racial appeal has shifted. Even as his white support drifts to his challengers, some of those black voters who spurned Nagin four years ago are embracing him, political analysts said.

…”The black voters seem to be coalescing around me more quickly than the white voters,” said Nagin, a former cable television executive who before the storm was viewed as a savvy City Hall reformer by many here. “It had to happen. I was the only guy who stood up during the crisis when people were suffering at the Superdome and the Convention Center. Afterward, I was the only one who basically spoke to their hopelessness about being spread out across the country. So there’s a connection there I just have to build upon.”

Nagin said some of his prominent white supporters who now appear to be backing other candidates had been “a little opportunistic. They assumed, like everyone else, that I was going to go into the toilet.”

His two leading challengers, according to polls, are Ron Forman, chief of the Audubon Nature Institute here, and Landrieu. If none of the 23 candidates receives a majority of the vote, the top two finishers will face each other in a runoff scheduled for May 20…

Well, the only Saturday outcome that seems a safe bet is that the Runoff is going to Happen. / No wait, check that. Also that Litigation will ensue. :) The Complaints: Disfranchisement of the NOLA diaspora. Rigged voting technology. Early Voting and Often. Heavy Decedent Turnout. Millions Of Ballots Thrown Out. Powerful groundbased laserbeams targeting the Satellite Polling Stations. My Foot hurts. Frauuuud. :> Oh but it’s going to be Fierce. :)

Read the whole thing. Btw if elected, Ron Forman (the Audubon guy :) will be the formerly-Big Easy’s first Jewish mayor of Any race. :)

The epidemic is swelling. :> And isn’t that just Swell. / More after the mump. No no no :)

IOWA CITY, April 19 — In the largest mumps outbreak in the United States in more than 20 years, almost 1,000 people have contracted the disease in the Midwest, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta announced Wednesday.

The epidemic began in Iowa, where the State Department of Public Health has reported 815 suspected or confirmed cases. It has spread to at least seven other states.

Per the accompanying Infection Map those would be Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Illinois.

So far, no one has died from the disease…Twenty people have been hospitalized, said Dr. Julie L. Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control.

…About half of the cases in Iowa involve college-age students, most of whom have been vaccinated, said the state epidemiologist, Dr. Patricia Quinlisk. Federal and state health investigators have not pinpointed the origin of the epidemic, but the first cases were identified in December on a college campus in either Iowa City or Dubuque. State officials said they would not name the campus because such information was medically privileged.

Yes but then why did the State Epidemiologist name the two Cities, one of which contains the First-cases Campus while the other Doesn’t? What is it, a Guessing game already? :> This will generate intercollegiate competition. “WE WERE NUMBER ONE! WE WERE NUMBER ONE!” :)

Dr. Gerberding said the disease had spread quickly because of the dense concentration of students in affected cities and because the vaccine is not perfect…

How can this Happen in America? :)

…[She elaborated] “What’s going on here is basically a number of people who haven’t received both doses, coupled together with people who have received the vaccine but are susceptible anyway, living in crowded conditions like college dormitories or mixing up with other students at spring break or during holidays, and setting up a cascade of transmission that’s going to take a while to curtail.”

…Christine F. Cassa, a University of Iowa freshman, got the mumps a few weeks ago, along with four or five other students on her dormitory floor. She said she had heard of about a dozen cases in her 900-student dormitory, Burge Hall.

“The dorms are so like close quarters,” Ms. Cassa said. “You’re around so many people, and you don’t think about what you’re touching and what you’re drinking, and people share a lot of stuff.”

Since December, the university’s student health service has confirmed 55 cases, said Lisa James, associate director of student health.

…Students who have symptoms are told to isolate themselves for at least five days.

Officials say it could be worse. “We’re seeing really very low attack rates,” Dr. Seward said. “If we didn’t have the high two-dose coverage, we’d be seeing thousands of cases, or tens of thousands of cases.”…

Read the whole thing. My Guess: before the break of May, New England gets the mumps. Well us eastern chumps will just have to take our lumps. ;>

Great Big Sea ROCKS!!!


The view from the third row. You know you’ve got great seats when you can only just barely get a picture with all four singers in it.

The end of the concert, an awesome a capella send-off with “Old Brown’s Daughter.” It was amazing to me that Alan could hit those high notes — and project so well without amplification — after rocking out for almost three hours. What a show!

More later. Must sleep now.

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Woohoo!