Burn, Baby, Burn!

Obama's birthday was celebrated today the only way Lansing knows how, by burning a cop car in his honor!

While waiting in line on Michigan Avenue in front of Lansing's Civic Center to see Obama give a speech on energy, a police car rolled to a stop across the road from us with steam rolling out of the hood. At first we laughed, then after the cops milled around the car a bit it suddenly was clear that the steam was actually smoke, and that it wasn't stopping but actually growing.

Then we laughed harder. At this point the cops decided it was time to get the important stuff out of the car, their lunch. Not kidding, the cops took what could only be a burrito wrap from the car, abandoning the ammo and gun. Unfortunately, I missed that shot. I started snapping shots immediately after:


Ah, yes. We can probably take care of this with a couple of extinguishers, right?








Abandon all hope, the car is a goner:







This is when the ammo in the burning vehicle started going off and the volunteers decided to move the line further down to safety:


Gun fire didn't seem to bother this guy:








Welcome to Lansing Barack!

Ironically, when we got inside the Civic Center we noticed this on the information board:


I didn't notice if Hall A had cleared out or not, didn't seem to phase Barack though:



Upate: The Lansing State Urinal, as usual, reports inaccurately, the car was not 'parked' until the police men jumped out of it, and there were quite a few people around it, not to mention a line across the street when the ammunition started going off in the flaming car. But at least they managed to not miss the giant flaming police car in front of the rally, congratulations LSJ.

Update update: MSU's State News gets it wrong too, apparently the police are sticking to the story that the car was parked when it caught on fire. If anyone spent a minute interviewing anybody at the scene or looking for witnesses, they would know that the 2 officers in the car were driving when they pulled it to the side of the road, smoke streaming from the car, clutching desperately for their burrito lunches and abandoning the live ammo. Sounds like the police are just trying to cover up the officers incompetence in dealing with the embarrassing situation.

Found live video footage here, you can even hear the ammo going off.



The State News posted another multimedia video here of the police car burning, again you can hear the ammo going off and what I believe is a fireman yelling about live rounds.


.......................