5 Sep 07, NEW YORK CITY, NY, USNA-- Manhattan Meetup #50 has won a campaign contest for most acres covered by Ron Paul signage. Members created a "GOOGLE RON PAUL" sign by turning earth in a 4-square-mile cucumber field in central New York City, visible from all flights to and from Kennedy and LaGuardia International Airports. Last week, the entire mosaic also received in-flight comments from Space Shuttle Endeavour commander Scott Kelly.
A transcript of Commander Kelly's broadcast reads, "Coming down faster now, Mission Control .... The entire Atlantic seaboard is cloudless and conditions are-- hey! Oh. There is a Ron Paul ad next to Long Island [laughter]. Typical, they always show up at dinnertime."
The volunteer agricultural advertisement required over four hundred meetup members to spend days digging up the otherwise fertile green, and exposing the light tan soil over hundreds of acres. Due to unexpectedly high interest, it was completed a week ahead of schedule. Meetup member Avery Knapp, the farmland's owner, echoed the feelings of many meetup registrants when he told The Spoof, "Actually, a week of backbreaking, sweaty labour for Dr. Paul isn't too bad when you consider how many years of labour we pay the IRS." Knapp also took interviews from Associated Pravda, USNA Today, and the Wall Street Urinal, all of whom declined to publish his comment without an Infernal Revenue Service rebuttal.
The Manhattan Meetup wins the grand prize, a full-day personal visit from Dr. Paul scheduled for a time when he was planning to campaign there anyway. The other grand prize goes to Philadelphia Meetup #25, which saw the Comcast Centre, Liberty Place, and other skyscrapers display on-off lights in their windowed offices to spell "Ron Paul" across the city skyline-- one letter per building. Yet hardly a city in the United States of North America has not seen Paul's advertising acreage.
- The Jacksonville, FL, meetup obtained a Transportation Department map of all overpasses in Duval County, and in a series of late-night raids, wrapped nearly 4000 of them thoroughly in durable polyethylene banners with large red-blue "Ron Paul Revolution" logos. The original overpasses and bridges were invisible beneath the white sheeting, emphasizing the meetup theme, "Recovering Government Works for the People". No damage occurred to surroundings, although a couple vagrants, inadvertently shrouded by the material, needed help getting free from the wrappings, which they received immediately after they promised to vote for Dr. Paul. Local news stations could not formally trace the advertisers, and their confusion appeared genuine for once when they led newscasts, "Who is Ron Paul?"
- A landowner from the Rapid City, SD, meetup made his property available for meetup groups to chisel, drill, and sandblast a local cliff face into Ron Paul's 40-foot visage, which now nicely complements Mount Rushmore from the best vantage points. Members considered the work greatly simplified by Dr. Paul's large, wrinkle-free forehead. The sculpture was still ongoing by contest deadline but successfully reached completion in time for the South Dakota Straw Poll of September 3 (handily won by Dr. Paul). After learning of the project, "unannounced candidate" Rudy Rompson (who announced today that he will announce later whether he is a candidate) abandoned plans to purchase Black Hills land for sculpting his own image.
- Inspired by the Manhattan group's progress, Meetup #6 in Concord, NH, discovered it had almost as many members as there were city residents. The meetup took a careful plat and negotiated with various unaffiliated property owners, many of whom reportedly became instant Ron Paul converts. After obtaining the necessary clearances, in a single night, meetup members painted well over 400 roofs bright red or blue, spelling out the name "Ron Paul" in citywide lettering. This new "signage" is visible from flights to the new Live Free or Die International Airport built by Free State Project members. This meetup won a runner-up prize.
- CalTech students from the North Hollywood, CA, meetup papered over the famous "HOLLYWOOD" welcome sign with white and black sheets so that it now reads "RONPAUL08".
The Ron Paul meetup groups, which just today crossed the four-hundred-million member mark, show no signs of letting up. (As the Paul campaign predicted upon contest launch, free-market competition will always produce immeasurably greater results than top-down campaigns like Rompson's faltering organization.) A giant hedge maze is growing near Houston to form Ron Paul's name, with a solution path of nearly one mile. Supporters plan to paint vast tracts of Arizonan desert with Nazca-style lines spelling out "Ron Paul 2008 dot com". Hundreds of copies of Paul's name, burned into various Iowa fields, display a consistent, distinctive, and unofficial crop-circle logo. Meetup groups in South Carolina are painting thousands of durable, padlockable chests with Ron Paul logos; they intend to wait until January 19, and then to deposit one chest and at least two armed meetup volunteers at every voting precinct precisely when the primary polls close. The Ron Paul meetups have stated vehemently that they deny all plans to forcibly commandeer ballot boxes statewide, bring the ballots to undisclosed locations, count them in darkness and secrecy, and announce their own vote totals; but this might not be trustworthy, because the state election commission said the same thing.