{"id":1643,"date":"2005-05-16T13:22:37","date_gmt":"2005-05-16T17:22:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2005\/05\/pet_goat_ii\/"},"modified":"2005-05-16T13:22:37","modified_gmt":"2005-05-16T17:22:37","slug":"pet_goat_ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2005\/05\/pet_goat_ii\/","title":{"rendered":"Pet Goat II"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week when the White House and Capitol were evacuated thanks to the Cessna scare, I was willing to cut Mr. Bush a little slack for being out bicycling at the time. After all, I’m not one to fault a guy for being out cycling on a nice day. Granted, we’re talking about the supposed most powerful man in the world here, not your average Joe. But whatever.
\nBut today I learn that our “Commander in Chief” wasn’t even aware that (1) 30,000 people in D.C. (including his wife) had been evacuated, (2) the continuity of government plan was initiated, and (3) fighter jets had been scrambled, until 36 minutes after the “all-clear” had given<\/a>!
\nDespite the 9\/11 Pet Goat<\/i> fiasco (or more accurately, because of it) this is stunning. You’d think the White House handlers would have learned a lesson and at least attempted to portray the president as being “in charge.” But I guess if you’re in a situation where seconds count, there’s only time for the most essential tasks.
\nIt’s nice to see that the Secret Service did their job and took care of the most essential elements in the Executive Branch during a potential crisis. You know, the people who are really<\/i> in charge. Meanwhile, I’m sure Mr. Bush enjoyed a nice, peaceful bike ride.
\nUPDATE: Commenters at AMERICAblog are contending this only illustrates that the Cessna scare wasn’t a real emergency. Maybe so. At the time, I thought all the brouhaha was an overreaction to a high-flying Cessna, but I’m not a terrorism security expert. At any rate, if the Secret Service is evacuating people (warranted or not), the president should know what’s going on. It’s that simple.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week when the White House and Capitol were evacuated thanks to the Cessna scare, I was willing to cut Mr. Bush a little slack for being out bicycling at the time. After all, I’m not one to fault a guy for being out cycling on a nice day. Granted, we’re talking about the supposed […]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1643","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1643\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}