{"id":345,"date":"2006-08-25T19:03:45","date_gmt":"2006-08-25T23:03:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/semitrue.com\/blog\/2006\/08\/25\/highway-robbery\/"},"modified":"2006-08-25T19:08:22","modified_gmt":"2006-08-25T23:08:22","slug":"highway-robbery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/semitrue.com\/blog\/2006\/08\/25\/highway-robbery\/","title":{"rendered":"Highway Robbery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" hspace=\"10\" align=\"left\" title=\"gallen.jpg\" id=\"image346\" alt=\"gallen.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/semitrue.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/08\/gallen.thumbnail.jpg\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2006\/08\/24\/AR2006082401627.html\">The Washington Post<\/a>, as well as <a href=\"http:\/\/news.google.com\/news?hl=en&#038;tab=wn&#038;ie=UTF-8&#038;ncl=http:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/story\/0,2933,210475,00.html\">other news outlets<\/a>, reported today that the Secret Service asked the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) to shut down the HOV (that&#8217;s High Occupancy Vehicle, for those reading outside of VA) lanes on I-395 from 1:00 to 7:00 PM on Wednesday so that &#8220;President&#8221; Bush could drive to a presumably urgent fund-rasier in Mt. Vernon for Republican Senator George Allen.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;ve ever driven on that stretch of road anytime between, say, 7:00 AM to 8:00 PM, you know that it is already a slowly-moving parking lot. The HOV lanes are the <em>only<\/em> relief as that is where the commuter buses travel, as well as the cars with three or more drivers. Shutting down those lanes would have been \u00e2\u20ac\u201d what&#8217;s the word that Bush recently used to describe pulling out of Iraq? \u00e2\u20ac\u201d oh yeah &#8230; a <em>disaster<\/em>!<\/p>\n<p>My favorite part of the story: the VDOT turned them down. They are now my heroes.<\/p>\n<p>Actually, I secretly wish they hadn&#8217;t. I personally would have loved to see all those red brake lights and tens of thousands of fuming motorists hearing that they&#8217;re stuck so Bush could attend a $200 a plate fundraiser for the putative Republican presidential candidate whom many describe as &#8220;Bush without the brains&#8221;. (Okay, I made that last part up; I&#8217;m sure the dinner was <em>much <\/em>more than $200 a plate&#8230;)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Washington Post, as well as other news outlets, reported today that the Secret Service asked the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) to shut down the HOV (that&#8217;s High Occupancy Vehicle, for those reading outside of VA) lanes on I-395 from 1:00 to 7:00 PM on Wednesday so that &#8220;President&#8221; Bush could drive to a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[23,8,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cville","category-politics","category-virginia"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4E3H-5z","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/semitrue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/semitrue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/semitrue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/semitrue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/semitrue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/semitrue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/semitrue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/semitrue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/semitrue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}