The Secret Service have a thankless job.
And then, sometimes, they get shot at!
I can tell you that when George HW Bush visited Hawaii for the 50th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, they shut the main roadways down at the height of rush hour on a Friday evening, resulting in total traffic chaos. But when Bill Clinton made his first visit shortly after becoming president, his people coordinated closely with the traffic authorities, with motorcycle cops out ahead shutting only one intersection at a time until the motorcade was through it. Much, much better.
Huge motorcade of police motorcycles at the hotel now. Streets being shut down. I’m thinking the president is arriving shortly.
At about 2am tomorrow, go poking around in the hotel with a flashlight and see if you can find any juicy documents.
Loach:
I’m totally on board with this.
At about 2am tomorrow, go poking around in the hotel with a flashlight and see if you can find any juicy documents.
[/QUOTE]
Do you know what you are if you don’t do this?
Chicken!
Bawk! Bawk!
Having lined in DC for twelve years, I would vote for this. Whenever he moved, police would block intersections for hours. They didn’t actually tell the local cops exactly when the Prez was going to move, and they didn’t want quick shut-downs of intersections to be a signal to potential attackers that the Prez was just about to arrive.
They even made kite flyers on the Mall pull down their kites – for hours – before flying Marine 1 in or out of the WH. They thought nothing of ruining a whole day of kite flying for dozens of people, just to protect the most powerful man in the world. 
I remember when President Ford was in office and he visited the city I live in.
A local hospital had to reserve an operating room, with full staff just standing around, in case something happened to the Prez. The hospital was told that even if there was an emergency, and all the operating rooms were full, nobody else was allowed to use that operating room until Ford was out of town.
For Gerry Ford??? Well, I suppose given how many times the SS saved him from falling down stairs or walking into helicopter propeller blades, it was a reasonable guess that he might stumble into some kind of trash compacter or paper shredder.
[QUOTE=Loach]
He can teleconfrence.
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Oh, like he’s going to do tomorrow for the 60,000-odd people who will not be able to see him due to moving the acceptance speech from the huge open-air football stadium to the itty-bitty basketball arena?
I was planning to attend tomorrow, but as someone who lives in Charlotte, it’s just a disappointment. I feel sorry for the people who have actually travelled here just for the opportunity.
I’ve been involved in a couple of presidential visits. It was less complicated to get Bush through Baghdad than it was to get Obama through New Jersey for a photo-op. That is not a partisan snipe, it just happened to be the ones I dealt with. It is amazing how much time, inconvenience and money it takes to move the president just so he can get a soundbite on the news at night.
Hey, there’s a 20% chance of rain! 20%! You can’t take that chance just to accommodate your loyal supporters.
That’s because NJ is not an occupied country. This is a partisan snipe - how much ‘time, inconvenience and money’ did it take for Bush’s laughable ‘Mission Accomplished’ photo op on the USS Abraham Lincoln?
One of the local Alt papers did a piece a few years ago that it’s illegal to close roads for the president under the guise of illegal search & seizure. They’re “seizing” the roads & since we all make different salaries there couldn’t possibly compensate us at a uniform rate for our lost time & it would be way too complex this figure out everyone’s individual rate, either for sitting there until the road reopens or going out of our way to go around the closures.
Admittedly it was a bit out there, but an interesting concept.
Bullshit. Its not a partisan snipe because it just happened to be Obama who landed in my town for a photo op. If Bush needed a photo op here the ‘time, inconvenience and money’ would have been the same. Its what happens whenever a president goes anywhere. It looks good on TV but screws up everyone who lives there. Just stay home!
ETA: I guess I read that wrong. You didn’t say I sniped, you were announcing you were sniping. Carry on.