| CBS News | 0 | |
| WaPo | 0 | |
| Zogby | North Dakota Senator Byron Dorgan Trails in Potential 2010 Senate Match-up |
0 |
| SF Chron | 0 | |
| KDVR | 0 |
Audacity of Truth
Big Government- Hot Air
- Michelle Malkin
- Wheeling & dealing: Snowe pow-wows with Obama; Landrieu, Schumer, Daschle behind the scenes
- Saturday in the Senate: Cash for Cloture; Reid gets 60; Update: 8:15pm Eastern cloture vote – 60-39; Voinovich absent; Dems invoke Teddy Kennedy; Reid: “Ted would be happy.”
- Another day, another Berkeley tantrum
- Jake Tapper
- Lynn Sweet
Politicizing the Minnesota bridge collapse (MORE: THE FAULT OF BOTH BUSH PRESIDENTS)?
Of course, it you knew it was bound to happen. Check the comments here (thanks to ST reader GWR for the tip) and the Shot in the Dark blog notes the politicizing already taking place in Minnesota (thanks to Bak for that tip).
The ‘bats don’t ever put their hatred to bed for even a few minutes, even in times of tragedy.
Update I: Here’s video of the collapse of the bridge:
Unreal.
Here’s a flashback to the 1940 collapse of the Tacoma Narrows bridge. The swaying of the bridge alone is hard to watch, let alone the collapse:
Update II: This didn’t take long, did it?
As Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) opened the Thursday session of the Senate, he warned that the bridge disaster was a “wake-up call” regarding infrastructure investment across the country.
Later, Reid and other Democratic leaders went a step further, bashing Republicans for failing to pass a water resources and development act, known as WRDA on Capitol Hill, for seven years, saying that the bill was essential to investing in American infrastructure.
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who chairs the appropriations subcommittee that funds transportation programs, slammed President Bush for threatening to veto the transportation bill because it exceeds his initial budget request.
“This is what I worry about every day. The lack of investment in infrastructure is frightening” Murray said. “This is what [Bush] is threatening to veto — investment in infrastructure for [roads] we go to work on every day.”
Reid even suggested that Bush has been too distracted by the Iraq war and post-Sept. 11 national security needs to focus on the country’s water, sewer and transportation infrastructure.
“Since 9/11, we have taken our eye off the ball” Reid said.
If he means “we” as in Democrats, he’s right about that: Democrats have taken their eye off the ball since 9-11, and have been focusing it on the WRONG target: GWB, rather than Islamofascism.
In any event, never underestimate the Democrats ability to politicize a tragedy before the smoke even clears.
Update III: An intriguing headline from the AP: Minn. bridge problems uncovered in 1990:
MINNEAPOLIS – Minnesota officials were warned as early as 1990 that the bridge that plummeted into the Mississippi River was “structurally deficient,” yet they relied on a strategy of patchwork fixes and stepped-up inspections.
[...]
During the 1990s, later inspections found fatigue cracks and corrosion in the steel around the bridge’s joints. Those problems were repaired. Starting in 1993, the state said, the bridge was inspected annually instead of every other year.
[...]
A 2005 federal inspection also rated the bridge structurally deficient, giving it a 50 on scale of 100 for structural stability.
Got that? During the first President Bush’s term, the bridge was found to be structurally deficient. During the Clinton administration there was an effort to fix those problems. During the second President Bush’s term, the bridge was found again to be structurally deficient.
Omigosh – I guess this means that both Bush presidents were responsible for this tragedy, while Clinton’s hands are, of course, clean …
RSS feed for comments on this post.
26 Responses to “Politicizing the Minnesota bridge collapse (MORE: THE FAULT OF BOTH BUSH PRESIDENTS)?”
Comments
Blogads
Disclaimer: The views expressed on this blog do not necessarily reflect those of ST's advertisers, nor do their opinions necessarily reflect ST's. Stats
Some personal favorites from the Kossack thread linked above:
Blame it on the WOT:
Or just blame it on Bush:
because you know, not only would Christopher Reeve be break-dancing if Dems held the White House, but bridges never collapse either:
Or blame it on being undertaxed:
What upset this genius most of all was that the non-stop coverage pre-empted the Olbermaniac:
The tin-foil hats are out in force:
One of them even took the time out to remind the commenters why the web site exists, and please use this tragedy accordingly:
These people are off-the-charts insane.
This just doesn’t surprise me anymore.
It’s Bush’s fault. The rich aren’t taxed enough. Blah, blah, blah.
Nevermind the fact that spending on highways and infrastructure is more per year during Bush than the Clinton years.
Facts are irrelevant…. Let’s all blame Pawlenty or Bush or conservatives !
Here’s a flashback to the 1940 collapse of the Tacoma Narrows bridge.
Wait a minute…1940? Couldn’t be, ST. There was a Democrat in the White House in 1940, so no bridges could have collapsed. You must have meant…1984, or 2004, right??
(/sarcasm)
Damn,
THAT didn’t take long did it? Even if the over/under was 24 hours it’d still be the under. Next time the over/under will be 18 hours for blaming Bush.
Vegas, I’ll take the under. If I wire you the money, can you get to the casinos there and put the bet down for me??
There are still ca. 20 people unaccounted for, and these vipers are hissing already.
How sad.
ST, Check this out:
That is from page 3 of this CBO document titled “Status of the Highway Trust Fund: 2007″
On top of that state spending for infrastructure has increased over the years.
Lying about infrastructure spending does not make a good leader. Patty Murray and Harry Reid are liars and not leaders….. I’ll say that as blunt as it needs to be said. They should be censured for lying on the floor of the Senate.
Good find, Bak.
That’s like saying water is wet!!!
Funny how after explosions or attacks everyone screams “Don’t blame the muslims until we have proof!!”, yet it doesn’t stop them from blaming something like this on the Pres. before we have even buried the dead.
Absolutely disgraceful.
Well now that Dems are in charge of Congress, maybe they should do something other than investigate Bush’s staff and AG and appropriate some money. This blame Bush thing is so pathetic. It also doesn’t say much about their respect for other government workers if they don’t approve of the way they’re handling bridge repair.
Here’s a flashback to the 1940 collapse of the Tacoma Narrows bridge.
That film was required viewing when I was an undergrad studying physics when we were going over harmonic oscillation. A more perfect example of resonance is hard to find.
Norma wrote without factual basis, “Well now that Dems are in charge of Congress, maybe they should do something other than investigate Bush’s staff and AG and appropriate some money. ”
See comment 8 Norma. As always, appropriations isn’t the issue. It isn’t with education, veterans benefits, the environment, health, infrastructure, Medicare, or ANYTHING. All categories of spending have gone up EVERY year for over 6 decades.
Knowing facts is what turned me from liberalism to conservatism in 1991. Ignorance is expensive. And it costs everyone else around us as well. It’s negligence continued….
Bak, I’d go back and re-read Norma’s comment if I were you. She’s on our side, amigo
Wasn’t it nicknamed *Galloping Gurdy*, Sev? Seems I remember seeing in one of the films a guy making his way off having abandoned his old *T*, just parked where he said whoa!
In layman’s terms, what exactly caused the Tacoma Narrows bridge to collapse?
Sorry.
s’ok, Bak – this continued liberal politicizing of tragedies has got everyone’s nerves frayed, including mine …
Oh c’mon….you mean they aren’t saying that the Bush administration blew up the
twin towers,New Orleans Levees, Minnesota bridge?Guess I should’ve check the update, seems I remembered a different car but that’s the guy rescuing the dog that I recall! Define bravery and stupidity…oh that thin, thin line!
Galloping Gertie, that sounds familiar.
What happened on Tacoma Narrows is that the bridge was not designed properly for the wind loading. A good summary is from Wikipedia:
I remember the wind being 42 mph, whatever the bridge started oscillating in it, and the swings kept getting amplified to greater and greater displacements, like a car with bad shocks going over a bumpy road. It was used as a demonstration of damped, driven harmonic oscillation in class. Pretty good example, it sure stuck in everyone’s mind. The thing was obviously not designed properly for the wind loading over the sound.
Yup. People likened the effect to being on a roller coaster…you’d be driving across it, and see cars in the other direction suddenly dip out of sight, and then reappear as the road rose up again.
I’m putting this together from my undergrad physics work too, so if Sev can spot any inaccuracies, I’ll yield to his expertise…my field’s chemistry, not physics.
Two factors: lightweight materials in construction and a roadway design that didn’t let wind pass through.
Look at the first part of the video above, and pay attention to the road. There’s just one solid bed there – no trusses underneath it to break up the wind and let it pass through.
So let’s say you’re on the bridge, and facing in the direction of the roadway, and the wind is coming from your left – across the road, not in the same direction. Since there’s nothing in the lightweight roadway to break up the wind, it will lift the left side up – basically, you’re getting aerodynamic lift, the same thing that makes planes fly – and the bridge begins to twist. You see that clearly in the video.
But the bridge is still a solid mass, and eventually the strain and stiffness build up enough so it starts rotating back. But it can’t just simply stop when it gets back to level – it keeps going. This is where the left side dips down and the right side goes up.
And the strain builds up again, this time in the other direction, so once again the rotation changes direction and the left side goes up, but this time with more help from the wind, which increases the amount of twisting. This is what Sev’s referring to by harmonic resonance. Think of when you were on a swing as a kid. If every time you came back, you got another push, you got higher and higher. Same principle.
Eventually the strain from the twisting got to be too much for the span and it broke apart.
Before anyone thinks the design was faulty, this wasn’t known at the time. It’s why bridge designs now go through wind tunnel tests.
Class dismissed. This will not be on your final, but the moonbattery will
… ST, the geeky student
who always sat in the back of the classroom, reads and absorbs intently, and thanks Profs. GWR and Sev …
Actually, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge was being scale model tested in a wind tunnel when it collapsed. People were just starting to figure out there was a problem. Just a little bit too late.
But that isn’t important right now. What we all need to get to the bottom of is Bush, Cheney, and Rove’s dirty little figerprints on the collapse.
Rush pointed out two facts today that I have checked on the Minn state website. One is that the state budget had a surplus of 2.2 BILLION in Nov 2006. The other concerned the building of a sports arena which turned out to be TWO arenas, one for the Twins and the other for the state university. One arena cost $522 mill and the other $248 mill, also approved in 2006. It is a matter of priorities for state expenditures, i.e. infrastructure or pleasure or whatever. That bridge would have collapsed Iraq war or not. Also, there were earmarks that Minn has gotten which have nothing to do with roads and bridges. I don’t mean to pick on Minn, because every state in the union has it’s own problems to be dealt with or not, and earmarks as well that mostly address greed. Just pointing out that media yaking mouths need to be questioned and pinned down to facts when they tie anything negative that they can get by with to President Bush
First read post #8 in this thread.
Then see what this DU poster had to say.
This guy blames Reagan, Bush, Pawlenty and yes the VOTERS of Minnesota and America for voting in the GOP.
Here are some money quotes if you can’t read the whole thing:
and
and
Please visit post #8 again. We have approximately doubled infrastructure spending per year on average over the last 8 years. I don’t know why this is getting on my nerves so much but there aren’t any leaders or media outlets REPORTING the facts about infrastructure spending.