Posted on 08/04/2007 11:09:21 AM PDT by SmoothTalker
"President Bush surveyed Minneapolis' collapsed highway bridge from the ground and air Saturday, viewing the concrete slabs and twisted steel that once spanned the Mississippi River. He pledged to help cut the red tape to reconstruct the span."
""Our message to the Twin Cities is we want to get this bridge rebuilt as quick as possible," Bush said after visiting with rescue workers and people who watched the bridge crumble. "We understand that this is a main artery of life here.""
""I do promise that she's going to listen to the local authorities to find out what the folks here need," Bush said. "I do promise that when she sees roadblocks and hurdles in the way to getting the job done she'll do everything she can to eliminate them." "
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
I remember when we all laughed at some old idiot in 1992 who thought infrastructure should be a focus of federal money. He was so out of touch he even thought grocery store scanners were cool.
Good thing we elected someone who was a lot hipper, even though he had never used an ATM card in his life.
remember when Bush didn’t visit New Orleans quick enough...he’s still paying for that, I guess he learned.
Are you kidding me? The point is that if he doesn’t go, he gets skewered. Being touchy feely is part of the job.
Did the president visit when the I-40 bridge collapsed (a stratgically more important arterey?)
I had to cancel all of my loads going to MN (through that route) for the rest of the week. My account lost thousands of dollars.
Looks like poor judgment on someone's part to cancel loads to avoid a few miles of detour. Looking at the map, it appears that there were at least a half - dozen interstate quality alternates though the metropolitan area.
Surely not!
Those Minnesota folks have enough troubles without HIV or AIDS.
It says "aid", not "aids".
Freudian slip there, perhaps?
Many do. Many do while saying they want Gov't to cost less or do less. They say 'less taxes' and 'fix the potholes' in the same breath.
It is pointless to yell at Gov't when the vast majority are yelling even louder at Gov't.
FedGov is a separate issue often confused with Gov't.
Tragedies affect all Americans and it's in our nature to look to our Presidents to share our sympathies.
A lot of people are affected by this - you're talking about workers who commute, goods and services being moved, probably the entire Northeastern portion of MN depended on this artery.
That wasn't caused by neglect or deterioration, a ship slammed into it.
Looks like poor judgment on someone's part to cancel loads to avoid a few miles of detour. Looking at the map, it appears that there were at least a half - dozen interstate quality alternates though the metropolitan area.
You obviously have no clue what logistics are. It's all about getting our freight to our consignees as soon as possible. Using alternative routes would have pushed the delivery times to next week anyway, so they were all cancelled and rescheduled for Monday.
Unfortunately a nature that must be broken if we're ever to get rid of most of the government.
I understand what you're saying and I have a buddy myself that lives up there. From my understanding, it was indeed a tragic event and has added much time to his and others commute. Course, and forgive me in advance if this sounds cold, having the government build anything other than post roads this is what you get. Shoddy workmanship, that even when discovered never gets fixed. We have a stretch of I-40 here in NC that is going through its second paving job in three years because the first contractor realized you don't have to actually produce anything of quality when working for the government. I expect the second job to be just as bad...
A 5 mile detour causes a week's delay? You know most drivers have cell phones now, don't you?
So the lives lost were worth less? So the disruption of a major cross-continent route didn't matter? What point are you trying to make?
I'm saying there's a difference between tragedies caused by human error, which is more common, and those that occur unexpectedly.
Trying using a cell phone while your left hand is continuously shifting gears and your other hand has to be on the steering wheel. And you have to pay attention to the road because your hauling 40,000+ lbs of freight, or worse, your hauling bulk freight of flammable material such as gasoline or hazardous cylinders on a flatbed. Yeah, I'll just pull over right here (never mind the "No Trucks" sign) and call for directions during the allotted hours that I'm supposed to be driving. NOT.
Since both the I-35W and the I-40 disasters were likely caused by human error, and both were unexpected, I still don't see your distinction.
So you were able to communicate with them to cancel the run, but not to tell them to use an alternate route through Minnesota? You know, if you left it up to them, most would have been able to find one of the alternates on their own.
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