As we used to say a long time ago, in what increasingly is becoming a distant country, the United States of America.

Fubar at Needlenose grabbed a line from a Walter Mondale op-ed piece in the Washington Post about the Carter administration: “we told the truth, obeyed the law, and kept the peace.”

Those concepts should be the main talking points of the Democratic Party. They should be on bumper stickers and literature. The GOP should be hammered with them.

Margie Kieper has been filling in at Dr. Jeff Masters for several days. At the end of today’s post she notes that she can see the site of the bridge collapse from her office window and then presents a possible scenario for what happened that involves a week of high temperatures, vibrations, and the method used to construct the bridge.

Her theory rings true to me because in the early pictures of the collapsed sections the bridge support that failed was showing under the roadbed sections. From what I saw I assumed the supports were a metal frame work, like a lot of railway bridges. But then later images showed what appeared to be concrete supports that were still standing. It was as if the support that failed had lost its concrete outer coat, before it collapsed.

The Shrubbery managed to locate the White House rose garden and let people know that he had been told about the bridge collapse…except the statement starts with:

Good morning. I just finished a Cabinet meeting. One of the things we discussed was the terrible situation there in Minneapolis. We talked about the fact that the bridge collapsed, and that we in the federal government must respond and respond robustly to help the people there not only recover, but to make sure that lifeline of activity, that bridge, gets rebuilt as quickly as possible.

To that end, Secretary Peters is in Minneapolis, as well as Federal Highway Administrator Capka. I spoke to Governor Pawlenty and Mayor Rybak this morning. I told them that the Secretary would be there. I told them we would help with rescue efforts, but I also told them how much we are in prayer for those who suffered. And I thank my fellow citizens for holding up those who are suffering right now in prayer.

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