You know I take a lot of heat for being an independent.  My refusal to identify myself as a Republican is a problem to some.  But while I will not label myself as Republican despite my conservative values, I will certainly never align as a Democrat or a liberal, not with the way these people take a moment of tragedy and spin it to their use.

I gotta hand it to them, they will not let any opportunity go.  You have to admire their tenacity even as I question their motives, priorities and in some cases, their sanity.

It’s hard to decide where to begin, either with the confused or with the deranged

Let’s start with Randi Rhodes, via the Radio Equalizer.  Her previous runs of conservative derangement are legendary.

Earlier today, your Radio Equalizer noted a number of kooky comments from readers at the website of Air America talk host Randi Rhodes. We wondered if Randi would condemn or support these outrageous remarks.

Lo and behold, not only did Rhodes agree with these crackpots, she took it several steps further, blaming Bush, Iraq and tax cuts for the deaths in Minnesota.

Here’s an exclusive transcript from the first segment of her first hour today:

RHODES: “And may I just say this to the people of Minneapolis, I am just so sorry about your bridge collapsing, but you know, join the ranks. Apparently, a 2005 report called your bridge ’structurally deficient’.

Structurally deficient, so here we are wasting a trillion dollars in Iraq, protecting that lie at all costs, right? Wiretapping our own citizenry so that nobody gets too uppity about that whole trillion being spent. And it takes like a quarter of that to repair our infrastructure and nothing’s being spent.

The bridge collapse is the result of wasting a trillion dollars in Iraq. Basically what you saw there in Minneapolis and what you’ve been watching all day, last night, the whole thing.

What you’re watching, should have the chyron underneath, instead of it saying Governor Tim Pawlenty, or news conference on bridge collapse, or recovery or whatever, you know what it should say underneath there? ‘Your tax cuts at work!’ That’s what it should say.

Please make a note of it and call CNN and MSNBC, Faux News, yeah call them all and tell them, ‘hey, you’ve got the wrong chyron!’”

Rhodes then went on to blame recent explosions in Dallas and New York City (the steam pipe incident) on Bush, Iraq and tax cuts as well.

Any port in a storm.

Jack Cafferty appearing with Wolf Blitzer, and John Gibson has a select reading of the unhinged comments in this audio clip.  One quote:  “Too bad Karl Rove was not on that bridge”…

Talk Show Host Ed Shultz continues the theme:

Ed Schultz Blames Bush For Minnesota Bridge Collapse

No, I’m not kidding.  Here’s a paraphrase of what he said:

…the only reason Bush is talking about fatalities is because he didn’t give MN enough money to maintain the bridge.

Right, Ed.  Because it’s the President, and not Congress, who appropriates highway funds for roads and bridges.

What’s more, have we really departed so far from our federalist roots that we’re now blaming the President of the United States for not properly maintaining a bridge in Minneapolis (if that is indeed why the bridge went down)?  What about local city officials?  County road inspectors?  State highway department people?  The governor?

Of course, Schultz isn’t the only liberal driven to stupidity by the bridge collapse in Minnesota.  Others are saying that the bridge collapsed because, get this, we aren’t paying enough in taxes.  Again, I’m not sure why the bridge in Minnesota collapsed (hasn’t anyone been inspecting it?), but if more funding was needed to maintain it Congress could have cut back on the number of million dollar bus stops and bridges to nowhere they’ve been building with our highway money.

More from the media.  On Hardball, even with a sub sitting in for Chris Matthews, the conversation took a disgustingly partisan edge:

On bridge Tragedy, Hardball’s Mike Barnicle Wonders: ‘Does This Help Democrats?’

No angle there.  Rather then deal with the tragedy, he is using it to pimp for tax increases and larger government.  Nothing a Democrats loves more, is there?

On tonight’s Hardball, Mike Barnicle, substitute-hosting for Chris Matthews, used the tragedy of the bridge collapse in Minneapolis to call for bigger government and wondered, “Does this help the Democrats?” All throughout tonight’s show, Barnicle repeatedlypressed his guests to call for an increase in the size of government and at one point even demanded: “Government’s gotta get bigger!”

First up Barnicle asked the liberal Barney Frank where he would find the money to pay for bridge repair. After Frank responded that he would “end the war in Iraq” and raise taxes to improve America’s infrastructure, Barnicle took the Congressman’s cue to advance the tax hike/big government theme for the entirety of the show.

The following are just some of the exchanges as they occurred on the August 2, edition of MSNBC’s Hardball:

Mike Barnicle: “Welcome back to Hardball. Minnesota’s tragic bridge collapse is raising new questions about our country’s infrastructure and how much we’re investing to keep it safe. Democratic Congressman Barney Frank of Massachusetts is the chairman of the Financial Services committee. Congressman, every city in this country or nearly every city in this country, people go to work, they use the subways, they drive along highways that have been built, been there for 40, 50, 60 years. Bridges that have been there, perhaps longer. The Golden Gate, San Francisco, Verrazano-Narrows, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Tobin Bridge in Boston, Massachusetts. Where are we gonna get the money that everyone is talking about, today, to repair this infrastructure?”

Rep. Barney Frank: “Well we’re gonna get it from taxation and one way we can do that, frankly, in my judgment, is end the war in Iraq. I, when I proposed spending more on some of these things, people say to me, where am I gonna get the money? I was in Congress on September 10th, 2001 and I know, factually, there was no money in the, in the budget at that time for the war in Iraq and since then we’ve found $500 billion. So, sometimes, I think I should go find the guy who found that $500 billion and ask him if he can find some of that for us here. I mean we’re a very wealthy country. We can afford it as a country. The question is, how do we allocate it? And we’ve got this odd view that some people have been holding, which is that any time you cut government it’s a good thing. And I have colleagues who say, ‘It’s the taxpayers’ money not the government’s money. Let the taxpayer keep the money.’ Well, of course it’s the taxpayers’ money. Sensible taxpayers know they have two sets of needs. Some are best done individually but some we have to pool our resources. I can give you the biggest tax cut in the world, you can’t fix a bridge.”

Barnicle: “Yeah but you know Congressman, you say sensible taxpayers and I agree with you, there are, there are huge numbers of sensible taxpayers out there in this country and yet we are already, not even on the edge of a presidential campaign, we’re into a presidential campaign and in state after state, primary after primary, each and every candidate, each and every campaign is forced to respond to this litmus test of ‘No New Taxes.’ How are we gonna get taxes passed when you can’t get anything done in the Congress it seems?”

  Plenty more where that came from:

Couric: Taxes Must Be Raised… 

STAR-TRIBUNE COLUMNIST: Those who opposed tax increases to blame…

The Democrats are having a feeding frenzy. And there isn’t even a new trick, as we look back on some nostalgic blaming from 1989:

Bridge to Bias: 1989 Earthquake Collapse Blamed on Conservatives

Journalists blaming a bridge collapse on cheap Republicans and conservatives who like tax cuts is nothing new. In 1989, after a memorable San Francisco earthquake, part of the Oakland Bay Bridge collapsed and killed hundreds. Media figures demanded new taxes, and some, such as ABC’s Ted Koppel, even suggested California’s property tax-limiting Proposition 13 ballot initiative may have caused unnecessary deaths.

A reprint of an article in the November 1989 MediaWatch, a monthly newsletter the MRC published at the time:

As aftershocks  rumbled through the San Francisco Bay area, media figures began calling for more taxes. On the October 18 Nightline, Ted Koppel asked an agreeable Democratic politician from California: “We all remember a few years ago Proposition 13 which rolled back taxes. And at the same time the point was made you roll back the taxes, that’s fine, but that means there are going to be fewer funds available for necessary projects. Any instances where the money that was not spent because of the rollback of Proposition 13 where money would have made a difference?”

But…the truth is….

The Wall Street Journal took time to study the facts. An October 24 editorial noted: “California’s roads and bridges aren’t funded by property taxes but by state and federal gasoline taxes. Both have been raised at least 30 percent in recent years, even while the price of gasoline has fallen. Dragging Prop. 13 into this story is a pretty long stretch.”

I was 60 miles from San Francisco during that quake.  I don’t think anyone could have anticipated it, and I personally doubt that any amount of retrofitting would have made a difference.

And as someone who grew up in the shadow of prop 13 it was not roads that suffered it was schools.  And I don’t recall too many Democrats of the day speaking out against it.

Once again it is up to Popular Mechanics to bring some clarity to the issue.

It will take time to determine why the Interstate 35 bridge collapsed, so tragically, during the height of a Minneapolis rush hour on Wednesday night. But investigators will likely find that two factors contributed to its failure: age and heavy use. Bridge 9340 was constructed in 1967, 11 years after the launch of the Eisenhower Interstate System. Until it plunged into the Mississippi River, it served as a transportation lifeline for the growing Twin Cities population, carrying across its 14 spans many of the SUVs, cars and trucks that accounted for the 42 percent rise in Minnesota’s vehicle traffic from 1990 to 2003.

Age and heavy use are by no means isolated conditions. According to a report card released in 2005 by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), 160,570 bridges, or just over one-quarter of the nation’s 590,750-bridge inventory, were rated structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. The nation’s bridges are being called upon to serve a population that has grown from 200 million to over 300 million since the time the first vehicles rolled across the I-35W bridge. Predictably that has translated into lots more cars. American commuters now spend 3.5 billion hours a year stuck in traffic, at a cost to the economy of $63.2 billion a year.

It is not just roads and bridges that are being stressed to the breaking point. Two weeks ago New Yorkers were scrambling for cover after a giant plume of 200-plus-degree steam and debris shot out of the street and into the air. The mayhem was caused by the explosion of a steam pipe, installed underground in 1924 to heat office buildings near Grand Central station. In January 2007, Kentuckians and Tennesseans woke up to the news that the water level of the largest man-made reservoir east of the Mississippi would have to be dropped by 10 ft. as an emergency measure. The Army Corps of Engineers feared that if it didn’t immediately reduce the pressure on the 57-year-old Wolf Creek Dam, it might fail, sending a wall of water downstream that would inundate communities all along the Cumberland River, including downtown Nashville.

Get it?  The problem has been in a slow festering growth since the 50’s and possible earlier.  That is half a century of Democrat and Republican Administrations.  Decades of Republican and Democrat Congressional dominance.

Republican lead wars and Democrat lead wars.

Times of wealth and poverty with low and high taxes.

The issue is serious and needs to be dealt with in a serious fashion, not with deranged commentators blaming Bush and the Republicans like this is a magical problem that just “happened”, nor with demagoguing the issues to scare us into tax increases.

For once, just once, I wish our Congress would cowboy up and admit that their partisan bickering, selfish earmarks and wrangling for power is destroying our country from the inside out as they argue endlessly over meaningless bullshit while the things that actually matter get lost in the cacophony.

No wonder their approval rating is so low.

 Trackposted to Hot Air, Outside the Beltway, The Virtuous Republic, Diary of the Mad Pigeon, Rosemary’s Thoughts, DeMediacratic Nation, Shadowscope, Blue Star Chronicles, The Pink Flamingo, Webloggin, Wyvern dreams, The Amboy Times, Dumb Ox Daily News, Conservative Cat, Right Voices, Gone Hollywood, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

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