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When I heard the news late Wednesday afternoon PT about the Minnesota Interstate 35W bridge collapse, after the initial shock and sadness for the victims, one of my first thoughts was that the Left would try to score points and blame the tragedy on President Bush and the Republicans.

Sure enough, within four minutes of the news breaking nationally at 7:32 pm ET on the Fox News Channel, the initial discussion thread about it at Daily Kos was already collecting comments like the following ones which are representative of hundreds of messages that soon appeared there (the first two below, by the way, were the first two to be posted):

We spend billions in Iraq

While we fall apart at home.

We have been warned

by engineers that our nation's infrastructure is in dire need of repair and upgrade.

Who needs terrorism when the inept GOP runs our nation into the ground. The "terrorists" can just sit back and watch as our nation falls apart.

Mission Accomplished.

No one has the balls to take this on

Every week there's a new national tragedy...tainted food, nutcases with automatic weapons, structural damage to cities, hospital patients dropped on the streets, dysfuctional transportation system, poorly cared for vets, trashed education system, national disasters from global warming. I am waiting for a national figure with the balls to call these warning signs what they are: Republican disdain for and neglect of government oversight,venality, insensitivity to human suffering, tax breaks for rich folks, blatant government incompetence, dirty politics, and bleeding our resources in an immoral f-----k war.

God damn right

you want services, you have to PAY FOR THEM.

That includes roads, electric grid, public transportation, airports, air traffic control, police, firemen, schools, colleges, and last AND least, military.

NO corporation is going to do those things. THERE'S NO PROFIT IN IT. And there SHOULDN'T be.

You can't run a 21st century country with a 19th century infrastructure. Or tax structure. Or 19th century thinking.

Scratch that - 16th century thinking.

It is a terrorist attack by Republican budget

cutters

I'm watching this now on Olbermann

I can't help thinking that the Bush tax cuts and corruption has contributed to this. Our country is falling apart, but Bush doesn't care as long as he cronies get to make money.

And from another popular Kos thread about the incident:

More Republican 'Family Values'?

Move along, nothing to see here folks.

Just another case of people paying with their lives, so the rich can keep "their hard earned money".

Just move along.

Some of the Kos messages mentioned the fact that the 2008 Republican National Convention will take place in Minneapolis. "Netroots" activists on the Left feel that linking the bridge collapse with Republicans can score points with voters and perhaps disparage or spoil the lead up to next year's convention.

Over at MinneaPolitics.com, in an August 1 article "Live From Minneapolis: Our Dirty Laundry," Bretton Jones writes,

"I'm feeling a little down about our bridge collapsing with many of my fellow humans on it, and I can't help but feel the desire to go straight for the money that should have been used on my cities' federally funded, interstate highway infrastructure by re-appropriating it directly from Blackwater and Haliburton."

Jones concludes with "IMPEACH BUSH RECALL PAWLENTY." (Tim Pawlenty is the second term Republican governor of Minnesota.)

Jones also has a blog at Kos, where someone posted this comment in response to his article:

This is what happens when militarists run things

The Military and all it's attendant fraud and waste soaks up the lion's share of the federal government's money.

Next to nothing is left for the civilian infrastructure and it's maintenance.

Point of fact: In 2005, according to the Office of Management and Budget, the Federal Government spent $2,479 billion. The amount appropriated to the Department of Defense that year was $400 billion, or less than 1/6^th of the total. According to the Congressional Budget Office, military spending, as a percentage of both the GDP and the federal budget, has been shrinking significantly since the 1960s. According to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, of the 2006 U.S. federal budget, the "lion's share" - 54% - went to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other entitlement programs.

Peter Barry Chowka, a widely published writer and investigative journalist, first reported from the U.S. Presidential campaign trail in 1972. His Web site is http://chowka.com/.

Leftist dementia: Blaming Bush & GOP for Minneapolis Bridge Collapse