Get an independent explosives team in now or forever suffer the conspiracy theorists. That’s just the way it is. If I were governor of Mn, it would be on my top ten list of things to do.
Conspiracy theorists are not in charge and shouldn't be. That's a good thing. They are simply paranoids. They key there is that suspicion is irrationally founded and reality simply can not be grasped. They see everthing as being arbitrarily caused by some etherial evil force and they're only comfortable with others that agree with them. It's bizzzare. The govm't doesn't need to get any more bizarre than it already is. Wasting tax money on bizarre is evil.
Besides, in the pic I posted showing where the failure occurred there's already a dozen guys there standing around. Those are feds. They're giving orders on what materials need to be disposed of and destroyed and what evidence needs to be planted. Those cops there are there to make sure no one gets close enough to see the real evidence, before it's taken away.
So, I swallowed my bile, and punched "202" into the remote for the DreckTV box, and watched CNN. Amazingly, they actually reported on some news other than the Minnesota bridge failure. (For having allowed Fox to drone on during the day, I had NO idea that there was an incident in North Carolina, in which some "middle eastern men" were arrested driving a van packed full of explosives. I guess that's not big enough of a story to push the sleaze and bridge mix off the permanent front age at Fox. Nor was the near-fistfight at Congress, or the stolen vote.)
But I digress.
CNN interviewed an engineer at the bridge -- a guy who knew all the ins and outs of the industry. He gave them a quick but fairly in-depth tutorial on metal fatigue and how it affects bridges, and, how it's treated (i.e., drill a hole at the end of a split to keep it from growing, IF you can find the split).
He said that these metal fatigue cracks are usually impossible to see, they are that tiny.
When questioned further, he was perplexed -- he said he could not understand how the bridge could have failed due to metal fatigue. He said that if a crack developed, it would cause the bridge to tilt, to bend to one side, etc., but for the bridge to collapse the way it did, it would take multiple IDENTICAL splits, failing at the IDENTICAL time, on opposite sides of the bridge.
I can think of one potential cause for that sort of failure, but the media has been running from it like mad, as have quite a few Freepers.
What I cannot for the life of me comprehend is why the government keeps telling us to be on the lookout for attacks of this sort, and then, when they occur, IMMEDIATELY tells us that even though they have no idea what caused it, that there's NO reason to think there's terrorism involved, and then they engage in a full court press -- with media working hand-in-hand -- to "examine" ANY other cause, all the while ridiculing anyone who would even suggest the possibility of terrorist involvement.
Actually, I lied. It doen't confuse me at all. It makes perfect sense that there'd be a "no terrorism involvement" rule when the primary goal is to "avoid panic" -- especially at a time when the stock market is, shall we say, "nervous", and the economy -- while being touted as the best ever, is poised for some rather nasty inflation.
And in line with that, there's the curious removal of the "M3" reporting a few months ago. Without knowing the M3, we don't know the amount of "money" (i.e., the number of dollars) in existance at any given time.
We are constantly told that "inflation" means "the rising prices of 'stuff'", but that's BS. In reality, inflation is simply the amount by which the currency has been INFLATED, i.e., how many dollars are in existence at any given time.
When you INFLATE the size of the currency, each dollar is worth a bit less than it was before you inflated the size of the currency. In the stock market, it's called "dilution" -- when a company starts issuing and selling new shares, printed out of thin air, to generate some working money to burn -- the existing shares aren't worth as much, because the actual value of the company hasn't "inflated". In other words, if the company has a million shares out in the market, each share is worth one millionth of the company. If they suddenly print up and sell off another million shares, then each share is suddenly worth one HALF millionth of the company. (Please, no one jump me on this, these are stupid numbers, but they illustrate the principle.)
So, the economy is, ahem, "fragile", the market is at the point where high rollers are looking for an easy path to the window, and in that environment, the one thing that the government does NOT want is "panic", or anything that would cause "lack of confidence."
The MAIN thing is to try to keep the economy going. And if people were to believe that there was a fifth column inside our borders, doing to us what the French Resistance did to the Germans in the 1940s, then "the economy would suffer" in their minds.
So, I do not expect that ANY actual terrorist attack would be acknowledged as such unless there were absolutely NO way for them to deny it.
I've typed more than I intended, so I'll close by simply reiterating the main thing I intended to convey -- the engineer on CNN was very very persuasive. If you haven't seen the interview, then I'd suggest tuning in and seeing if the replay it, or, checking to see if it's on their website.