Tuesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Tuesday, March 26, 2024
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61 comments
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About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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The headline of the day- Baltimore bridge collapses after ship collision
If I remember correctly, this is the bridge on the south end of the city which allows travelers to bypass the tunnel in the middle of Baltimore. It’s been 35 years since I traveled that way, so be easy on me if my memory is faulty.
Many cars have plunged into the bay and the outlook for those people has to be bleak. A little bit of Florida history, we had a similar happening 44 years ago involving a ship and a major bridge.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunshine_Skyway_Bridge#1980_collapse
@Bill Jempty: It’s a big bridge, about a mile and a half long, and the ship hit one of the supports dead center.
@Bill Jempty: This is near where my parents and brother live, though a little out of the way from where they normally travel; still, they’re affected by it as it’s led to closure of I-695 (the Baltimore Beltway).
Video of collapse:
https://twitter.com/HomaBashNews/status/1772528853635744090?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1772528853635744090%7Ctwgr%5Ef7c6ec0b4cd31c95c109f21f3ee52e0851339875%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com%2F2024%2F03%2Fthe-key-bridge
Embed is here:
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2024/03/the-key-bridge
The Sports headline of the day- Utah experienced ‘racial hate crimes’ during hotel stay for NCAAs
Just a little more information on the Key Bridge:
– It is part of the 695 beltway around the southern end of Baltimore along with the 95 and 895 tunnels
– 695 is a Federal Interstate highway but the Key Bridge is actually MD 695 – state owned (the tunnels are Federal Insterstate). I’m wondering if this will complicate rebuilding (which will take years)
– Since hazardous material cannot go through the tunnels, this was the fastest way around Baltimore for a large amount of trucking
– Named for Francis Scott Key, who was not far from it’s location when he witnessed the star spangled banner still flying over Fort McHenry in the early light of dawn
@MarkedMan:
This looks like an engineering failure.
It is a foreseeable scenario. The supports should have been sufficiently protected (e.g. by separate crash barriers) to survive such a collision.
In Texas, ex-oil and gas workers champion geothermal energy as a replacement for fossil-fueled power plants
From NotMax over at BJ:
When the ship hits the span…
@MarkedMan:
That won’t stop the Republicans from using the occasion to attack Buttigieg, I suspect.
@drj: I wonder if the fact that container ships are so much larger than when the bridge was designed has anything to do with it? Still, if you look at the video the ship hit the support dead center. I can’t imagine what a protective barrier would look like that could withstand that…
@Mister Bluster: My understanding though is that there is a Federal level planning and coordination effort on the US Interstate Highways that does not exist for the state roads, at least not at the same level.
@Kylopod: I’m wondering if the Trump states, you know the ones that are constantly coming hat in hand to the Feds looking for Federal bailouts and management of their various disasters, will view Maryland as a Northeaster state rather than a mid-Atlantic one. If so, they will reflexively try to block any Federal help.
@drj:
@MarkedMan:
The energy generated by the weight of that ship, which was likely moving at 5-7 knots, would have overwhelmed any barrier. If the ship were to be intentionally run aground on the shore, the momentum of the ship would have carried it dozens of yards onto the land.
Unless there is a mechanical/electrical failure on the ship that made it difficult to steer, this is on the harbor pilots who would have been in control of the ship.
Over at The American Conservative one Peter Tonguette is already arguing for repeal of the 22nd Amendment to pave the way for a Trump third term. Despite the evidence of his first term, Mr. Tonguette is sure Trump would be wildly popular by the end of his second term. And I suspect he’s right, that by the end of another term Trump would be just about exactly as popular as Vladimir Putin and by the same means. However, this seems early for such a proposal. I suppose Tonguette wanted to get in ahead of the rush.
So is DJT a “meme” stock pumped up artificially? Is it rising because of the dumb Trump marks? Are foreign or billionaire investors working to make Trump financially secure?
Who will get rich off this? Follow the money.
Short sales are at 11%. This has fraud written all over it.
Trump’s Truth Social stock jumps in first day of trade
@Sleeping Dog: NPR is reporting a series of power failures on the ship.
@MarkedMan:
The barrier wouldn’t need to withstand the collision. Its purpose would be to dissipate the collision’s energy before it reaches the bridge itself.
@Sleeping Dog: Latest videos which shows the time just before impact clearly show the the boat losing power as it maneuvering to pass under the bridge.
@MarkedMan:..–695 is a Federal Interstate highway but the Key Bridge is actually MD 695 – state owned (the tunnels are Federal Insterstate). I’m wondering if this will complicate rebuilding (which will take years)
I took this comment to mean that some parts of the Interstate Highway System, tunnels, are owned by the Federal government. Apparently I misunderstood your remarks.
@drj: I understand, but such a barrier would need to be immense. These ships are immense. Even a “small” modern container ship can weigh over a 100,000 tons fully loaded, and something like the EverGiven that grounded in Egypt (and its sister ship that grounded not far from this current catastrophe) come within spitting range of a quarter million tons.
@Sleeping Dog:
A friend who was in the Navy said that it appears as though the ship lost power before the accident. If so, that’s probably the dominant factor.
ETA: I need to read ALL of the comments first…Joe & MarkedMan got there first!
@Mister Bluster: My understanding is that routine maintenance falls under the states purview but that for any significant changes the Feds are deeply involved.
@MarkedMan:
It is also possible, of course, that the ship was simply too big to be accommodated by the port of Baltimore.
Alternatively, perhaps the ship should have been accompanied by one or two tugs near that bridge.
My point is that somewhere, somehow there has been a blatant disregard for normal safety precautions.
@MarkedMan:..My understanding is that routine maintenance falls under the states purview but that for any significant changes the Feds are deeply involved.
Uncle
The Wire:
https://twitter.com/JaviFuser/status/1772551707798421737
@Mister Bluster: More of a discussion than a debate on my part. I really don’t have inside knowledge and what I know has just been picked up in passing over the years. It could well be possible that despite being a State bridge it falls under some kind of special Federal category, given that it is the designated alternate route for hazardous materials. I imagine all us news junkies will be learning a lot more about such matters in the coming weeks and months.
It’s not the first time a ship hits and takes down a bridge.
I vaguely recall something about barriers around bridges. These are not supposed to stop a derelict ship, but to direct it away from the structures supporting the bridge. I think. Changing the course of a moving object with massive amounts of kinetic energy is somewhat easier than stopping it, but it’s not easy.
@Scott:
This is especially noteworthy given that DJT is not widely available (when you short a stock you have to pay a sort of weekly rental fee on the shares you’re shorting and how much that is depends on how hard it is to find shares of that stock), which implies that the people don’t just think it’s going to go down, they think it’s going to go down quickly, because this is going to be an expensive short position to keep open.
This is not good.
I discovered this outage on Saturday when I visited Panera. They have one of my credit cards on file to pay the monthly charge for the Coffee Club subscription. Not sure what anyone could charge on that card as it is close to maxed out.
This Panera system crash has forced me to finally use the Hotspot feature on my iPhone. Never did check that out till now. Works just fine.
Apple 4 ever!
@Kathy:
If you watch the video, I can’t imagine anything that could stop it. You would have to build a substantial island in front of each pier, both sides. There are many, many bridges that aren’t any more protected than this one.
@Mister Bluster: FWIW, I never click the “remember my card” button. I have a password keeper that can fill all my credit card info in with one click, and I trust it a lot more than some company that could be bought by a private equity firm tomorrow and downsize the IT department and outsource most of it to some shady Indian company.
@MarkedMan:
In a cultural and political sense, MD is essentially a Northeastern state today, despite its history and its being below the Mason-Dixon line. Calling it “mid-Atlantic” has always struck me as somewhat of a dodge, as that term typically means a Northeastern state outside of New England. The Census still classifies MD as a Southern state and applies the term “mid-Atlantic” only to PA, NJ, and NY. Most of the time, though, I see it classified as mid-Atlantic.
A while back I saw an old broadcast from the 1988 presidential election, where one of the anchors casually referred to MD as a Southern state. I have my doubts that even back then most Marylanders–let alone most Southerners–would have agreed with that classification, but I suspect the anchor was thinking of it that way in part because of its status as a swing state in presidential elections. From the 1990s forward it shifted to being one of the bluest states in the country at the same time as the South at large became uber-red. That may have been the final nail in the coffin for MD being considered “Southern” in any sense. I don’t even hear the phrase “border state” used much in political analysis anymore.
Judge dismisses ‘vapid’ Elon Musk lawsuit against group that cataloged racist content on X
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/03/26/baltimore-key-bridge-collapse-maryland/#link-ASUHMQVNONCNHM7NVHMHAEBSCA
(Possibly a gift link)
A target for lawyers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N39w6aQFKSQ
Play by play account,
@Kylopod:
In my discussions of political geography, I refer to the northeast urban corridor (“BosWash”) as a single unit. Wikipedia has a nice map.
@Michael Cain: The weird thing is that in Western Maryland and the Eastern Shore there is a significant and vocal “The South Shall Rise Again”, “Slaves Were Better Off” contingent. Even Anne Arundel County (Basically everything from the southern end of Baltimore to an equal distance below Annapolis, on the western side of the Patapsco River) has it’s share of Lost Causers. When I first moved there in 2015 there was still a League of the South guy in the County Legislature, not just a casual member, but someone who held office in that organization. It was a happy day when he got voted out of legislature.
For those who aren’t aware of the League, from Wiki:
The first time I lived in Baltimore I asked someone if it was considered a Northern or Southern city and the person replied, “Well, during the Civil War the cannons on Federal Hill pointed in towards the city, not out towards the bay.”
@MarkedMan:..FWIW, I never click the “remember my card” button.
Nor do I. The arrangement with the Panera Sip Club subscription I am enrolled in is that I give them my credit card account information and they deduct $14.99+tax each month. About 56¢ a day for all I can drink. There is no option to save or not save the data. They’ve got it. They say that I can cancel any time.
This is a risk I take for the considerable discount I get since I don’t pay $3.19+tax for every cup of mud that I draw from their tanks on a daily basis. If I could I would pay the monthly rate in cash at the register in the store every 30 days but that is not an option.
@MarkedMan: Washington state had a bridge collapse because it was hit by a truck (Skagit river bridge on I-5, back in 2013, for those curious about the details). The Maryland bridge seems a lot tougher.
My wife responding to a Virginia school district that caved to a troll and stopped a one-school read of Wishtree.
@Michael Reynolds:
Brava, Katherine.
@Bill Jempty: links to the WIKI article on Tampa’s Sunshine Skyway Bridge. I drive over the second bridge occasionally. As Bill notes, the first bridge was taken out by a ship in 1980. A photo at the link shows the new bridge parallel to the old bridge. You can see the “structural dolphins” placed to protect the new bridge. I don’t know if the Baltimore bridge had anything similar, or whether they’d deflect, stop, or even slow down something the size of the Dali. The ship that hit the Sunshine Skyway was only 20,000 tons.
It took a little longer to try all the apple varieties. I also decided to share them at the office.
I won’t rate all seven here, but the best, as far as my opinion on their flavor goes, were honey crisp and cosmic crisp (delusions of grandeur and all). Gala has the best texture. Ambrosia barely tastes like anything.
Texture won’t matter much after shredding and cooking, so I’ll probably go with one of the two crisp options.
@Michael Reynolds: Her demeanor is a good reminder that we win more by trying to bring people inside the club rather than berating them for their failings.
BTW, is she that un-grumpy in real life? If so, there’s an obvious question 😉
I kid, I kid. FWIW, the same observation could be made about me and my wife.
Per the NYT, Trump’s had a gag order imposed on him by the judge in the hush money case.
@gVOR10: If you look at that video, I don’t see how anything could have stopped it. It may be a bit deceptive because of scale. That bridge is really big and really long. And if that ship is the same size as the Ever Given, the width is essentially from the goal line to the 65 yard line on a football field. The height from keel to top (and it’s loaded all the way to the top) is from the goal line to the 36 yard line, with a good portion of that underwater. To put it in perspective, if you’ve ever been to Chicago and seen the John Hancock building, it is roughly that size. I can’t imagine anything short of a substantial island that would have stopped it.
@Michael Reynolds:
Great video. Good for her!!
Side note: How the hell did you, YOU, land Katherine as a wife? Seriously, dude. What the hell? How??
Just turned on the news and watched 5 minutes of Gov Moore press conference concerning the bridge accident. That is my first exposure to him and know nothing about him, but if that is typical, man, he is good.
@MarkedMan: @EddieInCA:
The Katherine and Michael story: I had jumped bail just a month before, had been living on the streets 2 weeks before, got a job and an apartment. And one night coming home (as it happens from spending time with another young woman) I saw this girl in a second floor window. Short story even shorter, I came up with a pretext and knocked on her door. We went out to Les Amis, had a beer, I told her everything, a single kiss, and the next day we moved in together. 44 years.
Ah hah hah hah hah. I laugh through my tears.
Honestly I get cold sweats when I imagine not catching that glance of her in a window in Austin. What if I had not knocked? What if she’d had more sense than to fall for a fugitive?
@Scott: As a Marylander, my impression to date is that he is quite good. He builds himself up not by picking fights but by accomplishing things. And he is content with the win, he doesn’t have to stomp on the other guy.
I’ll give you an example, although I have to admit there is a lot of speculation in it. The current owner (until tomorrow, anyway) of the Baltimore Orioles has been a real piece of work, with wild and erratic demands to sign a new lease to stay in the city and a basic “F you all” demeanor. I was becoming convinced that the Governor was getting played or at least jerked around and losing control, especially after an announced “contract” turned out be just a letter of understanding. And then, boom, all at once we have a signed contract and, quite frankly, it is as good as we could have hoped. Not good as in “as good as we could have hoped because we have to expect to pay hostage money to these billionaire bastards”, but as in, a very reasonable and long term deal. And then very quickly afterwards, and after proclaiming loudly that he had no intention of selling the team, he announced a deal to sell it to a life long Orioles fan and Marylander, David Rubenstein, with a very detailed plan with many prestigious Marylanders having minority stakes, something that must have been under negotiations for months if not years. And the current owner didn’t even have the courtesy to inform the Governor before announcing it to the press. But almost immediately, after looking at the minority shareholders which included people like a former Mayor of Baltimore and Michael Bloomberg, I knew the Governor must have known all along. And this was confirmed when Rubenstein in a press release mentioned in passing that they had worked closely with the Governor’s office. But the press, as far as I saw, never picked up on that. And the Gov never gave an “in your face, asshole” press conference, but rather thanked the current owner (and his father, the real owner before illness) for all their efforts for MD and the City, yadda, yadda, yadda.
Take the win, and be gracious in victory.
@Michael Reynolds:
I often have a similar thought about my wife and I, although it was so very far from an overnight thing that it borders on the impossible. At one point if you put a finger on the globe where I was at (Ghana) you would have to rotate it around to the farthest point away before you would find her (Fiji). I don’t know how I would have turned out but I’m certain that because of her I’m a better person than my basic nature would seem to dictate.
@Michael Reynolds:
That’s really great. Thank you for sharing.
Calls to mind this lovely poem by Sean Thomas Dougherty:
Why Bother?
Because right now, there is someone
out there with
a wound in the exact shape
of your words.
How the criminal case against Texas AG Ken Paxton abruptly ended after nearly a decade of delays.
He’ll pay $300k restitution for his securities fraud.
It’s not like he did something terrible, like steal to feed his family. Or have a child with gender dysphoria be treated by an actual doctor, instead of a quack who tells the child to take a cold shower and suck it up.
And to top it off, Paxton gets to continue to take his revenge, which he is very open about.
@MarkedMan: Imagine an island 75-100 yards in diameter. You make an artificial island out of rip-rap (large boulders) around the support upon which the ship can run aground before striking the bridge. Viable if it’s fairly shallow, like 50 depth or less, and even at 50 ft you’re talking a lot of sand and boulders.
I think for the Easter weekend I’ll try cooking cholent.
Like goulash or hot & sour soup, it’s one of those things that has as many variations as you find recipes online, and then some. But basically it’s beef, beans, barely, onions, and potatoes cooked slowly. In fact, not that different from the bean and chicken stew I’ve been making.
I’m confident enough to slow cook it on high (4-6 hours tops), and to add more bean varieties for additional flavor. I’ll also try to add kasha. I thought to add bacon or chorizo just to be sacrilegious, but the flavor profiles don’t seem to mix in all that well.
On other news, Ronna Romney McDaniel has been axed by NBC. I think she didn’t last even one full Scaramucci.
You know, backlash can be hard to see coming (not this time), but sounding out the existing on-air talent and reporters first, does seem like a prudent move.
Good riddance.
@Michael Reynolds: Great response. Thanks for posting it. We’ve been looking for a book for our grandkids, and seeing this made it an easy decision to order wishtree today. I hope this school board’s decision leads to thousands of other parents and grandparents doing the same thing. Coincidentally, I had looked at The One and Only Ivan at our local bookstore over the weekend, so I decided to get it, too.
@Michael Reynolds: As to Katherine’s video, I already like her better than you. 🙂
@Kathy:
The Golden Gate bridge fender system.
This is not a lot different than the system installed on the Bay Bridge recently completed, but is designed to work on a ship striking more or less perpendicular to the span, so it’s not proof against everything possible.
@Michael Reynolds: I watched your wife, agree with it all. But I remember 20+ years ago going into an independent bookstore (huge) and asking for “The Turner Diaries,” to try to figure out the weird folks quoting them (I don’t think it is a thing anymore). Oh no, we won’t carry stuff like that. but I found Das Kapital (Eng translation) that I find equally bad. I’m sorry you have to deal with this, but you have the resources to deal with it. And great response by Katherine.
@dazedandconfused: I have experience as a Civil Engineer (I know bridge design in theory and a couple of friends that are bridge designers) and am someone formerly licensed to navigate the Puget Sound up to 20K Tons (this ship is 250-500K Tons) from my Navy Navigator time. Momentum, momentum, momentum. The ship lost power and there is zero some magic bumper (actual term, bumper) that could stop something with that much mass. As we mariners say, Law of Gross Tonnage, don’t get in the way.
The important thing now it to bring in some massive floating cranes and clear the 50′ depth shipping channel This is the East Coast’s primary RORO (Roll-on, Roll-Off) = car import facility. Container cargo can go elsewhere but only Baltimore has the huge RORO ability.
Then there is the hazardous cargo stuff. Guess old US-1 through residential Baltimore? Can’t go through the tunnels (maybe).
What ships are trapped behind the fallen bridge?