Last week during his address to Congress, President Obama talked about our crumbling infrastructure. One project he highlighted was the Brent Spence bridge, which connects Cincinnati to Northern Kentucky. This bridge is a part of the most major north/south corridor in the United States  – I-75. It is a vital part of transportation, meaning it’s a vital part of commerce. If it were to be unexpectedly shutdown, it would be a nightmare not only for the greater Cincinnati area, but far a large portion of the eastern United States.

The following day this area got another warning about the deteriorating bridge. In Louisville the I-64 bridge crossing the Ohio River into Indiana was suddenly shutdown because of cracks.  The video on this page shows the traffic nightmare commuters experienced yesterday morning from the closure of this bridge.

While our leaders have spent the past decade engaged in extreme partisan warfare, America has fallen apart. We have a Republican Party that looks at replacing these important parts of our infrastructure and economy as being “pork”.  Remember this scene?

That’s from 2007, when the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis suddenly collapsed, killing 13 people. That day America suddenly felt much more like a third world nation as we watched the horror of our citizens dying because of a crumbling infrastructure that has been neglected due to broken ideology. At the time we had a Republican President and Minnesota had a Republican governor. Instead of worrying about what to do to keep our country functioning, these people worry about how to cut vital money while wasting money in other areas.

So how many more mothers, fathers, children are going to have to die before the GOP pulls their heads out of their ass and realize that without spending money this kind of scene will become more common? How hard is it for them to realize that our interstate system is a very vital part of our economy and letting it fall apart will further hurt us, not only physically but also financially?

We need to fix our crumbling infrastructure, but before that can happen we need to fix our broken political system – especially the one party that believes that fixing America is pork.