The Bridge To Nowhere

Not that it makes any difference but I’m going to throw this one out there today just for the fun of it. You’ve all heard about the famous “Bridge to Nowhere,” right? We keep hearing Obama and the left-wing bloggers, you know, (the experts) constantly criticizing Alaskan Governor, Sarah Palin for supporting the bridge before she voted against it. You know the drill. It’s funny that no one ever mentions that Obama and Biden both supported the exact same bridge from the get go. But hey, why let facts get in the way of a good political attack strategy, right?
First off, the supporters of this project went about it all wrong from the beginning. If they’d just asked for my help, I could have told them how to get it done and by the time they were through they could have been heroes. I’ll get to that later though.
Be honest. Other than knowing it’s now known as the “bridge to nowhere” what do you really know about the thing in the first place?
You’ve probably heard that it was just a bridge to connect the mainland to an island that had just 50 people living on it. Anyway, that‘s the story I‘ve always heard. But the main reason for the bridge was to replace the ferry that currently connects Ketchikan, Alaska to the Ketchikan International Airport on Gravina Island. Ketchikan International is the second largest airport in Southeast Alaska and handles somewhere around 300,000 passengers a year. But we never hear that part of the story do we? It would have provided better and safer service to the airport and provided more opportunities for development of large tracts of land on the island, you know, ”economic development.” Again, no one wants to talk about that now do they?
The bridge was to be nearly as long as the “Golden Gate Bridge” and a little taller than the “Brooklyn Bridge” It had to be this tall to allow for ship traffic because it would cross what’s known as the “Tongrass Narrows” part of Alaska’s Inside Passage. The proposed cost of the project was just under $400 million. Now I don’t claim to be an expert on bridges. In fact all I really know about bridges is, well, nothing. But it doesn’t sound that far out of line to me. Let me ask you this, isn’t it a Governor’s job to improve whatever parts of their states they can if given the chance? Makes sense to me. When it became apparent the funding had dried up and that the Congress and the media were spinning this to make Alaska look bad Palin had no choice but to change her position and stop the proposed bridge project. To do otherwise would have been, well, stupid. What can I say?
There were two ways this bridge project could have flourished but like I said before, no one asked me. So here goes. Instead of building a bridge to improve safety and to provide better service to the Ketchikan International Airport and allowing for more economic development on Gravina Island, they should have said they building it to save the poor, helpless “Polar Bears” who are dying at an alarming rate because of global warming. It wouldn’t have mattered one bit that the polar bear population is thriving and has been steadily growing for the last three decades. The Democrats and left-wing bloggers, you know, the “experts” would be falling all over themselves to get their names attached to this one. You know, for the moral reasons they’re so strong on.
And if that plan failed to gain the needed traction to move the project forward you could always build a “late-term” abortion clinic on Gravina Island and you could build any bridge, at any price you wanted. Just something to think about.
Think I’m out of line? Tell me so at www.rm235.blogspot.com or you can always e-mail me at:www.kevinmcginty@sbcglobal.net