By now everyone has seen the video of that ship in Maryland hitting the bridge….and there has been a lot of ‘investigation’ into what happened…..and there has been a lot of rightg wing silliness about the collision.

That’s right I said silliness!

Here are some right wing excuses…..just a short rundown of stupidity…..

+ In the age of Clickbait Politics, it pays to offer an instant conspiracy theory to explain any major catastrophe. The wilder, the more profitable.

+ FoxNews’ Maria Bartiromo (the former Money Honey who people used to take financial advice from) blamed it on “wide-open borders.”

+ Marjorie Taylor Green asked: “Is this an intentional attack or accidental?”

+ Andrew Tate, from whatever dungeon he’s hooking up from these days, warned: “This ship was cyberattacked…Black Swan event imminent.”

+ CPAC’s Matt Schlapp blamed the bridge collapse on…the COVID lockdowns.

+ Republican Senator Eric Schmitt pointed his finger, inexplicably, at the “weaponization of the Justice Department.”

+ And former 60 Minutes reporter, Lara Logan, says “intelligence sources” (Mike Flynn?) told her the bridge collapse was…wait for it… a cyberattack “just like the attack on 2020 on the voting machines that you cannot see.”

+ Others, naturally, blamed DEI, the far right’s latest euphemism for the N-word.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/03/29/roaming-charges-114/

Now that we have seen just how stupid the right wing can be….let’s look into the real problem with this ship…..

This ship has had a history of problems…..

The mega-container ship that lost propulsion before toppling Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge in a Tuesday morning collision was involved in a previous crash, and was cited last year for propulsion-related problems.

Newsweekreported that the Maersk Line Limited-chartered MV Dali—which crashed into the Interstate 695 Patapsco River crossing just before 1:30 am, causing the span to collapse and sending a construction crew into the water—collided with a wall in the harbor at Antwerp, Belgium in 2016. The accident, which was reported by Vessel Finder and other outlets at the time, was attributed to errors made by the ship’s master and pilot.

The 9-year-old Dali was also detained by port officials in San Antonio, Chile last June after inspectors discovered a problem related to the vessel’s “propulsion and auxiliary machinery,” according toThe Washington Post, which cited records from the intergovernmental shipping regulator Tokyo MOU.

The ship’s owner, Grace Ocean Private Ltd., and operator, Synergy Marine, “have been sued at least four times in U.S. federal court on allegations of negligence and other claims tied to worker injuries on other ships owned and operated by the Singapore-based companies,” according toThe Associated Press.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/maersk-dali

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