 All right, you guys have probably seen the news about the Baltimore Bridge. If you haven't seen videos of the bridge collapsing, they're quite striking. It's worth seeing. It's interesting engineering in terms of how the whole bridge collapses, the central section of the bridge. It's a bridge that's made of section and the whole center of the bridge just collapses. I mean, basically what happened is a ship on the waterway exiting, I think it was exiting, the Port of Baltimore, one of the busiest ports in the United States, lost its basically lost control and drifted. It let, I guess, the authorities know that it was losing control and it was likely, it was probably, they would hit the bridge. They landed up hitting one of the columns of the bridge and because it is a vertical force on a column, a vertical force, most of the force a bridge is designed to handle is obviously horizontal. It's from the top, it's down and this is a vertical force on a column. It just buckled and the whole bridge just came crashing down. The photos, I mean, the video is quite striking. You can see it from multiple angles and horrible and quite tragic. The bridge could have been a lot worse in the sense that because the ship had let the authorities know they had tried to close the road off. So you can actually see cars passing as it's drifting towards the column and then there are very few or any cars driving along once the ship hits so that reduced the number of casualties. There was some workmen, the bridge was not a repair, so there's some workmen on the bridge who hit the water. Last I saw, I mean, originally the estimates were about 20 people from the construction crew were missing in the water. One had been rescued, one or two have been rescued. Last I saw there were only six missing in the water, but I think we'll know more as the day progresses. It is an interesting engineering feat today, a bridge like this would be, a number of different things would be done in order to prevent it from an accident like this. I mean, this is not a crazy accident, right? You would think a bridge could withstand this force coming from the side, but remember this is a, I don't know, I saw some way, this is the ship that went 500 feet off course, again that's pretty rare, but you can imagine that the bridge should have been designed to deal with it and why it would collapse. Let's, let me just give you a quick update on this. So we're talking about, you know, we're talking about a large bridge, a span of, my internet is for some reason suddenly slow, I guess maybe because of, okay, let's start from the beginning. The bridge, the bridge, other bridges have collapsed on similar strikes in 1980, a Sunshine Skyway bridge collapsed when a vessel strikes again, one of the columns, that's the weak point in a bridge like this. This bridge was hit by a container ship, a container ship that was fully loaded. We're talking about well over three million pounds, right? No bridge I think is designed of three million pounds of that's equivalent static force of hitting a column from the side. The bridge had three spans, but once you take out one, they all collapse on top of the other. The other spans a whole because the centerpiece is hinged and once those collapse, the rest of the bridge is fine. So this is designed to look like this, designed to collapse. What usually happens is that you, a modern bridge is built to prevent a ship from hitting the column, so what they do is around the column, they will put lots of rocks and other things, sand and rocks and build it out, so the ship doesn't literally hit the column, it hits the sand barrier with the rocks and so the whole force is not hitting a thin column on which the bridge rests. And you'll see that when they rebuild this, they will build it quite differently. So it's going to be interesting also, modern bridges often have cables. The cables are there to take some of the stress off of the center column so the column could get weakened, but the cables would hold it up at least for a while until you came in and reinforced the column. So a lot of modern bridges would not collapse the way this bridge did and it'll be interesting to see what the bridge looks like once they rebuild it and what the cost is and everything. Talk about costs. This bridge, the bridge that just collapsed was built in 1977 and it cost $61 million, which is about $343 million in 2024. I'm going to make a guess that the new bridge that replaces it will cost anywhere between I don't know, five to ten times that amount. So probably looking at one and a half to three billion dollars. Not because it has to cost that much, but because, and not because of inflation, we're taking into account inflation from 61 to 343, that's inflation. No, but because of regulation and all the constraints on building today and the environmental concerns and the million things that you have to do today when you construct anything that you didn't have to do in the column, the old days. So yes, this bridge is going to cost a fortune to fix the other thing that I don't think people are taking into account. This is going to take quite a while to build. Again everything takes a lot longer than it used to take and this is not a section of a highway that collapses like in Philadelphia. This is a bridge of a waterway. In the meantime, this is going to have a pretty negative consequence to the Port of Baltimore. Again, one of the busiest ports in the United States. I'll also note that, you know, they're going to have to dredge this area, they're going to have to take out the bridge and take out the stuff that collapsed into there. There is a foreign dredge act of 1906, which you're probably not familiar with. But the foreign dredge act of 1906 says that dredging operations in the United States waters, in U.S. waters, must be the dredging equipment, must be built in the United States, be owned and chartered by a U.S. citizen. That's the Jones Act for dredging. So one can anticipate that there are fewer dredging capabilities than would otherwise be available, that these dredging capabilities are far more expensive than they should be because they have to be American built and American owned and American flagged and American personnel and American this and American that. So we have kind of a Jones Act for dredging. That's kind of interesting. Let's see what else. Yeah, there was a great post by, you know, so this bridge collapse tragic and unfortunate and sad, but it highlights a bunch of issues in our economy, like the foreign dredging act, which is absurd and ridiculous. But so this is going to cost a fortune to fix, it's going to cost a fortune to dredge, it's going to cost a fortune to reopen the Port of Baltimore. These are real costs on the economy. These are real costs to all of us. These are real costs to progress. It's sad and, yeah, it, you know, I think Mark says the ship was dealing with power issues. Yeah, basically they lost power and it drifted into the column and they kind of had a sense that that was happening. And it's one of these big container ships. So God, I mean, that hits a column. It doesn't have to be at very high speeds because of the mass involved, that is the force. But here is, here is Thomas Massey. Thomas Massey, for those of you who do not know, is a representative, I think from Ohio, maybe not from Ohio, anyway, from the Midwest, and he is considered the most libertarian, I mean, seriously, the most libertarian member of Congress, yes, Kentucky, I think you're right, he's from Kentucky. So the most libertarian member of Congress, this is what he writes. My district has 250 miles of the Ohio River with three dams, city water intakes and a dozen bridges. The Jones Act requires shipping on inland waterways to be conducted with vessels built, registered, and crewed in the United States. I support the Jones Act. Even if it is protectionist, I don't know, I'm speechless. I have no idea what he's talking about, so he doesn't want foreign vessels traveling in the inland waterways of the Ohio River, because in Kentucky, because of what, you know, American ships that are built flagged the safer. I mean, is there evidence of this? Is this just xenophobia? I mean, this is the most libertarian member of Congress. Now he's really, really bad on foreign policy. But I thought he'd be good on this. But no, he's supporter of the Jones Act. The number one stupidest act that we have in the books, well, they're probably stupid, but certainly one of the most stupidest acts that we have in the book. Massies, I mean, this is it. The Republican Party is finished. It's history. It's junk. It should be trashed in the junk keep of history if this is the most free-market person. Now, it turns out that in spite of what Thomas Massie is saying, foreign vessels can and do operate on US inland waterways. So in spite of the Jones Act, foreign vessels can navigate through these inlands. They just can't go between two American ports. And if you think that Jones Act vessels don't collide with bridges and other infrastructure, then you're delusional. And it's a completely arbitrary assertion. But there's a number of examples, one at least of a Jones Act vessel hitting a bridge in Kentucky in January 26, 2012. So this idea that Jones Act ships don't hit bridges, bizarre, silly, ignorant, and very non, I don't know, what you'd think traditionally of libertarian. But here is a libertarian member of Congress, Republican, coming out for the Jones Act because somehow it protects the bridges in Kentucky, which it doesn't. It's just stupid. And this is politics today. Stupid squared. What else can you say? I mean, I don't know what else you can say about this stuff. Anyway, right now, ever this moment, I guess the websites where you can find who is operating on the waterways. As we speak right now, there are foreign vessels on US inland waterways, not just American vessels. So I guess you should be very, very, very worried. I mean, it might even be the case that some of those vessels operating in the inland waters of the United States, maybe some of them are even, God forbid, maybe some of them are even owned by the Chinese. And that, of course, would be the end of times.