With DNC in Mind, City Bans Carrying Urine, Feces

“S*** happens,” California’s illustrious past and present Governor Jerry Brown sagely informs his constituents, particularly when it comes to the state’s aging and exhausted infrastructure. Which, come to think of it, is almost as aging and exhausted as Gov. Brown himself:

Maybe in California, the state government should have torn itself away from condom delivery services and a $70-billion high-speed rail boondoggle that no one believes will actually be high speed to make sure the bolts on the $6 billion San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge project weren’t broken.

Just three months ago, Gov. Jerry Brown stood on the Bay Bridge, pushed a glowing button that started a countdown for the Labor Day opening of the new span, and spoke loftily of exciting plans in store for the gleaming new structure.

“We’re going to have a bicycle race, running, walking — tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people,” Brown told a television reporter in a segment that ran just after the San Francisco 49ers lost the Super Bowl.

“It was big in 1936 when we were in a Depression,” he said of the first Bay Bridge opening. “It ought to be just as big this time.”

Tuesday, Brown had a saltier way of describing the moment he was in, after weeks of controversy over cracked bolts on the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge that threatens to delay the opening: “Don’t know if it’s a setback. I mean, look, shit happens.”

The Democratic governor stressed that people shouldn’t “pull our hair out” over something like the structural integrity of the state’s most traversed bridge:

Brown since last summer has maintained unwavering support for the state’s construction and oversight of the new bridge, dismissing questions about its structural integrity.

He said this morning, “There are very professional engineers that are looking at this thing, and when they’re ready to give us their report, I think the public will be satisfied.”