Got $500 Million to Spare?
Donald Trump’s latest way to help you eat and pay rent in a tanked economy that isn’t going to get any better unless we offer 3,000 daily human sacrifices to the Economy Gods, is this little do-dad he wants.
President Trump is once more pushing to have his border wall painted black, a design change that is projected to add at least $500 million in costs, according to government contracting estimates obtained by The Washington Post.
Yeah, he wants to paint it black. On the upside, it’s the first time he’s ever wanted anything black. On the downside, $500 million is a good chunk of money for a wall he won’t get completely built and that Mexico was supposed to pay for in the first place.
The military people tried to talk him out of it saying it would cause long-term maintenance problems and expenses, but Trump thinks – get ready for this – panting it black “would enhance its forbidding appearance.” So, black people, as Trump asked, “what have you got to lose?” Well, for starters ….
Maybe he thinks it will look like the monolith from 2001 A Space Odyssey? Except horizontal?
I’m all for sending Trump to the moon or Jupiter to investigate the potential of a sideways monolith.
1From Paint it Black by the Rolling Stones:
I look inside myself and see my heart is black
I see my red door, I must have it painted black
Maybe then I’ll fade away and not have to face the facts
It’s not easy facing up, when your whole world is black
Enough said.
2Somehow, I can’t see Congress appropriating the money to paint his non-existent wall with non-existent paint, instead of giving money to people who have lost their jobs in the pandemic, or money to states that need to purchase PPE, ventilators, and erect temporary hospitals to handle the overflow of COVID-19 patients–especially since the largest numbers of new cases are taking place in states that vote for the Orange Menace. But stranger things have happened in this administration. It needs to be gone. Please, Texas (et al.), make it so in November.
3This reminds me of the make work projects by the Citizens Conservation Corps under FDR’s New Deal during the great depression. Only FDR had a heart and a true mission to help people. And um, how are the workers supposed to get to the top of the wall to paint it if it is supposedly unscalable by ladders? How are they going to paint the Mexican side since it has been sealed off? Maybe they could use oil instead of paint applied with pressure washer hoses since we have so much of it that it can’t all be stored and refined. Add a little tar and it would be like fly paper and grab ahold of anyone trying to climb the wall. That’s the ticket! Dumb Ass Drump.
4Anyone who’s ever owned a car or even a t-shirt knows that nothing shows scuffs and dust like the color black.
5Mark @2, “Paint it Black by the Rolling Stones”,
Whammo, like minds or whatever, that old rock tune was my first thought on reading of this SOBOTUS idiocy [can’t even use the word “latest”, because you know in the last few hours Comrade Donnei’s regime has worked on something even worse].
Tactically , it might make just a little sense, since at lower latitudes, anything black gets hotter and untouchable, especially metal [I almost never wear black shoes or clothes, you can feel the extra heat]. However any maintenance needed will be harder.
6Karen in New Mexico @4, “…reminds me of the make work projects…”, re- FDR’s CCC, etc.
That’s way too harsh and misleading, and a perennial Rethug trope.
Those [no longer ‘Greatest’] Depression FDR admin projects [fought tooth and nail by YKW- the ‘old’ and new Rethugs] created and built, solidly, huge numbers of national commercial and recreational infrastructure; much of which we –are still using today–!
Roads and highways, ports, airfields, magnificent National and state park improvements and buildings, artworks, the ‘photographic, film and sound recording’ projects, etecetc.
Thousands of high value, quality, enduring, beneficial things that are –still– being used and enjoyed by millions of Americans [and furriners too], 80-90 years later.
There are few such monumental societal benefits ever created in human history, particularly those for a ‘common good’.
7An appreciation for things like that in the latter half of my life has partially fueled my white-hot hatred of all things Republican.
My grandfather was able to feed and provide a home for his family due to those ‘make work’ projects. I went to Jr. High in a beautiful building my grandfather helped plaster and brick. I later taught in that building and it’s still there in my hometown, stately and serving another generation. Too bad 45 can’t come up with a better use of half a billion dollars when people are out of work.
8¡Ay, caramba! Sounds of joy coming from the Mexican side of the border because they know wearing black in the night would stick out like a coyote in a full moon against a white wall. Sie, black wall, that’s the ticket.
9How about we skip a few steps and paint Trump black?
10Karen @ #4 on CCC make-work projects:
Here in the Nebraska Panhandle we have such a project built by the Veterans Conservation Corp: A stone lighthouse built on Lake Minatare.
Lake Minatare isn’t navigable. There is no light.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Minatare_Lighthouse (includes photograph of the lighthouse)
It has become quite the tourist attraction though.
I’ve suggested to my wife we should contact the state and see if they need a lightkeeper: We could move right in.
11I just can’t help but wonder, has a Trump invested in a paint company’s stock recently??
12Yessiree! When the coyotes and smugglers come upon that black wall they will be so intimidated they will drop their Sawzalls, abandon whatever they are smuggling and run for their lives.
13i smell slush fund for trump friends & relatives
14i smell slush fund for friends & trump family….
15ok i goofed…
16Step one
17Declare states “open”
Step two
Deny any unemployment or other mitigation to workers who fear going back to work since the state s now “open. Big savings for state.
Step Three if any business does not open strip it of any benefits, rent holidays etc. hence driving them in to bankruptcy.
Step Four award corporate “make work” contracts to thuglican donors where no work is even needed but that results in them getting more money from state and feds to carry them over.
Step Five Aicheve corporatoarcy ownership of country populated by the desparate, starving and dead.
Success.
James @11, “…make-work projects: Here in the Nebraska Panhandle we have such a project built…”.
If you had read your own Wiki link you would find that the structure was purposely built to just ‘look’ like a lighthouse, not necessarily as a ‘make-work’. Not be an actual “aid to navigation”, an ‘ATON’ in CG parlance. As modern cellphone towers are often disguised as something else, at extra cost [in fancier neighborhoods].
Whether it qualifies as a “make work project”, a boondoggle, we don’t know, but probably not.
It seems that there was some functional need for it back then, as “a combination shelter house and observation tower”, perhaps at a park.
Those Depression-era projects were eagerly sought by each locality nationwide, they applied for them with plans and specs. Then the Feds reviewed them, made final designs, approved, and sourced materials, then tasked a labor force. Most material and workers were provided from the locality itself, if possible, in order to help the local economies as directly as possible; the main purpose of it all.
Contrast with the current rumpregime grift-fest, where Trillion$ of dollars have splashed all over, much ending up in insiders and 5%’ers [redundant] pockets, with few or no local or even national economic effects. The dinero just disappears into mega-corps and off-shore accounts, without providing much in way of localized employment or commercial benefit. These ‘walls’ are costing $50-120Million a mile or more, a ludicrously inflated griftdoggle price.
The rump ‘wall’ jobs really need to be audited, a lot of dinero is getting skimmed off the top without any local effects [I used to live on the border, not far away now].
Y’all want to see and climb a real lighthouse, check out the Port [Point] Isabel, TX one, still visible from far offshore, in daylight anyway [coming in from the GOM there is now a “range” ATON to guide you into Brazos Santiago Pass]:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_Isabel_Light
Minatare Wiki:
18“The Lake Minatare Lighthouse is a historic mock lighthouse located on Lake Minatare near the city of Scottsbluff in Nebraska. The 55-foot (17 m) tower was built by the Veterans Conservation Corps in 1939 and is currently located within the North Platte National Wildlife Refuge. Designed as a combination shelter house and observation tower, it was “built to simulate a lighthouse.”[1]”
Meanwhile This maladministration tried a “Bay of Pigs” invasion of Venezuela on the cheap led by what sounds like a Blackwater recruit.
Read article where Pompeo stated the the US had no “and raised eyebrows by saying there was no “direct” US government involvement in the strange raid.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/06/venezuela-maduro-abduction-plot-luke-denman-americans-captured
19Sandridge@7:
20Karen in New Mexico @ 4’s second sentence is the bridge to the point she was making. Cut her some slack.
ALL that money going into Mr Ran Away`s pocket .
21Well, this is the way I was raised. You wanted something bad enough you got out and did it yourself. See what I mean?
22More idiocy. Give him credit for one thing–some more first rate conning: he’s gotten everyone to call it a wall when it’s not a wall, it’s only a fence.
23