@moonbus saidIt is perhaps fitting and deeply symbolic that, instead of "draining the swamp," Citrus Commodus turned the reflecting pool into a swamp.
How does this reflect upon Donald Trump? In the truest sense of the word, this reflecting pool reflects his whole life, not only his presidency.
One, a vanity project.
Two, somebody else pays for it.
Three, the no-bids contract goes to a crony. Perfectly acceptable in business, totally unacceptable in government.
Four, the work is shoddy, poorly planned, poorl ...[text shortened]... ee here. Next week there will be some new bizarre turn, and this will be knocked off the front page.
@Soothfast said
It is perhaps fitting and deeply symbolic that, instead of "draining the swamp," Citrus Commodus turned the reflecting pool into a swamp.
From https://tinyurl.com/4mwp5cfk
Commodus (180-192 AD): The least successful Roman emperor.
After the death of Marcus Aurelius in AD 180, Commodus inherited a secure and unified empire.
His father had spent nearly two decades defending Rome’s northern borders, during which he built alliances and reinforced military strength.
Upon becoming emperor, Commodus quickly reversed these efforts, and as a result he ended the Marcomannic Wars and returned to Rome, abandoning plans to establish permanent control over the Danube frontier.
Primarily focused on spectacle, Commodus spent large sums on gladiatorial contests, often entering the arena himself dressed as Hercules.
Surviving busts show him with a lion-skin headdress to support this image. He renamed months after himself, referred to Rome as "Colonia Commodiana," and erected statues portraying himself as a god.
Meanwhile, he largely allowed corrupt advisors such as Cleander to run the government.
Cleander sold public offices, manipulated grain supplies, and caused widespread unrest, leading to riots in AD 190 that ended with his execution.
Sound familiar?
@AverageJoe1 saidI grew up right across the river from Manhattan. The people of NYC hated sleepy do. They despised him.
My my Wgrass steps into it again. A chemical snafu, whatever, I actually fired my pool guy, so life ain’t perfect. But here’s something that is perfect. You small minded guys don’t know about things that have happened under Trump for many many years. Way before his presidency he undertook making the Wollman skating rink what it is in Central Park..
NYC thanked him ...[text shortened]... when the Rollman Rink was in disrepair.
Another down day for Wildgrass. Send me another one. 🙂
@moonbus saidIt also encapsulates the failure of right-wingers to appreciate the complexities and interconnectedness of nature, from climate change to the homeostasis of ecological systems to the dynamics of infectious outbreaks.
The rest of the article is behind a paywall, but this is enough to encapsulate Trump's whole life, as a private person and as president: he creates a crisis, and then when the consequences start to catch up with him, he diverts by creating another one, and another one and another one, rinse, repeat--story of his life.
At least in the case of the reflecting pool fiasco we can all laugh about it.
@wildgrass saidYes.
A perfect encapsulation of how this administration operates. Identify a problem and take the simplest possible option that is aesthetically pleasing but if you took more than 2 seconds to think about it you realize it was also dumb and makes the problem much worse.
Everything. Immigration. DOGE. Foreign policy. Tax policy. All the illegal executive orders. Real problems ...[text shortened]... the problem worse.
The pool fiasco is a reflection of the attitude of the entire administration.
We're on the same wavelength here.
@AverageJoe1 saidi've been a pool attendant
I myself have a great pool, it is constantly needing upkeep to keep it balanced. You fellows ( I have been asked to stop saying the word fellow like we do in the south, as the 'dictation' applet types it like I say it...) you fellows are not being fair about getting this huge pool balanced. You will go after ANYTHING!!!!
trained with the ft worth health dept
still have my certification card, altho it's prolly expired
managed a 100K gallon pool for an hoa and a much smaller public pool across town for a different hoa
i do not want that job any longer
PITA
here's a thing you have yet to figure out dummy
the reflecting 'pool' is not a swimming pool
IT'S A POND
and now joe,
you can assert with various degrees of vigor that "i already KNEW that!"
even as you still attempt to equate the two things that are not the same thing
a swimming pool gets sanitized to keep folks from getting sick
a pond is managed to keep cool animals and critters and ALGAE from dying
the best thing would be koi and a few catfish, but then you'd have to aerate the water to keep the fish alive and weep weep weep
sealing the bottom of the POND was the worst thing they could do
was this donald's fault?
he couldn't see anything with his head in his diaper
btw, joe, yer stupid
@wildgrass saidWhy don’t you like Trump again? 🙄
Yeah you summed the article nicely. An encapsulation of Trump's whole life, bankrupting companies and now bankrupting America financially, morally, and strategically. Of course he screwed up fixing the reflection pool.
@rookie54 saidWho said swimming pool? Not me. So the post written by you means nothing,
i've been a pool attendant
trained with the ft worth health dept
still have my certification card, altho it's prolly expired
managed a 100K gallon pool for an hoa and a much smaller public pool across town for a different hoa
i do not want that job any longer
PITA
here's a thing you have yet to figure out dummy
the reflecting 'pool' is not a swimming pool
IT'S A P ...[text shortened]... s this donald's fault?
he couldn't see anything with his head in his diaper
btw, joe, yer stupid
Alllllll those sentences……they mean nothing.
To your readers. Each pool has a filtering system. They are bodies of filtered water, each thus having same exposures and same existence. Balance ph, etc, same process. Baaaaaad post.
But you are not stupid, as you call me. You are , well something else.
“Swimming pool”. A pool can be for swimming, reflecting, or,,,,,wading,maybe raising fish,,,coy?, perhaps?
@AverageJoe1 saidAccording to the contractor they were ordered by Trump to apply the stuff they use to seal truck beds.
Why don’t you like Trump again? 🙄
Had they consulted anyone with a degree in anything,.they would have known that this treatment would cause an algae bloom within days of refilling the reflecting pool.
It tells you they don't apply expert opinions in the decision making.
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@AverageJoe1 said@AverageJoe1 said
Who said swimming pool? Not me. So the post written by you means nothing,
Alllllll those sentences……they mean nothing.
To your readers. Each pool has a filtering system. They are bodies of filtered water, each thus having same exposures and same existence. Balance ph, etc, same process. Baaaaaad post.
But you are not stupid, as you call me. You are , well ...[text shortened]... g pool”. A pool can be for swimming, reflecting, or,,,,,wading,maybe raising fish,,,coy?, perhaps?
I myself have a great pool, it is constantly needing upkeep to keep it balanced.
Who said swimming pool? Not me.
golly joe, yer so stupid
now pay attention
IT IS NOT A POOL
it's a POND you dummy
NOT THE SAME PROCESS OR PROTOCOLS
estupido
anything else dummy?
baaaAaAAad post
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@wildgrass said„For every problem, there is a solution which is simple, neat, and wrong.“
A perfect encapsulation of how this administration operates. Identify a problem and take the simplest possible option that is aesthetically pleasing but if you took more than 2 seconds to think about it you realize it was also dumb and makes the problem much worse.
Everything. Immigration. DOGE. Foreign policy. Tax policy. All the illegal executive orders. Real problems ...[text shortened]... the problem worse.
The pool fiasco is a reflection of the attitude of the entire administration.
— H.L. Mencken
And Trump finds it, with infallible consistency. Tariffs…
@AverageJoe1 saidAn excerpt from "A 1980s New York City Battle Explains Donald Trump’s Candidacy", an article in Bloomberg Politics, dated Sep 29, 2015.
My my Wgrass steps into it again. A chemical snafu, whatever, I actually fired my pool guy, so life ain’t perfect. But here’s something that is perfect. You small minded guys don’t know about things that have happened under Trump for many many years. Way before his presidency he undertook making the Wollman skating rink what it is in Central Park..
NYC thanked him ...[text shortened]... when the Rollman Rink was in disrepair.
Another down day for Wildgrass. Send me another one. 🙂
If Trump has any particular genius, it is for jumping to the front of the parade and acting like it is where he has been all along. Agreeing to take on the rink was in this category. It is not as if Trump decided to take over the Second Ave Subway or other long-stalled (and far more complicated) city development projects. “I mean c’mon, it’s a skating rink,” said Julia Vitullo-Martin, who also served as an assistant commissioner in the Parks Department during the Wollman Saga, and is now a senior fellow at the Regional Plan Association. “Any halfway decent construction person would have been able to build the damn thing.” There were no real environmental reviews, limited public safety concerns, and delays usually associated with refurbishing a landmarked property were removed as a condition of Trump taking over the project. Plus, the city was limited by a review process and by hiring the lowest-bidding contractor. As a private entity, Trump was able to ignore all that, paying contractors at below cost by promising more work later on in one of his many projects.
Rudolph Rinaldi, the director of construction in the Parks Department at the time, recalled Trump taking his team to Canada to see how a similar project was refurbished, and showing up to tour the site in Central Park with one team of architects and engineers, only to show up the next time with a completely different set of architects and engineers. “We did projects that were much more complicated without Trump,” Rinaldi said. “But we couldn’t fire all of our architects and a hire a whole new team just because we felt like it.”
At the time, City Hall was mystified that Trump was even interested. “You generally don’t see developers try to fix someone else’s capital project,” recalled Vitullo-Martin. “I mean, who does that? Have you ever seen a developer come in and say to a city, ‘Oh, I can fix your crumbling bridge?’ You need a narcissist who will come forward and say, ‘You don’t know what you are doing. I know what I am doing, I will fix it and you will put my name on it.”’
“Any real estate developer in the city could have done that project, but why do you think they didn’t?” asked Adrian Benepe, then a spokesman for the Parks Department and later its commissioner. “It’s because most major real estate families in New York want to work behind the scenes and do the deals, and so many of them do many more deals and build many more buildings than Donald Trump ever does.
“There are so many myths about this thing,” Benepe continued. “One was that he did it for free. No, he did it for whatever the budget was. Another myth: he did something the city never could have done. Well, no, the project was largely complete by the time he took over.”
But Trump also wanted to prove a point: That the private sector was a far more efficient vehicle than municipal government. By getting the thing built on time and under budget, Trump burnished his reputation as a can-do guy while pioneering the notion of public/private partnership that increasingly swept the city. And in a city where the major developers sit atop philanthropic boards and give away billions to make New York a slightly better place to live, Wollman has remained Trump’s lone calling card of his concern for the greater good.
“Yes, he did a solid for the city, but he also burnished his reputation to a considerable extent,” Benepe said. “Most real estate developers, when they get involved in something like this, ask themselves what’s in it for the city. Trump wanted to know what was in it for Donald Trump and then there may be some ancillary benefits for the city.”
The distinctive mixture of braggadocious civic concern and narcissism Trump displayed in the Wollman rink contretemps now has him well on the way to the GOP nomination.
@AverageJoe1 said“Swimming pool”. A pool can be for swimming, reflecting, or,,,,,wading,maybe raising fish,,,coy?, perhaps?
“Swimming pool”. A pool can be for swimming, reflecting, or,,,,,wading,maybe raising fish,,,coy?, perhaps?
It's spelled koi, you bumbling moron, a Japanese ornamental carp.