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Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting! NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.If you have any questions, comments, concern, or feedback regarding the USPMT, then please use this thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/website-feedback/510156-us-politics-thread |
On August 05 2026 13:32 KwarK wrote:
How do you know that nobody else would have bid on the job if you didn’t have an open bidding process?
You're not making any sense. You're raising objections that either have no relevance to the question of whether there should have been a bidding process like there not being infinite contractors or are directly solved by a bidding process like finding out a competitive margin for a job like this. You don't need to do a no-bid contract for when a job is so specialized that there are only a handful of companies that could do the work, they'll bid on it.
Also with all that has happened the angle that they couldn't just go with random bidders because randoms might do a bad job, they had to go with this company no-bid to ensure that it was done right, is an odd one.
Closed bidding is not allowed on jobs over 20,000$ here. At 15,000,000 you are getting lots of quality bids from every decent contractor in the area and some from out of state.
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On August 05 2026 23:22 Jankisa wrote:Another cool video going into details on why the invasion is not advisable and even with the full might of USA would more then likely not go well. I am yet to find anything saying otherwise.
I have not watched the video because I'm not signing up for an Instagram account, but the evolution over the past six months of "USA would wipe the floor with Iran's military, they're only ballsy because they're not afraid to die martyrs and receive 72 virgins" to "oh shit, they just won the war" would be comical if not for the fact that countless innocent people have died because Trump and Hegseth are bloodthirsty morons.
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On August 05 2026 23:39 LightSpectra wrote:Show nested quote +On August 05 2026 23:22 Jankisa wrote:Another cool video going into details on why the invasion is not advisable and even with the full might of USA would more then likely not go well. I am yet to find anything saying otherwise. I have not watched the video because I'm not signing up for an Instagram account, but the evolution over the past six months of "USA would wipe the floor with Iran's military, they're only ballsy because they're not afraid to die martyrs and receive 72 virgins" to "oh shit, they just won the war" would be comical if not for the fact that countless innocent people have died because Trump and Hegseth are bloodthirsty morons.
Happy to summarize it for non-Meta access users.
Basically, it goes over the Iranian Mosaic defense:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosaic_defence_strategy
So secretive it has a wiki page, who could have seen it coming?
And the origins, efficiency and resiliency of their missile program and their underground bases and facilities:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_underground_missile_bases
Plus some info on why the Iranian command structure didn't collapse (despite our resident election denier stating "There is no Iran" at the start of April) and why the missile program is still a very real threat.
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On August 05 2026 16:17 Geiko wrote:Show nested quote +On August 05 2026 13:20 oBlade wrote:On August 05 2026 03:52 Geiko wrote:On August 05 2026 00:46 oBlade wrote:On August 05 2026 00:06 Geiko wrote:
I never said the no-bid contract was illegal I said it was just another example of normalized corruption in the USA.
No-bid federal contracts usually have 6-12% profit margin. This one had 20%. That's 3M in profits just for being Trump's friend.
Companies that have comparable experience in waterproofing large pools:
Water Works
Water Structures
KJC Waterproofing
Membrane Concepts Yeah going to be harder to keep $3 million when they're liable for redoing the thing, which has a high risk of something going wrong like 2012, under warranty, as they are doing now. On August 05 2026 00:06 Geiko wrote:
I didn't come up with the term "botched" so I don't feel the need to define it to you, seeing as I'm no expert. "Botched" is the term used by the DOJ to describe the job done by Trump's friend after investigation.
So we're using "exagerating" instead of "lying" now are we ? Ok maybe arresting a former olympic athlete on false charges was a bit of an exageration right ? Oops no biggie, just Trump being Trump.
You should know what "botched" means if you use it. You are not now quoting a Trump DOJ filing because you believe them or because you trust them, you are quoting them because they agree with what you already thought. So you should know what exactly was "botched." In detail. About the pool. From the horse's mouth, the ever-credible (for you) Trump DOJ (except weeks ago when they had this guy charged but you didn't believe it). You're missing the point. Whether or not they keep the 3M is irrelevant, what matters is that they got to have it in the first place when "normal" contractors would have gotten ~ 1,5M. You're stuck on level 1. The magic free money gods of government didn't just arbitrarily decide for them to get 8% extra. It is a CONTRACT. Contracts require TWO PARTIES TO AGREE. Nobody would have done it for 6% because look at the timeframe and requirements. You already admitted you think no-bid contracts are corruption, period, so what do you think you're going to convince me of by quibbling about the specific percent margins that you don't understand? It's not a cost-plus contract. It's a fixed price contract for a difficult and rush (at the time, slightly less so now) job. Something probably neither the contractor nor the government were sure was possible in the timeframe. That's why it's 20%. It's about risk. For reference Sika, the company that took two years to FUCK IT UP last time, the only one with experience, was approached. The government said we're trying to fix the Reflecting Pool in 2 weeks or whatever before Independence Day. The company said, no thanks, not interested, don't want to be liable for that, not with a ten foot pole. A cost-plus contract would be "Hey it didn't work, I need some more money to redo it like we agreed." Fixed cost is "It didn't work. Fix it now, or pay for someone else to, or else we will hold you liable for damages and your company will no longer exist." On August 05 2026 03:52 Geiko wrote:
I think you're also not thinking quite clearly. My stance is very obvious, I trust neither Trump nor his DOJ. By that I mean that I think they lie enough of the time that they are not reliable sources of information.
Why I'm quoting the DOJ is because in this instance, we have the head of the DOJ saying something (damage to the pool was not done by vandals) and Trump saying the exact opposite (damage done to the pool was done by vandals). It follows logically that one of them is saying a falsehood. (Regardless of whether I trust any of them).
My opinion is that Trump is the one lying because he has all the reasons to lie as you've said, it benefits him politically. On the other hand the head of the DOJ has no reason to lie, quite the contrary as it endangers her job.
Now we've established that one of them is telling falsehoods, who do you think it is and why ? Your issue is not realizing these things are interconnected. The fact that the damage is due to the repair job not going as planned doesn't mean Trump created this whole situation just as an excuse to give his "friend" (if you believe him) a 20% $3 million contract to break the pool. The damage is due to the repair job not going as planned because it is an old sinking pool, a unique job, a problem that neither the government nor contractors have shown mastery of, and has a high chance of not going according to plan no matter who did it. Which is why there's not an infinite supply of contractors willing to do it for 1% margin in 1 day and you shouldn't trust them if there were. On the subject of the lying: You still haven't answered my question. Who do you think is wrong Trump or the DOJ ? And why do you think they are wrong ?
HEY *waves hands wildly*
You literally just read, quoted, and responded to this:
. The fact that the damage is due to the repair job not going as planned doesn't mean Trump created this whole situation just as an excuse to give his "friend" (if you believe him) a 20% $3 million contract to break the pool. The damage is due to the repair job not going as planned
What part of these sentences gives any ambiguity whatsoever about whether I think the damage was caused by vandals or not? Let's get some information to stick here.
On August 05 2026 16:17 Geiko wrote:
On the subject of corruption:
I don't think no-bid contracts are necessarily corruption. I think they are corruption when they are not justified. The Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) and the Competition in Contracting Act (CICA) require justifications in order to ensure an open-bidding process could not have been done.
In this case the government argued that the justification was "unusual and compelling urgency".
My questions to you:
Did the fact that the 250th anniversary happened on the 4th of July 2026 come as a surprise to the Trump administration?
Was the fact that the pool was leaking/broken hidden from them and they only discovered it recently ?
If the answer is "no" to the previous questions, what was unusual and urgently compelling about needing to fix the pool for the 4th of july ? Is it incompetence for not having foreseen something easily foreseeable? Or is it corruption for waiting until the last moment to "legally" hand out a 15M no-bid contract to a friend ?
So the standard of corruption is not whether it's legal, not whether it's no-bid, it basically boils down to just whether the person handles it different than you would.
The 2012 open bid job took 22 months. This was told to you which again makes me suspect nothing is sticking. Ask the LLM teaching you law what date is 22 months after January 20th, 2025. Use another LLM or your own background knowledge to compare whether that date falls before or after July 4th, 2026. Yeah rushing is justified.
Nor was Trump inaugurated on January 20th 2025 knowing "We are going to have a fair on the National Mall next year, and for this purpose we want the Reflecting Pool to be painted blue." That would have been absurd. That was decided in 2026. That's why rushing is legitimate. Even though you wouldn't personally do it that way, I got that, you would use hindsight and a time machine to start far earlier, the standard for corruption isn't just what you would do. It can't be. For example, you aren't president, don't live in DC, don't have to take care of DC, aren't holding a 250th anniversary celebration, probably have different views about the significance of the Reflecting Pool and aesthetic opinions of what color it should even be, etc.
The government, and the administration, are not simply Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool optimizers. They have other jobs. For the pool there's many options. You can clean it. You can modify it. You can repair it. You can tear it down and rebuild it. You can choose to let it languish. But the fact that the pool is leaking is apparently not a guaranteed motivation to repair it per se. Or else everyone involved going back to 2013 is incompetent. Just sitting back and blaming people as soon as they do something, for not having done it earlier, inculcates a culture of nobody ever doing anything. Boring philosophy to nowhere.
Pool renovation: Genius home-run miracle? No (not yet, off chance of yes after 2nd go). Apocalyptic corruptiongate? No. Reasonable effort by obvious patriots to make a national symbol look better and be stronger? Yes. Still ultimately just a pool I'm never, ever going to fall into heart attack psychosis about? Absolutely.
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Northern Ireland27464 Posts
On August 06 2026 00:36 oBlade wrote:Show nested quote +On August 05 2026 16:17 Geiko wrote:On August 05 2026 13:20 oBlade wrote:On August 05 2026 03:52 Geiko wrote:On August 05 2026 00:46 oBlade wrote:On August 05 2026 00:06 Geiko wrote:
I never said the no-bid contract was illegal I said it was just another example of normalized corruption in the USA.
No-bid federal contracts usually have 6-12% profit margin. This one had 20%. That's 3M in profits just for being Trump's friend.
Companies that have comparable experience in waterproofing large pools:
Water Works
Water Structures
KJC Waterproofing
Membrane Concepts Yeah going to be harder to keep $3 million when they're liable for redoing the thing, which has a high risk of something going wrong like 2012, under warranty, as they are doing now. On August 05 2026 00:06 Geiko wrote:
I didn't come up with the term "botched" so I don't feel the need to define it to you, seeing as I'm no expert. "Botched" is the term used by the DOJ to describe the job done by Trump's friend after investigation.
So we're using "exagerating" instead of "lying" now are we ? Ok maybe arresting a former olympic athlete on false charges was a bit of an exageration right ? Oops no biggie, just Trump being Trump.
You should know what "botched" means if you use it. You are not now quoting a Trump DOJ filing because you believe them or because you trust them, you are quoting them because they agree with what you already thought. So you should know what exactly was "botched." In detail. About the pool. From the horse's mouth, the ever-credible (for you) Trump DOJ (except weeks ago when they had this guy charged but you didn't believe it). You're missing the point. Whether or not they keep the 3M is irrelevant, what matters is that they got to have it in the first place when "normal" contractors would have gotten ~ 1,5M. You're stuck on level 1. The magic free money gods of government didn't just arbitrarily decide for them to get 8% extra. It is a CONTRACT. Contracts require TWO PARTIES TO AGREE. Nobody would have done it for 6% because look at the timeframe and requirements. You already admitted you think no-bid contracts are corruption, period, so what do you think you're going to convince me of by quibbling about the specific percent margins that you don't understand? It's not a cost-plus contract. It's a fixed price contract for a difficult and rush (at the time, slightly less so now) job. Something probably neither the contractor nor the government were sure was possible in the timeframe. That's why it's 20%. It's about risk. For reference Sika, the company that took two years to FUCK IT UP last time, the only one with experience, was approached. The government said we're trying to fix the Reflecting Pool in 2 weeks or whatever before Independence Day. The company said, no thanks, not interested, don't want to be liable for that, not with a ten foot pole. A cost-plus contract would be "Hey it didn't work, I need some more money to redo it like we agreed." Fixed cost is "It didn't work. Fix it now, or pay for someone else to, or else we will hold you liable for damages and your company will no longer exist." On August 05 2026 03:52 Geiko wrote:
I think you're also not thinking quite clearly. My stance is very obvious, I trust neither Trump nor his DOJ. By that I mean that I think they lie enough of the time that they are not reliable sources of information.
Why I'm quoting the DOJ is because in this instance, we have the head of the DOJ saying something (damage to the pool was not done by vandals) and Trump saying the exact opposite (damage done to the pool was done by vandals). It follows logically that one of them is saying a falsehood. (Regardless of whether I trust any of them).
My opinion is that Trump is the one lying because he has all the reasons to lie as you've said, it benefits him politically. On the other hand the head of the DOJ has no reason to lie, quite the contrary as it endangers her job.
Now we've established that one of them is telling falsehoods, who do you think it is and why ? Your issue is not realizing these things are interconnected. The fact that the damage is due to the repair job not going as planned doesn't mean Trump created this whole situation just as an excuse to give his "friend" (if you believe him) a 20% $3 million contract to break the pool. The damage is due to the repair job not going as planned because it is an old sinking pool, a unique job, a problem that neither the government nor contractors have shown mastery of, and has a high chance of not going according to plan no matter who did it. Which is why there's not an infinite supply of contractors willing to do it for 1% margin in 1 day and you shouldn't trust them if there were. On the subject of the lying: You still haven't answered my question. Who do you think is wrong Trump or the DOJ ? And why do you think they are wrong ? HEY *waves hands wildly* You literally just read, quoted, and responded to this: Show nested quote +. The fact that the damage is due to the repair job not going as planned doesn't mean Trump created this whole situation just as an excuse to give his "friend" (if you believe him) a 20% $3 million contract to break the pool. The damage is due to the repair job not going as planned What part of these sentences gives any ambiguity whatsoever about whether I think the damage was caused by vandals or not? Let's get some information to stick here. Show nested quote +On August 05 2026 16:17 Geiko wrote:
On the subject of corruption:
I don't think no-bid contracts are necessarily corruption. I think they are corruption when they are not justified. The Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) and the Competition in Contracting Act (CICA) require justifications in order to ensure an open-bidding process could not have been done.
In this case the government argued that the justification was "unusual and compelling urgency".
My questions to you:
Did the fact that the 250th anniversary happened on the 4th of July 2026 come as a surprise to the Trump administration?
Was the fact that the pool was leaking/broken hidden from them and they only discovered it recently ?
If the answer is "no" to the previous questions, what was unusual and urgently compelling about needing to fix the pool for the 4th of july ? Is it incompetence for not having foreseen something easily foreseeable? Or is it corruption for waiting until the last moment to "legally" hand out a 15M no-bid contract to a friend ?
So the standard of corruption is not whether it's legal, not whether it's no-bid, it basically boils down to just whether the person handles it different than you would. The 2012 open bid job took 22 months. This was told to you which again makes me suspect nothing is sticking. Ask the LLM teaching you law what date is 22 months after January 20th, 2025. Use another LLM or your own background knowledge to compare whether that date falls before or after July 4th, 2026. Yeah rushing is justified. Nor was Trump inaugurated on January 20th 2025 knowing "We are going to have a fair on the National Mall next year, and for this purpose we want the Reflecting Pool to be painted blue." That would have been absurd. That was decided in 2026. That's why rushing is legitimate. Even though you wouldn't personally do it that way, I got that, you would use hindsight and a time machine to start far earlier, the standard for corruption isn't just what you would do. It can't be. For example, you aren't president, don't live in DC, don't have to take care of DC, aren't holding a 250th anniversary celebration, probably have different views about the significance of the Reflecting Pool and aesthetic opinions of what color it should even be, etc. The government, and the administration, are not simply Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool optimizers. They have other jobs. For the pool there's many options. You can clean it. You can modify it. You can repair it. You can tear it down and rebuild it. You can choose to let it languish. But the fact that the pool is leaking is apparently not a guaranteed motivation to repair it per se. Or else everyone involved going back to 2013 is incompetent. Just sitting back and blaming people as soon as they do something, for not having done it earlier, inculcates a culture of nobody ever doing anything. Boring philosophy to nowhere. Pool renovation: Genius home-run miracle? No (not yet, off chance of yes after 2nd go). Apocalyptic corruptiongate? No. Reasonable effort by obvious patriots to make a national symbol look better and be stronger? Yes. Still ultimately just a pool I'm never, ever going to fall into heart attack psychosis about? Absolutely.
Do you ever tire of chatting absolute bollocks?
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On August 06 2026 01:05 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2026 00:36 oBlade wrote:On August 05 2026 16:17 Geiko wrote:On August 05 2026 13:20 oBlade wrote:On August 05 2026 03:52 Geiko wrote:On August 05 2026 00:46 oBlade wrote:On August 05 2026 00:06 Geiko wrote:
I never said the no-bid contract was illegal I said it was just another example of normalized corruption in the USA.
No-bid federal contracts usually have 6-12% profit margin. This one had 20%. That's 3M in profits just for being Trump's friend.
Companies that have comparable experience in waterproofing large pools:
Water Works
Water Structures
KJC Waterproofing
Membrane Concepts Yeah going to be harder to keep $3 million when they're liable for redoing the thing, which has a high risk of something going wrong like 2012, under warranty, as they are doing now. On August 05 2026 00:06 Geiko wrote:
I didn't come up with the term "botched" so I don't feel the need to define it to you, seeing as I'm no expert. "Botched" is the term used by the DOJ to describe the job done by Trump's friend after investigation.
So we're using "exagerating" instead of "lying" now are we ? Ok maybe arresting a former olympic athlete on false charges was a bit of an exageration right ? Oops no biggie, just Trump being Trump.
You should know what "botched" means if you use it. You are not now quoting a Trump DOJ filing because you believe them or because you trust them, you are quoting them because they agree with what you already thought. So you should know what exactly was "botched." In detail. About the pool. From the horse's mouth, the ever-credible (for you) Trump DOJ (except weeks ago when they had this guy charged but you didn't believe it). You're missing the point. Whether or not they keep the 3M is irrelevant, what matters is that they got to have it in the first place when "normal" contractors would have gotten ~ 1,5M. You're stuck on level 1. The magic free money gods of government didn't just arbitrarily decide for them to get 8% extra. It is a CONTRACT. Contracts require TWO PARTIES TO AGREE. Nobody would have done it for 6% because look at the timeframe and requirements. You already admitted you think no-bid contracts are corruption, period, so what do you think you're going to convince me of by quibbling about the specific percent margins that you don't understand? It's not a cost-plus contract. It's a fixed price contract for a difficult and rush (at the time, slightly less so now) job. Something probably neither the contractor nor the government were sure was possible in the timeframe. That's why it's 20%. It's about risk. For reference Sika, the company that took two years to FUCK IT UP last time, the only one with experience, was approached. The government said we're trying to fix the Reflecting Pool in 2 weeks or whatever before Independence Day. The company said, no thanks, not interested, don't want to be liable for that, not with a ten foot pole. A cost-plus contract would be "Hey it didn't work, I need some more money to redo it like we agreed." Fixed cost is "It didn't work. Fix it now, or pay for someone else to, or else we will hold you liable for damages and your company will no longer exist." On August 05 2026 03:52 Geiko wrote:
I think you're also not thinking quite clearly. My stance is very obvious, I trust neither Trump nor his DOJ. By that I mean that I think they lie enough of the time that they are not reliable sources of information.
Why I'm quoting the DOJ is because in this instance, we have the head of the DOJ saying something (damage to the pool was not done by vandals) and Trump saying the exact opposite (damage done to the pool was done by vandals). It follows logically that one of them is saying a falsehood. (Regardless of whether I trust any of them).
My opinion is that Trump is the one lying because he has all the reasons to lie as you've said, it benefits him politically. On the other hand the head of the DOJ has no reason to lie, quite the contrary as it endangers her job.
Now we've established that one of them is telling falsehoods, who do you think it is and why ? Your issue is not realizing these things are interconnected. The fact that the damage is due to the repair job not going as planned doesn't mean Trump created this whole situation just as an excuse to give his "friend" (if you believe him) a 20% $3 million contract to break the pool. The damage is due to the repair job not going as planned because it is an old sinking pool, a unique job, a problem that neither the government nor contractors have shown mastery of, and has a high chance of not going according to plan no matter who did it. Which is why there's not an infinite supply of contractors willing to do it for 1% margin in 1 day and you shouldn't trust them if there were. On the subject of the lying: You still haven't answered my question. Who do you think is wrong Trump or the DOJ ? And why do you think they are wrong ? HEY *waves hands wildly* You literally just read, quoted, and responded to this: . The fact that the damage is due to the repair job not going as planned doesn't mean Trump created this whole situation just as an excuse to give his "friend" (if you believe him) a 20% $3 million contract to break the pool. The damage is due to the repair job not going as planned What part of these sentences gives any ambiguity whatsoever about whether I think the damage was caused by vandals or not? Let's get some information to stick here. On August 05 2026 16:17 Geiko wrote:
On the subject of corruption:
I don't think no-bid contracts are necessarily corruption. I think they are corruption when they are not justified. The Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) and the Competition in Contracting Act (CICA) require justifications in order to ensure an open-bidding process could not have been done.
In this case the government argued that the justification was "unusual and compelling urgency".
My questions to you:
Did the fact that the 250th anniversary happened on the 4th of July 2026 come as a surprise to the Trump administration?
Was the fact that the pool was leaking/broken hidden from them and they only discovered it recently ?
If the answer is "no" to the previous questions, what was unusual and urgently compelling about needing to fix the pool for the 4th of july ? Is it incompetence for not having foreseen something easily foreseeable? Or is it corruption for waiting until the last moment to "legally" hand out a 15M no-bid contract to a friend ?
So the standard of corruption is not whether it's legal, not whether it's no-bid, it basically boils down to just whether the person handles it different than you would. The 2012 open bid job took 22 months. This was told to you which again makes me suspect nothing is sticking. Ask the LLM teaching you law what date is 22 months after January 20th, 2025. Use another LLM or your own background knowledge to compare whether that date falls before or after July 4th, 2026. Yeah rushing is justified. Nor was Trump inaugurated on January 20th 2025 knowing "We are going to have a fair on the National Mall next year, and for this purpose we want the Reflecting Pool to be painted blue." That would have been absurd. That was decided in 2026. That's why rushing is legitimate. Even though you wouldn't personally do it that way, I got that, you would use hindsight and a time machine to start far earlier, the standard for corruption isn't just what you would do. It can't be. For example, you aren't president, don't live in DC, don't have to take care of DC, aren't holding a 250th anniversary celebration, probably have different views about the significance of the Reflecting Pool and aesthetic opinions of what color it should even be, etc. The government, and the administration, are not simply Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool optimizers. They have other jobs. For the pool there's many options. You can clean it. You can modify it. You can repair it. You can tear it down and rebuild it. You can choose to let it languish. But the fact that the pool is leaking is apparently not a guaranteed motivation to repair it per se. Or else everyone involved going back to 2013 is incompetent. Just sitting back and blaming people as soon as they do something, for not having done it earlier, inculcates a culture of nobody ever doing anything. Boring philosophy to nowhere. Pool renovation: Genius home-run miracle? No (not yet, off chance of yes after 2nd go). Apocalyptic corruptiongate? No. Reasonable effort by obvious patriots to make a national symbol look better and be stronger? Yes. Still ultimately just a pool I'm never, ever going to fall into heart attack psychosis about? Absolutely. Do you ever tire of chatting absolute bollocks?
Not before others stop entertaining it.
It's not as if people aren't familiar with the concept. Everyone knows the Sartre explanation for what someone like oBlade gets out of it. What people are struggling with is actually investigating/understanding what it is they are getting out of supporting oBlade in perpetuating it.
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It must hurt knowing that people here think letting oBlade type up his insane rants is more productive than talking to someone who puts words in other people's mouths when they can't win an argument.
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On August 06 2026 01:33 LightSpectra wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2026 01:17 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 06 2026 01:05 WombaT wrote:On August 06 2026 00:36 oBlade wrote:On August 05 2026 16:17 Geiko wrote:On August 05 2026 13:20 oBlade wrote:On August 05 2026 03:52 Geiko wrote:On August 05 2026 00:46 oBlade wrote:On August 05 2026 00:06 Geiko wrote:
I never said the no-bid contract was illegal I said it was just another example of normalized corruption in the USA.
No-bid federal contracts usually have 6-12% profit margin. This one had 20%. That's 3M in profits just for being Trump's friend.
Companies that have comparable experience in waterproofing large pools:
Water Works
Water Structures
KJC Waterproofing
Membrane Concepts Yeah going to be harder to keep $3 million when they're liable for redoing the thing, which has a high risk of something going wrong like 2012, under warranty, as they are doing now. On August 05 2026 00:06 Geiko wrote:
I didn't come up with the term "botched" so I don't feel the need to define it to you, seeing as I'm no expert. "Botched" is the term used by the DOJ to describe the job done by Trump's friend after investigation.
So we're using "exagerating" instead of "lying" now are we ? Ok maybe arresting a former olympic athlete on false charges was a bit of an exageration right ? Oops no biggie, just Trump being Trump.
You should know what "botched" means if you use it. You are not now quoting a Trump DOJ filing because you believe them or because you trust them, you are quoting them because they agree with what you already thought. So you should know what exactly was "botched." In detail. About the pool. From the horse's mouth, the ever-credible (for you) Trump DOJ (except weeks ago when they had this guy charged but you didn't believe it). You're missing the point. Whether or not they keep the 3M is irrelevant, what matters is that they got to have it in the first place when "normal" contractors would have gotten ~ 1,5M. You're stuck on level 1. The magic free money gods of government didn't just arbitrarily decide for them to get 8% extra. It is a CONTRACT. Contracts require TWO PARTIES TO AGREE. Nobody would have done it for 6% because look at the timeframe and requirements. You already admitted you think no-bid contracts are corruption, period, so what do you think you're going to convince me of by quibbling about the specific percent margins that you don't understand? It's not a cost-plus contract. It's a fixed price contract for a difficult and rush (at the time, slightly less so now) job. Something probably neither the contractor nor the government were sure was possible in the timeframe. That's why it's 20%. It's about risk. For reference Sika, the company that took two years to FUCK IT UP last time, the only one with experience, was approached. The government said we're trying to fix the Reflecting Pool in 2 weeks or whatever before Independence Day. The company said, no thanks, not interested, don't want to be liable for that, not with a ten foot pole. A cost-plus contract would be "Hey it didn't work, I need some more money to redo it like we agreed." Fixed cost is "It didn't work. Fix it now, or pay for someone else to, or else we will hold you liable for damages and your company will no longer exist." On August 05 2026 03:52 Geiko wrote:
I think you're also not thinking quite clearly. My stance is very obvious, I trust neither Trump nor his DOJ. By that I mean that I think they lie enough of the time that they are not reliable sources of information.
Why I'm quoting the DOJ is because in this instance, we have the head of the DOJ saying something (damage to the pool was not done by vandals) and Trump saying the exact opposite (damage done to the pool was done by vandals). It follows logically that one of them is saying a falsehood. (Regardless of whether I trust any of them).
My opinion is that Trump is the one lying because he has all the reasons to lie as you've said, it benefits him politically. On the other hand the head of the DOJ has no reason to lie, quite the contrary as it endangers her job.
Now we've established that one of them is telling falsehoods, who do you think it is and why ? Your issue is not realizing these things are interconnected. The fact that the damage is due to the repair job not going as planned doesn't mean Trump created this whole situation just as an excuse to give his "friend" (if you believe him) a 20% $3 million contract to break the pool. The damage is due to the repair job not going as planned because it is an old sinking pool, a unique job, a problem that neither the government nor contractors have shown mastery of, and has a high chance of not going according to plan no matter who did it. Which is why there's not an infinite supply of contractors willing to do it for 1% margin in 1 day and you shouldn't trust them if there were. On the subject of the lying: You still haven't answered my question. Who do you think is wrong Trump or the DOJ ? And why do you think they are wrong ? HEY *waves hands wildly* You literally just read, quoted, and responded to this: . The fact that the damage is due to the repair job not going as planned doesn't mean Trump created this whole situation just as an excuse to give his "friend" (if you believe him) a 20% $3 million contract to break the pool. The damage is due to the repair job not going as planned What part of these sentences gives any ambiguity whatsoever about whether I think the damage was caused by vandals or not? Let's get some information to stick here. On August 05 2026 16:17 Geiko wrote:
On the subject of corruption:
I don't think no-bid contracts are necessarily corruption. I think they are corruption when they are not justified. The Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) and the Competition in Contracting Act (CICA) require justifications in order to ensure an open-bidding process could not have been done.
In this case the government argued that the justification was "unusual and compelling urgency".
My questions to you:
Did the fact that the 250th anniversary happened on the 4th of July 2026 come as a surprise to the Trump administration?
Was the fact that the pool was leaking/broken hidden from them and they only discovered it recently ?
If the answer is "no" to the previous questions, what was unusual and urgently compelling about needing to fix the pool for the 4th of july ? Is it incompetence for not having foreseen something easily foreseeable? Or is it corruption for waiting until the last moment to "legally" hand out a 15M no-bid contract to a friend ?
So the standard of corruption is not whether it's legal, not whether it's no-bid, it basically boils down to just whether the person handles it different than you would. The 2012 open bid job took 22 months. This was told to you which again makes me suspect nothing is sticking. Ask the LLM teaching you law what date is 22 months after January 20th, 2025. Use another LLM or your own background knowledge to compare whether that date falls before or after July 4th, 2026. Yeah rushing is justified. Nor was Trump inaugurated on January 20th 2025 knowing "We are going to have a fair on the National Mall next year, and for this purpose we want the Reflecting Pool to be painted blue." That would have been absurd. That was decided in 2026. That's why rushing is legitimate. Even though you wouldn't personally do it that way, I got that, you would use hindsight and a time machine to start far earlier, the standard for corruption isn't just what you would do. It can't be. For example, you aren't president, don't live in DC, don't have to take care of DC, aren't holding a 250th anniversary celebration, probably have different views about the significance of the Reflecting Pool and aesthetic opinions of what color it should even be, etc. The government, and the administration, are not simply Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool optimizers. They have other jobs. For the pool there's many options. You can clean it. You can modify it. You can repair it. You can tear it down and rebuild it. You can choose to let it languish. But the fact that the pool is leaking is apparently not a guaranteed motivation to repair it per se. Or else everyone involved going back to 2013 is incompetent. Just sitting back and blaming people as soon as they do something, for not having done it earlier, inculcates a culture of nobody ever doing anything. Boring philosophy to nowhere. Pool renovation: Genius home-run miracle? No (not yet, off chance of yes after 2nd go). Apocalyptic corruptiongate? No. Reasonable effort by obvious patriots to make a national symbol look better and be stronger? Yes. Still ultimately just a pool I'm never, ever going to fall into heart attack psychosis about? Absolutely. Do you ever tire of chatting absolute bollocks? Not before others stop entertaining it. It's not as if people aren't familiar with the concept. Everyone knows the Sartre explanation for what someone like oBlade gets out of it. What people are struggling with is actually investigating/understanding what it is they are getting out of supporting oBlade in perpetuating it. It must hurt knowing that people here think letting oBlade type up his insane rants is more productive than talking to someone who puts words in other people's mouths when they can't win an argument.
It's sad/scary. I'm happy to be ignored when the "BlueMAGA left" and "not-BlueMAGA left" are actually distinguishing themselves from each other functionally.
You all are demonstrably incapable of that (and have been for ~a decade) though.
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Northern Ireland27464 Posts
On August 06 2026 01:33 LightSpectra wrote:
It must hurt knowing that people here think letting oBlade type up his insane rants is more productive than talking to someone who puts words in other people's mouths when they can't win an argument.
Lmao
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You don't sound very happy to be ignored.
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Northern Ireland27464 Posts
On August 06 2026 01:38 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2026 01:33 LightSpectra wrote:On August 06 2026 01:17 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 06 2026 01:05 WombaT wrote:On August 06 2026 00:36 oBlade wrote:On August 05 2026 16:17 Geiko wrote:On August 05 2026 13:20 oBlade wrote:On August 05 2026 03:52 Geiko wrote:On August 05 2026 00:46 oBlade wrote:On August 05 2026 00:06 Geiko wrote:
I never said the no-bid contract was illegal I said it was just another example of normalized corruption in the USA.
No-bid federal contracts usually have 6-12% profit margin. This one had 20%. That's 3M in profits just for being Trump's friend.
Companies that have comparable experience in waterproofing large pools:
Water Works
Water Structures
KJC Waterproofing
Membrane Concepts Yeah going to be harder to keep $3 million when they're liable for redoing the thing, which has a high risk of something going wrong like 2012, under warranty, as they are doing now. On August 05 2026 00:06 Geiko wrote:
I didn't come up with the term "botched" so I don't feel the need to define it to you, seeing as I'm no expert. "Botched" is the term used by the DOJ to describe the job done by Trump's friend after investigation.
So we're using "exagerating" instead of "lying" now are we ? Ok maybe arresting a former olympic athlete on false charges was a bit of an exageration right ? Oops no biggie, just Trump being Trump.
You should know what "botched" means if you use it. You are not now quoting a Trump DOJ filing because you believe them or because you trust them, you are quoting them because they agree with what you already thought. So you should know what exactly was "botched." In detail. About the pool. From the horse's mouth, the ever-credible (for you) Trump DOJ (except weeks ago when they had this guy charged but you didn't believe it). You're missing the point. Whether or not they keep the 3M is irrelevant, what matters is that they got to have it in the first place when "normal" contractors would have gotten ~ 1,5M. You're stuck on level 1. The magic free money gods of government didn't just arbitrarily decide for them to get 8% extra. It is a CONTRACT. Contracts require TWO PARTIES TO AGREE. Nobody would have done it for 6% because look at the timeframe and requirements. You already admitted you think no-bid contracts are corruption, period, so what do you think you're going to convince me of by quibbling about the specific percent margins that you don't understand? It's not a cost-plus contract. It's a fixed price contract for a difficult and rush (at the time, slightly less so now) job. Something probably neither the contractor nor the government were sure was possible in the timeframe. That's why it's 20%. It's about risk. For reference Sika, the company that took two years to FUCK IT UP last time, the only one with experience, was approached. The government said we're trying to fix the Reflecting Pool in 2 weeks or whatever before Independence Day. The company said, no thanks, not interested, don't want to be liable for that, not with a ten foot pole. A cost-plus contract would be "Hey it didn't work, I need some more money to redo it like we agreed." Fixed cost is "It didn't work. Fix it now, or pay for someone else to, or else we will hold you liable for damages and your company will no longer exist." On August 05 2026 03:52 Geiko wrote:
I think you're also not thinking quite clearly. My stance is very obvious, I trust neither Trump nor his DOJ. By that I mean that I think they lie enough of the time that they are not reliable sources of information.
Why I'm quoting the DOJ is because in this instance, we have the head of the DOJ saying something (damage to the pool was not done by vandals) and Trump saying the exact opposite (damage done to the pool was done by vandals). It follows logically that one of them is saying a falsehood. (Regardless of whether I trust any of them).
My opinion is that Trump is the one lying because he has all the reasons to lie as you've said, it benefits him politically. On the other hand the head of the DOJ has no reason to lie, quite the contrary as it endangers her job.
Now we've established that one of them is telling falsehoods, who do you think it is and why ? Your issue is not realizing these things are interconnected. The fact that the damage is due to the repair job not going as planned doesn't mean Trump created this whole situation just as an excuse to give his "friend" (if you believe him) a 20% $3 million contract to break the pool. The damage is due to the repair job not going as planned because it is an old sinking pool, a unique job, a problem that neither the government nor contractors have shown mastery of, and has a high chance of not going according to plan no matter who did it. Which is why there's not an infinite supply of contractors willing to do it for 1% margin in 1 day and you shouldn't trust them if there were. On the subject of the lying: You still haven't answered my question. Who do you think is wrong Trump or the DOJ ? And why do you think they are wrong ? HEY *waves hands wildly* You literally just read, quoted, and responded to this: . The fact that the damage is due to the repair job not going as planned doesn't mean Trump created this whole situation just as an excuse to give his "friend" (if you believe him) a 20% $3 million contract to break the pool. The damage is due to the repair job not going as planned What part of these sentences gives any ambiguity whatsoever about whether I think the damage was caused by vandals or not? Let's get some information to stick here. On August 05 2026 16:17 Geiko wrote:
On the subject of corruption:
I don't think no-bid contracts are necessarily corruption. I think they are corruption when they are not justified. The Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) and the Competition in Contracting Act (CICA) require justifications in order to ensure an open-bidding process could not have been done.
In this case the government argued that the justification was "unusual and compelling urgency".
My questions to you:
Did the fact that the 250th anniversary happened on the 4th of July 2026 come as a surprise to the Trump administration?
Was the fact that the pool was leaking/broken hidden from them and they only discovered it recently ?
If the answer is "no" to the previous questions, what was unusual and urgently compelling about needing to fix the pool for the 4th of july ? Is it incompetence for not having foreseen something easily foreseeable? Or is it corruption for waiting until the last moment to "legally" hand out a 15M no-bid contract to a friend ?
So the standard of corruption is not whether it's legal, not whether it's no-bid, it basically boils down to just whether the person handles it different than you would. The 2012 open bid job took 22 months. This was told to you which again makes me suspect nothing is sticking. Ask the LLM teaching you law what date is 22 months after January 20th, 2025. Use another LLM or your own background knowledge to compare whether that date falls before or after July 4th, 2026. Yeah rushing is justified. Nor was Trump inaugurated on January 20th 2025 knowing "We are going to have a fair on the National Mall next year, and for this purpose we want the Reflecting Pool to be painted blue." That would have been absurd. That was decided in 2026. That's why rushing is legitimate. Even though you wouldn't personally do it that way, I got that, you would use hindsight and a time machine to start far earlier, the standard for corruption isn't just what you would do. It can't be. For example, you aren't president, don't live in DC, don't have to take care of DC, aren't holding a 250th anniversary celebration, probably have different views about the significance of the Reflecting Pool and aesthetic opinions of what color it should even be, etc. The government, and the administration, are not simply Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool optimizers. They have other jobs. For the pool there's many options. You can clean it. You can modify it. You can repair it. You can tear it down and rebuild it. You can choose to let it languish. But the fact that the pool is leaking is apparently not a guaranteed motivation to repair it per se. Or else everyone involved going back to 2013 is incompetent. Just sitting back and blaming people as soon as they do something, for not having done it earlier, inculcates a culture of nobody ever doing anything. Boring philosophy to nowhere. Pool renovation: Genius home-run miracle? No (not yet, off chance of yes after 2nd go). Apocalyptic corruptiongate? No. Reasonable effort by obvious patriots to make a national symbol look better and be stronger? Yes. Still ultimately just a pool I'm never, ever going to fall into heart attack psychosis about? Absolutely. Do you ever tire of chatting absolute bollocks? Not before others stop entertaining it. It's not as if people aren't familiar with the concept. Everyone knows the Sartre explanation for what someone like oBlade gets out of it. What people are struggling with is actually investigating/understanding what it is they are getting out of supporting oBlade in perpetuating it. It must hurt knowing that people here think letting oBlade type up his insane rants is more productive than talking to someone who puts words in other people's mouths when they can't win an argument. It's sad/scary. I'm happy to be ignored when the "BlueMAGA left" and "not-BlueMAGA left" are actually distinguishing themselves from each other functionally. You all are demonstrably incapable of that (and have been for ~a decade) though.
Ok GH you’re right and everyone else lacks your moral fortitude, congrats.
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On August 06 2026 01:39 LightSpectra wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2026 01:38 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 06 2026 01:33 LightSpectra wrote:On August 06 2026 01:17 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 06 2026 01:05 WombaT wrote:On August 06 2026 00:36 oBlade wrote:On August 05 2026 16:17 Geiko wrote:On August 05 2026 13:20 oBlade wrote:On August 05 2026 03:52 Geiko wrote:On August 05 2026 00:46 oBlade wrote:
[quote]
Yeah going to be harder to keep $3 million when they're liable for redoing the thing, which has a high risk of something going wrong like 2012, under warranty, as they are doing now.
[quote]
You should know what "botched" means if you use it. You are not now quoting a Trump DOJ filing because you believe them or because you trust them, you are quoting them because they agree with what you already thought. So you should know what exactly was "botched." In detail. About the pool. From the horse's mouth, the ever-credible (for you) Trump DOJ (except weeks ago when they had this guy charged but you didn't believe it). You're missing the point. Whether or not they keep the 3M is irrelevant, what matters is that they got to have it in the first place when "normal" contractors would have gotten ~ 1,5M. You're stuck on level 1. The magic free money gods of government didn't just arbitrarily decide for them to get 8% extra. It is a CONTRACT. Contracts require TWO PARTIES TO AGREE. Nobody would have done it for 6% because look at the timeframe and requirements. You already admitted you think no-bid contracts are corruption, period, so what do you think you're going to convince me of by quibbling about the specific percent margins that you don't understand? It's not a cost-plus contract. It's a fixed price contract for a difficult and rush (at the time, slightly less so now) job. Something probably neither the contractor nor the government were sure was possible in the timeframe. That's why it's 20%. It's about risk. For reference Sika, the company that took two years to FUCK IT UP last time, the only one with experience, was approached. The government said we're trying to fix the Reflecting Pool in 2 weeks or whatever before Independence Day. The company said, no thanks, not interested, don't want to be liable for that, not with a ten foot pole. A cost-plus contract would be "Hey it didn't work, I need some more money to redo it like we agreed." Fixed cost is "It didn't work. Fix it now, or pay for someone else to, or else we will hold you liable for damages and your company will no longer exist." On August 05 2026 03:52 Geiko wrote:
I think you're also not thinking quite clearly. My stance is very obvious, I trust neither Trump nor his DOJ. By that I mean that I think they lie enough of the time that they are not reliable sources of information.
Why I'm quoting the DOJ is because in this instance, we have the head of the DOJ saying something (damage to the pool was not done by vandals) and Trump saying the exact opposite (damage done to the pool was done by vandals). It follows logically that one of them is saying a falsehood. (Regardless of whether I trust any of them).
My opinion is that Trump is the one lying because he has all the reasons to lie as you've said, it benefits him politically. On the other hand the head of the DOJ has no reason to lie, quite the contrary as it endangers her job.
Now we've established that one of them is telling falsehoods, who do you think it is and why ? Your issue is not realizing these things are interconnected. The fact that the damage is due to the repair job not going as planned doesn't mean Trump created this whole situation just as an excuse to give his "friend" (if you believe him) a 20% $3 million contract to break the pool. The damage is due to the repair job not going as planned because it is an old sinking pool, a unique job, a problem that neither the government nor contractors have shown mastery of, and has a high chance of not going according to plan no matter who did it. Which is why there's not an infinite supply of contractors willing to do it for 1% margin in 1 day and you shouldn't trust them if there were. On the subject of the lying: You still haven't answered my question. Who do you think is wrong Trump or the DOJ ? And why do you think they are wrong ? HEY *waves hands wildly* You literally just read, quoted, and responded to this: . The fact that the damage is due to the repair job not going as planned doesn't mean Trump created this whole situation just as an excuse to give his "friend" (if you believe him) a 20% $3 million contract to break the pool. The damage is due to the repair job not going as planned What part of these sentences gives any ambiguity whatsoever about whether I think the damage was caused by vandals or not? Let's get some information to stick here. On August 05 2026 16:17 Geiko wrote:
On the subject of corruption:
I don't think no-bid contracts are necessarily corruption. I think they are corruption when they are not justified. The Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) and the Competition in Contracting Act (CICA) require justifications in order to ensure an open-bidding process could not have been done.
In this case the government argued that the justification was "unusual and compelling urgency".
My questions to you:
Did the fact that the 250th anniversary happened on the 4th of July 2026 come as a surprise to the Trump administration?
Was the fact that the pool was leaking/broken hidden from them and they only discovered it recently ?
If the answer is "no" to the previous questions, what was unusual and urgently compelling about needing to fix the pool for the 4th of july ? Is it incompetence for not having foreseen something easily foreseeable? Or is it corruption for waiting until the last moment to "legally" hand out a 15M no-bid contract to a friend ?
So the standard of corruption is not whether it's legal, not whether it's no-bid, it basically boils down to just whether the person handles it different than you would. The 2012 open bid job took 22 months. This was told to you which again makes me suspect nothing is sticking. Ask the LLM teaching you law what date is 22 months after January 20th, 2025. Use another LLM or your own background knowledge to compare whether that date falls before or after July 4th, 2026. Yeah rushing is justified. Nor was Trump inaugurated on January 20th 2025 knowing "We are going to have a fair on the National Mall next year, and for this purpose we want the Reflecting Pool to be painted blue." That would have been absurd. That was decided in 2026. That's why rushing is legitimate. Even though you wouldn't personally do it that way, I got that, you would use hindsight and a time machine to start far earlier, the standard for corruption isn't just what you would do. It can't be. For example, you aren't president, don't live in DC, don't have to take care of DC, aren't holding a 250th anniversary celebration, probably have different views about the significance of the Reflecting Pool and aesthetic opinions of what color it should even be, etc. The government, and the administration, are not simply Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool optimizers. They have other jobs. For the pool there's many options. You can clean it. You can modify it. You can repair it. You can tear it down and rebuild it. You can choose to let it languish. But the fact that the pool is leaking is apparently not a guaranteed motivation to repair it per se. Or else everyone involved going back to 2013 is incompetent. Just sitting back and blaming people as soon as they do something, for not having done it earlier, inculcates a culture of nobody ever doing anything. Boring philosophy to nowhere. Pool renovation: Genius home-run miracle? No (not yet, off chance of yes after 2nd go). Apocalyptic corruptiongate? No. Reasonable effort by obvious patriots to make a national symbol look better and be stronger? Yes. Still ultimately just a pool I'm never, ever going to fall into heart attack psychosis about? Absolutely. Do you ever tire of chatting absolute bollocks? Not before others stop entertaining it. It's not as if people aren't familiar with the concept. Everyone knows the Sartre explanation for what someone like oBlade gets out of it. What people are struggling with is actually investigating/understanding what it is they are getting out of supporting oBlade in perpetuating it. It must hurt knowing that people here think letting oBlade type up his insane rants is more productive than talking to someone who puts words in other people's mouths when they can't win an argument. It's sad/scary. I'm happy to be ignored when the "BlueMAGA left" and "not-BlueMAGA left" are actually distinguishing themselves from each other functionally. You all are demonstrably incapable of that (and have been for ~a decade) though. You don't sound very happy to be ignored.
You're not distinguishing the functional differences between the "BlueMAGA left" and "not-BlueMAGA left", or ignoring me lol.
That said, I'm mostly just getting secondhand embarrassment.
On August 06 2026 01:41 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2026 01:38 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 06 2026 01:33 LightSpectra wrote:On August 06 2026 01:17 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 06 2026 01:05 WombaT wrote:On August 06 2026 00:36 oBlade wrote:On August 05 2026 16:17 Geiko wrote:On August 05 2026 13:20 oBlade wrote:On August 05 2026 03:52 Geiko wrote:On August 05 2026 00:46 oBlade wrote:
[quote]
Yeah going to be harder to keep $3 million when they're liable for redoing the thing, which has a high risk of something going wrong like 2012, under warranty, as they are doing now.
[quote]
You should know what "botched" means if you use it. You are not now quoting a Trump DOJ filing because you believe them or because you trust them, you are quoting them because they agree with what you already thought. So you should know what exactly was "botched." In detail. About the pool. From the horse's mouth, the ever-credible (for you) Trump DOJ (except weeks ago when they had this guy charged but you didn't believe it). You're missing the point. Whether or not they keep the 3M is irrelevant, what matters is that they got to have it in the first place when "normal" contractors would have gotten ~ 1,5M. You're stuck on level 1. The magic free money gods of government didn't just arbitrarily decide for them to get 8% extra. It is a CONTRACT. Contracts require TWO PARTIES TO AGREE. Nobody would have done it for 6% because look at the timeframe and requirements. You already admitted you think no-bid contracts are corruption, period, so what do you think you're going to convince me of by quibbling about the specific percent margins that you don't understand? It's not a cost-plus contract. It's a fixed price contract for a difficult and rush (at the time, slightly less so now) job. Something probably neither the contractor nor the government were sure was possible in the timeframe. That's why it's 20%. It's about risk. For reference Sika, the company that took two years to FUCK IT UP last time, the only one with experience, was approached. The government said we're trying to fix the Reflecting Pool in 2 weeks or whatever before Independence Day. The company said, no thanks, not interested, don't want to be liable for that, not with a ten foot pole. A cost-plus contract would be "Hey it didn't work, I need some more money to redo it like we agreed." Fixed cost is "It didn't work. Fix it now, or pay for someone else to, or else we will hold you liable for damages and your company will no longer exist." On August 05 2026 03:52 Geiko wrote:
I think you're also not thinking quite clearly. My stance is very obvious, I trust neither Trump nor his DOJ. By that I mean that I think they lie enough of the time that they are not reliable sources of information.
Why I'm quoting the DOJ is because in this instance, we have the head of the DOJ saying something (damage to the pool was not done by vandals) and Trump saying the exact opposite (damage done to the pool was done by vandals). It follows logically that one of them is saying a falsehood. (Regardless of whether I trust any of them).
My opinion is that Trump is the one lying because he has all the reasons to lie as you've said, it benefits him politically. On the other hand the head of the DOJ has no reason to lie, quite the contrary as it endangers her job.
Now we've established that one of them is telling falsehoods, who do you think it is and why ? Your issue is not realizing these things are interconnected. The fact that the damage is due to the repair job not going as planned doesn't mean Trump created this whole situation just as an excuse to give his "friend" (if you believe him) a 20% $3 million contract to break the pool. The damage is due to the repair job not going as planned because it is an old sinking pool, a unique job, a problem that neither the government nor contractors have shown mastery of, and has a high chance of not going according to plan no matter who did it. Which is why there's not an infinite supply of contractors willing to do it for 1% margin in 1 day and you shouldn't trust them if there were. On the subject of the lying: You still haven't answered my question. Who do you think is wrong Trump or the DOJ ? And why do you think they are wrong ? HEY *waves hands wildly* You literally just read, quoted, and responded to this: . The fact that the damage is due to the repair job not going as planned doesn't mean Trump created this whole situation just as an excuse to give his "friend" (if you believe him) a 20% $3 million contract to break the pool. The damage is due to the repair job not going as planned What part of these sentences gives any ambiguity whatsoever about whether I think the damage was caused by vandals or not? Let's get some information to stick here. On August 05 2026 16:17 Geiko wrote:
On the subject of corruption:
I don't think no-bid contracts are necessarily corruption. I think they are corruption when they are not justified. The Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) and the Competition in Contracting Act (CICA) require justifications in order to ensure an open-bidding process could not have been done.
In this case the government argued that the justification was "unusual and compelling urgency".
My questions to you:
Did the fact that the 250th anniversary happened on the 4th of July 2026 come as a surprise to the Trump administration?
Was the fact that the pool was leaking/broken hidden from them and they only discovered it recently ?
If the answer is "no" to the previous questions, what was unusual and urgently compelling about needing to fix the pool for the 4th of july ? Is it incompetence for not having foreseen something easily foreseeable? Or is it corruption for waiting until the last moment to "legally" hand out a 15M no-bid contract to a friend ?
So the standard of corruption is not whether it's legal, not whether it's no-bid, it basically boils down to just whether the person handles it different than you would. The 2012 open bid job took 22 months. This was told to you which again makes me suspect nothing is sticking. Ask the LLM teaching you law what date is 22 months after January 20th, 2025. Use another LLM or your own background knowledge to compare whether that date falls before or after July 4th, 2026. Yeah rushing is justified. Nor was Trump inaugurated on January 20th 2025 knowing "We are going to have a fair on the National Mall next year, and for this purpose we want the Reflecting Pool to be painted blue." That would have been absurd. That was decided in 2026. That's why rushing is legitimate. Even though you wouldn't personally do it that way, I got that, you would use hindsight and a time machine to start far earlier, the standard for corruption isn't just what you would do. It can't be. For example, you aren't president, don't live in DC, don't have to take care of DC, aren't holding a 250th anniversary celebration, probably have different views about the significance of the Reflecting Pool and aesthetic opinions of what color it should even be, etc. The government, and the administration, are not simply Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool optimizers. They have other jobs. For the pool there's many options. You can clean it. You can modify it. You can repair it. You can tear it down and rebuild it. You can choose to let it languish. But the fact that the pool is leaking is apparently not a guaranteed motivation to repair it per se. Or else everyone involved going back to 2013 is incompetent. Just sitting back and blaming people as soon as they do something, for not having done it earlier, inculcates a culture of nobody ever doing anything. Boring philosophy to nowhere. Pool renovation: Genius home-run miracle? No (not yet, off chance of yes after 2nd go). Apocalyptic corruptiongate? No. Reasonable effort by obvious patriots to make a national symbol look better and be stronger? Yes. Still ultimately just a pool I'm never, ever going to fall into heart attack psychosis about? Absolutely. Do you ever tire of chatting absolute bollocks? Not before others stop entertaining it. It's not as if people aren't familiar with the concept. Everyone knows the Sartre explanation for what someone like oBlade gets out of it. What people are struggling with is actually investigating/understanding what it is they are getting out of supporting oBlade in perpetuating it. It must hurt knowing that people here think letting oBlade type up his insane rants is more productive than talking to someone who puts words in other people's mouths when they can't win an argument. It's sad/scary. I'm happy to be ignored when the "BlueMAGA left" and "not-BlueMAGA left" are actually distinguishing themselves from each other functionally. You all are demonstrably incapable of that (and have been for ~a decade) though. Ok GH you’re right and everyone else lacks your moral fortitude, congrats.
I know me breaking immersion is upsetting for people, but it is a necessary part of informed political engagement.
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United States44398 Posts
On August 06 2026 01:46 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2026 01:39 LightSpectra wrote:On August 06 2026 01:38 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 06 2026 01:33 LightSpectra wrote:On August 06 2026 01:17 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 06 2026 01:05 WombaT wrote:On August 06 2026 00:36 oBlade wrote:On August 05 2026 16:17 Geiko wrote:On August 05 2026 13:20 oBlade wrote:On August 05 2026 03:52 Geiko wrote:
[quote]
You're missing the point. Whether or not they keep the 3M is irrelevant, what matters is that they got to have it in the first place when "normal" contractors would have gotten ~ 1,5M. You're stuck on level 1. The magic free money gods of government didn't just arbitrarily decide for them to get 8% extra. It is a CONTRACT. Contracts require TWO PARTIES TO AGREE. Nobody would have done it for 6% because look at the timeframe and requirements. You already admitted you think no-bid contracts are corruption, period, so what do you think you're going to convince me of by quibbling about the specific percent margins that you don't understand? It's not a cost-plus contract. It's a fixed price contract for a difficult and rush (at the time, slightly less so now) job. Something probably neither the contractor nor the government were sure was possible in the timeframe. That's why it's 20%. It's about risk. For reference Sika, the company that took two years to FUCK IT UP last time, the only one with experience, was approached. The government said we're trying to fix the Reflecting Pool in 2 weeks or whatever before Independence Day. The company said, no thanks, not interested, don't want to be liable for that, not with a ten foot pole. A cost-plus contract would be "Hey it didn't work, I need some more money to redo it like we agreed." Fixed cost is "It didn't work. Fix it now, or pay for someone else to, or else we will hold you liable for damages and your company will no longer exist." On August 05 2026 03:52 Geiko wrote:
I think you're also not thinking quite clearly. My stance is very obvious, I trust neither Trump nor his DOJ. By that I mean that I think they lie enough of the time that they are not reliable sources of information.
Why I'm quoting the DOJ is because in this instance, we have the head of the DOJ saying something (damage to the pool was not done by vandals) and Trump saying the exact opposite (damage done to the pool was done by vandals). It follows logically that one of them is saying a falsehood. (Regardless of whether I trust any of them).
My opinion is that Trump is the one lying because he has all the reasons to lie as you've said, it benefits him politically. On the other hand the head of the DOJ has no reason to lie, quite the contrary as it endangers her job.
Now we've established that one of them is telling falsehoods, who do you think it is and why ? Your issue is not realizing these things are interconnected. The fact that the damage is due to the repair job not going as planned doesn't mean Trump created this whole situation just as an excuse to give his "friend" (if you believe him) a 20% $3 million contract to break the pool. The damage is due to the repair job not going as planned because it is an old sinking pool, a unique job, a problem that neither the government nor contractors have shown mastery of, and has a high chance of not going according to plan no matter who did it. Which is why there's not an infinite supply of contractors willing to do it for 1% margin in 1 day and you shouldn't trust them if there were. On the subject of the lying: You still haven't answered my question. Who do you think is wrong Trump or the DOJ ? And why do you think they are wrong ? HEY *waves hands wildly* You literally just read, quoted, and responded to this: . The fact that the damage is due to the repair job not going as planned doesn't mean Trump created this whole situation just as an excuse to give his "friend" (if you believe him) a 20% $3 million contract to break the pool. The damage is due to the repair job not going as planned What part of these sentences gives any ambiguity whatsoever about whether I think the damage was caused by vandals or not? Let's get some information to stick here. On August 05 2026 16:17 Geiko wrote:
On the subject of corruption:
I don't think no-bid contracts are necessarily corruption. I think they are corruption when they are not justified. The Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) and the Competition in Contracting Act (CICA) require justifications in order to ensure an open-bidding process could not have been done.
In this case the government argued that the justification was "unusual and compelling urgency".
My questions to you:
Did the fact that the 250th anniversary happened on the 4th of July 2026 come as a surprise to the Trump administration?
Was the fact that the pool was leaking/broken hidden from them and they only discovered it recently ?
If the answer is "no" to the previous questions, what was unusual and urgently compelling about needing to fix the pool for the 4th of july ? Is it incompetence for not having foreseen something easily foreseeable? Or is it corruption for waiting until the last moment to "legally" hand out a 15M no-bid contract to a friend ?
So the standard of corruption is not whether it's legal, not whether it's no-bid, it basically boils down to just whether the person handles it different than you would. The 2012 open bid job took 22 months. This was told to you which again makes me suspect nothing is sticking. Ask the LLM teaching you law what date is 22 months after January 20th, 2025. Use another LLM or your own background knowledge to compare whether that date falls before or after July 4th, 2026. Yeah rushing is justified. Nor was Trump inaugurated on January 20th 2025 knowing "We are going to have a fair on the National Mall next year, and for this purpose we want the Reflecting Pool to be painted blue." That would have been absurd. That was decided in 2026. That's why rushing is legitimate. Even though you wouldn't personally do it that way, I got that, you would use hindsight and a time machine to start far earlier, the standard for corruption isn't just what you would do. It can't be. For example, you aren't president, don't live in DC, don't have to take care of DC, aren't holding a 250th anniversary celebration, probably have different views about the significance of the Reflecting Pool and aesthetic opinions of what color it should even be, etc. The government, and the administration, are not simply Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool optimizers. They have other jobs. For the pool there's many options. You can clean it. You can modify it. You can repair it. You can tear it down and rebuild it. You can choose to let it languish. But the fact that the pool is leaking is apparently not a guaranteed motivation to repair it per se. Or else everyone involved going back to 2013 is incompetent. Just sitting back and blaming people as soon as they do something, for not having done it earlier, inculcates a culture of nobody ever doing anything. Boring philosophy to nowhere. Pool renovation: Genius home-run miracle? No (not yet, off chance of yes after 2nd go). Apocalyptic corruptiongate? No. Reasonable effort by obvious patriots to make a national symbol look better and be stronger? Yes. Still ultimately just a pool I'm never, ever going to fall into heart attack psychosis about? Absolutely. Do you ever tire of chatting absolute bollocks? Not before others stop entertaining it. It's not as if people aren't familiar with the concept. Everyone knows the Sartre explanation for what someone like oBlade gets out of it. What people are struggling with is actually investigating/understanding what it is they are getting out of supporting oBlade in perpetuating it. It must hurt knowing that people here think letting oBlade type up his insane rants is more productive than talking to someone who puts words in other people's mouths when they can't win an argument. It's sad/scary. I'm happy to be ignored when the "BlueMAGA left" and "not-BlueMAGA left" are actually distinguishing themselves from each other functionally. You all are demonstrably incapable of that (and have been for ~a decade) though. You don't sound very happy to be ignored. You're not distinguishing the functional differences between the "BlueMAGA left" and "not-BlueMAGA left", or ignoring me lol. That said, I'm mostly just getting secondhand embarrassment. Show nested quote +On August 06 2026 01:41 WombaT wrote:On August 06 2026 01:38 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 06 2026 01:33 LightSpectra wrote:On August 06 2026 01:17 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 06 2026 01:05 WombaT wrote:On August 06 2026 00:36 oBlade wrote:On August 05 2026 16:17 Geiko wrote:On August 05 2026 13:20 oBlade wrote:On August 05 2026 03:52 Geiko wrote:
[quote]
You're missing the point. Whether or not they keep the 3M is irrelevant, what matters is that they got to have it in the first place when "normal" contractors would have gotten ~ 1,5M. You're stuck on level 1. The magic free money gods of government didn't just arbitrarily decide for them to get 8% extra. It is a CONTRACT. Contracts require TWO PARTIES TO AGREE. Nobody would have done it for 6% because look at the timeframe and requirements. You already admitted you think no-bid contracts are corruption, period, so what do you think you're going to convince me of by quibbling about the specific percent margins that you don't understand? It's not a cost-plus contract. It's a fixed price contract for a difficult and rush (at the time, slightly less so now) job. Something probably neither the contractor nor the government were sure was possible in the timeframe. That's why it's 20%. It's about risk. For reference Sika, the company that took two years to FUCK IT UP last time, the only one with experience, was approached. The government said we're trying to fix the Reflecting Pool in 2 weeks or whatever before Independence Day. The company said, no thanks, not interested, don't want to be liable for that, not with a ten foot pole. A cost-plus contract would be "Hey it didn't work, I need some more money to redo it like we agreed." Fixed cost is "It didn't work. Fix it now, or pay for someone else to, or else we will hold you liable for damages and your company will no longer exist." On August 05 2026 03:52 Geiko wrote:
I think you're also not thinking quite clearly. My stance is very obvious, I trust neither Trump nor his DOJ. By that I mean that I think they lie enough of the time that they are not reliable sources of information.
Why I'm quoting the DOJ is because in this instance, we have the head of the DOJ saying something (damage to the pool was not done by vandals) and Trump saying the exact opposite (damage done to the pool was done by vandals). It follows logically that one of them is saying a falsehood. (Regardless of whether I trust any of them).
My opinion is that Trump is the one lying because he has all the reasons to lie as you've said, it benefits him politically. On the other hand the head of the DOJ has no reason to lie, quite the contrary as it endangers her job.
Now we've established that one of them is telling falsehoods, who do you think it is and why ? Your issue is not realizing these things are interconnected. The fact that the damage is due to the repair job not going as planned doesn't mean Trump created this whole situation just as an excuse to give his "friend" (if you believe him) a 20% $3 million contract to break the pool. The damage is due to the repair job not going as planned because it is an old sinking pool, a unique job, a problem that neither the government nor contractors have shown mastery of, and has a high chance of not going according to plan no matter who did it. Which is why there's not an infinite supply of contractors willing to do it for 1% margin in 1 day and you shouldn't trust them if there were. On the subject of the lying: You still haven't answered my question. Who do you think is wrong Trump or the DOJ ? And why do you think they are wrong ? HEY *waves hands wildly* You literally just read, quoted, and responded to this: . The fact that the damage is due to the repair job not going as planned doesn't mean Trump created this whole situation just as an excuse to give his "friend" (if you believe him) a 20% $3 million contract to break the pool. The damage is due to the repair job not going as planned What part of these sentences gives any ambiguity whatsoever about whether I think the damage was caused by vandals or not? Let's get some information to stick here. On August 05 2026 16:17 Geiko wrote:
On the subject of corruption:
I don't think no-bid contracts are necessarily corruption. I think they are corruption when they are not justified. The Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) and the Competition in Contracting Act (CICA) require justifications in order to ensure an open-bidding process could not have been done.
In this case the government argued that the justification was "unusual and compelling urgency".
My questions to you:
Did the fact that the 250th anniversary happened on the 4th of July 2026 come as a surprise to the Trump administration?
Was the fact that the pool was leaking/broken hidden from them and they only discovered it recently ?
If the answer is "no" to the previous questions, what was unusual and urgently compelling about needing to fix the pool for the 4th of july ? Is it incompetence for not having foreseen something easily foreseeable? Or is it corruption for waiting until the last moment to "legally" hand out a 15M no-bid contract to a friend ?
So the standard of corruption is not whether it's legal, not whether it's no-bid, it basically boils down to just whether the person handles it different than you would. The 2012 open bid job took 22 months. This was told to you which again makes me suspect nothing is sticking. Ask the LLM teaching you law what date is 22 months after January 20th, 2025. Use another LLM or your own background knowledge to compare whether that date falls before or after July 4th, 2026. Yeah rushing is justified. Nor was Trump inaugurated on January 20th 2025 knowing "We are going to have a fair on the National Mall next year, and for this purpose we want the Reflecting Pool to be painted blue." That would have been absurd. That was decided in 2026. That's why rushing is legitimate. Even though you wouldn't personally do it that way, I got that, you would use hindsight and a time machine to start far earlier, the standard for corruption isn't just what you would do. It can't be. For example, you aren't president, don't live in DC, don't have to take care of DC, aren't holding a 250th anniversary celebration, probably have different views about the significance of the Reflecting Pool and aesthetic opinions of what color it should even be, etc. The government, and the administration, are not simply Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool optimizers. They have other jobs. For the pool there's many options. You can clean it. You can modify it. You can repair it. You can tear it down and rebuild it. You can choose to let it languish. But the fact that the pool is leaking is apparently not a guaranteed motivation to repair it per se. Or else everyone involved going back to 2013 is incompetent. Just sitting back and blaming people as soon as they do something, for not having done it earlier, inculcates a culture of nobody ever doing anything. Boring philosophy to nowhere. Pool renovation: Genius home-run miracle? No (not yet, off chance of yes after 2nd go). Apocalyptic corruptiongate? No. Reasonable effort by obvious patriots to make a national symbol look better and be stronger? Yes. Still ultimately just a pool I'm never, ever going to fall into heart attack psychosis about? Absolutely. Do you ever tire of chatting absolute bollocks? Not before others stop entertaining it. It's not as if people aren't familiar with the concept. Everyone knows the Sartre explanation for what someone like oBlade gets out of it. What people are struggling with is actually investigating/understanding what it is they are getting out of supporting oBlade in perpetuating it. It must hurt knowing that people here think letting oBlade type up his insane rants is more productive than talking to someone who puts words in other people's mouths when they can't win an argument. It's sad/scary. I'm happy to be ignored when the "BlueMAGA left" and "not-BlueMAGA left" are actually distinguishing themselves from each other functionally. You all are demonstrably incapable of that (and have been for ~a decade) though. Ok GH you’re right and everyone else lacks your moral fortitude, congrats. I know me breaking immersion is upsetting for people, but it is a necessary part of informed political engagement.
lol
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Northern Ireland27464 Posts
On August 06 2026 01:46 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2026 01:39 LightSpectra wrote:On August 06 2026 01:38 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 06 2026 01:33 LightSpectra wrote:On August 06 2026 01:17 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 06 2026 01:05 WombaT wrote:On August 06 2026 00:36 oBlade wrote:On August 05 2026 16:17 Geiko wrote:On August 05 2026 13:20 oBlade wrote:On August 05 2026 03:52 Geiko wrote:
[quote]
You're missing the point. Whether or not they keep the 3M is irrelevant, what matters is that they got to have it in the first place when "normal" contractors would have gotten ~ 1,5M. You're stuck on level 1. The magic free money gods of government didn't just arbitrarily decide for them to get 8% extra. It is a CONTRACT. Contracts require TWO PARTIES TO AGREE. Nobody would have done it for 6% because look at the timeframe and requirements. You already admitted you think no-bid contracts are corruption, period, so what do you think you're going to convince me of by quibbling about the specific percent margins that you don't understand? It's not a cost-plus contract. It's a fixed price contract for a difficult and rush (at the time, slightly less so now) job. Something probably neither the contractor nor the government were sure was possible in the timeframe. That's why it's 20%. It's about risk. For reference Sika, the company that took two years to FUCK IT UP last time, the only one with experience, was approached. The government said we're trying to fix the Reflecting Pool in 2 weeks or whatever before Independence Day. The company said, no thanks, not interested, don't want to be liable for that, not with a ten foot pole. A cost-plus contract would be "Hey it didn't work, I need some more money to redo it like we agreed." Fixed cost is "It didn't work. Fix it now, or pay for someone else to, or else we will hold you liable for damages and your company will no longer exist." On August 05 2026 03:52 Geiko wrote:
I think you're also not thinking quite clearly. My stance is very obvious, I trust neither Trump nor his DOJ. By that I mean that I think they lie enough of the time that they are not reliable sources of information.
Why I'm quoting the DOJ is because in this instance, we have the head of the DOJ saying something (damage to the pool was not done by vandals) and Trump saying the exact opposite (damage done to the pool was done by vandals). It follows logically that one of them is saying a falsehood. (Regardless of whether I trust any of them).
My opinion is that Trump is the one lying because he has all the reasons to lie as you've said, it benefits him politically. On the other hand the head of the DOJ has no reason to lie, quite the contrary as it endangers her job.
Now we've established that one of them is telling falsehoods, who do you think it is and why ? Your issue is not realizing these things are interconnected. The fact that the damage is due to the repair job not going as planned doesn't mean Trump created this whole situation just as an excuse to give his "friend" (if you believe him) a 20% $3 million contract to break the pool. The damage is due to the repair job not going as planned because it is an old sinking pool, a unique job, a problem that neither the government nor contractors have shown mastery of, and has a high chance of not going according to plan no matter who did it. Which is why there's not an infinite supply of contractors willing to do it for 1% margin in 1 day and you shouldn't trust them if there were. On the subject of the lying: You still haven't answered my question. Who do you think is wrong Trump or the DOJ ? And why do you think they are wrong ? HEY *waves hands wildly* You literally just read, quoted, and responded to this: . The fact that the damage is due to the repair job not going as planned doesn't mean Trump created this whole situation just as an excuse to give his "friend" (if you believe him) a 20% $3 million contract to break the pool. The damage is due to the repair job not going as planned What part of these sentences gives any ambiguity whatsoever about whether I think the damage was caused by vandals or not? Let's get some information to stick here. On August 05 2026 16:17 Geiko wrote:
On the subject of corruption:
I don't think no-bid contracts are necessarily corruption. I think they are corruption when they are not justified. The Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) and the Competition in Contracting Act (CICA) require justifications in order to ensure an open-bidding process could not have been done.
In this case the government argued that the justification was "unusual and compelling urgency".
My questions to you:
Did the fact that the 250th anniversary happened on the 4th of July 2026 come as a surprise to the Trump administration?
Was the fact that the pool was leaking/broken hidden from them and they only discovered it recently ?
If the answer is "no" to the previous questions, what was unusual and urgently compelling about needing to fix the pool for the 4th of july ? Is it incompetence for not having foreseen something easily foreseeable? Or is it corruption for waiting until the last moment to "legally" hand out a 15M no-bid contract to a friend ?
So the standard of corruption is not whether it's legal, not whether it's no-bid, it basically boils down to just whether the person handles it different than you would. The 2012 open bid job took 22 months. This was told to you which again makes me suspect nothing is sticking. Ask the LLM teaching you law what date is 22 months after January 20th, 2025. Use another LLM or your own background knowledge to compare whether that date falls before or after July 4th, 2026. Yeah rushing is justified. Nor was Trump inaugurated on January 20th 2025 knowing "We are going to have a fair on the National Mall next year, and for this purpose we want the Reflecting Pool to be painted blue." That would have been absurd. That was decided in 2026. That's why rushing is legitimate. Even though you wouldn't personally do it that way, I got that, you would use hindsight and a time machine to start far earlier, the standard for corruption isn't just what you would do. It can't be. For example, you aren't president, don't live in DC, don't have to take care of DC, aren't holding a 250th anniversary celebration, probably have different views about the significance of the Reflecting Pool and aesthetic opinions of what color it should even be, etc. The government, and the administration, are not simply Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool optimizers. They have other jobs. For the pool there's many options. You can clean it. You can modify it. You can repair it. You can tear it down and rebuild it. You can choose to let it languish. But the fact that the pool is leaking is apparently not a guaranteed motivation to repair it per se. Or else everyone involved going back to 2013 is incompetent. Just sitting back and blaming people as soon as they do something, for not having done it earlier, inculcates a culture of nobody ever doing anything. Boring philosophy to nowhere. Pool renovation: Genius home-run miracle? No (not yet, off chance of yes after 2nd go). Apocalyptic corruptiongate? No. Reasonable effort by obvious patriots to make a national symbol look better and be stronger? Yes. Still ultimately just a pool I'm never, ever going to fall into heart attack psychosis about? Absolutely. Do you ever tire of chatting absolute bollocks? Not before others stop entertaining it. It's not as if people aren't familiar with the concept. Everyone knows the Sartre explanation for what someone like oBlade gets out of it. What people are struggling with is actually investigating/understanding what it is they are getting out of supporting oBlade in perpetuating it. It must hurt knowing that people here think letting oBlade type up his insane rants is more productive than talking to someone who puts words in other people's mouths when they can't win an argument. It's sad/scary. I'm happy to be ignored when the "BlueMAGA left" and "not-BlueMAGA left" are actually distinguishing themselves from each other functionally. You all are demonstrably incapable of that (and have been for ~a decade) though. You don't sound very happy to be ignored. You're not distinguishing the functional differences between the "BlueMAGA left" and "not-BlueMAGA left", or ignoring me lol. That said, I'm mostly just getting secondhand embarrassment. Show nested quote +On August 06 2026 01:41 WombaT wrote:On August 06 2026 01:38 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 06 2026 01:33 LightSpectra wrote:On August 06 2026 01:17 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 06 2026 01:05 WombaT wrote:On August 06 2026 00:36 oBlade wrote:On August 05 2026 16:17 Geiko wrote:On August 05 2026 13:20 oBlade wrote:On August 05 2026 03:52 Geiko wrote:
[quote]
You're missing the point. Whether or not they keep the 3M is irrelevant, what matters is that they got to have it in the first place when "normal" contractors would have gotten ~ 1,5M. You're stuck on level 1. The magic free money gods of government didn't just arbitrarily decide for them to get 8% extra. It is a CONTRACT. Contracts require TWO PARTIES TO AGREE. Nobody would have done it for 6% because look at the timeframe and requirements. You already admitted you think no-bid contracts are corruption, period, so what do you think you're going to convince me of by quibbling about the specific percent margins that you don't understand? It's not a cost-plus contract. It's a fixed price contract for a difficult and rush (at the time, slightly less so now) job. Something probably neither the contractor nor the government were sure was possible in the timeframe. That's why it's 20%. It's about risk. For reference Sika, the company that took two years to FUCK IT UP last time, the only one with experience, was approached. The government said we're trying to fix the Reflecting Pool in 2 weeks or whatever before Independence Day. The company said, no thanks, not interested, don't want to be liable for that, not with a ten foot pole. A cost-plus contract would be "Hey it didn't work, I need some more money to redo it like we agreed." Fixed cost is "It didn't work. Fix it now, or pay for someone else to, or else we will hold you liable for damages and your company will no longer exist." On August 05 2026 03:52 Geiko wrote:
I think you're also not thinking quite clearly. My stance is very obvious, I trust neither Trump nor his DOJ. By that I mean that I think they lie enough of the time that they are not reliable sources of information.
Why I'm quoting the DOJ is because in this instance, we have the head of the DOJ saying something (damage to the pool was not done by vandals) and Trump saying the exact opposite (damage done to the pool was done by vandals). It follows logically that one of them is saying a falsehood. (Regardless of whether I trust any of them).
My opinion is that Trump is the one lying because he has all the reasons to lie as you've said, it benefits him politically. On the other hand the head of the DOJ has no reason to lie, quite the contrary as it endangers her job.
Now we've established that one of them is telling falsehoods, who do you think it is and why ? Your issue is not realizing these things are interconnected. The fact that the damage is due to the repair job not going as planned doesn't mean Trump created this whole situation just as an excuse to give his "friend" (if you believe him) a 20% $3 million contract to break the pool. The damage is due to the repair job not going as planned because it is an old sinking pool, a unique job, a problem that neither the government nor contractors have shown mastery of, and has a high chance of not going according to plan no matter who did it. Which is why there's not an infinite supply of contractors willing to do it for 1% margin in 1 day and you shouldn't trust them if there were. On the subject of the lying: You still haven't answered my question. Who do you think is wrong Trump or the DOJ ? And why do you think they are wrong ? HEY *waves hands wildly* You literally just read, quoted, and responded to this: . The fact that the damage is due to the repair job not going as planned doesn't mean Trump created this whole situation just as an excuse to give his "friend" (if you believe him) a 20% $3 million contract to break the pool. The damage is due to the repair job not going as planned What part of these sentences gives any ambiguity whatsoever about whether I think the damage was caused by vandals or not? Let's get some information to stick here. On August 05 2026 16:17 Geiko wrote:
On the subject of corruption:
I don't think no-bid contracts are necessarily corruption. I think they are corruption when they are not justified. The Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) and the Competition in Contracting Act (CICA) require justifications in order to ensure an open-bidding process could not have been done.
In this case the government argued that the justification was "unusual and compelling urgency".
My questions to you:
Did the fact that the 250th anniversary happened on the 4th of July 2026 come as a surprise to the Trump administration?
Was the fact that the pool was leaking/broken hidden from them and they only discovered it recently ?
If the answer is "no" to the previous questions, what was unusual and urgently compelling about needing to fix the pool for the 4th of july ? Is it incompetence for not having foreseen something easily foreseeable? Or is it corruption for waiting until the last moment to "legally" hand out a 15M no-bid contract to a friend ?
So the standard of corruption is not whether it's legal, not whether it's no-bid, it basically boils down to just whether the person handles it different than you would. The 2012 open bid job took 22 months. This was told to you which again makes me suspect nothing is sticking. Ask the LLM teaching you law what date is 22 months after January 20th, 2025. Use another LLM or your own background knowledge to compare whether that date falls before or after July 4th, 2026. Yeah rushing is justified. Nor was Trump inaugurated on January 20th 2025 knowing "We are going to have a fair on the National Mall next year, and for this purpose we want the Reflecting Pool to be painted blue." That would have been absurd. That was decided in 2026. That's why rushing is legitimate. Even though you wouldn't personally do it that way, I got that, you would use hindsight and a time machine to start far earlier, the standard for corruption isn't just what you would do. It can't be. For example, you aren't president, don't live in DC, don't have to take care of DC, aren't holding a 250th anniversary celebration, probably have different views about the significance of the Reflecting Pool and aesthetic opinions of what color it should even be, etc. The government, and the administration, are not simply Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool optimizers. They have other jobs. For the pool there's many options. You can clean it. You can modify it. You can repair it. You can tear it down and rebuild it. You can choose to let it languish. But the fact that the pool is leaking is apparently not a guaranteed motivation to repair it per se. Or else everyone involved going back to 2013 is incompetent. Just sitting back and blaming people as soon as they do something, for not having done it earlier, inculcates a culture of nobody ever doing anything. Boring philosophy to nowhere. Pool renovation: Genius home-run miracle? No (not yet, off chance of yes after 2nd go). Apocalyptic corruptiongate? No. Reasonable effort by obvious patriots to make a national symbol look better and be stronger? Yes. Still ultimately just a pool I'm never, ever going to fall into heart attack psychosis about? Absolutely. Do you ever tire of chatting absolute bollocks? Not before others stop entertaining it. It's not as if people aren't familiar with the concept. Everyone knows the Sartre explanation for what someone like oBlade gets out of it. What people are struggling with is actually investigating/understanding what it is they are getting out of supporting oBlade in perpetuating it. It must hurt knowing that people here think letting oBlade type up his insane rants is more productive than talking to someone who puts words in other people's mouths when they can't win an argument. It's sad/scary. I'm happy to be ignored when the "BlueMAGA left" and "not-BlueMAGA left" are actually distinguishing themselves from each other functionally. You all are demonstrably incapable of that (and have been for ~a decade) though. Ok GH you’re right and everyone else lacks your moral fortitude, congrats. I know me breaking immersion is upsetting for people, but it is a necessary part of informed political engagement.
What immersion are you breaking exactly?
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On August 06 2026 02:02 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2026 01:46 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 06 2026 01:39 LightSpectra wrote:On August 06 2026 01:38 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 06 2026 01:33 LightSpectra wrote:On August 06 2026 01:17 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 06 2026 01:05 WombaT wrote:On August 06 2026 00:36 oBlade wrote:On August 05 2026 16:17 Geiko wrote:On August 05 2026 13:20 oBlade wrote:
[quote]
You're stuck on level 1. The magic free money gods of government didn't just arbitrarily decide for them to get 8% extra. It is a CONTRACT. Contracts require TWO PARTIES TO AGREE. Nobody would have done it for 6% because look at the timeframe and requirements.
You already admitted you think no-bid contracts are corruption, period, so what do you think you're going to convince me of by quibbling about the specific percent margins that you don't understand?
It's not a cost-plus contract. It's a fixed price contract for a difficult and rush (at the time, slightly less so now) job. Something probably neither the contractor nor the government were sure was possible in the timeframe. That's why it's 20%. It's about risk.
For reference Sika, the company that took two years to FUCK IT UP last time, the only one with experience, was approached. The government said we're trying to fix the Reflecting Pool in 2 weeks or whatever before Independence Day. The company said, no thanks, not interested, don't want to be liable for that, not with a ten foot pole.
A cost-plus contract would be "Hey it didn't work, I need some more money to redo it like we agreed." Fixed cost is "It didn't work. Fix it now, or pay for someone else to, or else we will hold you liable for damages and your company will no longer exist."
[quote]
Your issue is not realizing these things are interconnected. The fact that the damage is due to the repair job not going as planned doesn't mean Trump created this whole situation just as an excuse to give his "friend" (if you believe him) a 20% $3 million contract to break the pool. The damage is due to the repair job not going as planned because it is an old sinking pool, a unique job, a problem that neither the government nor contractors have shown mastery of, and has a high chance of not going according to plan no matter who did it. Which is why there's not an infinite supply of contractors willing to do it for 1% margin in 1 day and you shouldn't trust them if there were. On the subject of the lying: You still haven't answered my question. Who do you think is wrong Trump or the DOJ ? And why do you think they are wrong ? HEY *waves hands wildly* You literally just read, quoted, and responded to this: . The fact that the damage is due to the repair job not going as planned doesn't mean Trump created this whole situation just as an excuse to give his "friend" (if you believe him) a 20% $3 million contract to break the pool. The damage is due to the repair job not going as planned What part of these sentences gives any ambiguity whatsoever about whether I think the damage was caused by vandals or not? Let's get some information to stick here. On August 05 2026 16:17 Geiko wrote:
On the subject of corruption:
I don't think no-bid contracts are necessarily corruption. I think they are corruption when they are not justified. The Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) and the Competition in Contracting Act (CICA) require justifications in order to ensure an open-bidding process could not have been done.
In this case the government argued that the justification was "unusual and compelling urgency".
My questions to you:
Did the fact that the 250th anniversary happened on the 4th of July 2026 come as a surprise to the Trump administration?
Was the fact that the pool was leaking/broken hidden from them and they only discovered it recently ?
If the answer is "no" to the previous questions, what was unusual and urgently compelling about needing to fix the pool for the 4th of july ? Is it incompetence for not having foreseen something easily foreseeable? Or is it corruption for waiting until the last moment to "legally" hand out a 15M no-bid contract to a friend ?
So the standard of corruption is not whether it's legal, not whether it's no-bid, it basically boils down to just whether the person handles it different than you would. The 2012 open bid job took 22 months. This was told to you which again makes me suspect nothing is sticking. Ask the LLM teaching you law what date is 22 months after January 20th, 2025. Use another LLM or your own background knowledge to compare whether that date falls before or after July 4th, 2026. Yeah rushing is justified. Nor was Trump inaugurated on January 20th 2025 knowing "We are going to have a fair on the National Mall next year, and for this purpose we want the Reflecting Pool to be painted blue." That would have been absurd. That was decided in 2026. That's why rushing is legitimate. Even though you wouldn't personally do it that way, I got that, you would use hindsight and a time machine to start far earlier, the standard for corruption isn't just what you would do. It can't be. For example, you aren't president, don't live in DC, don't have to take care of DC, aren't holding a 250th anniversary celebration, probably have different views about the significance of the Reflecting Pool and aesthetic opinions of what color it should even be, etc. The government, and the administration, are not simply Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool optimizers. They have other jobs. For the pool there's many options. You can clean it. You can modify it. You can repair it. You can tear it down and rebuild it. You can choose to let it languish. But the fact that the pool is leaking is apparently not a guaranteed motivation to repair it per se. Or else everyone involved going back to 2013 is incompetent. Just sitting back and blaming people as soon as they do something, for not having done it earlier, inculcates a culture of nobody ever doing anything. Boring philosophy to nowhere. Pool renovation: Genius home-run miracle? No (not yet, off chance of yes after 2nd go). Apocalyptic corruptiongate? No. Reasonable effort by obvious patriots to make a national symbol look better and be stronger? Yes. Still ultimately just a pool I'm never, ever going to fall into heart attack psychosis about? Absolutely. Do you ever tire of chatting absolute bollocks? Not before others stop entertaining it. It's not as if people aren't familiar with the concept. Everyone knows the Sartre explanation for what someone like oBlade gets out of it. What people are struggling with is actually investigating/understanding what it is they are getting out of supporting oBlade in perpetuating it. It must hurt knowing that people here think letting oBlade type up his insane rants is more productive than talking to someone who puts words in other people's mouths when they can't win an argument. It's sad/scary. I'm happy to be ignored when the "BlueMAGA left" and "not-BlueMAGA left" are actually distinguishing themselves from each other functionally. You all are demonstrably incapable of that (and have been for ~a decade) though. You don't sound very happy to be ignored. You're not distinguishing the functional differences between the "BlueMAGA left" and "not-BlueMAGA left", or ignoring me lol. That said, I'm mostly just getting secondhand embarrassment. On August 06 2026 01:41 WombaT wrote:On August 06 2026 01:38 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 06 2026 01:33 LightSpectra wrote:On August 06 2026 01:17 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 06 2026 01:05 WombaT wrote:On August 06 2026 00:36 oBlade wrote:On August 05 2026 16:17 Geiko wrote:On August 05 2026 13:20 oBlade wrote:
[quote]
You're stuck on level 1. The magic free money gods of government didn't just arbitrarily decide for them to get 8% extra. It is a CONTRACT. Contracts require TWO PARTIES TO AGREE. Nobody would have done it for 6% because look at the timeframe and requirements.
You already admitted you think no-bid contracts are corruption, period, so what do you think you're going to convince me of by quibbling about the specific percent margins that you don't understand?
It's not a cost-plus contract. It's a fixed price contract for a difficult and rush (at the time, slightly less so now) job. Something probably neither the contractor nor the government were sure was possible in the timeframe. That's why it's 20%. It's about risk.
For reference Sika, the company that took two years to FUCK IT UP last time, the only one with experience, was approached. The government said we're trying to fix the Reflecting Pool in 2 weeks or whatever before Independence Day. The company said, no thanks, not interested, don't want to be liable for that, not with a ten foot pole.
A cost-plus contract would be "Hey it didn't work, I need some more money to redo it like we agreed." Fixed cost is "It didn't work. Fix it now, or pay for someone else to, or else we will hold you liable for damages and your company will no longer exist."
[quote]
Your issue is not realizing these things are interconnected. The fact that the damage is due to the repair job not going as planned doesn't mean Trump created this whole situation just as an excuse to give his "friend" (if you believe him) a 20% $3 million contract to break the pool. The damage is due to the repair job not going as planned because it is an old sinking pool, a unique job, a problem that neither the government nor contractors have shown mastery of, and has a high chance of not going according to plan no matter who did it. Which is why there's not an infinite supply of contractors willing to do it for 1% margin in 1 day and you shouldn't trust them if there were. On the subject of the lying: You still haven't answered my question. Who do you think is wrong Trump or the DOJ ? And why do you think they are wrong ? HEY *waves hands wildly* You literally just read, quoted, and responded to this: . The fact that the damage is due to the repair job not going as planned doesn't mean Trump created this whole situation just as an excuse to give his "friend" (if you believe him) a 20% $3 million contract to break the pool. The damage is due to the repair job not going as planned What part of these sentences gives any ambiguity whatsoever about whether I think the damage was caused by vandals or not? Let's get some information to stick here. On August 05 2026 16:17 Geiko wrote:
On the subject of corruption:
I don't think no-bid contracts are necessarily corruption. I think they are corruption when they are not justified. The Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) and the Competition in Contracting Act (CICA) require justifications in order to ensure an open-bidding process could not have been done.
In this case the government argued that the justification was "unusual and compelling urgency".
My questions to you:
Did the fact that the 250th anniversary happened on the 4th of July 2026 come as a surprise to the Trump administration?
Was the fact that the pool was leaking/broken hidden from them and they only discovered it recently ?
If the answer is "no" to the previous questions, what was unusual and urgently compelling about needing to fix the pool for the 4th of july ? Is it incompetence for not having foreseen something easily foreseeable? Or is it corruption for waiting until the last moment to "legally" hand out a 15M no-bid contract to a friend ?
So the standard of corruption is not whether it's legal, not whether it's no-bid, it basically boils down to just whether the person handles it different than you would. The 2012 open bid job took 22 months. This was told to you which again makes me suspect nothing is sticking. Ask the LLM teaching you law what date is 22 months after January 20th, 2025. Use another LLM or your own background knowledge to compare whether that date falls before or after July 4th, 2026. Yeah rushing is justified. Nor was Trump inaugurated on January 20th 2025 knowing "We are going to have a fair on the National Mall next year, and for this purpose we want the Reflecting Pool to be painted blue." That would have been absurd. That was decided in 2026. That's why rushing is legitimate. Even though you wouldn't personally do it that way, I got that, you would use hindsight and a time machine to start far earlier, the standard for corruption isn't just what you would do. It can't be. For example, you aren't president, don't live in DC, don't have to take care of DC, aren't holding a 250th anniversary celebration, probably have different views about the significance of the Reflecting Pool and aesthetic opinions of what color it should even be, etc. The government, and the administration, are not simply Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool optimizers. They have other jobs. For the pool there's many options. You can clean it. You can modify it. You can repair it. You can tear it down and rebuild it. You can choose to let it languish. But the fact that the pool is leaking is apparently not a guaranteed motivation to repair it per se. Or else everyone involved going back to 2013 is incompetent. Just sitting back and blaming people as soon as they do something, for not having done it earlier, inculcates a culture of nobody ever doing anything. Boring philosophy to nowhere. Pool renovation: Genius home-run miracle? No (not yet, off chance of yes after 2nd go). Apocalyptic corruptiongate? No. Reasonable effort by obvious patriots to make a national symbol look better and be stronger? Yes. Still ultimately just a pool I'm never, ever going to fall into heart attack psychosis about? Absolutely. Do you ever tire of chatting absolute bollocks? Not before others stop entertaining it. It's not as if people aren't familiar with the concept. Everyone knows the Sartre explanation for what someone like oBlade gets out of it. What people are struggling with is actually investigating/understanding what it is they are getting out of supporting oBlade in perpetuating it. It must hurt knowing that people here think letting oBlade type up his insane rants is more productive than talking to someone who puts words in other people's mouths when they can't win an argument. It's sad/scary. I'm happy to be ignored when the "BlueMAGA left" and "not-BlueMAGA left" are actually distinguishing themselves from each other functionally. You all are demonstrably incapable of that (and have been for ~a decade) though. Ok GH you’re right and everyone else lacks your moral fortitude, congrats. I know me breaking immersion is upsetting for people, but it is a necessary part of informed political engagement. What immersion are you breaking exactly?
Basically, the immersion around the feeling of superiority among those that are functionally helping to perpetuate/propagate oBlade's "insane rants/absolute bollocks"
If we all honestly examine what anyone gets out of continuing to take the baits and fall into the Sartre traps, we can nip them in the bud.
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We're getting oBlade to write out insanely funny shit like "long COVID doesn't exist" and you think we're the ones getting baited. Because of our weak wills and lack of pattern recognition, surely, but nothing you can't fix by linking back to your own posts about hamster wheels for the 90th time.
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On August 06 2026 02:46 LightSpectra wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2026 02:29 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 06 2026 02:02 WombaT wrote:On August 06 2026 01:46 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 06 2026 01:39 LightSpectra wrote:On August 06 2026 01:38 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 06 2026 01:33 LightSpectra wrote:On August 06 2026 01:17 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 06 2026 01:05 WombaT wrote:On August 06 2026 00:36 oBlade wrote:
[quote]
HEY *waves hands wildly*
You literally just read, quoted, and responded to this:
[quote]
What part of these sentences gives any ambiguity whatsoever about whether I think the damage was caused by vandals or not? Let's get some information to stick here.
[quote]
So the standard of corruption is not whether it's legal, not whether it's no-bid, it basically boils down to just whether the person handles it different than you would.
The 2012 open bid job took 22 months. This was told to you which again makes me suspect nothing is sticking. Ask the LLM teaching you law what date is 22 months after January 20th, 2025. Use another LLM or your own background knowledge to compare whether that date falls before or after July 4th, 2026. Yeah rushing is justified.
Nor was Trump inaugurated on January 20th 2025 knowing "We are going to have a fair on the National Mall next year, and for this purpose we want the Reflecting Pool to be painted blue." That would have been absurd. That was decided in 2026. That's why rushing is legitimate. Even though you wouldn't personally do it that way, I got that, you would use hindsight and a time machine to start far earlier, the standard for corruption isn't just what you would do. It can't be. For example, you aren't president, don't live in DC, don't have to take care of DC, aren't holding a 250th anniversary celebration, probably have different views about the significance of the Reflecting Pool and aesthetic opinions of what color it should even be, etc.
The government, and the administration, are not simply Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool optimizers. They have other jobs. For the pool there's many options. You can clean it. You can modify it. You can repair it. You can tear it down and rebuild it. You can choose to let it languish. But the fact that the pool is leaking is apparently not a guaranteed motivation to repair it per se. Or else everyone involved going back to 2013 is incompetent. Just sitting back and blaming people as soon as they do something, for not having done it earlier, inculcates a culture of nobody ever doing anything. Boring philosophy to nowhere.
Pool renovation: Genius home-run miracle? No (not yet, off chance of yes after 2nd go). Apocalyptic corruptiongate? No. Reasonable effort by obvious patriots to make a national symbol look better and be stronger? Yes. Still ultimately just a pool I'm never, ever going to fall into heart attack psychosis about? Absolutely. Do you ever tire of chatting absolute bollocks? Not before others stop entertaining it. It's not as if people aren't familiar with the concept. Everyone knows the Sartre explanation for what someone like oBlade gets out of it. What people are struggling with is actually investigating/understanding what it is they are getting out of supporting oBlade in perpetuating it. It must hurt knowing that people here think letting oBlade type up his insane rants is more productive than talking to someone who puts words in other people's mouths when they can't win an argument. It's sad/scary. I'm happy to be ignored when the "BlueMAGA left" and "not-BlueMAGA left" are actually distinguishing themselves from each other functionally. You all are demonstrably incapable of that (and have been for ~a decade) though. You don't sound very happy to be ignored. You're not distinguishing the functional differences between the "BlueMAGA left" and "not-BlueMAGA left", or ignoring me lol. That said, I'm mostly just getting secondhand embarrassment. On August 06 2026 01:41 WombaT wrote:On August 06 2026 01:38 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 06 2026 01:33 LightSpectra wrote:On August 06 2026 01:17 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 06 2026 01:05 WombaT wrote:On August 06 2026 00:36 oBlade wrote:
[quote]
HEY *waves hands wildly*
You literally just read, quoted, and responded to this:
[quote]
What part of these sentences gives any ambiguity whatsoever about whether I think the damage was caused by vandals or not? Let's get some information to stick here.
[quote]
So the standard of corruption is not whether it's legal, not whether it's no-bid, it basically boils down to just whether the person handles it different than you would.
The 2012 open bid job took 22 months. This was told to you which again makes me suspect nothing is sticking. Ask the LLM teaching you law what date is 22 months after January 20th, 2025. Use another LLM or your own background knowledge to compare whether that date falls before or after July 4th, 2026. Yeah rushing is justified.
Nor was Trump inaugurated on January 20th 2025 knowing "We are going to have a fair on the National Mall next year, and for this purpose we want the Reflecting Pool to be painted blue." That would have been absurd. That was decided in 2026. That's why rushing is legitimate. Even though you wouldn't personally do it that way, I got that, you would use hindsight and a time machine to start far earlier, the standard for corruption isn't just what you would do. It can't be. For example, you aren't president, don't live in DC, don't have to take care of DC, aren't holding a 250th anniversary celebration, probably have different views about the significance of the Reflecting Pool and aesthetic opinions of what color it should even be, etc.
The government, and the administration, are not simply Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool optimizers. They have other jobs. For the pool there's many options. You can clean it. You can modify it. You can repair it. You can tear it down and rebuild it. You can choose to let it languish. But the fact that the pool is leaking is apparently not a guaranteed motivation to repair it per se. Or else everyone involved going back to 2013 is incompetent. Just sitting back and blaming people as soon as they do something, for not having done it earlier, inculcates a culture of nobody ever doing anything. Boring philosophy to nowhere.
Pool renovation: Genius home-run miracle? No (not yet, off chance of yes after 2nd go). Apocalyptic corruptiongate? No. Reasonable effort by obvious patriots to make a national symbol look better and be stronger? Yes. Still ultimately just a pool I'm never, ever going to fall into heart attack psychosis about? Absolutely. Do you ever tire of chatting absolute bollocks? Not before others stop entertaining it. It's not as if people aren't familiar with the concept. Everyone knows the Sartre explanation for what someone like oBlade gets out of it. What people are struggling with is actually investigating/understanding what it is they are getting out of supporting oBlade in perpetuating it. It must hurt knowing that people here think letting oBlade type up his insane rants is more productive than talking to someone who puts words in other people's mouths when they can't win an argument. It's sad/scary. I'm happy to be ignored when the "BlueMAGA left" and "not-BlueMAGA left" are actually distinguishing themselves from each other functionally. You all are demonstrably incapable of that (and have been for ~a decade) though. Ok GH you’re right and everyone else lacks your moral fortitude, congrats. I know me breaking immersion is upsetting for people, but it is a necessary part of informed political engagement. What immersion are you breaking exactly? Basically, the immersion around the feeling of superiority among those that are functionally helping to perpetuate/propagate oBlade's "insane rants/absolute bollocks" If we all honestly examine what anyone gets out of continuing to take the baits and fall into the Sartre traps, we can nip them in the bud. We're getting oBlade to write out insanely funny shit like "long COVID doesn't exist" and you think we're the ones getting baited. + Show Spoiler +Because of our weak wills and lack of pattern recognition, surely, but nothing you can't fix by linking back to your own posts about hamster wheels for the 90th time.
I think it is pretty obvious and why a lot of people have stopped taking the bait.
You could replace "long COVID doesn't exist" with just about anything (meaning basically any preposterous and bigoted MAGAbrainrot) and people would believe you/not care if it wasn't true. Helping oBlade spread the insanity is literally exactly what you yourself already know is oBlade's intent/desire you and others are fulfilling.
On June 11 2025 01:36 LightSpectra wrote:Show nested quote +On June 11 2025 01:19 Jankisa wrote:
EDIT: I just noticed he replied, this long winded reply I will simply ignore it and won't read it, and now we wasted a nice amount of his time that he can't spend posting this shit on reddit or stormfront or wherever he usually spews his bullshit. It ain't much, but it's honest work. Frustrating them by not participating in their bad-faith nonsense is the best strategy. + Show Spoiler +The evergreen Sartre quote universally applicable to the alt-right: “Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.” Also: No, I Will Not Debate You: Civility will never defeat fascism, no matter what The Economist thinks.
If you won't listen to me, maybe listen to you?
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On August 06 2026 02:54 GreenHorizons wrote:I think it is pretty obvious and why a lot of people have stopped taking the bait. + Show Spoiler +You could replace "long COVID doesn't exist" with just about anything and people would believe you/not care if it wasn't true. Helping oBlade spread the insanity is literally exactly what you yourself already know is oBlade's intent/desire you and others are fulfilling. On June 11 2025 01:36 LightSpectra wrote:Show nested quote +On June 11 2025 01:19 Jankisa wrote:
EDIT: I just noticed he replied, this long winded reply I will simply ignore it and won't read it, and now we wasted a nice amount of his time that he can't spend posting this shit on reddit or stormfront or wherever he usually spews his bullshit. It ain't much, but it's honest work. Frustrating them by not participating in their bad-faith nonsense is the best strategy. + Show Spoiler +The evergreen Sartre quote universally applicable to the alt-right: “Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.” Also: No, I Will Not Debate You: Civility will never defeat fascism, no matter what The Economist thinks. If you won't listen to me, maybe listen to you?
GH discovers why people stopped responding to GH except to laugh when they're visibly disgruntled people won't respond to them except in jest.
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I’m enjoying the irony of GH not realizing he is the closest thing the thread has to blue MAGA. Even has the nick names and slogans.
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Over the last nine months, Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has run dozens of paid ads that include explicit AI-generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and images of minors alongside sexually suggestive statements, according to details of the ads shared with WIRED: https://www.wired.com/story/meta-ran-ads-that-contained-ai-generated-child-sexual-abuse-imagery/
"this isn’t content posted by third parties on Facebook or Instagram, these are ads that were reviewed, approved, and allowed to run by Meta, never encountering interference while the company collected the ad dollars"
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EPT
