US Politics Mega-thread

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:

Show nested 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.

Show nested 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.

It's very hard talking to you, and if I'm being honest, you're being a little dense. I asked you three times why Trump would say vandals damaged the pool, and you still won't answer. The only thing I got was, "Trump likes to exaggerate things," which I don't understand, because there's nothing to exaggerate. It's not like there were people doing a little bit of vandalism and Trump claimed they did a lot of vandalism. The vandalism with box cutters is simply completely made up. The correct answer to the question is, "Trump is a pathological liar," which you won't bring yourself to say, despite agreeing yourself that he's saying things that are clearly completely made up. Just like you wouldn't bring yourself to say that "a 3000% decrease" doesn't make any sense, or that Joe Biden won the 2020 election. And it's hard to understand because you seem like a decently intelligent individual.

What's your objective here? Deny everything like the cool people you see on Fox News? Refuse to answer "Who won the 2020 election?" like the cool politicians you see in those Senate hearings? You're not a politician and you're not on national TV; you're on a StarCraft forum, and copying these people (who do what they do so as not to anger Trump) just makes you look like a tool.

With that out of the way, a competitive open-bid process takes about six months for this type of work. I don't need an LLM to know that because it's literally my job. Instead of starting in March 2026, they would have had to start in October 2025. But who needs planning when you can just give away more money to friends and family right ?

The standard for corruption is not "whether the person handled it differently than I would have"; it's "did Trump and/or his friends enrich themselves at the expense of the American taxpayer?"

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