hmmm
Category: Race,
Trump order to paint border wall black could drive up cost $500 million or more
[Trump’s] determination to have the steel bollards coated in black has fluctuated during the past several years, and military commanders and border officials believed as recently as last fall that they had finally talked him out of it. They consider the black paint unnecessary, costly and a significant long-term maintenance burden, and they left it out of the original U.S. Customs and Border Protection design specifications.
Trump has not let go of the idea, insisting that the dark color will enhance its forbidding appearance and leave the steel too hot to touch during summer months.
…The Post obtained a copy of painting estimates that federal contracting officials produced, and it shows costs ranging from $500 million for two coats of acrylic paint to more than $3 billion for a premium “powder coating” on the structure’s 30-foot steel bollards, the high end of the options the officials have identified.
…The White House has obtained about $15 billion for the project so far, two-thirds of which has been diverted from Defense Department construction funds and counternarcotics programs. CBP projections indicate the money will pay for approximately 731 miles of new barriers, but those estimates did not take into account the president’s painting plans.
…One official with knowledge of the plans said it wasn’t clear how the painting crews would operate on the Mexico side of the barrier, where only a narrow strip of land separates the two countries. Painters would potentially need to apply the black coating using a specialized boom long enough to extend up and over the barrier from the U.S. side.
…Last year, after Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) heavily promoted Fisher to the president as a cheaper option for building the border wall, Trump urged aides to give the firm a building contract. The North Dakota company and its owner have donated to Cramer and the president, and the company sued the government when its border wall bids were not accepted.
Loser.
Michelle Obama: Lack of minority voters in 2016 was ‘slap in face’
“I understand the people who voted for [President] Trump. [But] the people who didn’t vote at all … that’s when you think, ‘Man, people think this is a game,’ ” she added at another point.
“It wasn’t just in this election, but every midterm, every time Barack didn’t get the Congress he needed, that was because our folks didn’t show up. After all that work, they just couldn’t be bothered to vote at all. That’s my trauma.”
…“When you see people gunned down because somebody was so afraid of a kid in a hoodie, that that ended his life … how were these people dealing with the fact that a black family was in what they perceived was their White House? That was the America that we live in,” she said.
…She said that being dubbed an “angry black woman” when she first hit the spotlight hurt — and forced her to stop talking off the cuff.
“I had to be much more scripted. I was just waking up to the truth of who we can be, so ready to assume the worst in people,’’ Michelle said.
Michelle Obama: Lack of minority voters in 2016 was ‘slap in face’
n/t
Man wears KKK hood while grocery shopping in San Diego area
Man wears KKK hood while grocery shopping in San Diego area – Los Angeles Times
If you’re protesting and violating self-isolation guidelines, people like this guy in the hood are who you aligning yourself with. Period.
There is nothing that says wrong-kind-of-white like proclaiming your own self-determination to be worth more than the lives and safety of others.
The secret weapon hidden in Obama’s endorsement of Biden
The contrast between those two — Donald Trump and Barack Obama is stark, not just on policy but on larger themes like goodness, virtue and purpose. Restoring those things to the White House would banish what Obama called in his endorsement video the “corruption, carelessness, self-dealing, disinformation, ignorance and just plain meanness” of the Trump tenure.
The secret weapon hidden in Obama’s endorsement of Biden (opinion) – CNN
Interesting theory.
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