Dem
47
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53
Boy, this story is almost too obvious for this feature. And yet, it is also damn near the Platonic ideal of schadenfreude, so we're going with it. As most readers have heard by now, the Trump administration's slapdash efforts to "improve" the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool have turned into an unmitigated disaster.
When you have water that is somewhat warm and somewhat still, that is a recipe for algae to form, at least in the summer. The algae problem has gotten worse in the last decade or so, a development broadly attributed to climate change—a phenomenon that the current presidential administration considers to be "fake news." There is a way to make the algae problem even worse, and that is to paint the bottom of the pool a color—say, blue—that absorbs heat and makes the water even warmer than it would otherwise be. And so—Surprise!—this year's algal bloom is the worst it's been in at least 5 years, and possibly longer. Consequently, the color of the water is not the "American flag blue" that Donald Trump has promised. Something more like "American sewage green." See for yourself:
Those images are from EarthCam.
Obviously, Trump cannot handle the fact that he cannot overcome the realities of marine biology with force of will. And so, Department of the Interior (DoI) employees have been dumping vast amounts of hydrogen peroxide into the reflection pool. It is true that will kill algae. It is also true that it will have a broader environmental impact, like killing the ducks that use the pond for swimming and drinking. Oh, and the hydrogen peroxide being used is a very strong 12% concentrate, which is potentially dangerous for workers. Take a look at this picture:
Does it look like proper safety measures are in place?
And it gets worse. Recall that the cost of painting the pool blue was $14.7 million, with the no-bid, overpriced contract being awarded to a crony of the President's. This arrangement did not get all that much scrutiny, probably because $14.7 million seems like pennies compared to the $1 billion for Trump's ballroom and the $1.776 billion for his slush fund—two stories that were in heavy rotation at about the same time. It would seem that $14.7 million doesn't go as far as it once did, because just 12 days after the re-paint was "finished," the paint started peeling from the bottom of the pool. There are pictures all over the Internet showing big chunks of paint floating to the surface:
In fairness to the firm that did the work, even they probably know that in addition to killing algae and ducks, hydrogen peroxide is also a paint remover.
And now that the whole project is a complete and utter mess, and has made the White House the butt of jokes (yet again), how have the President, his underlings and his supporters responded? In exactly the two ways you would guess, if you thought about it for a minute. The first of those is conspiratorial thinking. One popular claim is that Trump-hating government employees deliberately seeded the pool with algae, so as to embarrass the President. Another is that the embarrassing photos that are all over the Internet were actually taken while Joe Biden was president. Unexplained is why the photos would show big paint chips, since Biden's administration never painted the bottom of the pool.
The other oh-so-Trumpy response is gaslighting. The DoI, for example, put out this tweet:
The advanced nanobubbler technology very effectively killed the algae that has plagued every Lincoln Reflecting Pool reopening—most infamously Obama's reopening—since 1922.
The Reflecting Pool water is crystal clear, and our National Park Service team is now vacuuming up the dead algae resting on the bottom of some parts of the Reflecting Pool—just like the destroyed Iranian Navy resting on the bottom of the Persian Gulf.
In other words: Don't believe your lyin' eyes, especially since we have a copy of Photoshop.
At this point, let us review the elements of this story:
It's remarkable how very much this situation is a microcosm for the entire administration.
The good news for Trump is that there has been an enormous increase in tourist traffic to the reflecting pool. That bad news is that it's from people who want to see if it's really as bad as the media is reporting, and who want to laugh at Trump's failings. Oh, well, any publicity is good publicity, right? (Z)