13 thoughts on “Friday Open Thread”

1. Who will be the next speaker of the house?  http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/26/us/boehner-will-resign-from-congress.html?_r=0

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   1. Totally disastrous and entirely possible! A conservative hero and representative of the intellectual qualities of today's Tea Party! The reason why Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann and Donald Trump don't embarrass Republicans! Ladies and gentlemen, I give you:

       

       

       

      

       

       

       

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2. How stupid an idea is the Republican Border Wall of Separation?

   100% of Stupid-Americans (40% in this poll) say if we start building border walls we should include the exclusion of our Northern Neighbors. 0% of former East Germans agree.

   And how is this border wall to keep out all the unwanted Canadians and Mexicans to be constructed? 

   [H]uman beings have built a 2,000-mile-long frontier wall exactly one time. Once. And it was accomplished only through a centuries-long building campaign that necessitated the forced labor of millions of Chinese peasants.

   But wait, we hate the Chinese and would surely be foolish to copy them, no?

   […] If we assume a border wall length of 1,954 miles (there are 600 or so miles of existing border barrier, but much of this would not qualify for Trump’s wall), then we can make some estimates as to the volume of concrete needed for the project:

   Foundation: 6 feet deep, 18 inch radius = 42.4 cubic feet

   4 square feet area by 30 feet tall = 120 cubic feet

   Wall panels: 25 feet tall by 10 feet long by 8 inches thick = 166.7 cubic feet

   Total concrete per 10-foot segment = 329.1 cubic feet 1,954 miles = 10,300,00 feet = 1,030,000 segments (10-feet long each) 1,030,000 segments * 329.1 cubic feet per segment = 339,000,000 cubic feet = 12,555,000 cubic yards. (The cubic yard is the standard unit of measure of concrete volume in the United States.)

   Twelve million, six hundred thousand cubic yards. In other words, this wall would contain over three times the amount of concrete used to build the Hoover Dam — a project that, unlike Trump’s wall, has qualitative, verifiable economic benefits.

   Such a wall would be greater in volume than all six pyramids of the Giza Necropolis — and the quantity of concrete could pave a one-lane road from New York to Los Angeles, going the long way around the Earth, which would probably be just as useful.

    

   I vote for Trump as General Contractor and Halliburton as builder. And let's talk about it 24x7x365 until these morons come back to reality.

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   1. The stupidity of the expense is only, umm, "trumped" by the fact that the Great Wall of China ultimately did not work – it did not keep the outsiders out.  Nor did the various Roman walls of the second century CE keep the Gauls and Vandals away.  Insert obligatory George Santayana quote here.

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      1. Speaking of forgetting and so being doomed to repeating history, Jeb! apparently either missed the widespread media amusement over Santorum claiming the Pope, who holds a degree in Chemistry and worked as a chemist before becoming a priest, should stick to religious matters because he's not a scientist (and apparently leave it to pols with no science background) or he's already forgotten it. By making  a nearly identical stupid statement just months later, Jeb! once again demonstrates the shaky nature of decades worth of common wisdom claims that he's the smart brother. 

         http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jeb-bush-climate-change-pope_56047a10e4b08820d91c57bc?utm_hp_ref=politics

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         1. Don't you long for the day when Dan Quayle was the stupidest Republican we had to deal with? 

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            1. Or when we didn't hear from talking heads about a pol like Boehner's problems with the conservatives in his party as if Boehner and almost every Republican in congress isn't, at the very least, a rock ribbed conservative with the Young Guns/Teapartiers not just conservative but completely irrational right wing extremists. The fact that the Boehners in congress recognize that at least some small degree of deal making with the other side is necessary to governing doesn't make them less conservative. It just makes them a little less childish and irrational. 

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   2. Did you see the latest episode of South Park? Who's to assume the Canadians WANT to come here? They're just as likely to build a wall to keep US out 🙂

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      1. That's aboot the size of it, 'ay? (with apologies to Canadians)

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      2. Can we at least repatriate Raphael Eduardo Cruz to his native land before they seal the Canadian part of the wall?

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      3. It's a reverse Trump! The Canadians get a wall and get Trump to pay for it!

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   3. Zapp – this is a great post.  I'm in an MBA program and have a class where I'd like to talk about this. Do you mind if I used this? (I'll give you credit for the information).  Thanks. 

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      1. Please do. No need to give credit, though it will give "Zappatero" a trifecta of cites (once in The Nation, once in Ari Berman's "Herding Donkeys").

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