Trump made a number of public promises about the reconstruction of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Here are the principal ones that were widely reported:
It would be completed quickly. Trump initially said the resurfacing and repairs would take about a week, emphasizing that the work would be done rapidly.
It would cost less than $2 million. Early estimates from the administration put the project at approximately $2 million. Later reporting found that the cost grew to about $14.7 million.
The pool would be resurfaced in “American Flag Blue.” Trump personally selected the blue coating, saying it would improve the appearance and better reflect the sky.
The new surface would fix leaks and waterproof the pool. The project was promoted as replacing or repairing deteriorated joints and providing a durable waterproof lining.
The renovation would solve the algae problem. Trump described the new materials and filtration approach as using the “latest and greatest” technology to eliminate the recurring algae blooms that had plagued the pool.
The finished pool would be beautiful and long-lasting. Trump repeatedly characterized the renovated pool as a showcase project for America’s 250th anniversary, and in one widely circulated statement claimed it would last 100 years.
After problems developed, Trump promised to repair them quickly. When the blue coating peeled and the pool developed algae, Trump said the damage was caused by vandals and promised that after the July 4 celebrations the pool would be drained, repaired, and restored to looking “as good as it was two weeks ago.”
The contrast between those promises and subsequent events has been a major focus of news coverage.
And by the way, Trump just said he would use the same no-bid contractors again because “they did a fantastic job.” (In Trump-speak, “fantastic” is the same as “fantasy.”)
Are you surprised that Trump says one thing, backtracks and says another thing, and then backtracks again and says still another thing, all the while never admitting he is wrong about anything?
If you are surprised, you must be a MAGA. or simply not paying attention. His promises are like smoke. They disappear the moment they are made. For instance:
Date
Statement
Context
June 13
“Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left.”
Following Israel’s initial strikes, Trump urged Iran to negotiate mediately.
June 13
“The attacks will only get more brutal.”
Warning that additional Israeli attacks would be more destructive if Iran refused a nuclear agreement.
June 13
“We gave them 60 days… today is day 61.”
He linked the Israeli operation to the expiration of his negotiation deadline.
June 18
“I may do it. I may not do it. Nobody knows what I’m going to do.”
Referring to possible U.S. military intervention.
June 19
“I’ll make my decision within the next two weeks.”
Announcement, through Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, that he would decide whether to attack Iran. The strikes occurred two days later.
June 21
“We have completed our very successful attack on the three nuclear sites in Iran.”
Truth Social announcement immediately after the U.S. strikes.
June 21
“A spectacular military success.”
Opening line of his televised address to the nation.
June 21
“Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.”
His strongest characterization of the damage inflicted.
June 21
“NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE!”
Posted immediately after announcing the attacks.
June 21
“Any retaliation… will be met with force far greater than what was witnessed tonight.”
Warning to Iran after the strikes.
Late June
“The nuclear program has been set back decades.”
Repeated claim defending the effectiveness of the operation.
June 27
“You got beat to hell.”
Directed at Iran’s Supreme Leader after Tehran claimed victory.
June 27
“I would absolutely” bomb Iran again.
Said he would authorize another strike if Iran resumed high-level uranium enrichment
One thing that stands out in this episode is his repeated use of superlatives—”spectacular,” “completely and totally obliterated,” “very successful.”
And yet, here we are, in far worse position than before Trump started the war he promised he never would start: We have no agreement; Iran now controls the Strait vs. having an agreement and having free passage through the Strait. And this cost us America lives, Iranian lives, billions of dollars, an inflation, the trust of any other nation, and a severe depletion of our weaponry.
This is what Trump claims is a “fantastic” success.
China and Russia must be laughing.
A CHART OF TRUMP’S BROKEN PROMISES, IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER, LEFT TO RIGHT
So why wouldn’t I pardon them for trying to overthrow the United States government. Is that a crime?
But don’t you dare touch the peeling paint in my reflection pool. THAT is a serious crime.
Trump-appointed judge reluctantly drops January 6 case against Proud Boys
Story by Sam Stevenson
The Trump-appointed judge made clear he was acting under legal constraint, not agreement with the outcome.
The ruling erases some of the most serious January 6 convictions and cements the Trump administration’s effort to dismantle the sprawling federal prosecution tied to the Capitol attack.
It permanently clears charges against Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl and Dominic Pezzola, preventing any future federal prosecution on the same counts.
Key Points
Convictions erased: All had been convicted of serious felonies in 2023; three of seditious conspiracy.
Case dismissed “with prejudice”: Charges cannot be brought again by a future administration.
Trigger event: DOJ motion following a presidential order directing dismissal of January 6-related indictments.
Scale of clemency: Around 1,500 January 6 defendants were pardoned, with a smaller group—including these four—originally receiving sentence commutations.
Legal constraint: Judge said he lacked authority to force prosecutors to continue the case.
Thank you, Supreme Court, for providing a path for future traitors. Ignore all judges and juries, and get a cr00ked President to pardon you. It’s easy.
OK, this is not a real photo, but remember all those secret meetings Trump had with Putin — the one’s where no secretaries were even allowed in to take notes?
Think back to Trump’s history with women and all the accusations against him. And even a conviction. Does anyone with a brain really believe Donald Trump resisted the temptation?
We’re talking about the Donald Trump, who cheated on three wives, and admitted to grabbing women’s pu***es, suddenly resisting temptation???
“Yeah, Vlad, I know it sounds ridiculous, but MAGAs buy whatever I say. So, I’ll keep acting like I can’t stand you Communists, while doing everything possible to block Ukraine and help you come out on top.
“Just, please, don’t leak the tapes of me with those Russian hookers—I’ve already had enough trouble keeping the Epstein stuff buried. “And let’s not even think about Katie Johnson, who was only 13. “If you stay quiet, I’ll just keep denying it all, and the so-called moral right will go along with me. “Now, what else do you need me to do?”
We often hear thee phrase, “You don’t know what you don’t know.”
It implies that the unknown merely awaits discovery. But the deeper limitation may not be ignorance; it may be imagination. I can’t imagine what I can’t imagine.
Every thought I have, every analogy I construct, every scientific theory I devise is built from narrow tiny range of stimuli that evolution has allowed me to perceive. There may exist entire categories of reality for which I possess no sensory foundation, no language, no mathematics, and no intuition.
The greatest mysteries of the universe may not be the questions we cannot answer. They may be the questions we never can think to ask.
Are there things that literally are unimaginable — things we never will know because they are well outside our senses?
Science is often portrayed as an endless expansion of knowledge, but perhaps our greatest limitation is not ignorance. Perhaps it is imagination. We assume that if something exists, eventually we will discover it. Yet every discovery we have ever made has been filtered through the narrow range of stimuli our senses can detect.
We build telescopes, microscopes, radio receivers, and gravitational-wave detectors, but all they really do is translate unfamiliar phenomena into sights, sounds, numbers, and images that our human brains already know how to interpret. We extend our senses, but we do not fundamentally change them.
Learning itself depends upon analogy.To understand something new, we compare it with something already familiar. Every explanation eventually comes down to the phrase, “It is like…”
That simple phrase reveals the profound limitation of human thought. If a phenomenon is unlike anything we have ever experienced, then we cannot truly imagine it. We can assign it a name, measure its effects, and manipulate equations describing its behavior, but we cannot picture it.
Ultraviolet light is a perfect example. We know its wavelength, we know that bees see it, and we know that flowers display intricate ultraviolet patterns invisible to us. Yet no human has ever experienced what ultraviolet “looks like.” We possess the mathematics, but not the sensation.
Many insects, birds, fish, and even reindeer can see ultraviolet light. We can imagine red and blue, but we cannot imagine ultraviolet. We cannot imagine what gravity looks like. Or magnetism. We cannot comprehend a singularity that supposedly lies at the center of a black hole. We cannot visualize a fourth physical dimension.
Quantum mechanics illustrates this limitation perfectly. We speak confidently of particles, waves, fields, and entanglement, yet these words are merely placeholders.
A quantum “particle” is not truly like a tiny billiard ball, a quantum “field” is not a field in the ordinary sense, and “entanglement” is simply a label attached to a mathematical relationship that defies ordinary intuition.
These all are just the stimuli that we know exist, but we can’t imagine them. There may be infinite potential stimuli in the universe a that are completely beyond our imagination–literally unimaginable. Our ability to imagine may be “like” the skin of an apple compared to what the universe holds.
We invent words because our language has reached its limits. The names do not explain the phenomena; they merely remind us that something exists beyond our imagination.
Perhaps mathematics is our greatest attempt to escape these biological constraints. It allows us to reason about realities that no human being can visualize.
Yet mathematics, too, is a human invention, constructed by human minds from human patterns of thought. It succeeds brilliantly, but it reaches boundaries.
At the singularities predicted by general relativity and in the earliest moments of the Big Bang and inside a black hole, our mathematics ceases to provide meaningful descriptions. Our final refuge becomes silent.
Imagine that the universe contains a mile-wide spectrum of possible stimuli, while human beings can detect only a one-inch strip. Every philosophy, every science, every religion, every work of art, and every mathematical system must necessarily arise from that tiny strip.
We naturally ask, “What don’t we know?” The deeper question is, “What are we incapable of even imagining?” Somewhere beyond our narrow sensory window may exist entirely different categories of experience for which human senses, language, mathematics, and intuition have no counterpart.
One day we may discover that the next great scientific revolution will not come from a larger telescope or a more powerful accelerator. It may come from acquiring an entirely new sense.
Imagine a human endowed with the ultraviolet vision of a bird, the magnetic sensitivity of a migratory animal, or some completely novel form of perception unknown on Earth.
Such a person would not merely gather more information. They would possess new analogies, new intuitions, and perhaps entirely new mathematics. Concepts that now appear mysterious—perhaps even quantum entanglement itself—might become as self-evident as color or sound is to us.
Our greatest obstacle to understanding the universe may not be that reality is too complex. It may be that evolution equipped us to survive rather than to comprehend.
The human mind is a magnificent instrument, but like every instrument, it has a range. Beyond that range lies not merely the unknown, but perhaps the unimaginable. Every discovery we make is limited not only by the instruments we build but by the kinds of experience our brains are capable of having.
Why can’t you understand?
Usually, I propose a specific idea—Monetary Sovereignty, consciousness as responsiveness, locality as relationship. Here, I identify a limit: not a limit of physics, but a limit of human cognition itself.
Whether the conclusion ultimately proves right or wrong, I think it is an important philosophical question. Are there things we simply cannot know, because evolution wired our brains to survive, not to know the universe.
Try to explain atoms to a dog. Its brain is not constructed to understand atoms. Why should we humans believe that our brain is constructed to know everything? Why should there not be an intelligence as far above us as we are above a dog?
We flatter ourselves by believing that science is a steady march toward complete understanding. Perhaps it is a steady march toward the limits of human imagination. Beyond those limits may lie realities that are not merely undiscovered but literally inconceivable to the human brain.
Evolution has not ended here. It continues. There is no reason why evolution should have equipped today’s Homo Sapiens to imagine everything. We surely are just another interim in the long chain of evolution — which may even include forms of machine intelligence — and not the ultimate rung of comprehension.
Perhaps there are aspects of reality — stimuli that surround us every moment — as obvious to other forms of intelligence as color is to us, yet forever inaccessible because the necessary senses, analogies, and concepts do not exist within us of today.
We do not know what they are. More profoundly, we cannot imagine what they could be.
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 