Trump's border wall looks more like a fence

[Porsupah Ree]

Looks like IT at the Executive Office will be busy all weekend fending off attacks as people decide to prove he is wrong about that!

Now you've done it. I want to hear Trump tech support. =

 

[Essence Lumin]

Now you've done it. I want to hear Trump tech support. =

I can only imagine. Customer: "My computer is in flames and electricity is flying".

Trump tech support: "Have you tried rebooting it?".

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Navy intel vet talking about how useless a wall is.

 

[Kara Spengler]

Now you've done it. I want to hear Trump tech support. =

A RL one that occurred a few years back ....

When an administration leaves people tend to do small jokes on the next one. Not leaving keys to locked drawers and stuff like that. When Clinton left a LOT of people took the 'w' key off of their keyboards. Of course since that was part of Bush's name ....

That is not the best part though.

One keyboard manufacturer heard about it and sent IT a bag of 'w' keys calling it 'the most important letter on the keyboard' (clearly an R and sucking up). The bag of keys got returned because it was above the value of what you could give as a gift.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Some quick calculations just for fun. Judging by the scale of the car, these steel bars are 8 m tall above the ground, 0.25 m in diameter and spaced 0.25 m apart. Assuming they are anchored 2 m into the ground and made from solid steel, they would require about 40 million metric tonnes of steel - almost half USA's total steel production in 2014 - to cover the entire US-Mexican border with this design. Assuming a price of 335 USD per tonne (the current U.S price for shredded scrap steel), the cost of the raw materials alone would be more than 13.5 billion dollars.

That's for the bars alone, not including the necessary bracing and such.

Of course, they could be made from hollow steel tubes but this design is critically flimsy even when solid so that's not really an option. All it takes to break through it is a truck, a length of heavy steel chain and about half an hour of time before the border patrol arrives. An actual wall that would have any significant effect at all, would require far sturdier bars using far more steel.

On top of that, steel rusts, so maintenance would be a nightmare.

Please feel free to repost and redistribute this post any way you like as long as it is the entire post (excluding the illustration from Twitter) with the reservation that this is a very quick estimate and should be checked and rechecked for errors by experts.

Some calculations on similar lines by the Washington Post, who spotted that, based on the image of the car used for scale, the picture seems to have been compressed, presumably to make the bars seem closer together than they would be in reality: Based on Trump’s detailed diagram of his slat wall, we did some advanced mathematics

 

[Pamela]

Oops.

 

[Kara Spengler]

Oops.

Well, maybe donnie can use the gofundme money somehow and call that his win on the issue. Although it might be hard (even if it is not a con) since the WH was unable to accept even keycaps because they cost too much.

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

Oops.

Too bad she deleted that tweet. I wanted to have some fun with that!

 

[Kaimi Kyomoon]

I keep getting emails claiming to be from a triple amputee veteran who started a GoFundMe to get money to build the wall. The emails are all about how vicious liberals are now attacking and threatening him and his family in horrible ways. How I got on THAT list I can't imagine.

 

[Pamela]

Well, maybe donnie can use the gofundme money somehow and call that his win on the issue. Although it might be hard (even if it is not a con) since the WH was unable to accept even keycaps because they cost too much.

He has only spent a tiny percentage of the money already allocated for border security. The wall is a complete bullshit distractor.

Anyway: His minions think that a measly five million is half a billion!

 

[eku zhong]

i was thinking... if Frumpty's wall is like the one in the picture at the start.. then a ladder gofundme is not needed.
All you need are some tension rods... JUST SAYING...

 

[Pamela]

i was thinking... if Frumpty's wall is like the one in the picture at the start.. then a ladder gofundme is not needed.
All you need are some tension rods... JUST SAYING...

It’s not. He has published a picture featuring slats*. But that too is bullshit. He also says the wall has already started being built. It has not.

The bottom line, he is not getting any damn wall as long as Nancy Pelosi is breathing. And the longer he reminds us of that fact, the weaker he looks, even to his base.

Anyway it’s all about building a monument to maintaining white privilege:

* https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/23/opinions/trump-wall-address-base-fear-obeidallah/index.html

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Anyway it’s all about building a monument to maintaining white privilege:

I like that. In Trump's head it's his personal Karnak, but that sums up the base so well.

 

[Veritable Quandry]

Just wondering who is passing all those bills with Congress out of town...

 

[Cindy Claveau]

I love how they keep saying "walls work". Based on what, exactly? Can they name even one country that has secured its borders with a wall that successfully kept out immigrants and invaders? Even the Great Wall of China was breached fairly often.

The Maginot Line was mainly a device intended to make Germany laugh. It worked, for a couple of days.

 

[Cindy Claveau]

Today America is definitely again going into some kind of isolationism, feeling scared, unsafer than ever before, divided, unhappy. Which is quite a feat considering that America has by far the biggest military budget worldwide, and it's not exactly surrounded by enemies either.

We had loud voices advocating for "America First" (using that very same slogan) before WW1, too. Then a war happened.

 

[Jopsy Pendragon]

Clearly this wall, like the keystone XL pipeline, is just a way of sending American money to Trump's and Putin's buddy and Russian steel oligarch, Roman Abramovich (Evraz). Trump's throwing a supreme hissy over funding because he and his family's asses would be forfeited with extreme prejudice if he fails.

Even if Pelosi/Schumer stipulated that "funding for the wall being entirely contingent on 100% U.S. mined and manufactured U.S. Steel", it would drive the cost of steel up so much that our construction and auto industries would both suffer AND be forced to buy Evraz steel as well.

 

[detrius]

The Maginot Line was mainly a device intended to make Germany laugh. It worked, for a couple of days.

Well, Nazi Germany didn't attack the Maignot line, but went around it.

If I recall correctly, it was actually supposed to work in tandem with the Dutch and Belgian fortifications: French soldiers would move into the Netherlands and Belgium to support their allies if a war with Germany broke out. But then the Netherlands and Belgium declared neutrality and when WW2 came, France couldn't help as planned. So Germany just overran the smaller countries and moved straight into France.

ETA: not quite sure if it was just the defense of the Netherlands, Belgium or both countries that failed - the point is that the Maignot Line was just one part of a much larger defensive strategy and it was the ~other~ parts of this strategy that didn't work out as planned.

Anyway, the Maignot Line was also a series of fortifications, not a wall, and it was supposed to stop an actual invasion, not to hinder migration.

 

[detrius]

Clearly this wall, like the keystone XL pipeline, is just a way of sending American money to Trump's and Putin's buddy and Russian steel oligarch, Roman Abramovich (Evraz). Trump's throwing a supreme hissy over funding because he and his family's asses would be forfeited with extreme prejudice if he fails.

Even if Pelosi/Schumer stipulated that "funding for the wall being entirely contingent on 100% U.S. mined and manufactured U.S. Steel", it would drive the cost of steel up so much that our construction and auto industries would both suffer AND be forced to buy Evraz steel as well.

Someone should suggest digging a 30 feet deep trench instead of erecting a 30 feet high wall.

Y'know, just to mess with the Trump-tards.

Like a trans-continental ha-ha.

(Or "ho-ho", since it would be much deeper.)

 

[Innula Zenovka]

I love how they keep saying "walls work". Based on what, exactly? Can they name even one country that has secured its borders with a wall that successfully kept out immigrants and invaders? Even the Great Wall of China was breached fairly often.

Hey, it worked for Westeros for 8,000-odd years.