Pondering Thirteen Months To Build The Empire State Building Over Dry Land & Fort Worth's Bridge Boondoggle

No. That is not the stunning skyline of beautiful downtown Fort Worth you are looking at here. What you are looking at is a small section of the stunning skyline of beautiful downtown New York City.

Today we are looking at that tall skyscraper in the center of the picture as the latest chapter in our popular series of bloggings about feats of engineering completed in a time frame of less than four years.

That skyscraper you see here is known as the Empire State Building. For several decades the Empire State Building was the tallest building in the world.

Construction of the Empire State Building began on March 17, 1930. Construction of the Empire State Building was completed on April 30, 1931, with the grand opening the next day, on May 1, 1931.

The Empire State Building took around 13 months to build.

A year and one month.

Meanwhile, in Fort Worth, Texas, 85 years after the Empire State Building opened for business, a big explosion amid embarrassing braggadocio from local politicians, and others, marked the start of construction of three simple small bridges being built over dry land.

With those three simple small bridges being built over dry land projected to take four years to build.

Hardly anyone among the herd of local sheep questions this bizarre slow motion bridge construction's absurdly long timeline for such a simple project.

The Trinity River Vision Boondoggle has been boondoggling along for well over a decade now. Yet there is only a peep here and there about the obvious fact that there is something not quite right about this allegedly vitally needed flood control and economic development project.

Clearly, judging by The Boondoggle's non-urgent, slow motion project progress there must not be much of a flood control problem or any economic development need.

If the Interstate Highway system, which began to be built in the late 1950s, was built on a Fort Worth time schedule, we would still be waiting for a freeway to exit Texas on in the direction from whence we came.

Near as I can tell no New York City congressperson's son was given a cushy job to be the Executive Director of the Empire State Building Vision.

However, former New York governor, Al Smith, did chair the construction company which built the Empire State Building.

Maybe former Texas governor, Rick Perry, could be hired to help with some aspect of the hapless Trinity River Vision Boondoggle.

For the grand opening of the Empire State Building President Herbert Hoover dramatically signaled the opening by pushing a button in the White House which turned on the lights in the Empire State Building.

What with the start of construction of the Empire State Building beginning with a simple ground-breaking ceremony, not a TNT explosion like The Boondoggle's start of construction of its three little bridges over dry land, with such things needing to be proportional, what sort of amazing act is The Boondoggle going to come up with to mark the grand opening if its little bridges are finally ever able to carry traffic?

I suspect whoever is President, on that distant day in the future if The Boondoggle's bridges are ever finished, won't be pushing any button in the White House to mark the occasion.

That is, unless America goes totally mad and elects J.D. Granger's mama to the highest office in the land. One can only shudder to wonder what job a President Granger would give her favorite son.......

Friday The 13th Thinking About Not Voting Al Smith For President Because He Is Catholic

It is appropriately very very dark this Friday the 13th, looking out my primary viewing portal on the world, past the bars that surround my secondary viewing portal patio prison cell, at a swimming pool that is currently too cold to swim in.

It is currently 29 degrees in the outer world at my location.

This is the first time, that I remember, since I began obsessively monitoring the temperature around the world, that the temperature at my current location and my old location, in Washington, are the same.

Changing the subject to Mitt Romney. I knew he was a Mormon. I should have guessed, since he is a Mormon, that Mitt Romney has reproduced himself a lot of times.

But I had no idea, til this morning, that there are so many Mitt Romney reproductions. And that they look like clones. I saw a group picture of Mitt Romney and a large percentage of his clones, I mean, sons. Mitt Romney looks like their big brother, not old enough to be the maker of all these reproductions.

I don't know if I got the info on all the sons, but the bios of the ones I read had them all married and busy making reproductions. I saw no photos of the secondary reproductions, so I don't know if they are all Mitt Romney clones too.

I'm not understanding why there is not more of an issue made of Mitt Romney being a Mormon. Has America really gotten totally tolerant? It does not seem all that long ago that a Catholic had a hard time running for President.

I remember when the governor of New York, Al Smith, became the first Catholic nominated for President, in 1928. He lost to Herbert Hoover. I don't remember who I voted for in that election. It was likely Al Smith, because I seldom vote for the winner.

A much bigger fuss was made in 1928, over Al Smith being a Catholic, than the almost zero fuss made over Mitt Romney being  Mormon in 2012.

I have nothing against Mormons, or any religion. I just think it's goofy to believe that Jesus got resurrected in Jerusalem and then made his way over to North America where he preached to the Native Americans, before taking off for wherever it is His heavenly paradise is located.

I wish I could say I am going swimming now.