What would you do with $3 trillion?
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.
Usually wrong but never in doubt
Also, are you sure you want people to rate your comments?
There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you do not.
Republicans do not pay their debts.
Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.
Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.
Trumpflation is an intolerable hardship for every American, and it’s Trump’s fault.
Fight them, without becoming them!
“Facilitate” is an active verb, not a weasel word.
“In the future, this lab will be a museum. do not touch it.”
He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!
They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.
Dumb motherfuckers cannot understand a consequence that most 4 year olds have fully sorted out.
American history and black history cannot be separated.
Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?
The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.
Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.
Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.
They punch you in the face and then start crying because their fist hurts.
If ‘weird’ was the finish line, they ran through the tape and kept running.
You are either for trump or for democracy. Pick one.
The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.
The lights are all blinking red.
Pisco Sours
I’d become a supervillain, buy my own tropical island, unleash a plague that would threaten to turn everyone gay, and meet a grisly end at James Bond’s hands.
cleek
i’d get this run in all the major newspapers.
Pisco Sours
cleek, if that’s a rickroll, you’re going to be the first test subject for my new virus.
cleek
not a rickroll.. more of a dickroll.
jake
Bwraaak! Freedom isn’t free, bwraaak!
/Propaganda Parrot
If you turned George Bush gay I’d feed you to your damn piranhas myself. Cheney? You’d go in the tank, feet first and slo-o-o-w.
Also, how does a plague threaten to turn someone gay? Notes, e-mail, phone message?
Maybe we should just skip to the part where Bond drops you in the inexplicably placed giant food processor.
Evil villains, hmmph!
Redhand
Ah, priceless, AND you can charge it to someone else’s Mastercard.
Rick Taylor
David Goodstein, a physicist and Vice Provost at Cal Tech, wrote a book called “Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil” in which he argued that civilization itself was threatened by the end of fossil fuels and the lack of some way to power it. He made the prediction, “Civilization as we know it will come to an end some time in this century, when the fuel runs out.” He said this was different from other scientific predictions, in that in making it he hoped it would be wrong, and in making the prediction he hoped to help make it wrong.
I heard him interviewed on NPR’s Fresh Air by Terry Gross (unfortunately the interview doesn’t seem to be available anymore). He made his usual prediction with the usual caveat, and she asked him, what if we put the resources we currently using towards the Iraq war to find alternative energy instead? Would that be enough? He paused for thought, as he hadn’t expected the question, and then answered yes it would.
ParagonPark
Nothing like “science” to provide objective information free from hyperbole, propaganda and the taint of political motivation.
There are so many good reasons to oppose the war we really don’t even need to rely on the fallacious argument that military spending is bad for the economy let alone hypothetical solutions to hypothetical crises, where neither hypothesis is backed by anything more than a guy with a degree saying something outrageous so he can get a wider audience than he would for real science.
4tehlulz
Build something to whack this asteroid.
Have a nice day!
Punchy
Buy a tank of gas, and use the $5.64 left over for a Slurpee and Corn Nuts.
Tim C
I would end world hunger.
Incertus
I’d buy a house in south Florida–almost.
On a side note, the Catholic Church really needs to find a better ad agency, because those pictures don’t help their cause very much.
Crusty Dem
I tell you what I’d do, two girls at the same time.
After that, i’d put a trillion into wind turbines, a couple hundred billion each into nuclear, solar, and fuel cell technology, and throw the rest at NIH for biomedical research. I might set aside a couple billion for “personal needs”, but that should do it.
Then I would tell the Saudis to go Cheney themselves. Speaking of which, can I use this money to do unspeakable things to Dick Cheney? If so I would render him (extraordinarily) to Uzbekistan for boiling oil dippings and repeated sodomization with a rolled copy of the bill of rights (written in 72 pt helvetica bold)
4tehlulz
>>helvetica bold
No way. That’s going too far.
cleek
truly. Helvetica is the cruelest of all the fonts… after MS Comic Sans, obviously.
Crusty Dem
I know some would prefer Times New Roman, but they’re just dirty fucking hippies.
TheFountainHead
Three trill, huh?
Well, I could try and pay down my student loans with it…or I could just blow it all on a couple of Spitzer’s hookers.
Woodrowfan
Hire fact checkers for every radio talk show host in the county (of every political stripe), give them an interupt button, and everytime the radio host lied they’d be interupted with an airhorn and the fact checker would correct them.
and feed the hungry, provide better medical care for every person in the US, fix the decaying bridges.
Oh yeah, and buy a red 1976 Camero…. for me.
Soylent Green
Develop the technology to terraform and settle Mars, then give free tickets to all takers on the outgoing flights. Promise them their own states there with whatever belief systems and prejudices they choose as the law of the land. The U.S. of Mars: Biblethumpania, Wingnuttistan, Bigotland, and so forth. On the Dem side, Hillariana.
Probably need some more trillions.
John Cole
That ad is actually exceedingly clever.
jrg
The federal government has to pay it’s debts just like everyone else. Maybe they will raise taxes to do it. Maybe they will print more money, causing inflation and further devaluation of the dollar. How are you proposing they do it?
You’re right – this is not science, it’s common sense. If you go out and charge $30K on a credit card, you have to pay it back.
tBone
Elitist. The Pious Pistol-Packing Pantsuit and other blue collar Americans like Helvetica, Times Roman and Comic Sans just fine. Your embrace of snooty contemporary typefaces just shows how out of touch you are.
(On a related font-nerd note, there’s a documentary devoted to Helvetica . Really.)
Seitz
Here’s how I put it into perspective. We’ve spent over $500 billion on the war so far. How much is that really? Consider that the new stadium for the Washington Nationals cost $667 million. With just $500 billion (1/6th of the $3 trillion predicted), we could build a state of the art stadium or arena at roughly that price for:
Every Major League Baseball Team (30 teams)
Every National Football League Team (32 teams – and the Jets and Giants get their own stadiums!)
Every National Basketball Association Team (30 teams – The Lakers and Clippers won’t have to share Staples Center!)
Every National Hockey League Team (30 teams – and they wouldn’t even have to share with NBA teams!)
Every Major League Soccer team (14 teams)
Every Division 1 Football program (242 teams – Both Bowl and Playoff subdivisions!)
Every Division 1 Basketball program (341 teams!)
That’s about 720 shiny new stadiums. We’d even have enough left over to cover cost overruns and maybe some division 2 programs. And that’s just what we’ve spent so far. We get to spend that much five more times before it’s all over.
ParagonPark
jrg:
The POINT is that government has to “pay” for all spending not just military spending. If instead of military spending the government spends the same money on things (such as alternative energy research that the good prof claims could solve the crisis he hypothersizes will exist in a century) we’d still havve to “pay” for that 3 trillion.
the real difference is that, like it or not, military spending provides just about the greated ECONOMIC benefit possible from any form of government spending. What do you think military spending is?
It’s salary and wages fror military personnel, which benefits us not only because those people use that money to purchase goods and services but also by reducing unemployment by reducing the civilain labor force. Military spending is also buying stuff like weapons, uniforms, food, supplies, etc. Buying stuff from people who make make stuff also helps the economy. when you add to the equation that military purchases are from domestic producers at a rate much higher than purchases in most other sectors that money is even more beneficial to the economy.
As i said, there are a lot of reasons to oppose the war but the claim it is hurting the economy is he kind of nonsense only those with absolutely no understanding of the world around them will believe. Oppose the war for all sorts of reasons despite the fact it helps the economy, but understand that spending money on the military is not the same as burning money– the money spent flows directly into the domestic economy and grows it.
chopper
i’d buy a pushcart and push it up and down the street yelling ‘rags, old iron! marrow bones, tuppence a hogshead!’
AkaDad
I’d offer Keira Knightley a billion to sleep with me. After the inevitable bail, court costs, and lawyer fees, I’d use the rest of the money to start extracting our oil that’s sitting under Canadian soil, and then relocate the Israelis to Montana.
jrg
Nonsense. From the Congressional Budget Office:
Sending money overseas to destroy and re-build Iraqi infrastructure is not an effective form of economic stimulus for the U.S. economy – It’s a method of moving money out of the U.S. economy.
If someone in the U.S. is given a dollar as part of an economic stimulus package, that dollar gets spent in the U.S., stimulating helping American business. If you spend that dollar building a bridge in Iraq (that may or may not get blown up next month), that dollar is gone, and it’s not coming back.
Woodrowfan
If you go out and charge $30K on a credit card, you have to pay it back.
I keep hoping we’ll find out we stole Norway’s credit card…
ParagonPark
trg:
Don’t cite things you don’t understand. The CBO was offering an opinion on emergency measures to affect short term aggregate demand in response to the current or impending recession. It was not offering an analysis of the relative macroeconomic benefits of the various forms of spending.
Obviously, it is of greater long-term, comprehensive benefit to create hundreds of thousands of jobs and spur extensive capital spending than to pump some one-time cash into the retail sector. I’m sure the CBO understands that and I know it was not attempting to suggest otherwise in that report. your concluding that from the report simply reinforces that you don’t know enough.
jrg
OK. How about you give me a link extolling the benefits of Iraq war spending on the U.S. economy. You are the one who’s suggesting said spending is beneficial – back it up.
Crusty Dem
Come on jrg, just think of what the war is doing for Halliburton’s bottom line. That’s cash money, baby! They’re just farming it out to local Iraqi firms and keeping 60-90 cents on the dollar. That money isn’t being left in Iraq, it’s going straight to the, ummm, let me see, yes, it’s going straight to the Cayman Islands. Kccching!
ParagonPark
I have backed it up. In pure economic terms, no one seriously denies that military spending will increase GDP, GNP and also results in broader, more diffuse flow of of wealth than any other form of spending. Everyone paying attention also understands that the capital investment spurred by military spending has huge beneficial impacts.
Have you been asleep? Do you not grasp why politicians fight to the last gasp to preserve military bases and/or defense contractor jobs– even when the military itself says the base is redundant or the product the defense contractor is producing is obsolete or inefficient? It’s because the people involved spend the money they make and that has huge economic benefit and people want it.
War actually increases the benefit because it increases the demand for materiel that is consumed in the war. We need more weapons and more equipment to replace that which is lost and more people get paid more money to make them. those people buy more stuff, pay more taxes, accumulate greater pensions and all the rest. do you actually deny that is an undeniable reality?
The arguments against war start with the moral and continue through the political and practical but the hiring of people to fight them and the production of things with which they fight have such obvious economic benefit it is necessary to argue we don’t want that wealth produced because of the moral and political costs not that it doesn’t produce wealth.
jrg
I see. So no matter how (or in what country) the military spends tax dollars, those dollars have a positive effect on the U.S. economy simply because these dollars were spent by the military.
Um, gee, maybe because federal money spent towards state-side bases helps the states that receive that money, at the expense of those states that foot the bill? What you’re describing is pork.
Where’s that link I asked you about, anyway?
Here is a link for the IMF. Fell free to ignore it’s contents and continue your personal attacks. In the mean time, I think I’ll quote the article:
Randall
some of the money flows into the domestic economy, but the type of spending the video is making fun of (W’s war) does
not grow the economy, it hampers it. If it doesn’t stop soon it will destroy it.
jrg
Clearly you don’t know much about economics.
As long as the person spending money is sporting cammos and high and tight, the spending helps the economy. Hell, the military could be paying peasants in Nairobi to dig holes in the ground and fill them back up, it’s will always be the best bang for the U.S. taxpayer’s buck.
The military is a magical wealth machine. As long as they are the ones spending money, anything they buy (and at any price) is good for the economy.
That’s why North Korea is such an economic powerhouse.
Randall
I forgot about the magical military wealth machine. Do we own those holes in Nairobi after they are filled back up?
ParagonPark
trg:
Again you are citing sources you do not understand that are evaluating something different. From the IMf report:
“However, little analysis has been done to show how conflict and terrorism affect macroeconomic performance and public finances either within or across a large number of countries. Our research is intended to fill this gap. We first assess the impact of armed conflict within countries by examining the evolution of macroeconomic and fiscal variables (such as growth, inflation, government revenues, expenditures, and budget balances) before (three years, on average), during, and after (three years, on average) 22 episodes in up to 20 conflict-afflicted countries between 1985 and 1999. Six of these are in Africa, three in Latin America, two each in Asia and the Middle East, and seven in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union
So you will cease embarassing yourself, this study is assessing the impact of wars (or armed conflicts if you prefer)that took place PHYSICALLY WITHIN THOSE COUNTRIES’ BORDERS!!!!!!!!!!!
I HAVE NOT SUGGESTED WAR IS GOOD FOR THE ECONOMY OF THE COUNTRY WHERE THE FIGHTING IS ACTIVELY TAKING PLACE!!!!!!!
I think we can all agree being in a war zone is bad for business and that business is likely to pick up once the fighting stops– which are the shocking findings of that IMF report (spending money on such studies is precisely the type of spending that does the least good– BTW)
Citing a report that finds that internal war hurts the economies of small, weak, struggling nations has nothing whatsoever to do with disproving the undeniable benefits to a huge, powerful, wealthy nation with excess capacity going under-utilized spending money to fight some place else.
That should be obvious.
jrg
Read. The. Fucking. Article.
….
Using your logic, North Korea should be in better economic shape than the rest of the world. You have not addressed that point, you have not provided me with any links from reputable sources to say that the Iraq war is good for the economy.
In fact, the crux of your argument seems to be “the military can spend money on anything, and it will be good for the economy, because it’s the military”.
Back your arguments up with a link, or we’re done. I’m not going to waste time debating someone who’s just pulling stuff out of their ass.
ParagonPark
Let me explain this reallllllllly sLoooooowly for you. They compared the countries that experienced war within their borders to other countries that were otherwise demographically similar so that they could discount variables OTHER THAN THE FACT THOSE COUNTRIES HAD WARS WITHIN THEIR BORDERS AS BEING SIGNIFICANT CONTRIBUTING FACTORS TO THE LESSENED ECONOMIC PROPORTION OCCASIONED BY THE PROBLEMS CREATED BY ARMED CONFLICT.
So if countries A, B and C are demographically quite similar but there is a war going on in A the fact B and C are performing better helps support the thesis that the presenrce of people killin each other in military battles within the country isn’t a good thing. Of course, most of us probably could have guessed that without the comparative data study.
You are making one hell of an unitended case for the need for spending more money to improve our educational system– unless you were educated abroad.
jrg
The article is about the effects of military expenditures on the financial stability of countries involved in conflict. Again, from the link:
The study in this article is not limited to countries with armed conflicts within their borders. Clearly, you’re having a bit of trouble understanding that, so I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader.
Zuzu
Well except that the $3 trillion cost wasn’t all calculated in the usual “military spending” sense you’re thinking of.
For instance:
Zuzu
Well, not everyone finds the equation quite so simple: