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You are here: Home / All about the Benjamins

All about the Benjamins

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I’m pretty sure that the new $100 bills will produce some kind of wingnut freakout.

The most obvious angle is “they look like European money!”, but we may also see some chatter about jack-booted Federal thugs coming to take back all the old hundreds.

Also too, it’s a lot tougher to counterfeit a chicken than to counterfeit a piece of paper.

Reader Interactions

113Comments

  2. 2.

    jeffreyw

    Planted a C-note once, but the money tree that grew from it only bore dollar bills. Genetic drift, I figure. There was a bonus though. Never had rake the yard again.

  4. 4.

    LuciaMia

    Looking for another wingnut circus? Story in the paper today about the trial of a teen hacker who broke into Palin’s emails and other files during the 2008 campaign. Palin and even Todd are on the witness list. Can just imagine the media frenzy if they actually appear.

  6. 6.

    Brachiator

    I’m pretty sure that the new $100 bills will produce some kind of wingnut freakout.

    Obama should put a copy of his birth certificate on the back of the new bill.

  7. 7.

    ruuffles

    Counterfeit a chicken? Have you forgotten about the ones with huge breasts designed for consumption?

  8. 8.

    jl

    Well, yeah, this new C-note should raise alarm bells. Just watch the video in the link showing the new bill’s supposed security features.

    The security watermark portrait doesn’t look like Franklin at all. It’s Jack Benny, known liberal and early media race-mixer integrationist who started corrupting our youth over 50 years ago. Benny also did not age a year after he turned 39 and died (supposedly) under mysterious circumstances.

    Jack Benny, Joe Biden, Barack O’Bama. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

    Glenn Beck will be talking about this soon, and be sure to watch my commercials for my Benny New World Order replicant detector, which will come in handy for the coming New World Order Bennycopalypse. You will need to identify the replicant Benny zombies coming to take your stuff and give it to Rochester replicants, who will then oppress you.

    The Benny watermark portrain is an obvious signal for the New Order thugs to Prepare. You should be prepared too.

  10. 10.

    thebassguy

    a pal of mine has worked on engraving several of the latest bills, and he says there are more security features hidden in the portraits and borders than in the rest of the bill! Oh, and the US currency is not printed on paper, fyi.

  11. 11.

    Bob K

    You really want to see some heads explode? Tell them we INSIST on putting Sarah Palin on the front. (nekkid on a bear skin rug on the back – they all get snatched up as masturbatory aids and never be circulated)

    Bonus: Snappy catch phrase “It’s all about the Palins” also to
    whatever.

    Moreover forget about St. Ronnie on a $50 instead of Grant – I think they should use Michael Steele – THAT train will NEVER sail.

  12. 12.

    Napoleon

    I just pass pigeons off as chickens. You would be amazed at how many medical procedures I have had done that way.

  13. 13.

    David in NY

    @jeffreyw:

    Planted a C-note once, but the money tree that grew from it only bore dollar bills.

    Regression to the mean: cf. Romney (Mitt), Bush (George W.), etc.

  15. 15.

    Jager

    If my grandfather and his brother could be brought back from the cosmos for a couple of hours they could relate the story of one week in the summer of ’35 when the two of them, a lawyer and a doctor, netted several baskets of vegetables, a ham, 6 chickens and nine bucks in cash for a weeks worth of medicine and law!

  16. 16.

    jl

    @Bob K: So the nekkid Palin is not shooting something?

    What a sorry excuse for a suggestion.

    Once you know the signs, New World Order agents are easy to spot.

  17. 17.

    dmsilev

    I’m sure today’s inkjets are up to the job of printing convincing counterfeit chickens, though admittedly cleaning stray feathers out of the rollers and such is quite tedious.

    dms

  20. 20.

    Violet

    If counterfeit chickens were good enough for our grandparents, they’re good enough for us!

  21. 21.

    EvolutionaryDesign

    Kind of OT, but this is from yesterday in Boulder, CO. Think the news media will show a peaceful protest like this that has at least three times the attendance of your average teabagger rally? Didn’t think so.

  22. 22.

    licensed to kill time

    The U.S. has always had the most boring looking money on the planet, practically. I, for one, welcome our new European Looking Overlord bills.

  23. 23.

    Punchy

    If chickens are the new currency, then what does one pay the chicken farmer with? Why the fuck would he want more chickens?

  24. 24.

    JGabriel

    @ruuffles: Have you forgotten about the ones with huge breasts designed for consumption?

    No need to get all porn-y about it.

    .

  26. 26.

    Huggy Bear

    @El Cid: What if it’s Ronald Reagan in flagrante with Tom Jefferson or Bill Clinton? Would that be constushinanal currency in your opinion?

  27. 27.

    jl

    @Punchy: The chicen farmer is paid with crushed oyster shells, to help the chicken farmer’s chickens lay eggs.

    The oyster farmer is paid with salt.

    The salt farmer is paid with pepper.

    The pepper farmer is paid with steak.

    And the continuation is very obvious, until you get to the spaghetti mines, which complete the cycle.

    You people need to talk with your grandfolks and learn the economic circular flow everyone used in the good old days.

  29. 29.

    SpotWeld

    Also too, it’s a lot tougher to counterfeit a chicken than to counterfeit a piece of paper.

    Ever eaten a McNugget?

  32. 32.

    Bulworth

    What if the doctor doesn’t want to be paid in chicken? What if the doctor has already been paid in lotz of chickens and no one will want to barter with him for more chickens? This is getting very complicated. Freedom!!!!

  34. 34.

    Bob K

    @jl:

    Fur coat
    Full frontal
    Huey UH-34 or UH-1
    M-60 machine gun
    One leg on copter skid other folded up provocatively

    JL – You are a “Real Man (or Woman) of Genius” (lifted from Bud Light commercial) You have single handedly defeated a plot to implement Socialism/Maoism (Pick your favorite ism) in this wonderful oligarchy of Dupont/Exxon Mobil/
    Halliburton/Goldman Sucks and all the rest of the Nasdaq. Please let us know when you’ll be able to attend your medal of honor ceremony. Our corporate overlords will honor your name 4 evah or until the next time Paris Hilton makes a nekkid video.

  35. 35.

    dmsilev

    @Crashman:

    Doctors pay the chicken farmers in free plastic surgery.

    Yes, but how many beak jobs does one farm operation need?

    dms

  39. 39.

    DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)

    @Punchy:

    He’s willing to work for chicken feed.

    @ruuffles:

    Huge breasts for consumption? Makes tucking a few chickens in the wallet a bit more difficult, doesn’t it?

  40. 40.

    Crashman

    @Punchy: I’m still confused about this new chicken based economy. Are eggs worth something? Because, you know, they can become chickens someday. Is there an egg-based derivative market I should be making money on?

  42. 42.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal):

    Makes tucking a few chickens in the wallet a bit more difficult, doesn’t it?

    What if we used some kind of representation of the chicken that would be easier to carry? Pieces of paper perhaps… They could be certified as being worth a certain number of chickens. We could then exchange the chicken notes for other things. Hell, they could become a medium of exchange. What do you guys think?

  44. 44.

    andy

    Someone should start a rumor that the new $100 bill doesn’t have “In God We Trust” on it… that should be enough to set them off without checking into it.

  46. 46.

    Warren Terra

    @Napoleon:

    I just pass pigeons off as chickens. You would be amazed at how many medical procedures I have had done that way.

    So it’s you! I thought that chicken looked scrawny when I accepted it in return for treatment, but the coloration was right. It wasn’t until I got it home that I realized it was just a pigeon painted to look like a chicken.
    But I have my revenge: I’m not a real doctor, and I did a lousy job. After all, what were you going to do: stop payment on the chicken?

  49. 49.

    DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    That’s why I suggested Chicken Credit in the other thread. JP Morgan/Chase can buy all of the chicken farms and then issue their own line of Fowl Plastic.

    How would you swipe a chicken? You can’t, you NEED a chicken credit card!

  51. 51.

    DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)

    @Pangloss:

    Hang around, myiq2xu GoatBoy will be by soon to break that goat up for ya.

    Poor goat…

  52. 52.

    Warren Terra

    @Crashman:

    Are eggs worth something? Because, you know, they can become chickens someday. Is there an egg-based derivative market I should be making money on?

    Remember those old chestnuts “never count your chickens before they hatch” and “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”? Well, under Lowdenomics those will be the first things you learn in Econ 101, and they will no longer be metaphors.

  54. 54.

    Keith

    The only counterfeiting measure out money needs is the same one the Founding Fathers used to write the Constitution: ink laid down by hand with a quill.

  55. 55.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Warren Terra:

    But I have my revenge: I’m not a real doctor, and I did a lousy job. After all, what were you going to do: stop payment on the chicken?

    You went to Hollywood Upstairs Medical College too?

    /Dr Nick Riviera

  56. 56.

    phoebes-in-santa fe

    Please think back to the Virginia Senate Race of 2006 where much was made of George Allen’s “Macaca moment”. Someone with some brains saw that go wide on the intertubes and it helped lead to Allen’s defeat to Jim Webb.

    Why is the idiocy of Lowden’s remark not being seen front and center on the ‘tubes???

    On a slightly related note, I am the proud owner of a huge, gorgeous oil painting of an ocean sailing ship – four masts, I think – that was painted for my grandfather, who was a urologist in Chicago during the Depression as payment for care rendered. The ship’s name is the “Suark”, which is my grandfather’s name – Kraus – backward.

  57. 57.

    Martin

    @thebassguy: Obama is having it printed on the skin of aborted fetuses.

    And the ‘security’ measures are obviously tracking devices so Obama can keep tabs on his Republican enemies, since Democrats only conduct business with welfare checks, cups full of change, and Rials.

    And I agree with Brach – the new bill should have had Obama’s COLB on it. That should become new Treasury policy.

  59. 59.

    Citizen_X

    I’m not satisfied until the $100 bill talks, with Ben saying, “WHERE MAH HOES AT?” Cuz you know he would.

  61. 61.

    Jon H

    1. Calligraphy is notoriously a Muslim art
    2. Bill says “in god we trust” but engraver was thinking “Allah”
    3. Instead of Benjamin Franklin, now features Franklin the token black Peanuts character.

  62. 62.

    Jon H

    “Also too, it’s a lot tougher to counterfeit a chicken than to counterfeit a piece of paper.”

    Parts is parts.

  63. 63.

    jl

    tip: squab are just baby pigeons. You can get baby pigeons off the street and pass them off.

    Some may call it sharp dealing, but I call it American Freedom Capitalism.

    You’ll be able to afford fancier medicine with that trick.

  64. 64.

    Jon H

    I’m disappointed that during the hearing when the crazy lady was talking, nobody in the Georgia legislature pulled out their cellphone and said “Oh, that was you?”

  66. 66.

    jl

    But seriously folks, the chicken currency thing is just a feint.

    And ‘In God We Trust’ is still on the bill.

    Lowden and those Yahoo commenters are in on the plot.

    The security watermark pic is Jack Benny, not Franklin. That is the clue.

    I’ve done my best. I’m off to collect some ‘squab’ to pay for my doctor appointment.

  67. 67.

    dmsilev

    So, in a park near where I work, there’s a massive flock of free-range geese. What’s the going exchange rate between geese and chickens, and how many geese do I need in order to score a new liver?

    dms

  70. 70.

    Ash Can

    @jl:

    And ‘In God We Trust’ is still on the bill.

    It’s spelled “In God We Trust,” but it’s pronounced “Fart Proudly.”

  71. 71.

    4tehlulz

    THE ANTICHRIST OBAMANATION HAS EMBEDDED SECRET BARCODES IN OUR MONIES SO THAT THE BEAST CAN KNOW WHEN WE BUY WETSUITS.

    STOCK UP ON GLENN BECK GOLDS TO SURVIVE THE COMING TRIBULATION

  72. 72.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    Uh, sorry that doesn’t look like European money. It still looks like the old, green, almost unchanged for hundreds of years US money that always looks so funny to me when I use it. A little more color, but not much.

    Not that I could tell for most of that video, that was hilarious, it spent most of the time flying showing me closeups of Franklin’s nose and so on.

  73. 73.

    Maude

    @Crashman:
    @40
    Where have you been? They securitized chickens in the 1980’s along with the mortgages.
    They chopped up the chickens, bundled the pieces together and sold them to their customers.
    Another company insured the bundles.
    The problem arose when the customers ended up with gizzards and tails.
    The Chicken Market Crach of 1990 helped get Clinton elected.

    I have gone around the bend.
    BBL if I come back within spittin’ distance of sanity.

  75. 75.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @jl:

    But seriously folks, the chicken currency thing is just a feint.

    I don’t know, I think it could be a real problem if Wingnuts start paying with chickens. It’s even worse if they pay with rubber chickens, because those always bounce.

  78. 78.

    Nylund

    Can someone enlighten me if we’ll be trading with live chickens, or chicken meat? The latter will spoil quickly and offers the risk of salmonella, but if my paycheck is going to start coming in the form of live birds, I’m gonna need to start building one hell of a chicken coop soon.

  79. 79.

    licensed to kill time

    __

    Not that I could tell for most of that video, that was hilarious, it spent most of the time flying showing me closeups of Franklin’s nose and so on.

    Lotta Franklins spend time in noses, maybe it’s a how to video.

  81. 81.

    Bob L

    Let’s see, chickens cost roughly $82 USD a bird. So your typical call girl hooker goes for $300 USD an hour that means you will need about four chickens for a good time. So will hotel chains have to add chicken coups into their hotel rooms?

    How do you make change of a chicken?

  83. 83.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    This must have come up already but have any Wingnuts started agitating for a chicken standard yet?

    Gives “boullion” a whole new meaning I guess.

  84. 84.

    Brachiator

    @Bob L:

    How do you make change of a chicken?

    Nuggets

    Gives “boullion” a whole new meaning I guess.

    In the remake of the classic James Bond movie, the villain Chicken Finger seeks to corner the market in chicken boullion cubes. Bond is helped by the babe Poulet Galore in stopping Chicken Finger’s plan.

  85. 85.

    ericblair

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Once you go down that road, you will inevitably get CDOs (Chicken Debt Obligations).

    No, that’s Chicken Dinner Obligations, where you’re required to go to your dotty old aunt’s place for supper as payment for debt. Chicken Dinner Swaps provides a market where traders can exchange white and dark meat quarter dinners in case the restaurant screwed up your order again.

    That reminds me, I need to go to the Chicken Futures market at the Safeway ‘cuz I want a Denver omelet for dinner.

    God, we can do this all day. With wingnuts the well never runs dry.

  86. 86.

    asiangrrlMN

    Oh my god. This chicken bartering system is the best thing ever–in turns of threads containing the funny. Let’s see. I have a dental appointment in a week. How many chickens am I gonna need for that?

    So, I’m assuming the downlow market will be called the Rhode Island Red Market? Or simply Black Chicken Market? The Down Average? Coop Street?

  87. 87.

    Mike in NC

    Did Obama make Ben Franklin look more gay to promote The Homosexual Agenda™?

    Possibly, but a guy who hung around with the French so much has no business being on our money.

  88. 88.

    IndieTarheel

    @gnomedad:

    Also, they have RFID chips so they can track you when you buy guns with them.

    And an extra-special bonus for those who have enough of them to wipe their asses – subcutaneous implantation!

  90. 90.

    Pangloss

    If I were Obama, I would have put a picture of my bare, kissable ass on the $100.

    I guess that’s why I’m not in politics.

  92. 92.

    fucen tarmal

    dead fetuses on one side of the hundred, a picture of gold coins on the other. the conservative pastiche.

  95. 95.

    media browski

    1. look up #lowdencare on twitter for laughs.

    2. I’ve already seen wingnuts (#tcot) saying something about it on twitter

    3. I have a chicken in my eye

  96. 96.

    dmsilev

    Brings a whole new level of meaning to ‘spend your nest egg on medical care’.

    dms

  97. 97.

    Comrade Mary

    Lance thinks hard about chickens.

    Has she thought about what would happen if people did start paying doctors in kind? In them olden days—Landon’s obviously studied at the Sarah Palin School of Eloqution—one or two chickens a week helped the doctor and his family eat. But doctors saw a lot fewer patients back then. Now some see twenty-five a day. That’s a lot of chickens. If we brought back the olden days it would turn doctors into poultry farmers and they would have to cut back on their doctoring to spend time taking their chickens to market, presumably in those flatbed trucks with beds stacked high with rickety cages that always get run off the road by the main characters’ speeding car in screwball comedies. All those sorrowful looking drivers standing by the wreckage of their trucks watching the feathers waft down around them were doctors, I guess. …
    __
    Lowden “remembers” the olden days because her grandparents remembered what their grandparents had told them about what their grandparents had told them.
    __
    Memory is partial. It gets colored by regret and nostalgia. It’s often not even made of memories. It’s assembled out of images and incidents we’ve been told about or that we read about or saw in movies and on TV or conjured up out of dreams. And it’s useful. It lends itself to convenient re-editing.
    __
    What Lowden is failing to remember about the olden days is that in the olden days when some doctors were forced by their patients’ poverty to accept payment in kind is that the doctors didn’t feel comfortable pressing for anything more because they were often being paid for letting someone die.

    Like my grandma used to say, read the whole thing.

  98. 98.

    Bulworth

    One would hope that a policy platform of bartered health care provision would be enough to sink one’s Senatorial ambitions. But I’m slightly pessimistic in today’s world of Faux. I expect Cavuto to trumpet the bartering economy as The Next Big Thing.

  99. 99.

    Herbal Infusion Bagger

    “They chopped up the chickens, bundled the pieces together and sold them to their customers.
    Another company insured the bundles.”

    So CDO means Chicken Debt Obligation?

  100. 100.

    El Cid

    @Herbal Infusion Bagger: The problem came when commodities bets that the bundled chicken which was expected to keep increasing in value proved to have been a mix of prime white chicken meat with salmonella-infected scrap parts.

    Those who had bet on the pressed chicken bubble continuing often lost their heads in the collapse, and yet still ran around for weeks on end not knowing the damage which had already been done.

  101. 101.

    Warren Terra

    @IndieTarheel:

    And an extra-special bonus for those who have enough of them to wipe their asses – subcutaneous implantation!

    Oh, my FSM – I hadn’t thought of this before. It used to be that the height of conspicuous consumption was lighting a stogie with a C-note (which Obama is making less attractive, what with the plastic strip in the new C-note). But now we’re going to go back to the good old days (the 16th century, back before (most of) the Reformation, naturally) when Rabelais said that the most luxurious way of wiping one’s ass was to use the neck of a live goose:

    Afterwards I wiped my tail with a hen, with a cock, with a pullet, with a calf’s skin, with a hare, with a pigeon, with a cormorant, with an attorney’s bag, with a montero, with a coif, with a falconer’s lure. But, to conclude, I say and maintain, that of all torcheculs, arsewisps, bumfodders, tail-napkins, bunghole cleansers, and wipe-breeches, there is none in the world comparable to the neck of a goose, that is well downed, if you hold her head betwixt your legs. And believe me therein upon mine honour, for you will thereby feel in your nockhole a most wonderful pleasure, both in regard of the softness of the said down and of the temporate heat of the goose, which is easily communicated to the bum-gut and the rest the inwards, in so far as to come even to the regions of the heart and brains.” (from Gargantua, 1534)

    I’m not sure how the banksters will do it in public, but obviously I’d hardly put it past them.

  103. 103.

    Mike G

    I’ll bet a chicken that some wingnut compares the new $100 bill to Kenyan currency before Friday.

  104. 104.

    Kyle

    I expect Cavuto to trumpet the bartering economy as The Next Big Thing.

    Or, in Cavutospeak —
    “Barter: the best economic system ever????”

  105. 105.

    Jager

    Sitting in my Doctors office in Las Vegas waiting to see my doc for a annual checkup. I have 14 chickens with me, 9 for the doc, 3 for the blood test lab fees and two for my urinalysis. The lady next to me is being treated for “female problems” as she puts it. She 23 chickens with her. The older gentleman across the room with high blood pressure has only 3 chickens with him. All told there are 11 patients waiting and 104 chickens, not to mention the guy with the steer in the hallway. BTW I just got my new F 250 pickup last week, I traded in my old Explorer and 11,391 chickens for it, I think I got the deal of a lifetime and it pulls my chicken trailer with ease!

  107. 107.

    jp2

    Topmost Headline on Drudge:

    EVEN OBAMA’S NEW $100 BILL LOOKS EUROPEAN…
    Might as Well Be a Euro…

    Right on cue…you a genius.

  108. 108.

    Warren Terra

    @jp2:
    Indeed, my understanding is that Greece’s woes come not from lacking control of a currency poorly suited to their economic state but instead from the European flamboyance and colorfulness of the notes they use.

  111. 111.

    Remember November

    But I wonder- are DHEA free chickens worth more or less? Whats the currency conversion for free- range over factory farm chix?

    Thats gotta be worth some scratch.

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