A little visual aid
By Nicole Belle Thursday Oct 25, 2007 11:46amAfter I posted about the CBO's estimation that the occupation in Iraq may end up costing the U.S. $2.4Trillion, I received this link from a C&Ler:
Using the actual size of a dollar bill, this is how large a stack of $9 million would be:
And using the same scale, this is $191 Billion, which is $5 Billion dollars shy of what Bush has demanded Congress give him with no restrictions or benchmarks THIS YEAR.
That little dark spot is the car from the above graphic. But wait, there's more
And here is $315 Billion
Now multiply that by 7. That still is not $2.4Trillion dollars. So do Bush's tax cuts still seem like a good idea? This is one bill that's gonna hurt, not only us--but our children and our children's children when it comes due.
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damn! im in the wrong business!
You know who LOVES this?
Northrop Grumman Corp
Exxon
Halliburton Company
I wonder what China is going to think when we go bankrupt? I thought they were supposed to be smart. Why do they keep throwing money down a rathole?
And where the FUCK is all that money going to? Does it cost that much money to feed and clothe soldiers who are so demoralized that they're reduced to search and avoid missions, shooting at soda cans in a field somewhere?
I doubt it. Considering the quality of equipment those guys are getting, I'm sure Erik Prince is stuffing 100-dollar bills down his pants while in the distance unarmored humvees are ripped to shreds by ied's.
The depth of contempt I have for these people is almost infinite.
So, we can waste this much money on an endless war, but we can't find health insurance money for poor and middle class children.
This country is going down the drain.
Thought you'd find this interesting.
Hell, I'll pay anything to get that boob and darth cheney out of office! Nice visual aid by the way; hey what's wrong with borrow and spend conservatives?
I've said for a long time, (everyone says no, no,no...) we could just fly C-130's loaded with 5 + 10 dollar bills and push them out the back. The entire country would be ten feet deep in cash, no violence because every morning you would have to shovel the driveway to get out. After all, our currency will be as good as snow soon, but at least it will keep you warm! Jeeves- it's chilly in here, throw another thousand on the fire would you?
Liberal Jer @ 5:
We're already down the drain and are now traveling through the sewer.
I might have posted this yesterday but....I wrote a paper eleven years ago on the elimination of nuclear weapons and part of it was the cost. Put this in relationship to the cost of the war in Iraq. Through 1996 the cost to develop, deploy, and maintain the nuclear arsenal of the U.S. in 1996 dollars is 4 trillion dollars. That is equivalent to one million dollars a day for almost 11,000 years, that's right 11,000 years. The Iraq war has only been going on for 4+ years and is already the equivalent of a million dollars a day for more than 6700 years. I don't know about you but I've never had a million dollars so this is incomprehensible to me.
Good stuff. But I read the article to say that Iraq and Afghanistan would total 2.4T. It says that Iraq would account for about 80%, or 1.9T. That's an important distinction to me because I actually support our efforts in Afghanistan. It's specifically Iraq that is the reason for my outrage. (still working on my reading skills ... I may not have that quite right)
Mmmm... Money tower...
*gurgle*
All this really doesn't matter as long as you have a yellow ribbon magnet on your SUV
And all that bulk of dough, represents work, resources, and people: all of it being drained out of our hides.
So W can sit on top of the pyramid with his pals and piss down on us. Just like Reagan promised--trickle down.
How many forests will be clearcut just for the paper to print the money?
Ron @ 15:
That's the good news. When you're as filthy stinking rich as the Cheney/Bush/Haliburton crowd, you don't need printed money. All you have to do is click on "Transfer to Caymans" on your keyboard. It's all electronic, and environmentally friendly.
They don't care. More debt equals more money in the global finacial system.
Watch this short film and learn:
http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/135.html
If the republicans were worth a shit, they'd be as angry about this as we are.
how many stories is $2.4 trillion?
about the same height as the twin towers?
ralph @ 3:
What's China going to say? Something along the lines of, "Well thanks, we always wanted territory on the Western Hemisphere" would be my guess.
We can use this visual at the 2008 elections against the Repubs running for office.
Maybe this is the tower the terrorist were trying to hit with the fourth plane....
Depressing. I'm going to work my whole life and if I'm lucky and things go as planned I might gross more than a car slam full of $1 bills.
The sad thing is that our government spent $250 million just to build a wallet that would fit that cash. The wallet was built by KBR and as a result about $9 billion fell out and was lost somewhere in Iraq.
ralph @ 3:
I know this is late.. but maybe they're trying to take over America.. with money? All they have to do is ask for a large return.. then invade America.
If you're like most, you'll be lucky to have a bucketful at the end. Lucky.
JUDGE NAUGHT @ 8:
If i could have just teeny tiny wafer-thin slice of that, who would notice.
but considering his friends are getting it. . . makes it a lot easier.. .
As long as it's all going to the defense industry and not towards some damn commie healthcare program, all's good right?
/snark
They must do this for the trillion figure. Just use Moon's or Earths...or Sun's.
StirFry @ 28:
Oh, that's how it starts. That's how all these contractors probably justify themselves initially, and avoid having to jump out of bed in the middle of the night to commit seppuku out of the horrendous shame of shaking down the American taxpayers who aren't even born yet to pay for their WORTHLESS product or service.
But then they realize, hey, it's money and I don't have a conscience anyway. Shame is for pussies.
Then they find out there are human rights lawyers all over the world who won't let them just fukkin' eat at a nice Paris diner, and they have to go find some third-world country to live in because their name and face is all over the news in America because they're a treasury-looting war profiteer thief and people will accost them on the streets and ask them for their GODDAMN MONEY BACK.
And then they get into drug smuggling and end up using all their ex-mil contacts, and turn into cartoonish villains twirling their moustaches on some TV show.
And then Uma Thurman shows up at their South American villa and slays them with the five-point-palm exploding heart technique.
If only . . .
"According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions." -Donald H. Rumsfeld, 9/10/2001
ralph @ 3:
The Chinese aren't stupid. They know that if they wait long enough, they'll just come in and take everything, and I mean EVERYTHING. hey white people, prepare to be Asia's domestic help. In fact , I have long predicted that if things stay on the path we're on, the decendents of those braindead 25%ers that voted against their best interests, hoping that it would bring them favor from the overlords they helped put in power, will find their poor freckled faced little daughters sitting in a window in Bangkok with a number on their chest. Horay for Capitalism!
This is very impressive, but before it gets used to fry the tiny minds of republican candidates, we should check the details. The third graphic is labeled 315 billion, yet it is shown as a massive stack relative to the second, which is 191 billion. But, 315 is only +/- half again as much as 191, so the third stack is either mis-labeled or is way too big. Perhaps it is meant to represent the entire 2.4 trillion?
A little visual aid
http://galleries.lycos.co.uk/d/13794-3/marilynmonroe.jpg
slippytoad @ 4:
And check out the Costofwar webiste to see where it could go! http://www.nationalpriorities.org/Cost-of-War/Cost-of-War-3.html
Thank you for linking to the $87 billion dollar website I went there yesterday and printed it out to give my son, in 6th grade, a visual of how much money that was, his math class had a problem related to money and the eight of 1 billion.......... sorry rambling
ysbaddaden @ 36:
:)
More pleasing to the eye, YSB.
that looks
like enough money
to fill in the potholes
with heh...
This is why I don't understand why the US taxpayers put up with this.
We pool our money together for the benefit of us, yet our money is wired directly to the war profiteers of BushCo.
We're not at war, which is nothing but a front for taxpayer fraud by BushCo. They designed and executed this heist, and we're either too stunned to believe it or too stupid to realize what BushCo did.
I have to stop thinking about this, or I'll give new meaning to "going postal".
AbbeyHoffmansGhost @ 10:
And those figures are already out of date due to the RRW (reliable replacement warhead) program and trying to sneak the RNEP (robust near-earth penetrator) warhead into the budget. (We apparently really have an obsession about underground bunkers.)
Funny, that. When I was in Vietnam in the late sixties, I helped deliver and unload from a helicopter eight military footlockers full of one hundred dollar bills to village up in the mountains. When I returned a few weeks later I found that everything from a bowl of rice to a pack of cigarettes would cost you a hundred bucks. There was no fives, tens, twenties, etc. to make change.
You're right, in that to the Iraqi on the street, a hundred dollar bill probably means little.
Pawsie @ 25:
We won the cold war, without firing a shot by making Russia outspend us militarily. China is just doing the same to us, without declaring an ideological "war" against us. They'll let us go belly up then just walk in and change all the locks on all our businesses and homes, since they will be holding all the bank notes!
we start that next war, and the bill comes in a lot sooner.
We should build a monument to the Twin Towers by erecting two pillars with stacks of treasury bills, equal to the amount we're flushing down the toilet in Irak.
Looks like the North Tower is already taken care of.
Ohhhhh I see...it's all so clear now. Bush intends to commemorate 9/11 by leaving a bill exactly the same size as the WTC! What a clever little chimp!
Hind sight is 20/20, but perhaps the most appropriate World Trade Center memorial would have been to rebuild the twin towers with stacks of 1 dollar bills.
DAR
If you were to lay one trillion dollar bills end to end it would extend from the earth to just a little past the Sun. That's over 90 million miles. It takes light over eight minutes (traveling at 186,000 miles per second) to travel that far. Absolutely true.
Course, the ones closest to the Sun will burn up quickly and then the experiment is over.
Darrel @ 48:
No, it means the Republicans will insist on six more months to complete the project. We'll be told we're turning the corner, and that the sun is in its last throes, and that we'll be greeted as liberators ...
Wouldn't be so much if it is American dollars.
Ha, it's just paper. Don't you people get the joke? The USA is 9 trillion dollars in debt, that's 30 thousand for every man, woman, and child in the country, so we'll never pay. So what does that mean? Answer: it's all just one big fat Ponzi scheme; that is the world economy. We buy products because we are the desinated consumer. The producers exchange our dollars that we give them for their products for Treasury Bonds, simple. Now, why do the producers buy Treasury Bonds if they're IOUs that will never be paid(the thousand dollar question)?
When we get two stacks of treasury bills piled up 110 storeys high, we can fly a couple planes to smash into them and hip-hip-hooray! Cycle is complete. War is Over. Mission Accomplished. As Dr. Phil would say, "closure." We've been healed.
I would like to see a vote of the people, vote for or against this war. Those who vote for it, pay for it and fight it. Those who oppose the war do not pay and stay at home. That would change the course of the neocon agenda.
Clearly, the intent of the Bush regime is the destruction of the US as a nation to enable corporate nationhood, where businesses make the laws and dictate the lives of the avereage person.
If my math is correct, a stack of bills for $2.4 trillion would be larger than one of the twin towers.
Again...assuming my math is correct - the taller of the two tower was 208 feet x 208 feet x 1368 feet. That translates to 59,185,152 cubic feet.
Looking at the page, $900 million is 20 feet x 50 feet x 31.25 feet or 31,250 cubic feet.
$900 million goes into $2.4 trillion 2,667 times.
31,250 cubic feet x 2667 = 83,343,750 cubic feet - or 24,158,598 more cubic feet than the taller of the two towers.
In other words, if it had the same base as the twin towers (43,264 square feet), the pile of money would be 1,926 feet tall - 558 feet taller than one of the WTC.
And if you're wondering, once we get to $3,401,588,736,000 (that's just over $3.4 trillion), the pile of money would match the volume of BOTH of the twin towers put together.
Again, if my math is correct...
It's well past time to say Farewell Fascist Fuckers!
Is Glenn Beck being paid out of the missing money?
How can we find out?
Holy Crap!
Chump change for a kickass country like us
below_me @ 1:
Exactly:
"After I posted about the CBO’s estimation that the occupation in Iraq may end up costing the U.S. $2.4Trillion
Here is a silly Friday thought.
A friend of mine had a lovely idea on how to stop wars everywhere in the third world. It goes like this:
You load up big transport aircraft with consumer goods, and you fly them over the afflicted areas and you keep dropping the consumer goods on them.... everything from food and medicine, to electric generators, tvs, Sony Play Stations, Big Macs, the works ... make everybody fat, happy and busy. The solution for world peace right here.
Amazingly enough, this would probably cost about as much as we spend now killing the trouble makers.
ooops, tags got f'd up, did the opposite of what they were supposed to do. That's what I get for not previewing. :-(
If A Mistake Made
You Filthy Rich, Would You Keep
Making That Mistake?
On The Surface, It
Looks Like Stupidity, But
It's Intentional
War Is Big Business
A Huge 'For Profit' Business
Rampant And Corrupt
Congress Won't Defund
Or Force Redeployment, There
Is No End In Sight
waterboarding for jesus @ 61:
The Government is already doing that basically. It's called "Full Spectrum Dominance."
George W.Bush spending money your grand children will make.
sully18 @ 65:
And how will they make that money when then jobs are gone?
And your Congress approving it.
John @ 66:
Sorry, that's "when THEIR jobs are gone"
John @ 66:
Perhaps in Solar energy,wind energy or hydrogen cel energy efficient cars.
so your saying thats a lot of green , yeah man
ralph @ 3:
to destroy america
Minstrel @ 35:
If you check out the original website you'll see that the 166 billion stack (then they add 25 billion to make the 191b money stack later) is 500x100x125 (feet) and the 315 billion stack is 125x200x450 (feet). The ration between these to sizes adds up (125x200x450)/(500x100x125) = 1.8 and 315/166 = 1.898... well almost. But I think that's close enough.
They say money is the root of all evil.
Man, I never thought I could evision that much evil. And when you think about it, that's what it is.
Gee, add up all those billions and trillions of wasted dollars (most of it borrowed, so you have to factor interest payments into the total), and you end up a pile o' cash probably the size of the World Trade Centre.
How fucking ironic.
sully18 @ 69:
And those will be Chinese based companies, I suppose?
slippytoad @ 4:
$0.40 of every $1.00 goes to the private military contractors like Blackwater and DynCorp. And don't forget, KBR and Halliburton have to put a few Billion into their pockets every year.
PurplePatriot @ 11:
my problem with afganistan is this!wtf does anybody give a crap about afganistan except if one has an interest in the poppy fields?
Maybe it's just me, but the illustration for 311 Billion looks innacurate, but when you think about it in terms of the interest that would be paid on it over time, you really start to see the picture. Painfully...
But . . . if you put it on a credit card . . .
no pile of cash -- just an IOU --
And incredibly the stock market is up today! Even though oil is getting comfortable at $90 and everyone knows that the credit and mortgage crisis is only going to get worse. In fact CountryWide is up to AFTER admitting they just lost of a BILLION dollars -- repeat their stock is UP!
The government is in debt up to its eye balls, people are losing their homes in record numbers, oil that is at the core of our economy is going through the roof, family credit card dept it at record highs, personal savings at record lows, and the market keeps going up?
That stack of 315 billion is not right. It's WAAAY too much bigger than the 191 billion, which is only a little more than 1 and a half times more than 315 billion. I think somebody messed up a bit. Still, it's a striking graphical illustration of sheer stupidity in action...
Would be a better graphic if it had other “money” buildings that show what we spend on healthcare, education etc for comparison. This way whether you make it in $1’s, $100’s or pennies you could see the disparity and judge for yourself.
The avergae individual in the US has been so dumbed down through the educational system over the last three generations that they haven't a clue as to what real money is or even the definition of inflation as it pertains to the US dollar and that's pathetic. But at least our government has us where they want us. Living from pay check to pay check and barely making ends meet. Slaves to a debt master in the form of a currency that is printed at will with nothing to back it since Nixon broke the link between the dollar and gold.
I can only hope that sooner or later people will get the message before it is too late. Get rid of the Federal Reserve and bring back this country under the law of the Constitution which calls for a sound money system backed by gold and silver. Not a central bank in the form of the Federal Reserve, that is owned privately by sharholders and whose interest on our national debt will never be paid off by even our great, great, great grandchildren
The LOVE of money is the root of all evil....
This reminds me of something I heard on a radio show that was asking for people to call in and verbally describe the number one trillion. The best one I heard was this: Counting backwards in time by seconds
1 million seconds = 11.5 days ago
1 billion seconds = Early in 1976
1 trillion seconds = roughly 30,000 B.C
Makes ya think huh when you translate $2.4 trillion
Ok, how can a stack of money one third greater then the second graphic be 5 times greater in the 3rd graphic...
if its 5 bails of money high at 191 billion... why would 315 billion be 42 stacks high?
That dosnt add up.
Reid said he wouldn't cut off the funding on Ed Schultz's show. This war will never end
Geez, if you converted that stack of bills to pennies, you'd have an anchor big enough to keep the US Ship of State immobile.
rasta said:
>how many stories is $2.4 trillion?
>about the same height as the twin towers?
Using the first illustration as a guide, it looks like the $9,000,000 stack of $1 bills is about a 6 ft cube. That's 216 cubic feet, or $41,667 per cubic foot.
Each of the towers measured 208 x 208 x 1362 feet according to Wikipedia. That's 58,925,568 cubic feet per tower. Multiply 58,925,568 cubic feet by 41,667 dollars per cubic foot and you get 2.46 trillion dollars.
So the answer to rasta's question is, (sadly) yes.
[Deleted. This is not the 'Ron Paul will save us' thread-Sitemonitor]
In the #90 bar it says: Your comment is awaiting moderation???
Am I on a hit list or something :)
Nice graphic, but this was obviously done by the math-challenged. According to my calcs, the volume of 9 billion $1 bills is ~360 ft^3. The first graphic has to depict $9 BILLION not $9 MILLION. So the jump to $191B should be about the size of 20 cars, not the warehouse like in the second pic. The graphic for $315B is about the size of 30 cars. Still a helluva lot of dough, by count or by volume.
I was thinking about a similar analogy yesterday when I saw a clip of McCain making fun of a one million dollar grant to a Woodstock museum that Hillary supported.
Hillary could give away $1,000,000 every single DAY for the next 6,500 YEARS and it would still be less than this $2.4 Trillion war.
ONE Million dollars EVERY DAY for 6.5 THOUSAND years. I think that really gets across just how much money this is.
slippytoad @ 4:
I wonder what percent of that is ending up in NGO pockets... 90? 95?
"This is one bill that’s gonna hurt, not only us–but our children and our children’s children when it comes due."
Um, I still think it's a bit naive at this point to assume there's gonna be a country by the time your children have children. Being optimistic and assuming there still is such a thing as the US, the dollar will be so worthless that $2.4 trillion would probably buy a loaf of bread.
Okay okay, but for duffel bag purposes, contractors in Iraq need that money to be in stacks of hundred dollar bills. Otherwise it would take forever to carry away.
Another way to look at this. If you spend 1 dollar every second, it will take you 31,709 (thirty-one thousand seven hundred and nine) years to spend 1 trillion dollars. Wouldn't mind having some.
Has the revolution started yet?
ralph @ 3:
So they can own us in a few years.
Andrew @ 83:
Um, I think it was FDR who took us off the gold standard way back in the 30s.
Minstrel @ 35:
Um... Minstrel? Take a close look at the stacks. Noticed anything yet? Ok, first put on your glasses, or go buy a pair. Now look again, the last stacks diameter is smaller than the second, just look at the size of the car . In the third image the car is larger than the car in the second image. Now if the car and stack in the third image were the same as the first, then yes 315 billion wouldn't be that big, but since the car is larger, and the stacks diameter is smaller, it's gona be that tall.
Schools out!
MJS @ 91:
Uh, no. See the car and human figure in each graphic? Those are intended to give you scale. I obviously cannot publish the same scale for each number because the 315billion dollar one would take up the entire home page.
All three graphics are scaled to the human figure and car.
Get it?
Minstrel @ 35:
Um… Minstrel? Take a close look at the stacks. Noticed anything yet? Ok, first put on your glasses, or go buy a pair. Now look again, the last stacks diameter is smaller than the second, just look at the size of the car . In the third image the car is larger than the car in the second image. Now if the car and stack in the third image were the same as the second, then yes 315 billion wouldn’t be that big, but since the car is larger, and the stacks diameter is smaller, it’s gona be that tall.
Schools out!
And to think: According to the GAO, we are missing over $1 Trillion from just the Dept of Defense this last accounting year...and 900 billion-ish from HUD. But we don't have enough money for Social Security or SCHIP. Pfffft!
Charles - by NGO, I assume you mean the private sector? Because I'd be very surprised if more than 0.01% of that is going to what we've traditionally called "non-governmental organizations" (e.g., Doctors without Borders, Red Cross).
For the past 2 1/2 decades, the raison d'etre of national leadership in this country has been redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the wealthy (and the super-wealthy).
Now, where'd I leave that bat mitzvah invitation?
2.4 trillion dolars=a stack 180,000 miles high, the good that could be done in this world is staggering but this money represents death and destruction. Are you all ready to stop these mad men. Check out Naomi Wolf.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-wolf/ten-steps-to-close-down-a_b_466...
and then part of the solution to defeat this;
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-wolf/sit-down-for-the-constitu_b_698...
Is there enough energy to run the printing presses? Or will the dollar just become worthless, and everyone become slaves? Kind of like the runaway inflation in Germany during the 1930's, where you needed a wheelbarrow full of Marks just to buy a loaf of bread (and even more by that same afternoon). It wiped out everyone, except the Hitler insiders.
Aha!!! The plot thickens!!
Now I finally see what president Bush wasdoing this time.
He single handedly is rebuilding the twin towers from dollar bills!!
Now that's a statement!
One thing he forgot though. These towers don't need planes to get them down. One very strong wind from the west, say somewhere from China, and the towers will blow away. And so will the rest of the American economy....
Minstrel @ 35:
I understood it. It means it's more than we can possibly imagine-- so WAKE UP!!!
Whitehouse @ 107:
I saw (over at "the Onion") Al Qaeda is getting a little miffed at the delays in building the Liberty Tower. Just sayin'.
ralph @ 3:
They win either way. You don't go bankrupt, you keep buying their stuff, and their economy grows at 15% a year. You do go bankrupt, they're instant world superpower and we all start learning Chinese.
One more. If the Treasury does run dry, how "patriotic" do you think Halliburton and Blackwater will be? Will they "donate" their "servies" to the US government, or sell themselves to the highest bidder, even if that is China??
Lollimom @ 40:
It's because they are tuning into FAUX nooz, and watching The celebutards stumble all over themselves. None of them will really know what's happened until it's too late!
Those visuals are not proportional, are they? The middle blocks represent 191 billion and the third 315 billion. Well, 315 is slightly less than double 191, so the third image should be slightly less than double the second image. Yet it is many times the size of the second image and gives a false impression. ( I'm not defending the spending either way, just looking for accuracy)
(Nicole: as I noted both in the original post and here, the graphics are NOT proportional. To attempt to do so would take up the entire front page of the site. The human and car figures in each individual graphic are representational of SCALE. There's nothing inaccurate about the graphics unless you are unable to understand the concept of scale.)
My first political video (3 minutes)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qecu0hiQbkA
Preacher Boob @ 88:
If you converted all that to pennies, the earth would be knocked out of its orbit around the sun!
The reason why love of money is evil is because it is really just an illusion. All the great spiritual teachers, monks and true saints seem to agree that this plane of existence is ruled by the veils of Maya (illusion) or controlled by the forces of Darkness (untruth, no light) or what have you. And to a greater or lesser extent we are all cught up in the illusion that having billions of little green pieces of paper is a good thing. Only problem is it stopped being a true representation of the due each of us deserves for our labor and instead has just become a numbers racket, with the least trustworthy and most ruthless being willing to make the soul suppression necessary to succeed. Another real danger of having too much money is that money allows one to control one's environment to the extent that one loses touch with reality and avoid spirtual growth. For when we are challenged by experiences, we have to work on ourselves and grow. This almost certainly why the true holy person in most cases gives up material things and turns their life over to whatever the universe sends them.
the nervous rex, you are wise.
Unfortunately, I foresee entire nations faced with the prospect of living with the reality of a new, global aristocracy. We will be a planet populated with starving billions and a few thousand wealthy beyond imagination. I just wonder how long that will last. Maybe a thousand years?
Gee whiz, maybe those Christian millenialists are right! :-(
$2.4 Trillion?
Now we are talking real money!
i don't understand the comment at the end, which went "So do Bush’s tax cuts still seem like a good idea?"
what has that got to do with anything? is the suggestion that tax cuts should be rescinded so that the State can better pay for this war? how about ENDING THE WAR? which as it were is entirely up to the Democrats, as they now control the purse strings. how about it, why are they not defunding this crazy adventure?
could it be cynical political calculation? i mean who cares if hundreds of US soldiers and thousands of Iraqis lose their lives in addition to those already perished, right? we have an election to win!
solution:
Sacagawea
Nicole,
NPR reported that the following stacks [heard it driving on a trip]:
• $1 million in $100 bills is 4.3 inches high
• $1 billion in $100 bills is 358 ft high
• $1 trillion in $100 bills is 68 miles
We are going to spend a stack of 163 miles of $100 bills in Iraq.
Wolfowitz said it would cost us 4 miles.
vlad dracul @ 120:
I agree. Why give them more money to pounce on.
End the goddam war.
Jeez... they can rebuild the twin towers out of dollar bills. That'll show those terrorists!
I've heard about "Left Gatekeepers" but removing my entire post and postition number, etc.??
What's the deal here? How far off the thread was it to use the name of a presidential candidate?
You should be ashamed of yourself. You call yourselves progessive but you keep posters limited to fluff news and not the real deal.
Nicole Belle @ 102:
I get it just fine but, if the scales of the three graphics are different, then, unless that is pointed out, the whole post is deceptive, as is obvious from the comments -- few readers are going to look that closely.
Nicole: Nevertheless, it is dishonest reporting to change the scale from one view to another in order to sensationalize your point. It is a deceitful practice.
I think we could have bought off the Sunnis and Shias much cheaper if we had just offered them cash.
They said that America couldn't be bankrupted.
Enter miracle boy Bush.
Nothing like a little PERSPECTIVE to really f--k up yer head when it comes to the Occupation of Iraq.
FOLLOW THE MONEY!
FOLLOW THE MONEY!
FOLLOW THE MONEY!
When the real stories start coming out about how all this cash was spent, stolen, re-directed, secretly shipped to other countries, and paid to mercenaries... THEN we will have a true picture of Bush, Cheney, Justice, and the State Department.
REMEMBER... this happened while THE REPUBLICANS DICTATED THE TERMS!
Corporations like Halliburton, and those in the munitions business, are interested in only one thing; as much money as they can bribe our so-called "representatives" to make sure they get by plundering the middle class and ignoring the plight of the poor. But hey, that's CAPITALISM! (In it's last stages, as MARX predicted). If congress had any guts it would seize about 99% of the upper classes' money and tell the corporations and China that they're luckey if they get 10% of what they think America owes them. We need a law that forbids CEOs to get paid anymore than twenty or thirty times the lowest paid worker. That would end "outsourcing" and give the average working person a decent income, as well as lowering prices.
gd @ 82:
They don't make buildings that small. I keep my lawn mower in a building bigger than that.
momly @ 116:
Not to mention there's not that much copper or zinc in the entire Solar System.
forge @ 132:
What the government spends, that is; obviously what private citizens end up spending on healthcare annually is far higher than that....
Wow! The liberal spew is working! You guys think that our country sucks, we are the bad guys, having a powerful military is wrong, the defense industry only wants your money, our military equipment is shameful and inept, Bush and Cheney are evil guys trying to ruin America for some corporation's benefit, our health care system can only exist if our government (the one you hate) runs it, poor little American children are sick and suffering because or our military, Bush, Cheney and Halliburton (not because their parents buy DVD players, large screen TVs, have houses that are above their means and refuse to better themselves through education and hard work so they can't afford the doctor's bills) AND THAT THE DEMOCRATS HAVE ALL OF THE RIGHT ANSWERS!
Our country is the greatest country that exists right now. Nowhere else do you have the freedoms, liberties, abilities to succeed, or beauty that exists in America? Make it better by getting involved not by just complaining a sick and tired mantra from the right or left.
We are not the bad guys! The bad guys want to kill our men, women and children and to strike terror into our lives just because. We are defending our Nation and our way of life. What part of that do you not understand? Do you even understand what a free and allied Iraq means to us? Do you understand that the Middle East is not something we can just leave alone and they will not bother us? Do you understand that the world has an assimilation problem right now? What do you want to do with this problem?
What do you think the world would do to us if we didn't have a strong military? The relative peace you have been experiencing since WWII has come from our leaders having the foresight to see that peace comes from strength. We are not Mexico where nobody has an interest in us, we are America. Everyone has their eye on us whether we like it or not. Take away our awesome military and the lives are we know them go away.
Bush and Cheney are just guys trying to do a good job. Just like Bill tried and George, Ronald, Jimmy, Gerald and Richard did before him. Do you really think that someone, with that many people watching their every move (press, aids, congress, judges, special prosecutors, etc), could possibly get away with setting public policy to aid his old buddies in the oil business? Whatever!
Have you ever looked at our poor? Do you ever wonder about the choices they make? Some are truly needy, some are not. Why do they have luxuries at home and then complain about not being able to afford medicine their child needs. It's their choices that get them in trouble, not that Bush and Congress have us in Iraq. Don't get snookered into thinking that there are poor kids everywhere just dying left and right. We need to bring back and instill into our society "great work brings great rewards". The government is not the answer for health care. Why would they be? They are the last resort option if you are down on your luck and temporarily out of sorts. If you think that war in Iraq costs a lot, then wait until you see the cost of governmental health care. If you hate the government for one institution, then why would they be the source of choice for another? The government is good at only a couple things: Defense and Infrastructure. They need to build roads and protect our borders. Other then that, they usually are inefficient and suck the life out of our economy.
Do yourself a favor. Stop listening to the talking heads. They have agendas. They bread fear into your hearts to get their way (both sides). Look at the issues. They use emotional topics to get things passed: teachers, firemen, police officers, senior citizens drugs, and little kid’s health. On their merits each needs to be addressed, but we can not afford to pay for them all. We need to make sound decisions based on fiscally responsible choices. Yes the war is expensive, but there is not a politician out there that will call off the war tomorrow. Out of one side of their mouths they spew "bring them home today" and out of the other they know it is a necessary war that we must win. Whether you like it or not, there is evil in this world and complacency will not make it go away. Is it the best approach - only time will tell? But at least we are doing something and if the people in power collectively (behind closed doors because they wouldn't want to be seen working together) can make decisions to keep us pointed in the right direction (learning from their mistakes), your grandchildren may see a better world then we have now. WWII did just that.
Quit spewing hate and contempt for our great country!
Let's see: I see class envy (the rich suck and are evil!), a complete misunderstanding of economics (the cost of the war is small compared to all of our social programs), a complete misunderstanding of scaled drawings (Nicole is correct), a complete misunderstanding of the American Dream (hard work and success are penalized), no clear conscience on charity (give everybody everything they need or want - um socialism), a warped since that your leaders(R) are corrupt and mine(D) are not, a misunderstanding of why we are in Iraq (just to line the pockets of Halliburton), no sense of the cost of compassion (how much would all of the social programs cost if they were to truly help EVERYONE and who would be left to pay it?) and a sense of "it's OK to take all or our money for my(D) programs, but not for yours(R)".
Why do you think our social programs are growing? Is it because they help so much? Because they work so well? Do you know the annual budget of Health and Human Services, HUD? Hmmm - probably not. Compassion is awesome but is best left off of the federal government's docket.
Dubya is gonna get Hidley elected just the way Daddy (BushI) got Bozo elected.
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