George W. Bush thinks it's OK for me to spend 120 dollars for a loaf of bread.

[Vickers]

I bring my lunch to work, so I treat myself to nicer loaves of bread that run around $2.50 a pop. The one I currently have in my kitchen is Nature's Own All Natural 12-Grain (26% of my daily fiber needs in just 2 slices!!!).

So the headlines have been talking recently about how the Iraq war costs are now projected at around 2.4 trillion bucks. Let me express that with numbers:

$2,400,000,000,000

That's alot!

So I started looking around at what the war was SUPPOSED to cost and found this from a recent Reuters story:

"In the months before the March 2003 Iraq invasion, the Bush administration estimated the Iraq war would cost no more than $50 billion."

Garsh, that doesn't even seem CLOSE! I mean

$50,000,000,000

vs.

$2,400,000,000,000

So I got my trusty calculator out and divided 2,400,000,000,000 by 50,000,000,000 and I came up with 48.

HOLY SHIT!

That means that we are all supposed to just ACCEPT that something we were expecting to pay $50,000,000,000 for ends up costing 48 times as much. In other words:

- my house would cost me $7,440,000

- the new Springsteen CD would cost me $479.52

- the skateboard I just bought for my son would be $3936

- a 6-pack of 12 oz. Budweisers would be $234.72

- and my loaf of high-fiber bread would be 120 bucks.

I guess you need an MBA from Harvard like The Little Cowboy to make sense of all this.

[The_Casual_Observer]

1. Seems to me that they were floating a figure of 1 billion in the winter

of 2003.

[Vickers]

2. At least one of those numbnuts (Wolfowitz?) was saying the war

would pay for itself, or maybe the post-war cleanup, I forget.

[silverojo]

4. How the hell does a war "pay for itself"? n/t

[Lucinda]

5. We steal their oil?

[greyshade]

6. Wolfie claimed it, and was debunked even at the time

Here's a great AP story from 2003:

http://media.www.dailytexanonline.com/media/storage/paper410/news/2003/03/17/Focus/Iraqs.Oil.Revenues.Cant.Cover.Cost.Of.Rebuilding.After.A.War.Experts.Say-495758.shtml

More debunking in 2004:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1246876,00.html

Which cites other reports predicting war will ultimately cost each US household $3,415.

I'll let someone else do the math on that one.

[Kool Kitty]

7. Wasn't Wolfie the one that said

Iraqi oil revenues would pay for the reconstruction?

[greyshade]

3. And wait seven years for babies.

"It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months," said Donald Rumsfeld (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2738089.stm).

Duration of the "war" (occupation of Iraq) so far, following the toppling of Saddam Hussein's government by military armed forces: April 2003 to November 2007 = about 56 months.

6 months

vs.

56 months

Trusty calculator, dividing 56 by 6, says 9 1/3.

That means that we are all supposed to just ACCEPT that something we were told would last, at most, six months, has ended up taking over nine times as long...so far.

By that math, if George Bush wants grandchildren, he'd better tell his daughters that they'll be pregnant for nearly SEVEN YEARS. He might be happy though, because his two terms as president would have lasted almost 75 years. Ugh. Now *that's* a disgusting calculation.

[Vickers]

10. Even worse than that...in the article I linked to, they mention 2017!

:wow::wow::wow::wow::wow::wow::wow:

But hey, George didn't even have a job (albeit one with lots of vacation) until he was in his 50s...what's the rush, huh?

[gateley]

8. K&R!

[FREEWILL56]

9. That high cost is exactly why they want inflation to run rampant.

You see if I were to owe you $10 today and inflation comes by and ups the costs for that same $10 by 2 for example it devalues the actual amount owed to 1/2 of its original cost. How would you like to be able to buy somethings today and tomorrow have it's costs artificially reduced to 1/2 of its original? Because taxes are higher when one makes more to compensate for the inflation the government does not suffer setbacks as they get automatic raises compensating for the inflational rise and pay off the debt which is now devalued comparatively.
I had been predicting elsewhere that bush would shoot inflation out of sight to offset his overruns in government spending and he has begun that process with the oil industry. Now that's a big surprise eh? Everything is now following suite in a domino like effect making your loaf of bread more expensive and (did you not notice?)> half of the size it should be. Republicons are playing a very bad game of poker in every sense from wars to rights to economy and we the people will ultimately pay the price for their irresponcibilities. (that's minimumly what it would be called) Yes the poorer masses is what will suffer the most as raises to compensate them for higher costs come far later and ususally for shorter in the compensation. As explained before that even if raises were compensated for every penny of inflation to the poor, that is a win win for paying off a high governmental debt as they get the automatically higher taxes flowing with higher tax brackets too.

[yoyossarian]

11. YUM!

He's not worried...


http://steponnopets.com/peo">President Evil Online has risen from the grave!

[Vickers]

12. How much fiber you reckon he's getting from that meal?

:P

[yoyossarian]

14. I don't know, but I think he may have bitten off more than he can chew!

But then again...



http://steponnopets.com/peo">President Evil Online has risen from the grave!

[Applan]

13. I was also thinking about that $2.4BN number

The other day while i was at the petrol pump.
They said $2.4bn over 10 years.
That's $8000 for every single one of the 300,000,000 people in the USA.
Or $800 per year per person
Or $67 per month per person
Or $267 per month per family of 4.

Then I was thinking, while I was pumping away, this petrol is getting expensive now. I reckoned I used about 36 gallons per month between the two cars we own. I paid about %2.60 per gallon at the pump for a total of $93.60 per month. But if you add in that extra $267 to make a total cost of about $360......

that makes my cost of petrol a nice round $10 per gallon!

[FREEWILL56]

15. Right!!!!

We the people pay for it all moreso than anyone in the US would ever believe. Look forward to high inflation coming thanks to bush and the republicons because of war and energy costs and it seems it'll really about hit the fan when a dem takes over the office of the president so the repukes will blame it all on us.