Groking

open thread_135.jpg
Back in the 50s, when I was a kid, there was a popular series called "The Millionaire".
IIRC.
It involved a very rich philanthropist that I assumed to be a multimillionaire (not sure there were any billionaires back then) who picked random people to gift a million dollars to anonymously.
There were strings attached, such as they had to spend it all in a prescribed amount of time. And they couldn't give any of it away.
But know that in the 50s, a million dollars was an astounding amount of money for a regular Joe Paycheck.
New cars were less than $2000, unless you splurged for a Cadillac, and then it was less than $3000 with the white sidewall tires.
Two bedroom Craftsman homes for under $10 grand in suburbia were the new Middle Class.
Flash forward to today, a mere 75 years in that future, and it is an amazing difference.
Today there are millions of millionaires, thousands of billionaires, and some are pushing the trillionaire envelop.
How much, exactly, is a trillion bucks?
Many Americans can grok a million dollars (a two bedroom house in Reseda), and maybe ten million (a bungalow in the Hollywood Hills). But hundreds of millions or a billion makes my eyes glaze over, and I just don't have anything that I can relate that much money to.
Groking hundreds of billions of dollars, as in what our government is gifting just two foreign countries alone, is beyond my ability to completely fathom and I just get a stunned feeling.
And when I consider a Defense budget of a trillion dollars a year, I just shut down entirely.
I don't even know how to complain about that kind of money.
Things change. I understand this. In my 75 years I've seen lots of changes. But I've been able to keep up with just about all of it.
Except the slowly sinking value of the greenback.
And I don't know where it will stop.
Is a quintillion dollar Cadillac in our future?
Up at the farm, so internet is a little netty.
Thread is open.

Share
up
13 users have voted.

Comments

snoopydawg's picture

.

Our first woman president is hopefully isn’t going to be the Kam. The cringe on her is off the charts.

Trump is too weak to be president after Biden had to step down from a 2nd run because his brain is too weak to be president. Kam is saying that Trump is hiding his medical records…..after democrats spent the last 4 years hiding the facts about Biden’s mental capacity? Are they just this dumb?

You earned this democrats

“This gender gap issue is real. It's a real problem. And you see the Democrats reacting to it.”

“Democrats care more about dudes who wanna become women than dudes who just wanna be men and no hunting cosplay or cringey videos is gonna change it.”

Plus you told them that everything is their fault and so you put Obama out there to scold them? Are you trying to lose? Some think they are so they can let republicans hold the bag when America turns to shyte.

I’m just so glad that I can watch this show from a distance…you can blame Obama for that too.

up
10 users have voted.

There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?

earthling1's picture

@snoopydawg
addicted to stupid.
We haven't hit rock bottom yet, Lord knows what that will look like.
Thanks for posting this morn.

up
9 users have voted.

Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

A million bucks could easily be spent in today's world on junk, which describes most products.
My, we have devolved in the past 70 years, haven't we?
I am surprised the Harris plagiarism scandal hasn't done to her what it did to Biden.
Oh, well, my day started off by watching 4 blue jays get a dink of water from the birdbath 10 feet away, and then be joined by a 5th out in a pecan tree outside the yard fence.
It will end with me having a full stomach of beef tacos! Sounds like a winner to me.
Thanks for the memories you OT brought to mind, friend.

up
8 users have voted.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

snoopydawg's picture

@on the cusp

Gosh I’m old enough to remember when all the media covered Biden’s plagiarism and it cost him the race. It just broke so maybe there’s still time.

Kam wants to go on Rogan…. Here’s a shitlib's take on her.

Harris hasn’t made a gaffe yet

and I think this is cause she is a natural. She speaks from the heart and doesn’t really need to politically calculate in her mind before talking. She believes deeply in her agenda and is prepared to answer any question either throw at her.

I think men will admire her guts to go on these venues and it should help her to dominate the news cycle which is very important heading down the home stretch.

If he is watching the same videos I’m watching I don’t get why he thinks that she is a natural speaker.

is prepared to answer any question either throw at her.

Lol…sure if you want to hear her life’s history that doesn’t have anything to do with the question.

"I was raised middle class where my neighbors mowed their lawns."

That’s nice, but the question was how will you help those who are struggling?

up
10 users have voted.

There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?

earthling1's picture

@snoopydawg
I can't stand to listen to her. I automatically cringe with the sound of her voice kackle.

up
9 users have voted.

Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

snoopydawg's picture

@earthling1

but it’s not just her voice that gets me, but her mannerisms and how she over dramatizes when she speaks. The hand to her heart is what gets me

Plus she doesn’t seem too serious about running for the biggest job in the world. Too damn much laughing and trying to come off as everyone’s Momala. Seriously that’s what some people call her. Momala.

up
7 users have voted.

There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?

miniscule and the thoughts of how to spend a gigantic prize are beyond my imagination.

However the 1% have developed a plan to dispense with their fortunes. They buy luxuries with astronomical prices like super yachts, works of art, jewelry etc.

up
9 users have voted.
earthling1's picture

@humphrey
years ago that if someone gave me a million dollar mansion I couldn't afford the property taxes alone.
Thanks for stopping by.

up
8 users have voted.

Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

Genocide Joe administration.

https://thehill.com/policy/international/4934396-biden-israel-gaza-arms-...

The Biden administration is telling Israeli officials to take immediate measures to address the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip or risk cutting off access to key U.S. military assistance.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin wrote to senior Israeli officials warning that continued U.S. military assistance is in jeopardy over the spiraling humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, urging the Israeli government to take “urgent and sustained action” to reverse course, in a letter first reported by The Washington Post and Axios.

National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby said the letter follows a “relatively recent decrease in humanitarian assistance reaching the people of Gaza, which is obviously something we’ve been very, very concerned about since the beginning of the conflict,” in a call with reporters on Tuesday.

Kirby said the Biden administration’s aim is to get more concrete measures in place to increase humanitarian assistance.

Meanwhile it is business as usual!

up
7 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

@humphrey

Chas Freeman said on the judge today that Kam's poll numbers must be very bad if they are pushing for food.

A person on Twit said that people are dumb for voting for Trump because basically there is a genocide happening on Biden’s watch, but Trump wants to deport people. She might have said Muslims. Quantifying the lesser evil of genocide. If they want the Kam to win then press her to stop funding Israel. Do not pretend that there is something worse. Gawd these people!

up
5 users have voted.

There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?

@snoopydawg

Kackling Kamala campaign that is entirely focus group driven.

She was against fracking but now she is for it.

She was for Medicare for all until she wasn't.

She was the Border Czar until she changed her mind about immigration.

She is appealing to black male voters but she recently said this to Howard Stern.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4934824-vice-president-harris-law-...

Harris has sought to appeal to undecided voters in key swing states by touting her prosecutorial chops. Last week, in an interview on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” Harris discussed being a gun owner, revealing she’s had one for “quite some time.”

And during a lengthy discussion with shock jock Howard Stern, the vice president divulged, “I have put a lot of people in jail.”

Her policy positions flip flop all over the map depending on polling.

up
6 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

@humphrey

But he’s lying his buttocks off about how Biden told him before that he must let more food in and Israel did. Must be why 60,000 people have died from starvation already. I don’t remember where I read that.

up
6 users have voted.

There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?

@snoopydawg

past promised were actually delivered the Palestinians would have to be put on diets due to the fact they were gorging themselves on the overabundant rations.

up
4 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

@humphrey

But he’s lying his buttocks off about how Biden told him before that he must let more food in and Israel did. Must be why 60,000 people have died from starvation already. I don’t remember where I read that.

I guess Israel let so much food in that was why Biden’s pier wasn’t needed anymore…it wasn’t because the pier couldn’t survive the 3 foot waves….sheesh!

up
3 users have voted.

There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?

enhydra lutris's picture

frame of reference.

Assume that the average US adult could get mildly buzzed on 3 bottles of brew, averaging everyone from teetotalers to fratboys to career winos. As of 2023, there were roughly 335 million adults in the US, about 1/3 billion. 3 beers per times 1/3 billion = 1 billion bottles of brew would get everybody buzzed for a while this afternoon. You can get a 6 pack of Firestone Walker for about $10 in my area, so $10 billion bux would get everybody buzzed for a while for 2 days. 182 billion would buzz everybody every day for one year.

simple as that.

be well and have a good one

up
6 users have voted.

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --