What's a billion here or there...
This morning I was able to watch about 20 mins of last week's "Meet the Press". I know...you are thinking "Really, you have 20 mins to watch TV"? Or maybe you were thinking "Really, you record Meet the Press"? But whatever you were thinking this morning I was struck with an ironic juxtaposition from the boob tube. And for the record the answers are...yes (but it was just 20 mins before the tribe descended upon me) and yes (I like to try and keep current on US politics since we are down here in Costa Rica and recording it just makes sense...)...
Anyway...During Meet the Press...Senator Obama was being asked about Pakistan and a soft-ball statement he made earlier about getting them to stiffen their fight against the crazies (i.e., terrorists). Obama went into one of his long winded not-really-gonna-answer the question modes. They were discussing how Pakistan should be spending the ~$10B we give them each year. Tom Brokaw was making an argument that more of the money should go directly towards fighting al-Qaeda or else we stop giving it to them. Obama went on about how more should be put towards schools and such. While I tuned the politics out...what resonated with me was the number $10B per year to Pakistan. That seems like a lot of money to me...but then...soon after I lost control of the TV (again...only 20 mins for dad) ...there was a quiz on the HGTV channel about how much Americans spend every year on their yards. Of course, Jen got it right and I was wrong...but the number was $37B.
Now since the population of Pakistan is about 170M folks (~half of the USA) and since they all reside in just 340K square miles (only 4% of the entire US area of 9.6M square miles)...it seems perfectly rational that Obama should have instead suggested that we simply re-landscape all of Pakistan. Hell, at just 4% of the area...they should have money left over to pave a few streets and throw up a few schools too....and with everyone proud of their yards...there would definitely be nowhere for the terrorists to hide-out anymore. Just imagine what they could do with even more of our tax dollars and a Lowes! I should have been a political think-tank guy.
