A Billion Dollars Well Spent. Except the "Well" Part.

Mitt Romney's Presidential campaign raised $106.1 million dollars in June. That's compared to "only" $71 million dollars raised for President Obama's re-election campaign. In May and June, the two presumptive nominees took in a combined $314 million in donations.

Sometimes only a meme will do.

Wait, let me repeat that, because it's just that interesting. In the last two months, the Romney and Obama campaigns have raised 314 million dollars.



The hell you say.

Now, there's going to be a lot more money raised and spent between now and November by these two thugs statesmen and their respective gangs parties - after all, the 2008 Presidential campaign cost more than...one billion dollars.

I admit it: I just wanted to run this picture. Dr. Evil is awesome.

A billion dollars to convince us which candidate is the most fiscally responsible and/or least likely to do stupid crap with our money? Really? Do the candidates think the American electorate is a bunch of idiots who will believe whatever message we see flashed in front of us?

OK, so I was totally taken in by that one.

And we know damn well that most of the money will be spent not on touting how great Candidate A is, but on what a godless asshat Candidate A wants you to think Candidate B is. Meanwhile, Candidate B's funds will be spent on convincing you that Candidate A is basically a big turd in a necktie who wants to murder your children. A billion dollars later, we'll be asked to vote for the least patently offensive person to drive our great nation to ruin for the next four years.

We call this expensive slap-fight "democracy."

For absolutely no good reason, let's list 10 random things that could be bought with a billion dollars, other than sleazy TV commercials and ugly bumper stickers.

For $1 Billion, You Could...

...pay for almost 59,000 students to attend a state university (including in-state tuition, fees, room and board) for a year.

...cover annual child-care expenses for the parents of more than 130,000 infants in Texas.

...buy a year's worth of groceries for almost 84,000 families.

...give a 64GB Apple iPad to 1.4 million status-obsessed hipsters. (That's approximately 5% of the world's hipster population, according to a statistic I just now made up.)

...buy a year's worth of gas (at $3.50/gal) for every licensed driver in Wyoming.

...send every child in America to the movies and let them buy an overpriced box of Junior Mints from the concession stand to boot.

...satisfy the annual health-insurance deductible for 258,000 families.

...put 21,700 tree-huggers behind the wheel of a fully loaded 2012 Chevy Volt (including TT&L).

...buy an ounce of gold for every person in Boston, Massachusetts (as long as they promised to invest it wisely and not blow it on Patriots tickets).

...give every single person in America (as of today) $3.20, just for the hell of it. Or randomly pick one person in 10 and give them $32.00, as a lesson in the unequal distribution of wealth.


Of course, to scrape together a billion dollars for any of these purposes could be characterized as "socialism," while to see PACs and corporations aim the same dollars toward two political campaigns is called "freedom of expression." According to some mud-slinging ad I saw on TV. I don't remember who it was for, though. I think it had a horse in it, or maybe a soldier.

Money well spent, Presidential candidates.