Worth at Least Two Carriers

Quote of the Day

Just as I predicted yesterday…. MSM will falsely claim the Secretary of the Navy was fired because of Battleships.

And the NYTimes is actually worse than I thought. Let me explain….

The mainstream media will make this about the ships because the defense “experts” never want more hulls. They want money flowing into consulting fees, AI “solutions,” and think tank white papers. Steel produces nothing for the Beltway class. A flight deck you can launch F-35s off of does not generate PowerPoints.

But the NYTimes is running an even more sinister play.

Throughout the Biden administration, and later during DOGE’s audit work, I translated every major spending bill into a unit every American can actually visualize: one nuclear aircraft carrier.

Nuclear supercarrier cost: $15 billion.

Biden’s BEAD rural broadband program, which connected zero homes to the internet: $42.5 billion, or roughly three carriers.

Pete Buttigieg’s infrastructure package: $1.1 trillion, or seventy three carriers.

Total DOGE savings to date: $215 billion, or fourteen carriers.

Known Somali-linked fraud in Minnesota, per federal prosecutors: $18 billion, or one carrier plus an Arleigh Burke destroyer.

Why do I keep doing this?

Because for the past two decades the NYTimes has run the same story on loop: the military is the reason for America’s skyrocketing national debt.

That is a psyop. It conditions Americans to believe that steel and sailors, not social programs and grift, are what is bankrupting the country.

Human beings are not wired to understand $15 billion. The mind goes blank at that scale. But every American, left or right, understands the sheer weight and menace of a nuclear aircraft carrier. It is the most visible, most photogenic instrument of state power on earth.

John Ʌ Konrad V @johnkonrad
Posted on X, April 24, 2026

As мαтту 🇺🇸 @OtherMatty said, in response to this post:

This post is worth at least 2 carriers.

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30 thoughts on “Worth at Least Two Carriers

  1. That is a useful and understandable metric to make things comparable and understandable.

  2. I’ve long thought that all government budgets above a million dollars should have to be expressed in no more than million dollar sums.
    Therefor a 1.3 billion dollar line item would have to be expressed as 1,300 hundred million dollars.
    Kind of brings it a little closer to home. And helps John Q. Public understand how much in taxes and interest he’s going to have to be paying.
    But since it’s math I doubt anyone in government would be able to present coherent numbers.
    But it’s not like they do now anyway. So, there is that.
    Course then again. Anyone that passed math in 8th. grade would know the insanity of trying to pay off, with interest, 40 trillion dollars of debt. (40,000,000 million dollars). Or the criminal behavior of borrowing that much.
    I guess that explains the logic of abortion because of over population. But bring in 50 million new people we have to borrow more money to feed and house and provide medical care for, to pay off the debt???
    So, there is that also.
    Or maybe, “Whom the gods would destroy, first they make mad.”

  3. I remember the first stimulus bill back during the housing crash when it was nearly a billion dollars and how that was the biggest pork being pushed at the time as a solution to a flagging economy. Now, a Somalia fraudster cum oligarch steals that much with government approval! And dares to call others out as bad for pointing it out.

    If there one good thing DOGE did, it was reveal just how much money is being skimmed. We all knew it was going on. A certain amount of low-level corruption exists anywhere. We just didn’t know it was that bad! I look forward to American austerity initiatives. I think we can wipe out half the national debt inside of a decade once we claw back and stop all of the institutionalized theft.

    • The interest on that debt is 1 trillion dollars every 100 days. We can’t make that much in taxes to pay that off. Ever.
      It ain’t going to happen.
      Debt default, along with the ending of the federal reserve banking corporation running our money system.
      Or hyper-inflation till we have nothing of value left to steal.
      Or a complete techo-prison society run by the same morons that think they can control AI.
      Or, all three that turns America into a balkanized bloody mess the world has never seen before. And only satan will be enjoying himself.
      No matter. No one is going to work hard enough to pay it all back.
      And we ain’t voting our way out.
      You don’t claw crap back from communists. And all the real thieves have people with guns, badges, and more than enough stupid to murder you if you try to stop them.
      I like your optimism, I just can’t share in it.

  4. One quibble I have with it is the quote “Because for the past two decades the NYTimes has run the same story on loop: the military is the reason for America’s skyrocketing national debt.” I can remember the same song all the way back to the early 80’s, and being spoon-fed that catechism in grade school and on the news during Regan’s first term.

  5. Perspective…very important. The military has ALWAYS been the demon the left complains about even though the VAST majority of our debt arises from “social spending”.

  6. Pingback: Instapundit » Blog Archive » THIS POST IS:  Worth at Least Two Carriers.

  7. I’m old enough to remember all the bloviating they did when the national debt went over the first trillion. You’d have thought the world was ending…

    They never mentioned that the primary reason it was doing that was because the Democrats in Congress, who controlled it for most of Reagan’s presidency, flatly refused to allow cuts to social programs, and blackmailed him into signing off on spending money or they wouldn’t pass the defense bills.

    My take on the whole thing is that so long as we’re in deficit, Congress shouldn’t get paid, shouldn’t go travelling, and should have to account for every dime of money they have in their possession when they leave Congress. Forensic accounting out to the ninth degree, and if there’s a dime of ill-gotten gains anywhere traceable to government service, they pay it back fivefold.

    I’ve no problem with the idea of former Congresscritters living in cardboard boxes under the bridges that somehow didn’t get fixed with our trillions of tax dollars.

    • And yet trump has increased the national debt by 133 carriers, but I’m sure that’s OK with your pea brained mental gymnastics

      • It’s not OK, but it’s no worse than what’s been going on, and it certainly LESS bad than it would have been under Biden or Kamala.

        As with most things Trump, with one set of standards, he varies between remarkably great in some categories to unremarkable in others. I know of no areas where he is bad in a way that stands out from the crowd (of politicians… ew).

        But you’d not know that from the way people scream about him.

        • It factually is more than Biden added, and anything about Harris is projection, assumptions, or conjecture.

          “But you’d not know that from the way people scream about him.”
          — oh shut up. seriously Obama ‘tan suit’. such a double standard. It’s the only one you really have.

        • OMG, call me surprised with republican what about ism yet again. But her emails……. but kamala…. but Obama…… Trump literally has increased in more in his term than any other president. He has done it twice, but your 3rd grade math can keep up im sure.

  8. This must be formally received as the Konrad V Carriers per Boondoggle metric.

  9. Your so blind you think DOGE was about cutting waste……. bwahahahaha……
    I think you all are sticking your heads up your boomershoot. What a maroon……

    • DOGE was about kneecapping Communists who were fleecing the American taxpayer and using those funds to gin up astroturf protests and riots, funding Democrat campaigns, and stealing elections.

      The fact that it inches us a tiny bit closer to resolving our deficit is icing on the cake.

      And I will forever remember the blessed few months while DOGE was on a roll, and the racist trolls on all my favorite websites disappeared while they scrambled to find funding. Sadly a few have come back, but they aren’t as pervasive as they used to be.

      Apparently the SPLC wasn’t the *only* organization funding the hate they claimed to be fighting!

      • bwahahahahahaha, OMG you are drinking the kool-aid.

        The ONLY things targeted by Musk were the very agencies investigating all of his businesses.

        Bwahahahahahahah…….. Keep simpin’ for the billionaires, I’m sure you’ll get there someday. Bwahahahaha.

    • That must be why, for apparently the first time in history, the people who were the beneficiaries of an audit of expenditures for programs that were supposed to be paid for things beneficial to them were protesting the existence of the people looking for what to the protesters should have considered money and benefits stolen from them.

      • sure, sure, paid protesters. yep.
        sort of like that Uber Granny for trump. Just more projection from the right.

        • Well, it’s true most all government is an exercise in who is the bigger grifter.
          You commies got 85% of that pie.
          With most of the Grift-servative movement holed-up in the Pentagon.

          • Commies, yep. Anything not GOP boot locking is commie or socialist. Moron.

            Look to your own orange clown for the grift. How are those Trump phones.

            Bwahahahahah, bwahahahah.

          • Hey look everybody!
            The one person that actually voted for Biden/Harris showed up!

  10. Back in the mid 1980’s a coworker stated that the difference between the democrats and republicans wasn’t in how much money they spent, they spend the same. But after a republican spends money the country has a new aircraft carrier, or tank, or bomber, or bridge, or dam; something REAL that you can point to and touch. After a democrat spends money the country has nothing; just lazy democrat voters not starving and rich democrats getting richer. With the recent fraud exposures, he would appear to be at least half right.

    • And yet the GDP goes up by more for democrats and by less for Republicans. Love how you complain of others cherry picking stats, but that’s all you do. Project much.

      • But how are you measuring GDP? California just spent $213 billion, eg 14 carriers and a destroyer, to build 0 miles of high speed rail … yet every one of those dollars count towards California’s “GDP”, because government spending is counted towards GDP.

        How much of our “GDP” merely the results of Democrats stealing our tax dollars and pretending the nation is better off for it?

        • Since World War II, the U.S. economy has generally grown faster under Democratic presidents, with average real GDP growth rates of 3.5%–4.3% annually, compared to 2.4%–2.6% under Republicans. This pattern persists regardless of the starting point, with Democratic administrations also experiencing better job creation and fewer recessions.

          —- uh, that’s the Senate’s website for the short bus.
          https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/53a8257e-97fe-4eaf-899d-dbd9bd25f4dc/jec-fact-sheet—the-economy-under-democratic-vs.-republican-presidents.pdf

          but sure, find ANY evidence for your argument. Instead you toss out more, What ifs, but…., and What about-ism all day long……. Good luck to you, keep just believing what they tell you. don’t read anything. don’t use a book at all, unless it’s the bible, but then only the preacher will tell you what to think. keep sheepin……

      • Only because of the gaming of GDP, where it is DEFINED that more government spending is more GDP, regardless of the outcome of that spending.

        In other words, it’s deceit, like usual.

        • Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics.
          For them it’s business as usual.

        • Since World War II, the U.S. economy has generally grown faster under Democratic presidents, with average real GDP growth rates of 3.5%–4.3% annually, compared to 2.4%–2.6% under Republicans. This pattern persists regardless of the starting point, with Democratic administrations also experiencing better job creation and fewer recessions.

          https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/53a8257e-97fe-4eaf-899d-dbd9bd25f4dc/jec-fact-sheet—the-economy-under-democratic-vs.-republican-presidents.pdf

          • “Since World War II, the U.S. economy has generally grown faster under Democratic presidents, with average real GDP growth rates of 3.5%–4.3% annually, compared to 2.4%–2.6% under Republicans.”

            So, just going to utterly ignore how the definition of GDP makes *growing the government* make that statement technically correct while being utterly deceitful in what it’s implying?

            Of course, actually looking at what you posted, just out of fairness, we see that that claim is *shockingly* skewed by Democrats long in the past, AND it stops in the Obama years (when the lies about the economy under Obama were still in force).

            It also leaves out entirely who was in charge of Congress… that’s what makes Clinton look good, for those who were alive to see how he pivoted after his first two years when the Republicans took Congress for the first time in a generation or more.

            So, as usual, more deceit. Must be a day that ends in ‘Y’.

  11. Bwahahahha. Obama tan suit says what, clown?

    Also typical of GOP, present any facts they don’t like and the facts are skewed, they are covering it up, they lie. You clowns are always projecting. At least come up with a new charade? This one is worn out from the 80s.

    Also love how if a repupublican president does it, it was all him, but a D president, and it’s only Congress that did the work. You all have been guzzling the Kool aid for so long. Keep simpin for the billionaires. I’m sure they really have your best interest at heart. Bwahahahahaha.

    How’s that Trump phone? Maybe you can order a trump steak on it? Bwahahahahah

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