Pejman Yousefzadeh

The White House has stated that it will respond to any and all online petitions that garner at least 25,000 signatures.

One such petition has not only met, but exceeded the threshold: A petition to have the United States build a Death Star.

I know that you think that this is crazy, but none other than Paul Krugman has advocated the following more than once in order to give a boost to the economy:

PAUL KRUGMAN, NEW YORK TIMES: This is hard to get people to do, much better, obviously, to build bridges and roads and healthcare clinics and schools. But my proposed, I actually have a serious proposal which is that we have to get a bunch of scientists to tell us that we’re facing a threatened alien invasion, and in order to be prepared for that alien invasion we have to do things like build high-speed rail. And the, once we’ve recovered, we can say, “Look, there were no aliens.”

But look, I mean, whatever it takes because right now we need somebody to spend, and that somebody has to be the U.S. government.

Now, here’s the thing: If we were to actually face an alien invasion, I highly doubt that the biggest agenda item on our to-do list would be to build high-speed rail. In fact, I daresay that a bigger and more pressing agenda item would be to build a Death Star. Not only could we equip ourselves to annihilate enemy spaceships once they have come close to Earth, we could get the Death Star to travel at light speed to enemy planets and obliterate them, no matter how peaceful those planets may turn out to be, and no matter how few weapons they might have.

So I do hope that the Obama administration will–like a bunch of good Keynesians–follow Krugman’s lead and announce that in anticipation of an alien threat, they will build a Death Star, if only to create jobs and stimulate the economy. I just hope that the Obamaesque Death Star won’t come with a thermal exhaust port that is at least two meters wide. I hear that if you practice gunning down womp rats in your T-16 back in Beggar’s Canyon, firing a couple of torpedoes that will destroy the exhaust port and the Death Star with it will be no problem whatsoever.

I mean, I would hate for the Obamaesque Death Star to become some kind of latter-day Solyndra. Wouldn’t you?