WTH of the Day Dept.

I was shopping for a new book bag/briefcase online when I stumbled across the Zero Halliburton 4″ Carbon Fiber Attache. Evidently something like an aluminum case except made with ultra-high-tech super-spy carbon fiber.

List price: $3,000.00. A bargain at 25% off, or $2,250.00.

This is a degree of sticker shock that I haven’t seen before, the kind severe enough to require medical treatment. And I wondered what the connection was to Halliburton, a company that knows a thing or two about overcharging for what it provides.

Wikipedia to the rescue. Zero Halliburton was once a division of Dick Cheney’s favorite meal ticket but has changed hands a couple of times and is now owned by a Japanese company that probably isn’t on your radar—unless you have two or more Cabinet members on speed-dial.

And here’s the best part:

Famously, the Nuclear Football (the briefcase used to order a nuclear attack) is a modified Zero Halliburton case.

Imagine being the guy who spends that kind of money on a briefcase that won’t even do the job without further modification. It’s just a reminder that some people live in a parallel world that doesn’t ever intersect with the one you and I live in.

If they ever covered this kind of thing in Consumer Reports I must have missed it. “Top Ten Nuclear Footballs Rated.”