but, before we take it to a more appropriate venue like Current Events, let's look at things realistically for a change.

Bush has created the largest Deficit in history for any country at anytime

This is economic bullshit from beginning to end. First, we had an economic slowdown that began in 2000 before Bush took office. That lead to a decrease in revenues. At the same time, we had so corresponding decrease in spending. Bush is to blame for part of that because he pushed a lot of new spending. However, many of the liberal persuasion don't look at the spending side of the equation when it comes to deficits - they see only the revenue (taxes) side. Bush did push through some big tax cuts but those have only began to be implemented. They only amount for a small (<20%) percentage of the deficits. If you keep spending more and more when revenues are stagnant or falling, you're going to get deficits.

Some of the falling revenue was due to the collapse of the dot.coms and the ripple effects through the high tech industry, some was due to slowdowns following 9-11, and some due to slowing economic activity due to the decline in the stock market (the "reverse wealth effect"). A lot of people lost their jobs and so their tax payments went down sharply. Likewise, some of the new spending was caused by the aftermath of 9-11. Of course, we could've taken the (cowardly) European approach and tried to appease the terrorists, but that never was a viable option.

Second, the claim that these are the biggest deficits ever is also economic bullshit. Back in 1993 when Clinton and the Democrats pushed through some very large tax increases, they were lambasted for pushing through the biggest tax increases in history. Not true, they replied. They said that when you factor in inflation, the Reagan tax increases in the 1980s were bigger. You know what, they were right.

It's just as correct to factor in inflation when looking at the Bush tax cuts, the size of the deficits, or (to pull from current headlines) the price of gas. You can go to the Inflation Calculator on the Bureau of Labor Statistics website to verify this. In real dollar terms, deficits were much larger during WWII than today. For example, the national debt increased from $72.4 billion in 1942 to $136.7 billion in 1943, an increase of $64.3 billion. According to the Inflation Calculator, that's equivalent to a $683.5 billion deficit today. That's easily understandable - we were at war and our very survival was at stake. I'm one of those who argue that the same is true today. Failure to confront the terrorists will only embolden them to keep hitting us, as was proven by the half-hearted (and sometimes non-existant) response to terrorist attacks in the 1990s.

Here's a link showing government spending, revenues, and deficits from 1960 through 2001, <a href="http://www.aug.edu/~sbajmb/econ2105-GovIncExpTable.pdf>adjusted for inflation. Here's a list of the Historical Debt Outstanding - Annual 1950 - 2000. It's interesting to see that the national debt increased every one of those years when we were supposedly running a surplus and were "paying down the debt." Funny how that happened, isn't it?

went to war in Iraq. If you think both of those actually directly link to 9/11, then fine be naive.

Better to be "naive" that to be completely ignorant, like you. The best available information indicates that Saddam wasn't behind 9-11 (although the Czech government still insists that Atta met with Iraqi agents in 2000, but that has not been confirmed) but he had a proven history of supporting terrorists. He also had a proven history of using chemical weapons.

Back to NASA and the Shuttle, in the grand scheme of things, IMO they just really aren't that important compared to protecting American lives. Three times now (Apollo 1, Challenger, and Columbia), NASA has killed a crew by overlooking known defects in their programs and being too busy to think about safety. From 1967 through this year, remarkably little has changed at NASA.