Okay.

Vietnam cost about $686 billion in 2008 dollars. Korean War? A little less than $600 billion in 2008 dollars. Add the $1.2 trillion cost to date of Afghanistan and Iraq and you get enough to pay for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid approximately through the fall of 2012.

The cost of the entire Cold War, 1945-1996 is estimated at about $13.1 trillion in 1996 dollars, or to keep everything even, about $18 trillion in 2008 dollars.

Plug them all together and we get about $20.2 trillion in 2008 dollars, which is about $21.2 trillion in 2011 dollars.

This is about what entitlements are going to cost us in just the next ten years alone.

It's the social spending eating our lunch, Eri. Two thirds of our budget now, and unfunded liabilities in the $40 to $50 trillion range. The Great Society, the glorious foundation of Democratic ideals. That's where the money's going. I pointed ER to this diagram. He didn't want to look at it. Maybe you don't either.

And all this calculation assumes anyone is jackass enough to label all of these military operations over the past 65 years as "Republican."

Just as an aside, the cost of the famous "Bridge to Nowhere" would pay for the current Federal budget for about 55 minutes.