Jay, it is "different, this time", because almost all of the expenses you listed were paid for via higher taxes on the "last dollar" of the highest income tax filers. You see, we in the US used to support a progressive tax policy until the elite managed to put a movie actor in the white house. When he took office, the outlays for most of the items and event you listed had been pared down to a national debt that was just under 1,000 billion.... what remained of the accumulation of total debt taxpayers were on the hook for, all the way back to 1788.

12 years later, incoming president Clinton was passed a national debt that had mushroomed past $4250 billion, but taxes at the top rate were much, much lower. The national debt was increasing at a $400 billion annual rate. Seven years later, the national debt increased by just $18 billion in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, 2000. Incoming president Bush was passed a national debt of $5650 billion. Clinton had increased taxes on the last dollar of income of the wealthiest, and presided over the largest reductiong of the number of non-military federal employees in history.

It's just 7 years later, and on August 1st, less than four months ago....the national debt total was $9550 billion, and when I looked today, it stood at $10660 billion. Time to restore taxes to the way they were before president Bush was sworn in in Jan. 2001? All it will take is for good men in congress to let the sunset provisions on the 2001 tax cut laws do exactly that, and the resoration of a sane foreign policy that will contribute to winding down the grossly out of proporation spending binge on all things military, intelligence gathering and analysis, and domestic security and surveillance related that so many insiders have profited from since 2002.

The manipulation of the "War on terror" bogeyman, instituted and hyped by the current administration to scare voters into granting them a second term, was exposed in this election cycle for what it was all along. It was a propagandized, "non-issue" not even seriously discussed as an actual challenge in the long, just ended campaign. So far, the costs of the bailout are nothing compared to what that giant "psy-op" has cost the country.

The damage of the ballooning of the national debt level as the intended policy of the last three republican administration is irreversibel, and the consequence is that the US Treasury will default on it's bond debt, so this debt won't be the disgusting legacy we expect we will be leaving to future generations to struggle to pay off. Instead, we will be an Argentinized nation with a busted currency. The deflationary period of ruin we are slipping into now, will be followed by a period of hyper-inflation that will guarantee a US Treasury default event.....and then will come a major war, or the rusting of the US fleet tied up at the docks, ala the former Soviet Navy in the 1990's.