self delete

[AngryAmish]

I'm stupid and illiterate.

[tk2kewl]

1. here...

[unblock]

2. that's not for the full year, only for three months!

that's the deficit for the first quarter of fiscal 2005, which began october 1, 2004.

[gratuitous]

3. Actually, that's for the period October-December 2004

The total deficit last year topped $500 billion by anyone's reckoning, and in reality probably approached $700 billion. A first quarter deficit of $114 billion represents a minor improvement over last year's numbers, but once the costs for the invasion of Iraq start getting added in (so far, the Republican Congress and the Bush administration are pursuing a gentlemen's agreement not to count that money), I predict the actual deficit numbers will again start turning redder.

This, after the Clinton administration handed Bush a federal budget in surplus in 2001 with projections (now gone like a puff of smoke in a windstorm) for paying off the national debt in our lifetimes.

But at least gays aren't clogging up our courthouses by getting married.