Not news: Our government is lying to us. News: The country's deficit is waaaay bigger then we ever thought.

The federal government keeps two sets of books.

The set the government promotes to the public has a healthier bottom line: a $318 billion deficit in 2005.

The set the government doesn't talk about is the audited financial statement produced by the government's accountants following standard accounting rules. It reports a more ominous financial picture: a $760 billion deficit for 2005. If Social Security and Medicare were included — as the board that sets accounting rules is considering — the federal deficit would have been $3.5 trillion.

Congress has written its own accounting rules — which would be illegal for a corporation to use because they ignore important costs such as the growing expense of retirement benefits for civil servants and military personnel.

Do you know whose political party has been lying to us about how big the deficit is?

John McCain's party that's who.

Still want to vote for him?

You know one of the things about the Republicans that really burns my ass is when they start using taxes to turn the voter against the Democratic nominee.

They say "Oh if you vote for him he will raise your taxes, you don't want that do you?"

They completely leave out the fact that the reason that taxes need to be raised is to pay down the giant deficit that the Republicans have created by spending money they don't have like a drunken housewife who just caught her husband banging the maid.

That is what happened in the Reagan administration, the George H. Bush administration, and this one beats them all.

Democrats are the grownups who pay for the damage that the Republicans do to this country.