In the long run this warning by S&P is probably a good thing, and may help to stave off the final hour. We will know when that hour has arrived, not because Medicare and Social Security have had their guts ripped out; not because there is no more head start, NSF, NIH, Bureau of Standards, or National Laboratories; nor because the National endowment for the Arts or Public Broadcasting are but distant memories, but rather because there will no longer be enough buying power left in the Federal Budget to subsidize the once mighty American, Military Industrial Complex via Israeli arms purchases, and not even enough for a few more hydrogen bombs, aircraft carriers, and missiles. And even though the delightful prospect of yet more "Democracy Building" is still heartily cheered by good Christians on Sunday mornings across America's fruited plain, sadly, there will simply be too little money left to "democratize" a sufficient number of heathens by sending them directly to Heaven.