AP, July 20, 2009:

"Instead of a dream, this routine report could be a nightmare," Tony Fratto, a former Treasury Department official and White House spokesman under President George W. Bush, said of the delayed budget update. "There are some things that can't be escaped."

The administration earlier this year predicted that unemployment would peak at about 9 percent without a big stimulus package and 8 percent with one. Congress did pass a $787 billion two-year stimulus measure, yet unemployment soared to 9.5 percent in June and appears headed for double digits.

Obama's current forecast anticipates 3.2 percent growth next year, then 4 percent or higher growth from 2011 to 2013. Private forecasts are less optimistic, especially for next year.

Any downward revision in growth or revenue projections would mean that budget deficits would be far higher than the administration is now suggesting.

You're holding up Alberta as a great example of socialized medicine, when ironically, it is precisely because Alberta has been right wing &conservative in its spending, that its able to invest in health care now, & precisely because it has privatized much more than other provinces, that it has the advanced accoutrements which other jurisdictions lack.

And, while Canada may pay for treatments which it CANNOT provide its own citizens in the US, this is not a sustainable system. It's like Americans saying, oh sure, we can spend a trillion or two or three more on health care with debt in the tens of trillions - no problem. Eventually, bills have to be paid.

The American system isn't perfect, but let's not pretend that it isn't SUPERIOR to the Canadian system in several ways, i.e. timeliness of access, availability of diagnostic and high tech treatment options, availability of family physicians, etc.

My family and I have never had a problem seeing a doctor in Alberta. When it is a emergency we have received immediate care and when it something minor the very next day. I sometimes bitch about waiting an extra hour though. Your media in the states is the most ridiculous in the world and you Americans will believe just about anything they say,especially TMZ....What's up with the Jackson's today?

Calgary is where she had her operations.TSP when Canadians go to the states for treatment it is still covered by our health care system.

(CNS News, July 16, 2009)
Were going to go bankrupt as a nation, Biden said.

Now, people when I say that look at me and say, What are you talking about, Joe? Youre telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt? Biden said. The answer is yes, that's what Im telling you.

Telegraph, July 6, 2009:

In a 2003 paper, Thomas Laubach, the US Federal Reserves senior economist, calculated the impact on long-term interest rates of rising fiscal deficits and soaring national debt. Applying his assumptions to the recent spike in the US fiscal deficit and national debt, long-term interests rates will double from their current 3.5pc.

July 4, 2009 (Bloomberg) -- Suresh Tendulkar, an economic adviser to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, said he is urging the government to diversify its $264.6 billion foreign-exchange reserves and hold fewer dollars.

The major part of Indian reserves is in dollars -- that is something thats a problem for us, Tendulkar, chairman of the Prime Ministers Economic Advisory Council, said in an interview yesterday in Aix-en-Provence, France, where he was attending an economic conference.

[So China, Russia, and now even India, have had it with the US dollar. Get ready USA. If for one second the US loses its reserve currency status, or even has it markedly reduced, prices are going to skyrocket d/t the trillions of dollars already injected. The rest of the world is getting tired of paying for the paper and ink.]

"New scientific studies suggest a trend that may have started in the late 1990s. The earth may be cooling. The Hadley Centre for Climate Change, part of the UK Met Office, tracks global temperature and shows a big drop in global temperature anomalies since January 2007. Based on theHadCRUT3
system of observed temperatures, global surface temperature anomalies have been trending down since 2001. January 2008 had the coldest anomaly since 1995. Temperature anomaly is the difference between observed temperature and the average temperature for the same time over a period of years."

[Second comment on global warming - also blocked]

"All 4 major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously... The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C—a value large enough to erase nearly all the global warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year time. For all sources, it's the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down."
February 27, 2008, Herald Sun,AU

[This post blocked on global warming]

(Reuters) July 1, 2009 - U.S. states face budget shortfalls of $166 billion for fiscal 2010, with the gap likely widening to more than $350 billion the following year, according to a report released on Monday.
...
Now 48 states will have to make cuts or RAISE TAXES to make up for the shortfalls, and more than 20 have had to cut their healthcare budgets. Most states have laws forbidding ending the fiscal year with a deficit.

[With so many states in budget shortfall, jobs are on the line, as well as higher taxes. Again, I think it is irresponsible of the media to be calling a recovery with so much up in the air, and signs only that declines have slowed - of course they've slowed you morons, they've injected a borrowed trillion dollars into the economy, and you're moving into the warmer weather of seasonal employment. My God, if the numbers weren't slowing at all, you'd be rocketing towards depression, instead of merely racing towards it.]