An Inconvenient Truth

[Cono Este]

" I'm pledging I will not raise taxes; I'm giving a tax cut to the people earning less than $200,000 a year.

Now, for the people earning more than $200,000 a year, you're going to see a rollback to the level we were at with Bill Clinton, when people made a lot of money.

KERRY: And looking around here, at this group here, I suspect there are only three people here who are going to be affected: the president, me, and, Charlie, I'm sorry, you too.

(LAUGHTER) "


I said it was a mistake, which was kind of me. But sitting in front of your billionaire wife, making statements like this to a bunch of low key midwestern types did not help. I repeat, it did not help.

You get over yourself.

[cj001f]

I have known peole who smell and look like a bum in a park who make 10x what kerry does and I respect them more than any yuppie with a hard on for a leased BMW.

There's a few dozen people in the world worth 10x Kerry and his wife

THE AUDIENCE LAUGHED WITH HIM CONO!

[Cono Este]

Sorry, I dont think that came off well. I awknowledge the fact that fox news and the right wing were trying to slander him for having a rich wife. He should not have fed them more.

And I am referring to the personal income that John Kerry disclosed. I am sure he does not consider the Heinz fortune his.

I am trying to fair. Like I said originally, we all know what al gore meant, and we all know what kerry meant. But, it came off bad to the avg joe. Thats all i am saying.

Geez guys,.

[MassLiberal]

once again, thay laughed with him. Fox news made it out to be a big deal because bush looked like an incompetent fool in all debates.

[Cono Este]

I call BS. ML, you should know more than anyone. I wasnt watching fox news, and I heard the silence afterward. And I am sure you had a tummy ache when he said it. I am sure if given the choice, you would have written him something better to say.

Anyway this is pointless. They guy lost and you cant even politely point out why. Big surprise around here.

[MassLiberal]

Yes, it was presumptive of him to make that comment, but there was laughter afterwards, after all , I was there.

But that is besides the point. Harping on a single instance in a presidential contest is ridiculous, just as many people harp on Bush's inablility to form a coherent sentence when he strays from his set talking points.

[Cono Este]

Yes, it was presumptive of him to make that comment, but there was laughter afterwards, after all , I was there.

But that is besides the point. Harping on a single instance in a presidential contest is ridiculous, just as many people harp on Bush's inablility to form a coherent sentence when he strays from his set talking points.

Yes they do.

And it was not just presumtous, it was stupid. Shortly afterwards a doctor asked a question. And I will presume he earns more than a senator.

Judging peoples personal income by sight, is simply poor taste. But I will admit it was both unintentinal and a mistake, but you call it "presumtous."

whatever keep feeding the haters, thats all they need is more ammo.

If I had your job, id advise anyone with a billionaire wife running for president to steer clear of that, but thats just my opinion.

[MassLiberal]

Mid level staff on a campaign is a long way away from advisor. I spent more time dealing with the partisans, than on the phone with Kerry.

However, my point is that taking one sentence and making it out to be the most important part of an election is more dishonest than Kerry making an arrogant statement. Using an Achille's Heal or Ad Hominen attack as the basis of a campaign is dishonest and robs the people of real debate on the issues. It seems to me that you have fallen for this line by criticizing Kerry for a stupid statement, while giving Bush a pass on stupid policy.

[Cono Este]

Unfortunatley ML, most people do. I myself am a trader. I am often always "right", but often lose. Its a fact of life. Im just pointing that out.

Remeber this BS? Its politics. The guy that is simply trying to always be "right" guy gets creamed harder than us Wall Street Whores.

[MassLiberal]

Yes, I guess it's a bit idealistic of me to think that debate in this country could be based on reason and logic.

[Cono Este]

In my job the right execution is often more important than the right idea.

Come to St. Loius and see how people think. It even frightens me a little. Plus Hidden valley, 300 ft of vert!! You can ski and play nine holes all in the same facility. (if I am still here).

[MassLiberal]

Hopefully we can meet one day where the mountains are big, and the golf courses are long. I've been to Missorah, And at the very end of the campaign I was stuck in Iowa, so I know your pain, and if I never step foot in the midwest again, I would be a very happy man.

(MN, WI are the exceptions)

[spindrift]

Judging peoples personal income by sight, is simply poor taste. But I will admit it was both unintentinal and a mistake, but you call it "presumtous."

He did not have to judge anyone by sight. He is in a financial realm where you just have to do the numbers. Both with respect to income and investable wealth. Digging into the demographics of wealth can be hard (surprised?) but some info is pretty readily gotten. Especially via the annual Merril Lynch - CapGemini World Wealth Report. Normally downloadable for free - and this year's should be out shortly. People like Kerry and Bush are in rarefied air. They can know with some statistcial confidence that when they walk in a room with a random assortment of people (or even a semi-random assortment) they are the wealthiest - unless the room contains more than about 20 or 30 thousand people And you can bet Kerry was on top of the statistics regarding real incomes over 200K. So while he may not have known the literal circumstances of everyone in the room, you can bet he was right on top of things from a statistical point of view.

If you, or anyone else found that comment regarding taxes arrogant or insulting, you missed the boat. Likely to your own detriment. The fact is Kerry was right on top of the economic issues. The fact is (and today's economy is bearing this out) that every dollar in tax cuts received by middle class Americans under Bush's tax regime has a negative net present value. Folks here who claim they are good with numbers, finance and markets should chew on that... (the people in the WWR have done this and their movement of capital tells you everything you need to know about their conclusions). And BTW, I don't even especially like Kerry at this point...

As for Al Gore - I have not yet seen his movie, but I'd expect him to put a spin on things - that's what you do when editorializing. However, I'm unaware of him ever lying. This is in contrast to the kind of lies he has personally been subjected to. These are unique in recent history to the slander machine of the "conservative right". Rove and his friends on right wing radio have a shocking willingness to push outright fabrications and lies into the heads of anyone stupid enough to take them at face value or too lazy or ignorant to crack the logic or numbers for themselves.

[Tippster]

Remeber this BS? Its politics. The guy that is simply trying to always be "right" guy gets creamed harder than us Wall Street Whores.

Don't really remember Dukakis anymore (I blame the drugs) but I certainly remember this, and no - I'm not willing to give him a pass on it.



They had to motor an Aircraft Carrier around to keep the coast from showing on the horizon, and they kept servicemen and -women from seeing their families a day earlier just for this farce.

[CUBUCK]

Don't really remember Dukakis anymore (I blame the drugs) but I certainly remember this, and no - I'm not willing to give him a pass on it.



They had to motor an Aircraft Carrier around to keep the coast from showing on the horizon, and they kept servicemen and -women from seeing their families a day earlier just for this farce.

I wouldn't be surprised if there were not a good number of service men on there who thought the extra day was worth it for an opportunity to meet the president. But hey, what do I know, I wasn't there. Doesn't make it right, not sure it makes it wrong either.

[PassTheDutchie]

I wouldn't be surprised if there were not a good number of service men on there who thought the extra day was worth it for an opportunity to meet the president.

Of course, the president could have met them without making them part of a political stunt and they wouldn't have had to spend that extra day... But hey, we live in America; style over substance, irrespective of the costs.

[Will]

By the way, I'm not disputing that global warming is real and caused by human activity, however I'm pretty sure that most of the warming over the past century happened between 1900 and 1940. Freon wasn't even invented until after 1938, and if you think about it, most Americans didn't start owning cars until after WWII... then again I'm not a scientist, but neither is Al Gore.

Let's bring this back on track.

Freon has to do with the hole in the Ozone layer, not global warming. It is now much less of a problem thanks to regulation of the Freon and other CFCs. This was mentioned in the movie as an example of how large scale global problems can be addressed through united action.

Al Gore may not be a scientist, but I bet he knows a lot more about global warming than you do. What motivation do you think he has to lie? How will he make money through misrepresenting environmental science? Of course, given ML's point about the overall agreement in the scientific field, I doubt he's doing much misrepresentation.

Along the same point, you make accusations of scientific groupthink. But isn't there tremendous motivation for a scientist to prove everyone else wrong, to prove the contrarian position, to upset conventional wisdom; they don't get the recognition and grant money by confirming what everyone else thinks.

Any attempt to explain complex scientific information to the public demands a middleman, someone to compile information and present it in an easily digestible form. For example, a movie or slideshow. So who would you trust to do that fairly?
If anyone who believes in global warming is a liberal, and any liberal will misrepresent global warming information, therefore global warming does not exist.
That seems like poor reasoning.

One middleman who takes great pride in being a contrarian is Greg Easterbrook. He has long doubted global warming and has argued in favor of intelligent design. Now he's changed sides. Read his opinion piece here.

And finally, here are some charts with estimations of global temperature over the past 2000, 1000, and 150 years. Does the slope of the line in the last 150 years seem rather steep to anyone else?

[CUBUCK]

Everybody listen up and listen good.....

The sky is falling!

[cj001f]

Everybody listen up and listen good.....

The sky is falling!

It may be a newsflash, but there are some things all the money in the world can't fix. So keep believing that cabals of scientists and journalists manipulate people daily, but capitalists never do because it's "the market", and keep up the stupid flippant dismisals of everyone else.

[MassLiberal]

It is interesting how once again the doubters continue to use ZERO logic in their counter arguments.

Another point to add to the previous one I made about a lack of existence of peer reviewed arguments against global warming is that something like 52% of newspaper articles present the side of the argument that climate change is a farce. Henceforth the well thought out contributions of CUBUCK

[CUBUCK]

It is interesting how once again the doubters continue to use ZERO logic in their counter arguments.

I want to see something that shows the earth's temperature fluctuations over the last 500,000 years and then show me where we are today within that range.

I don't deny that there is evidence that the planet has gotten warmer over the last 100 years. About 1 degree warmer or so. but what I would like to see is how this fits into a reasonable sample size of the earth's history.

What bothers me about it all is that people like Gore try to push the belief that one day in the next 50 years we will wake up and the earth's surface will be 90% covered in water.

[Tippster]

I still wanna know what the hell we're supposed to do about Global Warming. Even going to pre-Industrial revolution carbon emission Levels would only cause stasis in the Greenhouse gases. Since that's not an option, and anything we do that's over that limit (meaning, anything "modern") will just increase the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, what the hell would all you doomsayers like us to fucking do about it?

Once again South Park summed it up nicely: "Look! It's Global Warming! RUN!"

[CUBUCK]

Once again South Park summed it up nicely: "Look! It's Global Warming! RUN!"

Always the voice of reason

[cj001f]

Once again South Park summed it up nicely: "Look! It's Global Warming! RUN!"

Like most of the South Park summaries it's a trite means of avoiding the issue.

What to do? Well, admitting it is a problem is a start. Policies decoupling GDP growth and fossilfuel (oil) consumption would be another good step (it's been done before). Perhaps we can't 'fix' it. That doesn't mean limiting or reducing the effects would not be beneficial.

CUBUCK-
I'd like an exact model of all trading activity on the NYSE for the next year before I invest. I'll get back to you in a year with the money. That's a far easier system to model. Oh no! People exagerate! Gee, business, politicians, nobody else does that to make a point.

[MassLiberal]

I don't understand why you buy into the "if we do something about climate change, it'll ruin the economy" line of bullshit tipp.

Our economy is attached to an Antiquated energy source, by developing the fuels and techs of the future we stand to gain a lot more than by sitting idly by.