Obama's 2nd Inaugural Address

[AZGrizFan]

Agreed, but consumer spending by the middle class is more stimulative...or so the theory goes.

Understood, but that wasn't TTBF's point. He noted that everyone voted for increased revenue by opening the tap on the wealthy. Get unemployment down in the ~ 6% range and you've got a middle class paying payroll taxes, state/federal taxes, FICA, refunding FUTA/SUTA, and using their wages to buy stuff from China.

Yeah. How much revenue would be generated if they'd focus on the fucking PROBLEM and get the 20,000,000 or so unemployed back to work.

[BDKJMU]

Yeah, he's reaching across the aisle. WAFJ. That deal was a **** abortion. Period. It solved exactly NOTHING, accomplished NOTHING, except placating a bunch of potential voters by sticking it to a group of people who already pay 5x their "fair share".

yep. Elections have consequences. Voters said in November they wanted the wealthiest to pay what they paid under Clinton (3% increase in their taxes, which accounted for a HUGE portion of our deficit). That view won the day, and now will be policy... amazing as it is... the system worked. It was bumpy... but it worked.

Do they teach math at NDSU? Going from 35 to 39.6 is over a 13% increase in their taxes.

[BDKJMU]

Yeah, he's reaching across the aisle. WAFJ. That deal was a **** abortion. Period. It solved exactly NOTHING, accomplished NOTHING, except placating a bunch of potential voters by sticking it to a group of people who already pay 5x their "fair share".

yep. Elections have consequences. Voters said in November they wanted the wealthiest to pay what they paid under Clinton (3% increase in their taxes, which accounted for a HUGE portion of our deficit). That view won the day, and now will be policy... amazing as it is... the system worked. It was bumpy... but it worked.

Oh my god you are an idiot.

[AZGrizFan]

yep. Elections have consequences. Voters said in November they wanted the wealthiest to pay what they paid under Clinton (3% increase in their taxes, which accounted for a HUGE portion of our deficit). That view won the day, and now will be policy... amazing as it is... the system worked. It was bumpy... but it worked.

Oh my god you are an idiot.

He's a party hack, JMU. What do you expect him to say?

[BDKJMU]

Yeah, he's reaching across the aisle. WAFJ. That deal was a **** abortion. Period. It solved exactly NOTHING, accomplished NOTHING, except placating a bunch of potential voters by sticking it to a group of people who already pay 5x their "fair share".

TTBF - that's not my perception of how the fiscal cliff deal got done at all. Obama didn't reach across the aisle to rational actors - he and/or his surrogates made proposals, Boehner tried to make counter-proposals but kept getting undercut by teapartiers trying to take a hardline. Finally it came down to sh!t or get off the pot time and the moderate republicans who stood to lose voter support if we went over the cliff caved and Obama got a great deal. If the teapartiers would have let Boehner negotiate they would have gotten a better deal but they had to be ideological dicks about it and it blew up in their faces. The moderates broke rank not because Obama reached out to them but out of good old fashioned self-interest.

And AZ's right, that deal solved nothing. It just delayed the inevitable financial reckoning while continuing to rack up huge bills to be paid with income that we, our children & grandchildren haven't even earned yet.

We would have been better off in the long-run if we'd gone over the cliff. Republicans might have been able to sell that message if they would have taken the time to try and been willing to take the risk that they might lose an election and actually lead .

Which is what a lot of tea partiers were saying.

[kalm]

Oh my god you are an idiot.

He's a party hack, JMU. What do you expect him to say?

Meanwhile, that paragon of non-partisanship and open-minded virtue, BDKJMU....

[AZGrizFan]

He's a party hack, JMU. What do you expect him to say?

Meanwhile, that paragon of non-partisanship and open-minded virtue, BDKJMU....

Well, he's right in this instance: TTBF is being an idiot here.

[Seahawks08]

And what if it is?

Warmer, wetter winters in the northest? Just grow different crops and save money on fuel bills.

Colder Europe? Good, that will slow down the crazy drivers on the Autobahn = less deaths and better fuel consumption.

Warmer in the upper Mid-West? Fantastic...my family has a lot of land up there and we won't just visit in August. It wil also will mean longer and more productive summers = a wider range of crops.

More flood in Bangladesh? Great...nature's own population control method.

Seriously...who cares? Mankind will adapt...we have and always will. Of course, we will need to spend BILLIONS to build up a system of sea walls along the East Coast in order to maintain ridiculously located beach houses, but that will mean millions jobs in the construction industry and teen agers will still get to work part-time for 2 1/2 months out of the year while getting drunk and laid.

Seahawks...you are an idiot...a Chicken Little. "Oh...look out...the weather is changing! We are helpless and hopeless in the face of adversity. Please, everyone, stop what you are doing and listen to me! Wahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"

Grow up.

Ahh the community moron is back and I must say, I should have expected you would take that stance.

[JohnStOnge]

Elections have consequences. Voters said in November they wanted the wealthiest to pay what they paid under Clinton (3% increase in their taxes, which accounted for a HUGE portion of our deficit).

I don't think the part about the 3% tax increase making a big difference in the deficit is true. We all heard/read stuff about how little that would do. Here is one example:

http://washingtonexaminer.com/how-much- ... QHaOcU0WSo" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

That's based on raising rates on those making over $250,000 per year. When all was said and done, the deal raised rates only on those making over $450,000 per year. So it had even less impact on the annual deficits. And I've not seen anybody dispute the basic point that it's not going to have much impact.

As is the case with every word uttered when Obama opens his mouth, the Obama tax the rich thing was demagoguery. Symbolism. The tax increase made class envy warriors feel better. I guess. That's about it.

The problem is not the rich not paying enough taxes. It's the rest of us demanding government spending.

[JohnStOnge]

I like everybody and found John's post to be intriguing. He may be right. But there's a **** ton of other noted scientists and statisticians who might disagree with him.

I don't know if that's true when it comes to statisticians. The principle I talked about is a core principle of statistics. Cause and effect cannot be inferred without a controlled experiment. Believe me when I tell you that is something that is drilled into the heads of people who get into the field of statistics.

I would be very willing to bet that if you were to lay out what's been done in climate science to all of the statisticians of the world then ask them, "Has cause and effect been inferred in this case?," the overwhelming majority answer would be "no."

And, look, even the IPCC Physical Science Basis report basically concedes the point. For those who haven't followed links I've provided on that before you can go to http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_dat ... 9-1-2.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;. Do a find on the word "experiment" and you will find this language:

Detection does not imply attribution of the detected change to the assumed cause. ‘Attribution’ of causes of climate change is the process of establishing the most likely causes for the detected change with some defined level of confidence (see Glossary). As noted in the SAR (IPCC, 1996) and the TAR (IPCC, 2001), unequivocal attribution would require controlled experimentation with the climate system. Since that is not possible, in practice attribution of anthropogenic climate change is understood to mean demonstration that a detected change is ‘consistent with the estimated responses to the given combination of anthropogenic and natural forcing’ and ‘not consistent with alternative, physically plausible explanations of recent climate change that exclude important elements of the given combination of forcings’ (IPCC, 2001).

Underline added for emphasis. The underlined portion is a concession to the principle I'm talking about. Of course, as I wrote earlier, they get that concession out of the way then go on to act as though the principle doesn't exist. But it does.

BTW, you can't have a cause and effect "level of confidence" without a controlled experiment. And I have no doubt that if you come right down to it the overwhelming majority of statisticians would agree with me on that point.

[JohnStOnge]

I'm interested in seeing if the IPCC repeats the concession to the principle I talked about in its next report. I'm sure if I've pointed to it others have as well. The principle won't go away if the IPCC doesn't refer to it. But it'll be interesting to see if they continue to have the intellectual honesty to at least refer to it.

[JohnStOnge]

To me one of the saddest public perceptions of all is the idea that the "peer review" publication process in science represents a serious quality control process whereby valid studies are accepted and invalid studies are rejected. The truth, I think, is that many invalid studies are accepted and many valid studies are rejected. And I think that's especially true when you get into the realms of controversial, political issues. I understand that nobody is going to believe me. But I have had occasion many times to use work done by others in an applied way and just can't believe people think "peer review" means "serious quality control process."

[BDKJMU]

Boehner full of regret over 'fiscal-cliff' moves

"Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is sharing his regrets about his "fiscal-cliff" strategy, less than a month after the House bitterly swallowed a last-minute deal hatched in the Senate.

In a private speech to the Ripon Society on Tuesday, Boehner said that he should have taken a different course after the November election by immediately demanding that the Senate produce a bill to avert the worst parts of a combination of tax increases and spending cuts that were due to hit on Jan. 1.
Instead, Boehner delivered a formal speech at the Capitol on the day after President Obama won a second term, in which he offered a major Republican concession – new tax revenue as part of a broader fiscal deal.

“Looking back, what I should have done the day after the election was to make it clear the House has passed a bill to extend all of the current tax rates, the House has passed a bill to replace the sequester with cuts in mandatory spending, and the Senate ought to do its work,” Boehner said. “We’re ready, able and willing to work with the Senate as soon as they produce a bill. It should have been what I said. You know, again, hindsight is 20-20.”.....

.......Boehner now believes that effort was a mistake, and he has vowed to Republicans in the House that he will not negotiate one-on-one with Obama going forward. He is instead recommitting to a “regular order” process, whereby the House and Senate pass legislation independently that can then be reconciled with amendments or with conference committees.
That has begun with the House GOP’s move to approve a short-term increase in the debt limit in exchange for a commitment from Senate Democrats to pass a budget resolution for the first time in four years......."

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/27941 ... z2J7EjvJhq" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[houndawg]

Boehner full of regret over 'fiscal-cliff' moves

"Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is sharing his regrets about his "fiscal-cliff" strategy, less than a month after the House bitterly swallowed a last-minute deal hatched in the Senate.

In a private speech to the Ripon Society on Tuesday, Boehner said that he should have taken a different course after the November election by immediately demanding that the Senate produce a bill to avert the worst parts of a combination of tax increases and spending cuts that were due to hit on Jan. 1.
Instead, Boehner delivered a formal speech at the Capitol on the day after President Obama won a second term, in which he offered a major Republican concession – new tax revenue as part of a broader fiscal deal.

“Looking back, what I should have done the day after the election was to make it clear the House has passed a bill to extend all of the current tax rates, the House has passed a bill to replace the sequester with cuts in mandatory spending, and the Senate ought to do its work,” Boehner said. “We’re ready, able and willing to work with the Senate as soon as they produce a bill. It should have been what I said. You know, again, hindsight is 20-20.”.....

.......Boehner now believes that effort was a mistake, and he has vowed to Republicans in the House that he will not negotiate one-on-one with Obama going forward. He is instead recommitting to a “regular order” process, whereby the House and Senate pass legislation independently that can then be reconciled with amendments or with conference committees.
That has begun with the House GOP’s move to approve a short-term increase in the debt limit in exchange for a commitment from Senate Democrats to pass a budget resolution for the first time in four years......."

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/27941 ... z2J7EjvJhq" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Translation: "I'm tired of getting beat like MJ's unit at a Neverland birthday party."