US Politics Mega-thread - Page 5559

On October 14 2016 07:47 ticklishmusic wrote: He's actually a pretty solid dude - moderate, not-very-partisan Republican... who has no future in the Republican Party of today.

Donald Trump may not be planning to sue People over the magazine's story accusing him of sexual assault, but his wife Melania apparently is.

At 7:15 p.m. on Thursday night, Melania tweeted a copy of a letter bearing the return address of her lawyer, Charles Harder, and addressed to People editorial director Jess Cagle and People writer Natasha Stoynoff, who wrote a first-person account about Donald Trump forcibly kissing her at Mar-a-Lago in 2005.

Harder — who represented Hulk Hogan in his suit against Gawker, which was funded by Trump supporter Peter Thiel, and has sent threatening letters on Melania's behalf before — wrote that Stoynoff's account contained "actionable" falsehoods (though it did not call the article defamatory). The specific passage Melania Trump disputes: the account of the writer bumping into Melania and having a brief conversation with her outside of Trump Tower.

"The true facts are these: Mrs. Trump did not encounter Ms. Stoynoff on the street, or have any conversation with her. The two are not friends and were never friends or even friendly," Harder wrote.

Harder wrote that if the article is not corrected within 24 hours, Melania would "consider her legal options."
Earlier on Thursday, Cagle said in a statement that People magazine stands behind Stoynoff's reporting

Farmers, more than anyone else, manage America's land and water. They grow crops or graze cattle on more than half of the country's land outside of Alaska.

"Farming has huge impacts on water. Huge impacts on wildlife. It has big impacts on air, especially from animal feeding operations," says Craig Cox, senior vice president for agriculture and natural resources at the Environmental Working Group, or EWG, a nonprofit environmental organization. Agriculture, for example, has been blamed for algae blooms in Lake Erie, high levels of nitrates in Iowa's rivers and a giant "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico. Plowing and draining the Great Plains to make way for crops has driven many species of animals, like the black footed ferret, closer to extinction.

Yet according to many environmentalists, the federal government does little to regulate farmers. If anything, they say, the government makes things worse by providing subsidies that cushion farmers from the impact of low prices, encouraging them simply to plant more corn and soybeans, the crops that cover most of the Midwest. (This database created a decade ago by EWG shows exactly how much money each American farmer has been receiving from the government.)

But the government also provides some financial incentives for farmers to reduce their environmental impact. Farmers get government checks if, for instance, they voluntarily agree to plant strips of grass along streams, or create habitat for butterflies and native bees, or upgrade irrigation systems in order to use water or energy more efficiently.

These dollars are the government's main tool for getting farmers to do things that aren't in their economic self-interest, but which benefit the environment.

"We've been a huge supporter of these programs," says Cox. "But it's been difficult to know what they were doing."

Now it's possible to know a little more. This week, the EWG unveiled a database of "conservation" payments. They add up to almost $5 billion this year, or roughly a quarter of all farm subsidies.

Cox and his colleagues filed 28 separate requests under the Freedom of Information Act to collect details on every conservation payment, then assembled it all into a database. Anyone now can go online to see where the money went and what agricultural practices it was supposed to encourage.

"Now we can have an intelligent conversation about [these programs]," Cox says. "Are these are the right practices? Are payments going to the right places? Should we adjust the way these programs operate in order to make them more effective?"

Cox thinks the government could buy more environmental progress for its $5 billion a year.

On October 14 2016 09:38 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Nevermind that People's offices haven't been at the Time Life building for over a year, great law firm.

https://twitter.com/reidepstein/status/786717964036927488

On October 14 2016 09:39 TheTenthDoc wrote:


I wonder what it's like to live in a fantasy world like that.

On October 14 2016 05:35 Gorsameth wrote:

Did Arnold have an affair or did he sexually assault the nanny?

Right then, there is your answer about the difference...

On October 14 2016 09:17 Dan HH wrote:
https://twitter.com/MELANIATRUMP/status/786707074096963585

It's been a day full of tweeted lawyer letters

On October 14 2016 10:09 levelping wrote:
Can we all take a moment and appreciate the strategic plan of Clinton?

Wait till a month before the election date, go strong on these sexual claims, deflect attention from the emails, and as the closer, get your most popular speaker (Michelle) to directly call out trump. He'll either lose it and insult Michelle, or will have to leave her challenge unanswered.

Forget about whether all this is even true, but this is the sort of strategic mind I'd want to be dealing with the rest of the world.

On October 14 2016 09:50 GoTuNk! wrote:


The tape does not say "I sexually assaulted someone", that's just left wing narrative. It says I could do X (grab them by the pussy) and get away with it.

When arnie withdrew support we only had that. Now we also have some dubious claims that didn't exist before.

If he had said "I could totally go out and beat the shit out of Bill Clinton" people would not be saying that means he beat up Bill Clinton, because he is not saying that, and it doesn't prove anything.

Trump: "Yeah that's her with the gold. I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her. You know I'm automatically attracted to beautiful... I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything."

Bush: "Whatever you want."

Trump: "Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything."

On October 14 2016 10:21 Plansix wrote:

I'm so fucking confused.

On October 14 2016 10:21 Plansix wrote:

I'm so fucking confused.