US Politics Mega-thread - Page 7579

On May 19 2017 04:42 Plansix wrote:

I think we should just hold both sides accountable for the same things. I do remember a quote about a lot of coal miners being put out of work being taken out of context and paraded around. Was that a human mistake? Sure. Did the GOP and conservative media run with it? Oh yes.



There have been no corrections to that article. It is either a joke or the GOP leadership laughing about Russia hacking their opponents. The Post not running that story will not stop Fox News from doing its thing. And if the Post doesn’t run the story, the source will go to another reporter and they will. This is problem isn’t solved by self moderation.

On May 19 2017 04:56 Trainrunnef wrote:



I was referring to the previous retracted comment about the subpoena

Pence mentioned more than once that Trump's decision was at the recommendation of Rosenstein. A source with knowledge of discussions inside the White House told CNN's Dana Bash that the thinking was that because Democrats were saying precisely what Rosenstein said in a letter explaining the grounds for Comey's dismissal, there would be no backlash.

On May 19 2017 04:58 Plansix wrote:

I would not link to the two. One was bad information provided a source is the senate that was cleared up. The other is an article where the author took the time to confirm the recording was real and contacted the people involved with the discussion.

On May 19 2017 05:06 Trainrunnef wrote:


I hear you, but that's not the only article either and the frequency with which that happens just isn't sufficient for the public to be able to maintain trust in a long term basis. I guess this is just my personal gripe... idk

On May 19 2017 05:18 Plansix wrote:

Twitter and print articles are worlds apart. One has an editor and fact checker. The other is twitter.

The livelihoods of farmers and ranchers are intimately tied to weather and the environment. But they may not be able to depend on research conducted by the government to help them adapt to climate change if the Trump administration follows through on campaign promises to shift federal resources away from studying the climate.

Farmers stand to lose a lot if worst-case climate projections come to pass. They are likely to face extreme swings in temperature and precipitation. Pests and crop diseases will show up more frequently. Heat stress could stunt meat and dairy production by the nation's cattle herds, costing farmers billions of dollars in lost revenue and forcing food prices to rise.

Given the scope of the problem, the search for novel ways to adapt to a changing climate is driving agricultural research. The new administration in Washington, D.C., however, is attempting to change not just the direction of climate research, but also the tone and rhetoric around the issue.

For more than a decade, the federal government has taken on a large role in directing and funding climate change research, spending more than $11.6 billion on climate research in 2014 — an increase from just $2.4 billion in spending in 1993, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Former President Barack Obama made climate change adaptation and preparation a signature issue, rolling climate goals into policies across the government.

A high-profile Obama-era initiative specifically focused on the food system came in the form of U.S. Department of Agriculture research centers known as "climate hubs." The hubs are meant to better coordinate USDA research and outreach. After their creation in 2014, researchers set about translating scientific jargon into real-world advice for farmers, ranchers and foresters on how best to survive more erratic weather and a hotter climate.

The Agriculture Department established nine hubs across the U.S., and put one devoted to Caribbean adaptation in Puerto Rico.

In Fort Collins, Colo., the Northern Plains Climate Hub operates out of a squat, beige building, hidden behind a row of greenhouses. The center's director, agricultural economist Dannele Peck, says her team is doing the work necessary to keep America's farmers and ranchers productive as climate change upends their operations. And unlike other industries that could suffer losses in a hotter climate, Peck says farmers are already primed to start having conversations and changing certain practices now.

"When you walk into a local diner, what are they talking about? The weather," Peck says.

Peck's region – which includes Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota – is an agricultural powerhouse. Dairies are sprouting up and growing in Colorado, Nebraska and South Dakota, while beef cattle feedlots dot the landscape throughout. In crop production, the Dakotas rank high nationally for production of field crops like oats, wheat, sunflowers and dry beans.

To keep up the pace of food production in those areas, farmers and ranchers will have to make changes, Peck says. And it is the USDA's responsibility to help them adapt.

"One part of the hub's creation was just to make us more efficient," Peck says. "If we have many, many different people working on weather and climate issues and they don't talk to each other, you get redundancy or duplication."

Trump's new USDA secretary, Sonny Perdue, is now overseeing the agency's climate change projects, including the 10 climate hubs. He does not deny climate change is happening, but injects seeds of doubt about humanity's role in causing it.

"I've been on a farm since the early [1950s] and I can tell you the climate is changing," Perdue says. "But the fact of what the cause of it is, is really what is in dispute."

Nearly every climate scientist in the world disagrees. So do portions of the USDA's website that say unequivocally climate change is human-caused. But similar statements are slowly being scrubbed from other federal websites, leading some to question the Trump administration's commitment to well-established climate science.

"Farmers care about this a lot," says Roger Johnson, president of the National Farmers Union, a left-leaning farmer advocacy group. He was a North Dakota farmer for the majority of his life.

"What farmers really want is good, solid scientific information about how they can better operate their farms and ranches," Johnson says.

With equivocation or outright denial of the facts about climate change from those in charge of the country's top scientific and regulatory agencies, that solid scientific information from publicly funded scientists is in jeopardy, Johnson says.

On May 19 2017 05:28 Trainrunnef wrote:


Is that how the average public sees it though?

On May 19 2017 03:42 IgnE wrote:


it's pretty obvious that it's much easier to make a story you don't want to talk about go away by denying it than by saying "oh yeah, but to truly understand that let me set the context for you and explain why i don't think it is what you think it is." this is like basic political public relations.

some of you people are as bad at imagining other minds as zlefin is. maybe you guys should read some novels or something.

On May 19 2017 04:54 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
Oh and btw trainrunnef, in my adult working life I have never made any jokes about "body odor, weight, sex, color, penis size, or eye color". It sounds like a good way to get fired. Have to raise an eyebrow at some of these btw, since you are clearly refering to yourself. I mean I can kinda understand making a joke at a coworkers body odor but...Penis size really? Eye color really? How do you make a off color joke about eye color exactly?

On May 19 2017 05:47 Trainrunnef wrote:


Then maybe you as a great example of a human being with morals and character should be running for office, and no I am not being facetious. There's too many good people not running for office.

The biggest issue is that you are confusing my apathy over this one issue for an overall support of the right, which couldn't be farther from the truth. Its a shitty joke with a shitty response and though we could make a huge deal about a politician lying, this particular lie, in this particular situation just doesn't have enough backup to make it really important (to me), unless something else comes out like a follow up conversation reinforcing the fact that it wasn't a joke etc.

On May 19 2017 05:59 zlefin wrote:

running for office is really hard; and you have to work with a bunch of jerks (the politicians).
having integrity and character is far from enough, you have to be convincing. it's also of course rather hard to actually tell the integrity of people, and politicians are good at faking things.

There may be ways to change the setup so that it's easier to get the moral people in; of course whether they'll truly do a better job can be a bit hard to say at times.