Politapocalypse (U.S. Politics Megathread)

Dogs are happy. I would say that there are cases where an individual may affect a population's reproductive behavior, even if that individual has no contribution to the gene pool.

Sugar rush tells us that Captain Crunch makes us feel good, so we eat more. What's your point?

This report is an unbalanced, partisan, and needless attempt to justify a predetermined position regarding the transfer of five Guantanamo detainees in exchange for the release of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl from enemy captivity.

Much of our disappointment with the report derives from the highly exclusive manner in which it was generated. The minority was excluded from the majority’s closed process for: analyzing and distilling the collected information, crafting findings and conclusions, and drafting the report. In fact, despite months of prodding by the minority, the majority failed to provide a draft of the report to the minority until 5:15 pm on Monday, November 23, 2015. (The underlying investigation was initiated by Chairman McKeon nearly a year-and-a-half prior, on July 17, 2014.) We were then provided two weeks, which included the Thanksgiving holiday period, to review the majority’s draft report and to make comment. All the while, the majority was making substantial edits to that draft. The majority did not provide a final draft of the report to the minority until 10:27 am on Wednesday, December 9, 2015.

We are disappointed that the majority needlessly allocated tremendous amounts of time and taxpayer resources to generate a report that essentially found what the supporters of H. Res. 644 already passed in 2014 with little evidence to support it.

We consider this report to be an expression of shrill demagoguery, contrary to the interests of national security, and beneath the dignity of the House Armed Services Committee.

For all of the preceding reasons, we dissent.

The Ku Klux Klan is using Donald Trump as a talking point in its outreach efforts. Stormfront, the most prominent American white supremacist website, is upgrading its servers in part to cope with a Trump traffic spike. And former Louisiana Rep. David Duke reports that the businessman has given more Americans cover to speak out loud about white nationalism than at any time since his own political campaigns in the 1990s.

As hate group monitors at the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League warn that Trump’s rhetoric is conducive to anti-Muslim violence, white nationalist leaders are capitalizing on his candidacy to invigorate and expand their movement.

“Demoralization has been the biggest enemy and Trump is changing all that,” said Stormfront founder Don Black, who reports additional listeners and call volume to his phone-in radio show, in addition to the site’s traffic bump. Black predicts that the white nationalist forces set in motion by Trump will be a legacy that outlives the businessman’s political career. “He’s certainly creating a movement that will continue independently of him even if he does fold at some point.”

Trump does not belong to or endorse white supremacist groups. He has said that he does not need or want Duke’s endorsement and his campaign has fired two staffers over racist posts on social media. A man displaying a Confederate flag was ejected from a Trump rally in Virginia earlier this month.