Usa Thread

[unit731]

It truly is a dilemma.

There is no good response.

 

Does the civilized world allow the use of chemical weapons on any battlefield?

 

Not sure what the answer is.

But a guess is that every 3rd rate dictator is watching this closely.

 

Just a guess.

Syria has drawn many/most of the worlds fighting religious nut cases to its "civil" war.

Not all, of course, as nut case bombings still take place inside Iraq.

 

The home countries do not want these fighting religious nut cases to return to their home countries.

 

If the East or West wanted this "civil" war to end - it would have ended a long time ago.

[Flashermac]

Sadam used mustard gas in the 8-year-long Iran-Iraq War, and also against the Kurds. I don't remember the world getting very upset about it.

[cavanami]

Does Obama know he’s fighting on al-Qa’ida’s side?...No, it wasn't on his tele-prompter!

[cavanami]

Top 10 U.S. cities with the worst drivers show little signs of improvement

 

http://autos.yahoo.c...-152123985.html

 

While driving has become far safer over the past two decades, and accidents have slowly declined, there's still more than 5 million vehicle crashes a year in the United States, with roughly 3 million of those only causing property damage rather than injury. According to Allstate Insurance, that's enough to make the typical driver likely to get into at least a fender bender once a decade — unless they live around the cities with the worst drivers, where their chances of a wreck can double...

 

Top 10 cities with America's worst drivers

[Steve]

Top 10 U.S. cities with the worst drivers show little signs of improvement

 

http://autos.yahoo.c...-152123985.html

 

While driving has become far safer over the past two decades, and accidents have slowly declined, there's still more than 5 million vehicle crashes a year in the United States, with roughly 3 million of those only causing property damage rather than injury. According to Allstate Insurance, that's enough to make the typical driver likely to get into at least a fender bender once a decade — unless they live around the cities with the worst drivers, where their chances of a wreck can double...

 

Top 10 cities with America's worst drivers

 

Back when I was a kid, the cost of car insurance was so high in my area ($4,000 minimum with a perfect driving record and over 25, which doesn't sound like a lot but in a very depressed area, its pretty much a choice between car insurance a rent.). It was common to register your car elsewhere. My parents, extremely law abiding and honest, dad a baptist deacon, registered our car to an address in the suburbs.

 

Many people drove unregistered, old cars. This scene was common. A commuter driving up N. Broad Street near my neighborhood would get into an accident with a local. The local would calmly collect his personal belongings out of the trunk and front compartment and simply leave the vehicle right there and take the bus or train home.

[Steve]

Does Obama know he’s fighting on al-Qa’ida’s side?

 

 

If Barack Obama decides to attack the Syrian regime, he has ensured – for the very first time in history – that the United States will be on the same side as al-Qa’ida.

 

.

 

 

http://www.independe...de-8786680.html

 

I saw a news show that says the administration knows just that and its the primary reason for not getting more involved. Rigiht now we are supposedly letting the Saudis fund the rebels. But we are afraid of a post Syria with the people involved right now.

 

John McCain is beating the war drums and he HAS to know that too. In hindsight we dodged a bullet that he wasn't elected. He would have had American troops on the ground in strength in pretty much every Arab Spring uprising.

 

Anyway, the tricky part for us is how do we get rid of Assad without creating or allowing a much more radical government taking over?

[Flashermac]

Sen. Tim Scott wasn’t invited to event commemorating MLK march on Washington

 

 

Sen. Tim Scott, R.-S.C., the only African American serving in the United States Senate, wasn't invited to the event commemorating the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's march on Washington, though a host of Democratic luminaries spoke on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

 

“Senator Scott was not invited to speak at the event,†Greg Blair, a spokesman for the South Carolina lawmaker, said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “The senator believes today is a day to remember the extraordinary accomplishments and sacrifices of Dr. King, Congressman John Lewis, and an entire generation of black leaders. Today’s anniversary should simply serve as an opportunity to reflect upon how their actions moved our country forward in a remarkable way.â€

 

The event organizers didn't completely exclude Republicans from the event — former President George W. Bush, for instance, received an invitation, but he couldn't attend as he is recovering from surgery — but the slate of speakers was filled with names such as former President Clinton, Gov. Martin O'Malley, D-Md., Oprah Winfrey, Jamie Foxx and others.

 

President Obama was the keynote speaker of the event, of course, which is held in honor of the achievements of Dr. King and other civil rights leaders. Wouldn't it have made sense to have the first black president joined by the first black senator from South Carolina, which was a Jim Crow state when the original march on Washington took place?

 

The Washington Examiner contacted MLK Dream 50 to ask why Scott wasn’t invited, but didn’t hear back in time for publication.

 

 

http://washingtonexa...article/2534830

[Steve]

This is actually an honest question. Did Tim Scott want to be invited? I say that for a reason. My guess is he didn't want to.

[unit731]

"Sen. Tim Scott’s office claimed that he wasn’t invited to the March on Washington event yesterday, but the truth is that every member of Congress including Scott was invited weeks ago.

 

The latest in Republican false meme creation began when ABC “Benghazi emails†News reported, “The only African American serving in the Senate, Republican Tim Scott, wasn’t invited to partake in the festivities today, a spokesman confirmed to ABC News.†This statement was also reported by the Newscorp owned Wall Street Journal, which was then quoted by The Washington Post.

 

But according to the event organizers, this isn’t true. Roll Call broke with the mainstream media tradition of taking a Republican’s word for it by actually asking the organizers of the event if Republicans were invited. In an email statement, a spokesperson for the event said, “This was truly a bipartisan outreach effort…All members of congress were invited to attend and the Republican leadership was invited to speak. Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s office was very helpful in trying to find someone to speak at the event. Making this commemoration bi-partisan was especially important to members of the King family, too.â€

 

 

LINK

[Flashermac]

Republican Party officials reached out to organizers of this week’s March on Washington commemoration with a series of suggestions for possible GOP speakers, but several of the people they recommended were never contacted with invitations to speak, according to Republican National Committee officials.

 

Miscommunication and lack of coordination appear to have played a role in at least some of the invites not going out to Republican office-holders. Event organizers say they assumed Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., couldn’t attend, based on a failure to RSVP to an earlier, more general invitation. But his office says he was never actually invited to speak, and he may have been able to attend if he was formally invited.

 

More than half a dozen different prominent Republicans were invited to speak, but several of the invitations went out quite late in the planning. All sent their regrets.

 

Regardless of the motivations, the result was that an ostensibly non-partisan program on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial took on a political edge. Heated comments on affirmative action, gun rights, and racial discrimination in law enforcement echoed from the podium, with none of the 30-plus speakers – a list that included all three living Democratic presidents — representing a Republican point of view.

 

That’s not a tone that members of the King family and other groups involved in organizing the day wanted. And Republican Party officials, intent on reaching out to minority voters and with a large television audience tuning in to the 50th anniversary events, say they didn’t want the GOP to go unrepresented, either.

 

After it became clear that big-name Republicans like the Bushes were not going to be able to attend, RNC officials offered help in finding one or more appropriate Republican speakers, according to Sean Spicer, the RNC’s communications director.

 

“We were very proud of our efforts to commemorate this historic event, which we did in several ways over the last few days,†Spicer said. “Furthermore, we offered up assistance to the organizers of the event — our assistance in facilitating any Republican speakers that they would be interested in having.â€

 

Starting August 14 – two weeks before the commemoration — GOP officials offered help in reaching out to a range of other Republicans. That list, according to an RNC official, included Scott, who is the only African-American currently in the Senate; former Rep. J.C. Watts, R-Okla., who is black; and T.W. Shannon, the 35-year-old African-American speaker of the Oklahoma House of Representatives.

 

Organizers did invite several prominent Republicans – including both Presidents Bush, former Gov. Jeb Bush, former Gov. Mike Huckabee, House Speaker John Boehner, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and Sen. John McCain – to speak. They also reached out late in the planning process to the office of Rep. James Sensenbrenner, a veteran congressman from Wisconsin who has been prominent on voting-rights and sentencing-reform issues.

 

All of those invited declined, however, with the two former presidents citing health concerns, and the others pointing to scheduling conflicts. Cantor was invited just 12 days before the event, and Huckabee told ABC News he was invited just last week – too late for him to juggle other commitments.

 

“I was invited and so wished I had been able to do it,†Huckabee said in an e-mail to ABC. “I didn’t receive the invitation until last week, however, and it was too late for me to re-arrange things.â€

 

One Republican aide likened the late flurry of invites to “unvitations,†the “Seinfeldâ€-inspired practice of inviting someone to an event with the knowledge that they won’t attend.

 

That accusation doesn’t sit well with those who put the event together. The lack of Republicans was a disappointment to event organizers, up to and including members of the King family, said Donna Brazile, a veteran Democratic strategist who was tasked by event organizers with helping line up a Republican for the program.

 

She said it’s just wrong to suggest that organizers didn’t want Republican voices represented.

 

“It’s not the fault of the King Center. The attempt was made, from the [former] presidents to the speaker of the House, to various other leaders,†she said.

 

Brazile said she assumed Scott was invited to speak. Other organizers said that when he didn’t respond to an invitation sent to all members of Congress months ago – to attend, though not necessarily to speak – that he was assumed to be unable to attend.

 

A Scott aide said it’s impossible to say whether he would have attended if offered a speaking slot. But the aide pointed out that Scott wrote an op-ed about the anniversary this week and spoke at a church in Charleston about King’s legacy Wednesday night.

 

“The senator believes the anniversary was a day to remember the extraordinary accomplishments and sacrifices of Dr. King, Congressman John Lewis, and an entire generation of black leaders,†said Greg Blair, a Scott spokesman.

 

Without addressing specific names, Brazile said organizers weren’t going to put a Republican into the program who didn’t have the stature to speak alongside presidents and heroes of the civil-rights movement. She said she worked directly with GOP leadership offices on Capitol Hill to find an appropriate speaker, to no avail.

 

“They weren’t looking for any Republican out of the wilderness,†Brazile said. “For Republicans to try to make an issue out of this – that’s a sign of desperation. The overtures were made.â€

 

In a statement, the event’s executive producer, the Rev. Leah Daughtry, cited “scheduling conflicts†for the inability to include Republican voices.

 

“We regret that scheduling conflicts precluded the participation of many of our invitees, but we are confident that whether they were in Washington, DC or in their hometowns, everyone joined the celebration of Dr. King’s dream and remains committed to working and fighting for the fulfillment of the ideals Dr. King articulated 50 years ago,†Daughtry said.

 

In the event’s aftermath, though, some Republicans are suggesting their party was intentionally excluded, while some Democrats have accused Republicans of ignoring the King legacy.

 

“They asked a long list of Republicans to come,†Julian Bond, a veteran civil-rights activist who spoke at the event, said on MSNBC Wednesday. “To a man and woman they said ‘no.’ And that they would turn their backs on this event was telling of them, and the fact that they seem to want to get black votes — they’re not going to get ‘em this way.â€

 

“I would have liked to have seen Republican speakers at that,†NAACP’s Ben Jealous said during an appearance at the National Press Club. “There are messages that could have been brought.â€

 

But the RNC’s Spicer said it should have occurred to organizers to make a special effort to invite Scott, given the fact that he’s the only African-American U.S. senator.

 

“Overlooking Tim Scott would be like overlooking the president for the State of the Union speech,†he said.

 

And looking at a speakers’ lineup that included lower-profile Democrats such as Rep. Marcia Fudge, D-Ohio, and Rep. Donna Edwards, D-Md., there were plenty of other “nationally known†black Republicans who could have been included, he said.

 

 

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/08/gop-official-march-on-washington-organizers-ignored-suggestions/