*2016 US Presidential Elections* - Candidates, Statistics, Campaign Timelines, Debates

[Mayhem]

Republicans denounce Trump as confrontation with Muslim parents escalates

https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...397028-5722-11e6-9aee-8075993d73a2_story.html

Donald Trump faced mounting criticism from leaders of his own party Sunday as a confrontation between the Republican nominee and the Muslim American parents of a soldier killed in Iraq continued to consume the presidential race.

Khizr and Ghazala Khan denounced Trump in ever more forceful terms, asserting that Trump’s temperament and lack of empathy rendered him unfit for office, while Trump claimed that Khizr Khan “viciously attacked” him while speaking at the Democratic National Convention last week.

Khizr Khan also repeated his call for House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to repudiate Trump, saying they have a moral obligation to speak out against their party’s standard-bearer.

In separate statements, Ryan and McConnell expressed support for the Khans and reiterated their opposition to Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims, but neither mentioned Trump by name and neither abandoned his support for the Republican nominee.

The clash between the Khans and Trump has largely taken over the presidential race following both major party conventions and with 99 days before Election Day.

Whether the fight with the Khans will ultimately hurt Trump among voters remains an open question. Some of Trump’s more controversial remarks, such as his attacks on a disabled reporter and a U.S.-born judge of Mexican descent, seem to have initially registered only to fade somewhat quickly.

For instance, Trump was roughly tied with Democrat Hillary Clinton in an average of polls before his saying that Judge Gonzalo Curiel’s Mexican heritage made him unfit to rule in a lawsuit involving Trump. In the ensuing weeks, Trump fell behind Clinton by a few points, but he regained his standing not long afterward.

It’s also possible that the controversy could help Trump, at least among those considering supporting him, if voters begin to see it as another example of elite-driven political correctness by the media and political establishment.

On Sunday, Khizr Khan said Trump disrespected his wife by insinuating that she wasn’t allowed to speak at the convention because of the family’s Muslim faith, and he called on Republican leaders and voters to reject the GOP nominee.

“I implore those patriotic Americans that would probably vote for Donald Trump in November, I appeal to them, not to vote for hatred, not to vote for fearmongering,” Khan said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

In an op-ed published in The Washington Post, Ghazala Khan directly responded to Trump, saying that she was too distraught to speak at the convention and could barely control her emotions while walking on stage.

“Here is my answer to Donald Trump: Because without saying a thing, all the world, all America, felt my pain. I am a Gold Star mother. Whoever saw me felt me in their heart,” she wrote, using a term for the parents of fallen members of the military.

Trump and his campaign, meanwhile, sought to redirect the focus to the origins of the Iraq War and fears about Islamic terrorism.

Trump first tweeted that “Captain Khan, killed 12 years ago, was a hero, but this is about RADICAL ISLAMIC TERROR and the weakness of our ‘leaders’ to eradicate it!”

And then: “I was viciously attacked by Mr. Khan at the Democratic Convention. Am I not allowed to respond? Hillary voted for the Iraq war, not me!”

When pressed on CNN about what terrorism has to do with the Khan family, Trump spokesman Jason Miller said the campaign is trying to talk about a “broader issue.”

But Trump hammered away against Khan. In a tweet Monday, Trump wrote: “Mr. Khan, who does not know me, viciously attacked me from the stage of the DNC and is now all over T.V. doing the same — Nice!”

Trump’s vice-presidential running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, whose son is in the Marines, said Capt. Humayun Khan died defending his country in the war on terror. He blamed Clinton and President Obama — who was an Illinois state senator when Khan died — for allowing the Middle East to be “overrun” by the Islamic State. Pence said proposals such as Trump’s plan to bar immigrants from certain countries will help reduce military deaths.

“Donald Trump and I believe that Captain Humayun Khan is an American hero and his family, like all Gold Star families, should be cherished by every American,” Pence said.

Late Sunday, Trump supporters, including longtime adviser Roger Stone, circulated unsubstantiated accusations from an anti-Islam website about Khizr Khan. Stone tweeted a link to a post that, among other things, accuses Khan of being a “Muslim Brotherhood agent who wants to advance sharia law.

Both Khans forcefully denounced terrorism Sunday, and Ghazala Khan said Trump is ignorant when it comes to understanding Muslims. “If he studied the real Islam and Koran, all the ideas he gets from terrorists would change, because terrorism is a different religion,” she wrote.

Khan also wrote that Trump “doesn’t know what the word sacrifice means” after the real-
estate mogul said his hard work as a businessman and his employment of “tens of thousands” of people were sacrifices, in response to Khizr Khan’s charge at the convention that Trump had sacrificed “nothing.”

Some of Trump’s supporters agreed. Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), whose husband is a military veteran, said, “I am appalled that Donald Trump would disparage [the Khans] and that he had the gall to compare his own sacrifices to those of a Gold Star family.”

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush, who lost to Trump in the Republican presidential primary, lashed out at the businessman for suggesting that Ghazala Khan was not permitted to speak by her husband.

“This is so incredibly disrespectful of a family that endured the ultimate sacrifice for our country,” Bush tweeted Sunday evening.

Speaking at a church in Cleveland on the third day of a post-convention bus tour, Clinton said Khizr Khan stood before his country to tell the story of his son, Capt. Khan, who was killed by a suicide car bomb at age 27, and was denigrated by Trump.

“Mr. Khan,” she said, pausing, “paid the ultimate sacrifice in his family, didn’t he? And what has he heard from Donald Trump? Nothing but insults, degrading comments about Muslims, a total misunderstanding of what made our country great.”

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who urged Republicans to walk away from Trump after the Curiel episode, said the Republican nominee’s attack on the Khans is unprecedented.

“This is going to a place where we’ve never gone before, to push back against the families of the fallen. There used to be some things that were sacred in American politics — that you don’t do — like criticizing the parents of a fallen soldier, even if they criticize you,” Graham said. “If you’re going to be leader of the free world, you have to be able to accept criticism. Mr. Trump can’t.”

Mike Coffman, a veteran and Republican congressman from Colorado who has not endorsed his party’s nominee, said in a statement: “Having served in Iraq, I’m deeply offended when Donald Trump fails to honor the sacrifices of all of our brave soldiers who were lost in that war.”

A campaign spokeswoman for Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), who is locked in a tight re-election battle and has only tepidly supported Trump, said Portman does not agree with the Republican nominee and called Khan a hero.

This was not the first time Trump has made controversial comments about the U.S. military.

Trump said that the nation’s armed forces are a “disaster” during a debate, in response to a question about military spending. He said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a former prisoner of war, was not a war hero because he was captured. And he has been attacking retired Marine Gen. John Allen, who spoke at the Democratic convention, for failing to defeat the Islamic State.

Trump also drew criticism Sunday when he appeared to be unfamiliar with Russia’s actions regarding Ukraine and its 2014 annexation of Crimea.

“He’s not going into Ukraine, okay,” Trump said on ABC’s “This Week” of Russian President Vladi*mir Putin. “He’s not gonna go into Ukraine, all right? You can mark it down. You can put it down.”

Trump then appeared to contradict himself when George Stephanopoulos, host of ABC’s “This Week,” responded that “he’s already there, isn’t he?”

“Okay, well, he’s there in a certain way,” Mr. Trump replied.

Trump’s comments were notable following his urging of the Russian government to meddle in the presidential election by finding tens of thousands of Clinton’s emails. U.S. officials said there is strong evidence Russia was involved in a hack of emails and voice mails at the Democratic National Committee.

In a statement, Jake Sullivan, the chief policy adviser for Clinton’s campaign, said that “this is scary stuff.”

“What is he talking about?” Sullivan wrote. “Russia is already in Ukraine. Does he not know that? What else doesn’t he know?”

 

[BCsSecretAlias]

.002 percent of Gold Star families are Muslim. These people were chosen by the DNC in the interest of identity politics.

The fucker attacked Trump first and fuck anyone that doesn't like Trump defending himself.

And fuck his muzzie wife playing the victim role when Trump is exactly right saying she kept her mouth shut because muzzie broads aren't allowed to speak out.

Trump wasn't my first choice but God damn if he wouldn't be now if we had the primaries to go through again.

Muslims join our military for completely different reasons than Christians and Jews do. They can take the oath and not be bound to it due to their cult of a religion.

The Ft. Hood shooter should have met the same fate as Khan.

 

[Mayhem]

What would you know about why anyone joins the military. This is a club you were too good to join Clem.

And of course, one more member of the military for you to malign...like the red blooded Conservative shitbag you are.

Trump was always your first choice. You two are the exact same brand of batshit. You probably sleep under a Trump bedspread.

And don't be talking about oaths. You don't know shit about oaths.

 

[Mayhem]

John McCain’s full statement:

The Republican Party I know and love is the party of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan.

I wear a bracelet bearing the name of a fallen hero, Matthew Stanley, which his mother, Lynn, gave me in 2007, at a town hall meeting in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire. His memory and the memory of our great leaders deserve better from me.

In recent days, Donald Trump disparaged a fallen soldier’s parents. He has suggested that the likes of their son should not be allowed in the United States - to say nothing of entering its service. I cannot emphasize enough how deeply I disagree with Mr. Trump’s statement. I hope Americans understand that the remarks do not represent the views of our Republican Party, its officers, or candidates.

Make no mistake: I do not valorize our military out of some unfamiliar instinct. I grew up in a military family, and have my own record of service, and have stayed closely engaged with our armed forces throughout my public career. In the American system, the military has value only inasmuch as it protects and defends the liberties of the people.

My father was a career naval officer, as was his father. For hundreds of years, every generation of McCains has served the United States in uniform.

My sons serve today, and I’m proud of them. My youngest served in the war that claimed Captain Khan’s life as well as in Afghanistan. I want them to be proud of me. I want to do the right thing by them and their comrades.

Humayun Khan did exactly that - and he did it for all the right reasons. This accomplished young man was not driven to service as a United States Army officer because he was compelled to by any material need. He was inspired as a young man by his reading of Thomas Jefferson — and he wanted to give back to the country that had taken him and his parents in as immigrants when he was only two years old.

Captain Khan’s death in Iraq, on June 8th, 2004, was a shining example of the valor and bravery inculcated into our military. When a suicide bomber accelerated his vehicle toward a facility with hundreds of American soldiers, Captain Khan ordered his subordinates away from the danger.

Then he ran toward it.

The suicide bomber, striking prematurely, claimed the life of Captain Khan - and Captain Khan, through his selfless action and sacrifice, saved the lives of hundreds of his brothers and sisters.

Scripture tells us that ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.’

Captain Humayun Khan of the United States Army showed in his final moments that he was filled and motivated by this love. His name will live forever in American memory, as an example of true American greatness.

In the end, I am morally bound to speak only to the things that command my allegiance, and to which I have dedicated my life’s work: the Republican Party, and more importantly, the United States of America. I will not refrain from doing my utmost by those lights simply because it may benefit others with whom I disagree.

I claim no moral superiority over Donald Trump. I have a long and well-known public and private record for which I will have to answer at the Final Judgment, and I repose my hope in the promise of mercy and the moderation of age. I challenge the nominee to set the example for what our country can and should represent.

Arizona is watching. It is time for Donald Trump to set the example for our country and the future of the Republican Party. While our Party has bestowed upon him the nomination, it is not accompanied by unfettered license to defame those who are the best among us.

Lastly, I’d like to say to Mr. and Mrs. Khan: thank you for immigrating to America. We’re a better country because of you. And you are certainly right; your son was the best of America, and the memory of his sacrifice will make us a better nation – and he will never be forgotten.


But hey, who wants to listen to John McCain when we have BC, and the shining example he sets for us all. And BC has too, made his sacrifices. Sometimes the drug dealers make him come to them.

 

[BCsSecretAlias]

What would you know about why anyone joins the military. This is a club you were too good to join Clem.

And of course, one more member of the military for you to malign...like the red blooded Conservative shitbag you are.

Trump was always your first choice. You two are the exact same brand of batshit. You probably sleep under a Trump bedspread.

And don't be talking about oaths. You don't know shit about oaths.

I addressed the an issue raised here.

I did not reference you. I have been accused wrongly of fanning the flames on this thread. It is clear that you are the one doing it.

You don't seem to be able to control yourself.

We'll let your behavior on this thread speak for itself.

 

[BCsSecretAlias]

What would you know about why anyone joins the military. This is a club you were too good to join Clem.

And of course, one more member of the military for you to malign...like the red blooded Conservative shitbag you are.

Trump was always your first choice. You two are the exact same brand of batshit. You probably sleep under a Trump bedspread.

And don't be talking about oaths. You don't know shit about oaths.

Yes, I took an oath before the NC State Bar.
You really enjoy being wrong about everything don't you.



It was a club that your beloved president was too good for also.

No Trump wasn't my first choice and that fact is well documented.

I don't see the usual whiners complaining about how you are derailing the thread and engaging in name calling.

I won't be holding my breath for them to call for a timeout for you.

 

[Mayhem]

We'll let my behavior on any thread speak for itself. And yours too.

So where's your berserk defense of General Allen? Daddy was a Marine, Allen is a Marine, you're even better than a Marine because you say so. You lost your shit over Schwarzkopf, and he wasn't a Marine. Why aren't you setting your hair on fire on a Marine's behalf?

Let's see, Marines, soldiers, war hero's, Generals, Gold Star Mothers and POWs who became Senators. Are you going to actually stand up for any of them or are you the type of American Patriot who "Supports the Troops" until it actually comes time to support the troops?

 

[BCsSecretAlias]

Why should I be compelled to defend Allen?

There are plenty of Marines I disagree with. Like Michael Hagee who mishandled the inquiry into Lejeune water contamination.

You should stick to discussing your normal topics of expertise like armpit farts, the military is way over your head.

 

[Straight Shooter]

What would you know about why anyone joins the military. This is a club you were too good to join Clem.

And of course, one more member of the military for you to malign...like the red blooded Conservative shitbag you are.

Trump was always your first choice. You two are the exact same brand of batshit. You probably sleep under a Trump bedspread.

And don't be talking about oaths. You don't know shit about oaths.

I addressed the an issue raised here.

I did not reference you. I have been accused wrongly of fanning the flames on this thread. It is clear that you are the one doing it.

You don't seem to be able to control yourself.

We'll let your behavior on this thread speak for itself.

http://board.freeones.com/showthrea...-Thread-(read-the-rule-before-posting)/page36

 

[BCsSecretAlias]

I forgot about that one Ice. Good call. Perhaps after the election we can merge this thread with that one.

 

[Mayhem]

Just clearing up where your loyalties lie. Not that they aren't easy to spot.

I don't see the usual whiners complaining about how you are derailing the thread and engaging in name calling.

Yeah, uh-huh. Do a search for DD-214 and tell us what thread it appears in. And stop your crying, pathetic bitch. You derail everything you touch around here and then start pointing fingers. Now seriously, stop your crying.

Let's see, Marines, soldiers, war hero's, Generals, Gold Star Mothers and POWs who became Senators. Are you going to actually stand up for any of them or are you the type of American Patriot who "Supports the Troops" until it actually comes time to support the troops?

Anytime now Cletus.

 

[Bloodshot Scott]

26 deaths shy of 1%
Would it be ok to respect their sacrifice had 26 more died?
What is the Trump math on this sort of thing?

WTF? So if they essentially doubled?

 

[BCsSecretAlias]

Just clearing up where your loyalties lie. Not that they aren't easy to spot.



Yeah, uh-huh. Do a search for DD-214 and tell us what thread it appears in. And stop your crying, pathetic bitch. You derail everything you touch around here and then start pointing fingers. Now seriously, stop your crying.



Anytime now Cletus.

It is time for you to be banned.

I purposely didn't participate here yesterday so things would cool down.



As for supporting the troops, I donate more a year to various charities than you earn in 6 months.

 

[Mayhem]

It is time for you to be banned.

I purposely didn't participate here yesterday so things would cool down.

No, you purposely didn't participate here because you were on one of your weekend benders, now you're hungover and probably are on prescription meltdown. And now you're strung out and tired you're not your usual berserk, apeshit self. I say again, explain the DD-214 thing, Mr. Stay-On-Topic. And explain why all these things you sermonize and claim to cherish while you're screaming at people are so suddenly abandoned when Bonespur the Magnificent says and does the exact same things you attack others for.

You wanted to "let things cool down". After being the one who stirred it all up in the first place. You don't decide terms with me shitbag. Ever.

I donate more a year to various charities than you earn in 6 months.

I'm very comfortably calling you a liar on that. You spend more on Scotch than I earn in 6 months, absolutely. But for all this Monopoly money you think you give, you're comfortable letting your new Fuhrer call these same troops a "disaster", you let him attack their mothers, you question their loyalty, you let your nominee insult true combat commanders. And then you fork right over. Bullshit. :1orglaugh

 

[BCsSecretAlias]

No, you purposely didn't participate here because you were on one of your weekend benders, now you're hungover and probably are on prescription meltdown. And now you're strung out and tired you're not your usual berserk, apeshit self. I say again, explain the DD-214 thing, Mr. Stay-On-Topic. And explain why all these things you sermonize and claim to cherish while you're screaming at people are so suddenly abandoned when Bonespur the Magnificent says and does the exact same things you attack others for.

You wanted to "let things cool down". After being the one who stirred it all up in the first place. You don't decide terms with me shitbag. Ever.


I'm very comfortably calling you a liar on that. You spend more on Scotch than I earn in 6 months, absolutely. But for all this Monopoly money you think you give, you're comfortable letting your new Fuhrer call these same troops a "disaster", you let him attack their mothers, you question their loyalty, you let your nominee insult true combat commanders. And then you fork right over. Bullshit. :1orglaugh

Please continue.

You going meshuga is proving my point.

You'll have to talk to yourself from now on.

 

[sean miguel]

Khizr Khan is a fine American and the father of a true American patriot. But now he is also everything that is wrong with American politics today.

It is not entirely his fault, though he has only himself to blame for allowing his dead son to be used for the most hideous of purposes and dragged through the gutter of nasty and dishonest partisan politics.

Khan and his wife took to the stage at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia last week to deliver an impassioned rebuke of Donald J.Trump that was universally celebrated by the media. Even Republican politicos swooned at the gambit. The Clinton campaign trotted out the Muslim couple because their son, Captain Humayun Khan, was killed by a car bomb in 2004 while guarding a base in Iraq.

“If it was up to Donald Trump, he never would have been in America,” said Khan, sliding easily into the political tradition of lying and distorting the position of one’s opponent.

“Donald Trump consistently smears the character of Muslims,” he went on. “He disrespects other minorities, women, judges, even his own party leadership. He vows to build walls and ban us from this country.”

Despite all efforts by the media to distort Trump’s position about “banning” Muslims, he has made perfectly clear time and again that he does not want to ban all Muslims. He wants to simply perform thorough and complete background checks on all immigrants coming from countries presently in the grips of violent Islamic terrorism.

Yes, that means if you are a Muslim who wants to immigrate from Syria or Afghanistan, you are going to get a lot more scrutiny than if you are a Jew trying to immigrate from Canada. That is most unfortunate, but not nearly as unfortunate as innocents getting slaughtered by 10th Century savages killing in the name of Allah.

Anyway, this higher scrutiny should be no obstacle for the likes of Khizr Khan and his family, except for the additional hassle.

So, why would Khizr Khan choose to insert himself into politics and demean his son’s sacrifice by lying at a political convention on national television?

The answer is simple: He allowed himself to be tricked into it. And the Clinton campaign was all too eager to take advantage of him and his family and Capt. Khan and use them for their own political partisan purposes.

Stop for a moment and ask yourself how exactly the Clinton campaign arrived at the decision to trot out the Khan family in the middle of their highly-choreographed, exhaustively produced convention?

Were they just looking to give voice to the parents of a soldier? That would be a first. Did they want parents of anyone who had died abroad in the defense of their country? Gee, why not pick the parents of one of the fallen warriors who died defending the U.S. consulate in Benghazi? Oh, that’s right. They would have called Hillary Clinton a liar. Can’t have that.

No. Politicians like Hillary Clinton do not see people like Capt. Humayun Khan as a soldier who made the ultimate sacrifice on a foreign battlefield in defense of his country.

Politicians like Hillary Clinton see him only a demographic, a dispensable political pawn to be scooted around an electoral map, the way generals used to move armies across giant maps of the lands they were invading.

But instead of liberating Europe from evil fascists, politicians like Hillary Clinton use their long, worn croupier rakes to move their pawns about with the singular goal of advancing their own personal political careers.

To her, Capt. Khan is not a just soldier who died defending his country in a foreign land. First and foremost, to her, he is a Muslim of Pakistani heritage and therefore is a perfect political pawn for just the right situation.

For just about every American alive, Capt. Khan is an inspiring and unifying figure. To Hillary Clinton, he is a tool to be used to divide people. In her false promise of unifying America, she creates a national political Babylon. Her avaricious greed for more and more power knows no bounds.

It is an open secret in Washington that politics is the last bastion of rampant racial profiling. Both parties do it, but Democrats have taken it to a whole new scientific level.

Politicians like Hillary Clinton slice and dice people into racial and gender groups. Then they toot on all their little “dog whistles” to send all their little demographic pawns scurrying in various directions. That is how you wind up with Khizr Khan standing on stage beside his head-scarved wife, waving around the U.S. Constitution and distorting Donald Trump’s position on keeping radical Islamic terrorism at bay.

Perhaps a better testimony from Khizr Khan would have been for him to talk about how Hillary Clinton was in the U.S. Senate when she voted to invade Iraq. Years later, after that position became politically unpopular, she changed her mind and joined new political forces to vacate all the land across Iraq that so many great American patriots like Capt. Humayun Khan had died for.

It was her vote that sent Capt. Khan to his death. And then it was her decisions later to render that sacrifice worthless.

Try sticking that into your dog whistle and blowing it.

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-bl...r-khan-was-tricked-into-smearing-donald-trump

 

[Mayhem]

Please continue.

You going meshuga is proving my point.

You'll have to talk to yourself from now on.

Oh please, make that a promise. Do you have someone handy you can pinky-swear that with?

Nice job running away from the on-topic questions put to you? But then again, I haven't asked 10 times yet (a slight exaggeration).

 

[BCsSecretAlias]

Oh please, make that a promise. Do you have someone handy you can pinky-swear that with?

Nice job running away from the on-topic questions put to you? But then again, I haven't asked 10 times yet (a slight exaggeration).

It's called saving the rest of the board from having to be subjected to this feud over and over again.

If you seriously are glutton for punishment, shoot me a PM and I will be happy to humiliate you that way.

Haven't you embarrassed yourself enough?

 

[Mayhem]

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/what-would-it-take-gop-dump-trump-n620981

What would it take for Republican leaders to fully repudiate Donald Trump?

Khizr Khan, the father of fallen Army Capt. Humayun Khan, has called repeatedly for Republican leaders to condemn their nominee's repeated attacks on his family and Muslim faith. Khan's tearful pleas have been met instead with carefully worded statements that have largely fallen short.

"There had been some statements coming from the Republican leadership. But there is amazing silence. Silence of rebuke, silence of asking no more," Khizr Khan said Monday on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." The party's nominee has repeatedly attacked Khizr Khan and his wife, Ghazala Khan, since they appeared the Democratic National Convention to condemn the candidate's proposed temporary ban on allowing Muslims to come to the U.S.


That ban would have prevented the Khans from immigrating to the nation their son, Capt. Humayun Khan, served while deployed in Iraq, where he died trying to stop a suicide bomber and was posthumously awarded a Purple Heart and Bronze Star.

"Capt. Khan was an American hero, and like all Americans I'm grateful for the sacrifices that selfless young men like Capt. Khan and their families have made in the war on terror," McConnell wrote in a statement. "And as I have long made clear, I agree with the Khans and families across the country that a travel ban on all members of a religion is simply contrary to American values."

"Many Muslim Americans have served valiantly in our military, and made the ultimate sacrifice. Captain Khan was one such brave example. His sacrifice—and that of Khizr and Ghazala Khan—should always be honored. Period," Ryan said.

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/201...rump-over-comments-about-ghazala-khan-n620671

The families of 17 service members who died fighting for the U.S. demanded an apology from Donald Trump on Monday, accusing him of "cheapening the sacrifice made by those we lost."

They said the Republican presidential nominee's suggestion that the Muslim mother of a U.S. soldier who died in Iraq had not "been allowed" to speak at the Democratic National Convention was akin to "attacking us."

A letter signed by the Gold Star families — the term for those who have lost loved ones during military service — also called Trump's comments "repugnant, and personally offensive."

"When you question a mother's pain, by implying that her religion, not her grief, kept her from addressing an arena of people, you are attacking us," the letter added. "When you say your job building buildings is akin to our sacrifice, you are attacking our sacrifice."

Trump's comments go "beyond politics," according to the letter. "It is about a sense of decency. That kind decency you mock as 'political correctness.'"

It added: "We feel we must speak out and demand you apologize to the Khans, to all Gold Star families, and to all Americans for your offensive, and frankly anti-American, comments."

The letter's signatories were 10 families whose loved ones died in Iraq and one that lost a father in Vietnam.

And one of the nation's most prominent veterans groups -- the Veterans of Foreign Wars -- added its voice to the controversy Monday, calling Trump's criticisms of the Kahn family "out of bounds."

"Election year or not, the VFW will not tolerate anyone berating a Gold Star family member for exercising his or her right of speech or expression," said organization chief Brian Duffy in a statement. "There are certain sacrosanct subjects that no amount of wordsmithing can repair once crossed. Giving one's life to nation is the greatest sacrifice, followed closely by all Gold Star families, who have a right to make their voices heard."

He also responded to a Trump campaign statement saying the candidate he believes Capt. Khan is "a hero to our country."

While he appreciated the clarification, Khan added that "it sounds so disingenuous because of his policies, because of his rhetoric of hatred, of derision, of dividing us. And that is why I implored him to read the Constitution."

 

[Mayhem]

It's called saving the rest of the board from having to be subjected to this feud over and over again.

If you seriously are glutton for punishment, shoot me a PM and I will be happy to humiliate you that way.

Haven't you embarrassed yourself enough?

Don't you remember. It's right at the link you thanked Iceman for. You don't do PMs. You certainly do PMS, in every way imaginable, but Private Message? No, no BC don't play that. I post something Private, you get rage-drunk, and you post it out here anyway. I'm cutting out the middle-man and keeping you from being even more pathetic at the same time. (snort) Private message....from this buffoon......what a pickled amnesiac.

In case you haven't noticed (I know, those pesky hangovers), I'm trying to post to the topic here. Will you kindly read this 10 times:

You'll have to talk to yourself from now on.

and kindly fuck off so the rest of us can discuss. It's called "derailing a thread". Yeah, yeah. Some guy was just talking about it a few minutes ago.