John McCain Quotes

[Alferd_Packer]

"Thanks for the question, you little jerk."

John McCain, after being asked by a high school student if he was too old to be president. For good measure, McCain then threatened to draft him.

 

[Alferd_Packer]

Do you know why Chelsea Clinton is so ugly? Because Janet Reno is her father.

at a 1998 Republican fundraiser

 

[Alferd_Packer]

At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you c*nt.

to his wife, Cindy, after she playfully twirled his hair and said "You're getting a little thin up there."

 

[Alferd_Packer]

"Only an a**hole would put together a budget like this... I wouldn't call you an a**hole unless you really were an a**hole."

to Budget Committee Chairman and fellow GOP Senator Pete Domenici in a Senate budget hearing

 

[Alferd_Packer]

Remember the words of Chairman Mao: 'It's always darkest before it's totally black.

Whatever the heck that is supposed to mean.

 

[Alferd_Packer]

I believe my party has gone astray. I think the Democratic Party is a fine party, and I have no problems with it, in their views and their philosophy.

John McCain in 2004

 

[Brainster]

John McCain, after being asked by a high school student if he was too old to be president. For good measure, McCain then threatened to draft him.

McCain uses Don Rickles-type humor on people with that "jerk" thing, but he always has a twinkle in his eye and a smile on his face, so he always gets the laugh with it. Back when I was a regular on the blogger conference calls with McCain, he often referred to us as "you jerks", and after the first time everybody got that he wasn't being nasty, he was being funny.

 

[Alferd_Packer]

"I’d institute a policy that I call ‘rogue state rollback.’ I would arm, train, equip, both from without and from within, forces that would eventually overthrow the governments and install free and democratically elected governments."

And when has that worked in the past?

 

[Alferd_Packer]

McCain uses Don Rickles-type humor on people with that "jerk" thing, but he always has a twinkle in his eye and a smile on his face, so he always gets the laugh with it. Back when I was a regular on the blogger conference calls with McCain, he often referred to us as "you jerks", and after the first time everybody got that he wasn't being nasty, he was being funny.

Vote for Don Rickles then.

 

[chipmunk stew]

McCain uses Don Rickles-type humor on people with that "jerk" thing, but he always has a twinkle in his eye and a smile on his face, so he always gets the laugh with it. Back when I was a regular on the blogger conference calls with McCain, he often referred to us as "you jerks", and after the first time everybody got that he wasn't being nasty, he was being funny.

It's part of his endearing charm.

 

[Tsukasa Buddha]

Those quotes suck.

Better ones would be when he said that the war in Iraq would be over quickly and we would be greeted as liberators.

Though it is hard to get good quotes from him, or any politician.

 

[Peephole]

Those quotes suck.

Better ones would be when he said that the war in Iraq would be over quickly and we would be greeted as liberators.

Though it is hard to get good quotes from him, or any politician.

"I think we could go in with much smaller numbers than we had to do in the past... I don't believe it's going to be nearly the size and scope that it was in 1991." - September 15, 2002

"Because I know that as successful as I believe we will be, and I believe that the success will be fairly easy, we will still lose some American young men or women." - September 24, 2002

"We're not going to get into house-to-house fighting in Baghdad. We may have to take out buildings, but we're not going to have a bloodletting of trading American bodies for Iraqi bodies." - September 29, 2002

"But the point is that, one, we will win this conflict. We will win it easily." - January 23, 2003

"But I believe, Katie, that the Iraqi people will greet us as liberators." - March 20, 2003

"There's no doubt in my mind that... we will be welcomed as liberators." - March 24, 2003

"It's clear that the end is very much in sight." - April 9, 2003

"There’s not a history of clashes that are violent between Sunnis and Shiahs. So I think they can probably get along." - April 23, 2003

"This is a mission accomplished. They know how much influence Saddam Hussein had on the Iraqi people, how much more difficult it made to get their cooperation." - December 14, 2003

"I’m confident we’re on the right course." - March 7, 2004

"I think the initial phases of it were so spectacularly successful that it took us all by surprise." - October 31, 2004

"I do think that progress is being made in a lot of Iraq. Overall, I think a year from now, we will have made a fair amount of progress if we stay the course. If I thought we weren’t making progress, I’d be despondent." - December 12, 2005

"It’s entertaining, in that I was the greatest critic of the initial four years, three and a half years." - August 18, 2007

It sure is entertaining, John. It sure is.

 

[Cain]

Rape Jokes are Awesome!

Did you hear the one about the woman who is attacked on the street by a gorilla, beaten senseless, raped repeatedly and left to die? When she finally regains consciousness and tries to speak, her doctor leans over to hear her sigh contently and to feebly ask, ‘Where is that marvelous ape?’ --John McCain 1986

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/07/15/did-you-hear-john-mccains-womanrapegorilla-joke/

 

[joobz]

McCain uses Don Rickles-type humor on people with that "jerk" thing, but he always has a twinkle in his eye and a smile on his face, so he always gets the laugh with it. Back when I was a regular on the blogger conference calls with McCain, he often referred to us as "you jerks", and after the first time everybody got that he wasn't being nasty, he was being funny.

Without even knowing the source material, this was my thought. McCain is actually quite personable in his interviews and is willing to have fun. I think this is an admirable trait of his and I hate seeing it being used against him.

Having seen the Daily shows with McCain on, it's clear that he's a funny willing to laugh at himself and others kind of guy.

 

[ProbeX]

John McCain, after being asked by a high school student if he was too old to be president. For good measure, McCain then threatened to draft him.

How presumptuous and arrogant of McCain to act like he's president already.

Just kidding. Just a reminder that all contenders act presidential prior to being potentially nominated. Which is fine. Obama and McCain need to sell themselves to the public. And people need to stop singling out Obama for this "offense".

 

[ProbeX]

McCain is actually quite personable ... is willing to have fun. I think this is an admirable trait of his and I hate seeing it being used against him.

Having seen the Daily shows with McCain on, it's clear that he's a funny willing to laugh at himself and others kind of guy.

Did you hear the one about the woman who is attacked on the street by a gorilla, beaten senseless, raped repeatedly and left to die? When she finally regains consciousness and tries to speak, her doctor leans over to hear her sigh contently and to feebly ask, ‘Where is that marvelous ape?’ --John McCain 1986

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/07/15/did-you-hear-john-mccains-womanrapegorilla-joke/

... Yeah, what a fine gentleman.

 

[ProbeX]

John McCain in 2004

Alferd, thanks for all the quotes. There's just no way this guy can defend himself against the nutty things he has said. And what's even more sad, no one here wants to (or can?) defend him either.

 

[TragicMonkey]

Couldn't you find any relating to his Keating Five days?

Funny how that keeps being forgotten. You'd think "massive corruption scandal" would be something to haunt a presidential candidate.

 

[BeAChooser]

"I think we could go in with much smaller numbers than we had to do in the past... I don't believe it's going to be nearly the size and scope that it was in 1991." - September 15, 2002

]"Because I know that as successful as I believe we will be, and I believe that the success will be fairly easy, we will still lose some American young men or women."[ - September 24, 2002

"We're not going to get into house-to-house fighting in Baghdad. We may have to take out buildings, but we're not going to have a bloodletting of trading American bodies for Iraqi bodies." - September 29, 2002

"But the point is that, one, we will win this conflict. We will win it easily." - January 23, 2003

Thanks for bringing these McCain quotes to everyone's attention. Because with regard to the initial combat with Saddam's military, he was correct in his predictions ... contrary to many of the folks in your party, who were at the time claiming we'd lose the initial combat phase against Saddam's military.

"But I believe, Katie, that the Iraqi people will greet us as liberators." - March 20, 2003

"There's no doubt in my mind that... we will be welcomed as liberators." - March 24, 2003

And this prediction also turned out to be true. Coalition forces were indeed greeted as liberators by the Iraqi people. They may have been quickly disillusioned by the failure to stop the looting and post-war violence, but our soldiers were, in fact, greated as liberators ... at least in those regions and by those groups oppressed by Saddam's regime. Those who were pro-Saddam (i.e., the groups who'd had their thumb on the rest of the populace for several decades) were, of course, not happy. If you don't know this, then you haven't listened to the soldiers and journalists who were there ... or what the Iraqi people themselves said and wrote.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/2003/iraq-030408-army-101st-najaf.htm "AN NAJAF, Iraq (Army News Service, April 8, 2003) - The smiles and cheers of a liberated populace greeted the soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) as they secured the city of Najaf in the first days of April."

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?pageId=35907 "Iraq: Were we greeted as 'liberators'?, April 27, 2006, By Larry Elder"

And, by the way, despite a period later on, when perhaps Americans were not generally viewed that way, they are being viewed that way again. Right now.

http://nrd.nationalreview.com/article/?q=ODdmMmExYTIyNDQyOTQ2ZDRlMzYzMzhmYjkyZTdkN2E= "'Re-Liberators’ A progress report from Iraq ... snip ... A top U.S. general puts it aptly when he says, “In some ways, our soldiers have come to be seen as re-liberators.” In 2006, we watched Iraq descend into a sectarian hell that killed thousands and chased millions from the country. We stayed in our large bases and stuck by our plan of handing over control to Iraqi security forces, even though they manifestly weren’t ready for it. Iraq’s year of torment, and our year of shame, began to change with the surge. Chronically undermanned, we added more than 30,000 troops to our contingent of 140,000. As important as the increased numbers was what we did with them. American troops got out into the neighborhoods, establishing joint security stations and combat outposts. Americans now live among the population. “We don’t commute to work,” says Gen. Rick Lynch of the Third Infantry Division in Baghdad. Almost every indicator of violence is headed in the right direction."

In fact just the other day,

http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=33251

Iraq’s Interior Minister Thanks U.S. Troops for Liberating Iraq, Wednesday, July 30, 2008 ... snip ... “We have come … to express our gratitude and appreciation for the sacrifices made by these great warriors, soldiers, in freeing the Iraqi people and in helping us in Iraq recover from tyranny and dictatorship,” Jawad Karim al-Bolani, Iraq’s minister of the interior, said through a translator to a handful of journalists in the lobby of the medical center.

Let's skip over the rest of your out of context quotes and get to this one:

"It’s entertaining, in that I was the greatest critic of the initial four years, three and a half years." - August 18, 2007

Here's the full context:

It’s entertaining, in that I was the greatest critic of the initial four years, three and a half years. I came back from my first trip to Iraq and said, This is going to fail. We’ve got to change the strategy to the one we’re using now. But life isn’t fair.

He wasn't talking about being against the war or invasion. He was talking about the manner in which the war was fought the past 4 years. So here's the question. Did he come back from his first trip and complain about the way the war was being fought and if so, when was that? And what did he recommend at the time?

Here's an interview he had with Jim Lehrer of PBS in November of 2003.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/july-dec03/mccain_11-06_a.html

JIM LEHRER: Secretary Rumsfeld disputed your troop statement today. He said none of commanders on the ground in Iraq have asked for more troops. Why do you think they need them anyhow?

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Well, first of all, Jim, could I mention that I was in Iraq in August and I talked to a lot of people, too, including sergeant majors and many others. At that time they warned me that things were going to get worse in Iraq unless we changed the way we were doing business in the Sunni Triangle.

And I want to emphasize at the beginning, we're doing a lot better in the north around Kirkuk and in the south of the country. It's the Sunni Triangle; things have gotten worse. And I respect the opinions of Secretary Rumsfeld and our military commanders but facts are facts and the following facts are true: The improvised explosive devices -- up; numbers of attacks are up; number of Americans wounded are up; numbers of Americans killed tragically -- up. All of the trends are in the wrong direction.

General Sanchez said that the attacks are becoming more sophisticated, so all of the indicators which are objective, complied by the Department of Defense shows that we are in a more and more difficult situation. And so in my view we need more special forces, more marines, more counter intelligence, more MPs, more of the kinds of forces that do counter insurgency work.

... snip ...

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Those are the objective facts that I read and then we get into whether sufficient number of troops are there to do the job or not. Again, I want to emphasize that the Iraqi people don't want Saddam Hussein back. They don't want the return of that regime. But we are losing the support of these in the Sunni Triangle because they don't see, not only any benefit, but they are being frightened and cowed by these groups -- this combustible mixture of Baathist criminals, terrorists from other countries that are really making the situation extremely difficult.

And it's hard to get the Iraqi people to support us and to want to get rid of these people if they are not sure that we're going to be there and if they are not sure we're going to win.

So guess what Peephole. That was exactly the area where General Petraeus was an expert. Counterinsurgency. Soon as we put that type of expert in charge, look at what happened? Soon as Bush demonstrated (via the surge) that we were there to stay, look at what happened? We are now decisively winning. McCain was right ... 4 years ago. And Obama was COMPLETELY WRONG. Then AND now.

 

[BeAChooser]

Did you hear the one about the woman who is attacked on the street by a gorilla, beaten senseless, raped repeatedly and left to die? When she finally regains consciousness and tries to speak, her doctor leans over to hear her sigh contently and to feebly ask, ‘Where is that marvelous ape?’ --John McCain 1986

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/07/15/did-you-hear-john-mccains-womanrapegorilla-joke/

I looked at your source for this. It's a rather rabid liberal blogger. One who apparently likes the Clintons and Al Gore. You do know, don't you, that there are credible allegations (not jokes) about Clinton raping and abusing various women over the years? Ever hear of a woman named Broaddrick? You did hear about the exchange between a women and Al Gore concerning the Broaddrick rape allegation, where Gore essentially said it was ok if Clinton raped a women because he was such a great President? This blogger supports those people but objects to a joke? Sheeesh.

Besides, was the joke actually told by McCain? Go to the source link on your blogger's web page and you find this:

At the time, McCain’s spokesperson (Torrie Clark, yes, that one) alleged that this was story was some manipulation by the Richard Kimball campaign.

So I decided to investigate. And found this:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/15/sources-recall-mccains-jo_n_112955.html

"It's pretty obvious to us that this is a politically motivated sideshow," Torrie Clarke, McCain's spokeswoman at the time, said back in 1986. Till this day it has never been proven definitively true or false whether the Senator ever said the line.

The Huffington Post reached out to the original reporter in that story, Norma Coile (who wrote about the response to the rape joke in the Tuscon Citizen) to find out if she thought it was true. ... snip ...

"I'm not sure exactly what the wording was of the joke, but something was said. Some joke involving a rape and ape was said. Enough women repeated it to me at the time and the McCain campaign had a non-denial denial," said Coile, now with the Arizona Daily Star.

Did you get that? The person who originally started this smear by putting the statement in quotes indicating it's a direct quote said "I'm not sure exactly what the wording was of the joke". Who really knows what he actually said given the eagerness of people to hear what they want to hear. Notice that Coile called Torrie Clark's statement a "non-denial denial"? I don't read it that way. But that's what she wants to hear.

Frankly, I'm far more disgusted by the behavior of Democrats in this case than by ANY joke that McCain did OR DID NOT tell. Your party supported Clinton long after we all learned he was probably a SERIAL RAPIST. So if you want to raise this as an issue in this campaign go ahead. I'll be happy to talk about the attitude of Democrats towards rape.

For example, the Democrat supporting women's organization NOW stuck with Clinton even after all the allegations (many proven) that Clinton assaulted, abused and harassed women. In response to the allegation that he committed rape, NOW's president, Patricia Ireland, said those choosing to dwell on Juanita Broaddrick's claims should "stop wasting time on unprovable charges." Keep in mind that the charges were deemed credible by the FBI agents who investigated them and that Schippers (a Democrat, by the way) wrote in his book that if the statute of limitation hadn't expired on the crime he'd have charged Clinton with the rape. He was that convinced by the evidence they had (much of it now unfortunately sealed away from the public eye). Polls showed that the majority of Americans believed Juanita Broaddrick. Yet NOW (a major supporter of the Democrats) advised us to ignore those charges.

Disgusted doesn't even begin to describe my feelings about Democrats and those who NOW claim to be aghast at McCain's ALLEGED joke.