AUDIENCE MEMBER: Senator McCain I truly hope you get the opportunity to chase Bin Laden right to the gates of hell and push him in as you stated on your forum. I do have a question though. Disabled veterans, especially in this state have horrible conditions, their medical is substandard. They drive four hours one way to Albuquerque for a simple doctors appointment which is often canceled. Our VA hospital is dirty it is understaffed, it is running on maximum overload. The prescription medicines are ten years behind standard medical care we have seven hundred claims stacked up at the VA office in Albuquerque some of them are ten and seven years old waiting to be processed in the mean time these people are homeless. My son is an officer in the Air Force, and I am a vet and I was raised in a military family. I think it is a sad state of affairs when we have illegal aliens having a Medicaid card that can access specialist top physicians, the best of medical and our vets can’t even get to a doctor. These are the people that we tied yellow ribbons for and Bush patted on the back. If we don’t reenact the draft I don’t think we will have anyone to chase Bin Laden to the gates of hell.
MCCAIN: Ma’am let me say that I don’t disagree with anything you said and thank you and I am grateful for your support of all of our veterans.
There is a push on right now to lower the drinking age from 21 to 18. Ok, I might be reaching here, but I wonder if there is a connection? After all, this was a sticking point for draft age kids back when I registered for the draft at 18.
#22 bobbo. Not a McCain apologist, more an Obama strategist.
You see, the more quotes taken out of context (like in this post), the less credible the next post will be even if that post is germane and not out of context.
A better way.
Remember when McCain said this?
“Responding to a question about a survey that shows increased exports to Iran, mainly from cigarettes, McCain said, ‘Maybe that’s a way of killing them.’ He quickly caught himself, saying ‘I meant that as a joke’ as his wife, Cindy, poked him in the back.”
Now harping on this bad joke by itself just doesn’t get any real traction, Who cares? BUT…
His “joke” (tasteless humor?) can be combined with this:
“Tehran – Iran Saturday condemned US presidential candidate John McCain for his remark that one way of killing Iranians was to export cigarettes to Iran, the official news agency IRNA reported. “We condemn such remarks as ugly and immoral, especially for someone who intends to lead a country claiming civilization,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad-Ali Hosseini said.”
NOW we have a serious post. Cause and effect and how his off the cuff remarks can diminish the Presidency and hurt the country.
So, instead of harping on McCain’s “jokes” and gaffe’s with the sole result that we begin to look like small schoolchildren nitpicking on the guy with glasses –
Let’s post like adults who can see the consequences of his “jokes” and gaffe’s and ask ourselves;
Is this what we want?
http://tinyurl.com/5ev2zs
http://tinyurl.com/6krjzk
#30. Mustard- “And when there ARE wars to be fought, maybe we’d be a little more judicious in entering them if the silver-spoon princess daughters or the Overlords were going to have to pick up their M-16s and get down in the trenches.”
Nice dream, will Never Happen.
#32–Ah Yea===keep it simple.
#33 I think McCullough is speaking from personal experience here, which is the most persuasive argument.
BryanP, are you talking about the National Minimum Drinking Age Act?
#34 bobbo.
“Ah Yea===keep it simple.”
Simple?! Complex and convoluted is my middle name!! 🙂
Well, there’s no doubt that 100 years of war will require a draft. There is also no doubt that the American people won’t stand for either one!
Here in California, the drinking age has always been 21. I where other states were before 1971, bu t keep in mind that the VOTING age was lowered from 21 to 18 in time for the 1972 election. I think that prompted many states to lower the drinking age as well, until the Feds forced the change back to 21. I note that Puerto Rico has kept its drinking age at 18 and foregone the federal highway funds….not much road there anyway.
The drinking age should be about 16, like it is in the rest of the civilized world. Of course we Americans have always had a problem with alcohol that doesn’t exist in Europe. After all, we made it illegal for quite a while. And see what that got us..Al Capone, Meyer Lansky, J. Edgar Hoover…
#33 – McC
>>Nice dream, will Never Happen.
You may say I’m a dreamer. But I’m not the only one.
You can bet your combat boots that if Dumbya’s Darlings and Cheney’s Little Muff Muncher were in basic training 6 months before the trophy war started, they might have thought long and hard about the invasion.
What is wrong with draft. A nice golden amber with a good head, icy cold, aahhhhh
No president is re-instating the draft without Congress…and Congress is about as likely to re-instate the draft as our current political system is to get major party presidential candidates worth voting for. In other words, ain’t happening.
I didn’t read everything here, but I did want to comment on the 100 years thing.
I’m not stumping for McCain by any means, but the 100 years thing from so long ago was McCain saying it is possible that the US will have some number of troops in Iraq well into the future. He said there wouldn’t be public disapproval if they weren’t dying. He pointed that there are US troops in Japan, Germany, etc.
He might be an idiot about everything else, but the 100 war non-sense should stop eventually, shouldn’t it? Aren’t there substantive things to attack?
And they claim the Right engages in fear. Weren’t you saying this four years ago about Bush?
#43 – Steve-O
>>He pointed that there are US troops in
>>Japan, Germany, etc.
Yes, but Japan, Germany, etc., are our friends (more or less, or at least they were until Dumbya came along).
In Iraq, we’re the spawn of Satan. Infidels. Debaucherers. Pussies who don’t stone their women.
To think that with an American presence for 100 years there won’t be 100 years of bloodshed is naive, at best.
@ 44 AB CD
Clearly both sides do this.
On Saturday I was at a concert (Mighty Mighty Bosstones) and at the end this woman came out of no where and shouted “Vote Republican!” as she threw her hands over her (drunk) head.
She told my friend and I (who’d not said a word to her) that if we wanted to get bombed we should vote Dem, if we wanted to not get bombed we should vote Republican.
No. There is no public support for it. Nobody would vote for it.
This is a dead issue.
I wouldn’t want half you fairies next to me during a squad live fire movement, let alone an actual battle scenario.
McCain was never a “maverick”.
He would just get confused and accidentally vote the wrong way.
SPC mxpwr03 said “I wouldn’t want half you fairies next to me during a squad live fire movement, let alone an actual battle scenario.”
You’d want the other half of the fairies in the foxhole next to you?
>> Steven Long
>> He said there wouldn’t be public disapproval if they weren’t dying. He pointed that there are US troops in Japan, Germany, etc.
This is why you should never let conservatives start wars — they are always looking to the past instead of the present reality.
America having near-permanent bases in a Muslim country is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT than Germany or Japan.
Heck, it was our bases in Saudi Arabia that got us into this whole mess with bin Laden and 911.
#40. Actually, McCain’s kid is serving in Iraq. absent a real mortal threat to the United States of America that can only be met by a mass army, no draft.
it is an authoritarian measure and fundamentally un-American.
#52, “Heck, it was our bases in Saudi Arabia that got us into this whole mess with bin Laden and 911.”
Do a Google search on mujahideen + afghanistan sometime.
Sea Lawyer, you should maybe do some reading yourself. Bin Laden’s primary motivation was the bases in Arabia. Secondary motivations included the loss at Vienna, and the expulsion of the Moors from Spain
#55, well you’re an exciting one.
Those bases didn’t “get” us into anything. What they did was compound an already growing rift between us that had been created out of some of our other involvements.
McCain(McBush)can’t help being a WAR MONGER !!! Everthing he sees has CROSS-HAIRS ON IT, a legacy of his fighter pilot training !!! And he has a TWITCHY FIRING FINGER ON HIS JOY-STICK HAND !!! All the more reason he should NOT BE THE CIVILIAN COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF OF THE ARMED FORCES – We need a contemplative civilian weighing the options in a crisis – NOT A SHOOT FROM THE HIP FIGHTER PILOT !!!