Jesse Ventura - Shit Politicians Say: The Funniest, Dumbest, Most Outrageous Things Ever Uttered By Our Leaders

Copyright 2016 by Jesse Ventura

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Brian Peterson

Cover photo and interior photos credit: AP images

Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-1417-5

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-1418-2

Printed in the United States of America

Dedication

I want to dedicate this book to my father and mother

To my father Georgesergeant, World War II veteran, recipient of six Bronze Battle Stars, who, at the dinner table, frequently referred to Nixon as the tailless rat.

And to my mother, Bernicelieutenant, World War II veteran, nurse, served in North Africa. She always had the courage to send George to the basement when he got too wound up.

Acknowledgments

To the folks at Skyhorsethanks for your diligent work. Special thanks to Joe Craig, Stacey Fischkelta, Jacob Klein, Mike Lewis, Jill Lichtenstadter, Rachel Mongomery, Brian Peterson, Steven Sussman, and Bill Wolfsthal. And special appreciation to Tony Lyons, for the courage he shows whenever he publishes me.

Table of Contents

Introduction

In America, you have a right to be stupid, if you want to be. And you have a right to be disconnected to somebody else if you want to be. And we tolerate thatwe somehow make it through that.

John Kerry, in his first trip overseas as secretary of state, 2013

The American people have grown stupid, weve grown uninterested, weve gotten busy, were distracted, were lazy, and were easily manipulated. Again, I can sit with you and have a beer and I can tell you about how idiotic most of our politicians are. Thats boring to me. Its on us. Jefferson said something to the effect of, when a people becomes uninformed or uneducatedstupidtheyre going to lose their republic, theyre going to lose this democracy. And folks, Im here to tell ya with a big old smile, were there. Were losing.

Joe Walsh (IL) at a town hall meeting in 2013

In the words of Bob Dole, If youre hanging around with nothing to do and the zoo is closed, come over to the Senate. Youll get the same kind of feeling and you wont have to pay. Since the dawn of politics, leaders and leader wannabes have opened their mouths, letting the stupid loose from their brains. Weve watched the people running our countries closely for centuries, and weve heard just about everything, ranging from gaffes, rude remarks, and boorishness, to nastiness and malicious targeting.

While the Greeks and Romans had formal government in their day, it wasnt until after the American and French Revolutions that we could vote our stupid leaders back in office, rather than just have them be born into a stupid, royal family. And since we have the freedom of speech to criticize them, as well as the right to vote for them, I wrote this book.

When I sat down for my interview in Playboy magazine back in 1999, I called out a lot of bullshit. From religion, to inept leaders, to fat peopleI was honest. And I got a lot of shit for it. And even though people called me stupid, today I still stand by a lot of what I said.

With this book, I want to take the time to hold a mirror up to a lot of ugly I see coming from the people whose fingers are on the big red button. Because despite the freedoms we still have, the system is broken. During the last midterm elections, 94 percent of Congress got reelected even though they have something like a 10 percent approval rating. Whether this disconnect is because a lot of people are too lazy or apathetic to vote; or because many people who would otherwise vote are too disillusioned with a system that puts the interests of rich corporations, their owners, and their lobbyists ahead of the peoples best interest; or a combination of both, everyoneDemocrat and Republicanseems to be in agreement that this country is halfway to hell.

And maybe because of all that, there seems to be an uptick of stupid. While, again, its existed for centuries, stupid seems to be everywhere these days. Some believe its because the human race is getting stupider and stupider with every passing year. Me? Apart from the paragraph above, Id like to thank television, the Internet, social media, and the 24-hour news cycle for bringing more stupid to the public consciousness more efficiently than ever before. Thus, while I have a historic chapter on quotes that are from around 1990 and before, the giant bulk of these quotes will be from after 2000, and a big chunk of those from after 2010.

But first: How do I define politician ? Everyone knows what the word means, but sometimes there can be a fine line between politician, government employee, and pundit. A politician, to me, is an individual who holds or has held an elected or high-up appointed position in local, state, or federal government, or is running for or has run for one. So while Jerry Falwellthe evangelist who started Liberty University, founded the Moral Majority and is a conservative idolsaid a lot of dumb, political stuff (anyone else think the purple Teletubby was gay?), since he never ran for office, hes not a politician. However, Christine ODonnell, who appeared as a pundit on Politically Incorrect , is a politician in my book, since she ran for Congress in Delaware. So what she says or said is fair game. What Falwell said would go in a book called Sh*t Pundits Say , if anyone wanted to write one.

What about heads of special-interest groups? Unless they held office or ran for office, they go in the pundits drawer, too. So Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council (FRC) (a special special-interest organization that the Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled a hate group), I would consider a pundit if he were only ever head of the FRC. He served two terms as a Congressman in Louisiana and ran for state senator, so youll find him among the politicians.

I must, at this time, offer an explanation to Republicans as to why most of the stupid has an R attached to the person dishing it out. When I looked for liberal stupid (and I found plenty), most of the quotes came from entertainers, not politicians. Also, a lot of the stupid had to do with Republican platforms, such as anti-LGBT statements and science denial. Which, sorry (not sorry), are stupid. And Bush and Palin, who get whole chapters, are walking stupid-machines.

Many of the stupid quotes in this book are said about sensitive subjects, such as abortion. As Ive said, Im not a supporter of abortions, but I dont think they should be illegal. Ive included quotes that are biologically inaccurate (the senator that proposed we stick a camera down womens stomachs if theyre considering abortion; FYI, Senator, the reproductive and the GI tracts dont connect), as well as completely insensitive remarks that lacked empathy for people in bad situations (for anyone who thinks women who are raped should make the best of a bad situation, like Rick Santorum, I invite you to volunteer at a rape crisis call center for one day, or to imagine if someone you know was raped), and just the plain bizarre (fetuses masturbating in the womb? Really?). For issues such as the Affordable Care Act (ACA), I included quotes that were hyperbole or that showed conspiracies that didnt come true (Sarah Palin death panels, anyone?).