Video- Ex-UN Envoy Peter Galbraith Questions Karzai's Mental Stability, Attributes it to Drug Abuse

Pretty incendiary words. Vid via FDL.

The unexpurgated Cindy McCain

By GottaLaff

Rumor has it that Mrs. Gramm-pa wasn't thrilled with today's New York Times piece. Can't imagine why. These excerpts also reveal Gramm-pa's cold, removed, unfeeling side. I highlighted that part in red, to set it apart.

Sorry this is so long, but when it comes to Her Royal McTongueyness, it's hard to know where to stop:

Mrs. McCain, 54, describes herself as her husband’s best friend, though for the last two decades they have mostly lived apart, she in Arizona, he in Washington. She initially seemed like an ideal political partner, giving Mr. McCain a home state, money and contacts that jump-started his career. But as the years passed, she also became a liability at times. She played a role in the Keating Five savings-and-loan scandal, and just as her husband was rehabilitating his reputation, she was caught stealing drugs from her nonprofit organization to feed her addiction to painkillers. She has a fortune that sets the McCains apart from most other Americans, a problem in a presidential race that hinges on economic anxieties. She can be imprecise: she has repeatedly called herself an only child, for instance, even though she has two half-siblings, and has provided varying details about a 1994 mercy mission to Rwanda. [...]

Carol McCain was still a presence on the social scene, working in the Reagan White House and as an events planner. Everyone knew her story: she had stood by her husband during his captivity in North Vietnam, never passing word of a debilitating car accident, only to discover, a few years after their reunion, that he was leaving her for a younger, richer woman. [...]

Recently, Mrs. McCain has called the separations painful, volunteering that she endured several miscarriages alone. She spent subsequent pregnancies mostly confined to home, Ms. Ross said, sitting in a favorite stuffed chair, watching videos. But she rarely complained. “Her attitude was as a good soldier,” Mr. Gullet said. [...]

Her husband was accused of improperly intervening on behalf of a donor, Charles Keating, whose failed savings and loan had cost taxpayers billions. Four other senators were implicated, and one Senate spouse: Mrs. McCain. [...]

When Mrs. McCain visited Bangladesh after a cyclone, she stopped at an orphanage founded by Mother Teresa, who was not, as the campaign has said, present for the visit. Mrs. McCain returned with two baby girls; Mr. Gullet later adopted one, and Mrs. McCain informed her husband on landing that they would adopt the other. [...]

She had used the drugs, first given for back pain, to numb herself during the Keating Five investigation, she confessed to Newsweek magazine. “The newspaper articles didn’t hurt as much, and I didn’t hurt as much,“ she wrote in an essay. “The pills made me feel euphoric and free.” [...]

In interviews, some of Mrs. McCain’s statements seem questionable. She often tells of how she moved to California, leaving her children behind, for four months in 2004 to recover from a stroke that left her unable to walk or speak. But news reports from the time indicate she had few discernible impediments. She gave interviews four days afterward, attended a baseball game with her husband and a reporter several weeks later, and spoke at a Tempe, Ariz., Chamber of Commerce event. “One month out, I feel wonderful,” she told the audience. The McCain campaign declined to resolve the discrepancy. [...]

Rick Davis, a contentious figure in the McCain camp because of his lobbying ties, emerged as campaign manager, in part because Mrs. McCain, with whom he spent months traveling and fund-raising, backed him.

The ideal First Family.

The McCain Camp Is Grasping At Straws

Really, if they weren't so damn evil they'd be pathetic. Via Ben-

Cindy McCain's lawyer, John Dowd, in a letter complaining of the Times's coverage of Cindy McCian, complained that the Times hasn't spent enough time covering Obama's youthful drug use and other issues:

It is worth noting that you have not employed your investigative assets looking into Michelle Obama. You have not tried to find Barack Obama's drug dealer that he wrote about in his book, Dreams of My Father. Nor have you interviewed his poor relatives in Kenya and determined why Barack Obama has not rescued them. Thus, there is a terrific lack of balance here.

In fact, the Times, like other outfits, has chased this, and one of the strangest investigative pieces of the cycle reported something that many readers of Dreams for my Father suspected: Obama had, if anything, overstated the drug use in his book.

I'm feeling particularly mean this morning, so go gawk at the effect all that drug use did to old Cindy Lou right here. I'd steal the pic, but I might scare away our readers.

Mrs. Gramm-pa McCain: Vietnam vets with PTSD were 18-year-olds who didn’t know what they were doing.

By GottaLaff

Is Cindy McMealTicket really this stupid? This is a new low:

Q: You met your husband after his POW days. To what extent is that still with you - or is it a part of history?

McCAIN: My husband will be the first one to tell you that that’s in the past. Certainly it’s a part of who he is, but he doesn’t dwell on it. It’s not part of a daily experience that we experience or anything like that. But it has shaped him. It has made him the leader that he is.

Q: But no cold sweats in the middle of the night?

McCAIN: Oh, no, no, no, no, no. My husband, he’d be the first one to tell you that he was trained to do what he was doing. The guys who had the trouble were the 18-year-olds who were drafted. He was trained, he went to the Naval Academy, he was a trained United States naval officer, and so he knew what he was doing.

Good to know that Gramm-pa has no symptoms, and that all that training paid off. Then there was this little tidbit:

I’ll be very frank with you: I leave the politics to my husband and to his group — although I’m very involved in it, don’t misunderstand me...

Oh really? Is that right, Cin? Is that because you're not "alert" enought?

MC: You were addicted to painkillers in the early ’90s. What’s your advice to others?
CM: Beware. Beware. It’s not anything that I ever thought I could succumb to, and it happened without my even knowing it. But I’ll tell you what it has done for me: It’s made me a much better and more alert mother.

Beware is right. Beware of hypocrites:

MC: What would be your priority as first lady?
CM: Serving a cause greater than your own self-interest.

You might think about suggesting that to your husband and a few of his 82521650 lobbyists.

Tabloid Journalism & The Election

As Kathy notes, the tabs have been pretty quiet about all the sordid little scandals in the McCain closet, up until now. Seems the worm (aka polls) has turned. Go read.

h/t Matt

Washington Post picks up McCain cover-up of Cindy's drug use

By GottaLaff

Look who is running with the story we posted yesterday.

BREAKING: McCain covered up Cindy's drug use/theft, blocked DEA probe of her charity: VIDEOS

By GottaLaff


Via DKos:

A whistleblower is coming forth against John and Cindy McCain, and the picture he is painting is not a pretty one. You've probably heard about Cindy McCain stealing prescription drugs from her charity in the 1990s. Today, Tom Gosinski, her former employee and a close friend of the McCain's, came out on the record about the entire sordid episode. And it appears that McCain used his Senate staff and resources to cover up Cindy's drug use, and potentially to prevent the Drug Enforcement Agency from investigating his wife's theft of illegal prescription drugs.

More:

UPDATE: Gosinski is apparently releasing his journal entries from the time period in question, according to this Raw Story article.

UPDATE 2: Snud has written a diary with a lot more detail on this. Take a look and recommend.

More:

John McCain certainly used his political connections to begin a campaign of intimidation against Gosinski, because at the time - this was after the Keating 5 scandal - another major scandal would have derailed his career. Gosinski stayed quiet out of fear until today; a recent fight with cancer has strengthened his resolve. As he told me today, if he can beat cancer, he can go on the record regarding how the McCain's do business.

More as I find it:

There are lots of unanswered questions, but the basic contours of the story are clear. John McCain used his position as a Senator to help his wife abuse illegal drugs and avoid being searched by customs, and somehow his wife managed to avoid any charges by the DEA or the state (which has mandatory minimums in cases like this) on drug charges despite ample evidence. Did the DEA or the state not file charges against her because of political pressure? Did they keep this on the Federal level to avoid mandatory minimums for Cindy McCain because of political pressure from McCain? Did John McCain and/or his Senate staff tamper with a criminal investigation of his wife and her conspiracy to fraudulently obtain illegal drugs?

Whether illegal or not, and an investigation by Congress should happen, this is clearly a massive and overreaching case of both corruption on a personal sordid level and an abuse of power. And you might be seeing Gosinski on mainstream media soon.

Via Raw Story, Gosinski:

"I have never been so aware of the amount of insincerity behind a political campaign as I am now with John McCain's reelection campaign," he writes on Sept. 3, 1992. "Everything Cindy McCain does is politically motivated and driven by the almighty 'photo op.' I am convinced that Cindy McCain could give a rat's ass about the citizens of the third world countries or the victims of natural disasters."

Big ol' Ethics Scandal at Interior Dept.: Sex, drugs, gifts, Big Oil

By GottaLaff

What? Scandal at BushCo? No way! ... ... Okay, way:

As Congress prepares to debate expansion of drilling in taxpayer-owned coastal waters, the Interior Department agency that collects oil and gas royalties has been caught up in a wide-ranging ethics scandal — including allegations of financial self-dealing, accepting gifts from energy companies, cocaine use and sexual misconduct.

Drill! Drill! Drill! I meant that in a non-sexual way.

In three reports delivered to Congress on Wednesday, the department’s inspector general, Earl E. Devaney, found wrongdoing by a dozen current and former employees of the Minerals Management Service, which collects about $10 billion in royalties annually and is one of the government’s largest sources of revenue other than taxes.

“A culture of ethical failure” besets the agency, Mr. Devaney wrote in a cover memo.

How redundant of them.

The reports portray a dysfunctional organization that has been riddled with conflicts of interest, unprofessional behavior and a free-for-all atmosphere for much of the Bush administration’s watch. [...]

The investigations are the latest installment in a series of scathing probes of the troubled program’s management and competence in recent years. While previous reports have focused on problems the agency has had in collecting millions of dollars owed to the Treasury, the new set of reports raises questions about the integrity and behavior of the agency’s officials.

In one of the new reports, investigators conclude that a key supervisor at the agency’s minerals revenue management office worked together with two aides to steer a lucrative consulting contract to one of the aides after he retired, violating competitive procurement rules.

Two other reports focus on “a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity” and unethical behavior in the service’s royalty-in-kind program. That part of the agency collects about $4 billion a year in the form of oil and gas rather than cash royalties.

[...]

One of the reports says that the officials viewed themselves as exempt from [...] limits, indulging themselves in the expense-account-fueled world of oil and gas executives.

In addition, the report alleges that eight royalty-program officials accepted gifts from energy companies whose value exceeded limits set by ethics rules — including golf, ski and paintball outings; meals and drinks; and tickets to a Toby Keith concert, a Houston Texans football game and a Colorado Rockies baseball game.

The investigation also concluded that several of the officials “frequently consumed alcohol at industry functions, had used cocaine and marijuana, and had sexual relationships with oil and gas company representatives.”

The investigation separately found that the program’s manager mixed official and personal business, and took money from a technical services firm in exchange for urging oil companies to hire the firm. In sometimes lurid detail, the report accuses him of having intimate relations with two subordinates, one of whom regularly sold him cocaine.

The culture of the organization “appeared to be devoid of both the ethical standards and internal controls sufficient to protect the integrity of this vital revenue-producing program,” one report said.[...]

But two of the highest-ranking officials who were targets of the investigations will apparently escape sanction. Both retired during the investigation, rendering them safe from any administrative punishment, and the Justice Department has declined to prosecute them on the charges suggested by the inspector general. [...]

On one occasion in 2002, the report said, two of the officials who marketed taxpayers’ oil got so drunk at a daytime golfing event sponsored by Shell that they could not drive to their hotels and were put up in Shell-provided lodging.

Sidebar: Shell has been awarded a $4bn contract in the south of the country to supply gas for Iraqi domestic use but also for export. Back to our story:

While most of the oil companies allowed investigators to interview their employees, the cover letter noted, one major firm, Chevron, would not cooperate.

National Enquirer: "What Sarah's really hiding"

By GottaLaff

The Enquirer has been right on the mark lately. If this is true, I feel bad for the kids. It seems that they are going through some rough times. And yes, I thought twice before posting this, but it will be news soon enough.

clipped from www.nationalenquirer.com

PALIN FAMILY SHOCKERS: WHAT SARAH'S REALLY HIDING!

The NATIONAL ENQUIRER’S exclusive ongoing investigation of GOP VP Nom Sarah 'Barracuda' Palin’s goes far beyond a mere teen pregnancy crisis this week!

The Enquirer’s team of reporters has combed the Alaskan wilderness to discover the hidden truth about Gov. Palin’s family, which has become a central part of political identity.

The ENQUIRER has learned exclusively that Sarah's oldest son, Track, was addicted to the power drug OxyContin for nearly the past two years, snorting it, eating it, smoking it and even injecting it. And as Track, 19, heads to Iraq as part of the U.S. armed forces, Sarah and her husband Todd were powerless to stop his wild antics, detailed in the new issue of The ENQUIRER, which goes on sale today.

THE ENQUIRER also has exclusive details about Track's use of other drugs, including cocaine, and his involvement in a notorious local vandalism incident.

“I’ve partied with him (Track) for years,” a source disclosed. “I’ve seen him snort cocaine, snort and smoke OxyContin, drink booze and smoke weed.”

The source also divulged the girls would do anything for Track and he’d use his local celebrity to manipulate other guys “to get them to steal things he wanted.”

“He finally did what a lot of troubled kids here do,” the source divulged. “You join the military.”

And as Gov. Palin has billed the state of Alaska for various expenses related to her children, as reported by The Washington Post, The ENQUIRER's investigation reveals that she was so incensed by 17-year-old Bristol's pregnancy that she banished her daughter from the house.

Another family friend revealed pre-prego Bristol was as much of a hard partier as Track was.

“Bristol was a huge stoner and drinker. I’ve seen her smoke pot and get drunk and make out with so many guys. All the guys would brag that the just made out with Bristol.”

When Sarah found out the teen was pregnant by high schooler Levi Johnston, she was actually banished from the house. As part of the cover-up, Palin quickly transferred Bristol to another high school and made her move in with Sarah’s sister Heather 25 miles away!

And the ENQUIRER also learned that Levi Johnston, the baby mamma’s future wedded dada, who was glad handed by John McCain at the GOP Convention, isn’t too happy about his impending shotgun nups either.

“Levi got dragged out of the house to go to Minnesota,” Levi’s friend told The ENQUIRER. “Levi realizes he’s stuck being with Bristol because her mom is running for Vice President.”

The friend also confided that both Bristol and Levi “broke up a few times and they definitely messed around with other people.”

Meanwhile, as members of the Palin family’s war viciously over “Trooper-Gate” and claims of Sarah’s extramarital affair have turned the political race into a chaotic arena of threats, denials and vicious attacks by political black ops, The ENQUIRER has discovered shocking new details about the red-hot affair scandal!

H/t: Fernando

McCain's Ambien Use: a Security Threat?

Tsk tsk. Wonder if they share. Notice the link is to the "Health" section of the website, not the politics section. And FWIW, the headline is from the ABC story, not me. Via.

In a presidential race marked by references to preparedness in the face of the 3 a.m. call, the revelation that presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain has taken the sleeping pill Ambien during his travels raises concerns that the rare side effects of the medication could impair his judgment.

"Taking more than the recommended dosage of Ambien or combining it with other sedative-hypnotics — for example, alcohol — may result in amnesia, fugue states and sleep walking," said Dr. Peter A. Fotinakes, medical director of the St. Joseph Sleep Disorders Center in Orange, Calif. "Used appropriately, Ambien is a relatively safe medication."

From Drugs.com-

Ambien can cause side effects that may impair your thinking or reactions. You may still feel sleepy the morning after taking the medication. Until you know how this medication will affect you during waking hours, be careful if you drive, operate machinery, pilot an airplane, or do anything that requires you to be awake and alert**.

**Like run a country?