Cindy McCain addiction story is now FRONT page on WaPo site

[VTGold]

Sub-heading says "read me"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/?nav=globaltop

[Ichingcarpenter]

1. LINK TO DU's LATE BREAKING NEWS

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3484418

[Wheezy]

2. It's five pages long!

[HughMoran]

3. Her struggle was "complicated"

Yeah, and this story is old & complicated and will never get any traction.

I'm gonna :puke:

[VP505]

5. I only read the first page but I think your right,

it won't go anywhere. To me, from what little I read it seemed to have a Cindy as a victim and John was unaware tone to it.

[thunder rising]

16. forget it!

[demwing]

4. And that's ALL it is - Cindy McCain's Addiction

old stuff, in a long winded article

[Bluebear]

6. '"It's not just about her addiction, it's what she did to cover up her addiction

and the lives of other people that she ruined, or put at jeopardy at least," Gosinski said in an interview this week.

[EFerrari]

13. Does that mean you didn't bother to read it?

[demwing]

21. Nope. Forced myself.

It was what I owed myself for allowing myself to get caught up in the "giddyness."


The story was a yawner, the evidence was circumstantial and heresay, and I don't care. In the end, we all still have to vote in November. Nothing has changed.

[Greyskye]

7. Implicates wrongdoing w/ regards to Keating 5!

When questions arose about a vacation the McCains took to Keating's home in the Bahamas, Cindy McCain, as family bookkeeper, was asked to document that they had reimbursed the Keatings, but she could not. She has repeatedly cited the stress of the Keating Five scandal and pain from two back surgeries that same year as reasons for her dependence on painkillers.

Damning. Possibly too subtle for some people, especially those unaware of the Keating Five history, but damning.

[underseasurveyor]

12. Grabbed this little snippet from Wiki

After a lengthy investigation, the Senate Ethics Committee determined in 1991 that Alan Cranston, Dennis DeConcini, and Donald Riegle had substantially and improperly interfered with the FHLBB in its investigation of Lincoln Savings. Senators John Glenn and John McCain were cleared of having acted improperly but were criticized for having exercised "poor judgment".

Emphasis is mine.

Doncha just love how the words "poor judgment' are always present where ever john mclameass goes. Kinda like stink on shit the two just go together.

How on earth anyone could consider john 'poor judgment' mclameass for president, even for a second, is beyond me.

[thunder rising]

17. like "lost 5 planes" poor judgement, "shot down due to delaying departure" poor judgement,

kind of a pattern I think

[underseasurveyor]

22. And there ya have it.

John McLameass has continually shown time and time again that he is incapable of using anything but Poor Judgment!
Your Honor, I rest my case:evilgrin:

[alfredo]

20. He scares me. He's like bush, a recipient of social promotion.

[underseasurveyor]

24. Even little georgie admitted about himself

That he was made by the media.

Lord knows he's failed at every thing his fouled hands have touched. There's NO WAY he could have ever gotten this far without major media help.

[alfredo]

33. Let's hope McCain's attacks on the media cools their love affair.

[DemoRabbit]

8. And a Cindy Sympathy Article just hit the AP

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5ijft829VUmbbK44otYOPoenoMF2gD934NJJ84

Cindy McCain also discussed her addiction to painkillers. In the late 1980s, she underwent back surgeries and became addicted to painkillers that she was stealing from a medical charity she had founded.

"The era I was raising my children was the era when you had to be Super Mom," she said. "I was putting too much pressure on myself."

Cindy McCain has said she quit cold turkey in 1992 after her parents confronted her. She told the magazine she hid her dependency from her husband "because I didn't want to let him down."

[thunder rising]

18. And like Rush ... I am unique .. I was not a common addict .. I was a RICH addict .. there's a

difference

[mindwalker_i]

9. Feeling sorry for Cindy

Seriously, if I were (female and) married to McCain, I'd be jonesing for whatever stuff I could get my hands on. I'm sure she felt like Johnny married her for her fortune, was an a**hole to her to say the least, and fooled around with her on Carol and probably fooled around on her.

The fact that Johnny covered it up is significant but I'd blame him long before blaming her.

[Phx_Dem]

15. Okay. As long as you feel as sorry for all the other

addicted mothers who have infants and small children at home. Most of them didn't have the financial and political resources that Cindy McCain had access too.

Poor Cindy. Makes me cry just thinking about how pitiful she is.

[Pachamama]

10. Ruh Roh....

I don't think the McCains are going to be happy about this.... :eyes:

[central scrutinizer]

11. whitewash

makes McW out to be just an absent parent, not the fixer who called off the DEA or provided his wife with a diplomatic passport to facilitate smuggling and all of the other implications in the earlier posts on this tale. Should bounce off without leaving a mark.

[goodgd_yall]

29. That's what I'm seeing

I wonder if there was a time WaPo was going to do more with this story, but got cold feet.

[Phx_Dem]

14. Well well well. My goodness.

I guess someone is deserving of an apology. Some posters here apparently took Lonestarnot's comment of, "toxic, but I don't know about fatal" and translated it into "OH MY GOD, the election is fucking over and McCain is going to jail!" Hey, we all wish that were the case, but that is not what she said.

She promised a big story about prescription drugs. This story is on the front page of the Washington Post, and it's a 5-pages long.

What the WaPo decided, in the end, to include in the story no one could ever know unless they were editig the story. I wish they had included the allegations about the diplomatic passport and the near-overdose, but maybe they're saving it for a follow-up after getting more source verifications. Either way, Lonestar cannot be faulted for what was edited out. The information she put out was accurate.

Thanks for the heads up, Lonestar, it's always good to get insider info. :hug:

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

19. I didn't see anything that damning for John McCain

He hired a lawyer (same lawyer who got him off with the Keating affair) to defend his wife during the DEA probe of her drug use. The lawyer apparently was effective, as she escaped a possible 20 year sentence and only had to undergo treatment and perform community service. But she was a first-time offender.

McCain claimed he didn't know about his wife's drug use and her fraudulent criminal behavior whereby she obtained the drugs because he was living in Washington and commuting to Arizons only on week-ends. It appears his position is that he knew of the problem only after Cindy's parents confronted her.

He also had his lawyer go after Gosinki, after the latter filed a wrongful termination suit against him and tried to coerce him into a settlement by stating that he had damaging information that wasn't revealed in the complaint. He wanted an extra $250,000 which McCain refused to pay. McCain had his lawyer try to get the feds to pursue Gosinski for extortion, something that didn't fly.

Cindy lied to the press, trying to get in front of the story to do damage control. She told them she had already struck a deal with the feds and that she was already getting treatment and doing community service, which wasn't true at the time. She also lied about one of the reasons for using the drugs, claiming it was because of complications with her pregnancy. Actually, she only became pregnant a couple of years after she first starting using.

I just don't see anything here that nails John McCain in any way. I don't see the cover-up here. The only cover-up alleged is the one by Cindy Mccain as alleged by Gosinski, including a cover-up from her own husband (if you believe his claim - Gosinski himself doesn't appear to say John McCain was involved, based on the article which is all I know about this). It looks like Cindy was desperate enough to even bring the drugs with her on foreign trips. But then an addict will engage in a lot of reckless behavior. The DEA had Gosinki's journal so they had all the facts. McCain's lawyer did what he was paid for, and fought for a great deal on behalf of his client to get them to let Cindy off easy and avoid prison time. Mccain tried to get the feds to go after Gosinski but that didn't pan out. I don't see anything directly implicating McCain in anything yet. I'd like nothing better, but I don't see it.

I'm hoping for more. What did Gosinki have in the way of extra information for which he wanted $250,000? If there's proof that John McCain himself was sharing the drugs with his wife, that could be damaging. If McCain knew early on that the doctor was making out phoney prescriptions in the names of Cindy's employees and did nothing, that could be something. I hope there's more than this, however.

[LonelyLRLiberal]

23. The story hints at abuse of power by John McCain, but does not explicitly accuse him of it.

Perhaps they don't have the proof, but you have to ask yourself what would have happened to YOU, a regular person, if you had done what Cindy did.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

27. I wouldn't have the money to hire a high-powered lawyer

I assume McCain and his wife paid a lot of money for the same guy who got him off in the Keating affair. But then the rich, whether they are politicians or not, have it made. I don't mind Cindy McCain having avoided prison. I just wish a lot of the poor people serving long sentences for drugs had it as easy as she had it.

I'd like investigative reporters to dig into this to see if in fact there was an abuse of power. The article doesn't lead me to think there was, as McCain didn't contact the DEA directly and intervene as a Senator but instead hired a lawyer to do the talking for him. Of course there may be more to this. There always could be the case of someone owing McCain a favor at the DEA. If there was, I hope someone uncovers it. But according to the article as written, I don't see anything here that could spell trouble for McCain himself.

[Princess Turandot]

32. The flip side however is that the DOJ which signed off on this..

was under a Democratic president. It seems very likely to me that the issuance of charges against a *sitting US Senator's wife* was done with the AG in the loop. It seems very likely that the settlement would have been brought to his attention too. It's the DEA/DOJ, not quite the same thing as using the weight of a more important position to pressure a local state prosecutor, as example. Was her husband's position a factor in the resolution of the case? No doubt. Could her husband independently put adequate pressure, aka engage 'abuse of power', on the DEA/DOJ of the party not his own, and achieve an unusually light sentence, w/o the DOJ going along? Doubtful. This smacks of one hand washing the other more than anything else to me. Also, was her sentence *within guidelines* for a first time offender who is obtaining prescription drugs illegally for her own use? If it was, even if it was as light as possible, there is no damaging story here, beyond people in power being treated as well as is legal by other people in power. (Actually, it sounds like the MD also received a very light sentence, just relinquishing his license and retiring, since he obviously knew that what was going on wasn't kosher.)

[LonelyLRLiberal]

36. Good point. nt

[MattBaggins]

26. Coercion and extortion... A bit loaded?

His lawyer presented the offer to McCain's lawyer. I was not aware that offering an out of court settlement on a civil lawsuit was coercion and extortion. Isn't that encouraged by the courts to clear up the Judge's time.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

28. Yeah, that's probably why the feds dropped the investigation into alleged extortion

and it didn't go anywhere. Now if McCain himself as a U.S. Senator threw his weight around in trying to get the federal government to harrass Gosinski with the threat of criminal action for his private civil suit against McCain for wrongful termination, now that might be something worth pursuing, in claiming an abuse of power. The article is vague about how that played out. That might be something to investigate further. But since nothing ever came of it and Gosinki wasn't charged, I don't know if a claim can be made that McCain was all that effective in exercising that power that he allegedly abused. Exactly how did he get the feds to look into Gosinski?

[MattBaggins]

30. I hear ya on that. A big yawn.

Anyone with a lick of common sense realizes that McCain had to have engaged in some illegal methods to get his wife off; but there was no smoking gun back then, and with the enemies McCain has, I am sure they would have surfaced along time ago if there was proof.

[MattBaggins]

25. Without a smoking gun

proving obstruction of justice it is a complete non-issue.

[upi402]

31. I wonder if the Dems finally understand that proof isn't required

and neither is fact. Just repeat often enough and that noodle will stick to a teflon wall.

[GoldenOldie]

35. Fed Agents who worked this case know, "the rest of the story."

They have been muzzeled by their bosses from the Justice Department and threatened with loss of jobs and retirement. Cindy McCain was generous to her friends in sharing the loot she stole. How many knew she used the tranquilizers on her children. Seems the dismantling of our Justice Department began long before the firing of the US Attorneys, Ashcroft and Gonzales.

[mdmc]

34. silly

all this drama for a nothing story. And DU'ers are celebrating...
:eyes:

[Roy]

37. I agree...

Every story that exposes republican lack of morals, possible crimes, drug addictions, ETC. is a negative for the Dems.

It's like they want to lose, why don't Dems call the Washington Post and tell them to stop exposing these crooks and trying to cause the Dems to lose. they must be biased.

Hey! Maybe we should organize a DU letter writing campaign to The Washington post.

Yeah, WE CAN tell them no more negative stories about Republican embarrassment of this country.

Maybe we can eek out a win if we all pull together in this effort.

How bout it DU, ya with me..... EAGLES UP!!! LET'S ROLL!!!

SHEESH......

[mdmc]

38. big news

:shrug: