IOKIYAR Hello choir, is anyone listening? The base will wring their hands while the rest of us yawn

DON'T YOU PEOPLE GET IT??

Pill popping is just fine. Rush Limbaugh, Matthew Perry and even Brett Favre did that. All Cindy did was take a few Mothers Little Helpers. Cmon, who hasn't saved a few Vicodin and taken them with a glass of red wine long after the pain from your back surgery has subsided?

These people have less than nothing if they are trying to get this crap to stick. Let them raise this while Obama is visiting his sick grandmother. It will backfire like everything else.

Can someone slip them the kindergarten paper scandal?

That'll get the "uppity" meme going again.

It'd be high comedy.

Certainly, IOKIYAR, but also, since when is the New York Times synonymous with the Obama campaign? They are separate entities, and NYT has already delved into controversial aspects of Obama, most recently with the Ayers investigative piece.

Furthermore, why are they so sensitive about this? The McCains have already talked about this publicly.

Sadly, the McCain campaign (this includes the coordinated smears by Huckabee and Giuliani) is betting that society is more tolerant of drug use by an affluent white upper-class woman than drug use by a teenaged black male. Among Republicans, this is probably true.

My opinion is that "drug use" reads differently between the types of people who make up the Republican and Democratic parties. It's partly age, but mostly I see it as an extension of the mindset in Republicans that demands conformity and never questions authority. In my teens I waited longer than probably 90% of my peers to try pot. But eventually by their example I began to suspect that the "Reefer Madness" line of the government was a lie. So I tested the lie and found it mostly a lie. I discovered that in reality, most "drug users" are not addicts and they are not criminals, and that many, perhaps the majority, simply pass through drug use as a phase of early adulthood.

It would be a true milestone if we had a president who could simply speak the truth about both him or herself, but about the nation. George W. Bush was careful to never deny cocaine use, but to state that he was young and irresponsible. John McCain cannot accept the truth that his wife has no more excuse for her drug use than anyone currently serving time for drug possession.

Actually, I think the McCain campaign is fighting an heroic last ditch battle for the state and local tickets. It's an extreme "They Were Expendable" effort to save what little can be saved from the impending debacle.

Rather than go down in the statesmanlike manner for which he would like to be remembered, McCain is descending deeper into squalor to save the Bachmans of the party by appealing to the fever swamp that makes up the deep core. No rational person believes or minds the ridiculous charges being made by the McCain campaign. But the mouthbreathers who see Muslim symbolism in the Obama emblem--hell, in the flag of Ohio--need to be turned out.

I take a very Libertarian approach to the subject. I think drug laws probably ruin more lives than the drugs themselves.

Hmmm... In reality, more white kids use drugs than black kids. So let's push the stereotype that Obama is just a "typical" black drug user... you know, the bad kind of drug user, not the white kid who's "just experimenting," or the privileged white adult who needs help "coping" with their "complicated life."

Cindy's drug use brings up the question if John McCain wrangled a diplomatic passport for her so that she could transport her drugs unchecked. This isn't a peripheral issue for McCain.

Breaking laws as an adult, is a bigger deal than breaking laws as a minor.

I'm glad Obama has the maturity and restraint not to do it, but the Democrats could go medeival on the republicans with negative ads. There is just SO much material available.

That said, the Obama campaign should air all the available footage to expose the hypocrisy of their statements on this "issue."

"[Y]ou can't even raise these issues" Rudy

Funny how adept the GOP is at raising these issues.

The real quote should have been: "We can't even raise these issues without injecting a universe of hypocrisy into the issues."

May the next self appointed member of the GOP's they-shoot-themselves-in-the-ass-firing-squad please stand up.

This attack is just a tit-for-tat. The Rovian rule book requires that repubs look surprised and hurt by any reporting that isn't a glowing affirmation of their righteous superiority. That, plus, rule number 1 (win the news cycle at all costs).

I'm just waiting for the inevitable Wright attacks. If the DNC doesn't all ready have a well cut commercial with plenty of footage of McCain standing next to Hagee and Sarah addressing the AIP, they need to cut one now. Repubs can go suck on that.

IMO the NYT is at fault here anyway. I don't give a silent fart about Cindy M's drug use. I already knew as much about it as I ever wanted--the bare minimum--and I strenuously object to this kind of b.s. "reporting," which just further debases our whole political culture. It pisses me off when they do it to the Clintons and it doesn't piss me off any less just here because the target is a politician I'm opposed to. If this was news, it might just pass the smell test, not because of her drug use itself but solely because of the other aspects involved. But they're not bringing anything new to light and as it stands it constitutes an attack on the candidate's wife, which is despicable whatever you think of him or her. Utterly gratuitous sludge. The NYT should just STFU when it comes to this crap.

There seems to be a qualitative difference between the two.

How sweet. As if TV infotainment had any grasp of qualitative difference.

All my life we haven't even been allowed to talk about legalization of MJ. This has been an effective tactic by the 'squares' to keep MJ illegal.

If they now want to break that silence in some moronic last minute bid, I say bring it on. Lets have that discussion. Lets shine the spotlight on the idiots who keep up with the "think of the children" bullshit. Lets primary the Dems who feed at the prison-industrial complex trough.

Maybe McKranky will piss Obama off so bad that the first thing he will do is grant blanket immunity for all MJ convictions just to poke a finger in the eye of all the 'squares'.

Will all the assholes who can't get past 1968 please do the world a favor and croak already?

Enough of this crap.

That article on Cindy McCain was as inappropriate as the one on the Clintons' marriage earlier this year.

Seriously, as a voter am I supposed to care that the doyennes of Washington froze her out socially because they liked John's first wife better?

Is that going to make health insurance more affordable for me? Or fight this recession?

This downward spiral started with the wildly inappropriate way everyone covered the Clintons, and it's just gone downhill from there. This right-wing celebrity culture coverage has infected all political news. And we'll all pay for it.

Mike Huckabee usually stays out of the gutter?!?!?!? What planet are you on? Holy crap, don't fall for the false humility, Huckabee will pull the gutter card at a moments notice.

"The NYT should just STFU when it comes to this crap." -DRBB

I agree that this kind of stuff should be off limits to an extent. However, I'll make two points in defense of NYT.

1) Cindy has begun injecting herself into her husbands campaign in a way that makes this kind of criticism pertinent. You don't start addressing crowds with "I've always been proud of America" and "as a mother, Senator Obama's Iraq vote sent shivers down my spine", and expect nobody to critique you.

2) It seems the press in general is beginning to explore the "meet the possible First Lady" meme.

How quickly the republicans forget their own former drug using, alcoholic president. Maybe he could weigh in on that issue? Ahhhh, selective memory.

Capt Kirk made an opinion is that "drug use" reads differently between the types of people who make up the Republican and Democratic parties. And…I discovered that in reality, most "drug users" are not addicts and they are not criminals, and that many, perhaps the majority, simply pass through drug use as a phase of early adulthood.�

Capt Kirk's comment swung open a field of thinking I could relate to. In my early days in college, it was consumed with drugs and alcohol. For those who deny that, and claim they were completely free of it is the few that fall victim to the “Liars Paradox� were likely much of the debate leads into a contradiction. Like the Palin effect. It is so Oh, oh clear for professionals today, that many have been enjoying extreme use like Limbaugh and his opium pills for who knows how long. Limbaugh, Hannity, Dick Morris, Joe Scarborough, Mathews, Willie Geist fall into the “Lairs Paradox� in wide open cowboy flavor. They all have a common way most of time with Limbaugh, Hannity, and Morris, these Journalists have that sneer sneakily, snotty, bias in tone with deliberate direction. Don't forget the pimp master David Shuster.

Especially MSNBC group that get together at the end of a program to let everyone know what they have learned. Here is a cluster of Journalistic sophist in major contradiction, then have the nerve to belt out comments in “News that you don’t need.� Sheesh. My God, two whole mediums MSNBC and CNBC money channel. Yikes, here, all supplemented with back stage drama and privy connections through Andrea Mitchell wife of former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Allen Greenspan, king pin of America’s economic melt down, the doctor of the Jekyll Island banking system that has been bilking the American tax payer for about century.

Then in a soft spoken way Andrea Mitchell leads the political stress for deliberate confusion side tracking and avoiding absolutely everything she knows as insider knowledge. Likely knowing this economic activity was looming and better likely in on the planning for Bush's exposure to the public. The whole thing stinks of first degree contradiction, threaded through Constitutional sedition, Arab connections to Bush and Company with trillion dollar laundering though out the banking system, secret prisons torture and mercenary corruption beyond anything anytime in American history. Grampa Prescott Bush would be proud.

Now that Huckabee has his own time slot on FOX News is the paramount of the “Liars Paradox� with Liberal rock song guitar serenades to under score Conservative ideals. We all are waiting for Laura Bush and Sarah Palin in push up bras and leggy action to host “The View “...

There seems to be a qualitative difference between the two.

Not to the GOP. Their lifeblood is drawing false equivalences and it is the Media's job to report on both and treat them as equal because the Media is fair and balanced [/eyeroll]

When GWB first ran for prez, information came out that he used cocaine extensively while he was in collage. The story was quashed when Bush said "what happened is in the past and I won't talk about it". And the conservative talking heads followed suit only adding "But Clinton didn't inhale".

I'll make time to be sad about this two years into Obama's second term.

Megalomania, you are quite well spoken. And somewhere tonight, Rush Limbaugh is retiring after a tough day of blathering to his private place, his favorite chair where he can relax with his ritual shot of Oxy. He'll be ready for another tough day tomorrow, to be sure...

"Junkies are often surprisingly enterprising individuals." –William S. Burroughs