Cindy McCain

Better yet - what would you call a man who has to hide behind two women? If you're a Republican then I guess you call them a "maverick".

Why is it that John McCain is such a coward that he can't ask Obama about Ayers? Instead he has to have his wife and running mate go out and make the attacks. This is really a look into McCain's character and I love the fact that Obama and Biden are now calling McCain out on it. "Say it to his face" was Biden's challenge to McCain today. Will McCain have the nerve to do that or will he continue to hide behind his women?

Tom Gosinski, a former employee of Cindy McCain's, has finally come forward and started talking about Cindy McCain's drug abuse. Raw Story and Matt Stoller both have lengthy stories up that paint a not-so-pretty picture about the McCain family.

That's an outfit for a night out if you are Cindy McCain. The pricetag for the banana costume she wore Monday night at the convention was around $300,000.

TBogg raises the issue of how "accident prone" Cindy McCain is. I know the right will scream and bitch that we are "attacking Cindy", but if she was just a normal, everyday citizen, and suffered all these accidents, the emergency room would start raising questions. First off, given her history, is she possibly just shopping for pain pills? That's something more common than one would think. The second issue raised would be regarding a possibility of domestic abuse.

But she is Cindy McCain, so she just has accidents - accidents that would raise flags if they happened to anyone else.

That title is not by me, but rather Dan Savage, who also wrote this great piece today:

We’re wasting our time beating up on John McCain for suggesting that his leathery ol’ wife should participate in a topless/bottomless beauty pageant.

Yes, Obama couldn’t say it—but then Obama isn’t a notorious ladies man and adulterer that dumped his first wife when she went and got all ugly and shit.

Read on...

Here is the video of McCain offering his wife to participate in a beauty contest that is topless and "occasionally bottomless".

Josh has much more on this.

It sure looks like McCain is doing that, and not in a very good way:

Indeed, McCain felt so comfortable at the event that he even volunteered his wife for the rally’s traditional beauty pageant, an infamously debauched event that’s been known to feature topless women.

“I encouraged Cindy to compete,” McCain said to cheers. “I told her with a little luck she could be the only woman ever to serve as first lady and Miss Buffalo Chip.”

The even is Sturgis, the big biker rally. So I wonder how the family values group will take to McCain wanting his wife in a beauty pageant that features topless women? I wonder how women's right groups will respond?

There has been a lot of talk going on about attacking spouses in the general election. Now the McCain campaign is insisting that the Democrats have unfairly attacked Cindy McCain:

The article that the DNC drew attention to reported that the McCain campaign had failed to reimburse Mrs. McCain for a flight in her company's private jet to New York City, where she attended a fund-raiser for her husband. The article quotes two Republicans criticizing the campaign for this.

Asking about McCain's campaign reimbursing Cindy McCain's company for a flight is an attack? No - it's asking about the law, yet the McCain campaign thinks this is some sort of "attack". It isn't. It's a simple statement of fact, like this:

In 1989, following two back surgeries, Cindy McCain became addicted to the painkillers Vicodin and Percocet. To keep up with her daily need of 10 to 15 pills, she used other people's names for prescriptions and stole drugs from the American Voluntary Medical Team, a mobile surgical unit she'd begun in 1988 to provide emergency medical services around the world. A 1993 DEA audit of the amount of painkillers her charity had obtained quickly uncovered her thefts. She avoided prosecution for those crimes through an agreement with the Justice Department in which she submitted to drug testing, paid a fine, performed community service in a soup kitchen, and joined Narcotics Anonymous. She also closed her medical charity

That isn't an attack either - that is fact, and one the DNC hasn't brought up. So perhaps the McCain campaign should be thankful that the DNC is simply asking about the reimbursement of campaign expenses, instead of asking about Cindy's drug addiction (and it is an addiction - once an addict, always an addict).