Tough Words To Say....

Our society makes it really hard to admit, but the excuses? Come on. A judge in disciplinary proceedings for being intoxicated on the bench explains,

during the alleged drunken appearances, he was taking the painkiller Vicodin for back and knee injuries from a car accident; an anti-inflammatory medicine; Ambien for sleep apnea; and medication for diabetes and high blood pressure.

Let's get one thing straight. You don't take Ambien (or any other sleep medication) for sleep apnea. You take it to help you sleep if you are having trouble with a CPAP or BiPAP machine, the actual treatment for sleep apnea. After you take it you go to sleep. You do not take Ambien and then go to work unless you are either intending to go to sleep on the bench or you are an addict.

He admitted that he went on the bench on two occasions after taking Vicodin and consuming alcohol.

On Dec. 6, 2006, he took three or four Vicodins before a 9 a.m. session in Bridgewater, and at lunch that day had two to three glasses of Chardonnay.

When you're gulping down a triple or quadruple dose of Vicodin, with a substantial alcohol chaser, you're either being extremely foolish and reckless in the treatment of your physical pain or you've moved well hinto the territory of addiction.

Sasso said he knew he should not take his daily Vicodin dosage all at once but added that he generally needs a large dose because he is 6'3" and weighs 290 pounds.

More likely, because if you take three or four times your prescribed dose you build up a tolerance. If you are taking prescribed pain relievers and they're not helping, here's what you do: You go back to your doctor and say, "These aren't helping at the dose you prescribed. What do you recommend?"

Similarly, if you find yourself taking Ambien and not falling asleep, you go back to your doctor and say "These aren't helping me sleep. Can we try something else?" If you take Abmien and intentionally stay awake, it's unlikely that you're taking it for any purpose other than its intoxicating effects (which, as Patrick Kennedy (and the officer who investigated his accident) can tell you, are a lot like alcohol intoxication).

Let's draw a line here between addiction and dependence. If you take certain medications for a long enough period of time, including opiates, you develop a physical dependence on those medications. You may also develop a tolerance that requires an adjustment of your dose or a change of medication, and may be dependent to the point that you will suffer withdrawal if you suddenly stop taking your medications. That's not addiction. Where you transition from dependence to addiction is when your medications stop improving your ability to lead a normal life, and your focus shifts to clock-watching or drug-seeking. There's also a syndrome called pseudoaddiction, where somebody who is receiving inadequate pain relief may demonstrate obsessive or drug-seeking behaviors that resemble those of an addict, but those symptoms resolve when their pain is adequately treated. But if you're buying shoeboxes of drugs from your maid (in addition to taking the drugs you get from your doctor), or gulping down huge doses of opiate medication with alcohol, it's safe to assume that you're an addict.

The AA/NA model for addiction dictates that the very first step in recovery is admitting your powerlessness over your drug of choice. I'm fortunate enough not to have a history of addiction, but I can say this: When the Rush Limbaughs, Patrick Kennedys, and even lesser known people like Judge Sasso avoid making that direct, honest concession - when they insist that their addictions are somehow more elevated because they claim to have physical pain, or are somehow more pure because they're abusing prescription pharmaceuticals - they're lying to themselves and to anybody who listens to them.

It would be really nice to hear one of these high profile addicts discard all of the excuses and finger pointing and simply admit, even if prefaced with an explanation of how they became addicted, "I did it because I am an addict." (e.g., "Although I didn't seek out this disease, and had no experience with addiction before I received opiate medication for a back injury, I stole drugs from my charity because I am an addict.")

Addendum: To be clear, I believe that if high profile addicts are honest about their addiction, they will help diminish the stigma of addiction. While we sometimes pretend otherwise, addiction strikes at all levels of our society and, while the rich and powerful are often better able to cover for their addiction or avoid street drugs, nobody is immune.

McCain's Campaign Failed, Because....

The right hand didn't know what the right hand was doing?

Take it from Charles Krauthammer: Sarah Palin was a huge mistake.

Palin was a mistake ("near suicidal," I wrote on the day of her selection) because she completely undercut McCain's principal case against Obama: his inexperience and unreadiness to lead. And her nomination not only intellectually undermined the readiness argument. It also changed the election dynamic by shifting attention, for days on end, to Palin's preparedness, fitness and experience -- and away from Obama's.

McCain thought he could steal from Obama the "change" issue by running a Two Mavericks campaign. A fool's errand from the very beginning. It defied logic for the incumbent-party candidate to try to take "change" away from the opposition. Election Day exit polls bore that out with a vengeance. Voters seeking the "change candidate" went 89 to 9 for Obama.

No, take it from Pat Buchanan: Sarah Palin is our hero and savior, and perhaps the second coming of, er, Reagan?

Yet by Sept. 10, McCain, thanks to Sarah Palin, whose selection had proven a sensation, had come from eight points behind to take the lead, and Joe Biden was wailing that maybe Hillary would have been a better choice for Obama.

I disagree with both of them, to some degree. Krauthammer exaggerates the import of Palin, and continues to overestimate the "he lacks experience" theme that by the time McCain chose Palin no longer seemed to be resonating with the public. Look at the polls before and after the convention/Palin bubble - McCain was losing on the experience argument. That's not to say it isn't a good argument or a relevant issue, but McCain's campaign apparently recognized that if they didn't introduce a "game changer" they were going to lose. McCain's choice of Palin left conservative elites like Krauthammer tied up in knots, but she was red meat to Pat Buchanan. Palin energized the religious right and helped McCain ensure their turn-out, and provided him with the ability to launch scurrilous attacks on Obama by proxy. In the weeks leading up to the election did you see Obama's support increase? No, it held steady while McCain's support increased - wavering Republicans returned to the fold.

But Palin turned out to be something well short of a net positive. Her lack of experience wasn't so much the issue as her poor performance. That, coupled with the economic crisis, hurt McCain, because it suggested that he lacked judgment. Krauthammer implies that McCain's post-convention/Palin bounce reflected a permanent advantage,

Then Lehman collapsed, and the financial system went off a cliff.

This was not just a meltdown but a panic. For an agonizing few days, there was a collapse of faith in the entire financial system - a run on banks, panicky money-market withdrawals, flights to safety, the impulse to hide one's savings under a mattress.

This did not just have the obvious effect of turning people against the incumbent party, however great or tenuous its responsibility for the crisis. It had the more profound effect of making people seek shelter in government.

Seriously? So Krauthammer is bucking the trend among right-wing pundits and is arguing that the election result gives Obama not only a mandate for massive change, but a mandate to impose socialism? He doesn't like Sarah Palin, but he's clearly been sipping her Kool-Aid. Odd as it seems to say this, for a more rational perspective (albeit one that doesn't survive past the end of the paragraph) let's turn back to Buchanan:

Then came the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the bailout of AIG, McCain’s assertion that the economy was fundamentally sound, and his panicked return to Washington to assist Bush and Hank Paulson push through a wildly unpopular bank bailout - using 700 billion in tax dollars to buy up rubbish paper the idiot bankers had put on their books.

Right up to the point of the collapse, McCain was repeating the mantra, "The fundamentals of the economy are strong." Right up to the point of the collapse, his campaign was dispatching its proxies to savage Obama's economic proposals, to call Obama naive, and to ridicule comparisons between our present financial situation and the great depression. Reality intervened, and how did McCain respond? By trying to convince the people that when he said, "the fundamentals of the economy are strong" he actually meant, "American workers are strong", and then fumbling a suspension of his campaign such that he simultaneously looked manipulative, disingenuous and inept.

How did Palin then hurt him? Not by being inexperienced, and certainly not in her appeal to "the base", but by appearing to undecided voters as further evidence of bad judgment - like the supposed suspension of his campaign, the Palin choice appeared at best to be a cynical manipulation that, despite the McCain camp's spin, put campaign ahead of country. McCain's defense of his choices wasn't "straight talk", and it wasn't mavericky - it was sad and disappointing. He wedded himself to G.W. not so much by his voting record and policy choices, but by his refusal to concede even obvious mistakes and his insistence that his mistakes were in fact good choices.

I'll grant that he couldn't exactly say, "I regret my choice of Sarah Palin" - and it isn't clear that he should have regrets, given that Palin largely did her job by energizing evangelical voters and social conservatives - and perhaps he had dug himself too deep a hole with statements reflecting himself as out-of-touch with the economy, but he didn't have to demean himself or to try to advance lines that, simply put, are ridiculous. Nobody with an ounce of sense is going to believe that living near Russia translates into having foreign policy experience. And if you're going to claim that somebody "understands the energy issues better than anybody I know in Washington, D.C.," you had best make sure she's not going to turn around and stick her foot into her mouth. Repeatedly.

Buchanan believes that McCain could have won the election by acting more like Palin - attacking gay rights, advancing a rigid, pro-life agenda, attacking Obama as supposedly wanting to eliminate any restrictions on abortion, smearing Obama with tales of his association with Ayers and Wright, etc. - I don't think that would have worked, and in fact it might have hurt. There's a reason that the McCain campaign happily launched that brand of attack through Palin, while trying to keep McCain himself above the fray, and my guess is that it's because their internal polling suggested that those attacks would hurt him with swing voters (not to mention demolishing the public perception that he's not hostile to abortion rights). What better evidence of this than Krauthammer's horror at Palin and everything she represents?

I personally would argue that what hurt McCain the most with swing voters was his overt efforts to appeal to the Buchananite/evangelical wing of the Republican Party. You can still easily find people who lament that they weren't able to vote for the McCain who ran in 2000, and how they wished that guy had been in the race. That guy apparently concluded early on that he couldn't win his party's nomination without making serious concessions to religious and social conservatives, and apparently later concluded (probably correctly) that it was more important to "turn out the base" - have those reliably Republican voters come out and support him on election day - than to try to hold or win over the middle. Krauthammer writes,

McCain thought he could steal from Obama the "change" issue by running a Two Mavericks campaign. A fool's errand from the very beginning.

But he misses the point that the leading factor, and perhaps the only factor, that made McCain a serious contender in the race was the distance he had historically emphasized between his own positions and those of the Republican Party. Whether you believe that to be reality or myth, that McCain - the McCain of 2000 - could legitimately declare himself a candidate of change. The reminted McCain running in 2008 could not. And he lost.
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Update (via lies.com):

Did They Overplay Their Hand?

This is about as blunt an article as I've seen from a mainstream source, directly contrasting the claims of Palin and McCain with the facts. Something could have been added to this, though:

In Alaska, meanwhile, the investigator looking into whether Palin abused her power as governor in trying to fire her former brother-in-law asked state lawmakers for the power to subpoena Palin's husband, Todd, a dozen others and the phone records of a top aide. The state House and Senate judiciary committees were expected to grant the request.

Palin told ABC she welcomed the investigation. "There's nothing to hide in this," she said.

Nothing to hide, yet still she's hiding stuff....

Qualifications Don't Matter?

At the American Conservative, Dan Larison continues to display shell shock over McCain's choice of Palin:

But one sign in Albuquerque may have summed it up for Republican stalwarts: “Sarah - you had us at hello.” ~The Los Angeles Times

That really is the point, isn’t it? All Palin had to do was to show up, and these people were overjoyed regardless of what Palin had or hadn’t done. Much of the enthusiastic response from rank-and-file Republicans seems to be based in a simple desire for validation from the higher-ups, and in satisfying this disturbing hunger for approval it is as if all of McCain’s errors are forgiven and forgotten. This is exactly what Bush thought would happen when he nominated Harriet Miers on the assumption that evangelicals and religious conservatives would see her as one of them, and to some extent that is what happened. When the Bush administration tried to browbeat critics of the Miers nomination (which, I must stress, was a terrible nomination) with accusations of sexism and elitism, the same kinds of people who are now flinging those charges at Palin’s critics were outraged and became even more fiercely opposed to Miers.

What's the difference this time? Larison expresses concern about the "irrationality of mass democracy" and suggests why individual voters might react differently to the two situations. But the difference isn't coming from the bottom. I suspect that the "grass roots" would be as hostile to Palin as they were to Miers if they were told by their opinion leaders that they should oppose Palin. The difference is, key opinion leaders are ecstatic about Palin because they believe she is firmly wedded to a particular orthodoxy, and to them that is far more important than any understanding of the issues, experience, or objective qualification. They were uncertain about Miers - did she hold their political beliefs, and if so was she sufficiently dogmatic in her beliefs that she could be counted on to consistently hold their way as a Supreme Court Justice - so they advocated against her. They don't have those doubts about Palin.

You want to talk sexism? Take William Kristol, who can't seem to avoid making treacly, condescending comments about women.

Look the only people for Hillary Clinton are the Democratic establishment and white women… it would be crazy for the Democratic party to follow the establishment that’s led them to defeat year after year… White Women are a problem - but, you know… we all live with that…

“It’s the tears. She pretended to cry, the women felt sorry for her, and she won [the New Hampshire primary].”

If not Pawlenty or Romney, how about a woman, whose selection would presumably appeal to the aforementioned anguished Hillary supporters?

When speaking about men, Kristol finds experience to be of the utmost importance:

The two leading G.O.P. prospects have been Tim Pawlenty, the Minnesota governor, and Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor. But with Biden’s foreign policy experience as a contrast, could McCain assure voters that the young Pawlenty is ready to take over, if need be, as commander in chief?

What word would Kristol give to his application of a different standard to the genders, such that what disqualifies a man in no way disqualifies a woman?

Should voters be alarmed by a relatively young or inexperienced vice-presidential candidate? No.

Kristol didn't suddenly triumph over his misogynistic tendencies. He's comfortable with Palin's rigidity on certain issues he deems key, and thus to him her inexperience and lack of qualification is irrelevant. One moment he's lobbying for Lieberman, and in almost the next breath he's lobbying for Palin. While I have joked about the differences between those candidates, let's not overlook the commonalities near and dear to Kristol's heart - with her sincere Pentecostal beliefs she is unlikely to retreat from the Iraq war, and perhaps broader war in the Middle East, Kristol is comfortable that her positions on the war align with her own. Just as he was comfortable with Lieberman's dogmatism on the war.

Note also that although Kristol was quick and strong in his dismissal of Pawlenty on the basis of inexperience, his lobbying for the choice of Palin long predates that column. There was not one sincere word in his opposition to Pawlenty.

Even now, as he defends his vice presidential candidate of choice, Kristol finds himself unable to speak to her merits. Instead he sneers at the media for daring to ask such questions as,

Who is Sarah Palin to suddenly show up on the national stage? We didn’t vet her. And we don’t approve of her.

You know, a media reaction like this:

I'm disappointed because I expected John McCain to nominate someone with a visible and distinguished track record on the national issues - someone like Joseph Lieberman, Condoleezza Rice, or Mitt Romney - to say nothing of Elizabeth Dole, Meg Whitman and Kay Bailey Hutchison. Sarah Palin has an impressive record as a small town mayor and a couple of years as governor. She has no national or foreign policy credentials that I know of.

I'm depressed. Having polls this close meant everything rode on this nomination - and that McCain had to be ready to choose a strong nominee. Apparently, he wasn't. It is very hard to avoid the conclusion that McCain flinched from a fight on social issues. Palin is undoubtedly a decent and competent person. But her selection will unavoidably be judged as reflecting a combination of cronyism and capitulation on the part of McCain.

I'm demoralized. What does this say about a possible McCain administration - leaving aside for a moment the future of the country? Surely this is a pick from weakness. Is McCain more broadly so weak? What are the prospects for a strong McCain presidency? What are the prospects for gaining solid GOP majorities in Congress in 2008 if conservatives are demoralized? And what elected officials will step forward to begin to lay the groundwork for conservative leadership after McCain?

Yes, that approach is absolutely deplorable when you're not at the heart of it. Then it was "How dare they call us sexist for opposing a clearly unqualified candidate." Now it's, "Qualifications don't matter, and it's sexist to even look at her history as governor and mayor." The common theme? People like Kristol spin up accusations of sexism as a shield against addressing the issues - why is Miers unqualified, or why is Palin qualified?

The Vice President has two job responsibilities. First, she presides over the Senate and casts an occasional tie-breaking vote. Second, she sits around waiting to see if the President dies, in which case she assumes his office. Kristol assures us that this second role is some sort of historical footnote.

Should voters be alarmed by a relatively young or inexperienced vice-presidential candidate? No. Since 1900, five vice presidents have succeeded to the presidency during their term in office: Teddy Roosevelt in 1901, Calvin Coolidge in 1923, Harry Truman in 1945, Lyndon Johnson in 1963, and Gerald Ford in 1974. Teddy Roosevelt took over at age 42, becoming our youngest president, and he’s generally thought to have proved up to the job. Truman was V.P. for less than three months and had been kept in the dark by Franklin Roosevelt about such matters as the atom bomb — and he’s generally thought to have risen to the occasion. Character, judgment and the ability to learn seem to matter more to success as president than the number of years one’s been in Washington.

Did you catch that? Experience is irrelevant even in a President, because what really matters is "Character, judgment and the ability to learn". I suppose that makes this comment a demonstration of media misogyny?

And what exactly is her extensive experience in foreign policy or in anything? She's been a senator for six years. Obama's been a senator for two years. So, I mean, big deal.

She hasn't passed any legislation. He hasn't either. She sat in the White House while her husband was president.

And let's not forget Kristol's sneering at Obama's inexperience. Asserting different standards for a white candidate than a... no, let's not play Kristol's game on that one.

I Know It's Michelle Malkin, But....

After somebody at Fox News decided to run text in front of a news segment featuring Michelle Malkin, describing Michelle Obama as Barack Obama's "baby mama", Malkin came out in defense of the network....

But I do know that it was Michelle Obama herself who referred to Barack as her “baby’s daddy” and has used the phrase “baby daddy” to describe Barack while on the stump this year.

Her sources? A clear reference by Michelle to her husband as her "baby's daddy", and an unsubstantiated comment attacking her in the Topix John McCain forum. I guess she felt compelled to add the latter, given that even she knows how idiotic she would look if her sole argument was that referring to your spouse as your "baby's daddy" and referring to a black woman as a "baby mama" (or a black man as a "baby daddy") are comparable.

But even assuming a "baby daddy" reference exists, applying Malkin-think, is it now fair game to ask in relation to Cindy McCain if the nation is ready to have a First Lady who is a trollop? Would she argue that calling Cindy McCain a trollop or the C-word cannot be considered sexist, because McCain used those words first? Oh, I'm sure she would were McCain a Democrat, but as he's a Republican even Malkin could seek through that sort of specious, brainless Malkin-think, couldn't she?

Malkin's kind of like an intellectually flyweight version of Ann Coulter (a flyweight version of a welterweight). I'd suggest that she keep her mouth shut and simply be thought a fool, but every day she proves that you can make a small fortune playing court jester to the Republican establishment.