How vile is Mike Papantonio? For the second time in three days the trial lawyer-cum-radio host has actually made Ed Schultz look relatively reasonable.
Interviewed by Schultz on his MSNBC show this evening, Papantonio claimed that the Koch brothers had “purchased” Herman Cain in order to be able to “kill more people”with toxins.
Via Breitbart TV: Howard Stern comes to Cain’s defense: “I think it’s a smear job”:
An inspiring, motivational speech from another presidential contender, Newt Gingrich:
PJTV’s Scott Ott delivers the news: Politico-gate – Hear All the Vague, Non-Specific Allegations Against Herman Cain, Politico and More:
Triumph The Insult Dog’s Brilliant Report From #OccupyWallStreet:
Via Weasel Zippers, Bill O’Reilly blasts “the worst Mayor in the country”: Oakland Mayor Quan Praises Occupy Oakland Protesters After Riots Cost City $1 Million:
It must be late Friday afternoon – the Obama White House has some bad news…
The Associated Press reports they will not honor a subpoena and release all documents related to the scandalous $535 million Solyndra loan as requested by House Republicans.
The White House on Friday strongly rebuffed a subpoena from House Republicans seeking all communications about a failed solar panel manufacturer that received a half-billion dollar federal loan guarantee.
In a letter to two top Republicans on the House energy panel, White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler said the request “was driven more by partisan politics than a legitimate effort to conduct a responsible investigation.”
The White House and the Energy Department have already turned over 85,000 pages of documents on Solyndra Inc. The California-based company filed for bankruptcy and laid off 1,100 workers after receiving $528 million in federal backing.
Ruemmler said those documents show no wrongdoing or political favoritism by the administration.She added that curiosity alone is not a justification to encroach on the Executive Branch’s longstanding confidentiality interests.
I don’t see a valid reason for the rebuff anywhere in the article. An “encroachment” on the Executive Branch’s “longstanding confidentiality interests” doesn’t really cut it in an administration that promised (and claims) to be “the most transparent, ever.” And sorry – looking out for American taxpayers who are on the hook for more than a half billion dollars is not “partisan politics “. Weak tea – no wonder they announced it on a Friday afternoon.
Documents already obtained by the committee show that the Obama administration knew Solyndra was doomed from the start, yet they supported it anyway. If that isn’t “wrongdoing” I don’t know what is. It’s more than idle “curiosity” for House investigators to want to get to the bottom of why.
Denver October 16, El Marco:Anarchists, locking arms to lead the OccupyDenver March.
Why is the MSM playing the part of clueless dupe in its reporting of the Occupy protests? Why do reporters only reluctantly report any unsavory news about the protests, and always with the caveat that the protests are “mostly peaceful”, when clearly the anarchists causing the trouble are a large part of the movement, and in many cases, organizers? That’s not a movement that is peaceful. That is a movement that is only pretending to be peaceful.
The spillover into violence that the liberal media so wanted to report about the truly peaceful tea parties never materialized, yet when the left protests in large numbers, angry mob violence ensues. It’s entirely predictable that #OWS would become violent, and it’s entirely predictable that the MSM doesn’t want to report it. Instead they play it down. They ignore the people running around these protests with their faces covered with masks or bandanas. They ignore the open drug use, rapes and robberies occurring every night at the encampments. They ignore the Marxist/anarchist/wacko signs.
The New York Timeson down, every mainstream media outlet reporting on the Occupy Oakland Riots wants us to believe that the general strike was “orderly” and “peaceful” and that only a “belligerent fringe group” destroyed property and incited violence later in the night. But as The Oakland Tribune‘s live-blog of the protests shows this is just plain false:
Milani, a camper who did not want to give a last name, spoke against apologizing to businesses. She said it wasn’t just outsiders committing vandalism.
“The person I saw putting toilet paper up, they’re a facilitator at the general assembly. The person spray painting, they’re on the events committee.”
Via Michelle Malkin, the San Fran Chronicle reportedon the recent #OccupyOakland vandalism which is costing the city $25,000 to replace broken windows. Listen to the good Mayor make excuses for the Oakland protesters, who inhabit one of the most violent and depravedcamps in the country.
Crews were boarding up broken windows at the Tully’s Coffee shop just steps from Occupy Oakland’s camp at Frank Ogawa Plaza outside City Hall. Graffiti was sprayed on the Rite Aid and Walgreens drugstores across from each other at 14th and Broadway. The city estimated it would cost up to $25,000 to replace broken windows at city buildings.
City Administrator Deanna Santana apologized to business owners for the “chaotic events” that enveloped the city. Mayor Jean Quan called the rioters “a small and isolated group.”
“It shouldn’t mar the overall impact of the demonstration and the fact that people in the 99 percent movement demonstrated peacefully and, for the most part, were productive and very peaceful,” Quan said.
Tagami disagreed, calling the Occupy Oakland encampment “basically concealment and cover for anarchists who are doing this to our city.”
“We’re very concerned that a group of people can be allowed to do this type of destruction to our town and to our image without any repercussions,” Tagami said. “They need to be held accountable.” He rejected assertions that the anarchists were a small minority, saying, “No, you can’t have it both ways.”
The Oakland businessman interviewed by the Chronicle, Phil Tagami, had protected his building from the Occupy rioters, with a loaded shotgun.
Photojournalist, Zombieestimated that the protesters at OccupyOakland were 50% communist/socialist, 25% anarchist/anti-authoritarian, and 25% incoherent/confused/personal. From what I’ve seen, that ratio probably describes most of the occupations going on across the country. If 25% of the protesters are anarchists, that is not an insignificant minority. In fact, I suspect the reason that their ideological opposites – the Socialists/Communists who make up the majority at these occupiers – put up with them, is because the anarchists are serving a purpose at these protests. While the “peaceful” occupiers avert their eyes, the anarchists pick fights with the police, engage in vandalism, and cause general mayhem. Then the “peaceful” occupiers apologize and say they don’t condone it. It’s a pattern that has played out over and over again at all of the occupations that have seen violence.
If the “peaceful occupiers” really didn’t condone it, the anarchists wouldn’t be allowed to be a part of their movement. The troublemakers would be kicked out.
That’s how the peaceful tea party would handle it.
After the successful national day of action and general strike in Oakland, naturally, we see the topic of violence and non-violence growing within our movement and within the voices of corporate media networks. Obviously this is a result of certain actions that individuals and groups within the movement decided to partake in. Unfortunately we are hearing a great deal of slander, and nonsense at the forefront of this discussion. As someone who has been with the occupation as much as possible, I feel it’s necessary to confront this.
Isolating people based on their willingness to engage in self-defense by actively protecting the spaces we’ve all worked so hard to build together, and the symbolic defiance of exploitative property by making absurd claims of them being “Outside agitators” as if it they are some how separate from the many people who have been actively involved in building these spaces of ‘direct-democracy’ and communal living should not only be considered an attack on solidarity, but an attack on movements of the people. What divides movements of the people, weakens movements of the people.
Many of us out there today and tonight were Anarchists, but many were also not. We are the ones who were in the streets, ready to provide support & solidarity with all of our brothers and sisters. We were ready to brave against the violence of the state arm and arm with you, to protect one another, and provide medic support to anyone who fell victim to the police assaults. We are the ones whom also involved themselves with serving food to the commune, providing sanitation, organizing actions and broadening the movement. We are not separate from the movement. We are not outside agitators. We are a part of the movement, we are involved with the struggle. We stood with the occupation before day one, we stood with the occupation tonight and will continue to do the same in the future. Don’t let age old divide and conquer tactics convince you otherwise, please…
These are not new sentiments. When Adbusters began agitating for the occupation of Wall Street, the publishers there were familiar with the anarchist roots of the movement. This is what “occupation” means. The movement is about exploiting the current “contradictions of capitalism” (foreclosures, recession, unemployment) to propel the revolutionary moment.
Allahpundit did some “too good to check”, traffic luring, Palin rumor-mongering at Hot Air, yesterday: Palin reconsidering?
It’s wafer thin but lots of fun to game out, and I figure our resident Palinistas would appreciate having a new reason to believe after last month’s great disappointment. Here you go. The ballot deadlines have passed in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Florida, which means there are three possibilities. One: It’s not true. Two: It is true but she’s going to run third party, which means she doesn’t have to worry about primary deadlines. Three: It’s true and she’s going to run as a Republican, having been lured back into the race by the vacuum on the right after Perry’s collapse and Cain’s sudden vulnerability. What about NH, SC, and FL, though?
Well, she can skip those, and come back to slaughter Romey on Super Tuesday. Or so the thinking goes.
I can tell you that if the Cain Train derails over the sexual harassment story (remains to be seen, but could happen) it may finally be her turn to be “flavor of the week”.
Probably not happening, but it’s something fun for politicos to chew on.
Sarah Palin gave a great keynote speech at Republican Party Of Florida Victory Dinner 11-03-11:
Immediately after Roper shoved the officer’s bike, he was tackled to the ground and cuffed.
Here’s a typical left-wing description of what happened:
A Denver motorcycle policeman frustrated with protesters in his way decided to charge the impeding crowd with his motorcycle, running directly into Mr. Roper with his motorcycle. Mr. Roper reacted by shoving the motorcycle, followed by a brief sprint when he saw that the officer was turning around for him. Mr. Roper made it about 10 yards before being gang tackled by police and severely beaten resulting in multiple lacerations to his face. He was taken to a nearby hospital for treatment. Footage of the incident is in the sidebar.
Just look at the “multiple lacerations” on poor Frankie’s face, omg:
“Warning,” the blogger cautions us — this video is graphic because “Frankie’s face was split open”, and “due to the blows to his face that he received, he could not sit up – he basically passed out.” Frankie is “one of the more loveable protesters” he’s been following:
Now, we already knewthat Frankie wasn’t “severely beaten” by police because videos had appeared on Youtube showing what happened after Roper and his friends crowded and obstructed the officer on the motorcycle. When the cop refused to yield, Roper angrily shoved the bike as it went by, then darted away with the cop in pursuit, who quickly tackled him like a linebacker. The police hogtied Roper’s hands and feet, and removed him from the park. There was no beating what-so-ever. The only question was, how did the lacerations get on his face – did he hit a jagged rock when he hit the ground?
Thanks to El Marco’s excellent camera work, we now have a much better idea of what happened at the October 29 “leftist lawfare campaign of uncivil agitation” in Denver:
Denver, like other cities that have Occupy manifestations, is faced by a core of protesters from anarchist groups, labor unions, and communist organizations, often obscuring their affiliations, mixed in with a mishmash of confused students, concerned citizen activists, children, and all sorts of evil clowns.
Not to mention zombies. Don’t forget the evil ZOMBIES:
It turns out, our “loveable” hero is a zombie practitioner of lawfare. Those gashes on his face were not the result of his scuffle with the police. It was ZOMBIE MAKE-UP.
El Marco reported:
He was released immediately from the hospital, as he was actually uninjured. No doubt the makeup is what got him into the hospital rather than into jail.
This is what the “loveable protester” had been up to earlier in the day:
Lawfare is “the use of law as a weapon of war.” It is one of several alternative war-making concepts outlined in a 1999 Chinese book that set forth new types of offensive actions available to an international actor that seeks to undermine a military force. The international left has become adept at using lawfare in many arenas including against law enforcement. Both congressman John Conyers and Weather Underground terrorist Bernadette Dohrn are or have been members of the guild. Radicals are trained to harass the police and disobey every attempt of law-enforcement to control a deliberately orchestrated volatile mob action.
The trouble started when El Comandante (above, to left of statue) veered off the permitted march route, gesticulating wildly that the marchers should follow him up the steps to the Capitol. This created confusion on Broadway, and split the march, with about half following El Comandante (Spendley), and the other half returning as planned to Civic Center Park.
The marchers around me verbally expressed surprise when El Comandante summoned them off the route to the park, and led them up to the Capitol Building. I estimate the entire march of October 29 to have numbered no more than 1,000 although the DLEM claims 2,000. Protesters told me earlier that OD’s permit was for a march to support medical marijuana legislation.
I scampered up the stairs and found that the verbal abuse of cops had already begun. The man on the right, with the kaffiya and armband, is an Occupy Denver “official security anarchist.” Frankie Roper can be seen, with the orange bandana, launching into his confrontation with State Troopers. The trooper walking towards the camera will soon be the target of Roper’s insanity. It seemed to me that the troopers were taken by surprise.
Jeannie Hartley [gave] instructions while Frankie hurls abuse at State Troopers. The National Lawyers’ Guild films the developing confrontation, looking for evidence to use against the troopers in court. Anarchists can be seen streaming forward, screeching, and soon the mob wil reach a number between 400 and 500, howling abuse at the troopers. I’m immediately struck by the zen-like calm and mild humor with which the troopers absorb the abuse without reacting.
Frankie Roper, zombie from Colorado Springs, made repeated attempts to push his way through the thin blue line. He soon singled out the thinnest part of the line, and possibly the oldest of the troopers, on whom he spewed very personal venom.
The protesters were repeatedly told they were not allowed in or near the Capitol Building, as they had no permit to demonstrate there. Up and down the line, troopers were singled out by individual protesters, who concentrated on breaking through the line. The smiley-faced man in the center of the photo above is using a crossed-arm technique developed in Cuba by people to resist Fidel Castro’s goon squads. In Cuba, the difference being that the people are resisting totalitarian communist state agents, while here communists and anarchists are using it on police in an attempt to get their way by undemocratic means.
Roper repeatedly tried to advance through the line in order to provoke the police for the Lawyers’ Guild cameras, which were trained on this scene for over twenty minutes
The troopers really showed their training and courage as they held the line and waited for reinforcements. Note how the protesters carefully avoid laying hands on law enforcement. They have been schooled in the art of how to provoke by yelling, screaming, and shoving — right up to the line of what would be considered assault.
Can a regular citizen appreciate what these officers are now facing around the world from this Occupy movement? In Europe, officers are being butchered and incinerated (Rome: 40, Athens: 100′s) by Occupy communists and anarchists. While liberal polititians and media coddle and support the radicals, these officers’ lives will be in danger as this lunatic fringe gains ground.
The calm courage of the troopers only seemed to infuriate some of the protesters even more as they tried every foul combination of words to incite trouble.
Roper’s zombie buddies were also harassing individual officers. Hey liberals, try staring at a living, screaming, leftist zombie who’s showering spittle in your face for twenty minutes and see if you like it. Where is it written that a citizen has a right to do this to anyone?
Later on , one of the #OccupyDenver organizers, Jeannie Hartley appeared on Olbermann:
Olbermann: Tell me about the scene on Saturday. The protesters were described as unruly. Are the police being truthful in that statement?
Hartley: To be honest, I have to tell you what I saw. What I witnessed was not anyone being unruly. What I saw was several police officers chasing en masse into the park, running towards one little guy in a tree, and then chasing after another man and throwing him down onto the ground, and putting him in a choke hold, with officers surrounding him. I saw tear gas being dispersed, I saw rubber pellets being shot into the crowd towards people that from my vision were not being unruly. …who from where I was standing were not being unruly at all. We’d had a perfectly peaceful march a perfectly peaceful rally and it turned into something much worse.
… It was extraordinary, the amount of police force that was present, before anything was, by their definition, unruly…
KO: Is there any thought of going to the in Denver or the state courts?
H: Yes, That is something that is in the works. We have an amazing legal team. We are also working with the National Lawyer’s Guild. I can’t address (details) as I’m not an attorney, but I can promise you that’s in the works.
JH: People are in the streets because of injustice. So for the police force to inflict more injustice upon us is not going to make us leave, it’s going to make more people come into the streets.
When they say “Fox News lies”, you now know it’s pure projection, right?
“Conservative” Iowa radio host Steve Deace is in the news cycle accusing Herman Cain of sexual harassment — specifically saying, according to Politico, that Cain had said “awkward/inappropriate things… to two females on my staff.” Deace also said he was concerned about “the fact the guy’s wife is never around.”
The American Spectator contacted Deace directly tonight to ask two questions:
1. What did Herman Cain say to the woman or women on Deace’s staff?
2. Was Deace present when Cain did whatever “awkward/inappropriate things” Deace is accusing him of?
This evening Steve Deace responded as follows, his response printed in its entirety:
No one affiliated with our radio program has anything else to say about Herman Cain’s awkward and inappropriate comments made to our staff referenced in a recent Politico story beyond what we have already said.
Sadly, those comments are no more inappropriate and awkward than Mr. Cain’s multiple positions on the sanctity of human life, his support of the TARP, his not knowing China already has nuclear weapons, and his refusal to defend marriage. The fact that someone so uninformed and morally inconsistent has made it this far in a crucial Republican presidential primary, only to finally be vetted by his personal life, is an example of why so many Americans have lost faith in the system. Instead of debating issues we debate cults of personality. This sort of personality-driven politics helped Obama get elected four years ago, and look how well that turned out.
Steve Deace
So Deace went on the record to say that Cain said “awkward and inappropriate things”to his female staff, but even though he’s obviously not under any confidentiality agreement to keep silent about it, he’s zipping it on the details, anyway? We get to leave it all up to our imaginations? You’ve got to be kidding me.
He put up, and shut up. As Lord said later in his article – this is spectacularly unfair.
At this point I feel I must interject on Mr. Cain’s defense lest people start getting the idea he’s some out of control, lecherous cad. I’ve met Cain on a number of occasions, now, in both professional and social environments and he’s never been anything but kind, professional, and personable. I’ve seen no indication whatsoever that there was anything like the stories we’re hearing in his character. None. And all the women willing to go on the record who know him or have worked for him, say the same thing.
Joel P. Bennett, the lawyer for one of the women who has made accusations against Mr. Cain, said that his client had decided not to go public or to make a public statement herself in an effort to shield herself from the media frenzy swirling around the situation.
Whoever was behind this story getting leaked – whether it was the Perry camp,Rahmbo, or the Tooth Fairy – probably wasn’t expecting this to be the result:
In a statement emailed to the press tonight, Cain communications director JD Gordon announced that the campaign broke its daily fundraising record for the second consecutive day Tuesday, surpassing Monday’s record $250,000 total. According to the statement, Cain’s campaign has now raised nearly $1 million in the past 48 hours alone.
The Cain campaign is launching a “moneybomb” at midnight, capitalizing on his newly embolden supporters. You can find it at this link: http://TheIowaFund.org
…While waiting for the Cain Sex Scandal dust to settle. He may survive this – he may not. But if he survives to win the Republican nomination, don’t think that this issue won’t come back to bite him in the a$$ in the general. Obama has nothing positive to run on, remember. Nothing. The 2012 election is going to be a sh*tstorm. The gloves need to be off for Obama, too, but the msm will be there to shield him from any hard blows like last time.
Rick Santorum, a fellow Catholic and cultural conservative is someone I’ve admired throughout this process. He’s performed well at the debates, although he hasn’t dominated. His speeches are entirely adequate, but no match for Cain’s spirited, and inspiring speaking style. His service to this country as both a Congressman and Senator has been impressive and admirable. He was a conservative warrior who accomplished great things. To my knowledge, he hasn’t ever pushed or supported socialized health care, amnesty or free in-state tuition for illegals, or cheated on his wife in any capacity. He’s never publicly espoused a belief in anthropogenic global warming, and isn’t known for verbal gaffes. And he was against TARP.
But the main thing that has prevented me from backing him is the fact that he is too good.
Let me explain that.
Santorum is a devout Catholic and cultural conservative like I am. Very pro-life. Against gay marriage. (Therefore, to liberal Alinskyites, he’s “anti-woman”, and “anti-gay”.) He has said things that enrage the gay mafia, and you don’t want to engage the gay mafia. Google his name to find out why. Who has the stomach for a campaign like that? I don’t.
It’s a battle of good vs. evil. And it is a powerful and ferocious evil we’re dealing with in some corners of our political jungle. (No, I’m not saying all gays are like this – I’m assuming most people know I wouldn’t lump most gays in with nasty, gutter scum like Dan Savage.)
I understand we live in a divided nation. Not everyone agrees with cultural conservatism, and although I think the next President will have bigger fish to fry than to try to pursue any kind of cultural agenda, Santorum’s brand of conservatism tends to spook off moderates.
I discounted Sarah Palin for much the same reason, to many peoples’ chagrin.
I’ve been all about choosing the candidate I feel is most likely to beat Obama in 2012. We have to win this one, folks. We can’t take another four years of hope and change. We may not even be able to survive one more year of it.
If that means Nice Deb doesn’t get her favorite candidate, so be it. I will enthusiastically get behind whomever our nominee is.
The President was asked if Americans were better off than they were four years ago during an interview with CBS Minnesota affiliate WCCO on Tuesday. In typical humble fashion, Obama gave himself a solid B+.
“Well, you know, I think we are better off now than we would have been if I hadn’t taken all the steps that we took. I don’t think the country is stronger yet than it was when the economy was still booming and we didn’t have Wall Street crisis, and we didn’t have the housing bubble burst. But, we’ve made steady progress, we just need to make more.”
Video via Gateway Pundit, who posts a few charts that show otherwise.
John Boehner’s response to Obama’s folly via The Hill:
“Are you kidding me?!” Boehner said loudly in response to a reporter’s question on the comment. “Why don’t you go ask the 14 million Americans who are out of work whether they’re better off today than they were four years ago?”
Today, Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu said two more “Fast and Furious” guns were seized in Arizona from members of Mexico’s most powerful drug gang, the Sinaloa cartel.
An Arizona sheriff says that two guns seized as part of a major drug smuggling bust have been connected to a botched federal investigation known as “Fast and Furious.”
“Fast and Furious” was a controversial Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms’ investigation that lost track of up to 1,400 weapons that were sold in Arizona gun stores to suspected straw buyers for Mexican drug gangs.
***
Recently released documents show that Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer’s knew about Justice Department operations that walked guns from the U.S. to Mexico back in April 2010. This makes him the first high ranking Justice Official to admit that he knew U.S. agents were letting thousands of guns sold in the U.S. fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartels, only he implausibly said the “gun walking” tactics he learned about in April 2010 weren’t part of “Operation Fast and Furious,” but “Wide Receiver” which ran from 2006 to the end of 2007 during the Bush administration. That operation was ended when it lost track of a number of guns that were allowed to cross the border. The key difference in the operations – In Wide Receiver, the guns were being tracked. In Fast and Furious, there was never an attempt to track the guns. They just wanted to see where they ended up.
Breuer’s testimony left some legislators scratching their heads.
“He was asking questions about Wide Receiver at the very same time Fast and Furious was going on and it was going on in the same division within the Justice Department, so why wouldn’t they be asking questions about Fast and Furious the same way as they were about Wide Receiver?” Grassley told Fox News.
***
Holder said months ago this never reached into the upper levels of the Justice Department. Next week Holder will face questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee about his level of involvement with Fast and Furious.
As the Fast and Furious investigation enters its 10th month, the blame game grows more intense.
“In this investigation, best of my knowledge, we didn’t let guns walk,” said Phoenix Chief Bill Newell.
Newell testified he did nothing wrong, the former ATF director said he never read his memos. Holder claims he didn’t know about the operations’ “questionable tactics.”
And while more than two dozen congressmen now want Holder’s resignation, others say they just want a little honesty.
“Lanny Breuer’s statement said he told the attorney general in January or February so that doesn’t jive,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. “So we’ve just got some massive contradictions here.”
Az Governor Jan Brewer, appearing on America’s Newsroom on Fox, this morning to promote her new book, Scorpions For Breakfast, stopped short of answering in the affirmative when asked if she was willing to join the growing chorus of voices of Republican leaders asking Attorney General Holder to step down. With Holder’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary looming next week, she didn’t want to act as his judge and jury until all the facts were out, but she was willing to say that “he should be held accountable for his negligence”. She said as the top law enforcement officer, he was responsible for what his underlings were doing. The buck stops with him.
While Grassley zeroed in on who knew what and when – leaving Breuer to noticeably squirm in his chair under questioning – it was Feinstein’s comments that tried to deflect attention away from the scandal and toward her perennial gun control agenda. In an exchange that almost appeared choreographed, Feinstein and Breuer had this conversation:
The Hill asked all of the Republican primary contenders if they had anything to do with the Cain sexual harassment story and they all flatly denied it:
Every time one of the other campaigns gets a bad story they try to blame us,” said Perry spokesperson Mark Miner. “It’s way off-base. It’s completely inaccurate.”
Mitt Romney’s campaign issued a similar response. “We had absolutely nothing to do with it,” said Romney spokesperson Andrea Saul.
My money’s been on Mittens, but that’s just me. I could be wrong. I’m just basing it on hearsay.
The story received blanket coverage from news organizations Monday, threatening serious damage to Cain’s ascendant campaign.
Other GOP campaigns also vehemently denied being behind the story.
“We plan to go after Mr. Cain, and Romney and Perry for that matter, over issues like their support of bailouts and TARP,” said Ron Paul spokesman Jesse Benton. “Our campaign stays away from the personal attacks and mud slinging.”
Hogan Gidley, a spokesman for Rick Santorum, said they “had absolutely nothing to do with it.”
The campaign of Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) also denied any involvement. “It absolutely did not come from us,” Bachmann spokeswoman Alice Stewart said.
Spokespeople for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman (R) also said their campaigns had no involvement in pushing the story.
Huntsman?! Yeah, right - because when Cain’s supporters are freed up they’ll be stampeding straight to John Huntsman, baby!
Newt certainly has an interest, here, because that’s who a lot of Cain supporters will end up supporting if Cain implodes.
But so far, that remains to be seen.
In fact if anything, the story is helping with fundraising:
“Yesterday, with the firestorm, was one of our best fund-raising days online since the campaign started,” Cain told Laura Ingraham during the conservative host’s radio show this morning.
His campaign said he raised $300,000 online since Politico broke a story Sunday alleging that two women accused Cain of sexual harassment in the 1990s when he was head of the National Restaurant Association. They both allegedly received settlements.
One Cain campaign consultant said yesterday was the “single biggest fundraising Monday in the campaign’s history.” He added that the outpouring of support shows, “the article upset a lot of his supporters, and his supporters are ardent.”
Have I linked to Stacy McCain’s piece in The American Spectator, today, yet?
If not, here it is: ‘Sources Say’ is definitely worth a read.
Indeed, it is politics, where long-ago complaints by former employees can be dredged up and turned into a scandal reported hourly by the cable news networks. And it is politics, where few reporters took notice when Karol Markowicz, who worked closely with Cain on his 2004 Senate campaign in Georgia, strongly defended him in a series of Twitter messages Sunday evening. “I don’t believe…that Cain behaved inappropriately.… He never even bordered on inappropriate in the slightest,” she wrote, adding that she “just can’t believe there’s anything to the charges.” Markowicz called into Mark Levin’s nationally syndicated radio show Monday evening to reiterate her defense of Cain, but other than by me and the Weekly Standard‘s Michael Warren, this obviously relevant testimonial was ignored by the press. Meanwhile, on MSNBC — which showed no interest at all in Markowicz or anyone else vouching for Cain’s good character — Chris Matthews offered one of the Politico reporters “congratulations on breaking this story.”
This is a pattern of denial I’ve seen before with Cain. He misspeaks, and when called on it, he refuses to admit it, and digs himself into a deeper hole by changing his story. I don’t enjoy having to report this:
Presidential candidate Herman Cain said Tuesday that he never changed his story about sexual harassment allegations against him in the 1990s while he was the head of the National Restaurant Association, despite giving a series of conflicting statements in the two days since the accusations were disclosed.
A day earlier, Cain had said he was unaware of a financial settlement given a female employee in connection with allegations Cain had engaged in inappropriate sexual behavior. He later acknowledged he was aware of an “agreement” but not a settlement.
“It was an agreement. So it looked like I had changed my story. I didn’t change my story,” Cain told CNN’s Headline News. “The difference between settlement and agreement, it makes a difference to me.”
No, in his Fox Newsinterview with Jenna Lee, yesterday morning, Cain said:
When Jenna Lee asked whether there was any sort of settlement, Cain stressed that if there were, he was not aware of it. If the Restaurant Association made a settlement, Cain said, “I wasn’t even aware of it and I hope it wasn’t for much because nothing happened.”
The charge was filed. They did investigate. It was found to be baseless. And yes, there was some sort of settlement or termination, and I don’t even know what the contents of that was. Since it was found baseless, there was no big settlement or it would have had to have come to me.
Today, he’s calling it an “agreement”.
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Can somebody explain this to me? I’m all ears.
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I still doubt there’s any substance to the allegations, but damn it – Cain needs to get his story straight. He’s giving the MSM the ammo they need to squelch his campaign…
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This is no longer about the sexual harassment. It’s about his conflicting stories.
He says, “keep your seatbelts fastened and your tray back tables in the full upright position, because this ride is still far from over”:
In a very short period of time, Herman Cain did what can only fairly be called a complete reversal in his story, contrary to the well intentioned protests from his supporters. The candidate went from saying that he had no knowledge of any such settlement, and he “hoped” that the payout wasn’t very large, to saying that he was aware of some sort of payment, to providing details of what he thought the payment might have been. (This was all in the same day after he’d been given ten days notice to prepare, but more on that below.) This culminated on Tuesday morning with an interview with Robin Meade on CNN Headline News Morning Express where he made a truly floundering attempt to claim that he was answering the questions correctly based on the difference between a “settlement” and an “agreement.”
This was one of the most transparently evasive moments of the entire saga. Even for those of you claiming that Cain is such a keen legal eagle that he was drawing a proper legal distinction between the terms, (and it’s already starting) the problem should be clear. Were that the case, Cain knew that he was talking to reporters feeding a general audience, not grading somebody’s LSAT essay. Even under those circumstances, the proper answer might have been, “There was no settlement that I know of, but there was an agreement by the board which resulted in a payment to end this matter, even though the complaint had no merit.”
While speaking at the Florida Democratic Party State Convention over the weekend, U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solispointedly insulted members of the Tea Party, referring to them as “teabaggers.” As most of you already know, “teabagger” is a vile pejorative that refers to a sexual act.
As reported by Tallahassee Democrat and Sunshine State News,after voicing her support for large federal programs, Solis warned, “I’ll be darned if I’m going to set that aside now because a few teabaggers want to somehow muzzle my voice,” Solis said. “We don’t have to sit back and allow a minority in the Congress, known as the tea party, to dominate the discussion in our households.”
Debbie Wasserman Shultz wasn’t far behind in her unhinged, venomous rhetoric:
Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz echoed Solis’ sentiment, telling the crowd of Democratic partisans, “the unfortunate thing is that the problem, in fact, stems from a brutally fanatic right wing group of extremists, who put politics and ideology above principles and people.”
“These fanatics are destroying our state and our country and the contrast between their agenda and ours has never been more stark,” continued Wasserman Schultz.
The comments coming from the head of the Labor Department are striking because of the recent attacks from heads of unions on the Tea Party—this despite the fact that many union members are also members of the Tea Party.
A succession of speakers, including American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten and Labor Secretary Hilda L. Solis, offered support. They warmed up the crowd for Sharpton, whose raspy voice rang out, “No justice? No peace!” as the crowd shouted along with him, over and over.
A woman stomped her feet in the grass, and people pumped their fists.
Referring to Congress, Sharpton said, “If you won’t get the jobs bill done in the suite, we will get the jobs bill done in the street!”
The rally looked like this:
Marooned in Marinhas more on the Oct. 15 rally. Nice bunch Hilda hangs around with.
Hilda Solis may have forgotten, but I’d be happy to remind her. It was Tea party activism that led to the massive shellacking her party took at the polls only a year ago. And we aren’t going away until the Socialist horde is relegated to the obscurity it deserves. That means keeping an eye on an increasingly renegade Organizer in Chief, who now has no interest in working with a Republican House.
We the People elected Republicans in huge numbers up and down the ticket to (amongst other things) serve as a blockade to the Socialism being further emplaced by Donkeys. Unfortunately, the will of We the People remains utterly irrelevant to Obama. After the brutal Congressional slog that was the jamming-through of ObamaCare, over the expressed objections of We the People, the President had enough of the legislative (or constitutional) way of doing things, so he began his regulatory fiat power grabs.
Can’t pass the energy sector-assault that is Cap & Trade? No problem, President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will start imposing large swaths of it as if it has. Can’t pass the workplace-assault that is the Big Union-payoff Card Check? No problem, President Obama’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and Department of Labor will start imposing large swaths of it as if it has.
So for the President this weekend to pretend his democracy denying-dictaorial-ism is something new is mendacious. He’s been going at it at a pretty good for years and he’s only announcing that he’s now really going to ramp it up. He isn’t tired of “wait(ing) for Congress to do its job.” He long ago lost any interest in anything having to do with Congress — save their utility as an electioneering punching bag. Congress is in fact doing exactly the job we (in part) elected them to do: Be an impediment to the President’s overarching, overreaching Leftist agenda. And they have been largely successful when Obama isn’t illegally, serially, wantonly going around them.
The best chance We the People (and our representatives in Congress) have to push back against all of this is on Network Neutrality. Net Neutrality is what Obama’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) illegally jammed through last December and just now beginning to impose (it officially goes into effect November 20).
But Net Neutrality can be stopped by the same Congress Obama ducked in its imposition.
