I don’t have much to add to the discussion except forwarding both of these things, but it’s pretty interesting stuff none-the-less.
Super props to David Feldman for connecting dots.
WASHINGTON — Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee said he could “almost guarantee” that therecent Politico story about sexual harassment allegations against Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain came from information leaked by another GOP campaign.
The Politico report revealed that while Cain was head of the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s, “at least two female employees complained to colleagues and senior association officials about inappropriate behavior by Cain, ultimately leaving their jobs at the trade group.”
When asked on Laura Ingraham’s radio show Monday morning if it was likely the scoop was provided by another Republican campaign, Huckabee agreed with the suspicion and questioned the legitimacy of the Politico report, saying, “Quite frankly, knowing some of the reporters involved — they’re not that good.”
Huckabee recalled similar tactics involved in his own 2008 presidential campaign and accused other campaigns of hiring investigators to dig through his trash and show up at his children’s elementary schools posing as federal inspectors.
“It’s insane — one of the fundamental things a candidate will spend money on is [opposition] research,” Huckabee told Ingraham.
The Cain campaign has since accused Politico of “dredging up thinly sourced allegations” and called some of the claims “unsubstantiated personal attacks.”
Former Bush adviser Karl Rove told Fox News that Cain needs to either say “yes or no” to the allegations.
My friend David Feldman dissects it as follows:
David Feldman
Politico broke the Herman Cain sexual harassment story. Which means the story was leaked from within the GOP. It did not come from the DNC. Here’s why: Politico is owned by Robert Allbritton. Allbritton has extensive ties to the CIA and was Pinochet’s banker as well as the Saudi’s. Allbritton’s bank was pretty much shut down, and he had to pay multi million dollar fines in 2004 for money laundering. Politico, like Fox News, has the veneer of objectivity but it is in fact an arm of the right wing propaganda machine. Cain’s sexual harassment story came from within the wing of the GOP that wants Romney.
So… While still supporting Obama, guess who I’m cheering for now?
Note: I know it’s a repeat of a blog from six days ago. But… here. We. Go.
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Happy Halloween: Enjoy the evening. Because tomorrow, we all need to band together to make a ghost of Scott Walker’s job.
Dear #OccupyWallstreet - it’s time to #OccupyWisconsin.
The recall officially begins November 15th. Spread the word. Lead the charge. Be prepared to hit the ground running.
You can do it legally, quietly, simply by signing a signature and starting the process to make Scott Walker pay the price for being Scott Walker. You don’t even need to freeze your privates in the snow to make this statement.
Find a petition. Sign a petition. Get your friends and neighbors to do it. Make that number so undeniable, crushing and authentic that it’s impossible for the right to claim fraud. Start chatting up ‘em up now.
If you do… if that happens… watch the tea party start to fold like a deck chair.
Scott Walker is their poster boy. And by recalling him, you make him a Teabagging canary in a coal mine.
He goes, they’ll all fear for their political careers. He goes, Mitt Romney won’t be the only one changing his opinions in between heartbeats. They all will.
It will change the entire tone of the Presidential elections. Because the insane things you’re hearing come out of Perry and Romney… these are extensions of what Scott Walker is actually doing.
Which makes Walker the perfect person to be the example. It’s the perfect time to do it, right in the midst of the primary season.
This is a chance to make a statement that every GOP candidate needs to hear: Keep your fringe out of our politics. Act like an American, not a corporate spokesperson.
So let’s send this Walker guy packing.
And make that message resonate.
November 15th. Mark it on your calendar, folks. Two months. 540,208 signatures. That’s all it takes to fight back.
MADISON, Wis. — An effort to recall Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker over his contentious union rights law will begin Nov. 15, Democrats announced Monday, meaning an election could be held as early as next spring.
Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Mike Tate said on the party’s website that recall petitions will be circulated starting Nov. 15, giving supporters of the effort until Jan. 13 to collect 540,208 signatures.
Walker has become a national hero to many Republicans and conservatives and is a hot ticket on the fundraising and speaking circuit. But he is the top target for unions and Democrats as he became the face of the anti-union movement this year with his proposal that took away nearly all collective bargaining rights from most public workers.
“It has become clearer than ever that the people of Wisconsin – the traditions and institutions of our great state – cannot endure any more of Scott Walker’s abuses. To preserve Wisconsin, we must begin the recall of Walker as soon as possible,” Tate said in a statement on the website.
Two Republican state senators who voted for the law lost recall elections this summer, while four other Republicans and three Democrats survived recalls. The nine elections attracted $44 million in spending from national unions, conservative groups and others.
Under Wisconsin law, a recall can’t be started until a year after the officeholder was inaugurated. Walker was inaugurated on Jan. 3, which made Nov. 4 the soonest the recall effort could begin.
Tate’s statement accused Walker of being “dishonest with the people of Wisconsin” when he ran for governor.
“Soon after he took office, he proposed a radical change to state law by trying to take away state workers’ rights to collective bargaining which he never mentioned once during the campaign,” Tate said. “We cannot sit back and allow Scott Walker to continue to dismantle our education system, run our government as an auxiliary of corporate special interests, put our clean air and water at risk, and ignore an unemployment crisis that his policies exacerbated.”
There have only been two successful gubernatorial recall elections in U.S. history. The first was in 1921 in North Dakota and the other was when California Gov. Gray Davis was removed from office in 2003.
In Wisconsin, once recall backers file the required paperwork to start collecting signatures, they have 60 days to return the 540,208 required to trigger the election. If the effort starts on Nov. 15, the deadline for supporters to turn in petitions would be Jan. 13.
Once signatures are submitted to the Government Accountability Board, it has 31 days to review them. It will likely seek an extension to review the large number or signatures, similar to one it received for the recalls targeting state senators.
Legal fights could also delay any election.
If the board certifies the signatures, the recall election must be held six Tuesdays from that date. If more than two candidates run, that election would be the primary. A general election would be four weeks after that.
“It is not possible to say with any certainty when the election would be, especially to say it could be in conjunction with any existing election,” said Reid Magney, spokesman for the Government Accountability Board. “There are many aspects of the process that would make it difficult to do that because of the unpredictability of the timelines.”
No Democrat has announced plans to run against Walker. People mentioned as potential candidates include U.S. Rep. Ron Kind of La Crosse, former U.S. Rep. Dave Obey of Wausau, Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca of Kenosha, state Sen. Jon Erpenbach of Waunakee, and former Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk.
Tate did not say whether the recall would target both Walker and Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch. The Government Accountability Board, which oversees elections, has requested an opinion from the attorney general’s office on how a recall against the governor would affect the lieutenant governor. Candidates for governor and lieutenant governor run on the same ticket in Wisconsin.
Wisconsin has four previously scheduled elections next year: the spring primary on Feb. 21, the spring election and presidential primary on April 3, the fall primary on Sept. 11 and the fall general election on Nov. 6.
I’ve been thinking a lot about Herman Cain. I used to be worried about him. Guess what? Now, as someone who is 99% sure he’s voting for Obama based on the current pack of lunatics running on the right, I am absolutely pulling for him.
But first, a little history:
Actress and activist Janeane Garofalo threw down the liberal gauntlet while blasting Tea Party motives on MSNBC in 2009
“It’s about hating a black man in the White House. That is racism straight up. This is nothing but a bunch of teabagging rednecks,” she said.
A YouTube video titled “Tea Party Racism” shows signs seen at past Tea Party events. They include:
- Obama as a witch doctor
- A monkey face next to the words, “Obamanomics: Monkey See, Monkey Spend”
- Obama’s Plan: White Slavery
- The Zoo has an African Lion
- The White House has a Lyin’ African
Former President Jimmy Carter claimed to NBC “Nightly News” that “an overwhelming portion” of the animosity aimed at President Obama is because Obama’s black.
However, author Ron Miller doesn’t buy it. He’s written the book “Sellout,” which is a label often tossed at him because he’s a black Republican who speaks at Tea Party events.
He points out that two of the Tea Partiers favorite politicians are a black congressman and a black presidential candidate.
“If the Tea Party movement, fragmented as it is, had an opportunity to select the one man that they’d want as president of the United States right now, it would be Allen West and followed closely by Herman Cain,” he said.
“I simply say two things. First of all, the accusation of racism within the Tea Party movement is ridiculous. Why? Number two — the black guy keeps winning the straw polls. So how could they be racists?” Cain asked.
“Would a racist organization take that much interest and be that passionate about two men who are obviously black?” Miller asked.
Fox News commentator Juan Williams can often be a little suspicious about the Tea Party embrace of West and Cain.
“Maybe sensing that they are very vulnerable on this racial issue, they’re taking to people like West or like Herman Cain because they’re seeking to defend themselves against those charges,” he said.
But Williams said he wished people wouldn’t always be dragging out the race card.
“And I just find it abhorrent to American ideals that you would try to defeat your opponent with some blanket charge of racism or bigotry when in fact there’s something else on the table, and it’s a very legitimate difference of opinion,” he said.
“It’s not about race. It’s about policies, it’s about issues,” Miller told CBN News.
This was back in September when it was written, long before Cain was elevated to the status of front runner, whatever that means in the pack of dimwits, zealots and snoozers the GOP is running. Man, they thought it would be easy, didn’t they?
And I’m okay with that. Because here’s who runs against Obama if Cain gets the nomination:
Herman Cain is heartlessly out of touch with main stream America: (statement about Occupy Wallstreet)
“Don’t blame Wall Street, don’t blame the big banks, if you don’t have a job and you’re not rich, blame yourself. It is not someone’s fault if they succeeded, it is someone’s fault if they failed,” the ex-Godfather’s Pizza CEO declared.
Hermain Cain is a typical right-leaning islamophobe:
He had to apologize to Muslim leaders for vitriolic remarks in which he said communities have a right to ban mosques because Muslims are trying to inject sharia law into the U.S. and that he would not want a Muslim bent on killing Americans in his administration.
And yet for all for his issues with Islam being used to make law in America, he’s willing to his faith to make law here:
“I believe that life begins at conception, period. And that means that I will have to see enough evidence that someone I would appoint shares that same view. “
And, of course, Hermain Cain is a mouth piece for the uber-rich:
IOWA CITY, Iowa — Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain has cast himself as the outsider, the pizza magnate with real-world experience who will bring fresh ideas to the nation’s capital. But Cain’s economic ideas, support and organization have close ties to two billionaire brothers who bankroll right-leaning causes through their group Americans for Prosperity.
Cain’s campaign manager and a number of aides have worked for Americans for Prosperity, or AFP, the advocacy group founded with support from billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, which lobbies for lower taxes and less government regulation and spending. Cain credits a businessman who served on an AFP advisory board with helping devise his “9-9-9” plan to rewrite the nation’s tax code. And his years of speaking at AFP events have given the businessman and radio host a network of loyal grassroots fans.
So how does this guy rise to the top of the polls? Why is everybody talking about him?
Because, as Juan Williams suspects, Hermain Cain is a human shield for the Tea Party. The perfect defense against what Janeane Garofalo (and many others, including myself) have stated a long time ago: There’s a sick little undercurrent of racism going on in the tea party, and something had to be done to deflect.
To me, this is what it’s about: Being able to keep the hard-right agenda going, but neutering the race card. How many days did Rick Perry’s “N*****head” story get? A day and a half? The Texas Governor’s family getaway uses the N-word and this carries the news cycle less than 48 hours? C’mon, If Obama went to the Cracker Barrel for a soda, we’d hear about how he was calling white people “Crackers” through November.
What better way for the tea party to go “See? We’re not bigots!” than elevating Herman? It’s beautiful, beautiful strategy. And I hope it backfires.
I have grown to love Hermain Cain as the Republican Candidate for the United States of America. Do you hear me? I love him having to go toe-to-toe with Obama.
Because the election becomes race neutral. Obama’s skin color suddenly is no longer in the “plus” column for that bigoted chunk of Americans who don’t like a president who doesn’t look like their money — even if they don’t HAVE any money.
And if Cain wins the nomination, pow: Their party ALSO has a candidate with the same skin color. Now it’s about ideas. And who best represents the majority of Americans.
So for now, I’m pulling for him. Taking race out of this election is a PR move for the Tea Party. But it’s one of the best things that could happen to Obama. It makes this election about policies, the direction of the country, and who has the best interest for the majority of Americans.
So go, Herman. Go.
But honestly, by the time the GOP candidate is chosen, I think we all know he’ll be gone, Herman, gone.
“The minute that the Republican Party becomes the party — the anti-science party, we have a huge problem. We lose a whole lot of people who would otherwise allow us to win the election in 2012.”
— Jon Huntsman, in an interview with ABC News, ripping his GOP rivals on evolution and global warming.
I want to believe it. I do. That somewhere in this pack of lunatics there’s one Republican candidate who is willing to live in this decade, and not try to roll things back to the Scopes Monkey Trial.
He will be ignored by the media, because he isn’t threatening to “Go Texas” on anybody, or fire drones at illegal aliens, or screaming that the President is a socialist, or suggest his impeachment.
Not exciting, not inciting. So he is, I am more than certain, doomed.
It was nice to meet you, moderate conservative in the middle of Hurricane TeaBag.
You will be missed.
