The Ramble for 11-1-11

Roterdam,NY– I’m here dropping off a load of walnuts, that I brought up from Jersey. Nothing overly special to report… except that it’s been a bust few days so far. I may have something special to talk about tonight, however.

• Now the Slur Machine gets warmed up against Cain: Over at OTB, they’re playing the tune the Democrats and the GOP Castrati love to sing:
  

  After initial responses from his staff that were fairly close to being incompetently disastrous, Herman Cain spent most of his day in Washington today responding to the allegations raised by the story posted by Politico last night regarding sexual harassment allegations made against him 20 years ago:

  Herman Cain emphatically denied on Monday that he had ever sexually harassed anyone, calling allegations of harassment by two former employees “totally baseless and totally false” and saying that he is the innocent victim of a “witch hunt.”

  With the allegations threatening his bid for the Republican presidential nomination, Cain acknowledged in an interview with Fox News Channel the harassment charges during his tenure as head of the National Restaurant Association. He said he had been “falsely accused.”

  Later Monday, during an appearance at the National Press Club, Cain said that “in all of my over 40 years of business experience — running businesses and corporations — I have never sexually harassed anyone.”

  “I was falsely accused of sexual harassment, and when the charges were brought, as the leader of the organization, I recused myself and allowed my general counsel and my human resource officer to deal with the situation, and it was concluded after a thorough investigation that it had no basis,” Cain said.

  Politico reported Sunday night that Cain had sexually harassed two women while he ran the trade association during the 1990s and that the women were given financial settlements and left the association.

  Cain said that he was “unaware of any sort of settlement. I hope it wasn’t for much, because I didn’t do anything.”

  Cain suggested that the report was the product of a “witch hunt” spurred by his recent surge in the polls in the GOP presidential contest.

  “This bull’s-eye on my back has gotten bigger. We have no idea the source of this witch hunt, which is really what it is,” Cain said during a question-and-answer session following a 25-minute campaign speech before the National Press Club in downtown Washington. Cain’s comments were broadcast live on national cable television news networks.

  In the morning Fox interview, Cain defended his integrity and suggested someone was putting a “cloud” over his campaign.

  “It is totally baseless and totally false,” Cain added. “Never have I committed any sort of sexual harassment.”

  Cain said there were no additional harassment allegations. Should any surface, Cain said, they would be “trumped-up allegations,” adding: “I assure you people will simply make them up.”

  …

  A normally leftist commenter there says:

  I don’t wish to diminish the seriousness of sexual harassment, but there’s a credible argument that Rick Perry let an innocent man be executed in Texas and then obstructed an investigation into the matter. There’s a credible argument that at least a few members of the previous administration qualify as war criminals. THAT never caused 1/10th the media fury that these allegations Herman Cain may have behaved somewhat inappropriately in the workplace 20 years ago. Is the Beltway media so, pardon the expression, pussy whipped that they react to sexual harassment charges like they’re the equivalent of crimes against humanity?

  Look, the business with Perry is pure bovine feces, but beyond that, he’s got a point. I tell him:

  That depends on the target, if we take history as our guide.
  If the target is a threat to the Democrats, of course they’ll react that way. Say, a Herman Cain, or a Clarence Thomas. No smear is too low.

  If on the other hand we’re dealing with a President, say Bubba “Better put some ice on that” Clinton…. you’ll never see that kind of screaming, until someone figures out that keeping them in office will cost the liberal mantra more than removing them. In Bubba’s case, it cost less to cast Paula Jones as trailer park trash.

  Take Anthony Weiner, on the other hand, as an example of one who got too costly to keep in office. And watch the progression from overt defense to overt disconnection from the party, in that case as the cost of keeping him in office became too great.
  John Edwards to a lesser degree.

  IN any event, let be clear about the motivations, here. The Democrats are in a full panic, knowing they stand on the very edge of losing the WH and both houses of Congress. As such, they’re flailing around for anything that will keep them afloat Given those conditions nobody should be suprised at the intensity of the liberal press and their wailing over this.

  Think I’m kidding? Ask yourself; Had someone made that kind of slur on Obama, wouldn’t we be hearing about such attacks were racist? Wouldn’t the press and the leftie blogs be on an all out search and destroy mission against anyone who treated such charges as factual?

  The unspoken part of this, at least in this exchange, is the idea of a black conservative and how destructive such a person could be to the leftist ideal. Limbaugh brushed up against this, yesterday:

  This story appears to me to be a close relative of the hit job that the Washington Post is doing on Marco Rubio. It’s not a news story. This is gutter partisan politics, and it’s the politics of minority conservative personal destruction, is what you’ve got here. Rubio and Cain unfit to lead, don’t you see. We cannot have a black Republican running for the office of president. We can’t have one elected. We can’t have an Hispanic.

  The left owns those two groups, and those two groups are gonna forever be minorities. Those groups cannot ever be seen to be self-sufficient or rising above, on their own. Those two groups are owned — lock, stock, and barrel — by the Democrat Party and anything good that happens to any black or Hispanic in American politics can only happen via the Democrat Party. “If it happens elsewhere, we’re gonna destroy those people — a la Clarence Thomas.”
  …

  You think I’m wrong about this? Jackie Robinson in the 1960s was denounced. Jackie Robinson, who broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball, was denounced as an “Uncle Tom” because he supported Republicans in the 1960s. Jackie Robinson. The left, the Democrat Party of the day called Jackie Robinson an Uncle Tom. Throughout the history of this program people have called and asked me, “Why do Republicans do X?” or, “Why don’t Republicans do Y?” This is your answer: The Republican Party is scared to death of the mainstream media. They are deathly afraid of it. Herman Cain was not. Herman Cain exhibited no fear of the mainstream media. Herman Cain, on the campaign trail, is saying what he believes; proposing what he’s proposing.

  This is how the mainstream media keeps the Republican Party in check: They’re scared to death of this kind of thing happening to them. Pure and simple. It’s also why (I’m just predicting) you’re not going to see too many people in the official Republican establishment rise up to Herman Cain’s defense. You know, if this exact circumstance (as I just mentioned) had happened in a conservative publication, not only would the Democrats and the media be going after the women — as James Carville did and others during the Clinton years — they’d be going after the reporters. They’d be going after the publication. Anybody who had anything to do with the story, it would be search-and-destroy. Our side will not do that. Herman Cain stood up to the media, he did not act afraid, and so he had to be slapped down. Is it coincidental this all happened at night before his address to the National Press Club?

  Well, exactly. But I’m also going to suggest a possibility; Did this whole meme,come from one of the Romney Castrati? Wouldn’t shock me at all.

  But look, what do we have here, in the end? A 20 year old case, with no names, Unspecific charges, from second hand sources. A classic hit piece. The outstanding question is why anyone takes Politico seriously, anymore. Reynolds says it well:

  And I continue to ask: Would Jonathan Martin, Maggie Haberman, Anna Palmer and Kenneth Vogel have put their names on a similar piece, with no named sources, aimed at Barack Obama? Would Politico have run it? And how will people respond — will people respond? — to the next big “scoop” from Jonathan Martin, Maggie Haberman, Anna Palmer and Kenneth Vogel? Or from Politico?

• Liberal non-thought, applied, and the result: What happens when you apply liberal philosophy to a bank? No more bank. Jon Corzine figures very large here. Millions have gone missing in all this mess and the investigation has started. But of course a prominent Democrat is involved… and a Democrat runs the White House…. so the investigation won’t go far… but the missing money will turn up in DNC warchests without anyone knowing, I bet.
• Our current financial crisis: Clinton’s doing.  Here’s the proof.
• Who supports Occupy Wall Street? These morons. Every single one of them wants to destroy America.