Herman Cain may run for President again.
Yes, on May 31, he told the annual Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans that he might once again take up the Presidential quest in 2016.
The kicker: if God calls upon him to do so.
“I do not know what the future holds,” said the onetime CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, “but I know who holds the future. And I trust in God.”
The last time Cain ran for President–in 2011–his campaign ended in scandal. Multiple women came forward to accuse him of making aggressive and unwanted sexual advances.
Herman Cain
Cain’s longtime wife, Gloria, chose to stand by him. But millions of female voters chose other candidates to vote for.
Cain dropped out of the race in December, 2011, before any actual votes were cast.
Unwilling to face the truth about himself, he still blames liberals for his dropping out of the 2012 Presidential race.
“The liberals thought that they had shut me up,” he told his cheering supporters at the Republican Leadership Conference. “I’m back!”
Perhaps Cain hopes that, in another two years, Americans will have forgotten the real reason he was forced to at least momentarily give up his Presidential ambitions: The “BJs for jobs” program he once offered Sharon Bialek.
Sharon Bialek
Bialek was an employee of the National Restaurant Association (NRA) where Cain served as CEO in 1997.
In mid-July, 1997, she asked Cain for help in finding a new job or getting her old one back. She had been let go from her job with the educational foundation of the NRA.
Cain offered to help her and she traveled to Washington, D.C. to meet him.
As Bialek later recounted their meeting: “I met Mr. Cain in the lobby of the bar at the Capitol Hilton at around 6:30 p.m. We had drinks at the hotel.”
Cain then took her to an Italian restaurant for dinner.
“While we were driving back to the hotel, he said that he would show me where the National Restaurant Association offices were. He parked the car down the block.
“I thought that we were going to go into the offices so that he could show me around….
“But instead of going into the offices, he suddenly reached over and put his hand on my leg under my skirt and reached for my genitals. He also grabbed my head and brought it toward his crotch.
“I was very, very surprised and very shocked. I said, ‘What are you doing? You know I have a boyfriend. This isn’t what I came here for.’
“Mr. Cain said, ‘You want a job, right?’
“I asked him to stop and he did. I asked him to take me back to my hotel, which he did, right away.”
Of course, Bialek never got her job back–or help from Cain in finding another one.
Bialek was the fourth woman to come forward to accuse Cain of making improper sexual advances toward her. And it was her testimony that sealed his fate as a Presidential candidate.
But that didn’t mean Cain lacked Right-wing supporters–such as Rush Limbaugh.
Rush Limbaugh
On October 31, 2011, Limbaugh blamed “the Left’s racist hit job” for Cain’s faltering campaign: “The racial stereotypes that these people are using to go after Herman Cain, what is the one thing that it tells us?
“It tells us who the real racists are, yeah, but it tells us that Herman Cain is somebody. Something’s going on out there. Herman Cain obviously is making some people nervous for this kind of thing to happen.”
And on November 7, Limbaugh offered another “defense” for Cain’s behavior: Calling Bialek a “babe” and “the blonde bombshell,” he joked about Cain’s attempt to extort sexual favors via her need for a job.
“Ha-ha-ha-ha,” laughed Limbaugh. “That’s it. Cain decided to provide her with his idea of a ‘stimulus package.'”
But Limbaugh wasn’t through: “Get this now. I have been wrong in pronouncing the fourth Cain accuser’s name as “Be-allek.” Gloria Allred [Bialek’s attorney] says that her name is pronounced ‘Bye-a-lick,’ as in ‘Buy a Lick.'”
To drive home his point, he made crude slumping noises over the microphone.
Actually, the name is pronounced “By-a-Lek.”
But even the venom of America’s most toxic Right-wing broadcaster couldn’t save Cain. On December 3, 2011, he dropped out of the race.
Another Rightist who had only praise for Cain was the notoroious adulterer, Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the House of Representatives.
Newt Gingrich
As soon as Cain dropped out, Gingrich saluted him: “I am proud to know Herman Cain and consider him a friend and I know he will continue to be a powerful voice for years to come.”
Gingrich, then a Presidential candidate himself, had two reasons for not criticizing his former rival.
- Gingrich–who had loudly touted himself a champion of “Family Values”–had enjoyed more than his share of extramrital perks; and
- He hoped to inherit Cain’s supporters, not alienate them.
When considering Cain as a candidate in 2016, voters would do well to recall the line: “Birds of a feather flock together.”
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THE AMERICAN AYATOLLAHS: PART ONE (OF FOUR)
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 17, 2015 at 4:16 pmHamza Kashgari, a 23-year-old columnist in Saudi Arabia, decided to celebrate the birthday of the Islamic prophet Muhammed in a truly unique way.
Hamza Kashgar
In early February, 2012, he posted on Twitter a series of mock conversations between himself and Muhammad:
“On your birthday, I will say that I have loved the rebel in you, that you’ve always been a source of inspiration to me, and that I do not like the halos of divinity around you. I shall not pray for you.”
“On your birthday, I find you wherever I turn. I will say that I have loved aspects of you, hated others, and could not understand many more.”
“On your birthday, I shall not bow to you. I shall not kiss your hand. Rather, I shall shake it as equals do, and smile at you as you smile at me. I shall speak to you as a friend, no more.”
“No Saudi women will go to hell, because it’s impossible to go there twice.”
The tweets sparked some 30,000 infuriated responses. Many Islamic clerics demanded that he face execution for blasphemy.
Kashgari posted an apology tweet: “I deleted my previous tweets because…I realized that they may have been offensive to the Prophet and I don’t want anyone to misunderstand.”
Soon afterward, King Abdullah ordered his arrest.
Kashgari fled to Malaysia, another majority-Muslim country. He was quickly arrested by police as he passed through Kuala Lumpur international airport. Three days later, he was deported to Saudi Arabia.
Human rights groups feared that he would be executed for blasphemy, a capitol offense in Saudi Arabia.
After nearly two years in prison, Kashgari was freed on October 29, 2013. Kashgari used Twitter to inform his supporters of his release.
Outrageous? By Western standards, absolutely.
Clearly there is no tolerence in Saudi Arabia for the freedoms of thought and expression that Americans take for granted.
But before you say, “Religious oppression like that could never happen in the United States,” think again.
Right-wing American ayatollahs are now working overtime to create just that sort of society–where theocratic despotism rules the most intimate aspects of our lives.
One of these is the former GOP Presidential candidate and U.S. Senator Rick Santorum. In early January, 2012, he said that states should have the right to outlaw birth control without the interference of the Supreme Court.
In an interview with ABC News, Santorum said he opposed the Supreme Court’s ruling that made birth control legal:
“The state has a right to do that [ban contraception]. I have never questioned that the state has a right to do that. It is not a Constitutional right. The state has the right to pass whatever statutes they have.
“That’s the thing I have said about the activism of the Supreme Court–they are creating rights, and it should be left up to the people to decide.”
In the landmark 1965 decision, Griswold v. Connecticut, the Court struck down a law that made it a crime to sell contraceptives to married couples. The Constitution, ruled the Justices, protected a right to privacy.
Two years later, in Eisenstadt v. Baird, the Court extended Griswold by striking down a law banning the sale of contraceptives to unmarried couples.
Santorum has left no doubt as to where he stands on contraception. On October 19, 2011, he said:
“One of the things I will talk about that no President has talked about before is I think the dangers of contraception in this country, the whole sexual libertine idea. Many in the Christian faith have said, ‘“Well, that’s okay. Contraception’s okay.’
“It’s not okay because it’s a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be. They’re supposed to be within marriage, they are supposed to be for purposes that are, yes, conjugal, but also…procreative.
“That’s the perfect way that a sexual union should happen. We take any part of that out, we diminish the act….And all of a sudden, it becomes deconstructed to the point where it’s simply pleasure.”
“How things are supposed to be”–according to Right-wing fanatics like Santorum and the evangelicals who support them.
Like the Saudi religious religious zealots who demand the death of a “blasphemer,” they demand that their religious views should govern everyone. Both groups have far more in common than they want to admit.
The important difference–for Americans who value their freedom–is this:
The United States has a Supreme Court that can–and does–overturn laws that threaten civil liberties. Laws that GOP Presidential candidates clearly want to revive and force on those who don’t share their peculiar religious views.
Eleanor Roosevelt once said: “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
The same holds true–in a democracy–for candidates who seek dictatorial power over their fellow citizens. Don’t give them your consent.
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