Will update as she goes. Gloria Alred says the accuser is a registered Republican, for whatever that's worth.

Oh God, is this serious? It's hard to imagine a charge is serious when the clown Alred begins with a groaner gag (the press core did groan) that Cain offered her "his version of a stimulus package."

"I upgraded you." She was seeking a job, she says, and sought to meet Cain. Cain met her at a hotel, and upgraded her room to a palatial suite.

She says that on the way over to the National Restaurant Association offices, he grabbed for her genitals, then pushed her head down to his crotch. When she objected, he asked, "You want a job, don't you?"

She told her boyfriend and another person about this at the time.

These are her allegations, of course.

Cain issues statement: Just as the nation is beginning to focus on $15 trillion debt, Gloria Alred brings forward this false accuser.

I cannot help but note that when Anthony Weiner was accused, his gambit was "Just as we're focusing on this critical debt-ceiling issue, rightwing hoaxers are pushing this silly prank."

...

Gloria Alread filed some kind of sex beef against a baseball coach for pantomiming sex with his bat. This, she contended, was a horrific display that endangered the welfare of these poor kids.

And then... Well, watch this.
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Posted by: Ace at 09:51 AM | Comments (747)
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Joe Paterno's former defensive coordinator got caught (it is alleged) performing oral sex on a 10-year-old boy in the showers and everyone covered up.

This is actually a more difficult question than most people credit it as. As a matter of justice and ethics, you are duty-bound to rat on your friend.

I chose that word "rat" intentionally, because that's how it feels to the people who find out about the misbehavior of a friend. It feels like ratting. Maybe if they had the proper perspective, they'd see it wasn't "ratting" or "snitching," but bringing a predator to justice, but personal relationships and affections always complicate this.

I know what I should do in this situation. But people can convince themselves that the thing they want to do is actually the right thing to do rather easily. People are very good at rationalizing away their duty. I can imagine this guy, Sandusky, swearing (while crying like a baby) that it was just a slip-up, that he'll never do it again. I can see people making a case to themselves that it's better for the 10 year old boy if they don't report it -- after all, the boy shouldn't carry this around forever, should he?

Why, if we just keep our eye on Sandusky and make sure he flies the straight (ahem) and narrow, why, we'd be taking the win-win-win route. We make sure our friend gets help, we protect that boy's reputation, and we make sure no further victims come about. It's nothing but win!

Of course, that's wrong, and a pedophile isn't going to stop just because he cries like a bitch when you catch him. And I guess, then, that people having that impulse -- "Hey, let's just bury it and pretend it won't happen again" -- that makes it all the more important that outside forces be injected into the situation (and all future similar situations) and demand, "No, no matter what your personal affections for the pedophile, you must report it, or we'll come after your heads for covering it up."

But I do understand how people convince themselves that this is the "right" thing to do. This dynamic, I'm thinking, was at play in the Catholic priest pedophilia scandals.

Posted by: Ace at 09:39 AM | Comments (200)
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Few Obama jokes at all. Lots of jokes about GOP candidates, naturally.

There are two good ones here.

NBC “Late Night” host Jimmy Fallon joked about an interview in which Mr. Perry “criticized Mitt Romney for flip-flopping on the issues.” In response, “Romney said that Perry has no idea what he’s talking about. Then he added, ‘But he does know what he’s talking about.’ “

And from the Funny Because It's True department:

“How about I start tonight with good news,” offered TBS host Conan O'Brien in a recent monologue. “KFC has just introduced the new Cheesy Bacon Bowl, which is filled with mashed potatoes, cheese, gravy, chicken and bacon.” The Cheesy Bacon Bowl, he went on, is “now the Republican front-runner for President.”

The Cheesy Bacon Bowl For President

No paper trail. No experience. No vegetables.

Posted by: Ace at 08:09 AM | Comments (141)
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The aftermath of the assault is at 3:20 in the video below the fold, but before that is plenty of violent behavior by the mob.

The media likes to claim these demonstrations are "mostly" non-violent. But every mob persists because of the implied -- and often express -- threat that violence will ensue if police attempt to disperse them.

Before the elderly woman is pushed to the ground (on a flight of stairs!) for the crime of attending a conference the mob doesn't support, the mob indulges in a joyous spree of menace and intimidation. They gleefully block a car, driven by a guy (black-- racist!) with a 2-year-old in the back seat, just trying to get home, because they want to make their physical capacity to harm other people known. They get in the face of a couple with what looks like a four year old and a pre-toddler, to let them know the mob has power over them. They get up into people's faces with menacing gestures -- hands flashed quickly to people's faces, a pantomime of violence -- to let them know the mob can hurt them, the moment it wishes to.

This is non-violent? Amid all the actual violence is the deliberate attempt to instill fear of imminent danger to one's body.

Compare and contrast the media's breathless efforts to paint the Tea Party's jeering and laughing at politicians as a clear and present danger to the peace of the republic. But the Occupy movement threatens violence constantly, and frequently erupts in actual attacks on police and citizens, but the media insists on referring to this disorder and menace as being "mostly non-violent."

Nevermind all the goddamned rapes and now the dead woman found in Vancouver.

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Posted by: Ace at 07:33 AM | Comments (192)
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Interesting point from Instapundit.

He quotes Powerline discussing the government's inability to do big projects anymore:

In the old days, when the U.S. built things relatively quickly like Hoover Dam or the Golden Gate Bridge, someone actually got to make decisions. Today, I suspect the slightly authoritarian figures like Robert Moses or Frederick Law Olmstead would be arrested for their manner of public administration, or have their designs so slowed down and corrupted by ‘public input’ and review processes that we wouldn’t have Central Park. More likely we’d have 50 Zuccotti Parks scattered around New York City.

Then he writes himself:

What’s funny is that these innovations were championed by the same folks who — see, e.g., Rachel Maddow’s odd Hoover Dam bit — champion the idea of the government doing big things. Yet the end result of a government that focuses on process instead of product is a government that can’t do big things, and one in which the public has less faith. To pick an example from my neck of the woods, the TVA had its first dam filled within 18 months of the TVA Act’s passage. That could never happen today. Now arguably TVA built too many dams, but at least taxpayers who wondered where their money was going could see dams springing up all over. Now it goes into the pockets of lawyers and consultants and Environmental Impact Statement reviewers. Not surprisingly, that’s less impressive.

I immediately began looking for pictures of Freedom Tower, to see how far along in construction it was. Ten years along, this seems to be as far as we've gotten.

Posted by: Ace at 07:02 AM | Comments (102)
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Fantastic.

Intelligence provided to U.N. nuclear officials shows that IranÂ’s government has mastered the critical steps needed to build a nuclear weapon, receiving assistance from foreign scientists to overcome key technical hurdles, according to Western diplomats and nuclear experts briefed on the findings.

...

Although the IAEA has chided Iran for years to come clean about a number of apparently weapons-related scientific projects, the new disclosures fill out the contours of an apparent secret research program that was more ambitious, more organized and more successful than commonly suspected. Beginning early in the last decade and apparently resuming — though at a more measured pace — after a pause in 2003, Iranian scientists worked concurrently across multiple disciplines to obtain key skills needed to make and test a nuclear weapon that could fit inside the country’s long-range missiles, said David Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector who has reviewed the intelligence files.

,,,

Albright said IAEA officials, based on the totality of the evidence given to them, have concluded that Iran “has sufficient information to design and produce a workable implosion nuclear device” using highly enriched uranium as its fissile core. In the presentation, he described intelligence that points to a formalized and rigorous process for gaining all the necessary skills for weapons-building, using native talent as well as a generous helping of foreign expertise.

And where did this "foreign expertise" come from? The usual suspects, Russia, Pakistan and North Korea.

I think this would be an appropriate moment to pause and remind ourselves that the collective judgement of the US intelligence community is that Iran stopped developing a military track to it's nuclear program some years ago.

In a better world this would lead to a massive investigation of the intelligence community and whether or not their judgments have been compromised by political considerations. Or perhaps accusations of "politicizing intelligence" is one of those things liberals only care about when it works for them.

Related: No need to actually worry about any of this, Ron Paul has the answer: Offer Iran "friendship".

Oh and by the by, the US and Israel just announced they will be holding their largest joint military exercise in history. Nothing to see here, move along.

Posted by: DrewM at 06:15 AM | Comments (158)
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From the Walter Russell Meade piece Gabriel linked below:

Not a few now are unable to do anything much more remunerative than wait in line outside benefit offices; between tight economic times, social pathology, poor personal choices, and the destruction of the cityÂ’s entrepreneurial, job-creating culture, the state is the only legal and reliable source of income some have ever known.

"A sliver of madness." I always think of Heironymus Bosch's famous visions of hell whenever I read about Zucotti Park these days.

Remember what I was saying about Muni bonds? Yeah.

It's called the "man-cession" for a reason. Young men, and most particularly young black men, have been hit especially hard by this downturn, and the fear is that many of these men will be permanently disadvantaged in future years due to the setbacks they are facing this early in their working lives.

Steyn brings the DOOM.

America is seizing up before our eyes: The decrepit airports, the underwater property market, the education racket, the hyper-regulated business environment. Yet curiously the best example of this sclerosis is the alleged “revolutionary” movement itself. It’s the voice of youth, yet everything about it is cobwebbed. It’s more like an open-mike karaoke night of a revolution than the real thing.

Posted by: Monty at 04:45 AM | Comments (146)
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I stumbled over a column (I hesitate to call the DenBestian-length and -quality piece a mere blog post) by Walter Russell Mead yesterday on the topic of privilege. Specifically, the collapse of expectations of privilege that is fueling the Occupy movement and various other protests.

He starts with police union privilege:

New Yorkers are getting an uncomfortable look at the ugly realities behind what we like to think of as the countryÂ’s bluest, most European and most enlightened city. A series of trials now underway in the Bronx reveal the harsh truth of embedded corruption and contempt for the public at the heart (if that is the right word) of the New York City police union.

A palpably shocked New York Times covered the story last week as union-organized cops hurled their venom and hate at the law they are sworn to uphold:

As 16 police officers were arraigned at State Supreme Court in the Bronx, incensed colleagues organized by their union cursed and taunted prosecutors and investigators, chanting “Down with the D.A.” and “Ray Kelly, hypocrite.”

[...]

Together with a string of other recent cases, the Bronx case suggests that a culture of corruption and entitlement has spread through the ranks of the thin blue line. Worse, it is clear that police union officials are the mainstay of the illegal ticket fixing enterprise, so much so that prosecutors considered indicting the union as a corrupt organization under racketeering laws. The police demonstration in the Bronx was apparently orchestrated by the union, which sent text messages to officers urging that they show up to support colleagues involved in ticket fixing. “It’s a courtesy, not a crime,” was the slogan.

Read the whole thing.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:19 AM | Comments (72)
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She drives like crazy.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:51 AM | Comments (82)
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So What's Quirky About the United States?

It's always interesting to find out what foreigners consider the strangest things about the US. Often it's the little things that we just take for granted and don't give even a second's thought to. (And here I make a distinction between foreigners who have actually visited and lived in the US. Lots of Europeans - especially Germans - have what I call 'false familiarity' with the US, believing that years of watching Dallas and Baywatch religiously is the same as knowing Americans and American culture.)

When I've had friends from Ireland visit the two things they were fascinated by the most were school buses and the size of our mayonnaise jars - and we're talking regular grocery store sizes, not the Costco institutional-sized ones. And German guests were amazed by the number of 24-hour stores we have and how common it is to fly an American flag and sing the national anthem which to them seemed insanely nationalistic.

4700 kinds of toothpaste.

Surprisingly clean big cities.

Everyone complains bitterly about the suckitude of government and is suspicious of it but they all follow the rules anyway even if nobody is watching.

How supermarkets not just let you wander off with carts into the wild blue yonder but will set up displays of firewood, plants, pumpkins, etc., out front with nobody watching and trust youÂ’ll bring it indoors to pay for it.

- People ask "How are you?" as a casual greeting, but no one really cares how you are. He feels like it's too personal of a question to ask a stranger and doesn't like the insincerity of it.

- Tipping as an obligation. He doesn't understand why restaurants don't pay servers a better wage and do away with tipping altogether.

...

- Flags on everything. In Norway, flags fly on government buildings and they get out their little flags on their national day and maybe on some other very important holidays. But in the USA, flags fly from atop Walmarts, they're stuck on bumpers, etc.

- Almost everything stays open on Sundays, and most stores and restaurants are open even on holidays.

- Bathroom doors are so small and leave huge gaps from the floor and ceiling.

Fridges are HUGE compared to upright or under-the-counter European fridges. The default size for milk is the gallon, not the pint. Endless agonizing choices in the supermarket -- which of these 30 types of canned beans do I want now?

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:50 PM | Comments (590)
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