Herman Cain. Now pooping on GOP’s presidential maybes’ chorus line. This Georgian holds titles like minister, CEO, business VP, science master, board chairman. So how to properly address him?
“Not Herm as Sarah Palin did,” he said. “Everyone’s got fancy titles. Governor this … Speaker that … And forget phrases like African-American. I’m not from Africa. I’m Mr. Cain, an American black.
“Everyone’s running around throwing solutions. Political similarities parallel business. No right solutions until you find the right problem. This country has an economic crisis, budget crisis, energy crisis, immigration crisis, foreign policy crisis, moral crisis, Middle East crisis — mess with Israel, you mess with the United States. Plenty of crises. What we haven’t is leadership.
“Obama has no concept of how anything works. Surrounded with intellectuals who know nothing, he just spends OP’s — Other People’s money.”
His friend John Coale, lawyer husband of Fox News’ Greta van Susteren, added: “Explain how you were a ballistics mathematician in the navy.”
A what?
“Shooting a target,” said Mr. Cain, “you compute altitude, weather, distance, direction. That was my job. What I did. I don’t give generic answers. I’m a guy with ideas how to fix things.”
OK, so who exactly are you?
“My mother was a cleaner, my father a chauffeur. I grew up poor. Worked through my master’s at Purdue. I play golf. I’m married to Gloria 43 years. I help with cooking, and on garbage days I push the garbage out — even on presidential days. My son’s 33, in banking; daughter 39. Three grandchildren. My wife, not into politics, said: ‘Do something about Obama. We can’t stand more of his deception.’ My net worth? A few million. I’m no cajillionaire. But I rented a bus — and standing-room-only wherever I spoke.”
Does this long shot think he’ll survive the campaign?
“I had Stage 4 cancer of the colon and liver. Caught early, they removed 30 percent of one, 70 percent of the other. With repeat chemo they gave me only a 30 percent survival rate. It was nine months of aggressive, tough, demanding treatment at Anderson Center in Houston. My checkup tells me I’m 100 percent. Yes, I can survive it.”
What’s the bad part your opposition will pick on?
“Too controversial. I say things like, ‘Too many blacks are brainwashed.’ I was not an ‘A’ student. Liberals don’t like black conservatives. They can’t play the race card. They’ll come after me. I’m no right- wing Republican wacko. I also sing gospel songs.”
This man in rimless glasses, expensive tie, custom blue suit in the Plaza’s Palm Court then sang “Amazing Grace” to me.
A California blonde and her husband came to shake his hand and say: “We love your 999 theory — 9 percent business flat tax, 9 percent individual income tax, 9 percent national sales tax, which you explained replaces payroll tax, death tax, capital gains tax, personal income tax, corporate income tax. We’re voting for you.”
THE Saudis. Filthy rich. Feeling superior, they leak on us. Sitting on oil. Owning our real estate. Infiltrating their isms onto our culture. But go where when they get sick? To our heavily Jewish metropolis scene of Middle East terrorism: New York.
A hotshot sheikh/prince/royal/whatever is in East 68th’s hospital. This place, with multiple names like New York and Cornell, etc., has a special VIP high-priced floor. Super extra care, custom meals, $5,000-a-night rooms. Like being in the Ritz-Carlton. A ward, it’s not.
What Seymour Sheikh’s problem is, who knows? For sure it’s not poverty. To keep other rooms empty, he bought out half the floor. Americans, also requesting this 14th floor, were denied. His tab, give or take a barrel of crude, $1 mil a day.
Saudi security is all over. At elevators, in halls, the entrance to his wing. Each bearing his country’s little gold lapel pins.
Allahu akbar. God is great.
VANITY Fair has a piece about photographer Milton Gendel. He tells when in Buckingham Palace with Her Majesty “one of her corgis crapped on the red carpet. ‘Oh, dear, she always does that,’ said the queen who then rushed into a little bathroom, got some toilet paper and picked it up.”
Only in London, kids, only in London.
TAKING tomorrow off. Everyone, have a healthy New Year.