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Thursday, November 10, 2011

The Real Cain Scandal

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/print/282765

8 comments:

  1. Now this is very interesting:

    http://www.cbsatlanta.com/story/16002149/investigator-herman-cain-innocent-of-sexual-advances

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  2. The 90 percent black vote for Democrats is like money in the bank on Election Day."

    They, the black citizens, automatically vote Democrat: 90%.

    How do we define this as a white citizen without being racist?
    I suppose we could say: "90% of white so-called "Evangelicals" vote Republican on Election Day.

    I suppose we are all biased in some way, aren't we.

    This Thomas Sowell is quite a writer. Haven't heard from him in some time. Thanks for sharing this. Made me think out-loud. Hope you don't mind. fact is, I talk too much, and most of the time I'm off the mark. But, I'll keep on doing it until our Savior returns, unless an angel comes a strikes me like Zechariah.

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  3. Pilgrimsarbour said:

    "Now this is very interesting"

    The reliability of that sort of voice analysis is disputed. I don't know enough about the subject to make much of a judgment. But I doubt that the technology would be utilized as little as it is if it were as reliable as the story you linked suggests. If it can so effectively settle disputes over honesty, then why isn't it put to use far more often?

    In that story, the man who ran the test claims:

    "'I don't think she [Sharon Bialek] is fabricating her meetings,' said Ward. But, she is fabricating what transpired.'"

    If so, then Cain was wrong when he said that he hadn't met Bialek before. It could be argued that Cain had forgotten the meeting and, therefore, wasn't lying. But an independent witness confirmed Bialek's claim that she met and spoke with Cain at a recent Tea Party event. If Cain met her in the 1990s and recently spoke with her again at a Tea Party event, it seems unlikely that he would have no memory of her. So, how can the voice analysis indicate that Cain was entirely honest if he wasn't being honest about whether he had met Bialek before?

    (continued below)

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  4. (continued from above)

    Then there's his assessment of the charges Karen Kraushaar brought against him. Kraushaar and her lawyer have documentation of the charges she brought against Cain in the 1990s, and both of them claim that Cain is wrong about what the charges were. Maybe they're lying. Or maybe Cain is mistaken due to a faulty memory, some misinformation somebody gave him, or some other factor other than dishonesty on his part. But Cain's assertion that his comments on Kraushaar's height were the most serious thing she objected to seems dubious on its face, and I doubt that both she and her lawyer are lying about what the documents say. Multiple sources have corroborated Kraushaar and her lawyer for NPR:

    "People who had direct knowledge of the complaints at the time have told NPR that they detail persistent harassment by Cain. The harassment has been described to NPR as frequent, usually but not exclusively verbal, and involving sexually graphic comments and approaches when the women were alone with him in work situations."

    Furthermore, the notion that Cain would be as ignorant of Kraushaar's accusations as he claims to be is dubious. He was the CEO, and he was being accused of sexual harassment. The idea that he would be so ignorant of the charges as to think that his comments on Kraushaar's height were the most serious thing she was objecting to seems ridiculous.

    In other words, we have good reason to think Cain was being dishonest in some of his comments during the press conference. I doubt that voice analysis is sufficient to overcome that evidence.

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  5. Jason,

    You'll note that my deliberately ambiguous comment "this is very interesting" was not meant to imply either an advocacy for Herman Cain nor an advocacy for the technology used to analyse his voice. I hasten to add, though, that in this country a man is still innocent until proven guilty. I merely wished to bring the story to the attention of others.

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  6. I should have said "either...or." :-)

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  7. Pilgrimsarbour wrote:

    "I hasten to add, though, that in this country a man is still innocent until proven guilty."

    Since we're not in a court of law that tells people to apply higher standards than we normally apply, all we need is a probability. I've explained why it's probable that Cain is guilty.

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