Tales from the Trail

Former pizza magnate Herman Cain has been out of the presidential race for months, but don’t tell him that. Cain, who held the lead among Republican candidates before a series of sexual harassment allegations surfaced – admittedly, well before a single vote was cast – continues to seek relevance by pumping out campaign-like material on his web site and various social media outlets.

On Monday, a new Cain Solutions spot under the current umbrella of “Sick of Stimulus” drew the ire of animal lovers and was briefly pulled from the website YouTube.

The 37-second “Sick of Stimulus” spot, entitled “Rabbit,” showed a young girl holding a large, cute, black and white Easter bunny. “This is small business,” says the girl. “This is small business under the current tax code,” she adds, placing the rabbit into what looks like a cozy straw bed but is in fact a catapult. The bunny – now animated, not real – is then hurled into the air, where an actor dressed in a suit blows it to pieces with a shotgun.

On his website, Cain assures that “no actual bunnies were harmed” in the making of the spot. “Animals are still safer appearing in Herman Cain’s web advertisements than they are in PETA’s care,” he boasts.

YouTube pulled the Cain Connections spot and put up a notice saying its community of viewers had flagged the spot as “inappropriate.” That brought a furious response from Cain: “This is free speech. This is free speech under YouTube. I have some questions!” A triumphant Cain later returned to Facebook and Twitter to say that he had come back from his “YouTube time-out.”

President Obama is staying neutral on the Super Bowl, dislikes the “bubble” of being president, and enjoyed (go figure) political science in college.

Those were some of the takeouts from the president’s roughly 45-minute interview Thursday on the Internet site YouTube, which posed questions to him from viewers across the country.

Asked what his favorite thing was about being president, Obama said having a positive impact on people’s lives took first place.

Murray Hill is running for Congress to rid Washington of lobbyists and weak-kneed politicians once and for all. And there may be no better candidate, for Murray Hill is not a frail human being but a company.

“Until now, corporate interests had to rely on campaign contributions and influence peddling to achieve their goals in Washington. But thanks to an enlightened Supreme Court, now we can eliminate the middle-man and run for office ourselves,” the public relations firm from Silver Spring, Maryland, says in a statement.

It’s referring to the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which has drawn a torrent of criticism from officials including President Barack Obama by treating corporations as human beings when it comes to the constitutional guarantee of free speech. Critics claim the decision will unleash a new flood of corporate money into U.S. election campaigns, including money from foreign companies.

Road trip!

The Census Bureau on Monday launched the “2010 Census Portrait of America Road Tour” to reach out and convince everyone living in the United States to be counted in its once-a-decade population survey, which can alter political districts and affect where billions of dollars in federal funds are spent.

The tour set off from New York City and will include 13 vehicles visiting about 800 events around the country over four months, including the Super Bowl and Mardi Gras.

Vehicle updates can be followed on Twitter @2010Portrait and on Facebook, MySpace, Flickr and YouTube.

She’s blond and beautiful. He’s debonair. Together, with irresistible charm and a voracious appetite for self-promotion, they penetrated White House security to attend this week’s state dinner for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and got close enough to kiss Vice President Joe Biden.

That’s the current media image of Michaele and Tareq Salahi, who could be the world’s most celebrated gate crashers since the British comedian who attended Prince William’s 21st birthday party at Windsor Castle in 2003 while dressed as Osama bin Laden in drag.
    
But is there more to the story?
    
The Salahis’ lawyer, Paul Gardner, suggests there is. “My clients were cleared, by the White House, to be there. More information is forthcoming,” he says in a statement published by the Washington Post.
    
The now-famous couple also plans to appear Monday on CNN’s Larry King Live.
    
Paul Wharton, a friend of the Salahis, tells ABC’s Good Morning America that the couple has had lots of contact lately with Indian officials and has spent a fair amount of time in India. Could that explain why they were at a dinner honoring the Indian PM? 
         
News accounts cast the Salahis as determined publicity seekers who posted their wedding on YouTube and boast an online photo gallery of themselves with loads of celebrities including Britain’s Prince Charles.
    
Michaele, a former Washington Redskins cheerleader, is being considered for cable TV channel Bravo‘s upcoming reality series, The Real Housewives of Washington. In fact, the Post reports that she spent seven hours at a posh salon, TV production crew in tow, getting ready for the big night.
    
The camera crew followed Michaele and Tareq to the White House but couldn’t get in. The Salahis did and wound up being snapped for photos with Biden and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.
    
The Secret Service, which is charged with protecting President Barack Obama and other high-level officials, says the Salahis were not invited to the dinner. The agency is conducting a comprehensive review to get to the bottom of one of the most embarrassing security breaches in the history of White House dinners.
    
It’s not clear what could happen to the Salahis if they really did crash the party. But another friend of the couple, Casey Margenau, doesn’t sound too worried. “Whatever they do, they’ll land on their feet,” he tells ABC. “Promotion and parties are part of their life.”

Photo credits: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (Michaele and Tareq Salahi); Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (Biden)