From hosting a TV show to serving as secretary of defense, former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain says he’s keeping his future options open for now.

In a lengthy interview with The Daily Caller on Thursday, the former GOP presidential candidate seemed to rule one thing out: running for office again.

“Right now today?” he said when asked if he could imagine being a candidate again. “No.”

“And here’s why,” Cain explained. “Politics is too dirty and it’s too easy to go after somebody’s character when you can’t kill their idea.”

The former Godfather’s Pizza CEO dropped out of the 2012 race after saying his family was hurt too much by stories in the media about “false accusations.”

Cain said if it wasn’t for the media continuing to “spin over and over false accusations,” he knows he “would be the front-runner heading into Iowa, absolutely.”

Yet Cain says he doesn’t regret running for the White House, saying his 9-9-9 tax reform plan sparked a discussion among the GOP candidates about reforming the tax system.

“The answer is yes,” Cain said when asked if he’s still glad he ran. “I believe that I caused the other candidates to put solutions on the table.”

Cain admits he misses being a part of the debates. “Everybody I talk to, they say the debates just aren’t the same,” he said. (RELATED: Full coverage of Herman Cain)

Cain blasted “lazy journalism,” including reporters who claimed his campaign was more of a book tour than a presidential campaign. “To be honest with you, it is insulting,” he said.

Asked to describe his greatest weakness as a presidential candidate, Cain said “not being aware that some [news] outlets were going to look and evaluate every potential negative word or appearance.”

He said it was silly that he received so much attention for saying it was unimportant to know who the president of “Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-beki-beki-stan is.”

“And by the way, the president of Uzbekistan is Islam Karimov,” he said on Thursday.

Cain also made it clear he doesn’t plan to cooperate with reporters at Politico.com, the website that first reported accusations against Cain during the campaign. He said he almost didn’t agree to cooperate with TheDC for this story because he initially believed this reporter wrote for Politico.

Cain said he won’t “do an interview over there after that hatchet job.”

As for the 2012 race, Cain said he plans to eventually endorse, but doesn’t want to do it until “emotions subside.”

“I still have a lot of people that are disappointed that I dropped out,” he said. “I have a lot of people that are broken-hearted.”

Asked to assess the race, Cain said among his “biggest frustrations” are the “negative attacks” in the campaign “going on in Iowa right now and across this country.”


Without going into specifics, Cain said, “The negative stuff is what almost pushes me to endorse earlier, but I’m not going to.”


Asked if he could back someone like Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, whose campaign once put a press release out that said 9-9-9 would wreck the economy, Cain said, “Not if she still stands by that statement, obviously.”


But is the 9-9-9 plan dead without Cain in the race?

“No, no, no,” Cain said with a laugh. “And in Germany, it’s nein, nein, nein.”


Cain said he plans to announce a new initiative in January aimed at promoting his ideas on tax reform, as well as his foreign policy philosophy of “peace through strength and clarity.”


“It’s going to seem like a campaign except I won’t be campaigning to get a position,” Cain said. “I’ll be campaigning to achieve a mission.”


He’s keeping the details of the campaign secret for now — refusing to even share the name for it.


“The name of it, I can’t divulge,” he said with a chuckle. “Because it’s too good, too easy for somebody to steal. Not that you would, but you got folks out there that would steal a good idea.”


As for why he’d be an attractive candidate for secretary of defense, Cain quickly spouted off seven points.


“In other words, in a word, a leader,” he said. “That’s what I would bring to that job. You don’t need to have defense expertise. You don’t’ even need to have military expertise. You need to have leadership expertise. That’s what I would bring to that job.”


Cain said he hasn’t been approached about hosting a cable show, but said, “obviously I would consider that, if and when that opportunity comes along.”


“I got a name that is even better than the Herman Cain train so stay tuned on that front,” he said.


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NEW YORK (Reuters) – More than anything, Vito Russo loved the movies. More than 20 years after the gay activist and film historian's death, he is finally starring in one.

Entitled simply, "Vito," the HBO documentary takes a comprehensive look at the life, loves and battles of the East Harlem native who as a boy eschewed neighborhood stickball games and navigated his way to Times Square where he would revel in matinees and tap the pulse of the city.

As an adult, Russo was a founding member of three pivotal gay rights groups, starting with the Gay Activists Alliance in the early 1970s. He died of AIDS in 1990, age 44.

"Vito participated in every significant milestone in the gay liberation movement, from Stonewall to ACT UP," said director Jeffrey Schwartz. "He was right in the middle of everything, every step of the way."

"His story is also the story of our community," Schwartz said following a recent screening at the New York Film Festival where the director reflected on how he came to cast the story of Russo's life against the backdrop of the gay rights movement.

"Vito" melds archival footage and interviews of Russo's celebrity and activist friends, such as Lily Tomlin, with film clips of stars including Judy Garland, Shirley MacLaine and Cary Grant. Excerpts from interviews with Russo himself lend a poignant touch.

The documentary has been playing festivals in recent months before it airs on HBO in June 2012. A Hollywood Reporter review called it "an emotionally powerful documentary portrait with an impassioned voice that befits its subject."

Among the many protests he helped stage that made headlines was one in which Russo and a group of activists descended on New York City officials for a mass marriage, complete with cakes topped by figures of same-sex couples -- decades before gay marriage became a national issue and, in some states, legal.

"He was a true visionary," said his brother, Charles. "Same sex marriage, anti-bullying -- these were things he talked about 40 years ago, and they're on the front pages today."

MADE IN THE MEDIA

Russo also was a key voice in the creation of both ACT UP, the AIDS activist group credited with revolutionizing the federal approval process for new drugs, and the influential gay and lesbian media watchdog, Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, or GLAAD.

"He saw that changing images through media was more important than changing laws," Charles Russo said.

But to many, Russo is perhaps best known as the cinephile author of "The Celluloid Closet," which Schwartz calls "the bible of gay film."

Russo's 1981 book chronicles the history of depictions of gay people in film, and it was made into an award-winning documentary. The book found its origins in movie nights Russo organized in the early 1970s, when he combined the things he loved -- community and cinema.

The formula was simple -- hundreds of gay people and a beloved movie, yielding a night of enthusiastic audience participation during which strangers reveled in shared tastes.

At the time, with the Stonewall riots a fresh memory, such gatherings were political acts. For many, these precursors of gay film festivals were a first involvement in gay community.

Russo's cousin, Phyllis Antonellis, recalled that for his family, Russo "opened up a world to all of us that we never would have known otherwise." She might just as easily have been talking about the gay men who flocked to Russo's screenings to applaud favorite lines of dialogue with like-minded folk.

"The Celluloid Closet" came out just as AIDS began its devastating, unrelenting march into the lives of many individuals. Seeing entire circles of friends die, Russo returned to his activist roots and devoted himself to education, support and making as much noise as possible.


Schwartz sees the street protests of those days, for which Russo pulled together factions from an often-divided community, as forerunners of the present-day Occupy Wall Streeters, which have similarly tapped groups ranging from labor to students.


Like many a Hollywood tearjerker, "Vito" ends with the star's premature death. But Russo was no fictional character in a studio movie, even as much as he adored the archetype. His death was real, and still has resonance two decades later.


(Reporting by Chris Michaud; editing by Jill Serjeant and Bob Tourtellotte)

WASHINGTON – Americans probably bought more homes in November, but 2011 will still likely end up as the worst year for new-home sales since the government began keeping records in 1963.
Sales last month are expected to rise to a seasonally adjusted annual pace of 312,000, according to a survey of economists by FactSet. That's less than half the 700,000 that economists say must be sold to sustain a healthy housing market.
The Commerce Department will release the report at 10 a.m. Eastern time Friday.
In October, new-home sales rose 1.3 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 307,000. But the median price fell to its lowest level of the year: $212,300.
The year's sales pace is trailing last year's total of 323,000 new homes sold, the fewest on record.
Economists say housing is a long way from fully recovering. Builders have stopped working on many projects because it's been hard for them to get financing or to compete with cheaper re-sale homes. For many Americans, buying a home remains too big a risk more than four years after the housing bubble burst.
Even so, home construction has begun a gradual comeback and should add to economic growth in 2011. The main reason is that the rate of apartment construction is nearly twice as fast as it was two years ago.
And rising interest from would-be buyers left U.S. homebuilders less pessimistic about the housing market in December, according to the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo builder sentiment index. It rose two points this month, reaching its highest level since May 2010.
Though new-home sales represent less than 10 percent of the housing market, they have an outsize impact on the economy. Each home built creates an average of three jobs for a year and generates about $90,000 in tax revenue, according to the National Association of Home Builders.
Home prices have tumbled, the job market remains weak and unemployment is still high at 8.6 percent. Some people who want to buy can't qualify for a loan or make the higher down payments that banks are demanding.
Sales are slumping even though mortgage rates have fallen to record lows. This week, the average rate on a 30-year fixed home loan dropped to 3.91 percent, the lowest rate ever, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday.
In selling new homes, builders must compete with foreclosures and short sales — when lenders accept less for a house than what is owed on the mortgage.
Yet sales of previously owned homes are also dismal. They rose slightly last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.42 million units, the National Association of Realtors said this week.
That's below the 6 million that economists say is consistent with sales in a healthy market and barely ahead of 2008's revised totals, which were the worst in 13 years.

The Pinterest virtual collector website has skyrocketed in popularity over the past year. The site is doing so well, in fact, that it recently broke into Experian Hitwise’s Top 10 social networking and forums category, holding a number nine position which beat out Google Plus; Tumblr was no where to be found.

Pinterest was launched in March 2010 and over these 20 months it has built up a large base of followers, even with its invitation-only hurdle. Hitwise points out that in just the past six months the social bookmarking site has had a surge of visits, topping out at 11 million at the end of last week– which is almost 40 times the visits it had in June.



Online pinboard sites seem to be the new social networking wave, and though Pinterest is the lead representative, we’ve previously pointed out a few noteworthy virtual collector alternatives. Pinterest basically allows you to “pin” images found while surfing the web onto your virtual pinboard and organize the images into different themes, which users can then share with others.

Hitwise also points out that the latest traffic skews female with 58%, and is dominated by those between the ages of 25 and 44. Hobbies and Crafts enthusiasts are also enthusiastic about the site, which tends to have a lot of home decorating, crafts, fashion and food images. Geographically, internet hoarders seem to be mostly from California and Texas, but Pinterest gets a fair number of visits from states such as Tennessee, Oklahoma, Utah and Alabama.

The virtual collector site has a ways to go in order to catch up with the top three social networking sites. Facebook still commands 63% of the visits share, with YouTube at 20.9%, Twitter at 1.49% compared to Pinterest at rank nine with .41%.

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