WaPo: Ben Carson’s striking ignorance

[spanone]

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The political press is chortling at BuzzFeed’s story that Ben Carson believes Egypt’s pyramids were built for grain storage, not as burial chambers. “My own personal theory is that Joseph built the pyramids to store grain,” he said in a 1998 commencement speech, referring to Genesis 41, which tells of Joseph storing Egypt’s grain during the “years of plenty” for the coming famine. Carson confirmed to CBS yesterday that he still believes this, but I’m not sure why this is such a big story. Before Wednesday, we knew that Ben Carson takes the Bible literally. After Wednesday, we knew the exact same thing. Frankly, I don’t care whether the president believes the pyramids were built by Joseph, aliens or the Egyptians themselves levitating the stones into place. What matters are the ideas — and that’s where the focus should be with Carson, since it’s clear he has no idea what he’s talking about.

In the same week, Carson also said that Medicare and Medicaid fraud is “huge — half a trillion dollars.” If true, that would be almost 50 percent of our total spending on the two programs. The real number is somewhere between 3 and 10 percent — still a problem, but handing the program to a Carson White House would be like handing the drug war over to someone who believes half the United States is hooked on heroin. In the same Miami Herald interview, Carson was completely stumped by basic questions on U.S.-Cuba policy, before having no qualms about holding forth on the president’s Cuba policy.

And on Wednesday night on Facebook, Carson defended his lack of experience by claiming, “Every signer of the Declaration of Independence had no elected office experience.” That is utterly false: Many of the signatories, including Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, had been elected to colonial legislatures or other positions (and indeed were partly chosen for the Continental Congress precisely because of their prominence as elected officials). It’s one thing to be wrong about the pyramids, but Carson can’t cite the Founders both for the basic idea behind his outsider candidacy and for many of his policies when he can’t get their biographies right.

That’s just the past week. Zoom out farther, and we find that Carson has changed his Medicare plan from “End Medicare” to a new version that doesn’t make any sense. He refuses to acknowledge that his tax plan would force trillions of dollars in spending cuts to reach the balanced budget he wants, partly because he or his advisers appear to have no idea what does and doesn’t get taxed. (For example, Carson’s calculation would include taxing all government spending, including defense.) And he has confused the budget and the debt ceiling. Those are just some of the specifics he has actually talked about — even the conservative Heritage Action says he needs to release more detailed plans. We haven’t even touched on his many offensive comments about women, the Holocaust, Muslims, gays and so on.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2015/11/05/ben-carsons-striking-ignorance/?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-d%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

[RKP5637]

1. This guy has so many serious issues in his head it's frighting someone this dysfunctional and

filled with ignorance can have a following. What is even more concerning are the damn fools that think he's legitimate.

[scscholar]

2. I love how they're digging into things 20 years ago.

It shows how diligent and hard working they are.

[spanone]

3. don't take much work to expose a fraud

mentally, the doctor is not in.

[gratuitous]

11. The original story was about his commencement speech from 1999

But when he was asked about it again this week, Carson confirmed what he said then is what he believes now. His pronouncement on the pyramids being built by Joseph is utter nonsense; the two events missed one another by over a thousand years, and the pyramids took considerably longer than seven years to build.

I can't comment on what Carson might or might not "believe" to be true, but his remarks are on a par with "I believe the moon is made of green cheese."

[kydo]

16. Must have been after the good doctor preformed a botched lobotomy on himself

The man is nuts! Anyone buying the trash he is selling really needs to seek help before they too pass the point of no return on sane thinking.

[WinkyDink]

49. Do you think 20 years is a millennium?

[rhett o rick]

62. Not sure of your point here. How far back should we "dig" to find out the character of those

running for president? I hope you aren't defending him?

[underpants]

4. Sadly this op-Ed will fodder for the victim cannon but THIS is flat stupid

he or his advisers appear to have no idea what does and doesn’t get taxed. (For example, Carson’s calculation would include taxing all government spending, including defense.)

[Binkie The Clown]

5. But, But... He's wearing a FLAG pin on his lapel

Surely that counts for something?

[erronis]

15. Yup - counts for a lot! As soon as I see a flag pin I KNOW the asshole is a likely liar.

Now, I did say "likely". However the preponderance of these pins in the lapels of assholes is just astounding. It's almost like Satan said "If you don't wear my pin, you won't get to shack up with my favorite aholes."

(Darn, there were so many non-PC terms that I wanted to use for the PNAC/GWB crowd, but I've apparently been censored enough that the 'bots are onto me.)


FU, Bots. So there!

[Warpy]

6. I find it difficult to believe he could get through four years of premed followed by medical school

and be that completely fucking pig ignorant. Either he had a psychotic break and quit medicine, rejecting his former life and clinging to religion as the only way to cope, or he's putting on an act for the pig ignorant fundy vote. If it's the latter, it seems to be working for him, his poll numbers rise a little more every time he says something really, really stupid, which is just about every day now.

[pnwmom]

10. Any publicity is good publicity, as they say. It worked for "trees are polluters" Reagan. n/t

[smirkymonkey]

46. I was thinking the same thing, either he's completely gone off the rails and is

on mega-doses of meds and religion or he really is brilliant and this is all an act because he knows how pig-ignorant most republican voters are and this is his winning strategy. Either way, it's pretty frightening because he's doing very well in the polls.

Do you ever feel like you are going completely mad and the world just doesn't make ANY sense anymore?

[ibegurpard]

7. never underestimate our ability to elect idiots

Bush II and Reagan would like a word with you.

[pnwmom]

9. +1000. (Don't we ever learn?)

[pnwmom]

8. That's a PLUS for a Rethug. It helped Ronald Reagan get elected

and it will help Ben Carson in his campaign.

People forget how Reagan was endlessly mocked by Dems for his inane comments -- such as how trees are the real polluters.

But people liked the genial Reagan, just as they like Carson. And Carson has Reagan's agenda -- destroying Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

Carson is Reagan 2.0

Watch out for Carson.

[loyalsister]

12. One thing he was almost right about

Fox news keeps us from looking more like Cuba (with their 99.8% literacy rate).

[spanone]

14. ^^^^^

[hifiguy]

13. This guy belongs behind high walls,

that are topped with razor wire.

This man is clinically insane. Seriously Mentally Ill. Bananas. A Shrieking Looney. Out To Lunch. Bats in the Belfry. An asylum Napoleon who escaped the guys with the nets and the rubber truck.

And millions would happily vote for him for POTUS. They consider his derangement to be his primary qualification for the office.

This country just might be doomed if the Stupid gets any bigger.

[malaise]

26. Seriously

He is deranged

[smirkymonkey]

47. The really frightening thing is that we have so many idiots in this country

willing to elect someone like him to the highest office in the land. Seriously, can you see any other first world country running a candidate that is this bat-shit crazy - and have him/her be viable on top of it? They have right-wing, racist, ideologues, but nobody as whacked out as Carson.

[hifiguy]

48. America has always had a wildly disproportionate share

of fly-eating lunatics and duck-fucking nimrods in its population.

Shit the "Pilgrim Fathers" were so amazingly obnoxious that even the notoriously tolerant Dutch forcibly booted them out of the Netherlands only a few years after giving them sanctuary from the Church of England.

Every religulous dingbat in the world found their way to this country for 200 years and every one of them was able to set up a scam, err, church, and get rich. Add the racists, xenophobes, education-haters (another deep and strong strain in 'murka, strongly linked to the religulous loons) and you have a boiling cauldron of idiocy that's at least 200 years in the brewing.

Add the people who have been systematically propagandized and dumbed down - WAY down - by the reichwing project begun in the Zombie King Raygun years, which saw its culmination in the rise of Fox News and the installation of His Chimperial Fraudulency and Darth, and you can get 20 million people in this country to vote for a ham sandwich as long as it lurves Jebus, carries a gun, and hates teh geys.

American democracy didn't fail so much as it never got the chance to work. Or maybe it did work and a large percentage of the population are just easily led sheeple.

For my part I am going to join a revolutionary cadre if Bernie doesn't make it.

Long Live The Glorious Leader CHAIRMAN MEOW!!!

[Solomon]

64. ok now

now that's a damned good rant, I don't care who you are.

[humbled_opinion]

17. I said today at work that

I though Dr. Carson's comments about the pyramids showed his ignorance toward science.. Than I said that his new RAP ad was pandering, and I promptly got accused of being a racist.

[valerief]

19. This is why political correctness is a right wing tool. It shuts down discussion.

It doesn't matter you weren't talking about race. Because of political correctness, you can be accused of being racist. We're not allowed to criticize a black man who says STOOOOOOPID things. I'm betting your finger-waggers were right wing and white.

And this is why Carson is so cherished by the right wing. He's supposed to be brilliant and is allowed to say insane shit like that Louisiana "the dark side" crazy lady on Wife Swap.

[malaise]

22. He must be called on his bullshit

and it is bullshit

[valerief]

23. But our MSM won't do that. I'd love to see a Jeopardy game with

Carson, Oprah, and Tyson (Neil Degrasse, not Mike). Let's see how well Carson would fare in that scenario. Hell, even Mike Tyson would do better than Carson, I'll bet. (No white person could be called a racist if s/he called Carson stupid then.)

I was going to include President Obama, but even the asshole racists know he's brilliant (even if we don't agree with everything he does).

I didn't think there was anyone more stupid than Palin, but Carson, if you take away the brain surgery knowledge, is probably her intellectual peer.

If the Republicans had to have their token black candidate, I don't know why they didn't bring back Cain. At least, he's intelligent and sounded sane when he delivered their talking points.

[humbled_opinion]

56. LOL that woman is

batshit craaaazzzzyyy.... Pretty much passes for today's typical rightwing Christian

[hifiguy]

29. Not surprising.

For a very vocal cadre on DU any criticism of ANY AA person for ANY reason is racist, and any criticism of ANY woman for ANY reason is sexist.

It's hard to find trains of thought any more derailed than that. It's a slap in the face to logic and reason.

[valerief]

44. And highly insulting to intelligent, rational POC. nt

[hifiguy]

50. Indeed it is.

But Identity Politics Uber Alles is the name of the game for many.

[valerief]

18. Joseph who? Stalin? He talks about this Joseph guy like we're supposed to know

who he means.

[Arugula Latte]

27. Ya know, Joseph in the Buy-bull!

[tclambert]

34. Pretty sure he means the Joseph with the amazing technicolor dreamcoat.

[valerief]

37. That was a musical with those awful Webber songs.

You mean, that was about some real person?

Next thing, Carson will be telling us Cats from the musical are real.

[tclambert]

39. A "real" person? It's based on a character in an old book that many think is non-fiction

but contains many scientifically questionable events. Then there are characterization problems, like this one character, who is said to be all-seeing and all-knowing but who says at one point, "Adam, where are you?" That same character, despite being called all-knowing and all-powerful, at another point needs ten attempts to persuade a guy to release a certain group of people from bondage. That means nine failures. You'd think that leaves a lot of room for more-knowledgeable and more-powerful.

[valerief]

42. Ha!

[hifiguy]

51. Anyone who has ever had a cat in their life

knows that they are.

[valerief]

52. No real cat could tolerate that awful music. Only stupid humans can. nt

[hifiguy]

54. The characters of the cats are very true to life, though.

[valerief]

60. The music is ear pollution, though. nt

[malaise]

20. Imagine having this fool in the White House after someone who values education

and science.
Recently a very close friend of ours died. He was a Jamaican - earned his PhD at MIT in Econometrics. The year he was accepted at MIT he had been accepted at every Ivy League School in the US. Let me be clear - he started school at three - walking down the street in his diapers behind his mother and only sibling, his sister. It was an all girls school but he insisted he was going to school and the principal let him come to school - genius does not describe him and a more unassuming person you will never meet.

His hobby was calculating the angles of the pyramids and discussing the pyramids and the stars. I mentioned him to hubby when I read this shit from Carson. I really hate stupid ignorant assholes who think rational people want to hear their crap.

They will soon find out that Carson is a con-artist on steroids.

[Ilsa]

24. Maybe he'll take their money and drop out.

I'm shocked that someone this ignorant is leading in their polls. Then again, if you watch a rerun of Jaywalking from Jay Leno's Tonight Show, it doesn't seem such a remote possibility.

[malaise]

25. Truth be told

he's hawking books more than campaigning - the perfect con.

[valerief]

43. Kimmel does man-on-the-streets with morons, too.

It's amazing how much people know about sports but nothing about what REALLY affects their lives.

[hifiguy]

30. He'd appoint this guy as Education Czar.

The character, not Max Baer.

And no they won't. In the minds of millions, his utter derangement is his principal qualification for the office.

[spanone]

32. Ben Carson Once Studied Fetal Brain Tissue, Now Calls the Research 'Disturbing'

he's a TOTAL fraud.

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson once conducted research on fetal brain tissue—and published his findings—to better understand how the human brain develops. Recently, the retired neurosurgeon called such tissue research "disturbing."

A 1992 study published by Carson and three of his colleagues at John Hopkins University was disclosed Wednesday in a blog post by Dr. Jen Gunter, an OB-GYN. She said Carson and his co-workers at the Baltimore university during the study used tissue from the fetal brain and nasal cavity to better understand the development of chambers in the brain.

The idea of using infants' body parts for medical research after an abortion was part of a controversial Planned Parenthood video that surfaced last month. Carson responded to the footage, telling Fox News: "At 17 weeks, you've got a nice little nose and little fingers and hands and the heart's beating. It can respond to environmental stimulus. How can you believe that that's just an irrelevant mass of cells? That's what they want you to believe, when in fact it is a human being."

Carson told Fox News it is "disturbing" that some people don't even realize the "callousness with which we are treating human life." He added: "There's nothing that can't be done without fetal tissue." Carson was the director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins for almost 30 years, and supports defunding Planned Parenthood, a belief voiced by the other GOP presidential candidates.

http://www.newsweek.com/ben-carson-published-research-17-week-fetal-tissue-362543

[malaise]

35. In Jamaica he'd be described as a ginal

aka - a fugging conman.

[SoapBox]

21. Whatever it is, there's something wrong with this guy.

[Arugula Latte]

28. I think it's his brain.

Call a neurosurgeon.

[hifiguy]

31. Do it yourself brain surgery with

a ball-peen hammer and a wood chisel seems a strong probability.

[MrScorpio]

33. The GOP is at a stage where it's promoting and rewarding incompetence.

Carson is the poster child for the dumbing down of half of the electorate. Every idiotic thing that's coming out of his mouth is a selling point for the GOP's base.

Basically, this is a recipe for disaster for the Republicans. Personally, I hope that they nominate this guy, because unless Democrats fail to show up at the polls next November, there's no way that Carson can get elected.

You want to keep him out of the White House if he's their nominee? Then get out the vote.

[Demeter]

38. That's been happening a long time

Since Goldwater, Hillary's first crush, at least.

[hifiguy]

53. Goldwater was sane.

Wrong about most everything back then, but he was a sane man.

His vicious turn on reichwing preachers in the 70s showed he was no fool and continued to think as he lived life.

Modern repukes are just plain Joker-crazy.

[Demeter]

55. His idea of nuclear war wasn't exactly sane, IMO

[tclambert]

36. Silly man. Time travelers built the pyramids.

See, so many time travelers went back to see the pyramids when they were new and then felt so disappointed to find out the pyramids didn't exist that the time travelers banded together to build the pyramids themselves.

[northoftheborder]

40. I'd like to know why he has retired from his medical profession.

Is he too old to be a surgeon? How old is he? How long did he practice as a physician, or is he still licensed to practice? I've heard him referred to as being "brilliant" but what is the basis for that?

[spanone]

41. he's 64

according to his wiki page

In March 2013, Carson announced he would retire as a surgeon, saying "I'd much rather quit when I'm at the top of my game".[26] His retirement became official on July 1, 2013.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Carson

[Skittles]

57. it's hard to believe he was ever successful at anything, let along surgery

he comes across like a fucking idiot

[one_voice]

45. It never ceases to amaze me the way the..

right seems to celebrate and elevate ignorance and incompetence; while ridiculing intelligence as if education is something to be ashamed of. The way they snicker and bully anyone that speaks with intelligence but revere the likes of Carson, Palin, etc. I truly don't understand it.

[Gothmog]

58. Carson is so stupid that it is scary

[hay rick]

59. The critical mass of the uncritical masses.

We have a perfect storm brewing. The large field of Republican candidates for president allows the pool of Republican primary voters that are motivated by angst rather than information to coalesce around similarly uninformed candidates. Trump. Carson. The other candidates are faced with a choice of chasing the paranoia or losing the polling credibility they need to attract financing for their campaigns. It's dumb and dumberer on steroids. Fasten your seat belts, it could be a very bumpy ride.

[Egnever]

61. So pretty much a standard GOP candidate...

[Octafish]

63. GOP! You get what you pay for.

With humor, Mr. Priebus! With humor!