Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Glad to see john eastman going through some things.

“Cheese and Kraken paired together for the appetizer trial.”

There is one struggling party in US right now, and it’s not the Democrats.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

The revolution will be supervised.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

Bad news for Ron DeSantis is great news for America.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

“woke” is the new caravan.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

You are here: Home / Elections / Election 2016 / Schrödinger’s Derp

Schrödinger’s Derp

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Ben Carson has a new ad out:

Like Donald J. Trump, Ben Carson, the retired pediatric neurosurgeon and Republican presidential candidate, has defied the pundits and establishment prognosticators by unapologetically running as a political outsider.

A new television ad by the Carson campaign aims to capitalize on his unusual experience and style of campaigning.

The 30-second spot, which is airing in the Greenville, S.C., market, features Mr. Carson, in a suit, standing next to an empty cardboard box that says “Washington political class” on one side and a sketch of the Capitol on another.

“I’m Ben Carson and I’m running for president,” he says. “The political class and their pundit buddies say: ‘Impossible. He’s too outside the box.’ Well, they do know impossible. Impossible to balance the budget, impossible to get border security, impossible to put aside partisanship.”

He continues: “I’m Ben Carson, I’m running for president, and I’m very much outside the box.”

Then, turning to the box, Mr. Carson concludes, “There must be a good idea in there somewhere.”

We’ll know how bad things are for the GOP when Nooners and the like start publicly writing columns trying to convince themselves and us that a Carson presidency won’t be too bad.

Reader Interactions

149Comments

  3. 3.

    redshirt

    I like using that phrasing: Schrodinger’s ________

    For example, Schrodinger’s Choice: Whatever choice you make, the choice you didn’t make was the better option.

  4. 4.

    JGabriel

    OT, but too good to wait:

    Fort Wayne, Indiana: Dog Named Trigger Shoots Owner While Hunting via DKos:

    NORTH WEBSTER, Ind. (WANE) Conservation officers said a woman who had been out hunting was hospitalized after she was shot in the foot – by her dog.

    Allie Carter, 25, of Avilla was hunting waterfowl at Tri-County Fish and Wildlife Area on Saturday when the Indiana Department of Natural Resources (DNR) was called around 10 a.m. on reports of someone shot while hunting.

    Carter was apparently repositioning herself while hunting waterfowl and placed her 12-gauge shotgun on the ground at her feet. That’s when the DNR said her 10-year-old chocolate Labrador, “which is ironically and aptly named Trigger,” stepped on the shotgun. The gun went off and shot Carter in the foot, point-blank.

    The DNR said Carter had injuries to her left foot and toes. She was taken to a nearby hospital before being transferred to one in Fort Wayne.

    Carter reportedly did not complete a hunter education course and the DNR said the shotgun’s safety was not on. …

    (Apologies if this has already been posted in a previous thread.)

  5. 5.

    Tom Levenson

    Meanwhile, as I sit waiting for some help at the Apple Store, without time to write out the full rant, holy sweet baby Jeebus’s favorite uncle has Maureen Dowd defecated the bed again. While I take second place to no one in my loathing for, and sense of the damage done by David Brooks, Maureen Dowd is her own special genus of wasted space — and the most valuable real estate in American media at that.

    Why oh why can’t we have even a merely horrible press/pundit corps?

  6. 6.

    beltane

    The scary thing is that should he win the nomination, Ben Carson is guaranteed to win the votes of almost half of all Americans. We are surrounded by crazy people.

  11. 11.

    Renie

    that sounds like a good ad that will appeal to people who hate politics; hopefully the visual look of it is bad.

  12. 12.

    Gimlet

    Carson’s opinions as circulated in the media make me wonder about his ability to size things up.

    This could lead to real strange outcomes if given a complex problem outside his training.

  14. 14.

    gussie

    The punchline: “Reached for comment, the Carson campaign said the spot had aired mistakenly a few times, and was not officially scheduled to hit the airwaves for another week or two.”

  16. 16.

    trollhattan

    @JGabriel:
    Thank goodness it was the nitwit herself and not somebody nearby, e.g., a kid being shown how to hunt “the right way.”

    In other unrelated news hey moms, you know how you inherit insanity from your kids? Chin up, it looks like you also inherit better health!

    This is a story about two people sharing one body. Maybe even three people. Or four.

    Back in the late 19th century, a German scientist named Georg Schmorl made a remarkable discovery: Cells from a baby can hide out in a mother’s body, after birth. More than a hundred years later, scientists are just beginning to figure out what these cells are doing. And their findings may have implications for how cancer and autoimmune diseases affect women.

    But the discovery also means something else. Something that’s a bit mind-boggling: You likely have cells from your older siblings in your body. And cells from your grandmother, maybe even your great-grandmother. Here’s how.

    Pregnancy has every element of an alien invasion, says Dr. Hilary Gammill, a fetal medicine expert at the University of Washington in Seattle. The fetus has different genes than the mom. So in a sense, she’s a foreigner inside the mom’s body. And the placenta literally invades the mother’s body, Gammill says.

    As the placenta grows, it reaches out and grabs onto the mom’s arteries to control blood flow. “The human placenta is one of the most invasive placentas,” compared to those in other animals, Gammill says.

    This ensures the fetus has nutrients. But in the process the baby ends up giving the mother a gift. “There’s a very large amount of fetal material that is sloughed off into the mother’s circulation,” says Dr. J. Lee Nelson, also at the University of Washington. “This material is widely circulating in the mom’s body.”

  17. 17.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Tom Levenson: @redshirt: The Biden story? Given how long it dragged on, I kind of doubt that Dowd’s column came out of the blue. If Dowd wanted to burn her source, I’d bet fifty bucks it was Dick Harpootlian
    ETA: not that I want to defend MoDo, who long ago jumped the shark and is now swimming with Peggy Noonan’s Magic Dolphins

  18. 18.

    beltane

    @Tom Levenson: Please elaborate, the suspense is killing me.

    I will never forget reading Dowd’s first column in the NYT, right after she took over from Anna Quindlen whose work I used to read religiously. I was more ashamed than disgusted, feeling that MoDo was making all women look bad, like petty-minded nitwits. Now I am older and I just ignore her completely.

  21. 21.

    Chris

    The political class and their pundit buddies say: ‘Impossible. He’s too outside the box.’

    I think the political class is thinking “he’s black, so one party won’t vote for him, he’s a right wing lunatic, so the other party won’t vote for him, so what are we scared of?” I suspect the political class is right for once.

    “I’m Ben Carson, I’m running for president, and I’m very much outside the box.”

    There is not a single fucking thing about your politics that sets you apart from the rest of the dirty dozen.

  23. 23.

    gf120581

    @beltane: Big problem with Dowd is that all too often she seems like emotionally she’s still stuck in high school. Her blatant bias against Hillary is so petty that at times it seems like she’s one of the Plastics sniping back at an old friend who stole her boyfriend way back when.

    It was very nice to see Biden say the whole “Beau begged me to run from his deathbed” story she peddled was full of crap.

  24. 24.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    On topic:

    impossible to get border security, impossible to put aside partisanship.”

    Do bipartisanship-fetishists realize that the two most bipartisan achievements of the last twenty years (as far as I can recall) were the repeal of Glass-Stegal and the Iraq War?

  27. 27.

    Redshift

    @Renie: Hopefully it might those people to pay attention to what he actually says. Nothing says “put aside partisanship” like comparing Obamacare to slavery, or proposing cutting off funding to universities where faculty say things the Carson administration doesn’t approve of.

  29. 29.

    beltane

    It’s not safe to let some people think outside of the box; they are liable to do crazy things like run around naked in traffic. Ben Carson is one of those people.

  32. 32.

    Patricia Kayden

    “impossible to put aside partisanship.”

    But doesn’t the red meat base among Republicans love partisanship? Don’t they punish their politicians who commit the great sin of compromise?

    @gussie: So the ad itself is prematurely out of the box. Alrighty then.

  33. 33.

    cmorenc

    @Tom Levenson:

    Meanwhile, as I sit waiting for some help at the Apple Store, without time to write out the full rant, holy sweet baby Jeebus’s favorite uncle has Maureen Dowd defecated the bed again.

    To save the rest of you from having to lay eyeballs on Dowd’s Oct 24th Column where she shat the bed, the opening two sentences of Dowd’s column tells you all you need to know about it:

    Nobody plays the victim like Hillary.
    She can wield that label like a wrecking ball.

  34. 34.

    Mark B.

    Well, it’s not the worst political commercial I’ve ever seen, but it’s not bad enough to be entertaining like Fiorina’s demon sheep ad was. Yeah, there’s a box. Carson’s not inside it. He speaks softly with a slight lisp about the box and how he’s not in it. That’s it. I know it’s only a 30 second ad, but I was bored halfway through it.

  36. 36.

    beltane

    @cmorenc: Maureen Dowd must have been a very unpleasant person in high school. She is like a more intelligent version of Sarah Palin.

  37. 37.

    Gimlet

    Is it an open thread yet?

    http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Abbott-hints-he-will-ramp-up-fight-on-sanctuary-6590904.php

    AUSTIN — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott hinted Monday he plans to ramp up the fight against so-called “sanctuary cities,” telling the Dallas County sheriff that the state “must pass laws” to prohibit them.

    The sheriff, Lupe Valdez, announced this month that her deputies no longer will comply with federal requests to detain immigrants in the country illegally if her office does not find them to be a significant public safety risk. In a letter to Valdez, Abbott decried the policy, saying it “poses a serious danger to Texans” and may necessitate state action.

    “Your refusal to fully participate in a federal law enforcement program intended to keep dangerous criminals off the streets leaves the state no choice but to take whatever actions are necessary to protect our fellow Texans,” Abbott wrote.

    Potential actions, he wrote, include passing laws to prohibit any policy that promotes sanctuary to people in the country illegally or to require sheriff’s departments to honor federal immigration detainer requests; amending the Tort Claims Act to ensure counties are responsible for actions of immigrants in the country illegally who are released; and “evaluating the extent to which local taxpayers should foot the bill for local decisions that increase costs for Texas’ health and education systems.”

  46. 46.

    RaflW

    “impossible to put aside partisanship”

    If anyone thinks Ben Carson will somehow magically transcend partisanship, they are more deluded/more foolish than he is.

  47. 47.

    Luthe

    @Chris:

    “he’s black, so one party won’t vote for him, he’s a right wing lunatic, so the other party won’t vote for him,

    Ben Carson is the GOTea’s Black Friend. They’ll vote for him to prove how “not racist” they are even while they continue to shit on every other black person in America.

  49. 49.

    BruceFromOhio

    @redshirt:

    Schrödinger’s Cab Ride: you can’t know if you made it or not, since you never took the trip.

    Schrödinger’s Pity Party: you’ll never know if you felt better afterward, because you never told anyone about it.

  50. 50.

    Mark B.

    @Iowa Old Lady: Yep, that was one of the rationales that Bush used for his ruinous tax cuts directed at rich people. To solve the dangerous issue of the government paying off its debt. What’s good or bad depends on who’s in office at the time.

  51. 51.

    Bex

    @gussie: Lots of “mistakes” going on with the Carson campaign…like calling me who has never been registered as anything but a Democrat. Who did they pay to call people who would never in a million years vote for their candidate?

  54. 54.

    Bokonon

    Putting aside partisanship? Is that what Carson really says he is all about?

    Given how partisan Carson is, and given how he wants to do things like criminalizing abortion and weaponize the Department of Education to go after political correctness in the classroom … what does Carson really mean?

    Maybe he means making all domestic dissent go away, by crushing political force, and essentially “putting aside partisanship” at police gunpoint?

    Don’t treat this guy as a joke. He isn’t.

  56. 56.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Steeplejack (phone): I clicked on it. I am going to read it now. I believe I am making a grave error. Someone stop me.

    ETA: You’re a a buncha bastards – except for Tom Levenson who is good people.

  64. 64.

    redshirt

    @BruceFromOhio:

    Schrödinger’s Cab Ride: you can’t know if you made it or not, since you never took the trip.

    Schrödinger’s Pity Party: you’ll never know if you felt better afterward, because you never told anyone about it.

    I play Schrodinger’s Fantasy Football (whichever player you choose will stink and any player going against you will have their game of the season) and let me tell you: I wish I chose otherwise.

  65. 65.

    PurpleGirl

    WRT the ad: Did anyone else flashback to The American President and Richard Dreyfus saying “I’m ??? and I’m running for president.” And then have wish we had someone who could repeat Michael Douglas saying “I’m [Andrew Shepard] and I am the president.” ETA: Too bad Obama is term limited.

  66. 66.

    Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)

    I’d love to know what Carson, and people in Carson’s campaign, have told each other at times when nobody else was around. At the beginning, I bet it was, “Yeah, well, we all know I can’t win anything, but after a run I can make even more money giving speeches and writing for shit outlets like World Nut Daily. Anybody who signs onto this pointless (as far as practical politics go) campaign can hop aboard the train to Wingnut City with me, and get rich!”

    As this undertaking has worn on, I’m wondering if some of these people aren’t seriously thinking that they might have a shot at winning the nomination by now, though. “Shit! Could we really win this thing? I don’t know why not. Let’s just keep going with it and see how far we can ride it! Either we win, or we fall by the wayside sooner or later, but it’s looking a lot more like later than sooner, if at all, and the longer this thing lasts, the better set we’re all going to be when it ends! Sweet!”

  68. 68.

    sm*t cl*de

    “We have to start thinking, have groupthink in this country,” Carson said in response to a question from the crowd about unfunded entitlement liabilities.

    “We need to maximize the potential of all our people if we’re going to be able to compete in the future. So we have to start thinking corporately as an entity.”

  69. 69.

    Mark B.

    @Gimlet: Texas politics is fucked. It’s now essentially a one-party state, but since the economy is going to hell with declining oil prices, the only prosperous places are places like Austin, which are decidedly liberal, but who have very little influence because of gerrymandering. In order to keep people riled up and distracted from their mismanagement of state government, Texas Republican politicians have decided to keep coming up with weird attacks against the U.S. government to have something to show to their constituents. Actually governing is hard work, and is pretty much not something they’re suited to do, they’d rather tell the citizens that government is bad and a failure, and when they make it fail, they are vindicated by their own failure.

  70. 70.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Normally I wouldn’t be an enabler, but this column was one for the record books. That that was what she took away from Hillary’s Benghazi committee marathon.

  71. 71.

    NonyNony

    @RaflW: I think people are missing out on what Carson means by “putting aside partisanship.” He means the nasty Republican leadership and the virtuous Tea Party coming together to do what the Tea Party demands. He’ll get the GOP elites to put aside partisanship and do what they’re told.

    What? You think he’s talking about Democrats? Ha!

  74. 74.

    rikyrah

    Shaun King ✔ @ShaunKing
    The full video of the Spring Valley High School Police Officer brutally assaulting a peaceful student. pic.twitter.com/oHIS8GrtSS

    Shaun King ✔ @ShaunKing
    Yep. The Sheriff’s Office just told me that this was because the student was being “verbally disruptive” in class & “resisted arrest”.
    4:30 PM – 26 Oct 2015

  75. 75.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @JGabriel:

    Carter reportedly did not complete a hunter education course

    This is where I mention once again that at the age of 12, I successfully completed a hunter education course and outscored all of the adult men in the class, which my dad bragged about until the end of his life.

    As I remember it, it was mostly “How Not To Die Of Stupidity In The Woods.”

  77. 77.

    Anoniminous

    Bill Gates goes Commie:

    Gates admitted that the private sector is too selfish and inefficient to do the work on its own, and that mitigating climate change would be impossible without the help of government research and development.

    “Since World War II, U.S.-government R&D has defined the state of the art in almost every area,” Gates said. “The private sector is in general inept.”

    Cries of “KILL THE HERETIC!!!” will waft from the WSJ in …. 4 …. 3 …. 2 ….

  78. 78.

    BR

    I haven’t watched Caron’s ad, but from the above description of it, it doesn’t sound awful — it could actually be effective and conveys a simple but powerful idea. That said, Carson is not just outside the box, but is rummaging around in the trash for ideas that others discarded because they were terrible.

  79. 79.

    mclaren

    Listen to Nate Silver on this one.

    Ben Carson is an incompetent neurosurgeon who left surgical sponges in his patients’ brains. Carson has never been elected to any political office. Carson’s polls are meaningless, because at this early point in a presidential campaign, polls are proxies for name recognition.

    Ben Carson is going nowhere. Ignore him.

    The more you listen to the horserace pundit commentary and look at the polls at this point, 12 months away from the actual election day, the more you will confuse and mislead yourself.

  87. 87.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @BR: We’ve all done it and at least you brought up visions of something far more attractive than Carson’s candidacy.

  89. 89.

    Keith G

    Funny writing on the script.

    Good for him as humor might be the only way that he can improve his chances of being president from very microscopic to mostly microscopic.

  91. 91.

    Hungry Joe

    GOP House members want to “end partisanship” while at the same time all but declaring that compromise is treason.

    Actually, there’s a solution: The Democrats just have to go along with everything the GOP wants. See? No more partisanship. And if the Dems don’t get with this program, they’re being obstructionist.

    This politics stuff is easy.

  92. 92.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    For all the jokes, Jeb said, his older brother had earned better grades in college than Al Gore and John Kerry — “the two candidates that you whooped like nobody’s business,” he added.
    As the crowd murmured, presumably reflecting Mr. Gore’s victory in the 2000 popular vote, Jeb adjusted: “Close enough,” he said.

  93. 93.

    rikyrah

    zellie ‏@zellieimani 47m47 minutes ago
    Currently, #BenFields is facing a lawsuit in federal court accusing him of violating the civil rights of a student at #SpringValleyHigh

    zellie ‏@zellieimani 47m47 minutes ago
    The lawsuit claim #BenFields, “recklessly targets African-American students with allegations of gang membership and criminal gang activity.”

    zellie ‏@zellieimani 44m44 minutes ago
    Just to be clear, #Benfields is facing a lawsuit from a student for a previous incident. A trial is scheduled to begin on January 27, 2016.

  94. 94.

    dogwood

    There probably isn’t much that Clinton, W. Bush, and Obama have in common except for making Maureen Dowd a persona non grata during their administrations. And I can’t say I blame any of them. Her Clinton rants were unhinged. The W. pop psychology stuff was embarrassing, and her Obambi schtick is and was creepy. As a women, she makes me cringe and wonder how such a mean girl teenybopper is allowed to occupy such a high perch in American journalism.

  95. 95.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @dogwood:

    There probably isn’t much that Clinton, W. Bush, and Obama have in common except for making Maureen Dowd a persona non grata during their administrations.

    Ivy League degrees?

  97. 97.

    NotMax

    Woo-hoo! Let’s all work up an outside the box platform!

    1) Anyone named Fred or Phyllis is exempt from taxes for 5 years.
    2) Jobs will be created (and propriety enforced) by manufacturing and installing a giant condom for the Washington Monument.
    3) As their owners must spend time and money exercising Constitutional rights, firearms will now be classified as dependents.
    4) More jobs! Making and dropping a huge dome of asbestos and Kevlar over ISIS in Syria solves that problem.
    5) Former Confederate states get double electoral votes to make up for that election they “sat out.”
    6) Medicare and Medicaid will be free but only one doctor – in Barrow, Alaska – will be licensed to accept their recipients.

  98. 98.

    Keith G

    @efgoldman:

    Waitaminnitt! Isn’t this the same state that wants to secede because of onerous federal regulation? Tenth amendment and all that bullshit?

    No

    But Abbott is still a pus-filled polyp.

  99. 99.

    Shana

    @Bex: I’ve had two calls from his campaign too. His consultants and campaign people are just spending his money to make themselves seem like they’re doing important work. I think I’ve also heard that the campaign is paying half of their funding on fundraising. Think about that one, half of what is raised is being paid to raise more money.

  100. 100.

    NotMax

    @Shana

    Got a robocall about two months or so ago.

    In Hawaii, a state he couldn’t win if his was the only name on the ballot.

  102. 102.

    Peale

    @Omnes Omnibus: (shhhhh….we aren’t to question the uninterrupted 28!year run of Ivy League schools. It’s been amazingly good for the average joe to have that Ivy wisdom calling the shots)

  103. 103.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Peale: OTOH, the last non-Ivy Leaguer was Reagan. And Nixon was not-Ivy as well. Not necessarily great counter-examples.

  104. 104.

    dogwood

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone):
    This school story made me think about my own career. I taught high school for 35 years, and probably sent a student out of the room fewer than a dozen times. In each case I decided to remove the student because I found myself getting angry which never ends well. Never had a student refuse to leave, but if he/she did, I think I’d simply take the rest of the class out of situation and finnish the lesson in the hallway if necessary. Bringing in administrators let alone cops serves only to escalate these types of situations.

  105. 105.

    PurpleGirl

    @Southern Beale: Not in Georgia but in northern Alabama — AFK, Life Interrupted for Rescue, and Kendra Kampf. They have a FaceBook page. Kendra Kampf has worked with a rescuer I know in Connecticut (Cassie Packard, Cassie’s Kitten Kastle). Kendra may know of rescuers in Georgia. (I know, sort of long way around but it’s the best I can do.)

  106. 106.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    Just got off the phone with a poll from Ted Cruz.

    I thought it was interesting that his questions led off with defending Confederate monuments from the media.

  109. 109.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @Omnes Omnibus: The media has been busily shaming states into hiding or talking about removing the monuments!

    @efgoldman: That’s why I stuck with it, wanting to see if it was a push poll from one of the PACs. No, it was paid for by the Cruz campaign, asking if five policy stances would make me more or less likely to vote for him in the primary. First was defending the Confederate monuments, second was vetoing any legislation that gives Members of Congress exemptions or loopholes, third was making the sale of human embryos illegal, fourth was a Constitutional Amendment instituting term limits, fifth was not allowing Syrian refugees into the US.

    I’ve kind of been gafiating, but they all sounded like they would be well within his base’s interests and positions.

  111. 111.

    Villago Delenda Est

    “Outside the box”.

    He should be in a padded cell. He’s a danger to himself and others. He is not sane.

  113. 113.

    mclaren

    @NotMax:

    Woo-hoo! Let’s all work up an outside the box platform!

    1) Anyone named Fred or Phyllis is exempt from taxes for 5 years.
    2) Jobs will be created (and propriety enforced) by manufacturing and installing a giant condom for the Washington Monument.
    3) As their owners must spend time and money exercising Constitutional rights, firearms will now be classified as dependents.
    4) More jobs! Making and dropping a huge dome of asbestos and Kevlar over ISIS in Syria solves that problem.
    5) Former Confederate states get double electoral votes to make up for that election they “sat out.”
    6) Medicare and Medicaid will be free but only one doctor – in Barrow, Alaska – will be licensed to accept their recipients.

    You think you’re being funny. But this may actually be Carson’s platform.

  114. 114.

    mclaren

    (Sigh.) Maureen Dowd’s latest vowel movement involves accusing Hillary Clinton of playing the `victim’ card:

    Nobody plays the victim like Hillary.

    She can wield that label like a wrecking ball.

    If her husband humiliates her with a girlfriend in the Oval Office, Hillary turns around and uses the sympathy engendered to launch a political career. If her Republican opponent gets in her space in an overbearing way during a debate, she turns around and uses the sympathy engendered to win a Senate seat. If conservatives hold a Salem witch trial under the guise of a House select committee hearing, she turns around and uses the sympathy engendered to slip into the H.O.V. lane of a superhighway to the presidency.

    I could go on, but why bother? This is the kind of fact-free empty-headed mean-girl sadism the rest of us left behind in junior high school.

    If there’s any justice, Maureen Dowd will be selected for a pain tolerance trial by the National Institute of Standards and forced to watch the entire run of The Dukes of Hazzard while coked to the gills with LSD.

    To quote the Principal in Billy Madison:

    [Miss Dowd], what you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

  115. 115.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Mark B.: Santorum’s “mud-flinging” (spoiler: it looked like santorum) ad I believe was right up there with demon sheep. WTH were they thinking?

  116. 116.

    Heliopause

    Nooners and the like start publicly writing columns trying to convince themselves and us that a Carson presidency won’t be too bad

    It won’t be, in the same sense that a Palin Presidency wouldn’t be too bad. That is, the President-elect would immediately be surrounded by Cheney-Rumsfeld type operatives, for the obvious reason that Ben Carson/Sarah Palin in genuine command is too terrifying to contemplate, and those other folks would be in charge. Now, please note, that “wouldn’t be too bad” in the limited sense that our republic would keep functioning in status quo fashion for the vast bulk of the citizenry, with all that entails, though the rest of humanity outside our borders would have a great deal to worry about. Just saying, I can’t imagine someone as obviously febrile as Carson being allowed to exercise genuine power.

    Please remember; we survived several years with a President who was very obviously suffering from Alzheimer’s, and almost two whole terms of a President who suffered some level of stroke after choking on a pretzel. Our Masters will figure out some way to get President Carson/Trump/Fiorina through it all. But woe betide the rest of the world.

  118. 118.

    mclaren

    @efgoldman:

    And to think, he used to go to work with very, very sharp implements in his hand.

    Let’s summarize:

    Ben Carson, a neurosurgeon, has no idea what a budget deficit is. This neurosurgeon does not believe in evolution. This neurosurgeon believes the earth is 6000 years old.

    As I’ve pointed out repeatedly, doctors in America have created a mythology that they’re smart. That is not even remotely true. The typical doctor in America is an average student with absolutely typical IQ of 100. Doctors almost never flunk out once they’re accepted into medical school, and the acceptance rate of the typical medical school in the U.S. is 48%.

    Doctors are nothing more than glorified plumbers who learn lots of rules of thumb, but who do not learn the scientific method or skeptical critical thinking or the methodology of scientific research.

    As a result, doctors in America typically persist in believing in and prescribing treatments even though the evidence overwhelmingly shows those treatments don’t work.

    Studies show that the early administration of beta-blockers to heart attack victims does not save lives, and occasionally causes dangerous heart failure. While two studies support the use of beta-blockers after heart attack, there are 26 studies that found no survival benefit to administering beta-blockers early on. Moreover, in 2005, the largest, best study of the drugs showed that beta-blockers in the vulnerable, early hours of heart attacks did not save lives, but did cause a definite increase in heart failure.

    Remarkably, the medical community has continued to strongly recommend immediate beta-blocker treatment. Why? Because according to the theory of the straining heart, the treatment makes sense. It should work, even though it doesn’t. Ideology trumps evidence.

    The practice of medicine contains countless examples of elegant medical theories that belie the best available evidence.
    Recent press reports detailing the dangers of cough syrup for children have noted that cough syrup doesn’t work. True: No cough remedies have ever been proven better than a placebo, either for adults or children. Yet their use is common.
    Patients with ear infections are more likely to be harmed by antibiotics than helped. While the pills may cause a small decrease in symptoms (for which ear drops work better), the infections typically recede within days regardless of treatment. The same is true for bronchitis, sinusitis, and sore throats. Unnecessary antibiotics are still given to more than one in seven Americans each year for these conditions alone, at a cost of more than $2 billion and tens of thousands of serious adverse medication effects requiring treatment.
    Back surgeries to relieve pain are, in the majority of cases, no better than nonsurgical treatment. Yet doctors perform 600,000 of these surgeries each year, at a cost of over $20 billion.
    More than a half million Americans per year undergo arthroscopic surgery to correct osteoarthritis of the knee, at a cost of $3 billion. Despite this, studies show the surgery to be no better than sham knee surgery, in which surgeons “pretend” to do surgery while the patient is under light anesthesia. It is also no better than much cheaper, and much less invasive, physical therapy.

    Source: “Believing in Treatments That Don’t Work,” The New York Times, 2 April, 2009.

    These are not the behaviors of of smart people. This is the kind of stupid ignorant automaton-like behavior you get when mediocre minds get regimented and trained and drilled with rote rules of thumb, then given a god complex by an overawed public.

  119. 119.

    John Revolta

    Outside the box. Holy God, I hope he’s not PAYING anyone to write this drivel. I can hardly wait for the next one, with Dr. Brain pushing the edge of an envelope down the street.

  120. 120.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @mclaren:

    The typical doctor in America is an average student with absolutely typical IQ of 100. Doctors almost never flunk out once they’re accepted into medical school, and the acceptance rate of the typical medical school in the U.S. is 48%.

    Links?

  121. 121.

    Jeffro

    @mclaren:

    You think you’re being funny. But this may actually be Carson’s platform.

    I think y’all forgot
    7) Tire rims and anthrax in every pot!

  122. 122.

    Jeffro

    Meanwhile, while we’re all gabbing about Carson, guess who’s still out there, racking up big donors and trying to tie the Establishment, Tea Party, fundies, and neocons together?

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/cruzs-secret-fundraising-strength-a-network-of-wealthy-donors/2015/10/26/d170532e-7c0b-11e5-beba-927fd8634498_story.html

    Seriously, read the quotes from the GOP big donors in the article. They think Ted will be the guy who can unite the party. And if you think about it, he’s really only alienated Senate Repubs…the Freedumb Caucus takes direction from him, and so does the Tea Party and Evangelicals. All he has to do is get enough Establishment folks and donors on his side, and the scales will tip.

    Rubio/Cruz is bad, but Cruz/Rubio?? Cruz/Fiorina? Ugh.

  123. 123.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    welp, looks like Jeb?!$’s a lock, after all

    NewsmaxVerified account
    ‏@ Newsmax_Media
    Bill Kristol: End May Be Near For Jeb

  124. 124.

    Cervantes

    @efgoldman:

    If s/he provided links

    Seems to me mclaren often does — more than most others.

    Links by themselves prove nothing, of course.

    As for the above assertions about doctors’ IQs, I find them … questionable.

  125. 125.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    impossible to put aside partisanship.

    I am fascinated how THE Base(tm) proposes to do this – They actually believe they weasel him in that the rest of the faction will just unconditionally surrender?

  126. 126.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Cervantes:

    As for the above assertions about doctors’ IQs, I find them … questionable.

    Hence my request for links. I would also note that, in my experience, mclaren often provides links, those links don’t necessarily support his points.*

    *It is a personal observation, and I am not going to spend time looking for support for it.

  127. 127.

    mclaren

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Links?

    Since you’re obviously too ignorant and too incompetent to use google, here you go — bear in mind that the next time you demand “Links?” for these kinds of obvious well-documented statistics, I’ll slam you as too stupid to type a simple search into google and write you off.

    In 2012, 45,266 people applied to medical schools in the United States through the American Medical College Application Service. Of these 45,266 students, 19,517 of them matriculated into a medical school for a success rate of 43 percent.

    Source: wikipedia article for medical school acceptance rate. Okay. slightly different from the 48% I cited. It depends how you average the numbers — breaking down by race, asians and caucasians had lower acceptance rates and blacks had higher acceptance rates, so the exact number depends on the precise racial mix of the med school graduating class. (Duh.)

    “On average what is the IQ of a doctor?”

    100-110, that’s the standard answer. Nothing special about doctor’s IQ scores. FYI: beware of reverse estimates in which “IQ is estimated from median income.” That’s bullshit junk science, where instead of verifying actual Stanford-Binet scores, the stats guesstimate IQ from the highly unreliable “more income = smarter” heuristic.
    https://www.quora.com/On-average-what-is-the-IQ-of-a-doctor

    Also see this article in the Daily Mail from 14 August 2009, “Why doctors are not as clever as they used to be,” 14 August 2009.

    The average doctor was found to have an IQ of 111, slightly higher in Britain than in the U.S. Incidentally, the entire article is easily explained by the Flynn Effect, but the reporter was too ignorant to be aware of the Flynn Effect, or the dramatic impact the periodic renormalization of IQ scores have on test-takers due to the Flynn Effect.

    I don’t have the time or patient to educate you in this kind of trivial elementary stuff, so further demands for proof and links will result in lethal verbal response.

    Use google. Learn to type.

  128. 128.

    mclaren

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Hence my request for links. I would also note that, in my experience, mclaren often provides links, those links don’t necessarily support his points.*

    *It is a personal observation, and I am not going to spend time looking for support for it.

    Ah, yes…the speciality of the astroturfing troll. [Insert smear here] “It is a personal observation, and I am not going tospend time looking for support for it.”

    Turnabout is fair play, troll. Provide at least 10 (ten) detailed citations showing “mclaren often provides links, those links don’t necessarily support his points” or stand revealed as a compulsive pathological liar.

    Links?

    Links???

    Links????

  130. 130.

    Cervantes

    @mclaren:

    “On average what is the IQ of a doctor?” 100-110, that’s the standard answer.

    Standard answers are quite often incorrect.

    In any event, the numbers I’ve seen range from 105 to 135. (You won’t ask me for a link, I presume!)

    And all this is assuming IQ scores tell us anything useful in the first place.

  131. 131.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @mclaren: Nah, I noted that it was a personal observation, basically my opinion. It can stand or fall on the readers’ judgment of my opinion.

  132. 132.

    mclaren

    @Cervantes:

    As for the above assertions about doctors’ IQs, I find them … questionable.

    I find your doubts…questionable. Since you provided no evidence for your doubts, no logic to back up your vague assertion, and nothing but an unsubstantiated claim as proof.

    Reminicent of the wingers’ favorite line: “As for the above assertions about Iraq’s lack of WMDs, I find them … questionable.”

    Get back to me when you’ve examined the links I provided to hard evidence and specific numbers. You can then troll me about why the 45,266 people who applied to medical schools in the United States through the American Medical College Application Service weren’t actually 45,266 people, and why the 19,517 of them matriculated into a medical school weren’t actually 19,517 people.

    You also need to get busy writing long letters to the researchers at Bristol University who authored that study in Britain explaining to ’em that the average IQ of a doctor is not 111, but much higher. I’m sure if you provide overwhelming evidence like “I find it … questionable” they’ll listen to you and revise their statistics.

  133. 133.

    mclaren

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I am actually rather worried now that you will have a stroke. Try some deep breathing.

    Lame effort at deflecting the question.

    Provide links, or stand revealed as a liar.

  134. 134.

    mclaren

    @Cervantes:

    Standard answers are quite often incorrect.

    Links?

    According to the astroturfing troll Omnes Omnibus, all assertions must be followed up with detailed citations, so please provide a list of references proving your claim.

    Boy, this is fun. It’s so easy to grind the entire conversation to a halt by yammering “Links? Links?”

    And by the way, don’t try to claim that humans breathe oxygen, or that Barack Obama is president of the united states — we’ll demand links!

    Links!

    Links!!!

  135. 135.

    mclaren

    @Cervantes:

    Standard answers are quite often incorrect.

    Links?

    According to the astroturfing troll Omnes Omnibus, all assertions must be followed up with detailed citations, so please provide a list of references proving your claim.

    Boy, this is fun. It’s so easy to grind the entire conversation to a halt by yammering “Links? Links?”

    And by the way, don’t try to claim that humans breathe oxygen, or that Barack Obama is president of the united states — we’ll demand links!

    Links!

    Links!!!

  138. 138.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @mclaren: Follow the link back to my comment. And as far as your request for links goes, I already told you that I offered my opinion of you and your links. You are free, as is everyone else, to make whatever judgment you like about my opinion. Since I think you are a rage addicted, autodidact who does not actually know the limits of his own known knowledge, and has contempt for anyone with academic credentials, I don’t worry too much about your opinion.

  139. 139.

    Cervantes

    @mclaren:
    @mclaren:
    @mclaren:

    It’s late. I’m off.

    If your requests (especially the ones you make twice) still seem relevant in the morning, say so at that time and I’ll address them as necessary.

  144. 144.

    J R in WV

    @Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:

    For one thing, the actual sale of human embryos is currently illegal. The sale of any human tissue is illegal, I’m thinking. That’s why rich dude couldn’t just buy a liver from some guy down on his luck.

    You have to get in line with the nationwide transplant group.

    So that’s as stupid as it gets right there. Are you more willing to vote for me if I get a law passed making murder illegal?

    How about making child porn illegal? No, How about selling meth to grade school kids? What would it take to make you vote for me?

  145. 145.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @J R in WV: For one thing, the actual sale of human embryos is currently illegal.

    Not if Planned Parenthood does it!

    I actually laughed out loud at that one. And the unvetted Syrian refugee resettlement was expected. I assume the loophole is a reaction to something else going around the wingnut-o-sphere. Have they been keeping the stocks loophole microscandal alive?

  149. 149.

    Bokonon

    @NonyNony:

    I think people are missing out on what Carson means by “putting aside partisanship.” He means the nasty Republican leadership and the virtuous Tea Party coming together to do what the Tea Party demands. He’ll get the GOP elites to put aside partisanship and do what they’re told.

    What? You think he’s talking about Democrats! Ha!

    Even worse than that … I think that Carson has the idea that the Democrats are silent because they are all in jail. Or in those “camps” that some right wing talk radio hosts like to talk about (like Michael Savage). Think Chilean legislature under Pinochet, after the coup.

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