Another day, another Ben Carson lie exposed:
Ben Carson’s campaign on Friday admitted, in a response to an inquiry from POLITICO, that a central point in his inspirational personal story was fabricated: his application and acceptance into the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
The academy has occupied a central place in Carson’s tale for years. According to a story told in Carson’s book, “Gifted Hands,” the then-17 year old was introduced in 1969 to Gen. William Westmoreland, who had just ended his command of U.S. forces in Vietnam, and the two dined together. That meeting, according to Carson’s telling, was followed by a “full scholarship” to the military academy.
West Point, however, has no record of Carson applying, much less being extended admission.
“In 1969, those who would have completed the entire process would have received their acceptance letters from the Army Adjutant General,” said Theresa Brinkerhoff, a spokeswoman for the academy. She said West Point has no records that indicate Carson even began the application process. “If he chose to pursue (the application process) then we would have records indicating such,” she said.
When presented with this evidence, Carson’s campaign conceded the story was false.
It will be interesting to see how the Republican base reacts- generally, faking or fabricating military service is one of the unforgivable sins, or so they say. There are of course nuances to the Calvinball rules- actual military service is denigrated if it does not fit the narrative (see also Beauchamp, John Kerry, etc.), but this kind of lie is generally frowned upon in wingnut circles. At any rate, you get the feeling that the way this GOP nomination is going, each one of the candidates is going to have their flirtation with being in front before their hubris drags them crashing back to earth and they end up settling on Jeb! or John Kasich or someone like them.
As a side note, IMHO, no profession has suffered more damage in my eyes in the last few years of enhanced wingnuttery than the medical profession. It’s been eye opening how many doctors are just sociopaths.
Frank
“As a side note, IMHO, no profession has suffered more damage in my eyes in the last few years of enhanced wingnuttery than the medical profession. It’s been eye opening how many doctors are just sociopaths.”
Not to those of us who work in the medical arena!
WJS
Ben Carson wrote a number of very helpful and informative books but libtards keep reading them and finding lies, fabrications, and glaring mistakes–plainly, this is not fair.
A guy
Certainly disappointing. But no worse than Hillary falsely claiming she came under fire in a combat zone. Or that she never forwarded classified material. Or that, well name it. Every time she goes thru a revolving door she comes out with another story. They all lie. I guess the art of it all for the voter is to ferret thru the lies and make a choice.
mistermix
It’s funny how his campaign just fesses up — I guess they are used to the fact that Ben’s past tales are strewn with lies.
On the face of it, the whole story smells: Why would Westmoreland have dinner with a 17 year-old kid? Was Carson some kind of standout in some way at age 17?
Duke of Clay
@Frank: Exactly what I was going to say!!
Punchy
Accurified that for ya.
BTW, where the fuck did all the blockquote, link, italics, etc. buttons go?
raven
These motherfuckers don’t give a shit about the military unless it fits their bullshit scenario.
Gin & Tonic
That meeting, according to Carson’s telling, was followed by a “full scholarship” to the military academy.
The USMA does not charge any tuition. Every student/cadet is there on “full scholarship.”
Cacti
Stolen valor if you’re a Dem. IOKIYAR if you’re not.
Betty Cracker
If logic played a part in it, the same people who say Hillary’s Bosnia hallucination is disqualifying would have to apply the same standard to Carson. But he’s milking the “liberal MSM is out to get me” meme for all it’s worth. Possibly it’ll work.
Amir Khalid
The Republican presidential candidates this cycle have been lying or bullshitting on a regular basis about a lot of things. I wonder if Dr Ben’s, ahem, economies with the truth about his personal history will really disqualify him in his supporters’ eyes. It seems just as likely they’ll merely get bored with him, and move on to some other favourite of the week.
Paul in KY
@WJS: I’m thinking Brave Sir Ben will now claim they were ‘memoirs’ (like the Million Little Pieces fiction).
Paul in KY
@mistermix: They were on a date? Would be irresponsible not to speculate…
raven
@mistermix: I went in on my 17th birthday, Westy didn’t come see me!
Paul in KY
@raven: Hear, hear!!
peach flavored shampoo
All this, yet Ben had the dumpster-size balls to say that the MSM are all a bunch of pathetic liars and meddling punks just last nite. Timing’s a bitch.
Tom Levenson
Re docs: my former Asst. US Atty. relative told me that in law enforcement, doctors are known to be the easiest marks for financial cons, with surgeons being the biggest patsies. They are, apparently, so used to be treated as the most utterly accomplished person in the room that they cannot imagine themselves as patsies. They are unable to grasp the old poker line, “if you look around the table and don’t see the sucker, you’re it.”
JPL
IOKIYR
Bush was Awol and Cheney had five deferments. Their savior Rush avoided the service also
OzarkHillbilly
@Punchy: They migrated south for the winter.
Peale
@Amir Khalid: Well, you have Trump saying that he never had help from his father. Both Cruz and Rubio lying fleeing from Castro. Fiorina rising from Secretary to successful HP boss. I think the most honest biography of the bunch is Bush.
Renie
Are his supporters going to claim the ‘liberal’ media is out to get him?
OT The ads are way too big and obnoxious.
Grumpy Code Monkey
Isn’t that how it’s gone the past few cycles? The mavericky outsider gets all the press and wins Iowa, but by Stupor Tuesday the “establishment” candidate is clearly the winner.
It ain’t gonna be Trump or Carson or Fiorina. It will be one of Bush, Cruz, or Rubio. I know his campaign so far has been a non-stop replay of every bad disaster movie ever made, but I’m not sure that Bush won’t be the least objectionable option by the time most of the shouting is over.
Starfish
@Punchy: The buttons were white text on light gray. I am glad they are gone. Here is your handy new guide.
<b>whining</b> Bold
<i>whining</i> Italics
<s>whining</s>
strikethrough<blockquote>whining</blockquote>
The hard one:
<a href=”http://www.foxnews.com”>stupidity</a>
links
Amir Khalid
@Punchy:
They’re getting a touch-up at the paint shop, so I hear.
raven
“Project 100,000 was initiated by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara in October 1966 to meet the escalating manpower requirements during American involvement in the Vietnam War and ended in December 1971.[3] Promoted as a response to Johnson’s War on Poverty by giving training and opportunity to the uneducated and poor, the recruited men were classified as “New Standards Men” (or, informally and pejoratively, as the “Moron Corps”[4]) and had scored in Category IV of the Armed Forces Qualification Test, which placed them in the 10-30 percentile range.[5] The number of soldiers reportedly recruited through the program varies, from more than 320,000[5] to 354,000, which included both volunteers and conscripts (54% to 46%).[3] Entrance requirements were loosened, but all the Project 100,000 men were sent through the normal training processes with other recruits, and performance standards thus were the same for everyone.[6]
Project 100,000 soldiers included those unable to speak English, of low aptitude, with physical impairments, as well as those who were too short or too tall or were overweight or underweight, among other categories. They also included a special category—a control group of acceptable soldiers. Each of the different categories was identified in their official personnel records with a large red letter stamped on the first page of their enlistment contract. Human resources offices had to prepare reports on them, to be submitted monthly to Department of the Army. The monthly reports did not include the identity of the soldiers.”
They took his place.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@Peale:
Born on third base, thought he hit a double?
trollhattan
It’s hard to envision Carson’s card home staying upright much longer–he’s singularly unsuited to close public scrutiny and at some point will be mortally wounded. And his supporters will put it down to evil media bias, the poor, poor fellow.
Tonight would be good.
rikyrah
told you all – never worried about Unca Ben. Knew that the GOP Establishment would handle him.
trollhattan
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
I see what you did there.
Face
What’s stunning to me is that Carson thought that faking not just an application but admission to West Point would be something that couldn’t be easily disproven. I mean, he’s not bullshitting an acceptance letter from some lackey at NorthEast Tennessee State University at Clarksville; he has completed fabricated acceptance to West Freakin’ Point. 2 phone calls and BOOM, he’s a proven liar.
Can a man this stupid really be the GOP nominee (with 45% of the votes in the bank)?
Origuy
Doctor Ben will say that his acceptance letter is in the Bible, right after the part where Joseph built the pyramids.
Tommy Young
I could almost give him a pass if it was just one thing. But it appears from this, to the stabbing thing, to who knows how many others, much of his narrative is made up. I said give a pass, because as I have gotten into my mid-40s I am sure a story about my life from say when I was 18, although the core and most of it totally true, has taken on a little here or there to make it sound a little better. But again I didn’t make the shit up.
Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA
@Face:
Not a bug. A feature.
Germy Shoemangler
@Starfish: I think you have to use “em” for italics, if you go back to edit your comments.
Felonius Monk
Ben Carson (R -Stupidville) has even doubled down on his assertion that the Pyramids were built to store grain. Coupled with the story at the top I guess that proves that Ben Carson (R – Stupidville) was built to store bullshit.
MattF
Yeah, Ben lied. Repeatedly. And it’s a big lie. Yooooge. Hard to overlook that, you’d think– but we shall see.
p.a.
You all are missing the big picture here: the US Military Academy is now controlled by lieberal Amrica haterz! Help us Annapolis-kenobi. You’re our only hope.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
This guy shakes his head, you can hear the screws rattle around, why is it so hard to say: He’s loopy, goofy, flip-city, ya hear? Boop-shooby.
The fact that a gifted surgeon can be so nuts is just one more fascinating mystery of the human brain.
mistermix
A surgeon and a psychiatrist get on an elevator. The doors are closing and someone says “hold it”. The psychiatrist puts his hand out to stop the doors from closing. The surgeon gasps and asks if the psychiatrist isn’t worried about damaging his hands. The psychiatrist says, “I don’t use them much in my line of work so I’m not that concerned.”
Next day, the surgeon is on the same elevator and someone says “hold it”. He sticks his head between the doors.
Cacti
The funniest part about all of this is that while Ben will rail away at the “liberal media,” this story was almost certainly fed to them by another GOP candidate’s opposition research team.
Germy Shoemangler
@rikyrah: told you all – never worried about Unca Ben. Knew that the GOP Establishment would handle him.
He’s okay being the GOP’s “black friend” but winning the nomination? That’d be like him dating their sister. They draw a line and it will not be crossed.
Steeplejack
@Starfish:
At least as of late last night, <i> doesn’t work any more; you have to use <em>.
Test: Does <i> work for italics? . . . No, it does not.
Germy Shoemangler
@Cacti: Jeb’s opposition team?
My guess his strategy is to have his people knock them down one by one. That’s what he means by fixing it.
Comrade Jake
Erick the Erickson says he’s toast:
http://www.redstate.com/2015/11/06/the-beginning-of-ben-carsons-end/
“As CNN goes after the knifing story and now the Carson campaign is admitting this fabrication, we’re about to see a novice politician with a less than highly skilled campaign begin to head into a storm the candidate himself created.”
Betty Cracker
@JPL: I thought an ass cyst had Rush removed. It probably went on to serve honorably!
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Frank:
I can’t remember if I heard this joke here or somewhere else, but I know it came from a nurse:
Q: How do you say “Fuck you” in Tagalog?
A: “Yes, doctor, right away.”
Hoodie
Sounds like Ben thought he was Forrest Gump. Wonder what other apocrypha he’s come up with?
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Was working on a vet’s (Nam) house yesterday. The man got shot, blown up, and stabbed. His aorta has blockage as well as the main artery to 1 or both kidneys and he is playing hell with the VA. Likes his care there…. when he can get it. But Sullivan is putting him behind a podium for Veterans Day so they can all thank him for his service.
p.a.
@Steeplejack: this morning I used it. It worked on mobile, didn’t work (same comment) on desktop.
Steeplejack
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
Well, in fairness, he did steal second (from third), to get back to where he thought he should be.
Felonius Monk
Carson continues to complain that the secular progressives and the liberal media are making up lies about him. The only one making up lies about Ben Carson is Ben Carson.
Calouste
Duh. Doctors (surgeons specifically) make a career out of cutting into live human bodies. Who except a sociopath would like to do that?
Jeffro
OT but it has a political line in it: WaPo columnist urges the Washington Football Team to play its second string against the Patriots this weekend
“DeSean Jackson is finally ready to play. Jordan Reed seems relatively okay. Kerrigan and Chris Culliver are plucky, but banged-up. These are all key pieces, and they’re all currently fragile. Why waste any of their health points in a lost cause? Is Bernie Sanders going to pour precious resources into Alabama? Is The Washington Post going to spend marketing money hawking print subscriptions to millennials?”
Germy Shoemangler
CARSON PLUMMETS IN POLLS AMID REPORTS HE DID NOT STAB ANYONE
BY ANDY BOROWITZ
Carson supporters, reeling from the news that their candidate’s past might have been devoid of stabbing, have deserted his candidacy in droves.
Amir Khalid
George Walker Bush shirked much of his service in the Air National Guard, after HW pulled strings to get him in as an alternative to fighting in Vietnam. Yet that didn’t seem to make W any less electable, did it? As deplorable as it is for Dr Ben to lie about West Point, I doubt that by itself it will do his candidacy much harm .
raven
@Tommy Young: Really, you could give him a pass on lying about the fucking military when we were up to our ass in Charlie?
Grumpy Code Monkey
@Steeplejack: I use <em> for italics and <strong> for bold. And for anyone who needs it, hyperlinks are done using <a href=” URL ” >link text</a>
raven
Obama just rejected Keystone
Cacti
@Germy Shoemangler:
My first guess was Jeb too.
Something like this is way too subtle for any of the other clowns.
I’ve also heard Romney suggested.
Cervantes
@Gin & Tonic:
Yes, so it’s not that Carson shouldn’t have said that; it’s more that everyone admitted can say it.
Not counting the whole “lying through one’s teeth” part, of course.
Steeplejack
@p.a.:
The mobile version of the site has reverted to the old version; I believe that’s why <i> works there.
Tommy Young
@Face: All the other stuff he has done I don’t think it will hurt him much with the far right of this party. This with military people will hurt. There are more than a few organization and people that work 24/7 to call out people that lie about military service or the medals they have earned. You say you got a Purple Heart or you served here or there and that comes into the public light, because usually you are running for office, and those things are not true, you are going to get called on it now with the Internet and Social Media.
You’d have to be an idiot at a level even above where I thought Carson was to think you could get away with this …..
But like Josh has been asking at TPM for days if not weeks, who really is running Carson’s camapign? And is it a campaign or a direct mail scam that just happened to “catch fire” and vault him to the top of the polls.
srv
The more Carson speaks, the crazier he sounds. The more Trump speaks, the more sense he makes.
Except for Iowa, people will get it.
raven
@Gin & Tonic: I had a McNamara Fellowship of Southeast Asian Studies!
The Other Chuck
@Face:
Only a man that stupid can be the GOP nominee.
Steeplejack
@Jeffro:
Great idea! Why not just forfeit the game and save the travel expenses?
Omnes Omnibus
@raven: Well played.
Felonius Monk
Looks like the Buttons are still on strike.
Calouste
@Tommy Young: I think Ben Carson was a boring, hardworking, youth from a disadvantaged background who, with assistance from the government, went on to have a successful medical career. As he climbed the societal ladder, he found that people on the same rung as him looked down on his boring, hardworking, disadvantaged background, something that got worse the farther up he got. Instead of taking pride in what he had achieved compared to where he came from, he started to make stuff up to make himself more interesting. The man just is unhappy with himself.
Paul in KY
@raven: I don’t blame him for not wanting to go. Only a whackjob wanted to go. However, he’s lying about getting a scholarship to West Point (plus a dinner with 4 star general Westmorland). All to gull the rubes.
Steeplejack
@raven:
LOL. Was it pass/fail?
MazeDancer
@MattF:
The Fox biz moderators may choose not to bring up West Point or the no-actual-scripture-in-Bible-about-it Grain storing Pyramids, but the Donald will. Early and often.
Carson’s repeated mention of the “full scholarship” offer from West Point adds even more potential for stolen valor. Since West Point is “free”. 100% of the student body is on a full ride. Because there is no cost. All service academies cost zero for the real attendees. Taxpayer dollars in action.
Bad con when you don’t get your “facts” straight before lying.
raven
@Paul in KY: Me neither, I especially admire the people who stood up and said “no”. Fuck a lying sonofabitch.
Renie
How do you think will get his supporters? Trump (for those voting non-politician) or Cruz (for those voting pyramids of grain religious fanatics)
gogol's wife
italics and then bold and
I don’t know why the buttons have disappeared.
italics
Marmot
“It’s been eye opening how many doctors are just sociopaths.”
Bit of a shock, isn’t it? Was for me too. I think it owes from all those bright young sociopaths of yesteryear seeking out the most lucrative and esteemed career available then. They go into finance nowadays. I think.
gogol's wife
Doesn’t work for italics
JPL
@Tommy Young: Carson did say the American people will decide whether they agree with CNN that he is a “pathological liar.”
benw
Carson’s so nutty they ought to put him in a Snickers bar.
gogol's wife
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
How the hell can anyone memorize that?
And, by the way, stewardess, I speak Russian.
The Other Chuck
@Marmot: Sociopaths tend to excel in jobs where their decisions are literally life or death. No empathy getting in the way of doing what needs to be done. Usually this works out for everyone involved, but when it doesn’t, hoo boy.
Germy Shoemangler
@MazeDancer: I don’t think the Donald will have much to say about Ben’s West Point career.
According to Trump’s Selective Service records, first obtained by the website The Smoking Gun through a Freedom of Information Act request, Trump received four student deferments between 1964 and 1968 while in college and an additional medical deferment after graduating.
Calouste
@Amir Khalid: W is an old money upper class white guy. Carson is a parvenu of the melanin-enhanced variety, he has barely any credits in the bank to waste on stuff like this.
varmintito
I think this one might have teeth. The other embellishments to his bio (stickup at Popeyes, stabbing friend, snake oil salesman) is stuff where GOP primary voters don’t really care whether it’s true or false, and the facts are either hard to prove/disprove (the Popeyes stickup and the stabbing) or subject to definitional dispute (what is an “endorsement”).
This seems different for two reasons.
1. The military is a talisman on the right.
2. There is no factual or definitional ambiguity here. West Point officials have stated in clear terms that they keep records of all applications and admissions, and they state that no such records exist for Carson. Plus he fessed up.
Elie
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
I’m with you. To back up the logic that the early crazies won’t win the Republican nomination, check out this article on 538.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-gops-primary-rules-might-doom-carson-and-cruz/
BTW the quote, bold, italic and link buttons aren’t working — aren’t even appearing on my comment box
raven
“I also represented the Junior ROTC at a dinner for Congressional Medal of Honor winners, marched at the front of Detroit’s Memorial Day parade as head of an ROTC contingent, and was offered a full scholarship to West Point.”
Minor point but there is no such thing as the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Elie
For some reason, my comment agreeing that the early favorites won’t win the nomination, is in moderation?
gogol's wife
italics
Germy Shoemangler
@raven: They like using the word Congressional.
http://www.cmohs.org
gian
I thought it was a congressional appointment to the military academies. Was I wrong?
Elie
@varmintito:
I anticipate a lot more revelations of this nature and just crazy grandiosity (which is what this really is). Narcissists can’t stop themselves from grandiosity of some sort. Whether its unnecessary lies about themselves or sweeping “ideas” or notions about how things are or should be, they can’t NOT do it. As I said, the more we see and know, the more it will reinforce his complete unsuitability for any office.
Amir Khalid
@gogol’s wife:
You need to put em inside the angle brackets to get italics. Like so:
italics
bold
link (to YouTube video)
Kelly
@Tom Levenson: After 40 years or so of somewhat risky wilderness adventures my worst companion was an Ivy League surgeon who seemed to figure he was immune to vagaries of weather and gravity. The best was an ER doc from a state school. The consistently best companions have been firemen.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Ha!
gogol's wife
@Amir Khalid:
How did you do “link”?
Tommy Young
@Calouste: I agree with you 100%. The guy had a pretty darn amazing story to start with, not sure why he had to start making stuff up when it starting writing books. I think you might have hit the nail on the head of why when you said this:
The story has been posted a lot like at TPM and Daily Kos. Carson was in Israel early in this run for President. He ran into a group of African Americans from a Baptist church in the US. They knew who he was in a second, because yeah Carson is kind of a rock star in the African American community (and I think he should be based on his professional life and his story — even when he doesn’t lie about it).
I don’t think it would be unfair to argue, outside of some sports stars that made it big in business (like Magic Johnson) Carson might be known as one of the most successful African Americans of his generation.
They’re taking selfies with him. Mobbing him. When he leaves a reporters asks a few of the people if they would vote for him. They kind of laugh and say, “he is a Republican right?!”
I guess in a long-winded way his life story is amazing. What he did as a doctor, also amazing. The African American community both loves and respects him, even if they wouldn’t vote for him. In my world that is a win, win, and another win. Why flipping lie and ruin that?
MattF
@gian: Congressional appointment is one way in, you can also apply directly.
benw
@raven:
Huzzay! From the NYT: “A 7-Year Battle Ends in a Victory for Environmentalists”. I haven’t believed I’d read a sentence like that in a long time.
Of course, I’d like the NYTimes and other media to further point out that victories for environmentalists are victories for all of humanity, since severe climate change will kill an awful lot of us, and a defeat for environmentalists is usually a win for 2 or 3 rich white dudes, but I hear my magical rainbow unicorn is in backorder. :(
Really?
“If he told me the world was round I’d be afraid of falling off the edge.”
joel hanes
It’s been eye opening how many doctors are just sociopaths.
Shouldn’t be.
In the US, doctors are very highly compensated.
And, as we have learned from well-conducted studies, as people become financially successful, they tend to lose their empathy and identification with others, particularly with those that are not successful. They tend to become less generous, less public-spirited, and less forgiving.
In short: wealth is a spiritual toxin, as that Yeshua fellow tried to tell us a couple millennia ago.
MattF
@gogol’s wife: Some years ago I spent a year writing and then (machine) parsing XML files and become a local expert in the XML spec. After a while, writing tags becomes sort-of automatic.
Joel
Carson is the Gingrich of this campaign. He’s done before the New Year.
Mike J
@gogol’s wife:
Easy once you understand the underlying structure.
Steeplejack
@gogol’s wife:
Right now you have to do it the Grumpy Code Monkey way—the thing you said you couldn’t memorize.
<a href="URL">TEXT</a>
My advice: don’t sweat it, just put in the naked hyperlink for now.
Sherparick
@Betty Cracker: @gogol’s wife: An technically he never claimed he went to West Point, just that he could have. Of course it is a lie (or at best a false memory) and the dead give away for anyone with any knowledge it the part about “full scholarship” since all Cadets and Midshipman in the military academies are already in the military and going to school on the Government dime while drawing a small salary, they are all on the same boat, no scholarship required. I expect he will play the victim card and in sense this misses the bigger picture of what a nut he is, and that the base that supports him is nuts.
It does bring up that Bosnian story of Clinton’s which I am afraid does her no good. I think this kind of thing goes to the story telling creatures we humans are. When telling them, we are constantly tempted to gild the lily to please and excite our audience. But BS over beers is one thing. Putting something out when one is running for President, that causes problems.
Elie
@Amir Khalid:
Are the buttons going away for good?
Not sure I am understanding your instruction… WHAT angle brackets? Also how to link?
Mike J
@raven:
Common nickname though, embedded in federal law. See 18 U.S.C. § 704.
rk
“It will be interesting to see how the Republican base reacts- generally, faking or fabricating military service is one of the unforgivable sins, or so they say’
I don’t know if comment sections below the politico article is an accurate reflection of the republican base, because if it is then nothing will ever penetrate their thick skulls. It’s nothing but comment after comment about Hillary, Hitlery, Benghazi etc. Just take a look at your own troll “A guy”. This is the mentality you’re dealing with. Nothing will change them, nothing will affect them. Facts are meaningless. This the way they are and this is the way they’ll be. You just hope that the sane people in this world outnumber the insane. Some days though I doubt it.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@gogol’s wife:
I posted this late yesterday, but you can download all of the lyrics from the “Hamilton” cast album for free from Atlantic Records:
http://atlanticrecords.com/HamiltonMusic/
It’s sung (and rapped) Broadway style, so it’s pretty easy to hear, but there are a few spots with overlapping lyrics where it might help.
Tommy Young
@gogol’s wife: Would it be helpful to you and others if I put these basic codes in the sidebar for the next couple weeks until the new commenting system is done? I’d do it now, but kind of “off-the-clock” because the server is being flaky and if I even do the most basic thing on the backend of WordPress I tend to lock up the server for a couple minutes on the backend. Last time it also did it here on the front end. So I’d rather get that fixed and work this weekend than risk crashing this site for a few minutes (or longer) in the middle of the day.
gogol's wife
@Tommy Young:
I guess I know them now, but maybe it would help others like me and Elie.
Amir Khalid
@Tommy Young:
I knew a guy at work, a long time ago, who made up shit about himself. Some time later I met him and a mutual friend for dinner, and Freddy Mercury came up in the conversation (this was the week that Mercury disclosed his HIV+ status, just before his death). Suddenly my friend came up with this story that his dad had been on the same masters degree course with Freddy Mercury. The other friend and I agreed afterwards, there was no way this story could be true. (Mercury was a graphic designer by training, per Wikipedia, and never did a masters degree course.) The kind of people who do this just can’t help themselves; they do it on the spur of the moment.
Elie
@Sherparick:
Its not one isolated story in Carson’s case. Its a whole pattern of exaggeration and hyperbole. Yes, of course, all politicians exaggerate or embellish a story here and there. In his case there is an alarming tendency to conjure up all kinds of fantastical theories and notions about reality or HIS version of reality anyway. THAT is not common and I don’t see Hillary doing that.
Mike J
For people lost without the formatting toolbar, if you’re on firefox, you could try the text formatting toolbar.
Elie
@gogol’s wife:
Yes, I would definitely appreciate it..
thank you
gogol's wife
@Elie:
I think it’s just temporary until they fix the commenting system. The angle brackets are on your keyboard. On mine they’re the shift version of comma and period. If you scroll up to the Grumpy Code Monkey comment, he shows you how to do it.
Patricia Kayden
So when does Dr. Carson admit that running for the President was a huge mistake for his reputation and legacy? Most of us had no issues with him when all we knew about him was that he was an accomplished surgeon. Now, he’s been outed as a bigot, liar and idiot. I am almost embarrassed for him and his family — but not quite.
Shouldn’t have listened to those voices in your head telling you to run, Dr. Carson. Should have kept your backside at home. The jig is up.
MattF
@Amir Khalid: I don’t see that applying to Carson. We’re talking books, inspirational speeches– the whole little Carson-glorification/grift industry is going to need a reset.
Amir Khalid
@Elie:
Das weiß ich nicht. You’ll have to ask Tommy.
The “angle brackets” I speak of are (shift)comma and (shift)period on my laptop keyboard.
rikyrah
Hope you are feeling better, Cole.
cmorenc
I could envision that Carson may actually have, as a 17yo, dined at the same table with Gen. Westmoreland, during the course of which Gen. Westmoreland made a passing comment to Carson encouraging him to apply to West Point – which encounter became, over time, inflated in Carson’s mind to his having been offered a de facto entree into West Point – and his failure to follow-up on Westmoreland’s passing comment also became inflated in Carson’s mind with Carson having turned down an actual offer to go to West Point. It’s quite common for big-name alums of big-name colleges to flatter young men and women who make a superficially favorable impression, with encouragement for these young folks to apply to their alma mater. This does not, however, amount to a promise to give said young person an actual key to admission, and even as a potential offer to serve as a “reference” should be taken with huge grains of salt – there’s a world of difference between given soft permission to mention some bigwig’s name as a passive reference and a promise to use their muscle for more active intervention in the process…
At best, this instance exhibits a hugely naive misunderstanding and grossly disproportionate inflation of a casual encounter with Gen. Westmoreland by Carson, of the sort which calls into question what else in his self-told biography may be grossly distorted, exaggerated, or more fictional than factual.
Tommy Young
@Elie: Frankly I am unsure and I am the person that will implement the new commenting system.
Here is where we are. There is NO good commenting system for WordPress. Period. Well that isn’t true, there are two really good ones. But they take “ownership” of the comments and the comments are not in this WordPress install, but on their server. We didn’t even have to present this as an option to John, because it is a “no go” for many reasons.
So we tried to find the best commenting system that did what we thought most here wanted with the comment stored locally. That was harder than you might have thought and I tested around 15. As it would happen, we liked the 16th one we tested. But it doesn’t do everything people want. Someplace, with any of them, we are going to lose some functionality while gaining other stuff.
Now you might ask why not use what Balloon Juice was using. Well that was not a commenting system. It was the WordPress commenting system with 5 different plugins laid over it. To give you an example, the text below the comment box that had HTML code, that was one plugin. Another to allow you to edit your comment. Another for the buttons across the top. On and on and on.
To say it was duct taped together with spit would be an understatement. It also wouldn’t run on a current/most updated version of WordPress or a modern theme.
You might not like this theme and what we did with it, but put that aside, if we/you found a theme you LOVED it wouldn’t work with it either.
Now finally. This commenting system was just released. My partner, who is much better with server side things and PHP is working with them directly to attempt, as they launch updates (doing so almost daily) to get the feature we want. I hope we get all of them, like the buttons you referenced, but I can’t promise that.
I hope that all made sense …….
Frankensteinbeck
@Renie:
Nobody is voting ‘non-politician’, or at least not enough to bother with. Trump catapulted into the lead by saying Mexicans are rapists and murderers. Carson and Trump attract different kinds of racists, that’s all. I still can’t answer your question, because they are different kinds.
Jeffro
@Steeplejack: I think Vegas would be unhappy about all those missed bets. At least with the 2nd team out there, the oddsmakers can set a line and rake in some dough.
Punchy
@benw: I reject Keystone, too. Shit is just nasty. Only a step above Milwaukee’s Best, and a step or 2 below Natty Lite.
Paul in KY
@raven: I have heard it called that: ‘Congressional Medal of Honor’.
rikyrah
@Tommy Young:
It wasn’t just fundie Christians who bought his books.
I am Black and have followed Dr. Carson for at least 15 years.
I respected his story.
I even respected that he had to get his shyt together as a teen, but lived up to the promise that others saw in him.
Which is why I hold him in such contempt now.
How dare someone who got everything he has because of a Government Program, turn around and spout the bullshyt that he does now.
PS- I went to quote something, and there was no blockquote button…what happened to it?
Elie
@Patricia Kayden:
He cannot stop it. Its a compulsion — the need to say grandiose things is a feature of his personality. It was part of his very successful work as a neurosurgeon — thinking big — as he calls it and instructs young people to do. Of course, he is spurred to ever greater heights and the attention he gets is an elixir that compels him to continue. He is unable to “feel” others’ concerns about his truthfulness or fantastical ideas — its a kind of “mind blindness”. He has limited empathy or ability to see from others’ perspective so exagerations where he is caught hold no particular risk or fear for him… He really does not care what we think about him.. we’re not relevant
Paul in KY
@Kelly: Are you the Kelly that has been on Survivor?
Kay
@Joel:
“Carson is the Gingrich of this campaign. He’s done before the New Year.”
He’s the fundie religious candidate. I wonder who they go to after he’s out. Has to be Ted Cruz. I watched one of Cruz’s “chat with the crowd” events on CSPAN and all his followers believe they’re the victims of religious persecution and need some kind of federal law (?) to protect them, so Cruz has a good of chunk of them now.
Mandalay
@raven:
This. I’m surprised at the casual shrugs in this thread. Maybe they’ll be proven correct, and his lie will fizzle into a nothingburger, but I thought what Carson did was beneath contempt.
SFAW
@gogol’s wife:
Oh yeah?
How do you say “sheee-it” pa Russki?
ETA: And, no, “Golly!” is not Russian.
Paul in KY
@Really?: “If he told me the sun rose in the East, I’d have to go outside to see it for myself”
Trentrunner
Carson’s spokesliar Armstrong Williams is on CNN saying that Politico’s West Point story is 1) contradictory, 2) covers things that happened decades ago, 3) changes nothing.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
If you’re on an iPhone or iPad and trying to find the carets they’re on the “#+=” keyboard. Hit “123” for the numeric keyboard and a button for the “#+=” keyboard takes the place of the shift key.
Frankensteinbeck
@rikyrah:
Yep. I’m not black, but I’ve heard him give his ‘blacks these days are lazy’ speech on FOX. I don’t resent anybody getting rich and successful, but You Do Not Pull The Ladder Up After You. And shitting on his own people, when racism is the driving issue of Republican politics? Jesus, what a supreme asshole.
Elie
@rikyrah:
the buttons are being worked on. There are complex instructions to use if you want to use them in the interim, but I am just going to limp along without…
gogol's wife
@SFAW:
У-У-У-бля
Kay
@Elie:
I was looking at the comments from people who read his book and they fall into two neat categories “inspiring amazing person!” or “he’s an egomaniac”
cmorenc
One other thing about the MSM finally focusing on more critical details about both Rubio’s and Carson’s biographies – to what extent might this reflect the Bush dirty-tricks machine finally getting in gear, albeit so far mostly working with bona fide available damaging material, without (yet) delving into malevolently distorted or fictional levels a la Willie Horton or John McCain in 2000 in South Carolina. Which if Jeb! still remains mired in single-digits come December or January, may yet be forthcoming. Given the Bush political family’s past track record, they won’t let Jeb! go down without without their first resorting to this level of sabotage of other candidates to try to resuscitate Jab!’s prospects .
gogol's wife
@SFAW:
У-У-У-бля
But the first time I tried this comment it didn’t post, so maybe we can’t have Cyrillic any more, so
OOOOH –blya!
Docg
In reading one of Carson’s publications, couldn’t help but notice that his authorship was cited as Carson, BS.
Tommy Young
@rikyrah: Glad to hear you say that and that I wasn’t off base.
I just find it amazing (in a good way) a community follows him. That he was mobbed by that group of people who knew exactly who he was in a second, had a ton of respect for him, wanted to take selfies with him, but asked if they’d vote for him they laughed out loud.
This is my minor in psychology coming out …. but I wonder if he is so removed from a lower, or even the middle class lifestyle that at John Hopkins and the circles he ran around in, his story was kind of boring (if not embarrassing) to him. Folks with Senators as fathers. Elite prep schools. Traveling around the world. Living in huge houses, that he felt the need to lie and exaggerate his life story to make it more interesting. To make him more interesting at dinner parties.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Good christ. The USSC is accepting another case about Obama, about contraception, again.
Paul in KY
@Elie: Supposedly, in his big ole house there is a very flattering full length portrait of Brave Sir Ben, with glowing light all around him. People who have seen it say it is very strange.
Ruckus
@Cervantes:
Aren’t the military academies the only schools where the students actually get a paycheck? Wouldn’t that and a full scholarship be considered a full ride?
princess leia
@cmorenc: There is evidence the General was nowhere near the dinner.
Elie
@cmorenc:
We have no reason to discount the effectiveness of the Bush Crime Family. I’m sure they did their homework digging up dirt on opponents before letting Jeb! jump in and will redouble their efforts to help him survive this. He still has a shot if the primary allocation method that the Republicans use is indeed a factor (which there is no reason to doubt). Here is the article about that on 538
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-gops-primary-rules-might-doom-carson-and-cruz/
Elizabelle
@Tommy Young: Hi there.
You might have answered this elsewhere. Is it possible to return to numbering the comments?
That turns out to have been huge in navigating the blog, for me anyway.
Find it interesting that neither the NYTimes or WaPost number comments any longer. Perhaps the newer software does not permit that, and it’s a loss.
Thank you.
rikyrah
@Patricia Kayden:
Well, it depends upon what you think his purpose was…I believe the purpose was to hitch himself to the GOP Grifting Train. At each stop, he’s collecting addressed, phone numbers and emails from the rubes, and will be sending them stuff about books, tapes, dvds, come out and meet me – of course, for a $$$$.
Democrats run for President…
GOPers run for the grift…now, there are varying degrees of the grift, but the grift is real. Rachel Maddow has done segments explaining about the grift..I honestly didn’t understand clearly until I saw those segments.
And, the only people with whom he has ruined his reputation is Black folks, but he doesn’t care about that, because of all the White rubes he has signed up during this grifting tour.
Tommy Young
@Mandalay: Oh I didn’t mean I’d give him a pass on the military service or West Point. I guess I wasn’t clear, I think many of his other lies he will get away with, and one of them I might be able to give a pass. But the military service I can’t/won’t give a pass and many to the far right and military will not either. Armstrong Williams better have a really, really good answer for this or Carson starting today and moving forward is going to get savaged in the media from military folks across the political spectrum (as he should be BTW).
Elie
@Paul in KY:
Not surprised. ALL that shit is gonna come out — as well as some people with very interesting stories about him. I hope he and his family are ready for the ride. Narcissists are also perennially naïve. They and he may not be prepared at all — they have never had to be.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Won’t do a damn thing to him WRT GOP primary voters.
That being said, he never could and never would be the candidate, melanin content of the skin being the issue. The GOP base is fine with having him as a buddy. They will not allow him to become the boss. Ever.
Aaron
@Betty Cracker: I don’t consider her sniper story, to be an fabrication. She was told that there was gunfire in the area, and she remembered it as being much scarier then it actually was.
Tommy Young
@Elizabelle: That has been covered about 100 times :).
Yes with the new system the comments will be numbered.
Now because some here think I am rigid and don’t listen, there is this.
I didn’t think the numbered comments was a “big” deal when first brought up. Now I have been in a few thread not entirely about the site, I miss the numbered comments :). There I was wrong, that is a very, very nice feature to have and I didn’t realize it until I didn’t have it.
Penus
@Calouste:
I think it’s more insidious than that. His entire campaign is laden with respectability politics. His narrative is that he was an angry black child who, through the virtues of conservatism, piety and bootstraps, turned himself into One Of The Good Ones. That’s why they trot him out.
Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA
@Trentrunner: I remember Armstrong Williams — he got busted for taking money from the Bush Administration to push their policies on his radio show.
In a normal world, I’d be amazed that the guy shows his face in public.
Elie
@Tommy Young:
Nope. Trust me. You will see. He can’t stop.
Linnaeus
@Paul in KY:
You do hear that name used frequently, but that’s not the official name of the award. It’s just “Medal of Honor”.
Re “full scholarship”, that’s a tell, but a clever way for Carson to have gotten out of that one would have been to say something along the lines of “I was told I’d get in and everything was paid for, which I thought was a scholarship”.
John D.
@raven: While its formal name is “Medal of Honor”, it is very, very common to see it referred to as “Congressional Medal of Honor”, since it is awarded in “the name of Congress”.
Bubblegum Tate
@Frank:
So I guess I should be glad that my dad (cardiologist) is just kinda right-leaning (mostly for the tax cuts, doesn’t give a crap about the Bible-thumping or any aspects of social conservatism, not a Fox News watcher) and not a full-blown wingnut, huh?
elspi
Ben Carson is not a doctor. Ben Carson is a surgeon. Which means he is good with his hands, and was able to get into medical school. Most doctors view surgeons as somewhat useful idiots (or so my dad always told me).
SFAW
@gogol’s wife:
Спасибо
Amir Khalid
@MattF:
Dr Ben might not be liar, as such, but rather a confabulist. That’s my layman’s guess at what my friend was.
rikyrah
@Tommy Young:
Tommy,
He was the focus of plenty of articles in Jet Magazine. Anytime he did one of those rare-type surgeries, he wound up in Jet/Ebony.
His was an BLACK American success story that didn’t involve someone:
a) having a ball in his hand
b) having someone pay a ticket to you see perform
He became a standout in his field through his skillset and hard work.
He used EDUCATION.
His entire story was something the every middle-class Black child was told over and over to do.
That he did it from the Projects, with an illiterate welfare-getting mother only added to it.
That he seemed to be a devoted husband and father, and had his mother live his family only added to his story.
I wasn’t kidding when I said that I’ve followed him for at least 15 years.
SFAW
@elspi:
He’s a doctor, he’s just not a medical person (in the sense that people in “the healing arts” make a distinction between the medical and surgical practitioners).
Unless you tell me that he never earned an MD, that is.
Benw
@Punchy: I only drink Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters.
sharl
@Tommy Young: Thanks for this explanation Tommy. Somewhere the last few days I’d read in comments here that there was a lot of stuff that was kluged together under the hood, and the instabilities had finally become too significant to be ignored any longer. [Mistermix’s quiet but obviously extensive involvement suggested that might be the case.]
Your explanation is an excellent specific example of that very thing, at least to this non-IT person.
pamelabrown53
@Tommy Young:
Tommy, don’t try to make this into a democracy You’re just asking for more cirrus.. We know changes are coming and hopefully most of us are adult enough that we can wait for the changes.
a different chris
This won’t sink Carson’s campaign. For some reason, you guys are forgetting he and his supporters live over in the Up Is Down universe. He’ll probably get a 3 or 4 point bump from this.
Kay
@Elie:
I don’t know if this is a proven fact or anything, but stories that are exaggerated or made up tend to be really specific. It’s not that all stories with details are made up, it’s that all made up stories include a lot of detail. It’s almost like people think if they recite tiny details that makes the story more credible, when actually most people don’t remember details and even perfectly honest people can get dates and places mixed up- big errors or omissions.
There’s a weird thing people do too, where they say “I remember because….” in a way that is always volunteered so sounds defensive (to me) – no one asked why they remember what they were wearing or whatever, nor would anyone ask that, because it doesn’t matter.
Elie
@Amir Khalid:
I think its more than that for Dr. Carson – sadly, though being a confabulist is part of the constellation of traits related to his personality disorder. Narcissists are typically very high functioning — and he is…
Mandalay
@Tommy Young: Gotcha – it will be interesting to see whether Carson survives his WestPoint lie. CNN has been kicking the shit out of him but the right are already arguing that the real issue is that the media overlook all the lies from Obama and Clinton. I don’t think that kind of deflection is going to work here though.
O/T: That tab functionality doesn’t work in Maxthon (http://www.maxthon.com/).
Elie
@a different chris:
Not yet. But it will.
Tommy Young
@rikyrah: That is all so wonderful to hear and now so sad he is doing what he is doing. Raised as a white upper-middle-class dude I didn’t lack for rolemodels. That Carson was such a rock star he was written up in Jet/Ebony for doing doctor stuff (again, how freaking cool is that), that would be like me being on the cover of Rolling Stone or Wired Magazine.
But this also goes to something else I often think a lot about. Why do people even want to run for President? Clearly Carson (and many others) could do whatever they want. Write books. Run a think tank, heck found your own think tank. Teach. Go on speaking tours. Or any combo of those and make “generational” money.
I think it has to be ego. Pure ego, and IMHO that is often their downfall when they run. And I think we’re starting to see it here with Carson and I know, I know we’ll see it before long with Trump.
SiubhanDuinne
@Tommy Young:
It made perfect sense to me, Tommy, and I am completely stupid when it comes to these things. Thank you for being so painstaking and patient. Y’all are doing a good job, I don’t care what anyone says.
PurpleGirl
@Peale: Trump claiming no help from his father — hahahahahaha
I’d say that a $20 million trust fund/heritence sure is a lot of help. Also he got help in the form of connections in the real estate industry in NYC.
The Other Chuck
@Tommy Young: Another thanks for that explanation. FYWP is actually an okay CMS-lite these days (but with no publishing workflow) but the comment system has always been an afterthought. It’s really the perfect example of “worse is better”, a thoroughly mediocre product pushed through because there was nothing better at the time, which now overshadows any attempt to replace it with anything better.
Typepad is a way better design. Hell, even Blogger has a decent API at least. But FYWP dominates because FYWP climbed over the initial alternatives to reach the top first.
Amir Khalid
@Elie:
I agree, the confabulation is most likely part of a wider personality disorder like narcissism.
Trollhattan
@Germy Shoemangler:
I believe that was upon the initial diagnosis of Squirrel on Head syndrome. And he suffers still, today.
Brachiator
@Tom Levenson: RE: my former Asst. US Atty. relative told me that in law enforcement, doctors are known to be the easiest marks for financial cons, with surgeons being the biggest patsies.
Doctors and airline pilots, among others. They have big egos and think they can outsmart the con. They pull in their buddies. And then they are often too embarrassed to admit that they have been taken, giving the scammers time to clean up and get out of town.
Benw
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Scalia won’t rest until US law enforces Catholic doctrine, as the founders intended.
Elie
So ole Possum Head seems to be in the doldrums. Can’t get that good ol satisfaction from just trashing one of his opponents — right now I think its Rubio but I think pig faced possum head has peaked.
Trollhattan
@Kay:
I’ve conflated him with Bachmann circa 2012. Wins the straw poll, quits after losing badly at the caucuses.
Elizabelle
@Brachiator: So true. Had a friend, a CPA, who noticed that very fact about doctors and developed a lucrative practice steering their finances and investments. She realized they were at sea.
SiubhanDuinne
@Trentrunner:
I heard just a couple of minutes of that in the car. Wolf Blitzer reached new depths of depravity, even for him, in the tongue bath he was giving Williams (and, by extension, Carson).
Tommy Young
@sharl: You are more than welcome.
Mark S.
Carson’s selling books, raising his fee on the speakers’ circuit, and having fun. Just like Gingrich, just like Herman Cain, and, I think, just like Donald Trump. Because they’re not really running, they can throw plenty of red meat to whichever segment of the base they’re selling to. They don’t have to be as careful as the ones who are actually running.
Punchy
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: NBC ended its article about this by pointing out that 7 federal courts sided with the Feds, only 1 did not. So despite a 7-1 court record, it will go to the Supremes, who will absolutely side with the plantifs.
Ladies, if ya work for a religious group, now may be the time to exit. Preferably, en mass, and with as much noise as possible.
Trollhattan
@PurpleGirl:
It’s so like Lady Ann carping about having to cash in some of Willard’s stock whilst eating off the ironing board during grad school. Boo fricking hoo, you giant baby.
Villago Delenda Est
Seriously, John, what the fuck do you expect? If you or I or Omnes (or any other vet here) tried to pull the shit that the Fortunate Dim Son pulled, not bothering to attend drill in Alabama, and not bothering to report at all in Massachusetts, we’d all have been Dishonorably Discharged, at the very least. Omnes and I probably would have been made examples of, because both of us held commissions…as did the deserting coward. Rethuglicans have been overlooking hinky military records of their own for decades now, and attacking the honor of those who actually have honorably served, like John Kerry.
I don’t think this revelation will do much to depress Carson’s numbers amongst the fundie wingtards. What it will do is get the MSM off it’s lazy collective butt and look into Carson’s fabulated self-history.
Jeffro
@Kay:[I wonder who they go to after he’s out. Has to be Ted Cruz. I watched one of Cruz’s “chat with the crowd” events on CSPAN and all his followers believe they’re the victims of religious persecution and need some kind of federal law (?) to protect them, so Cruz has a good of chunk of them now.]
Good call – I think the majority of Carson’s followers will go straight to Cruz for just that reason. There’s really no one else in that ‘lane’ (other than Huck, but he just got sent to the “kids’ table”). Rubio should get a small portion of Carson supporters too but nothing like Cruz stands to receive.
Amir Khalid
@Amir Khalid:
And it would be hard to face President Dr Ben — across a negotiating table, say — and not wonder if you were hearing stuff that he was psychologically compelled to pull out of his ass.
Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA
@Tommy Young:
The Republicans aren’t running for President. They’re running for the mailing lists, to widen their pool of potential marks.
Steeplejack
@Jeffro:
Hey, I’m trying to take the efficient M.B.A. perspective here!
boatboy_srq
@Tommy Young: Indeed. It’s a good thing that his MD and his Johns Hopkins time are public record, because those would be really ugly if they were fictitious. Always amazes me how the con artists can find such willing rubes.
Amir Khalid
@Tommy Young:
Did you just do something to the site? For the third time today, I have had a brief failure to connect to the site, which my browser says is due to the server resetting the connection.
PurpleGirl
@Amir Khalid: Right, because the people who will really consider this a count against him are us, those secular progressive he rails against so much. I, myself, would not vote him on the basis of lying about entrance to West Point. I hold attending the military academy as important and honorable. (A friend of mine’s father was an instructor there.) (Note: I wouldn’t vote for him anyway but lying this way doesn’t help his case with me.)
Tommy Young
@The Other Chuck: WordPress is a decade old. Their current commenting system is the SAME as it was when it launched. I am frankly kind of stunned they have been able to get away with this and both keep and grow market share to the point that about 23% of all the sites on the Internet are WP and around 18% of the top 1,000 most visited sites are also WordPress.
BTW: TypePad rocked!. Just saying.
Just to get in the weeds for a second, a few people don’t like I left the META info under the page title. Long story. But with release of WP 4.4 and up until 5.0 all the major enhancements are going to be META related (one reason I didn’t remove them on this site). They are tight lipped on what they are going to be, but they are supposed to be major. I get not everybody uses META tags the way I do, but once I started doing this for a living more than seven years ago and I saw how they worked, now I couldn’t use the Internet without them (well I could but it wouldn’t be as informative).
I can’t wait to see what they do ….. OK back to the regularly scheduled topic.
Villago Delenda Est
@Amir Khalid: Yeah, I experienced that a few minutes ago too. I blame Obama.
Tommy Young
@Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA: Agreed many/most are. Josh over at TPM has come straight out and said he thought Carson’s campaign was nothing but a “Direct Mail Scam” but somehow it caught fire and now he is at the top of polls and doesn’t know what the fuck to do.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/is-carson-for-prez-a-direct-mail-scam
Bobby Thomson
@Germy Shoemangler: yes, Bush is the best guess. It’s exactly what George the elder did in 88.
The charitable take is that some cadets said to Ben, “You should apply. You’re a shoe in to get in and it will be free,” and he remembered that as being offered a free ride.
The reason he supposedly are with Westmoreland was he was the top ROTC student in Detroit. Except the general’s calendar says otherwise.
I’m sure Carson’s girlfriend Morgan Fairchild can clear things up.
Tommy Young
@Amir Khalid:
@Villago Delenda Est:
I’ve seen that once or twice myself since I have been commenting and not working on the site. In fact those hiccups are why I am not working on the site because I fear I will crash the servers again the way I recently did for the Front Pagers, but this time for you folks as well. The people that know servers, and I know enough to cause problems and not fix things, are working on it.
Gin & Tonic
@Tommy Young: But the point has been that the authors here have used the META differently than you, and the readers have become accustomed to that over the years.
Elie
@Jeffro:
They actually don’t have a good raft to jump to IMHO. All will have big problems from Cruz who is only slightly more mentally well than Carson. This may be arguable once he gets front runner status and that smokes out his pathology just like its afflicting Carson. Rubio is corrupt and his shady finances are just not going to be survivable, I suspect. The Repubs are going to be starring at one of those single digit options sooner or later and the Republican primary formula will help them select their real nominee. Meantime, entertainment abounds with rounds of drinks with multiple toasts for everyone!
PurpleGirl
@MazeDancer: Well, the academy attendees do have to serve a number of years after graduation and starting out as an officer. They can go to graduate school, but that just puts off when they start that required service.
Kelly
@Paul in KY: No I’m just an ordinary outdoorsy guy. Interesting thing about Ivy League Surgeon. He’s the only person I know that’s needed a professional rescue.
JPL
@Bobby Thomson: The Carson campaign is fighting back. Technically he never said he applied to the academy. Westmoreland was in Detroit but at another time.
Elie
@Germy Shoemangler:
“That’s what he means by fixing it. ”
This.
Bobby Thomson
@JPL: that ad writes itself.
Tommy Young
@Gin & Tonic: I totally understand that. It is 110% true. And maybe this is both arrogant and wishful thinking on my part, but maybe over time we can change that. I will also admit I greatly underestimated, once I put this info in the bottom of each post (number of comments will be added to Categories as soon as I can start making edits again), the almost anger I didn’t then remove the META from under the page title.
Kay
@Jeffro:
I love the CSPAN thing where they just follow the candidates around while they talk to their voters. I couldn’t stop listening to the Cruz fans because they genuinely believe that they are being persecuted for their religion. It was funny because at one point Cruz supplied the proper term to a complainer who was too vague- “religious liberty, sure, vital issue”.
Mike G
It’s been eye opening how many doctors are just sociopaths.
Training for a medical career doesn’t leave a lot of time for following current events or developing a well-rounded interest in politics, history or philosophy.
From years of working with them, most doctors’ politics are limited to their self-interest and they just repeat what they hear on corporate media, on the TV news or in the paper without a lot of personal insight. And many of them act like they are experts at everything because they are good at doctoring. They have a high propensity for dying in private plane crashes and sporting accidents; my guess is because they overestimate their skills.
Brachiator
@elspi: RE: Most doctors view surgeons as somewhat useful idiots (or so my dad always told me).
I keep seeing this, and it seems a holdover from the time in the English dominated system when doctors or physicians were gentlemen, and surgeons were not. And here it was largely because doctors were often quacks who did little more than prescribe placebos to wealthy patients, and based their “knowledge” on an old tradition in which theory and intellectual guess work was seen to be superior to actually handling a human body.
Some of the greatest advances in medicine came from the results of surgeons actually having to understand how the body worked and applying practical and observable remedies and practices.
Elie
@JPL:
Awww — but the denials just keep the story alive and spur others looking into more – checking all his stories in all his books and such. And let us not forget, its not just his exaggerated self promotions in question. Its his crazy ideas that he generally does not refute. The two taken together just make a for a bad new meta about him — one that WILL kill his candidacy. He will be painted as a dishonest (and crazy) self promoter. He is tied to his stories because if he backs away from any of it, he is seen as a faker and inauthentic to his religious supporters. Of course, being tied to them makes him unacceptable to the non evangelicals…
Jeffro
@Elie:[They actually don’t have a good raft to jump to IMHO. All will have big problems from Cruz who is only slightly more mentally well than Carson.]
I disagree on several counts. For the fundies, Cruz is just as much a true believer as Carson. And while he’s devious and demagogic beyond description, he’s not nuts. (I do think Carson is not all there).
[This may be arguable once he gets front runner status and that smokes out his pathology just like its afflicting Carson.]
Again, I don’t think Cruz is mentally unwell – just cunning, self-serving, and a host of other unsavory traits.
[Rubio is corrupt and his shady finances are just not going to be survivable, I suspect.]
I don’t think it’s a killer – he’s already spun some of it off as youthful mistakes and just-what-happens-when-you’re-too-busy-serving-The-People. Plus, as you noted next:
[ The Repubs are going to be starring at one of those single digit options sooner or later and the Republican primary formula will help them select their real nominee]
they pretty much ARE staring at one of their single-digit options…two of them, in fact: Rubio and Cruz. It will be interesting to see if a) Cruz really does get most of Carson’s supporters, assuming Carson starts losing support, and b) if the Establishment starts to think better of Cruz.
Remember, Cruz’s main antagonists inside the party are his Senate colleagues and that’s about it – 2 out of 3 elements of the Base like him already, and he’s right in line with the GOP House. Heck, he’s right in line with the sentiment (if not the policies) of today’s Trumpian anger-based GOP.
Citizen Alan
I doubt Carson’s lies will slow him down. His supporters are already convinced the Obama has successfully lied about his citizenship and his religion for 8 years.
Germy Shoemangler
@Mike G: They have a high propensity for dying in private plane crashes and sporting accidents; my guess is because they overestimate their skills.
The small plane beechcraft bonanza was nicknamed the “doc killer” because it was so popular with affluent MDs who overestimated their flying skills.
kindness
Over at the NPR story the Republicans have gone all in on making derogetory remarks about Hillary in NPR’s Ben Carson is a Lying Sack Of Shit piece. No, NPR was nicer than that. Republicans though….not so much.
satby
@Tommy Young: So how’s that server move of your own website coming?
I see your link is still borked to your own site… and Alexa doesn’t show it as active.
Villago Delenda Est
@Elie: This is PRECISELY what Steve Schmidt tried to explain to Mussolini when she demanded that the McCain Campaign deny that Todd ever was a member of the Alaska Independence Party. You say something along the lines that “Todd was a member, but his thinking has evolved since then and he no longer supports the principle goals of the AIP” and you get on with your life. But no, Our Sarah, being a pathological liar and mean girl to make all Heathers jealous, kept insisting that it was a lie that Todd was ever a member. WRONG.
Gin & Tonic
@Tommy Young: Because the people who were arguing that they belonged at the bottom meant that they belonged only there. They want(ed) them moved, not added.
rikyrah
RZA Makes Donation to Hip-Hop Chess Federation, Says Game Teaches Strategy, Decision-Making Skills
November 6, 2015
RZA, a member of the legendary hip-hop group the Wu-Tang Clan, has made a donation to Hip-Hop Chess Federation to help develop programs for incarcerated youths. RZA, who serves as a board member of the Hip-Hop Chess Federation (HHCF,) said chess is a great way of teaching young people strategy and decision-making skills.
According to Hiphopdx.com, RZA met with about 400 juvenile hall inmates in St. Louis last month. He played chess with the young men and taught them the details of the game. RZA, who has expanded into producing, acting and directing, said he understood where the young men were coming from, because at one point his life was on the wrong track.
“Y’all are in here for not controlling your energy,” the Wu-Tang rapper said. “You are here now for not being analytical about the results of the actions you have taken. I’m the last one to talk in some sense. I’ve been through the same system. Me and my brother got our first gun, when I was 11 or 12. Riding NY city busses looking for what they call, a ‘vic.’”
RZA said chess, a centuries old game, could help the young men develop their minds and learn how to think proactively.
http://atlantablackstar.com/2015/11/06/rza-makes-donation-hip-hop-chess-federation-says-game-teaches-strategy-decision-making-skills/?utm_content=bufferc9673&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
D58826
@A guy: OOOPS sorry but the CIA just backed off on the story that Hillary passed along classified information. The information was classified 2 days after she wrote the e-mail.
Tommy Young
@satby: My link is not in the footer so I don’t know what you are talking about. And since you always trying to pick a fight and act like a total asshole this will be the last time I ever respond to you.
Patricia Kayden
@rk: I would love it if Republicans were dumb enough to select Dr. Carson as their Presidential candidate. But I doubt that will happen. They’re not quite that dumb.
This latest lie should be the end of him since you don’t get away with lying about the military (and he’s admitted to the lie so there’s no question about it).
Bye Carson. Shouldn’t have run.
Iowa Old Lady
It’s astounding to me that Cruz now gets referred to as an establishment candidate.
D58826
@JPL: Most people do not understand the process of getting in to one of the service academies and that thje academies do not offer scholarships. . They do understand that when some one says ‘I was offered a full scholarship by Duke’ that there was a certain process by which the person applied to Duke, filled out some forms asking for financial aid and then was accepted with a full scholarship. So when Carson says he was offered a full scholarship most folks are going to translate that into the process that they are most familiar with – the acceptance into a state or private university.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@gogol’s wife:
Once you’ve done it a few times, it sticks. The first few times I kept forgetting the quotes around the URL (the are not optional).
Of course, having a handy HTML manual or a link to one online doesn’t hurt.
It’s too bad BJ doesn’t support list tags in comments; I tend to use them a lot on other fora.
PurpleGirl
@Paul in KY: Do you mean a portrait, a la The Portrait of Dorian Gray?
Brachiator
@Elizabelle: RE: So true. Had a friend, a CPA, who noticed that very fact about doctors and developed a lucrative practice steering their finances and investments. She realized they were at sea.
Both legitimate investments and scams are pitched to “sophisticated” investors, i.e, suckers with lots of money who feel flattered to be called elite and sophisticated. Hooks ’em every time.
ninja3000
@Ruckus:
From the USMC West Point website FAQs:
“A first-year cadet earns more than $900 a month, and the amount increases each year.. A portion of that cadet pay is deposited into a personal checking account. Another portion of cadet pay is deposited to a “Cadet Account” that is used to help a cadet pay for expenses such as uniforms, books, a computer, activity fees, etc. Each cadet pays a standard amount for laundry, dry cleaning, haircuts, tailoring services and shoe repair. A cadet’s gross salary is subject to federal and state withholding taxes and Social Security deductions.”
Jeffro
OT but had to add: I am having way too much fun with a wingnut friend on FB. He reposted someone else’s nonsense about how no one deserves a $15/hour minimum wage because that comes out to $30k/year and lowly privates in the Army make $18k/year. So I told him that was a great argument for giving the troops an even BIGGER raise and now all his wingnut friends are piling on THAT and totally missing his initial point (i.e., hating on poor people) Love. It.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@Iowa Old Lady: He’s “establishment” in the sense that he’s an actual elected official, but yeah, in terms of ideology he’s far from being “establishment”.
Peale
@Jeffro: I don’t think Rubio’s finances are going to sink him (if he ever is going anywhere, which I doubt) if he can continue on with the “Look I was poor. You don’t concern yourselves with rich candidates finances. Wahhhhhhh.” You need to pull down others in with him so it’s not simply a matter of “I couldn’t make ends meet, just like you.” To do that, though, you’re going to need to start naming other names and so far, no one seems willing to do that because whatever crooks he’s involved with are probably involved with a lot of other republicans and office holders in Florida. No one cares about bills. What they may care about are things that look like bribes or graft.
Jeffro
@Iowa Old Lady: That’s what happens when Trump and Carson supporters make up 50% of the primary electorate, I guess – EVERYONE else starts to look “Establishment”, lol
He’s not there yet…but he doesn’t have to completely win over the Establishment wing to win the nom. Just enough.
BobS
@Elie: Has anyone actually seen Ben Carson perform surgery or is it just another fiction from one of his books? @elspi: Your dad was wrong.
Mike in NC
Carson is – first and foremost – selling another book. Anything else is gravy. The media will ignore his being a pathological liar just as they did with Mitt Romney, Dick Cheney, Ronald Reagan, etc.
IOKIYAR
KS in MA
@Gin & Tonic:
Exactly.
JPL
@Jeffro: Military personnel receive housing and meal allowances. I agree that a higher income, would be welcomed.
Peale
@mistermix: Also, while it is an honor to get into any of the military academies, the idea of promoting the “full scholarship” aspect of it is just odd. I didn’t know that other students had to pay tuition. That would actually have been a much better story. “I was the one student at USMA who offered to pay my own way. The Army was so excited to have their first student who could afford to go there and didn’t need a helping hand. I just couldn’t accept a government handout.”
burnspbesq
Are there other parts of “Doctor” Carson’s CV of which we should be skeptical?
Marmot
@joel hanes: That’s interesting. I hadn’t considered that.
Peale
@Tommy Young: That’s why I think Trump in the end is going to win this thing. No one likes any of the other candidates except for Carson and Carson isn’t going to bother with campaigning. He’ll probably win in Iowa and then realize that he’s forgotten to get himself on the ballot in enough other states to matter.
Villago Delenda Est
@Peale: That idiotic assertion would have been blown out of the water as well. George Patton came from a wealthy family and could have easily afforded to pay for his West Point education, but of course did not.
JPL
Carson is doing a fine job, discrediting himself from the office that he seeks. I’m not going to bash his surgical skills though. As with any profession there a good and bad individuals, but he seems to fall into the good category.
PurpleGirl
@Mike G: During my undergraduate years I hung out with a bunch of bio-premed majors. There was one guy who was very smart, very arrogant, and very self-assured. I once told him to go into research because he wouldn’t be able to connect to actual patients. (This was at NYU.) Well, some time later I saw him at an alumni function and he had changed a lot. He was doing medical school at Dartmouth (they have a med school?) but now he was in a class up against colleagues who had gone to Ivy League schools and they put him in his place (as it were) for coming from NYU. It was amazing.
Brachiator
@PurpleGirl: RE: I, myself, would not vote him on the basis of lying about entrance to West Point.
I would not vote for him because he doesn’t know a thing about national politics, the economy, foreign policy, health policy, finance … Oh, hell, the list of his areas of ignorance is so long that it’s easier to say that he seems to have been a great surgeon, and has a gentle manner, but nothing to recommend him as a political leader.
The lying out West Point is odd, but even here, not as bad as someone who, for example, lied about actually being in combat.
He seems to have ‘fessed up relatively quickly. This is a point in his favor.
I have no idea how this will affect his supporters. But then again, I don’t know why he ever had any supporters in the first place, except as a protest against mainstream Republican politicians.
Steeplejack
@Trollhattan:
Please, that is trivializing. The medical community now prefers the less freighted term CARS: cranial arboreal rodent syndrome.
steverinoCT
@Starfish: @Amir Khalid:
<witty>witty<witty>
<incisive>incisive<incisive>
<knowledgable>knowledgable<knowledgable>
These aren’t working for me (didn’t on the old site, either: go figure)
Elie
@BobS:
He is definitely a surgeon who knows his way around some pretty complex pediatric neurosurgery. Nuff said about that —
Its just that he unfortunately is a high functioning person with a personality or other disorder. This compels him to do things that don’t make sense for his goal to be a President of the US. He is unable to see that though. Oh, he sees wanting to be President and all — he just doesn’t get the cause and effect part of the other views and beliefs and preparation necessary to be successful… He is about to do what some surgeons have been accused of having a higher likelihood of doing than other professions — fly into a mountain cause he doesn’t believe the dials of the instruments in the cockpit
Elizabelle
You might laugh, but I feel so badly for Carson’s kids (think he has a few).
If he hadn’t injected himself into the presidential race, he’d still be revered in most quarters. You got the sense he was a Christian, but didn’t realize he was nuts about it. All of his oddness has been on public display.
Wondering if the kids are sad to see their dad taken down a peg. Or if they’ve been fearing this could happen for years.
J R in WV
@raven:
That isn’t what Tommy said, at all Raven. Read it again.
For one detail he said “almost” and then added how big a stack of other stuff there was to overcome to give him a pass.
Amir Khalid
@Tommy Young:
Before I post a comment in anger, I try counting to ten first. Then, upon further reflection, I might decide to make the comment seem less angry, before posting. Often I decide not to post it at all.
You might want to try that. The alternative is to risk frittering away the sympathy you earned by volunteering for this (admittedly thankless) task in the first place.
Myiq2xu
No, they didn’t. The only fabrication was Politico’s bullshit hit-piece. http://www.dailywire.com/news/960/no-ben-carson-didnt-lie-about-west-point-its-ben-shapiro
I won’t hold my breath waiting for John Cole to set the record straight.
D58826
@Myiq2xu: Beh Shapiro – isn’t he the guy that said Chuck Hagel had connections to an ISIL based charity? Only problem is the charity did not exist. But what the heck its only a detail
Trollhattan
@Steeplejack:
Whew, I should have known better than to use the term of art from the ’70s. [slinks off, chastened.]
Do they have a support group? Can I sign up Trump as penance?
Trollhattan
@D58826:
Virgin Ben’s still around? I’d completely forgotten about that tool.
WJS
@Paul in KY: That guy was his ghostwriter! Slam!
Aleta
@Tommy Young:
It would help me; I never knew them during the last existence, either. Thanks a bunch !
When the navigation rules are ready, I’d love it if someone could eventually write them out somewhere too. (Never knew about most of the previous ones either.)
And thanks for all your work and patience.
les
@Punchy:
Try BBCodeXtra (sorry, don’t have a link). In Firefox, it gives you a right click option to code highlighted stuff or from the clipboard, including text mods, quotes, links, etc. Really handy.
Aleta
Umm, how do I edit a comment?
WaterGirl
@Amir Khalid: I think that ship has sailed!
satby
@Tommy Young: this is in your nym, I assumed it was a link to your website?
http://webranding.org/
Whatevs.
Gvg
@Tommy Young: can you do something like “pin” this one very informative post to the top of the front page? Where it won’t get lost in the clutter of a fast moving blog? Maybe with the question it answers? Because a few times lately you or John have explained something but after awhile people who didn’t see it ask the same question again and I forget exactly what was said. I think there have been at least three posts that say a whole lot of significant info but I can’t remember how to find them now.
KithKanan
@Tommy Young: I think he meant the “Website” attached to your comments. When I click on your name it currently goes to webranding.org, which just displays a 403 error.
satby
@KithKanan: I did, but my response to that is in moderation.
Corner Stone
@satby:
I wonder if it will just fit into the order you posted it, like old moderated comments did? I guess the easiest way to find it later is to do a search for your name and see if it ever breaks the surface of the commenting pool.
Sarah, Proud and Tall
@Myiq2xu:
Keep fucking that goat, goatboy.
satby
@Corner Stone: Doesn’t matter, KithKanan covered it anyway. Himself thanked someone else for pointing out the dead link on the first day of the new design, and said he was moving servers. I like to see other people’s sites (it is why we do nyms with links I thought) but I noticed his was still non-functional. Silly of me to ask, obviously.
Steeplejack
@Tommy Young:
Just FYI, the link to
webranding.orgis in your nym every time you comment. You might want to remove it.hugely
@p.a.: well you still have the Sith Lords (Christianists and Mormonists) at AFA to call upon when needed
Brachiator
@Elizabelle: My favorite Ben Carson jibe, from Frankie Boyle in The Guardian:
“Indeed, the whole Republican field offers a bracing challenge to conventional notions of sanity. The current poll leader is Ben Carson, a neurosurgeon who happens to be a Seventh Day Adventist and creationist. Creationists have often made me doubt evolution, but probably not in the way they think. His taxation policy is based on Biblical tithing, taking economic pointers from people who had a GDP of one golden calf.”
J R in WV
@Sarah, Proud and Tall:
Sarah, don’t hold it back! Let us know how you really feel about myiq-whatever-stupid – we all feel that way too!!
But I feel bad for the goat!
Corner Stone
@satby: Are you threatening me?
satby
@Corner Stone: say wha??
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Elie:
I was saying in the thread above that Dr. Carson’s ability to suppress all self-doubt in order to cut into people’s brains is hurting him in politics. The qualities that made him a top neurosurgeon are the exact qualities that make him a terrible political candidate.
Matt McIrvin
The Carson-lying story is getting Dan Rathered. Politico will take the heat for breaking it in the first place, and Carson will remain unscathed.
Corner Stone
@satby: It’s what we in the business call a “2-way Go”. It plays off the petulant answer Tommy gave you previously and for commenters aware of all traditions it’s recognizable as a quote from Beavis & Butthead. So there are at least two lines of snarky/joke comments open there to those who may choose.
Original Lee
Based on my FB feed, the ones who love Carson are saying that the media blew it out of proportion, because the difference between being admitted to West Point and being told he had a chance to get into West Point if he applied, based on grades and Junior ROTC, is too small to worry about. Plus, he’s too good a man to be in politics, because politicians suck.
satby
@Corner Stone: ah, thank you. Beavis and Butthead were after my time. I’m old, and so are my eyes.
I did figure you were joking, just didn’t get the phrase.
Paul in KY
@Kelly: OK. Thanks for answering!
Paul in KY
@PurpleGirl: A portrait of him, in all his glory.