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News & ArtsTuesday, March 12, 2013
2016 Wait, Who the Hell Is Dr. Benjamin Carson?
Posted by Paul Constant on Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 2:18 PM
The conservative blog PREZ16 has a primer about Dr. Benjamin Carson, who is currently bubbling up in all the conservative blogs. Carson is a conservative pediatric neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins who is against political correctness, for the flat tax, and who gave a conservative speech at a prayer breakfast right in front of President Obama. Here's video of the speech:
Because of that speech, Sean Hannity told Carson he'd vote for him for president. The Wall Street Journal loves him. From that WSJ article, here's his health care plan:
When a person is born, give him a birth certificate, an electronic medical record, and a health savings account to which money can be contributed—pretax—from the time you're born 'til the time you die. If you die, you can pass it on to your family members, and there's nobody talking about death panels.
Carson sounds like he'd fit right in with the 2012 crop of Republican presidential candidates—Herman Cain's 9-9-9 flat tax plan mixed with Michele Bachmann's social views and Newt Gingrich's Big, Untested Ideas. And unlike Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush and all the others, he's completely outside the political system, which makes him a seriously appealing candidate to Republican voters. This is a name you'll be hearing a lot in the next few years.
2
Something like 10% of surgeons are psychopaths. Apparently normal human feelings can get in the way of slicing up people's bodies with a knife.
3
Personal responsiblity, stop blaming others and playing victim? What does he think we are, adults? Treat me like
a 2 yr old!
a 2 yr old!
5
@4:
Now, we finally see the true goals of the so-called "right to life" movement revealed: "If it's old enough to be born, it's old enough to get a job."
Now, we finally see the true goals of the so-called "right to life" movement revealed: "If it's old enough to be born, it's old enough to get a job."
6
If only people could put money into an HSA starting at birth that would solve their healthcare woes. Put those money grubbing infants to work so they can start contributing to their HSA. If the kid is too lazy to work then fuck him.
Oh! Does he mean the parents should be putting money into the HSA for him? Oh, that makes more sense. And if the parents have no money for the kids HSA then fuck that kid. He should have known better than to be born to poor parents.
Oh! Does he mean the parents should be putting money into the HSA for him? Oh, that makes more sense. And if the parents have no money for the kids HSA then fuck that kid. He should have known better than to be born to poor parents.
7
This will work because wages for working and middle class people are rising so people in the future will have so much more extra money, right?
And because health care costs are dropping and end of life care will be practically free there will be lots left over for your kids when you die.
Yay!
And because health care costs are dropping and end of life care will be practically free there will be lots left over for your kids when you die.
Yay!
8
So when I'm dying, I can choose to live a few more months or years, or I can choose to die and pass my healthcare savings to my spouse and kids. No death panels, just me picking an early grave to help my heirs. Nice.
9
I saw him a few years ago at my brother in law's graduation from ORU, and I second what @1 said. So many bootstraps! He did get a standing ovation, which kind of just confirmed my general feeling of overall antagonism. I love my brother in law, and my in laws, to death, but ORU seemed a kind of hot mess of crazy to me.
10
This Article makes me sad.
Ben Carson is something of a hero to Seventh-day Adventists, especially those of us from an African American background. He was a man who lived in a single parent household in the Ghetto and had an extremely rough life. As a teenager he almost stabbed a kid to death, but the knife broke on the kid's belt buckle and so nothing happened.
But Carson was always smart. And with his Mom's (and PBS....and Books') encouragement, he was able to get scholarship for himself to University and Medical School. He became a Neurosurgeon at John Hopkins, and became world famous in the early 1987 for the first successful separation of conjoined twins ever done.
My mother made me watch his life story when I was five. Every book he wrote, biographical or religious, in our house.
But now he will be a part of the same conservative ideological framework that has contributed to the Government Policies that have helped keep so many people in poverty, as he was, and he'll use the fact that he out of million's of others was and is a genius to make the case for a Government that double's down on those policies.
Sad.
Ben Carson is something of a hero to Seventh-day Adventists, especially those of us from an African American background. He was a man who lived in a single parent household in the Ghetto and had an extremely rough life. As a teenager he almost stabbed a kid to death, but the knife broke on the kid's belt buckle and so nothing happened.
But Carson was always smart. And with his Mom's (and PBS....and Books') encouragement, he was able to get scholarship for himself to University and Medical School. He became a Neurosurgeon at John Hopkins, and became world famous in the early 1987 for the first successful separation of conjoined twins ever done.
My mother made me watch his life story when I was five. Every book he wrote, biographical or religious, in our house.
But now he will be a part of the same conservative ideological framework that has contributed to the Government Policies that have helped keep so many people in poverty, as he was, and he'll use the fact that he out of million's of others was and is a genius to make the case for a Government that double's down on those policies.
Sad.
11
He *does* know that the 'death panels' were a manufactured issue by FOX News, right? That they're complete fiction, right? He's a neurosurgeon at a prestigious hospital, so he must know that, right?
I mean, you wouldn't want to tell me that there isn't a single conservative intellectual in America that doesn't also have a profound problem in separating fact from fiction, would you?
I mean, you wouldn't want to tell me that there isn't a single conservative intellectual in America that doesn't also have a profound problem in separating fact from fiction, would you?
12
Am I the only one concerned that his speech is nearly half an hour long? Ain't nobody got time for that.
14
@10. Exactly. It's cool if he worked hard and did all that he has done with his life, starting in a rough situation. But he's got to be blind if he can't recognize the millions of people who work hard and don't make it.
15
If he is a pediatric neurosurgeon, he probably has done many controversial operations in the eyes of the right wing. I wouldn't be surprise that he is pro stem cell research. There are probably times he had to let children die than operate on them, given if they have a terminal condition, that is going to play well in right wing batshit insanity land.
If he does three point landings for all the right wings talking points on health issues, from abortions, stem cells, health care, etc. etc. then he probably isn't a good neurosurgeon. I wonder how he feels about the American with Disabilities Act.
If he does three point landings for all the right wings talking points on health issues, from abortions, stem cells, health care, etc. etc. then he probably isn't a good neurosurgeon. I wonder how he feels about the American with Disabilities Act.
16
Ooh, money is going to come rolling in. Find a respected black man to parrot all those old, white bigots, and he's going to get really rich. Then some scandal comes along...wait, haven't we been here before?
18
The right wing seems to see his speech as a massive coup against Obama. Kind of like Colbert's mocking of Bush some years back. Dr. Carson is a good speaker. He has some nice stories, but then he kind of glides by these insanely naive policy proposals.
19
What a great healthcare plan for rich people with good luck! What a terrible idea for anyone else!
21
Talk about a death panel! The only thing stopping your family from getting your HSA money is keeping you alive!
23
@11: The way I hear it from the Hopkins medical students, he's a creationist (and a jackass). Don't get me wrong, he's a damned amazing surgeon, but I don't expect a lot of fact-based thinking from someone with scientific training that can ignore basically every biological discovery for the last century.
25
I know there are some rather stupid orthopedic surgeons out there (a friend's knee was operated on by one who it turned out didn't believe in antibiotics), but a stupid neurosurgeon is scary indeed. And at Johns Hopkins.
27
@25 sarah70
Kinda like a stupid lawyer whose only real claim to fame is to be a "Community Organizer?"
Yeah, I feel ya...scary.
Kinda like a stupid lawyer whose only real claim to fame is to be a "Community Organizer?"
Yeah, I feel ya...scary.
29
@27: He was a community organizer, yes. Then he graduated magna cum laude from Harvard. Then he taught constitutional law at the prestigious University of Chicago. Then he became a lawyer. Then he became a state senator. Then he became a US senator. Then he became President of the United States.
He's got a hell of a lot more claims to fame than any of us here, that's for sure. Crawl back into your hole, stoner.
He's got a hell of a lot more claims to fame than any of us here, that's for sure. Crawl back into your hole, stoner.
30
@29: They know all those accomplishments, just too racist to admit it. It's the equivalent of calling Obama "boy". They've got to knock him down by whatever ways they can find.
31
"Carson is a conservative pediatric neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins..."
Johns Hopkins? Now why does that university sound sooooo familiar? ? ?
Oh yeah......
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/e…
The numbers didn’t add up.
Over and over, Daniel Yuan, a medical doctor and statistician, couldn’t understand the results coming out of the lab, a prestigious facility at Johns Hopkins Medical School funded by millions from the National Institutes of Health.
. . . .
In August, Yu-yi Lin, the lead author of the paper, was found dead in his new lab in Taiwan, a puncture mark in his left arm and empty vials of sedatives and muscle relaxants around him, according to local news accounts — an apparent suicide.
. . . .
Daniel Yuan, pictured at his home in Laurel, raised doubts for years about the work of his colleagues in a Johns Hopkins medical research lab. “The denial that I am hearing from almost everyone in the group as a consensus is troubling to me,” he wrote in one e-mail. In December 2011, after 10 years at the lab, he was fired.
Johns Hopkins? Now why does that university sound sooooo familiar? ? ?
Oh yeah......
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/e…
The numbers didn’t add up.
Over and over, Daniel Yuan, a medical doctor and statistician, couldn’t understand the results coming out of the lab, a prestigious facility at Johns Hopkins Medical School funded by millions from the National Institutes of Health.
. . . .
In August, Yu-yi Lin, the lead author of the paper, was found dead in his new lab in Taiwan, a puncture mark in his left arm and empty vials of sedatives and muscle relaxants around him, according to local news accounts — an apparent suicide.
. . . .
Daniel Yuan, pictured at his home in Laurel, raised doubts for years about the work of his colleagues in a Johns Hopkins medical research lab. “The denial that I am hearing from almost everyone in the group as a consensus is troubling to me,” he wrote in one e-mail. In December 2011, after 10 years at the lab, he was fired.
32
I don't think this guy is a very good speaker at all. He mispronounces a lot of words, kind of sounds like he's winging it on phrasing (shooting for poignancy and achieving awkward), and his anecdotes are tired old, obvious jokes, not the "parables" he claims. Then he follows each one up with "enough said" as if he's just made some devastating point. Every time he said, "enough said," I thought, "no, not enough said if you actually wanted to make a point. All you did was tell a fucking joke I could have read in Mallard Fillmore."
He's no Herman Cain, because he's obviously not a complete dipshit, but his "policy ideas" are approximately as well thought out as Cain's. I welcome his candicacy.
He's no Herman Cain, because he's obviously not a complete dipshit, but his "policy ideas" are approximately as well thought out as Cain's. I welcome his candicacy.
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