Cheap shot: Cerebral

And you know what else is cerebral? Diseased rat brains.

Dr. Carson:

"There are two different Donald Trumps: there's the one you see on the stage and there's the one who's very cerebral, sits there and considers things very carefully," Ben Carson said Friday as he became the second former Republican candidate to back Trump in the White House race.

Though you might want to ask why Mr. Trump is taking such pains to hide that side. Of course Dr. Carson, as a brain surgeon, knows what he's talking about when he says "cerebral".

Called on the carpet: The sociopathy of innocence

Flying Carpet, ceiling sculpture by Cai Guo-Qiang, Herford, Germany, 2005.

What is it about that concept of  "carpet bombing", actually? I mean I know, of course, it's a phrase that gives the GOP voter a boner, with its suggestion of total, all-covering, all-burying power, potency from above the supine victim, not to get all Freud about it, but why aren't they afraid of getting laughed at by the military folks? Quoting from the debate text:

CRUZ: What it means is using overwhelming air power to utterly and completely destroy ISIS. To put things in perspective, in the first Persian Gulf War, we launched roughly 1,100 air attacks a day. We carpet bombed them for 36 days, saturation bombing, after which our troops went in and in a day and a half mopped up what was left of the Iraqi army.

They did not, for one thing:

Why is a blastocyst like a slave?

Republicans abolished both of them? No, that can't be right...

@benshapiro This only makes sense to those who actually think.

— Marcelo Garcia (@MGarcia1775) November 30, 2015

.@gaslightingsbad @benshapiro We had this discussion on Thanksgiving when the liberals in my life went quiet & sad and I became sad as well.

— MoreDebate (@MoreDebate) November 30, 2015

I think Marcelo Garcia means, "This only makes sense to those who are actually on drugs." I think Ben Shapiro is mistakenly under the impression that being pregnant is similar to being a white man in the antebellum South, in that um what? Pregnant women can lawfully terminate their pregnancies in all states through the first semester and white men in the antebellum South could force their slaves to work without pay in appalling conditions, buy and sell them separating their families, and treat them with extreme cruelty in many ways, and there is some kind of analogy between these two situations...

If life gives you grenades...

...can you make grenadine? I guess not, but maybe if you're sufficiently "deluded in good ways about your abilities" you might think you can, and perhaps that's all you need.

Charley Chase in  Mighty Like a Moose (1926), directed by Leo Carey.

Shorter David Brooks, "Tales of the Super Survivors", November 24 2015:

This is the age of terror, when people are constantly subject to unexpected stabbings, shootings, and bombings, but I think we need to maintain some sense of proportion here. After all, scientific research demonstrates that a good 75% of people never develop post-traumatic stress disorder under these kinds of conditions. So really. what's all the fuss about? Moreover, of those who do get PTSD, some are "super survivors" who heal from the damage, and come out radiating love and joy, and you know how I feel about people who radiate stuff.

In which we go Godwin

You know who else used to talk nonstop about freedom? Via TodoPorMéxico.

Via Mother Jones:

At a campaign event in New Hampshire, Carson noted that many people believe a situation like what took place in Germany in the 1930's and 1940's could never happen in America. "I beg to differ," Carson said. "If you go back and look at the history of the world, tyranny and despotism and how it starts, it has a lot to do with control of thought and control of speech."

At a press conference after the speech, reporters asked Carson who he thinks is like Adolf Hitler in the U.S. "I'm not going to go into that that. I think that example is pretty clear," he responded, without elaborating.

Running away, as you see, from his poison remarks. Carson loves to complain about "political correctness" preventing him from talking about slavery and Nazism, though as has been noted, he talks about them unhesitatingly all the time, but what's really wrong with what he does is the cowardly way he does it, throwing those scary words out into the discourse and then just leaving them there, refusing responsibility.

Carson Tells Truth!

Updated 11/10/2015

Via.

This is a scoop. Sort of, as it turns out that AmericaBlog and Brad DeLong have been there too, though I don't thing they've got the story right. And it was easy for them, because Carson released the thing at some point today, whereas Dr. Google and I found it on our own. So, by God (and man, and Yale) I'm posting it anyway.

Also, Dr. Google is especially pleased by the serendipitous way we did it, which was by searching for "Carson" and "psychology" in the Yale Daily News archives and going to the first 1970 entry. In fact Dr. Ben Carson's name wasn't even there; it only happened because of Johnny Carson's name getting mentioned in a learned discussion of late-night television and the terrible collusion of Dick Cavett (Class of 1958) with radical leftist antiwar protesters such as Jimmy Breslin. Oh, Yale. It sounds just like Jonah Goldberg (who went to Goucher, in the former girls' school's first co-ed class).

So the story, reproduced below, explains that the Yale Record, the college's ancient humor magazine (not as ancient, or presumably nearly as funny, as the Harvard Lampoon), had the previous day (January 13) issued a parody finals-week issue of the Daily News, which included a fake announcement that the semester's "Psychology 10" exams had all been destroyed and summoning students to a retake that evening at 7:30, which attracted "several" unwary students who didn't realize that it was a joke:

The Doctor is (way) out

No, Doctor, it's really the current bunch of lies we're most concerned about. Image via Business Insider.

Now that Dr. Ben Carson's truthfulness issues are getting to be a thing, would anybody care to revisit the story from the September debate where he spent a lot of time giving George W. Bush foreign policy advice back around 2002, trying to prevent the war in Afghanistan, and that's what Bush gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom for? It sounded just a tad odd to me at the time, and I wasn't the only one:

“What I suggested to President Bush is to be Kennedy-esque,” Carson had said. “Declare that within five to 10 years we will become petroleum independent. The moderate Arab states would have been so concerned about that, they would have turned over Osama bin Laden and anybody else you wanted on a silver platter within two weeks.”

When Wright asked Carson to share the details of his conversations with President Bush, the renowned surgeon did not hold back.

Sadly, no: Penny-pinching

Dr. Whom? Image via Americans Against the Tea Party.

Dr. Ben Carson at the Iowa Freedom Summit, January 25:

THERE IS ONE WELL-KNOWN POLITICIAN WHO SAYS YOU CANNOT CUT ONE PENNY OR IT WILL BE A DISASTER. ANYONE KNOW WHO THAT WAS? NANCY PELOSI. THAT IS CRAZY. 

Dr. Ben Carson, in conversation with Sean Hannity, October 5:

Nancy Pelosi said if you cut the budget by one penny, it will be a disaster. Not true at all.

Dr. Ben Carson, in conversation with Kai Ryssdal October 7:

the assumption of so many people is that every penny that the government spends is critical. You remember Nancy Pelosi saying, "If you cut one penny, the system will collapse"? And that's not true.

Dr. Ben Carson, in conversation with Wolf Blitzer, October 8:

I know that Nancy Pelosi said, if you cut one penny, the whole system will collapse. You know what I say about that? It's not true. 

And you know what I say?

Carson clarifies

A visit to the dentist in medieval Persia. Via medievalists.net.

What's wrong with Muslims?

"Under Islamic Law, homosexuals – men and women alike – must be killed. Women must be subservient. And people following other religions must be killed," he continued. "I know that there are many peaceful Muslims who do not adhere to these beliefs. But until these tenants (sic) are fully renounced…I cannot advocate any Muslim candidate for President."

Obviously that's a lot worse than Biblical literalist Christianity in which only male homosexuals need to be put to death and the girls get away scot-free. I know that there are many peaceful Christians who do not agree with the death penalty for sodomy, including the members of Dr. Carson's Seventh-Day Adventist Church, who hold that

Exchange: Locke and Load

The Founder of British Empiricism. Portrait by Sir Godfrey Knellor, 1697, via.

Another day, another comment war. This one at Crooks & Liars involving Dr. Ben Carson's assertion that the religion of Islam is incompatible with the US Constitution and a callow conservative who goes by Alex—sounds like he's about 20, but he uses Forbes Magazine as a source of scholarship on political philosophy, regarding it as "pretty objective", so he might well be 80.

DR. BEN CARSON: Well, I guess it depends on what that faith is. If it's inconsistent with the values and principles of America, then of course it should matter. But if it fits within the realm of America and consistent with the constitution, no problem.

CHUCK TODD: So do you believe that Islam is consistent with the constitution?

DR. BEN CARSON: No, I don't, I do not.

CHUCK TODD: So you--

DR. BEN CARSON: I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation. I absolutely would not agree with that.

CHUCK TODD: And would you ever consider voting for a Muslim for Congress?

DR. BEN CARSON: Congress is a different story, but it depends on who that Muslim is and what their policies are, just as it depends on what anybody else says, you know. (transcript from Real Clear Politics)

Note how assiduously Alex works to turn the his opponents' argument from a complaint on Dr. Carson's ignorance of the Establishment Clause (and the Religious Test clause of Article VI) to a ridiculous gripe about Dr. Carson's right to vote for any asshole he wants to vote for.

The ideology of stupid

Image from a real article, in Car & Driver, 2011.

So I too made myself watch the Republican candidates' "debate", or quite a lot of it, doing the family laundry—every time I resurfaced from the basement the 18-year-old said "You missed everything!" He was talking about the WWE trash-talking aspect, which dominated the production, as it was clearly intended to do, with all the questions directed by Jake Tapper to provoke quarrels: "Well, Cheryl says she saw you whispering to Bobby in algebra class, is that correct?"

On the plus side, Tapper tended to shut people up after some fixed number of seconds if they refused to answer the question at all, as they all did, in favor of a carefully composed aria displaying their "knowledge" of the general subject or asserting that they had dealt with something relevant in the course of their careers. This has of course always been a central element of the political "debate" since its advent in 1960; Tapper wielding the hook lent the proceedings an enjoyable note of Live-at-the-Apollo hilarity.

Cheap shots: It's gone, boom!

Image via Arizona Star.

The former neurosurgeon ate at the Silver Saddle Steakhouse on the south side's East Benson Highway, a day after speaking to thousands of people at the Phoenix Convention Center.

He drew national attention as well, after commenting later in the day that he supports the use of military drone strikes to help secure the border....

In January, comedian/actor/director/screenwriter Adam Sandler stopped in to the Silver Saddle to have dinner with his sister.

That Silver Saddle wouldn't by any chance be an advertiser or anything, would it, Star?

Anyhow, what does Dr. Ben Carson mean by "drones" in his stump speech, as at his Phoenix rally last Tuesday?

“What I have said consistently is that we need [to] seal our borders,” he said. “We can use a whole series of things to do that, not just fences and walls, but electronic surveillance and drones.”

I mean, given that US Customs and Border Patrol has been using surveillance drones since 2005, to virtually no effect, although they have managed to crash 23 unmanned planes, one 100 yards from somebody's house in Nogales? What use other than surveillance did he have in mind? He wasn't planning to kill anybody, was he? He wasn't planning to use armed military drones, in clear violation of the Posse Comitatus law (funny trick for a small-government Constitutional conservative, I must say), was he?

Cheap shot: Dr. Ben

Takes a tough man to make a tender superPAC. But you can keep fucking that chicken, Dr. Ben, as long as you don't marry it. Image via 365 Bars.

The Times seems to be interested in taking Dr. Ben Carson seriously as a presidential candidate:

One of the clearest indicators of his intention to run is that he has met recently with communications experts to tone down his remarks. In an interview, he blamed “the P.C. police” for frequently twisting his meaning. “When I mention bestiality or pedophilia in the same sentence with homosexuality, people say ‘Carson says they’re the same.’ Of course they’re not the same,” he said. “That point was if you change the definition of marriage for one group, you’ll have to change it for the next group and the next group.”