quote:The conservative group Accuracy in Media (AIM) has removed references to Wayne Simmons from its Benghazi commission website after he was arrested on "charges of major fraud against the United States, wire fraud, and making false statements to the government," including allegedly falsely claiming he worked for the CIA.
On July 29, 2013, AIM announced in a press release that it was launching the Citizens' Commission on Benghazi (CCB) "with some of the country's top retired military officers and national security officials," including "Wayne Simmons, former CIA officer." That press release is no longer online.
quote:TAPPER: Obviously Al Qaeda was responsible for the terrorist attack of 9/11, but how do you respond to critics who ask, if your brother and his administration bear no responsibility at all, how do you then make the jump that President Obama and Secretary Clinton are responsible for what happened at Benghazi?
JEB BUSH: Well I — the question on Benghazi which, is hopefully we’ll now finally get the truth to, is was the place secure? They had a responsibility, the Department of State, to have proper security. There were calls for security, it looks like they didn’t get it. And how was the response in the aftermath of the attack, was there a chance that these four American lives could have been saved? That’s what the investigation is about, it’s not a political issue. It’s not about the broad policy issue, is were we doing the job of protecting our embassies and our consulates and during the period, those hours after the attack started, could they have been saved?
TAPPER: Well that’s, that’s kind of proving the point of the critics I was just asking about, because you don’t want to have your brother bear responsibility for 9/11 and I understand that argument and Al Qaeda’s responsible, but why are the terrorists not the ones who are responsible for these attacks in Libya?
BUSH: They are, of course they are but — of course they are, but if the ambassador was asking for additional security and didn’t get it, that’s a proper point and if it’s proven that the security was adequate compared to other embassies, fine, we’ll move on.
posted
I remember how absurd the Clinton hearings over the Monica Lewinsky scandal became. It felt like a fact-finding committee with the unusual disposition of looking for specific facts it desperately wanted to exist.
Benghazi is basically this all over again.
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quote:Asked on Fox Business Network if the United States should take action to close certain mosques as part of the fight against the Islamic State, as has happened in Britain, Mr. Trump said, “I would do that, absolutely.”
Mr. Trump then said that he was not sure about the legality of closing mosques, but that it was certainly something that should be looked at.
“It depends if the mosque is, you know, loaded for bear,” he said.
quote:"My whole life really has been a 'no' and I fought through it," Trump said Monday at an NBC-sponsored town hall here. "It has not been easy for me, it has not been easy for me. And you know I started off in Brooklyn, my father gave me a small loan of a million dollars."
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Ben (I'm single-handedly destroying the stereotype that brain surgeons are wicked intelligent) Carson?
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quote:Donald Trump commented on Carson's theory about the pyramids on Thursday during an appearance on MSNBC, saying, "I'll have to put that into my repertoire when I talk about Ben...That was a strange deal."
That's actually kind of funny.
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posted
I just like how at odds it is with blatantly present and observable hard physical evidence of the actual pyramids, which are definitely there, and it's so easy to just look at literally everything we know about it from walking through them and and we can know that nothing suggests that it would have been designed to store grain if not just for the fact that it is the most stupidly elaborate and costly means possible to do that that people could have thought of back then. Okay so we have a ****ing X story tall ziggurat of pure stone constructed in this place where there are all sorts of, uh, tombs, of pharaohs and crap, and so here amongst all these tombs there is this gargantuan almost solid monument with just a few rooms and cramped corridors deep within and barricaded shut, over here, with all these tombs.
Why, it must be for storing grain! They just needed to haul stone across the desert for decades to make the least efficient grain storage system ever ok.
It would be like if a couple thousand years in the future someone comes across the remains of an aircraft carrier and decides that it must have been a phone booth of some kind.
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The ancient Egyptians build granaries as well. There are loads and loads of them still around - it's not like "how did the Egyptians store grain" was a mystery that needed solving.
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posted
How can you trust professional archaeologists, though? Professionals built the Titanic, and amateurs built the Ark.... so, you know, amateurs are better at, um... archaeology... and... I guess, neurosurgery, maybe?
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posted
Of course, he said none of the signatories of the Constitution had ever held elected office, either.
So, he apparently didn't pay attention to at least a couple different historical eras during school.
You know, when he was a violent maniac with barely restrained anger issues.... that no one in his school remembers, whatsoever.
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: It would be like if a couple thousand years in the future someone comes across the remains of an aircraft carrier and decides that it must have been a phone booth of some kind.
That's much more plausible. I mean carriers do have tons of communication gear on them. So clearly it's a place where transoceanic flights could land so the passengers could make a few calls before continuing the flight.
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posted
ok I take it back then. it is not like that because it is something that is MORE plausible than what carson said.
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: It would be like if a couple thousand years in the future someone comes across the remains of an aircraft carrier and decides that it must have been a phone booth of some kind.
That's much more plausible. I mean carriers do have tons of communication gear on them. So clearly it's a place where transoceanic flights could land so the passengers could make a few calls before continuing the flight.
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Ben "I've got holes in difference area codes because I finance infrastructural development with 10-15% flat income tax rates" Carson.
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Ben "I claim I was given a full ride scholarship into West Point by General Westmoreland himeself! But there's no records of my even applying, and my campaign admits it's not factual." Carson.
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Carson has racked up so many instances of deciding that educated/trained/qualified experts are wrong, where he believes something utterly false instead, because it's a simplistic appealing explanation...
how is anyone not terrified of what he would do with actual political power?
I'm confused how he made it through medical school to be honest. I mean, if he's President someday, I'll try to take some reassurance from the fact that he did, and it would have been impossible if he weren't capable of listening to experts and following their advice.
I'm just not sure how to distinguish that part of his track record the the part that consists of being startlingly wrong about things that are not that hard to understand.
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posted
I think the most straightforward explanation is that it's a cynical play on his part—he's appealing to ignorant voters who reflexively distrust authority and expertise.
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posted
I think Trump is the one who knows how ridiculous the things he says are, he's just saying it to pander. Carson, OTOH, strikes me as a true believer in what he says.
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quote:Originally posted by Jon Boy: he's appealing to ignorant voters who reflexively distrust authority and expertise.
now I'm sure it would be typically unfair of me to suggest that this is apparently what works for conservatives these days
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posted
The more I've thought about it, the more I believe that it's less likely a cynical ploy than a sincere but unexamined belief. It's the kind of belief that certainly sounds appealing, because it lets you disregard the advice of experts who say things you don't like, and it's easy to find evidence to support your belief.
But it's probably never occurred to him to question it, and so he doesn't really stop to think that his teachers in med school must not have known what they're doing because they're experts, or how he must not really be a good brain surgeon because he's an expert.
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Honestly, it makes me think of Pol Pot. That line of thinking is absolutely part of what lead to the Cambodian genocide.
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Jake: I coincidentally did a lot of reading on that subject (I realized about a month ago I had no understanding of the Cambodian Genocide) and the anti-intellectualism was what stood out to me. It seems you can gain a lot of power by teaching people to distrust or even despise scientists, doctors, educators, and other experts, since it allows you to pretty much blatantly lie to people and then accuse any expert who uses pesky fact or logic to disagrees with you with of being inherently untrustworthy.
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quote:Originally posted by Jake: Honestly, it makes me think of Pol Pot. That line of thinking is absolutely part of what lead to the Cambodian genocide.
Regardless of Carson's sincerity, it's a scary line of thinking, even if it never leads to something like that.
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Carson is proving that "I'm just a caveman" is a successful political strategy with the conservative base.
If Phil Hartman were still with us, I'd love to see SNL have a debate between unfrozen caveman lawyer and Ben Carson.
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quote:Originally posted by Jon Boy: The more I've thought about it, the more I believe that it's less likely a cynical ploy than a sincere but unexamined belief. It's the kind of belief that certainly sounds appealing, because it lets you disregard the advice of experts who say things you don't like, and it's easy to find evidence to support your belief.
But it's probably never occurred to him to question it, and so he doesn't really stop to think that his teachers in med school must not have known what they're doing because they're experts, or how he must not really be a good brain surgeon because he's an expert.
I think it's also because he's used to being the expert, and hasn't taken to heart the fact that being the expert at one thing doesn't make you the most knowledgable person on everything.
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quote:Carson, a political novice running for the GOP presidential nomination, made this observation in a late-night Facebook post defending his lack of political experience. As he put it:
“You are absolutely right — I have no political experience. The current Members of Congress have a combined 8,700 years of political experience. Are we sure political experience is what we need. Every signer of the Declaration of Independence had no elected office experience. What they had was a deep belief that freedom is a gift from God. They had a determination to rise up against a tyrannical King.”
Of course, the Declaration of Independence was crafted by a committee charged by the Continental Congress, which was made up of delegates who had been elected by the Colonial assemblies. But we’ll assume that Carson knew that, and instead meant that prior to being elected to Congress, the delegates had had no elected office experience. Is that correct?
Carson needs to hit the history books, or at least do a Google search. More than half of the signers of the Declaration of Independence had elected office experience.
Indeed, one reason why the American Revolution was successful is because it was led by men with many years in politics, political action and protest, often honed in the debates held in Colonial legislatures. In many ways, the background of the Founding Fathers undercuts the very argument Carson was trying to make.
quote:(Update: After this fact check appeared, Carson’s Facebook post was edited to read “no federal elected office experience.” There was, of course, no “federal” government at the time.)
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The whole "signers of the declaration experience" thing should really be dug into and made into a bigger issue.
Many historians credit the political acumen of the Americans with the difference between our forming a 230 year long Republic and descending into the madness of the French Revolution. We had more than a hundred years of political institutions to lean on, the French didn't.
The idea that political novices are superior to experienced politicians has no historical precedent I can find, especially not in the revolutionary period. The Founding Fathers, Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson, Monroe, Madison, were all very learned men, most of whom were very experienced in law and philosophy. They had a deep understanding of the issues and the ideas of the greatest thinkers of the day, grappled with those issues, and debated at a very high level.
The Presidency is not for amateurs. Frankly, high levels of government in general aren't for amateurs. I'm not saying the professionals are killing it, but the amateurs are doing terribly.
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