Tag Archives: Carson

Ben Carson Probably Shouldn’t Have Said That Marines Aren’t Ready to Deploy

by RXQLynne796031 Posted on September 17, 2015

Mother Jones

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During a discussion about the US military at the Republican debate on Wednesday night, Dr. Ben Carson said that Marines were not ready to be deployed. He was likely referring to something he’s said before, which is that perhaps half of the Marines’ non-deployed units aren’t ready to be deployed. Whatever the fine points, his comment didn’t land well with people on twitter:

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Ben Carson Probably Shouldn’t Have Said That Marines Aren’t Ready to Deploy

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The GOP Establishment’s Sneaky Ben Carson Fundraising Ploy

by AlissaHardin483 Posted on September 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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Ben Carson, the neurosurgeon turned GOP presidential candidate now soaring in the polls, routinely rails against Washington insiders, the political establishment, and officials who have experience with governing. But none of this has stopped Republican Party insiders from exploiting Carson’s popularity and appropriating his name to raise money for, yes, the GOP establishment.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee, a wing of the Republican National Committee with strong ties to the GOP Senate leadership, blasted out an email this week urging recipients to sign a “petition” wishing Carson, who turns 64 years old on Friday, a happy birthday. But this was not just a polite and thoughtful exercise. To sign the petition, a Carson well-wisher had to provide his or her name, email address, and zip code. That is, he or she had to provide valuable information that NRSC fundraisers could use to identify—and later target—conservative voters who back Carson but presumably reject the Republicans who control the NRSC, such as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

And after a Carson fan finished filling out the “birthday card” for Carson, the NRSC asked him or her to make a donation—to the NRSC. But an email recipient could be forgiven for thinking this contribution was somehow going to help Carson’s presidential campaign.

Politicians and candidates sometimes strike deals with party outfits and political action committees: You can use my name on a fundraising note, if you share the information you obtain. But in this instance, the NRSC did not consult Carson or his campaign beforehand. It did not ask if it could use his name to fill its coffers with a somewhat deceptive pitch. “No heads up, no courtesy notice…nor any deal,” says Carson spokesman Doug Watts.

Still, Watts isn’t blaming the NRSC for trying to profit off Carson’s success—even if the birthday card was a a ploy by the GOP establishment. “Ben’s name is currently the most powerful name in fundraising,” he says.

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The GOP Establishment’s Sneaky Ben Carson Fundraising Ploy

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Cruz, Fiorina Are Big Winners In First Post-Debate Poll

by LuisGwendolen Posted on August 9, 2015

Mother Jones

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A new NBC poll has gotten a lot of attention today for suggesting that Donald Trump won the Republican debate on Thursday. And maybe he did! But I’d take the results with a grain of salt. Here’s why:

As the chart on the right shows, Trump’s support didn’t increase. It stayed where it was. The big gainers were Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, and Ben Carson.
It was an overnight poll. So it might reflect what viewers thought of the debate itself, but it doesn’t take account of the weekend fallout over Trump’s post-debate treatment of Megyn Kelly. Nor does it take into account the media treatment of Trump over the past few days. This may or may not make a difference, but I’d wait a few days to see how things play out.
It’s an internet poll, not a telephone poll. The methodology is fairly sound, but it’s nonetheless another reason to treat the results with caution.

I’m not foolish enough to predict what’s going to happen to Trump’s poll numbers over the next week. I feel safe saying that Trump will implode eventually, and that he’ll implode over something like this weekend’s lunacy. But whether it will happen over this weekend’s version of this weekend’s lunacy—well, who knows? The base of the Republican Party is pretty inscrutable to a mushy mainstream liberal like me. I’m really not sure what will and won’t set them off these days.

As for the rest of the results, I’m stumped over Ted Cruz’s gain. He didn’t seem to especially stand out on Thursday. Conversely, Fiorina is easy to understand, and Carson’s bump might just be due to increased name recognition. Bush and Walker dropped a little more than I would have guessed, but 3 percent still isn’t much. We’ll see if all these results hold up over the next week.

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Cruz, Fiorina Are Big Winners In First Post-Debate Poll

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Debate Liveblogging: The First GOP Presidential Debate of 2015

by Parab3olum234 Posted on August 7, 2015

Mother Jones

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WRAP-UP: Marian, who seems to be more in touch with the common man than I am, thinks Rubio was the winner tonight. He seemed fine to me: plenty conservative, but also serious and wonkish. But the big winner? I’m not sure.

So who was? I don’t think there was a big breakout. But I do think there were two losers. First, Donald Trump. His schtick might be entertaining in small doses, but when you hear it repeatedly in response to question after question, it just seems juvenile. This was just not a good format for his brand of performance art.

The second loser was Walker. Not because he made any big mistakes, but because he didn’t really do anything to break out, and he needed to. This is not a huge deal: I don’t think he did himself any real harm, and there are plenty more debates to come. But he needs to up his game.

Jeb Bush was very presidential sounding, but mostly treaded water. For him, though, this isn’t so bad. Unlike Walker, I don’t think he really had to do any more than that.

Tonally, this debate was like night and day compared to the earlier debate. There was plenty of skirmishing, plenty of barbs, and much more energy. The actual substantive disagreements—Rand Paul aside—were pretty slight, but the candidates made the most of them.

There weren’t a whole lot of memorable zingers. Even Trump seemed off his game, even defensive at times (when he was asked about his contributions to Hillary Clinton, for example). Walker had his bit about Hillary’s email server, but it sounded too robotic to draw blood. Still, I’m sure it will get plenty of cable news air time, since there wasn’t a lot of competition. Mostly, I suspect the bits that will be on a 24/7 loop are the direct arguments between the candidates.

Summary: Trump and Walker probably lost a little ground. Maybe Christie too. Rubio gained a bit of ground. Bush stayed even. The rest probably will stay about where they are, which is so low that it hardly matters if they gained or lost a percentage point.

Prediction: Someone will drop off the top ten, and Carly Fiorina will be on the big stage next time. Personally, I think she did well, but not great. (Maybe because I live in California and remember her Senate run in 2010.) But the media seems to have decided very quickly that she did superbly. That will be enough to give her a bump in the polls.

Debate transcript here.

First off, I want to apologize if anyone gets seasick from the graphic at the top of this post. Sometimes politics requires sacrifices, I’m afraid. And I have to look at it too.

10:56 – Carson: “It’s time to move beyond” talking about race. Huge applause.

10:54 – Megyn Kelly is asking about God. But someone apparently came up during the commercial break to ask about veterans. So now she asks Rubio what he thinks about God and veterans. Kinda falling off the rails here.

10:52 – Kasich: “I do believe in miracles.” He’d better.

10:41 – Walker on recent cyberattacks: “It’s sad to think about, but probably the Russian and Chinese governments know more about Hillary Clinton’s email server than do the members of the United States Congress.” Zing! It got good applause, but wasn’t that a little too obviously a preplanned zinger?

10:37 – An Iranian general visited Russia. What would Trump do in response? No answer, but it would be totally different from what Obama is doing. BTW: the part of the Iran deal that Trump doesn’t like involves 24-day notice for inspections. Trump twice called it 24-hour.

10:35 – Walker gives a total non-answer about #BlackLivesMatter and civil rights.

10:32 – Kasich gets a surprising amount of applause when he gives a fairly tolerant answer about gay marriage.

10:31 – Trump’s defense of his big mouth: People’s heads are getting cut off. We don’t have time to be nice.

10:30 – I guess this debate is going two hours, not 90 minutes. Crap.

10:29 – Megyn Kelly asks Trump, “When did you actually become a Republican?” Trump says he has evolved. “You know who else evolved? Ronald Reagan.” Well, true enough.

10:26 – Rubio says he has never advocated a rape or incest exception to a ban on abortion. Is this true?

10:24 – Huckabee says “Iran got everything, we got nothing” from the Iran deal. With the exception of stopping Iran’s nuclear program for at least a decade, I suppose that’s true.

10:20 – Walker: We need to kill the Iran deal, put in place even more crippling sanctions, and then persuade our allies to go along. And how will we manage that? Crickets.

10:16 – Trump: Only four out of hundreds of his companies have gone bankrupt. So there. By the way, “this country, right now, owes $19 trillion, and they need someone like me to straighten out that mess.” Big applause. Crikey.

10:12 – Huckabee says his consumption tax is great because it will tax “illegals, prostitutes, pimps, drug dealers,” who are all freeloading off the system right now. Um….

10:11 – Christie: “I’m the only guy on this stage who’s put out a 12-point plan on entitlements.” Unsurprisingly, this got no applause. I guess 12-point plans aren’t what they used to be.

10:10 – Walker has exactly the same economic plan as Bush!

10:07 – How will Bush get 4% growth? Answer: lift our spirits, fix the tax code, get rid of regulations, repeal Obamacare, build the XL pipeline, fix the immigration system.

10:05 – Carson plays the Alinsky card on Hillary.

10:04 – Ben Carson doesn’t think Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee. I wonder who he’s betting on?

9:51 – Trump says he gives money to lots of politicians because he gets favors in return. “I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And you know what, when I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them and they are there for me.” So how about Hillary Clinton? What did he get from her? “I said, be at my wedding, and she came to my wedding. And you know why? Because she had no choice.” Ha ha ha. I wonder how long it takes before this routine gets old even with his supporters?

9:50 – Trump is asked why he supported single-payer health care 15 years ago but doesn’t anymore. He says it’s because 15 years ago was a different era. Huh? Word salad follows.

9:49 – Asked about health care, Trump says he was against the Iraq war. Okey dokey.

9:47 – Carson: “Carson doesn’t believe in fighting stupid wars.” Apparently this means he’s in favor of waterboarding.

9:45 – Bush: “We need to take out ISIS with every tool in our arsenal.” That’s all the detail we get from Bush.

9:41 – Cruz: “We will not defeat radical Islamic terrorists as long as we have a president unwilling to utter the words ‘radical Islamic terrorists.’ ” Yeesh. Apparently the way to defeat ISIS is to have a president who makes clear that joining ISIS amounts to signing your own death warrant. That’s all the detail we get about defeating ISIS.

9:37 – Chris Christie wants more surveillance, not less. Rand Paul supports the Bill of Rights. Christie: “When you’re sitting in a subcommittee blowing hot air, you can say anything you want.” Paul: “I don’t trust President Obama with our records. I know you gave him a big hug. If you want to give him a big hug again, go right ahead.” Christie: “The hugs I remember are the hugs I got after 9/11.” Megyn Kelly finally steps in and breaks up the fight.

9:36 – Well, everyone is opposed to illegal immigration.

9:31 – No one really wants to criticize Trump for saying illegal immigration is all due to the fact that our government is stupid.

9:26 – Chris Wallace wants to know if Trump has any specific evidence that the Mexican government is sending criminals over? Trump says that “border patrol people that I deal with, that I talk to, they say this is what’s happening, because our leaders are stupid.” The Mexican government is much more cunning than ours. “That’s what’s happening whether you like it or not.”

9:25 –Trump seems to think that Republicans didn’t really care about illegal immigration until he came along. Um….

9:20 – Rand Paul: “We didn’t create ISIS. ISIS created ISIS.” Roger that. Then Paul suggests that the way to beat ISIS is to stop funding their allies. I’m not sure what he was getting at with that.

9:18 – Huckabee thinks the next president should just ignore the Supreme Court and ban abortion. Again, huh?

9:17 – Scott Walker defends his opposition to a life-of-the-mother exception for abortion because there are always ways to protect the mother. “That’s been proven.” Huh?

9:11 – Megyn Kelly wants to know why Trump insults women so much. Trump is Trump in response. He’s kidding! He’s having fun. America’s problem is too much political correctness. That’s ridiculous when America is losing to everyone—everyone!—and needs to be made great again. If you don’t like it, tough.

9:09 – Rubio: “How is Hillary Clinton going to lecture me about living paycheck to paycheck? I was raised paycheck to paycheck.”

9:06 – Rand Paul barges in to attack Trump. “He’s hedging his bets because he’s used to buying politicians.”

9:04 – First question: a handraising question. Is anyone unwilling to pledge to support the eventual nominee? Only Trump raises his hand. He’s not willing to make the pledge unless he’s the nominee.

8:55 – To my surprise, Carly Fiorina has been anointed the big winner of the happy hour debate. I can see the case for her being the winner by a bit—she was competent and on message and made no mistakes—but not by a landslide. But apparently the punditocracy has spoken. Fiorina is ready for the big show.

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Debate Liveblogging: The First GOP Presidential Debate of 2015

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Jeb Bush Stiffs Christian Group on Poverty Video

by FranciscoErickso Posted on July 21, 2015

Mother Jones

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More than 100 Christian leaders from the right and the left working under the umbrella group Circle of Protection recently asked all of the presidential candidates to make a three-minute video answering this question: “What would you do as president to offer help and opportunity to hungry and poor people in the United States and around the world?” Ben Carson, Bernie Sanders, Mike Huckabee, Ted Cruz, and Carly Fiorina each responded with videos specifically produced for this project that to varying degrees answer the question. Jeb Bush replied by sending the group a stock campaign ad.

The non-Bush videos are mostly mediocre in production value and content. The Republican candidates couch most of their rhetoric in religious terms, suggesting that they would encourage families and churches take care of their own, with no help from the government. Cruz, in an awkward video, talks directly to the camera to declare the War on Poverty an abject failure. He promises to “reward” Americans who give money to Christian ministries. Fiorina barely manages to eke out a whole minute talking about the subject, but she works in lots of references to God. Carson suggests that big US agricultural companies working in Cameroon hold the key to helping the hungry. Sanders’ video is low-budget but at least presents specific proposals, including funding infrastructure improvements to put people to work. Huckabee’s video shows his childhood home in Hope, Arkansas. He vows to protect Medicare and Social Security.

Jeb Bush didn’t bother to cut a video for the Circle of Protection, which includes the National Association of Evangelicals. Instead, he sent in the “Making a Difference” video he released last month to “introduce himself to the nation” before officially announcing his presidential campaign. The spot has high production values, music, and lots of other people talking: the mother of a developmentally disabled child; a formerly battered woman; a kid who got a private school voucher. It’s easier to watch than Cruz’s. But it’s just a campaign ad.

Chris Ford, media relations manager for Bread for the World, one of the founders of the Circle of Protection, says that the group is not commenting on the individual videos and is “letting the voters decide” what to think. More videos, which will be circulated to churches across the country, are expected in the next week or so from Hillary Clinton, Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio, Martin O’Malley and Rand Paul. Ford says that the group has reached out to Donald Trump, but he hasn’t responded to its requests.

You can watch the Bush video here:

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Jeb Bush Stiffs Christian Group on Poverty Video

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Santorum Holding Onto Debate Stage By His Fingernails in Latest CNN Poll

by LatriceHarrhy Posted on July 1, 2015

Mother Jones

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Fox News will be sponsoring the first Republican debate on August 6, and they have decided to limit the stage to the top ten candidates. The lucky winners will be the ones who “place in the top 10 in an average of the five most recent, recognized national polls leading up to Aug. 4.”

So how is everyone doing so far? CNN is certainly a recognized national poll, so they’ll be part of the eventual winnowing. And their most recent poll shows Jeb! at the top followed by Trump, Huckabee, Carson, and Rand Paul. The bottom three candidates—Christie, Cruz, and Santorum—could easily lose a point or two just due to statistical churn, to be replaced by Jindal, Kasich, and Fiorina.

I’m looking forward to the Trump-Christie showdown for the Annoying Loudmouth Award, and to the Carson-Cruz showdown for the Looneybin Award—though both men have been disappointingly circumspect lately, hedging their beliefs as if they really wanted to win this thing.

But there’s still a chance of Rick Perry melting down in amusing fashion. That should make the whole thing worth watching.

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Santorum Holding Onto Debate Stage By His Fingernails in Latest CNN Poll

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Ben Carson Barely Has a Campaign and He’s Still Winning

by PaulinaBeebe Posted on June 16, 2015

Mother Jones

Ben Carson’s presidential campaign is in chaos. His deputy campaign manager quit to return to his farm. His general counsel just went on a safari. His campaign chairman left almost as soon as Carson announced his candidacy to work on a pro-Carson super-PAC—one of three outside outfits supporting Carson’s run, while at the same time competing with each other for money and volunteers. Carson, meanwhile, is continuing to travel the country giving paid speeches—an unusual move for a candidate.

He’s also leading the entire Republican field, according to the most recent poll of the race from Monmouth:

Monmouth University

It’s early—the first meaningful votes won’t be cast until January. But Carson’s strategy of not really campaigning hasn’t hurt him yet. He’s actually jumped four points in the polls since his non-campaign began.

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Ben Carson Barely Has a Campaign and He’s Still Winning

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Tea Party Heartthrob Ben Carson Once Lived the Hobo Life Hopping Freight Trains

by DemetriusBruns Posted on January 6, 2015

Mother Jones

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Before he was a prospective 2016 Republican presidential candidate, Ben Carson was just another disaffected teenager who hopped freight trains in search of thrills.

Carson, a retired neurosurgeon who plans to make a final decision about running for president by the end of May, became a tea party favorite after ripping into President Obama at the National Prayer Breakfast in 2013. Since then, he has staked out far-right positions on issues like gay rights (which he believes are part of a Marxist plot), the AP US History curriculum (which he fears will be an ISIS recruiting tool), and the 2016 election itself (which he believes might be canceled due to a societal breakdown).

Carson’s rags-to-riches story, as a one-time juvenile delinquent raised by a single mom who rose to the top of the medical profession, is at the core of his personal appeal. It has been the subject of a best-selling book and a feature-length movie. His youthful habit of hopping aboard moving freight trains is considerably less well known. But as Carson explained in his 2008 book, Take the Risk, he and his older brother, Curtis, began riding freight trains after moving back to Detroit from Boston for middle school:

We didn’t think twice about it at the time, and Mother certainly didn’t know about the risks we took, but just getting to and from school in our new neighborhood was a dangerous proposition. The fastest and most exciting way to commute was to hop one of the freight trains rolling on the tracks that ran alongside the route Curtis and I took to Wilson Junior High School. Curtis liked the challenge of fast-moving trains, tossing his clarinet onto one flatcar and then jumping to catch the railing on the very last car of the train. He knew if he missed his chance, he risked never seeing his band instrument again. But he never lost that clarinet.

Since I was smaller, I usually waited for slower trains. But we both placed ourselves in great danger we didn’t ever seriously stop to consider. Not only did we have to run, jump, catch the railing, and hold on for dear life to a moving freight train, but we had to avoid the railroad security who were always on the lookout for people hopping their trains.

They never caught us. And we never got seriously injured like one boy we heard of who was maimed for life after falling onto the tracks under a moving train.

As I reported in the January/February issue of Mother Jones, freight-hopping has always attracted a certain brand of (usually male) individualists who are skeptical of centralized authority. Carson’s Bo Keeley phase came to an end, however, after a run-in with a gang of racist youths. “We stopped after an encounter I had with a different threat as I trotted along the railroad tracks on my way to school along one morning,” he wrote. “Near one of the crossings, a gang of bigger boys, all of them white, approached me. One boy, carrying a big stick, yelled, ‘Hey, you! Nigger boy!'”

If elected, Carson wouldn’t be the first president with a hobo past. When Harry Truman was 18, he got a job with the Santa Fe Railroad, which required him to manage the migrant workers who rode the rails to do manual labor for the company. “Some of those hoboes had better educations than the president of Harvard University, and they weren’t stuck up about it either,” he later recalled.

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Tea Party Heartthrob Ben Carson Once Lived the Hobo Life Hopping Freight Trains

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On a Farther Shore: The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson, Author of Silent Spring

by Myrna Posted on April 5, 2013

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The Gentle Subversive:Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, and the Rise of the Environmental Movement (New Narratives in American History)

by Myrna Posted on March 27, 2013

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