US Presidential Contenders

[Buster's Uncle]

Dude, I speak fluent conservative and that's the whole point of the style.  This is a smartbomb meme - I hope the liberals will spread it, but I didn't make it for them.

[Buster's Uncle]

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=960710620637402&set=a.960554750652989.1073741831.100000954193838&type=3&theater

[snickers]

Click on the attachment to see at 100%.  It's a lot crisper like that.

[Buster's Uncle]

-Turns out the reason the tagging system is so clumsy on Facebook is, I surmise, so you can't name someone in a picture "Bigot" or worse.  I get it, but a shame this time, all the same...

[Buster's Uncle]

Playing now, the Ben Carson show
Yahoo Politics
Matt Bai  National Political Columnist  ‎September‎ ‎10‎, ‎2015



Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson became an overnight hero to conservative commentators and activists. (Photo: Ross D. Franklin/AP)



One of my least favorite journalism clichés is what I like to call the trick lead. That’s the one where the crafty writer starts a piece by making you think he’s talking about one thing, when really he’s talking about another.

 The well-liked vice president badly wanted to run, but everyone knew the boss was behind his anointed successor, and the party was closing ranks fast.

Joe Biden in 2015? No! It was  Charles Fairbanks  in 1908!

You know, that kind of thing.

But if I actually were the kind of writer who would begin today’s column with a trick lead, it would go something like this:

The political neophyte has now surged to the top of the  polls in Iowa and New Hampshire, where he’s defying the expectations of pundits and establishing himself as a serious threat for the Republican nomination.

Donald [Sleezebag]? No! I’m talking about Ben Carson!





If you haven’t been paying close attention to the non-[Sleezebag] Republican field this year — maybe because it’s a little like studying a “Where’s Waldo?” poster where everyone kind of looks like everyone else, except that no one is actually Waldo — then let me enlighten you.

Carson is a flat-out genius (even if he doesn’t believe in evolution). Raised by a single mother in Detroit and educated at Yale, he went on to medical school and became, at 33, the chief of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins. Not long after, he led a team of doctors in the first-ever operation to divide twins who were joined at the head. Then he turned the spelling bee world upside down by successfully implanting the brain of an Oxford professor in the skull of a fourth grader.

OK, that last part is entirely made up. But you know he could if he really tried.

Carson has never held elective office, or even run. But as the legend goes, in 2013 he spoke at one of these National Prayer Breakfasts in Washington, where he denounced the health care law and liberal government generally while standing just a few feet from President Obama, and overnight he became a hero to conservative commentators and activists.

Heeding their call, he jumped into the presidential field last May and is now in second place and gaining on [Sleezebag] in Iowa. If you made me guess today, I’d say he probably wins the caucuses.

Oh, one other thing, in case you didn’t know: Carson is African-American.

It’s hard to square this with the Republican Party you hear about if you watch cable news (otherwise known these days as “[Sleezebag] TV”) or hang out much with urban liberals. Conservative ideologues are supposed to be race-baiting and enraged, fueled by nativism, resentment and a deep loathing of our first black president, who they insist is a Muslim.



A Carson supporter holds copies of his books as he speaks during the Iowa State Fair. (Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)


Yet here is Carson, surging into second place in virtually all-white primary states, surpassing Jeb Bush and leaving archconservative candidates like Scott Walker and Rand Paul in the dust. And he’s not at all angry. While [Sleezebag] just about writhes with insecurity and calls everybody in politics an idiot, Carson projects an easy confidence and barely speaks above a whisper.

So how do we explain Carson’s appeal?

It’s not as if he has some incredibly creative agenda. Reading through the positions on Carson’s website is like spending a few hours at an amusement park called “Banal Land.” He’s pro-life, pro-balanced budget, pro-gun, pro-traditional marriage. On the one issue where he’s less than a reflection of accepted dogma, Carson supports a guest worker program for immigrants, which should hardly endear him to conservatives.

Carson doesn’t pretend to know very much about governing or foreign affairs in particular. His campaign manager, Barry Bennett, told the New York Daily News: “The man is a world-renowned brain scientist. … I think he can memorize a list of world leaders.” Which is kind of like Bobby Jindal saying, “Hey, I’m a Rhodes scholar. I’m pretty sure I can figure out how to surgically separate a couple of brains.”

Nor has Carson done anything special to seize his moment, in the way that Newt Gingrich took over the debate stage four years ago. For whatever reason, Carson was barely given a chance to speak at the first debate last month, and his only memorable moment came when he pointed that out.

No, what makes Carson compelling to a lot of people, clearly, is the power of his personal narrative. As I’ve written a few times recently, we live in a moment when, as the social critic Neil Postman predicted exactly 30 years ago, politics has merged fully into entertainment, when characters and story arcs have supplanted expertise and worldviews.

Much like candidate Obama, who cast himself at the center of an inspiring docudrama in 2008, Carson is running as the embodiment of a story we still like to tell ourselves about America — a story about enduring opportunity and equality, the triumph of parenting and will over circumstance and prejudice.

It’s the kind of stuff that makes for an emotional TV movie. In fact, it did! TNT aired “Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story” back in 2009. It starred Cuba Gooding Jr., of “Jerry Maguire” fame. Show me the cerebral cortex!

And in this way, Carson isn’t actually all that different from [Sleezebag], really. Their presentations bear no resemblance, but their appeal is rooted in the same cultural shift. [Sleezebag] is reality TV, explosive and unscripted. Carson is a miniseries, evocative and reaffirming.

There’s a danger in attaching such significance to inexperienced politicians, as we’ve learned. Obama spent too much of his presidency improvising a governing philosophy and figuring out how to deal with vast bureaucracies and recalcitrant adversaries. As much as Democrats may hate to hear it, the truth is that someone with more political experience would probably have found his footing a lot sooner.



Carson is running as the embodiment of a story about the triumph of parenting and will over circumstance and prejudice. (Photo: Charlie Riedel/AP)


Carson seems like a good guy and a great mind, and if one of my kids ever needed brain surgery, I’d bang down a thousand doors just to get in a room with him. But that doesn’t mean I want him rushing to the Situation Room when some terrorist group in Pakistan makes off with a nuclear weapon.

And yet it’s hard to blame voters for seeking some inspiration, and some authenticity, when all these governing-ready politicians seem so much the opposite. It’s hard to begrudge them their penchant for a moving story when all they get from the leading establishment types, too often anyway, are platitudes and artifice.

It was embarrassing to watch this week as Hillary Clinton’s campaign aides, speaking to the New York Times’ Amy Chozick,  laid out  a methodical plan for her to be more spontaneous, without a hint of irony. “I can have a perfectly fine life not being president,” Clinton herself told ABC’s David Muir, which must have sounded bizarre to voters who consider lives with healthy families and stable careers to be a lot more than perfectly fine.

Candidates like Clinton and Bush have to be more than humanistic renderings of long résumés and safe policies meant to shore up one constituency or another. In the age of narrative politics, the governing candidate has to tell a story that resonates, too — about how the country can look in 20 years, about the sometimes wrenching choices we’ll have to make to get there, about how you transcend bitterness and entrenched ideology.

Carson’s narrative may not have a whole lot to do with governing the country. But, you know, at least it’s real.

https://www.yahoo.com/politics/playing-now-the-ben-carson-show-128746591126.html


He sounds like an admirable man who would make a terrible president and has no business even running.  -So of course they love him.  And I'll have to eat a lot of crow if the Republicans nominate him - any African-American, in fact, in the new two decades.  The reality is what it is and a generation will have to die off before there's any chance at all.

[Buster's Uncle]

Okay, somebody tell me WTF is going on with Huckabee?  I always had the impression that he wasn't all that bad.  Has he had a stroke, or is he gone full-McCain/desperate hooker and cynically courting the outright bigots, or fooled me all along, or what?

He told someone on the radio today that the Dred Scott decision was still the law of the land.  -So stupid, ignoramus, right of David Duke, pandering like a [prostitute] TO the David Dukes who like the Pig, all of the above, what?

[Green1]

Okay, somebody tell me WTF is going on with Huckabee?  I always had the impression that he wasn't all that bad.  Has he had a stroke, or is he gone full-McCain/desperate hooker and cynically courting the outright bigots, or fooled me all along, or what?

He told someone on the radio today that the Dred Scott decision was still the law of the land.  -So stupid, ignoramus, right of David Duke, pandering like a [prostitute]TO the David Dukes who like the Pig, all of the above, what?

He was always like that. The constitution on applies if you are a Christian, rich rural business owner. Preferably not well educated. And when I mean not well educated, I mean drinking beer for four years at Arkansas State biding time to get VP at the family business after. No culture or social skills.

Thing is, there are vast areas of the country between the cities ruled by groups of people. Along with masses and the poor fighting and begging over to work for maybe 5 crappy families or companies (if  that) who think that behaving like them will some how make them rich and saved, too.

[Rusty Edge]

"Carson seems like a good guy and a great mind, and if one of my kids ever needed brain surgery, I’d bang down a thousand doors just to get in a room with him. But that doesn’t mean I want him rushing to the Situation Room when some terrorist group in Pakistan makes off with a nuclear weapon."

Well, I take issue with this.
Unlike the frontrunner, Carson seems to be a very humble and low key kinda guy, cool under pressure. I'm guessing calm and cool under pressure is a prerequisite for a brain surgeon, maybe I'm wrong about that. My dad has had brain surgery at least three times. I've met and heard tell of a lot of brain surgeons. One of them was the back-up brain surgeon for president Reagan.

It's merely a personal impression of mine, but knowing that a simple brain bleed can destroy brain tissue and lose memory or function forever, that sounds like a high pressure situation to me. More pressure than I'd care for.

Compared to several would be Holy Crusaders seeking the Republican nomination, and egos that don't back down from a urinating contest, right now I'm thinking I'd rather have a level-headed genius listening to the cabinet officers and making that decision. 

I do know that I really don't want the egocentric frontrunners from either party in that position.

[Rusty Edge]

Okay, somebody tell me WTF is going on with Huckabee?  I always had the impression that he wasn't all that bad.  Has he had a stroke, or is he gone full-McCain/desperate hooker and cynically courting the outright bigots, or fooled me all along, or what?

He told someone on the radio today that the Dred Scott decision was still the law of the land.  -So stupid, ignoramus, right of David Duke, pandering like a [prostitute]TO the David Dukes who like the Pig, all of the above, what?

Well, I'm shocked myself. I had a similar impression. My take on it is that he sees himself as the voice of the Evangelical wing. But he has to compete with sons of evangelical clergy like Walker and Cruz, and with an openly religious fellow like Ben Carson, and Carson is vey admirable and quite likable. Huckabee is fading away, without a hope of being either a king or a kingmaker. I wouldn't doubt he's having fundraising troubles with this competition, too.

I think it's a last, desperate attempt to recover attention.

[Buster's Uncle]

So full-McCain.  It makes a kind of sense - when you're stuck in back where nobody can see you you've got nothing to loose.

-When McCain went desperate hooker, that logic didn't apply, BTW.

Are these guys in a campaign bubble where they can't see how it looks, though?  I'd pass on a Sure Thing for Ruling the Universe before I'd show up at a God Hates Fags rally and then proclaim that Blacks Aren't Real Citizens later the same week. 

Cross Mike off the maybe list forever; unfit for public service/life of any kind. He's done. 

[Buster's Uncle]

-Rusty, how much of that is likes Carson and how much is looking like your guy so far.  You ain't got a good field of pickins at this point, unless the common Sith starts doing a lot better.

[Rusty Edge]

Uh...
Right now my guy is still ANYBODY BUT HILLARY THE WEASEL LAWYER. My hopes are up.

He who won't be mentioned did it again today. He retaliated. Carson made a remark recently that questions the GOP frontrunner's  humility and faith. The retaliation belittled Carson as a doctor!

Really? The guy was career Johns Hopkins, the top hospital in the country. Not just a brain surgeon, but a guy who did surgery nobody had done before, and a department head. Truly outstanding as a doctor.

That's like trashing McCain over Viet Nam. Well, he got captured because he was fighting behind enemy lines. In order to do that you not only have to serve in the military in wartime, but you have to risk your life at or beyond the front lines.

Both of those incidents got my hackles up.
Our GOP frontrunner- Alienating voters one day at a time.

The more I hear from him, the more I appreciate and long for a candidate with character. I can't have Ron Paul, but I still like to daydream about a trustworthy president. I like and respect Carson.
But I also recall that Jimmy Carter was clearly the most moral president in my lifetime, but one of the worst of those ( I count) eleven, so that's probably not a good idea. I think good liars and poker players make better presidents, because their threats and promises are convincing.

If I had to choose a president from people who are presently on the poll radar, I'd choose Kasich.
I think he's rational and well-qualified. I think Ohio is a state that's representative of America. I think he'd be a competent president.

[Green1]

[Sleezebag] actually said something that made me laugh for a change.

In a last ditch effort, our Governor Jindal said [Sleezebag] was a "narcissist and egomaniac". True.

But [Sleezebag] replied he had never met him since he was not at the big kid debate. Plus he does not respond to those below 1 percent at the polls.

LOL!!

Good. Jindal is a cuss word at our house.  I am glad that bullet is dodged. Jindal is a nut and an utter incompetent. He fought gay marriage, cut half the hospitals, imprisoned thousands, and destroyed the economy of the state. Enough bad, I would need a manifesto to do justice, the idiocy. Jindal is so crazed, he had his Governor pic as him as white even though he is definitely not! 

Dont believe me... Be glad this is one less Repulican nut:

[Rusty Edge]

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=960579800650484&set=pb.100000954193838.-2207520000.1441898404.&type=3&permPage=1

I'd like to do more versions with 'love its Ideals' (-Liberty- -Equality- -Freedoms- etc), but that starts making it too easy to pervert to the opposite of my meaning; I'm not about to feed the Statists -and their ignorant dupes- who are the problem.

Okay. Posted to facebook. Not that I have many contacts, but some of my friends & family do. I'll keep you advised of the response.

[Buster's Uncle]

I have a somewhat-related speech about ignorant dupes based on what I said to Mylochka at supper yesterday, but I want to wake up more first.


Oh lovely.  NPR just mentioned that it's Still Dead Day.   Let us not discuss it, but I was sick of that in 2003 2001.  Couldn't turn on the TV for about a week in September for years.


...I think Carson's a good man, Rusty.  He's really made a very good impression to the small extent I've paid attention, for all the he's behind a whole cluster of the usual social conservative positions I strongly disagree with.  He's looking like the adult in a roomful of clowns, which is what Romney had going for him last time.  -It stopped working when Romney was standing next to Bakrama instead of Gingrich, incidentally, or he'd have done a lot better.

But I think Bakrama is a very good man -with whom I agree much more often- who is not a good president.  He's bad for the opposite reason Dr. Carter was; Jimmy wouldn't compromise on anything, ever - Barry won't NOT compromise on anything ever.  Both extremes seem to get you hated.  Both fail at a basic extra-textual but fundamental duty of the President; leadership - and that's where Bakrama had the most potential to be good great, frustratingly enough.

I strongly emphasized the value of a proven record of experience and accomplishment in the OP when I tentatively endorsed Sanders.  I felt that way when our current president first ran, the author of the Carson article thinks the same, and I really wish more people did.  We don't need any presidents having a whit more steep a learning curve on day one than can be helped; there's never a safe time for that.

[Buster's Uncle]

...I just messaged the Sister Miriam's Sister image to Mr. Fun, A screaming wears-it-on-his-sleeve political homersexual, noting that the bumpersticker meme in the same album needed spreading, and something about subverting and destroying the Republican party that way.  His sort of mental illness is exactly what's needed on the job...