We need a real black intelligent president, not a community organizer.
Dr. Ben Carson for President
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Ben Carson should stick to performing surgery and you should GTFOH with this bullshit.
^^^^^
Sent from my S3 w/smiles
I welcome a new voice to the Politics board but it better have more to say than that.
I never heard of this guy before this thread, but black people won't support him if his introduction to the national stage is making the first black president slightly uncomfortable, even though Obama likely doesn't give a shit about the whole thing.
On another note, regardless of his politics, when was the last time modern black people put a doctor above a politician? Or a doctor over a rapper or an athlete? Even if he is an acccomplished neurosurgeon, people aren't pointing to him as a role model for their kids.
On another note, regardless of his politics, when was the last time modern black people put a doctor above a politician? Or a doctor over a rapper or an athlete? Even if he is an acccomplished neurosurgeon, people aren't pointing to him as a role model for their kids.
I have heard of Dr. Ben Carson and admired his accomplishments for many years. If he were to talk to me about brain surgery or healthy eating (especially for African Americans) I would listen and readily soak in the knowledge.
However, a doctor talking to me about the flat tax. Sure there are some things that sound good and others that he is probably qualified to have an opinion on somewhat - healthcare savings. But sadly he is nothing more than a tag line in a black face (kinda like Rubio). He is not saying anything revolutionary or trying to move the needle forward on serious political issues. A flat tax is great - what should we cut? How exactlly will a flat tax lead to more revenue - many products are non-American and we don't have a great minimum wage. I don't think a health savings plan will really help those making $7.50 an hour (but hey - we will have more people working!!!!).
More importantly, I wish I could say he was refreshing, but he is retiring within the next two years and nothing says I'm running for politcal office than using a prayer breakfast to expose your views. He will either be running for office as a republican or on fox news.
Now let's say he agreed with some of the things the president mentioned like the affordable health care act...think he could run for office or get on MSNBC? No - they got a million like him. This was his way to get in the front of the line. He can now keep the ball rolling.
Check out herman cain. Talk radio bullshitter - ran for president - got fucked over cause he forgot that he has skeletons - landed on Fox news. Ben carson - is probably thinking I can do better than that - why else would he break protocol without any real stats behind his thoughts?
However, a doctor talking to me about the flat tax. Sure there are some things that sound good and others that he is probably qualified to have an opinion on somewhat - healthcare savings. But sadly he is nothing more than a tag line in a black face (kinda like Rubio). He is not saying anything revolutionary or trying to move the needle forward on serious political issues. A flat tax is great - what should we cut? How exactlly will a flat tax lead to more revenue - many products are non-American and we don't have a great minimum wage. I don't think a health savings plan will really help those making $7.50 an hour (but hey - we will have more people working!!!!).
More importantly, I wish I could say he was refreshing, but he is retiring within the next two years and nothing says I'm running for politcal office than using a prayer breakfast to expose your views. He will either be running for office as a republican or on fox news.
Now let's say he agreed with some of the things the president mentioned like the affordable health care act...think he could run for office or get on MSNBC? No - they got a million like him. This was his way to get in the front of the line. He can now keep the ball rolling.
Check out herman cain. Talk radio bullshitter - ran for president - got fucked over cause he forgot that he has skeletons - landed on Fox news. Ben carson - is probably thinking I can do better than that - why else would he break protocol without any real stats behind his thoughts?
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I enjoyed listening -- though I must admist that I was caused to be cautious even before he spoke a word, having been introduced by Jeff Sessions. I think you make a good point about the health savings accounts and that we should dig-down into the specifics with respect to any other "solution" he advances, not because he or some might project him as the next ___________ (insert here as appropropriate) Hope, but because all that glitters, ain't gold.
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I don't know Carson's views on a flat tax, health care plans, or his political aspirations. However, you seem to be holding him to some high standard for whatever reason.
As the original post in this thread pointed out, he's being contrasted with a community organizer. What is inherent in a community organizer over a neurologist in thinking about the tax system, health care system, or legitimacy in running for president?
A politician is just a person who went through an election process. There is nothing they offer more than any other person. I think the ABILITY to think about complicated issues is more recognizable in a neurosurgeon compared to a community organizer.
If you look at politicians, their only qualification for thinking about taxes or healthcare is they were elected. Their backgrounds aren't normally medical or financial/economics based. I'm saying this because you seem to be dismissing what Carson is saying if it's not medical related.
Yep. Name all the famous doctors and compare them to the number of famous rappers.
Heck, I challenge the notion that "modern Black people" put rappers over doctors or that Black parents point to entertainers as role models but reject professionals.
People say the most revealing things.
That's the OP revealing himself to be an idiot. Barack Obama spent more time as a law professor than a community organizer but
those on the Right, who hate people who actually work with the disadvantaged, still try to make being a "community organizer" a slur.
I say "modern" because I wouldn't want to disrespect the times where black people had pride in themselves and would think the current black condition is good.
Its more revealing where you pretended to "welcome a new voice" on the board but you really just thought he was "an idiot."
Barack Obama ran as a community organizer his first term not as a law professor. Why did he do that? Probably because no one would give a shit about him being a professor at a top-tier university. So if the OP associates community organizer with Obama more than University of Chicago professor then blame Obama, but then again blaming him for anything is unthinkable on this board.
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I reject the President attending the National Prayer Breakfast.
Ben Carson should stick to performing surgery and you should GTFOH with this bullshit.
^^^^^^^^^ x2
That's it - I don't look at a politician/Neurosurgeon/Constitutional Law Professor/Community Org. etc.. for knowledge on the flat tax,etc... I look to economists and then economics. Health care - healthcare policy analysts/economists ...etc... politicians usually are front men/women on most issue. Sure you have Elizabeth Warren for consumer protection and banking issues and the President for Constitutional Law issues who have expertise.
The OP is an idiot - to describe the president as unintelligent. To be honest - the President's credentials compare nicely to Dr. Ben Carson. And intelligence is not even an issue for both. Additionally, I think the ability to think about complex non-medical issues - such as the constitutionality of health care overhaul/progressive tax rate and other constitutional issues that often involve economics (part of the foundation of law)is more recognizable in a Constitutional Law professor than a neurosurgeon .....I guess the president never went to Harvard. Never was editor and chief of Law Review. Never graduated Magna cum lude from Harvard Law and then taught con law at a top 10 institution.
Finally - I have no problem with a politician who previously helped lead voting registration drives as a civil rights attorney.
Actually he ran as a senator from Chicago here to bring change after 8 years of hypocritical bullshit. He never shied away from his life before hand. Only republicans and other against him - tried to paint him as simply a community organizer.
I think by no one gave a shit about the pres as a lawyer - you mean Donald Trump and his ilk who tried to imply that he was an an affirmative action case who did't have the aptitude for the presidency nor public office. Since law school grading is anonymous - I guess that doesn't really hold weight now does it?
Finally - there are many things we can critique the president for. No one is perfect. And our Constitution and three-branch system insures that the president can only do so much.
However, when someone calls the president just a community organizer or implies that he is unintelligent. He is an idiot. Because clear facts suggest otherwise.
However, when someone calls the president just a community organizer or implies that he is unintelligent. He is an idiot. Because clear facts suggest otherwise.
If Dr Carson wants to inject the Bible into politics, then he should take heed.
Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.
Mark 12:17
Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.
Mark 12:17
I could quibble with your belief anyone in government worries about constitutionality, but generally I would agree.
I'm not familiar with the OP, but this board is quick to turn personal when Obama is insulted. It's not healthy. People's aren't idiots if they have no respect for Obama, and you're not smart because you respect everything about him.
source: News Hounds
Fox Wants Dr. Benjamin Carson To Run For President, No Save America
Memo to Republican presidential hopefuls: Forget Iowa (for now, anyway). Find a way to embarrass President Obama on national television, maybe at the National Prayer Breakfast, throw in some right-wing shibboleths like the “war on Christmas” and “death panels” and voila! Not only can you get all the face time on Fox News you could hope for, you might even get an hour-long special on Hannity called, “Saving America” complete with focus group and cheering Q&A segments designed to promote your candidacy. Political experience optional. Minority ethnicity probably helpful.
If you don’t know who neurosurgeon Dr. Benjamin Carson is, you have not paid much attention to Fox News lately. Otherwise, you can’t miss him. To call him this year’s IT guy would be so five days ago. As of Friday (2/15/13), when the “Saving America” special first aired, Carson had been elevated from internet video sensation/President Obama embarrasser to official Fox News Republican savior.
As the right wing slobbers over Carson and daydreams that God will “grab him by the collar” and push him into politics, I can’t help but think he’s the "moderate" Fox's 2016 version of Donald Trump. Good-bye birth certificate, hello medical savings accounts and personal responsibility. Even Juan Williams is calling Carson “my hero.”
It’s hard to encapsulate the Carson love-fest on Hannity Friday night. But I think the video below of the Frank Luntz focus group is a good place to start. It just so happens that Luntz “recently convened” a group of Los Angeles “swing voters” to offer their thoughts on Carson’s potential candidacy.
Luntz sounded almost awestruck as he announced that Carson “has really struck a chord with a lot of Americans.” I noticed that Luntz never said the political makeup of those “swing voters” with him. In the past, he has slyly and deceptively tried to pass off Republican-heavy groups as reflective of the electorate. But I digress.
“Before we go to (the group) let’s go to a clip that dialed particularly well,” Luntz began, referring to his method of having his groups record their reactions. “On the deficit and debt, man does this guy score well!” Luntz gushed. After playing the clip, he asked the group to tell him in “one word” what was so powerful.
“Is this the kind of guy that you want to see in politics?” Luntz later "asked." Then, although we didn’t see how many people nodded, Luntz quickly went to two people and asked, “Why yes?” If anyone disagreed, we never heard about it.
“What is it about him that cut across partisan lines?” Luntz suggested asked. Most of the rest of the discussion was similarly designed to elicit positive responses.
Notice that Luntz never mentioned the word “qualifications.” For all his admirable credentials, Dr. Carson has none in politics or public policy.
Luntz closed with, “Sean, there aren’t many people right now who have the language to connect to the American people… but there’s something about the doctor’s message and delivery that really does connect across partisan lines. Very impressive.”
“Sounds like Frank may have found some – well, Carson campaign volunteers,” Hannity said.
But if the focus group voters are destined to be future campaign workers, the studio “audience” members are Carson’s current groupies. Check out their fawning “questions” if you have the stomach for it.
But there’s more to this than just Fox’s sudden beatification of Carson, and that is Carson’s seemingly willing partnership with Fox. Carson is a very impressive man whatever you think of his politics. As David Zurawik wrote in a terrific column in the Baltimore Sun about this astounding show:
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ndsdg-PIOsY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Fox Wants Dr. Benjamin Carson To Run For President, No Save America
Memo to Republican presidential hopefuls: Forget Iowa (for now, anyway). Find a way to embarrass President Obama on national television, maybe at the National Prayer Breakfast, throw in some right-wing shibboleths like the “war on Christmas” and “death panels” and voila! Not only can you get all the face time on Fox News you could hope for, you might even get an hour-long special on Hannity called, “Saving America” complete with focus group and cheering Q&A segments designed to promote your candidacy. Political experience optional. Minority ethnicity probably helpful.
If you don’t know who neurosurgeon Dr. Benjamin Carson is, you have not paid much attention to Fox News lately. Otherwise, you can’t miss him. To call him this year’s IT guy would be so five days ago. As of Friday (2/15/13), when the “Saving America” special first aired, Carson had been elevated from internet video sensation/President Obama embarrasser to official Fox News Republican savior.
As the right wing slobbers over Carson and daydreams that God will “grab him by the collar” and push him into politics, I can’t help but think he’s the "moderate" Fox's 2016 version of Donald Trump. Good-bye birth certificate, hello medical savings accounts and personal responsibility. Even Juan Williams is calling Carson “my hero.”
It’s hard to encapsulate the Carson love-fest on Hannity Friday night. But I think the video below of the Frank Luntz focus group is a good place to start. It just so happens that Luntz “recently convened” a group of Los Angeles “swing voters” to offer their thoughts on Carson’s potential candidacy.
Luntz sounded almost awestruck as he announced that Carson “has really struck a chord with a lot of Americans.” I noticed that Luntz never said the political makeup of those “swing voters” with him. In the past, he has slyly and deceptively tried to pass off Republican-heavy groups as reflective of the electorate. But I digress.
“Before we go to (the group) let’s go to a clip that dialed particularly well,” Luntz began, referring to his method of having his groups record their reactions. “On the deficit and debt, man does this guy score well!” Luntz gushed. After playing the clip, he asked the group to tell him in “one word” what was so powerful.
“Is this the kind of guy that you want to see in politics?” Luntz later "asked." Then, although we didn’t see how many people nodded, Luntz quickly went to two people and asked, “Why yes?” If anyone disagreed, we never heard about it.
“What is it about him that cut across partisan lines?” Luntz suggested asked. Most of the rest of the discussion was similarly designed to elicit positive responses.
Notice that Luntz never mentioned the word “qualifications.” For all his admirable credentials, Dr. Carson has none in politics or public policy.
Luntz closed with, “Sean, there aren’t many people right now who have the language to connect to the American people… but there’s something about the doctor’s message and delivery that really does connect across partisan lines. Very impressive.”
“Sounds like Frank may have found some – well, Carson campaign volunteers,” Hannity said.
But if the focus group voters are destined to be future campaign workers, the studio “audience” members are Carson’s current groupies. Check out their fawning “questions” if you have the stomach for it.
But there’s more to this than just Fox’s sudden beatification of Carson, and that is Carson’s seemingly willing partnership with Fox. Carson is a very impressive man whatever you think of his politics. As David Zurawik wrote in a terrific column in the Baltimore Sun about this astounding show:
What I wonder is how far Dr. Carson is going to run with this political football. I have interviewed him, and I know his history and career well. I have tremendous admiration for him. I am surprised to see him looking so comfortable within the smarmy embrace of Sean Hannity.
…I am not a brain surgeon, but I have been studying and writing for decades about how seductive, blinding and culturally dangerous the bright lights of prime-time TV can be.
Unlike Donald Trump, there is nothing that smacks of hucksterism in Carson. I question how much of Fox News he really watches. Somehow, I have a hard time picturing him as a Hannity or No Spin Zone habitué. Whether this is a political hookup or a marriage remains to be seen. Regardless, the outcome is sure to be worth watching.…I am not a brain surgeon, but I have been studying and writing for decades about how seductive, blinding and culturally dangerous the bright lights of prime-time TV can be.
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Dudes a brain surgeon. Of course he's going to be against Obamacare. That's how he overcharges people.
I too admire Dr. Carson. His humble roots in rural Georgia, his hard work and genius to become one of the premier neurosurgeons in the world.
He is a conservative. I don't know to what extreme, but he seems to have come out in opposition to Obmamacare, which leads me to believe he is not about seriously providing heath care to all.
This Dr. Ben Carson has been on Fox News and Hannity several times since that prayer breakfast. He laughs and chucks it up with them on the show. He is their new black token. Anytime you have Hannity asking you to run for President, you have a problem. Also, Carson is on that, "Those black people.....they" type shit like the pizza man Herman Cain. He also has the likes of Allen West, Ann Coulter, and Rush Limbaugh championing him. He's a damn fool if he lets Fox News play his ass like a sucka.
Here's a quote from Carson:
“I’m somewhat disappointed that more African Americans don’t kind of think for themselves and [that they] just kind of go with whatever they’re supposed to say and think"
Here's a quote from Carson:
“I’m somewhat disappointed that more African Americans don’t kind of think for themselves and [that they] just kind of go with whatever they’re supposed to say and think"
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They don't understand, it's not the messenger, it's the message.
So Black people currently don't have pride in ourselves?
Change your circle, G.
The current Black condition isn't perfect but it's been far worse and rarely much better, if ever.
I don't have to pretend. I encourage more people to come here but not if they're just going to spout off whatever dribble they lapped up from Rush or Hannity. They dont add anything to the dialogue. The fact that he/she hasn't come back to expound or explain themselves makes them both an idiot and a troll.
Just not true but someone else has already argued this point.
You must be in construction because you build excellent, if obvious, strawmen arguments.
I already said why I consider the OP an idiot. If it doesn't work with whatever's going on in your head or line up with your own prejudices and bias, that's a you problem.
I can respect a Black Republican but I have none for someone purporting to be a Black "Conservative". It's one thing to have some conservative leanings and ideas but to be a poltical Conservative, seeing how they've been on the wrong side of ever social movement ever, makes zero sense to me as a Black man.
"Think for themselves" always means "think like me".
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Controversial address vaults Hopkins' Carson into political arena
Dr. Ben Carson says he didn't anticipate the reaction to what he considered his common-sense remarks as keynote speaker this month at the National Prayer Breakfast.
But after video went viral of the trailblazing black neurosurgeon taking jabs at President Barack Obama's health care overhaul a few feet from the president himself, some want the famed doctor at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore to parlay the attention into a new career: politics.
"Here you have this guy who has been a celebrity minority for 30 years coming out and making the conservative case better than a lot of conservatives can," said Jonah Goldberg, editor-at-large for National Review Online. "Emotionally, that had a really big impact for a lot of people."
While some objected to Carson raising health care and tax policy at the traditionally nonpolitical Washington breakfast, conservative heavyweights Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter all cheered his address.
The Wall Street Journal published an editorial with the headline "Ben Carson for President."
Fame isn't new to Carson. The 61-year-old Detroit native, who rose from a childhood of inner-city deprivation to become the youngest person to lead a major division at Johns Hopkins Hospital and the first surgeon anywhere to separate conjoined twins, has written bestselling books about his life, his faith and success.
His memoir, "Healing Hands," was made into a television movie starring the Oscar winner Cuba Gooding Jr. President George W. Bush awarded him the Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, in 2008.
But with his address at the annual breakfast, he has drawn a new level of attention to himself - and one he intends to use to reach a larger audience.
Carson, who plans to retire from surgery in June, says he has no interest in running for office. But he says he will use the new exposure to urge common sense, bipartisanship and a reversal of the "moral decay" that he says is eating away at the country.
"I have this feeling that as time goes on, we're not getting any more civilized, and we should be," he said in an interview. "We're still running around like the days of Genghis Khan. There are so many important, better things to do and we need to encourage people to reach into the brighter side of humanity and not encourage people to continue to glorify the darker side."
He won plaudits from the political right for his prayer breakfast call for the creation of health savings accounts at birth in place of what he considers the bureaucracy of Obama's health reform, and for the imposition of a flat tax that he likened to a biblical tithe to supplant a complex tax code that he said asks too much of the rich.
He also lambasted Washington for the $16.5 trillion national debt - evidence, he said, of hubris to rival that of ancient Rome.
Though he didn't mention it in his remarks, Carson adds same-sex marriage to his litany of the nation's problems.
Much of his address focused on a biblical argument for bipartisan cooperation.
Carson has been better known for his accomplishments than for his ideology. Speaking at the prayer breakfast in 1997, he described being raised by a poor, single mother who had been one of 24 children. He said he felt as if he was "the dumbest person in the world" before he gained confidence in his intellectual abilities.
He studied his way to Yale, and then to medical school at the University of Michigan, where he considered going into psychiatry before he realized his hand-eye coordination and spatial skills would make him an apt surgeon.
At the age of 33, he was named director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins, where he led the team that performed the milestone conjoined twin surgery in 1987.
Along with this experience, he said, his Christian faith drives the practices that he preaches. Carson is a devout Seventh-day Adventist.
"I've had experiences in my life that leave no doubt in my mind about the fact that God exists," Carson said. "I'm quite willing to debate people who don't think so because I want them to explain to me how did our solar system get so organized and how is the universe so complex and yet well-organized that we can predict 70 years hence when a comet is coming?"
Carson is known for sharing his views plainly, said Carol James, a physician assistant at Hopkins who has worked alongside him for more than three decades and is godmother to his three sons.
"As time has gone on," she said, "his interest in the community and the country and how we are stacking up both educationally or in other ways with the world has become a more prominent concern for him."
The subject inspired "America the Beautiful: Rediscovering What Made this Nation Great," Carson's more recent book. James said he isn't shy about sharing those concerns.
The combination of Carson's forthrightness, his stature in the medical community, and the spectacle of an African-American physician confronting Obama over his most controversial policy have caught the attention of the political world.
Though Carson calls himself an independent, Republicans have rallied behind his message where it dovetails with their own. Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham have joined in the praise.
"I think it was refreshing to hear somebody speak plainly and talk about solutions and not talk about political rhetoric," said David Ferguson, executive director of the Maryland Republican Party. "I think there's always going to be a reaction, regardless of who is speaking, when somebody has solutions and a bold approach instead of the cyclical problems we're facing as a country."
Carson said he has been "deluged" since the speech with media requests and reaction, "95 percent of it positive." He said he believes it shows "an incredible thirst in this nation for common sense."
How long he stays in the spotlight could be up to him, said Paul Herrnson, a government and politics professor at the University of Maryland, College Park. Ross Perot, for example, kept himself relevant in the 1992 presidential election by persisting through his own ambition and financial independence. Given how far off the 2016 election is, that could be a tall task to attempt now, Herrnson said.
Some have criticized the breakfast address as an inappropriate political stunt. The conservative columnist Cal Thomas accused Carson of "lowering himself" by breaking with the tradition of avoiding politics at the 61-year-old event. Past speakers have included Mother Teresa, Bono and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
But the comments weren't intended to stoke political controversy, Carson said. Nor, he said, did they appear to offend Obama.
"I think there is virtually no better setting than something like the National Prayer Breakfast to talk about the spiritual state of the nation," he said. "I believe the spiritual state of the nation is not good."
Carson said he hopes to spark independent thinking over partisan bickering. He has planned 10 international trips after his retirement from surgery to speak to youth about the importance of education. He also plans to continue speaking around the United States - something for which he is now likely to be in greater demand.
Many of those speeches are likely to touch on what Carson sees as a weakening of the nation's moral fiber that threatens the country's survival.
"We try to make everything equal now, every kind of family situation," he said. "We go into the schools and we say there's no outstanding people because we don't want this one or that one to feel bad.
"We're basically extracting reality out of everything so everybody can feel good. But ultimately making everyone feel good makes everyone feel bad."
Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/02/21/183749/controversial-address-vaults-hopkins.html#storylink=cpy
He Wears the Mask
Ben Carson
<img src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/06/08/opinion/TaNehisi_img/TaNehisi_img-articleInline.jpg" width="100">
by Ta-Nehisi Coates | April 3rd 2013
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/04/opinion/coates-he-wears-the-mask.html?_r=0
The present darling of the right wing, Dr. Benjamin Carson, is a distinguished neurosurgeon who went from the depths of Detroit poverty to the heights of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. But his current status among conservatives isn’t so much rooted in Carson’s redemptive rise from rags to respectability, as it is in the belief that he is, in the long winter of Obama, the one they’ve been waiting for.
Last week, Carson came under attack for comparing advocates of same-sex marriage with advocates of bestiality and the North American Man/Boy Love Association. He then cast himself as a victim of political correctness, besieged by white liberals — “the most racist people there are” — who could not countenance his heterodoxy and wanted to keep him on the “plantation.”
The plantation metaphor refers to a popular theory on the right. It holds that the 95 percent of African-Americans who voted for a Democratic president are not normal Americans voting their beliefs, but slaves. A corollary to the plantation theory is the legend of the Conservative Black Hope, a lonesome outsider, willing to stare down the party of Obamacare and stand up for the party of voter ID. Does it matter that this abolitionist truth-teller serves at the leisure of an audience that is overwhelmingly white? Not really. Blacks are brainwashed slaves; you can’t expect them to know what’s in their interest.
Benjamin Carson is that Conservative Black Hope of the moment. His rise began with a meandering speech that mixed policy, humor and victimization in February at the National Prayer Breakfast, mere feet from the president of the United States, who was forced to take his medicine in a way that Clint Eastwood could only dream of. When Sean Hannity interviewed Carson about his speech he dispensed with the policy and simply dubbed the segment “Lecturing Obama.”
Since the dawn of the Obama era, conservatives have been on the lookout for such a man. In 2004 they dispatched Alan Keyes cross-country to take up the mantle of the Conservative Black Hope and deliver an early knockout to Obama. Keyes had never lived in Illinois and his voters barely knew him, and voted accordingly. But it did not matter who he was. What mattered was their plan.
“We needed to find another Harvard-educated African-American who had some experience on the national political scene,” said Steven J. Rauschenberger, a Republican who was then a member of the Illinois State Senate. “We need that because the Democrats have made an icon out of Barack Obama.”
Having seen their icon thrashed in 2004, in 2009 conservatives looked to Michael Steele, the first African-American to head the Republican National Convention, to face off with the first black president. But Steele had an on-again off-again relationship with the party line, and was thus ill suited to be a Conservative Black Hope, even if the hip-hop Republican often talked like one.
In 2010, Allen West, a congressman from Florida, arrived promising to lead black people off the Obama plantation like a “modern-day Harriet Tubman.” More like Harriet Miers; West was defeated in the very next election.
In 2012, Herman Cain took up the cape and cowl, proclaiming that the first black president had “never been part of the black experience in America” and insisting that Obama was “not a strong black man.” But Cain was not a strong presidential candidate, and the wait for the Conservative Black Hope continued. Things were looking up at the Conservative Political Action Committee this year when a black Republican, K. Carl Smith, ran a session for attendees who were “tired of being called a racist.” Among those answering in the affirmative was a man who proceeded to defend slavery.
Not all black conservatives see it as their job to tell white racists that they embody the dreams of Martin Luther King Jr. It is certainly possible to oppose Obamacare in good conscience. No one knows this more than Ben Carson. In the late 1980s and early ’90s, he may have been the most celebrated figure in the black communities of Baltimore. Carson responded to that adulation by regularly giving his time to talk to young people, who needed to know that there was so much more beyond the streets.
I was one of those young people. I don’t doubt that Carson was a conservative even then. I knew plenty of black people who loved their community and hated welfare. But white conservatives were never interested in them, and they were never as interested in Ben Carson as they are right now. When the presidency was an unbroken string of white men, there were no calls for him to run for the White House. And then he put on the mask.
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21 Things Less Bad Than Obamacare, According to Ben Carson
21 Things Less Bad Than Obamacare, According to Ben Carson
By Alex Seitz-Wald | National Journal
Sat, Oct 12, 2013
Speaking at the Values Voters Summit in Washington on Friday, conservative commentator Ben Carson declared that "Obamacare is, really I think, the worst thing that's happened in this nation since slavery."
Carson, a retired prominent neurosurgeon, rocketed onto the conservative scene in February when he lambasted President Obama--who was sitting just a few feet away--at a prayer breakfast. Since then, he's inked a columnist deal with The Washington Times and earned buzz as a long-shot presidential candidate.
Carson has never shied away from rhetorical bomb-throwing, and Friday was no different when he made his slavery remark. Carson, who is African-American, explained that Obamacare "was never about health care; it was about control" and making Americans "subservient." Given that logic, here a few things that have happened since the abolition of slavery that are apparently, according to Carson, less bad than Obamacare:
http://news.yahoo.com/21-things-less-bad-obamacare-according-ben-carson-154449226--politics.html
21 Things Less Bad Than Obamacare, According to Ben Carson
By Alex Seitz-Wald | National Journal
Sat, Oct 12, 2013
Speaking at the Values Voters Summit in Washington on Friday, conservative commentator Ben Carson declared that "Obamacare is, really I think, the worst thing that's happened in this nation since slavery."
Carson, a retired prominent neurosurgeon, rocketed onto the conservative scene in February when he lambasted President Obama--who was sitting just a few feet away--at a prayer breakfast. Since then, he's inked a columnist deal with The Washington Times and earned buzz as a long-shot presidential candidate.
Carson has never shied away from rhetorical bomb-throwing, and Friday was no different when he made his slavery remark. Carson, who is African-American, explained that Obamacare "was never about health care; it was about control" and making Americans "subservient." Given that logic, here a few things that have happened since the abolition of slavery that are apparently, according to Carson, less bad than Obamacare:
- 9/11
- AIDS
- Hurricane Katrina (and all other hurricanes since 1865)
- The Great Depression
- The Dust Bowl
- Pearl Harbor
- The assassinations of JFK, RFK, and MLK
- The assassination of Abraham Lincoln
- The attempted assassinations of Ronald Reagan and Theodore Roosevelt
- The sinking of the Titanic
- Every tornado since 1865
- World War I
- World War II
- Black Hawk Down
- Jim Crow
- Japanese internment
- The Challenger space-shuttle disaster
- Watergate
- The Vietnam War
- The Crack Wars
- Nickelback
http://news.yahoo.com/21-things-less-bad-obamacare-according-ben-carson-154449226--politics.html
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