Sassenach wrote:He confirmed the other day that it's still his belief. In a sense this is trivial of course, but it's also indicative of seriously flawed judgement and poor reasoning skills.

freeman3 wrote:The issue is not whether there is a full scholarship to the academy; the issue is whether Cardon said that he had received such an offer. Arguing that the story is false because there is no scholarship to the academy--you have to get an appointment--is not a valid argument. If Carson said--as Politico says he has been saying over the years--that he got a full scholarship from the academy as a way to burnish his credentials, that puffing reflects on his character. Period. Given that the statement is in his autobiography...pretty hard to explain.

rior to the big revelation, Carson defiantly defended himself. The famously even-keel Carson issued a fiery (by his standard) rebuttal on CNN’s airwaves Friday morning, calling the report “a bunch of lies.” His argument basically broke down into four key points:

CNN tried to prove a negative (that certain events didn’t happen), which is a fundamentally flawed endeavor. “Tell me, what makes you think that you’re going to find those specific people?” he asked. “Tell me how your methodology works, because I don’t understand it.”
It’s unfair to question Carson’s accounts because the events are “well documented.” “If you choose not to believe it, if it doesn’t fit the narrative that you want, that’s fine,” he said.
CNN’s report is not relevant to the campaign and is merely a sideshow. “Basically, what the media does is they try to get you distracted with all of this stuff, so that you don’t talk about the things that are important,” Carson said.
Media scrutiny of President Obama during his campaigns was much gentler, suggesting a liberal bias. “The vetting that you all did with President Obama doesn’t even come close — doesn’t even come close to what you guys are trying to do in my case

Proving a negative is, indeed, a difficult task. This is why some people believe in Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster. It’s also why, in our judicial system, the burden falls on prosecutors to prove that a defendant did commit a crime, not the other way around.
But it is certainly reasonable for reporters to look for evidence corroborating a presidential candidate’s personal history. If, instead, they find a lack of evidence, they should say so — provided the effort is thorough and made in good faith. CNN reported that it “was unable to independently confirm any of the incidents.” That doesn’t mean they didn’t happen; it just means the people CNN interviewed didn’t know anything about them.
This brings us to Carson’s second point, which simply isn’t true. His violent episodes are not “well-documented.” He has described them in his 1990 autobiography, “Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story,” and on the campaign trail. But he hasn’t actually documented them in any tangible way. In fact, he rebuffed CNN’s request to speak with other involved parties who could back up his version of events.
Carson explained in his TV appearance Friday that his victims wish to maintain their privacy, which is understandable. But he is, in fact, asking voters to take him at his word.

Does any of this matter to the campaign? Come on. Of course it does.

What Carson did or didn’t do as a teenager might not be as important as his tax plan or foreign policy chops. But background stories like CNN’s and Politico's are really attempts to find out — on voters’ behalf — whether candidates are honest and trustworthy.

As for the media’s treatment of Obama, the Pew Research Center did conclude that in 2008, the then-senator received slightly more positive coverage than negative in the home stretch, while “unfavorable stories about [Republican nominee John] McCain outweighed favorable ones by a factor of more than three to one.”

But, as CNN's Alisyn Camerota pointed out in her interview with Carson, Obama's "Dreams From My Father" got a close examination, too, with the president acknowledging during the 2012 race that the "New York girlfriend" described in the book was actually a composite character. (Obama had disclosed in the book's preface that "some of the characters that appear are composites of people I've known" but did not specify which ones.)

In any case, only a few weeks into Carson’s status as a GOP front-runner, it seems a little early to say that the media’s vetting of Obama “doesn’t even come close” to what Carson is going through

bbauska wrote:

freeman3 wrote:The issue is not whether there is a full scholarship to the academy; the issue is whether Cardon said that he had received such an offer. Arguing that the story is false because there is no scholarship to the academy--you have to get an appointment--is not a valid argument. If Carson said--as Politico says he has been saying over the years--that he got a full scholarship from the academy as a way to burnish his credentials, that puffing reflects on his character. Period. Given that the statement is in his autobiography...pretty hard to explain.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/03/26/us-usa-politics-clinton-idUSN2540811420080326

Similar?

rickyp wrote:The issue is not specifically whether Ben Carson exaggerated in his biography....
Its how he is reacting to scrutiny.

And how grounded he is in facts and evidence and rationale (sic) thought..

He supported notions about anti vaxxers that are not supported by science.

He denies evolution.

A fundament of biology which is the under pinning for medical science.... And he a doctor.
Those things ought to worry anyone.

But whats worry some (sic) about his response to scrutiny is his arguments.

With Ben Carson wanting to hit his mother on head with a hammer, stab a friend and Pyramids built for grain storage - don't people get it

How anyone could see him as president baffles me. Lies and insane theories

Hint: stop throwing out accusations with zero evidence

Right, so anyone who believes the Bible should not be President?

rickyp wrote:Its interesting that Carson and others are pointing to the scrutiny or Obama and Clinton as a way of blaming the media for their failure to respond well to scrutiny.
Same way they complain about gotcha questions and etc.

What they should learn from how Hillary, for instance, has responded lately to scrutiny of her .... is that most of the republican front runners are wimps.

WASHINGTON, June 14— The First Lady has offered a kaleidoscope of images to the public, but today she added the most curious one yet: Private Hillary.

Speaking at a lunch on Capitol Hill honoring military women, Hillary Rodham Clinton said that she once visited a recruiting office in Arkansas to inquire about joining the Marines.

She told the group gathered for lunch in the Dirksen Office Building, according to The Associated Press, that she became interested in the military in 1975, the year she married Bill Clinton and the year she was teaching at the University of Arkansas law school in Fayetteville.

She was 27 then, she said, and the Marine recruiter was about 21. She was interested in joining either the active forces or the reserves, she recalled, but was swiftly rebuffed by the recruiter, who took a dim view of her age and her thick glasses. 'Not Very Encouraging'

"You're too old, you can't see and you're a woman," Mrs. Clinton said she was told, adding that the recruiter dismissed her by suggesting she try the Army. "Maybe the dogs would take you," she recalled the recruiter saying.

She just went through an 11 hour endurance session at the Ben Ghazi hearings in which she came out looking fine.

When she is cornered by the truth not reflecting her statements entirely she's had the good sense to come clean. (Snipers in Bosnia).

The Clinton campaign says Senator Hillary Clinton may have “misspoke” recently when she said she had to evade sniper fire when she was visiting Bosnia in 1996 as first lady.

She has been using the episode as an example of her foreign policy bona fides.

“I certainly do remember that trip to Bosnia,” she said last week. “There was a saying around the White House that if a place was too small, too poor, or too dangerous, the president couldn’t go, so send the First Lady.

“I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.”

But her account has been challenged, first by Sinbad, the comedian, who traveled with her, and then by news organizations, most notably the Washington Post, which awarded her four “Pinnochios” which it gives for major “whoppers.”

"I did make a mistake in talking about it, you know, the last time and recently," Clinton told reporters in Pennsylvania where she was campaigning before the state's April 22 primary. She said she had a "different memory" about the landing.

Carson seems to be following the "never admit, never apologize, hang the evidence" playbook.

Carson's finished. This years Herman Cain.

rickyp wrote:Fate

Hint: stop throwing out accusations with zero evidence

.

Laughable coming from someone who seldom offers evidence for his claims.

And seriously you have to be under a log or stuck to Fox or Brietbart only if you haven't seen the quotations about his ridiculous beliefs...

Stat with evolution. and then with what he says this says about scientists.. (first link) And how the scientific community responded to the nut . Second link.

http://www.cnsnews.com/blog/michael-w-c ... ng-another

“I submit that changes can occur within a species,” said Dr. Carson in a 2011 speech at the Celebration of Creation conference, as reported by the Adventist News Network. “But is that a sign of evolution, or is it a sign of an intelligent creator who gave his creatures the ability to adapt to their environment so he wouldn’t have to start over every 50 years? You know, that sounds much more intelligent than anything else.”

“And no one has ever demonstrated one species changing to another species,” said Dr. Carson. “This should be, if it’s true, a continual evolving. So we should be able to find intermediate species at any given point in time. We should be able to find how they line up.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/ben-carsons-creationist-views-spark-controvery-over-commencement-speech/2012/05/08/gIQAi0vsBU_blog.html

And for good measure here's compendium of the doctors musings ....
http://www.businessinsider.com/ben-cars ... es-2015-10

http://www.gq.com/story/ben-carson-beli ... t-of-stuff

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/10/b ... tes-214614

Fate

Right, so anyone who believes the Bible should not be President?

A belief in the literal truth of the Bible demonstrates a mind that is not swayed by evidence or rational thought. (Joseph and the Pyramids is an example. )

I think that's a fundamental requirement for a President.

freeman3 wrote:DF--You've come full circle. First, you argued that Carson wasn't lying because Politico said Carson had claimed he was offered a full scholarship and you can't get a scholarship, only an appointment. Now, you're arguing that West Point had ads that said that basically offered a full scholarship ...I mean, come on, you have to first APPLY to an institution, then they have to ACCEPT you, and then you may get a FULL SCHOLARSHIP.

Doctor Fate wrote:It's not hard at all. An Army officer tells you West Point offers free tuition, free books, and free room and board. As a poor high school kid, how would you summarize it? I'd call it "a scholarship."

Parts one and two--application and acceptance--are missing here."Oh yeah , I forgot to tell you, Harvard offered me a full scholarship. But dude you never applied to Harvard. Yeah , but they say on their website that poor students can get their tuition paid for..."

I am not arguing about this anymore. It 's ridiculous to argue about. If you want to keep denying Carson 's lie here, fine, believe what you want to believe.

bbauska wrote:I suppose it is a much better attitude to have when we say "I don't care if he lied. He is the best chance to beat the Dems."

Yes, it is whataboutery. I care that Carson may have lied. You don't care that Mrs. Clinton does.

So, he's wrong? There's a demonstration somewhere of one species changing to another species?

While the genetic difference between individual humans today is minuscule – about 0.1%, on average – study of the same aspects of the chimpanzee genome indicates a difference of about 1.2%. The bonobo (Pan paniscus), which is the close cousin of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), differs from humans to the same degree. The DNA difference with gorillas, another of the African apes, is about 1.6%. Most importantly, chimpanzees, bonobos, and humans all show this same amount of difference from gorillas. A difference of 3.1% distinguishes us and the African apes from the Asian great ape, the orangutan. How do the monkeys stack up? All of the great apes and humans differ from rhesus monkeys, for example, by about 7% in their DNA.
Geneticists have come up with a variety of ways of calculating the percentages, which give different impressions about how similar chimpanzees and humans are. The 1.2% chimp-human distinction, for example, involves a measurement of only substitutions in the base building blocks of those genes that chimpanzees and humans share. A comparison of the entire genome, however, indicates that segments of DNA have also been deleted, duplicated over and over, or inserted from one part of the genome into another. When these differences are counted, there is an additional 4 to 5% distinction between the human and chimpanzee genomes.
No matter how the calculation is done, the big point still holds: humans, chimpanzees, and bonobos are more closely related to one another than either is to gorillas or any other primate. From the perspective of this powerful test of biological kinship, humans are not only related to the great apes – we are one. The DNA evidence leaves us with one of the greatest surprises in biology: the wall between human, on the one hand, and ape or animal, on the other has been breached. The human evolutionary tree is embedded within the great apes.