Ben Carson and the 3rd rail

[Turtle]

I've heard comments that since Ben Carson was active in the ROTC program and that he excelled in it, along with getting explemplary grades in school, as well as being a minority, that he would have been slam dunk to get a 'scholarship' to W.P.

It is impossible to attend West Point without doing so on a government scholarship. Getting a scholarship to West Point is not like getting a scholarship to Stanford. Getting a scholarship to Stanford is a big fat hairy deal, getting a scholarship to West Point is routine for anyone who attends.

It would have behooved Westmoreland and his brass to heavily recruit a young Ben Carson to go there. It's very plausible they would have made assurances to him that he is ' as good as in'. In fact, it would have been derelict for them not to make the effort during that time period to such a exceptional candidate.

I didn't think anyone is questioning that he was talked to about attending West Point, or even told straight up that if he wanted to go there that he would be able to without any problems. Virtually everyone in ROTC with a B average or better gets talked to about West Point. What people are questioning is, "Hey, if you want to attend West Point, I can offer you a full ride scholarship so that it won't cost you anything to go there."

 

[muttly]

I do wonder if those (no one in particular) who are so vigorously defending Carson, excusing everything, would be so vigorous in defending and excusing Obama or Hilary for the same kinds of misremembered details.

Carson is starting to remind me of Vanilla Ice, and isn't that funny.

Most wouldn't know about 'misremembered details' of Hillary or Obama because the regular media routinely buries those stories.
The Audacity of Myth: How the Media Ignored Obama's Lies About His Own Biography and Memoir

 

[Turtle]

Most wouldn't know about 'misremembered details' of Hillary or Obama because the regular media routinely buries those stories.
The Audacity of Myth: How the Media Ignored Obama's Lies About His Own Biography and Memoir

I'm not sure what "most" or "the regular media" has to do with "those who are so vigorously defending Carson, excusing everything," but OK.

It is interesting that the article focuses so strongly on unimportant details (minutae) as being big fat lies despite admitting that they are mostly family mythology that Obama to at face value and didn't fact check, and characterizes up-front declarations of "approximations" and "composites" as being lies. So I'm assuming that Newsbusters and the two authors of the piece fall into the category of the very people I mused about. Sooooooo, good job answering my musing. Thanks.

 

[muttly]

I'm not sure what "most" or "the regular media" has to do with "those who are so vigorously defending Carson, excusing everything," but OK.

It is interesting that the article focuses so strongly on unimportant details (minutae) as being big fat lies despite admitting that they are mostly family mythology that Obama to at face value and didn't fact check, and characterizes up-front declarations of "approximations" and "composites" as being lies. So I'm assuming that Newsbusters and the two authors of the piece fall into the category of the very people I mused about. Sooooooo, good job answering my musing. Thanks.

Unimportant details like the 'mischaracterization' of his mother's health care issue (during his healthcare campaign)
Just pointing out the silly double standard that the media has. Obama's recollections were viewed by them as artitistic literary work that benefitted his Presidential run, while Carson's is viewed as troubling distortions that should derail his candidacy.

 

[Turtle]

Unimportant details like the 'mischaracterization' of his mother's health care issue (during his healthcare campaign)

Correct. He mischaracterized an anecdote for political purposes. That's not even remotely the same as what Carson claimed.

Just pointing out the silly double standard that the media has. Obama's recollections were viewed by them as artitistic literary work that benefitted his Presidential run, while Carson's is viewed as troubling distortions that should derail his candidacy.

Yes, I know what you are doing. It's called deflection. My musing comment had absolutely nothing to do with the media. It had to do with those people specifically who are defending Carson and are minimizing false big picture claims, while at the same time treat Obama's mischaracterization of an anecdotal detail as being a big fat hairy deal of a lie. So, there's double standards all around.

 

[muttly]

Unless Carson is lying and never met Westmoreland or was never impressed upon him by brass from West Point that he could have a scholarship, this story is much ado about nothing. That he may have gotten his events mixed up about when and where he met Westmoreland and offered a 'scholarship' doesn't change the gist of his story. Moreover, it doesn't benefit Carson to have mixed up the dates. Compare this to Obama using an incident referenced in his book (and that he prefaced it in his book that the stories were composites) yet still went ahead and used the factually inaccurate story about his mother not receiving her health care coverage due to her preexisting condition. It was during the healthcare debate and purposely misled people by using a false story to advance a narrative for political purposes.

 

[Turtle]

Yes, I am fully aware that you are indeed one of the people I was referring to in my musing. There's really no need to go to such lengths to confirm it.

 

[muttly]

Yes, I am fully aware that you are indeed one of the people I was referring to in my musing. There's really no need to go to such lengths to confirm it.

Well you did say no one in particular.
So you were being particular.
I haven't defended Carson that much in past threads so I don't know where you are getting that he is being excused about 'everything'.
I've defended Carson in this instance because it hasn't been proven that he actually lied. It's plausible that some of his recollections about dates and times were confused.
If Westmoreland hadn't visited at the earlier date in Detroit, it would be a bigger problem for me with Carson. It would lend credence that he was making stuff up. But he was in the ROTC, it's possible he attended the earlier event that Westmoreland was at. And it's entirely possible he was extended an offer verbally at that event. The fact is you don't know that this didn't happen, yet you are calling the man a liar.

 

[Turtle]

Well you did say no one in particular.
So you were being particular.

No, I wasn't. You've since shown me that you belong in that group, though.

I haven't defended Carson that much in past threads so I don't know where you are getting that he is being excused about 'everything'.

You flatter yourself. I wasn't talking about you when I said it.

I've defended Carson in this instance because it hasn't been proven that he actually lied. It's plausible that some of his recollections about dates and times were confused.

And your still defending. Like I said, those who defend Carson will forgive and minimize, while at the same time refuse to even entertain such plausibility with the likes of Obama and Hillary.

If Westmoreland hadn't visited at the earlier date in Detroit, it would be a bigger problem for me with Carson. It would lend credence that he was making stuff up. But he was in the ROTC, it's possible he attended the earlier event that Westmoreland was at. And it's entirely possible he was extended an offer verbally at that event. The fact is you don't know that this didn't happen, yet you are calling the man a liar.

I didn't call him a liar. I said it's a significant problem to have a president who has such gross deficiencies in accurately remembering salient details of major life events. (salient means the most noticeable, or the most important)

 

[muttly]

I didn't call him a liar. I said it's a significant problem to have a president who has such gross deficiencies in accurately remembering salient details of major life events. (salient means the most noticeable, or the most important)

Turtle wrote:
Carson wrote that his ROTC instructor — identified as Sgt. Hunt — introduced him to Westmoreland “and I and my girlfriend, Morgan Fairchild, had dinner with him and the Congressional Medal winners.”

I got the Tommy Flanagan 'pathological liar' - and his girlfriend Morgan Fairchild - reference.

 

[Turtle]

Didja get the Vanilla Ice reference, too? Because Vanilla Ice and Tommy Flanagan are who he's starting to sound like.

Led a Memorial Day Parade to honor fallen veterans as a senior ROTC officer, then, had dinner with General Westmoreland and twwooo CMH recipients, where he was offered a full ride scholarship to West Point. That's one heckuva day, right there.

Yeah, he could have gotten the "details" wrong, but you don't know that. What we do know, for sure, is, it didn't happen like he said it did. Regardless of whether he's straight up lying, embellishing like crazy, or misremembering salient details of impact life events, he doesn't come off looking good. He comes off looking like Vanilla Ice, Tommy Flanagan, or someone who has a significant problem processing important events... none of whom belong in the White House.

 

[muttly]

The details were confused from a recollection of events twenty years prior. Whoopdeedoo.

 

[jjtdrv4u]

The details were confused from a recollection of events twenty years prior. Whoopdeedoo.

kinda confused here, are you a carson "apologist" or a trump "apologist"?...lol

 

[Mdbtyhtr]

Interesting reading but please consider this: when someone is in high school, their view on the world is a product of their surroundings. My father is an Annapolis grad, and it was always referred to as a scholarship, one that I did not have the academics to allow me to compete for. Secondly, to an inter city youth, a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient is so far removed from them it would be disingenuous to require them to remember the importance or context, especially when it is documented years later as an adult. People remember things to their own benefit, politics aside. What maybe a significant life event to me, may not be to another. I conduct background investigations and deal with this phenomenon on a daily basis. We cannot insert our culture, belief system, or expectations on others, simply because that is how we would feel, respond or react. The media uses half truths to sell news stories and they exercise no integrity in the process.

 

[Turtle]

The details were confused from a recollection of events twenty years prior. Whoopdeedoo.

More like the events were confused from a recollection of details.

kinda confused here, are you a carson "apologist" or a trump "apologist"?...lol

It depends on what the liberals' position is, and then what the conservative Blogs tell him to think, as his arguments are ripped right from those Blogs.

 

[Turtle]

Interesting reading but please consider this: when someone is in high school, their view on the world is a product of their surroundings. My father is an Annapolis grad, and it was always referred to as a scholarship, one that I did not have the academics to allow me to compete for.

I agree, and it's something I am keeping in mind. To a high schooler, it may very well be considered a scholarship to attend West Point, since colleges and scholarships are fresh on the brain, so a high schooler can be given a pass on getting something like that confused. Then again, he didn't write it as a teenager, he wrote it 20 years later, when he knew better, and still wrote it with the implication that a West Point scholarship was somehow unusual and unique to those who attend the institution.

In any case, if you're willing to give him a pass and concede that he got the terminology wrong as a teenager about it being a scholarship, then you must also concede that a teenager can "invent" a clock by reassembling a clock in a different housing by the same confusion in terminology. If one is a big deal, then so is the other, and if one isn't important, then neither is the other.

Secondly, to an inter city youth, a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient is so far removed from them it would be disingenuous to require them to remember the importance or context, especially when it is documented years later as an adult.

To the typical inner city youth, I'd agree with you. To the top ranking ROTC student in the city, not so much, especially in the context of not just honoring a CMH recipient, but in the context of honoring blacks in the military in the midst of the racial tensions of 1969.

People remember things to their own benefit, politics aside. What maybe a significant life event to me, may not be to another. I conduct background investigations and deal with this phenomenon on a daily basis. We cannot insert our culture, belief system, or expectations on others, simply because that is how we would feel, respond or react. The media uses half truths to sell news stories and they exercise no integrity in the process.

Except he wrote, at length, about just how significant a life event that was. It's one of the standout highlights in the book that showed how his character was formed.

 

[muttly]

More like the events were confused from a recollection of details.

It depends on what the liberals' position is, and then what the conservative Blogs tell him to think, as his arguments are ripped right from those Blogs.

That's funny right there. My opinion about Carson is that he misremembered the two events twenty years prior. It was more about understanding that someone could do that instead of just implying that he is a liar. BTW I initially defended the liberal news guy Brian Williams. Gave him the benefit of the doubt, but there was just too much of a pattern in the end.

 

[muttly]

Didja get the Vanilla Ice reference, too?

No. I'm not getting the Vanilla Ice reference. Did he claim that Suge Knight dangled him by his ankles off a ledge in a high rise?

 

[muttly]

I agree, and it's something I am keeping in mind. To a high schooler, it may very well be considered a scholarship to attend West Point, since colleges and scholarships are fresh on the brain, so a high schooler can be given a pass on getting something like that confused. Then again, he didn't write it as a teenager, he wrote it 20 years later, when he knew better, and still wrote it with the implication that a West Point scholarship was somehow unusual and unique to those who attend the institution.

West Point has even referred to it being a scholarship. In ads, etc.
Fact-checking Ben Carson's defense of his West Point scholarship story

 

[muttly]

Except he wrote, at length, about just how significant a life event that was. It's one of the standout highlights in the book that showed how his character was formed.

Did you read the book?
His character was formed by being offered to go to West Point? And deciding not to go?
It was such a significant life event that he wasn't even tempted to go there. He chose to go in to medicine instead.