DR. BEN CARSON IS THE MOST FRIGHTENING OF THE REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES

…Dr. Ben Carson receiving the Medal of Freedom from President Bush

 

Much of what the doctor-candidate supports is either wrong, ridiculous or just down right nuts.

 

Well, we have all been giving the blowhard Donald Trump much more attention than he deserves.  But it’s the guy holding 2^nd place in the Republican polls that has become the most intriguing and the largest wacko nut-case of the GOP candidates.

 

Yes, I’m talking about Dr. Ben Carson.

 

But I’m not the only opinion writer that thinks that the good doctor is a complete crank.

 

Even the Pulitzer Prize winning columnist of the Washington Post, Eugene Robinson recently wrote that Dr. Ben Carson “…has proved himself to be a crackpot of the first order.  Of all the GOP contenders, he’s the scariest.”

 

I have been intrigued from day one why Dr. Carson has been able to ascend to such a prominent political position, and to be able to remain there.  Oh, I agree that his soft-spoken manner and not savagely attacking his opponents, that has been a pleasant change for political campaigning.

 

But to have the American people actually believe some of his bazaar comments is very difficult to understand.

 

Yes, the doctor’s stellar career as the head of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital does show that he is a truly capable and intelligent individual.

 

It is also amazing to see the effect his rags-to-riches story has on other African Americans when he relates how he went from poverty in Detroit to become one of the most acclaimed surgeons of our time.  His personal story never changes.  He always says, “If I can do it, so can you,” and the impact of this story on his audience is always amazing.

 

But Dr. Carson is running for the Commander in Chief of the United States, not the US Surgeon General.  And some of his concepts of history and what he would do if he were president are not only off-the-wall, they are many times totally wrong, ridiculous or just down right nuts.

 

It all started when Dr. Carson referred to President Obama as a psychopath and when he said that “Obamacare was the worst thing to happen to the United States since slavery.”  His explanation for that was, “As America is a nation by the people and for the people, for the government to mandate that everyone should have health care coverage is against the US Constitution.” 

 

So, apparently it’s OK for the rest of us to pay billions of tax-payer dollars to pay for people to go to the very expensive Hospital Emergency Room instead of having preventative and regular health care at a much low cost with better results.

 

Dr. Carson then says that the Holocaust would have been “greatly diminished” if German Jews had been able to keep firearms in their homes. He contends that the gun control laws enacted by the Nazi regime were a prelude to the Holocaust genocide.

 

Jonathan Greenblatt, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, has written, “It is mind-bending to suggest that personal firearms in the hands of the small number of Germany’s Jews remaining in Germany in 1938 could have stopped the totalitarian onslaught of Nazi Germany when the armies of Poland, France, Belgium and numerous other countries were overwhelmed by the highly militarized Third Reich.  It is wholly inappropriate and totally offensive to manipulate the history of the Holocaust and use it to score political points.”

 

Even without Mr. Greenblatt’s explanation, the only guns outlawed in Germany in the 1930’s were the hand guns, not all the other rifles and firearms.  In addition, what good would a couple of family rifles be against military machine guns, bazookas, tanks, and the German SS?

 

When discussing what he witnessed of gun violence as an emergency room doctor in Detroit, Dr. Carson said, “I never saw a body with bullet holes that was more devastating than taking the right to arm ourselves away.”  So, I guess that means that all the thousands of innocent people killed by guns is a much better situation than having reasonable regulations that might stop the random selling of guns at a gun show, out of the trunk of a car or on the internet.

 

When discussing the victims at the Oregon college killed by a crazy gunman, Dr. Carso said “I would not just stand there and let him shoot me.”   He then stated that those people who find themselves in such circumstances should “rush the gunman”.  His idea is that the gunman can only shoot one person at a time.  Sorry, but that depends on the gun being used.  An assault rifle can fire 60 rounds per second. 

 

And I wonder how this doctor’s approach would have worked for those 23 young school children that were massacred at the Sandy Hook Elementary School?

 

The good doctor also has his own personal story of dealing with a bad guy with a fire arm.  He had stated, “I have had a gun held on me when I was in a Popeye’s organization,” referring to the fried chicken chain. “Guy comes in, put the gun in my ribs.  I just said, ‘I believe that you want the guy behind the counter.’ ” 

 

No one knows if his story is true, or what actually happened next, but Dr. Carson says he is a vegetarian.  If that’s true, what was he doing in a fried chicken eatery?

 

The biggest issue in Dr. Carson running for president has to do with the good doctor’s lack of background in foreign affairs.

 

However, somehow Dr. Carson apparently knows information that some of the best news organizations cannot confirm.  And, as with many other Republicans, Dr. Carson is a believer in international conspiracies. 

 

Dr. Carson now says that Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Russian President Vladimir Putin were all students and good buddies at the Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow in 1968. All of them, he claims, were attending there at the same time.

 

PolitiFact has looked into the matter and found that only Abbas might have attended the university.  But there is no indication of when he attended and zero evidence that the Supreme Leader ever studied in Moscow.  This story however is still highly doubtful as Putin was only 16 at the time the doctor is referring.

 

PolitiFact has classified this statement by Dr. Carson as: “Pants on Fire!” false.

 

On top of all this, the highly qualified and educated doctor does not believe in the 97% of scientists that support human-influenced climate change, nor does he believe in evolution.

 

I think I rest my case, but as Dr. Carson keeps adding to his questionable list of statements, we should stay tuned for more outrageous inputs.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2015