The Doctor is in....sane. (Ben Carson)

So it turns out if there is a winner in the whole implosion of the US house of resp things, its actually Doctor Ben Carson.....cause without that story his own two no good very very bad weeks would likely be the front page story.

First, it turns out we can add economics to the ever growing list of things that shockingly even a brain surgeon doesnt get.

From an interview with NPR'S Kai Ryssdal:

Ryssdal: All right, so let's talk about debt then and the budget. As you know, Treasury Secretary Lew has come out in the last couple of days and said, "We're gonna run out of money, we're gonna run out of borrowing authority, on the fifth of November." Should the Congress then and the president not raise the debt limit? Should we default on our debt?

Carson: Let me put it this way: if I were the president, I would not sign an increased budget. Absolutely would not do it. They would have to find a place to cut.

Right......except that cutting the budget has about as much to do with the debt ceiling as the fact it is October has to do with what day of the week it is. They may be tangentially related, but the budget is not what you were asked about

Ryssdal: To be clear, it's increasing the debt limit, not the budget, but I want to make sure I understand you. You'd let the United States default rather than raise the debt limit.

Carson: No, I would provide the kind of leadership that says, "Get on the stick guys, and stop messing around, and cut where you need to cut, because we're not raising any spending limits, period."
STRIKE 2!   But at least we can rule out accidental misspeak.

Ryssdal: I'm gonna try one more time, sir. This is debt that's already obligated. Would you not favor increasing the debt limit to pay the debts already incurred?

Carson: What I'm saying is what we have to do is restructure the way that we create debt. I mean if we continue along this, where does it stop? It never stops. You're always gonna ask the same question every year. And we're just gonna keep going down that pathway. That's one of the things I think that the people are tired of.

STRIKE 3! YOURE OUT!  Seriously the anchor even told Carson what the debt ceiling was, (as it became clear he had no idea) and he still couldn't answer the question...but at least he used the word debt that time. so theres that.

By the way, this wasnt the only problem for Carson in this interview, there was also this:

"Ryssdal: Let me turn to tax policy for a second, if I might, Dr. Carson. You have come out and said you prefer a 10 percent flat tax. You base it on tithing and the Bible —

Carson: Not necessarily 10 percent, but I use 10 percent because it's easy to work the numbers.

Ryssdal: Well if you're gonna propose a flat tax, then, sir, you gotta give me a number. So what's your number for the flat tax?

Carson: I think it would probably be closer to 15 percent."

Well hopefully your not planning on voting for Doctor Carson because of his tax plan....because he just admitted he's lying to you and that your taxes will be about 50% higher than he's claiming they will be

Also 10% is "easier to work the numbers?" who's working the numbers? I assume Carson means himself in his speeches when he gives examples.  Which seems to mean Carson is so bad at math he cant be honest about his own tax plan cause he wouldnt be able to do the math involved in it himself.

Yikes......

And heres the thing, unfortunately for Dr. Carson, we are just getting started...and the rest of it is even worse.

My guess is you heard about the recent shooting in Oregon. Carson clearly has....and he has some advice for all potential victims of future shootings (and yes, you can likely already guess from the premise here, this aint going to go over well):

Right, unlike the victim's who apparently just let themselves get shot, Carson would totally rush the shooter and actually you know try to do something.

Cause victim blaming sounds great.

And he didnt just say this once, From a CBS interview:

“From the indications I got, they didn’t rush the shooter, I would ask everybody to attack the gunman because he can only shoot one of us at a time. That way, we don’t all wind up dead.”

He said the same thing in a tweet of an interview put out by ABC.

But this is where the story takes a freaking amazing turn. On an appearance on a radio show Carson was asked if he in fact every has been in a situation with a gunman. And actually as it turned out the answer was yes. He was once involved in a robbery at a Popeyes.

Presumably, Carson heroically rushed the shooter and saved everyones lives right?

Per Carsons reply:“Guy comes in, puts the gun to my ribs and I just said, ‘I believe that you want the guy behind the counter,'”

Oh...so when someone points a guy at you...you dont rush them.....you actually just throw some minimum wage worker under the bus.

By the way in a follow up interview Carson was asked what the gunman's reaction was

"The resolution was, [the gunman] said, 'Oh, sorry,' and then he went to the appropriate person behind the register who gave him the money, and he left the store running before the police got there,"

See, everything was OK, no one got shot, and Carson helped the gunman successfully rob the store by making sure he stuck his gun at the "appropriate" minimum wage, possibly teenaged worker, and not you know, the important doctor.....

Oh and how doe Carson justify NOT rushing this shooter?

“They’re two very different situations. You’ve got a crazy person who’s shooting people and is clearly going to continue to do that versus somebody who’s coming in to try to get a little bit of cash. Now I’m not justifying the fact that he’s coming in to rob the place, but you’ve got to be able to distinguish between somebody who’s trying to rob a joint and somebody who is trying to kill you,”

Ah....see there it is, you only need to rush the shooter if you think he's going to kill YOU personally....otherwise you can just direct him to someone else and make it their problem on the assumption that other person is the one the shooter might truly feel the need to kill....

By the way, there is one more fairly problematic twist here for Carson.

Someone had the bright idea of asking the Baltimore Police about the robbery, to get some more detail. Turns out "We searched for it and based on the general statement, we have no report,".  So yea, its possible the event didnt even happen and Carson made the whole thing up.

By the way a couple of hours after the police made that announcement Carson was on CNN and was asked to defend his original comments:

Note the accusation here by the survivor: Carson cant understand unless he lived it.  This would be the perfect opportunity to mention (once again) your story where you HAD lived it as youve already talked about elsewhere.

Odd, if the story about Popeyes was true, Carson didnt go that route suddenly....you know only after the Baltimore PD weighted in.

Instead he attacked the survivor for basically being a mouthpiece who was only repeated lines fed to him and likely couldnt possibly really be offended......


And sadly for Carson, that interview got even worse for him later:

Yes, see if the Jews hadnt given up their guns and had you know fought back they wouldnt have been exterminated.....so kinda there fault I guess?

By the way, the Anti-Defamation league wasted no time in hammering Carson on this one:

“Ben Carson has a right to his views on gun control, but the notion that Hitler’s gun-control policy contributed to the Holocaust is historically inaccurate. The small number of personal firearms available to Germany’s Jews in 1938 could in no way have stopped the totalitarian power of the Nazi German state. When they had weapons, Jews could symbolically resist, as they did in the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and elsewhere, but they could not stop the Nazi genocide machine, In short, gun control did not cause the Holocaust; Nazism and anti-Semitism did.”
They could have also mentioned the Białystok Ghetto Uprising, the Częstochowa Ghetto Uprising, the Będzin Ghetto uprising, and the Łachwa Ghetto uprising just to name a few.

And that doesnt count things like the Sobibór uprising, in which unarmed jews (in a death camp) stole the german weapons and used them against them....

And Carson's response to all of this?

"That's total foolishness, I’d be happy to discuss that in depth with anybody but it is well known that in many places where tyranny has taken over, they first disarm the people. There’s a reason they disarm the people. They don’t just do it arbitrarily."

So according to Carson the ADL is wrong.....Jews didn't fight back and maybe if they had they wouldn't have been massacred....

But hey, you have to give Carson credit here, when it comes to blaming victims for their own deaths and offending pretty much everyone....the good doctor sticks to his guns.