Doctor Strange

You need your head examined.Title: “A More Perfect Union: What We the People Can Do to Reclaim Our Constitutional Liberties”

Authors: Ben Carson and Candy Carson

Rank: 9

Blurb: “I believe that making a difference starts with understanding our amazing founding document, the U.S. Constitution. And as someone who has performed brain surgery thousands of times, I can assure you that the Constitution isn’t brain surgery.”

Review: “America needs his wisdom and evidence-based problem-solving skills.”

Customers Also Bought: “Agents of Babylon: What the Prophecies of Daniel Tell Us about the End of Days” by David Jeremiah

Footnote: Where’s the evidence that suggests rushing a gunman who bursts into your classroom is possible, or even conceivable in the moment?

A More Perfect Union [Amazon]
23 Comments

I dunno.

To borrow a phrase from a man who once spoke to a chair: A man’s got to know his limitations.

He and Cliff Huxtable are giving Black doctors a bad name.

Like Ted Cruz – a very capable professional who is either ignorant or wilfully ignorant. I can’t quite call him dumb yet, but the election is more than a year away.

@blogenfreude: Cruz is cynical as hell. Carson is a straight-up dimwit.

@nojo: I wonder how someone like that got through medical school, but then again I know lawyers (I am one) who graduated from top schools with honors that I wouldn’t trust to feed my fish when I was out of town. If I had fish. And I don’t.

@blogenfreude: Let’s expand on this…

Cruz is a Manipulator, and a very good one. More than anyone in recent memory, he has the chops to be the next Joe McCarthy. Happily, he pisses off everyone he comes into contact with, so his danger is contained.

Carson is an idiot — an idiot savant. Just ask his colleagues, who have been enduring his crap for years. He may be blessed with Gifted Hands, but the Good Lord, in His Infinite Amusement, transplanted that talent from his head, and stuffed in some sawdust to make up the weight.

Carson is not a Manipulator. He is Manipulated, not just an idiot, but a Useful Idiot. Someone aims to make some serious bank off him, and I’m sure we’ll learn some highly entertaining things about his backers if he lasts long enough for anyone to worry about him.

Best comparison to Carson? Shrub, of all people. Also a Useful Idiot — you could drink Near Beer with the guy! — and also an easily manipulated front for the sorry crew that ran the show.

@nojo:
Agreed. He’s like many a brilliant engineer I worked with, but so hopelessly outclassed in everything outside his field (yet he believes he knows it all.)

It’s one reason why I’ve grown to loathe the character of Sheldon Cooper from the Big Bang Theory who only exists for laughs. Real life Sheldons are nowhere near as funny especially if they’re your boss.

@ManchuCandidate: That tendency is indeed more pronounced (or maybe, to us, just more familiar) among Geeks: I possess this particularly intense domain knowledge, therefore I possess all knowledge.

I mention this because the moment it came to mind I thought of a clarifying counter-example: Steve Jobs. Just because he ran Apple, he didn’t presume he could run the world.

Then again, maybe making a dent in the universe was sufficient.

@nojo:
I’ve been guilty of it once or twice. Learned to shut my mouth after that about things I know nothing of.

Fortunately Jobs didn’t conceive of iPower.

@ManchuCandidate: Wow, it looks like the Canadian elections are gonna be a white-knuckled ride right up to the end. I cannot believe that the Conservatives and Liberals are tied. Who the hell wants Harperbot 3000 2 B PM 4 life? Whathufuck is wrong with people (rhetorical).

@¡Andrew!: Turns out there are lots of Canadian bigots who hate immigrants, too. Who knew?

@¡Andrew!:
NDP leader Mulcair has the personality of toast and his campaign sucked.

Depends on the polling. One consistent trend is that the NDP pulled a Washington Nats and pulled defeat from the Jaws of Victory. They lost a lot of support due to Trudeau Jr doing a better job of campaigning and tacking to the left of the NDP!! Either way, Harper panicking and pulling out the bigotry card trying to save his Ontario seats (where he’s going to lose a few here.)

Common refrain “If only Layton were alive.”

Either way, a minority government.

@Mistress Cynica:
Oh yeah. Plenty.

@ManchuCandidate: Yeah, I did find it exceedingly odd that Mulcair was promising to balance the federal budget, while my back-up huzbund Justin Dreamy plans to run deficits for stimulus spending. WTF?

With his cold, dead eyes, and andriodesque manner, Harperbot 3000 looks like a Scooby Doo villian. “And I would’ve gotten away with it, too, if it hadn’t been for you meddling kidz!”

@ManchuCandidate: Jack Layton would’ve handed Harperbot his robotic azz. Heave Steve!!

Somebody really needs to remind Dr. Carson that the only part of the original Constitution that concerned anyone like him is Article I, Section 2: “Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states which may be included within this union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other persons.” Sorry Dr. Carson but that’s it for you, that’s your personal “amazing founding document”.

Friend of mine practiced medicine with Dr. Carson at Johns Hopkins. Says he was a good surgeon but could not understand why everyone didn’t agree with him on everything, since he was clearly right.

@Dodgerblue: My over-the-internet diagnosis is Narcissistic Personality Disorder, though everyone running on the R-side is some flavor of psychopath. It’s like the DSM-5 has come to life.

HuffPo had a psychiatrist on staff around ten years ago who was trying to figure out what was wrong with Caligutard, whether he was a day-drunk or had drain bammage or WTF. He’d be hospitalized for exhaustion from trying to keep up with the RWNJs today.

On the good news front, the University of Washington just chose its first out, lesbian, Latina president. This is a BFD.

@¡Andrew!: It’s like the DSM-5 has come to life.
Best description I’ve seen.

@ManchuCandidate:

Exactly. The pseudo-scientific “discipline” of Creationism is littered with engineers who think they’ve discovered all the obvious flaws in Evolution that actual, credentialed Biologists who’ve devoted their careers to the study of life on earth have somehow managed to miss. It’s truly pathetic.

@¡Andrew!: I second Mistress Cynica – you hit the fucking nail on the head, in a way that is so much more accurate than my generic “clown car” descriptor.

Does anyone else find a strange resemblance between our Dr. Ben and the Peter Sellers character Chauncey Gardiner in Breaking Bad? Eerie.

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