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Ben Carson's Passing Grade in a "Honesty" Psychology Class Didn't Happen

maxparrish said:
Nice Squirrel said:
As been pointed out by posters in the past, he has a compelling story and there is no need to tell such whoppers, but his stories are approaching Commander McBragg level.

http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/11/06/ben-carson-west-point/


Alright apologists have at it. Let's see the back flips on this one.
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No need to. Like all the other ginned gotcha stories of petty quibbles, his biographical recollections will likely turnout to have a basis in fact. IF, on the other hand, it is totally made up THEN we have an issue...we shall see.
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So you believe the following are true (from the WSJ) as relayed by Mother Jones:

  • Ben is broke. Finds ten-dollar bill on sidewalk. Thank you, Lord!
  • A year later, Ben is broke again. Looks for ten-dollar bill, doesn't find one.
  • Ben gets notice that all the final exams in Perceptions 301 were accidentally lit on fire. He goes in for the retest.
  • The new test is really, really hard. A girl near Ben tells her classmate they should leave. "We can say we didn't read the notice."
  • Everyone starts leaving. Ben is conflicted. "I was tempted to walk out, but I had read the notice, and I couldn't lie and say I hadn't."
  • Eventually Ben is the only one left. The professor comes back in with a Yale Daily News photographer. The whole thing was a hoax, she said. "We wanted to see who was the most honest student in the class. And that's you."
  • Ben concludes the story: "The professor then did something even better. She handed me a ten-dollar bill."

So the tests were from a class that never existed, taught by a professor that didn't exist and were lit on fire (like the professor couldn't mimeograph more)... you believe this is a case of forgetting small aspects and not a straight up fabrication?

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2015/11/ben-carson-and-tale-redemption

Mother Jones said:
Are these embellishments unnecessary? Sure. But Carson knows his audience. Serious evangelicals really, really want to hear a story about sin and redemption. That requires two things. First, Carson needs to have been a bad kid. Second, redemption needs to have truly turned his life around. He was already a student smart enough to get into Yale, so he needs more.

That's where these stories come in. He needs to exaggerate how violent he was when he was young. And after he finds God, he needs to exaggerate how great everything turned out. This culminates in the absurd story about his psychology class. No one who's not an evangelical Christian would believe it for a second. But evangelicals hear testimonies like this all the time. They expect testimonies like this, and the more improbable the better. So Carson gives them one. It's clumsy because he's not very good at inventing this kind of thing, but that doesn't matter much.

Not all of Carson's deceptions follow this pattern. But several of them do. And they were far from unnecessary. Carson needed to sell his story to evangelicals, and that required a narrative arc as formulaic as any supermarket romance novel. So he gave them one
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Anybody who concerns themselves with the ravings of this lunatic should rest assured, his unimportant little anecdotal lies will automatically disqualify him for running for the office of the LIAR IN CHIEF. Nice try Ben, but you are trying to compete in a crowded field of class one liars for an office occupied exclusively by the world's best and most consistent liars...the U.S. Presidency.:rolleyes:
 
Nice Squirrel said:
maxparrish said:
No need to. Like all the other ginned gotcha stories of petty quibbles, his biographical recollections will likely turnout to have a basis in fact. IF, on the other hand, it is totally made up THEN we have an issue...we shall see.
Click to expand...

So you believe the following are true (from the WSJ) as relayed by Mother Jones:

  • Ben is broke. Finds ten-dollar bill on sidewalk. Thank you, Lord!
  • A year later, Ben is broke again. Looks for ten-dollar bill, doesn't find one.
  • Ben gets notice that all the final exams in Perceptions 301 were accidentally lit on fire. He goes in for the retest.
  • The new test is really, really hard. A girl near Ben tells her classmate they should leave. "We can say we didn't read the notice."
  • Everyone starts leaving. Ben is conflicted. "I was tempted to walk out, but I had read the notice, and I couldn't lie and say I hadn't."
  • Eventually Ben is the only one left. The professor comes back in with a Yale Daily News photographer. The whole thing was a hoax, she said. "We wanted to see who was the most honest student in the class. And that's you."
  • Ben concludes the story: "The professor then did something even better. She handed me a ten-dollar bill."

So the tests were from a class that never existed, taught by a professor that didn't exist and were lit on fire (like the professor couldn't mimeograph more)... you believe this is a case of forgetting small aspects and not a straight up fabrication?

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2015/11/ben-carson-and-tale-redemption
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I believe what I stated, the first link you provided from the NYT says a journalists "investigation" implies that Carson fabricated his experience. Given the repeated debunking of prior allegations (or allegations without evidence) against Carson in other stories; there is no reason to believe this one. Moreover, your listing of journalist and/or your own characterizations as a basis of discussion cannot be assumed to be faithful or accurate; there is no reason to assume that Mother Jones's paraphrase of either the WSJ and/or their paraphrase of Ben Carson's account is fully accurate, nor can we assume WSJ was faithful to Ben Carson's account.

After wasting time with misrepresented, incomplete, and made up accounts in the MSM from now on when it comes to Carson I want to read his full account, presented in quotes. The paraphrases, partial quotes, and editorializing with characterizations by anti-Carson hacks are no longer useful as a basis of debate, albeit their tactics are the well worn ploys used by smear lobby.

Until such time as his FULL account is presented as he originally wrote or said it, there is nothing to dispute.
 
maxparrish said:
...nor can we assume WSJ was faithful to Ben Carson's account...
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Of course not, I mean they are part of conservative, corporate media after all. It's entirely possible that they are paid off by the Trump campaign to disseminate false news about Carson. There's a good way to get an idea of how honest they are, though, and that's for you to pay to subscribe online to WSJ. Pay into the capitalist news if you can afford it and check if they are jumping to conclusions and logically consistent within the article they posted about it.

Let us know how it goes.
 
maxparrish said:
Until such time as his FULL account is presented as he originally wrote or said it, there is nothing to dispute.
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Well if Google books is a reliable copy of the book:
https://books.google.com/books?id=T...ge&q="gifted hands" "perceptions 301"&f=false

GiftedHandsPerception1.jpg
...
GiftedHandsPerception2.jpg

So, yeah.
"we wanted to see who was the most honest one" Oh, just bullshit. We knew there would be only one... Oh joy joy love heart Bennie, it's YOU!

maxparrish said:
Moreover, your listing of journalist and/or your own characterizations as a basis of discussion cannot be assumed to be faithful or accurate; there is no reason to assume that Mother Jones's paraphrase of either the WSJ and/or their paraphrase of Ben Carson's account is fully accurate, nor can we assume WSJ was faithful to Ben Carson's account.
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ALSO PLEASE NOTE: everything that Nice Squirrel quoted from the MoJo version of the WSJ article is exactly accurate.
Just... sayin'.
 
maxparrish said:
Nice Squirrel said:
So you believe the following are true (from the WSJ) as relayed by Mother Jones:

  • Ben is broke. Finds ten-dollar bill on sidewalk. Thank you, Lord!
  • A year later, Ben is broke again. Looks for ten-dollar bill, doesn't find one.
  • Ben gets notice that all the final exams in Perceptions 301 were accidentally lit on fire. He goes in for the retest.
  • The new test is really, really hard. A girl near Ben tells her classmate they should leave. "We can say we didn't read the notice."
  • Everyone starts leaving. Ben is conflicted. "I was tempted to walk out, but I had read the notice, and I couldn't lie and say I hadn't."
  • Eventually Ben is the only one left. The professor comes back in with a Yale Daily News photographer. The whole thing was a hoax, she said. "We wanted to see who was the most honest student in the class. And that's you."
  • Ben concludes the story: "The professor then did something even better. She handed me a ten-dollar bill."

So the tests were from a class that never existed, taught by a professor that didn't exist and were lit on fire (like the professor couldn't mimeograph more)... you believe this is a case of forgetting small aspects and not a straight up fabrication?

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2015/11/ben-carson-and-tale-redemption
Click to expand...

I believe what I stated.
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But do you believe Ben Carson's story is accurate to actual events?
 
Plus this whole idea that he was counting the students as they left, and after 10 minutes knew there were about 100 left. This whole thins just SCREAMS Fundagelical Exaggeration for Jesus. It's like a freakin' cookbook!
 
I've been trying to figure out what the proposed rationale was for the students who left. "Oh, we didn't see the notice" might have worked for the first two, but there's no way they could have all expected to pull that off. Seriously, if I handed out 150 exams and only got 100 back, the students whose tests I was missing would have a whole lot of esplainin' to do.

Is this the miracle of the evaporating exams? A talking snake is more believable...
 
maxparrish said:
Until such time as his FULL account is presented as he originally wrote or said it...
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The "full account" we're disputing comes from his autobiography. All of the accusations are based on that account not actually being true. It's not like this is hearsay or something he carelessly said in an interview or an email to a staffer. This is the story he told about himself in a published written work and claimed it afterwards to be the truth.

Seriously, Max, you can climb down off of Ben's dick now. You don't have to defend every Republican who gets caught doing something stupid; they have whole legions of professional publicists who actually get PAID to do that.
 
Crazy Eddie said:
Alias2 said:
John Brown isn't running for president.
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And Ben Carson was never a slave.
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He never claimed he was. "Runawa Slave" is a term for conservative blacks who escaped from the democrat plantation. The left expects every black person to vote democrat. When the left sees a black conservative it makes them angry.

- - - Updated - - -

Keith&Co. said:
Alias2 said:
Nothing frightens the left more than a runaway slave.
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You keep saying that.
What does it mean?
What are you trying to make it mean?
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Black conservatives have escaped from the democrat plantation.https://youtu.be/55aujTwuJY8
 
Alias2 said:
Crazy Eddie said:
And Ben Carson was never a slave.
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He never claimed he was. "Runawa Slave" is a term for conservative blacks who escaped from the democrat plantation.
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Then Carson is more delusional than we thought.

The left expects every black person to vote democrat.
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Given the blanket Republican antipathy towards the working poor -- of whom black people are drastically overrepresented -- coupled with their opposition of the social programs the black community has relied on for years, opposition of public education and, finally, the dismantling of the Voting Rights Act that black people spent twenty years fighting to get passed in the first place... why would you expect them to vote Republican?

It's also kind of telling that conservatives liken "being a democrat" to slavery. As if supporting a political party that is slightly less apathetic to your causes than its opposition is equivalent to being directly owned, physically and sexually abused and forced to work against your will by another person purely because of the color of your skin. It's almost as if Republicans don't know -- or even CARE -- how offensive that analogy really is.
 
I think we've all met pathological psychopaths like this guy.

They can be high achievers but they are crazy, living on another planet.
 
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