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Ben Carson's West Point Story Fabricated Says Ben Carson.

dismal said:
Tom Sawyer said:
OK, if you know that you have these kinds of major inconsistencies in your public statements about your past, shouldn't you make an effort to clear them up before you start running for President? He was aware that every detail of his life would be gone through with a fine-toothed comb and yet he just left all this stuff sitting out there to be dropped as bombshells at the most politically inconvenient time for him.

What an idiot.
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You'd think he'd have learned from when Joe Biden was caught plagiarizing details of his biography and the shame and outrage caused him to abandon politics and disappear from public life.
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You mean the Joe Biden running for president?

aa
 
maxparrish said:
Was he introduced to Westmoreland?
Did the two have dinner together?
In the conversation was there any discussion of attending West Point?
Did Westmoreland allude or suggest any scholarship might be available if he applied?
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Are the pyramids filled with grain?
Did he tell a armed robber to rob a cashier in a Popeye's organization?
How strong was he as a kid in order to break his knife on a belt buckle? And how big of a hardbody was the guy he was trying to stab with the embossed buckle (assumed as rounded and flat buckles would have deflected the knife into the flesh)?
 
Nice Squirrel said:
Tom Sawyer said:
Rubio is in third or fourth place at the moment. Park that one until December.
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Agreed. We can wait for him to explain the complexities of "credit card for business purchases only" as well.
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Ya, it's not like the GOP are offering up a limited amount of crazy that we can discuss. We can wait for them to present an unqualified person as a leading candidate before we start going on about how they're unqualified. There's no need to shoot our entire load a year out from the election.
 
Tom Sawyer said:
dismal said:
You'd think he'd have learned from when Joe Biden was caught plagiarizing details of his biography and the shame and outrage caused him to abandon politics and disappear from public life.
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I agree with dismal. Let's take the discussion away from the GOP to talk about how bad the Democrats are.
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Well, obviously what Biden did was far worse.

Carson's is probably closer to Hillary dodging sniper fire in Bosnia.
 
So far being crazy has only been a plus for republican candidates. Is this where their voters draw the line?
 
dismal said:
Tom Sawyer said:
I agree with dismal. Let's take the discussion away from the GOP to talk about how bad the Democrats are.
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Well, obviously what Biden did was far worse.

Carson's is probably closer to Hillary dodging sniper fire in Bosnia.
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Good work. There have been other Democrats who have done other things as well. Be sure to list a few more. Discussions don't derail themselves, after all.
 
Tom Sawyer said:
dismal said:
Well, obviously what Biden did was far worse.

Carson's is probably closer to Hillary dodging sniper fire in Bosnia.
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Good work. There have been other Democrats who have done other things as well. Be sure to list a few more. Discussions don't derail themselves, after all.
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What exactly is being derailed? This is a discussion about a politician who was caught fabricating a background story.

How are examples of how the public and the forum reacted to other people doing that not relevant?
 
Selsaral said:
So far being crazy has only been a plus for republican candidates. Is this where their voters draw the line?
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One would like to think so. What's really needed is the party doing a better job of vetting potential candidates beforehand, so this sort of thing doesn't come out in the middle of a campaign.

We have the same problem up here in Canada. During the recent election, one candidate had to resign the day before the then Prime Minister gave a major speech because some video surfaced of him peeing in somebody's cup and putting it back into the sink while he was doing some remodelling of their house. Threw the entire campaign off message for a couple of days. Then there was another one from another party who turned out to be a 9/11 Truther and everyone was talking about that instead of the issues the parties wanted to discuss.

There really needs to be more of a pre-screening process done so that the parties are aware of this sort of thing before they have it coming out in the middle of the campaign.
 
dismal said:
This is a discussion about a politician who was caught fabricating a background story.
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Not only that, but it is about a person who made up a story.


Just the other day I was listening to an interview with Stephen King. Did you know he was once hit by a car? Pretty ironic for a guy who makes up stories about killer cars, huh?
 
maxparrish said:
Did he plagiarize Neil Kinnock's biographical speeches as his own life story...oh wait, that's another guy.
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Funny how this history worked...a month after the plagiarizing got out Biden dropped out of the 1988 presidential race after non-stop scrutiny by the liberal media on his penchant for plagiarizing.
 
funinspace said:
maxparrish said:
Did he plagiarize Neil Kinnock's biographical speeches as his own life story...oh wait, that's another guy.
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Funny how this history worked...a month after the plagiarizing got out Biden dropped out of the 1988 presidential race after non-stop scrutiny by the liberal media on his penchant for plagiarizing.
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Ya, but most of the articles which were written about that were ripped off from another reporter.
 
To be fair, when I was 17 and made a brief contemplation of a military academy (not that they would have taken me, probably), the fact that there was no "tuition" that I had to come up with sounded an awful lot like a "scholarship" to me. Of course, over the next 30 years, I learned the difference. Maybe carson just never thought about it again after that teenage point in time.
 
Rhea said:
To be fair, when I was 17 and made a brief contemplation of a military academy (not that they would have taken me, probably), the fact that there was no "tuition" that I had to come up with sounded an awful lot like a "scholarship" to me. Of course, over the next 30 years, I learned the difference. Maybe carson just never thought about it again after that teenage point in time.
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This is not going to be his problem as it's a relatively meaningless distinction. His problem is going to be that he says he was offered it when he never applied. He will no doubt claim the offer was informal from Westmoreland at dinner or somesuch.

His bigger problem is many establishment Republicans don't want him anyway.
 
Rhea said:
To be fair, when I was 17 and made a brief contemplation of a military academy (not that they would have taken me, probably), the fact that there was no "tuition" that I had to come up with sounded an awful lot like a "scholarship" to me. Of course, over the next 30 years, I learned the difference. Maybe carson just never thought about it again after that teenage point in time.
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And in the spirit of fairness, the part he is obviously lying about is that he received such a fiction. West Point has no record of him ever applying. And Carson admitted as much.

aa
 
dismal said:
Rhea said:
To be fair, when I was 17 and made a brief contemplation of a military academy (not that they would have taken me, probably), the fact that there was no "tuition" that I had to come up with sounded an awful lot like a "scholarship" to me. Of course, over the next 30 years, I learned the difference. Maybe carson just never thought about it again after that teenage point in time.
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This is not going to be his problem as it's a relatively meaningless distinction. His problem is going to be that he says he was offered it when he never applied. He will no doubt claim the offer was informal from Westmoreland at dinner or somesuch.
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What about the pesky fact that his campaign office said it was fabricated?

From the description it sounds like he was at a recruiting event and talked to recruiters.
 
They didn't say "it was fabricated".

They said:

“Dr. Carson was the top ROTC student in the City of Detroit,” campaign manager Barry Bennett wrote in an email to POLITICO. “In that role he was invited to meet General Westmoreland. He believes it was at a banquet. He can’t remember with specificity their brief conversation but it centered around Dr. Carson’s performance as ROTC City Executive Officer.”

“He was introduced to folks from West Point by his ROTC Supervisors,” Bennett added. “They told him they could help him get an appointment based on his grades and performance in ROTC. He considered it but in the end did not seek admission.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/ben-carson-west-point-215598#ixzz3qkDvjk8E

From the same politco article:

Carson repeated his West Point claim as recently as Aug. 13, when he fielded questions from supporters on Facebook.

"The next question is from Bill. He wanted to know if it was true that I was offered a slot at West Point after high school," Carson wrote. "Bill, that is true. I was the highest student ROTC member in Detroit and was thrilled to get an offer from West Point. But I knew medicine is what I wanted to do. So I applied to only one school. (it was all the money I had). I applied to Yale and thank God they accepted me. I often wonder what might have happened had they said no."
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In this one he pretty clearly says he never applied to West Point. So it is not perhaps surprising Politco's courageous act of journalism could find no record of him applying to the school.

So, it all comes down to what he means when he said "was offered". His campaign has acknowledged there was no formal offer.


Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/ben-carson-west-point-215598#ixzz3qkELaAvJ
 
The really oddity about all of this is the Carson has a really compelling life story. I don't understand why he thought that he had to fabricate all of these details.

I don't think that he had anything to fear from the speeches that he gave to Mannatech. The only reason that it became an issue is because he lied to cover it up. For no obvious reason as it turns out.

The long time politicians have public records that they have to defend. Clinton voted for the invasion of Iraq, numerous giveaways to Wall Street and supported the the TPP as Secretary of State, none of which sit well with her primary voters. Sanders voted for his rural constituency on gun control. Jeb! has Terry Shirvo (sp?) whose eyes he saw life in that he would have to carry in the general election were he to win the nomination. Rubio has his petty corruptions and his past rather human positions on immigration which his rabidly xenophobic primary voters won't like.

But the game show host, the mad doctor and the unsuccessful businesswoman don't have these problems. Why do they bring it on themselves? Foot in mouth disease?
 
dismal said:
It really all comes down to debate over the meaning of "offered".
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That meaning being "none of us are from West Point admissions and their are no scholarships because there is no tuition"
 
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