Praying up Dollars for Dr. Ben…

WHY THE NEWS MEDIA IS SO LOST ON DONALD TRUMP

WHY I LIKE BEN CARSON

Same answer, both times.

They simper. They prance. They pout. They raise their eyebrows. They squeal with glee and they bellow with feigned outrage. But most of all, the new, young, homosexual, liberal media elite – condescend. They have apparently fallen under some sort of delusion that they know something we don’t, and if I don’t fail to properly interpret, they truly, truly believe that they are intellectually superior to their viewership. And so the delivery of news now reeks of a kind of desultory condescension. The question is, deriving from WHAT precisely?

First, perhaps its my age, but do these people seem really really YOUNG? I could swear they are younger than my own children. How much life experience can they actually have? Where did they get all this superior knowledge? I’ve got SHIRTS older than Rachel Madcow. Chris Hayes looks like HER illegitimate son given up for adoption in an awkward adolescent moment.

Second, when did journalism school become the last refuge for the truly intellectually gifted? My take was that in the pecking order of higher education, far, far below all science and engineering, below the business majors, if you failed at accounting and HAD to change your major to economics, and you failed at economics and HAD to change your major to education, and if you FAILED at education and HAD to change your major to something, there was always journalism or mass communications. The presumption being that you could at least be trained to work a typewriter or a microphone given sufficient practice time and expert instruction.

It almost defines the major course of study for over-mammaried blondes. I mean I guess there’s interior decorating in there somewhere. Or perhaps fashion design…

So rather than “reading the news”, somewhere along the way these post-adolescents have decided that they actually know something and that their opinion MATTERS to someone out there in “TV-land”.

And so I rather enjoy watching the news because of the striking level of “don’t know and don’t know they don’t know” at play. I’m constantly wondering if they can hear what they are saying and truly don’t know how bizarrely lost it is, or is there some sort of six-second delay at work here that prevents them from hearing it at all?

In any event, there’s a new wrinkle to all of this. Donald Trump and Ben Carson have both filed to stand for election to the United States Presidency. And the media both unanimously and instantly labeled and categorized them both as moronic idiots. Hawing and braying with mirth like donkeys all the while.

I’m struggling to picture the epistemology that gets them to the point where a self-made billionaire in the WORLD’s most viciously competitive and cutthroat real estate market, and the head of Johns Hopkins Pediatric Neurosurgery, can both be intellectually challenged and probably in need of adult supervision, while the aforementioned J-school grad can be, conversely or perversely, intellectually brilliant while deigning to sprinkle us with wisdom on the topic.

And if this isn’t entertaining enough, they are so SMUGLY self-congratulating while doing it. Kind of like rock apes mugging in front of a mirror.

And now, after months of panning them, dismissing them, sagely explaining them, and predicting their inevitable demise, this same media has to come to grips with the facts that Trump/Carson are in a battle for the Republican Party nomination, with about 16 other experienced politicians and the movers and shakers of national politics, trailing so far back that ALL of them TOGETHER don’t cumulatively summon enough polling points to equal EITHER of the two leaders.

Trump, meanwhile, alternating poll lead with Carson, hasn’t spent a DOLLAR of his billions on a paid advertisement, expertly playing the media itself as if it was a Steinway piano. After the last debate, which he claims to have single handedly shortened from three hours to two, and during which he only opened his mouth to yawn, Trump held three national TV networks enthralled for a full hour in the spin room AFTER the debate.

They constantly challenge him on policy specifics and just how he’s going to do all he claims. He avoids the entire concept adroitly. In a moment of irritation he DID give us a peek under the skirts. Barrack Obama had just had a PRESS CONFERENCE and interview announcing the deployment of 50 black-ops troops in Syria.

“This is the worst President in history!” proclaimed Trump. “He’s TELEVISING the announcement of the positioning of black-ops troops – endangering their very lives.”

This makes no sense to someone with a lifetime swimming with the sharks in Manhattan real estate. You don’t signal your competitors what you’re going to do in advance.  The reason they call them “black” ops is not because they are all African Americans. We’re not SUPPOSED to know what the hell they are doing.   It’s “blacked out”. Or it was before Obama outed them.

Trump has no intention of telling you what he’s going to do on taxes, the Mexican wall, jobs, international trade, immigration. He tells you what he intends to ACCOMPLISH in those areas in general terms.   And he trusts the American electorate to decide if THEY want those things accomplished as well.

With regards to immigration, I simply don’t. With regards to ISIS, I simply don’t. With regards to Iran, I simply don’t. With regards to international trade, I simply don’t. Indeed I disagree with almost EVERYTHING Donald Trump wants to do. But I have no doubt he can do it. And I continue to admire his intellect and abilities. I just don’t agree with his objectives. Brilliant guy. But we have different desires and missions. No match. C’est la vie.

And the specifics of how, in addition to not being something to air in public, has another problem. Neither Trump nor Carson are going to DO anything about it. They’re going to point at it, and hire people to do it. The President of the United States cannot be effective DOING anything at all other than communicating from the bully pulpit. They can hire selected expert professionals, and put them under persuasively extreme pressure to make it happen. And decree that they have the resources to do it. And explain to the American people why it is a good thing to do. But they don’t DO anything themselves at all. The Donald may be a real estate magnate, but he doesn’t DO drywall work.

So how is he going to build a wall along an 1800 mile Mexican border and get Mexico to pay for it? Wrong question. We should ask ourselves if we WANT a wall built along the Mexican border at all.

Me? I think it’s fantastic that 11 million people would risk the dangers and tribulations of coming here, facing arrest and deportation, to live like I do. I would note that the number seeking to ESCAPE from the U.S. across the border in the other direction is somewhat the lesser. As Martha Stewart says “That’s a good thing.”

My observation is that Mexicans, in general, work hard, breed hard, and pray hard – three failings I might aspire to, and I dare suggest, so might we all.

So rather than build a wall, I would advocate declaring a national FREE THE FREAKIN MEXICANS FOR CHRISSAKE ALREADY holiday. Declare them all legal. Welcome them all – each and every one – and ask them to each fill out a Social Security card and start paying with every paycheck to support us old people.

Then, everybody in the country eat a Chicken Chimichanga and a Tamale in their honor, and we all drink a bunch of Tequila and shoot off a bunch of fireworks. Unloose the dogs of party-hearty.

Indeed, if it goes well, we could do it on the same day EVERY YEAR. Just pulling one out of my hat, what do you think of the fifth of May? Clear your iPhone calendars.

And while I don’t’ agree with Mr. Trump on immigration, America’s role as constabulary to the world, protectionism, taxation, and how to generate jobs, the real problem I have with Trump is he’s just too nice a man to be President. He actually likes the media and really pretty much everybody he meets.

I’m a strong supporter of Ben Carson. He’s not as nice as you think. In fact, he’s got an elegantly mean streak, that I really really admire.

He’s also dealing very effectively with the Media. And about 40% of Republicans get it. This dovetails very nicely with the George Carlin effect.

Noted comedian George Carlin once observed that if you consider the average intelligence, of the average American, you have to understand that half the people you will meet today ain’t that smart. That’s kind of what average means.

Dr . Carson, somewhat darkly, is concerned about a number of serious problems facing the United States today. And he is concerned that we are unable to deal with them, because the concept of rationally discussing them at all has now been precluded in our society by the rise of the new perennially “offended” class.

The perennially offended class is actual a series of easily replicated victim groups that live poised and ready to be “offended” by certain key trigger words they nominally author as “theirs” for whatever cause they adopt. If anyone utters one of these keywords, they launch the attack in an almost violent accusation designed to get them a little bit of face-time on national television advocating whatever cause they individually deem their raison d’etre.

And so anyone, but particularly any politician, who dares commit a “gaffe” by using one of these words, is instantly besieged and laid to until they tearfully confess that they didn’t really mean it and were quoted out of context and of course [insert pandering apology to cause here]. Followed by a ten-point penalty in the polls and often the end of a political campaign.

Doctor Carson believes this goes beyond words and campaigns and actually warps reality a bit by chilling the space for any serious or cerebral discussion of the actual factors and prime principles of any problem we want to address. Viewing this as an attack on our country and way of life, endangering the future of the innocent and the helpless, he is angered then by any hint of political correctness. And he has none of Donald’s good natured humor about it. His eyes grow cold and his stare is a bit chilling itself.

And with no sympathy or mercy in his heart we find that the news media has gained his undivided attention on this matter. And they probably didn’t actually want that, were they sufficiently sentient to be aware.

Gotta love that. I’m onboard. I agree with his take on this and applaud some action – I just think he’s a little harsh with what he’s doing and about to do to them. They are to some degree in Carlin’s morning half, and know not what they do.

But I’m in.

His method is elegantly simple. He throws out an egregious politically incorrect gaff, and then fails to retreat or apologize for it. This disables the media as it doesn’t follow the very well established script that they assumed was cast in concrete and it throws them into confusion and disarray.

While they stutter and stammer, he quickly works in a very quiet and very calm lead line on something original, thought provoking, and again nuanced to SOUND just a little bit ridiculous, until you think about it. Most miss it entirely. And in all cases if you actually want to know more or discuss it, you have to kind of chase it down. You’ll find it on YouTube or his website or in a speech but YOU have to go dig it out.

And so he plays the media, to speak in code almost exclusively to the best and brightest, or Biblically to those with an ear to hear, in the strategy that those would be the people that could help develop strategies for dealing with some of the problems if we could join him in an actual discussion without partisanship or political correctness

I’m in again.

Picture declaring a meeting to devise solutions, but excluding all stupid people from the building. It’s dark. But I like it.

Some examples. The most stunning was comparing freedom of speech in America to Nazi Germany. It wasn’t stunning in the comparison, but rather in Wolf Spritzer’s reaction as he gasped in horror sputtering and stammering, and THREE TIMES insisted that Dr. Carson didn’t really mean it and didn’t he want to retract the statement. This of course caused Wolf to blow his time mark entirely, granting Carson about three times as much face-time as he would otherwise have been granted prior to the Cialis commercial which slipped badly and almost had to be omitted from the broadcast. Carson very calmly and indeed in an almost inaudibly quiet voice threw out his very thought provoking lead and then retired assuring Wolf that all was well and no he didn’t want to retract anything. Far from it. He usually sums up with his canned disavowal of political correctness in general.

This was a circular argument inside a circular argument inside an anti-politically correct wrapper all about freedom of speech. This is the type of self-referential reiterative syllogism that Linux fanatics do so delight in. But no, it is unlikely that Wolf Spritzer is going to get it. And so in the final coup d’grace Carson, to a certain small segment of the viewership, has just very neatly emasculated Wolf Spritzer with an incision less than a half inch long. Vasectomy advocates worldwide staggered in envy at the elegance of the operation. You can actually see how he COULD separate co-joined twins given enough air time. Spritzer was blissfully unaware of any of it.

An example with some thought provoking substance: He was recently asked if his right-to-life stance extended to victims of rape and incest and he quickly answered yes, of course. The child has done nothing wrong.   As the media babe gasped in horror, he quickly worked in that abortion was very much like slavery. At this point, she’s helpless – double blows to the ribs (I told you he has a kind of mean streak – elegant, but mean) and she just catatonically hands him the microphone.

This was an unusual moment in that after delivering his lead, the dead air allowed him to actually start discussing it a bit.

Right-to-life politicians, those who truly believe that murdering babies is actually murdering babies, have generally pandered to the women’s movement by noting that they personally are against abortion (for the evangelicals) but at the same time as public figure must recognize the right of the woman to choose as established by Roe vs Wade – after all the law of the land.

This has become the textbook way for politicians to deal with the issue with a theoretical chance of appeasing both sides. In practice, it alienates both sides and so APPEARS to be effective while operating as a total failure mode.

Carson was having none of it. He went back to the late 1850’s and early 1860’s noting that slavery was a property right. For those holding slaves, the humans they enslaved were considered by all and by law to be “property” and so of course the property owners were completely within their rights to do anything they liked with their property, up to and including pulling a pistol and shooting them – with no recourse from the community at large.

And he posed the question as to where we would be today with regards to slavery, if the abolitionists had said that they of course personally were against slavery, but recognized the right of the slave holder to do anything they like with their property as it was the law of the land.

The obvious answer was that slavery would never have been eradicated in the U.S.

Whatever your politics on abortion, I had never heard this topic of division discussed or presented in this way. It was to me a truly original sounding and very thought provoking argument.   If slavery is an ethical and moral wrong, we should of course move to eliminate it. And if abortion is an ethical and moral wrong, should we then tolerate it? I mean the woman has some rights to HER property – HER body. Does she not? And it is the law of the land – is it not?

My point is not for or against abortion, although I oppose it and believe we will look back on these days with embarrassment as cruel primitive savages who ate their own young. My point is Dr. Carson’s ability to pose chronic ongoing issues in new and thought provoking ways. It doesn’t’ insist a solution. But it IS a different conversation.

Which is rather his point in that we can’t have that conversation with idiots screaming epithets over the top of it – the PC police.

In another area, health care costs. Carson throws out the concept of health care savings accounts. These are accounts where you can put in money tax free, and if you never use it it is yours to keep. If you need it, you pay for it out of the account.

This is not an original concept. It’s been proposed for decades and always decried as hopeless as the ones who need medical care the most won’t have the discipline or wherewithal to actually put any money in them. It is viewed as a way to NOT provide health care AT ALL but appear to have a proposal. A red herring do nothing policy.

And Carson of course looks hopelessly out of it, unaware of reality, politically naïve, hopelessly out of touch. A pathetic figure who just doesn’t get it. Just not presidential material. Sad really. Parroting a ridiculous policy that never had a chance.

So work with me here. How does a guy that rises from a slum in poverty, get through school, become one of the worlds most reknowned neurosurgeans AND wind up administrative head of Johns Hopkins Pediatric Neurosurgy and at least three other departments at Johns Hopkins, and be so COMPLETELY divorced from reality on health care costs.

Because he’s not. At the heart of the logic here, note that YOU are no longer in control of anything about your medical care. The insurance companies and the Federal Government have the final say so over EVERY decision about your health, large, small, major, or minor. You are a bystander while THEY decide what kind of operation, when, whether, etc. When you are admitted, when you are discharged, how many days in the hospital you are “allowed”.

You are reduced to being a bovine cattle in the chute of the health care system. And you will remain there until YOU are the payer – the checkbook that decides on the doctor, the treatment, and the strategy. And the doctor cannot intervene on your behalf. And the hospital can’t either. ALL decisions and all authority and control are granted to the entity with the checkbook, period.

Cost wise, you might as well show up at the emergency room as go to the walk in clinic during hours, even if it is a minor ailment. You’re not paying so you don’t care. Multiplied by 330 million people, this results in 18% of our GDP going to health care.

So the current system is both dehumanizing AND extraordinarily wasteful.

Carson’s answer is to put YOU back in control. So how about those who don’t have the resources or the discipline to put money in their health care savings account.?

His out of the box answer is again elegantly simple. What Carson is advocating is that you receive a social security number and health savings account at birth. And his response to resource is that if we wipe out all health insurance, and we wipe out Medicare and Medicaid, there is a shitpot full of resource to fund that health care account right from the beginning.

18% of GDP is actually quite a lot. The numbers break down to the numbers that break down. I do recall that my mother had a back operation that did absolutely no good at all and nothing for her, but Medicare paid $227,000 for it two years before she died and it didn’t allieve ANY pain or discomfort for her at all.

I would posit, that we could simply make EVERY SINGLE CHILD BORN IN AMERICA an instant millionaire, just put a million dollars in his health savings account, and allow it to draw interest for all of their lives, and if they never had a sick day they could have it at age 65 say. And their social security and medicare taxes could go into it along the way. And it is THEIR account. Might there be a motive to go to the walk in clinic instead of the emergency room now? And who is in control of their medical care decisions? The kid with the checkbook.

Waste and fraud?   I think it is pretty much over. I’ll be watching mine like a hawk.

So Ben Carson may have just invented a way to finally vote ourselves all millionaires – from birth. If you take what all state and Federal governments spend on Medicare, Medicade, health insurance for Federal employees, what WE pay for health care insurance, etc. it winds up being a tidy bit.  A tidy bit per person. Few babies need much. Their crying need is 60 years later. Should that be dependent on who they work for then? If they have a job then?

The Veterans Administration? Have Vice President Trump fire their ass. Bonus veterans in their health care accounts. So much per day in uniform just for the stress, so much per injury incurred in action. Let them seek health care at MD Anderson if they want. I bet they get in for an appointment.

My nephew “got runned over by a damned old truck.” Ultimately there was a court award for pain and suffering and medical bills. He spent it all in a single year as follows as I recall:

• 15% pizza
• 15% beer
• 45% marijuana
• 15% more pizza
• 15% more beer

And the other 35% on marijuana.

The court could have just as easily awarded his health care account. He could then use it to treat his glaucoma and get his marijuana but the pizza and beer would have been entirely on him.

So yes, Carson rather deliberately just tossed out the idea of a health care savings account and watched the media squirm around like maggots at a pork roast. But if you calmly and quietly discuss it with him, the ideas are indeed original, out of the box, and extremely thought provoking. Better, I think it solves about 15 different problems simultaneously.

This is a scant handful of examples of what can come from a keen and gifted mind that has steadily applied itself to education and the public good over a series of decades.

America is actually in GREAT shape and I do not see it as darkly and problematically as Doctor Carson. But we have FAILED to send our best and brightest to Washington to address the problems we do have. We have instead developed a system of sending people to make their fortunes in the laps of the rich and powerful at our expense.

2015 marks a watershed in that we are seeing dawning recognition that these problems HAVE become sizable and problematic. And the solution isn’t to be found in Washington DC at all. They have failed in utter partisan childish gridlock to even address them. And a significant percentage of our citizenry IS in George Carlin’s afternoon class.

I would pose that the world is a bit more complex than our 24 year old titty blond newscasters or expertly quaffed and groomed professionally bred political class is aware. And we need Donald Trumps and Ben Carsons to stand up and finally take responsibility for their world.

And so you can now understand how Trump can enjoy 35% in the polls while Carson enjoys 35% as well with 16 others splitting up the remaining 30% with the marijuana percent thrown in.

Trump is known as “one tough customer” in business. I find him to be a really nice guy and almost too easy going with the press and the politicians. He’s having too good a time and really spreading live and let live across the waters.

Dr. Ben Carson is ironically known as a really nice guy. He’s a really POLITE guy. But if he thinks you are part of the problem instead of part of the solution – he takes that as a kind of attack on his God, his country, his family and people he loves, and his way of life. Makes him a might surly if you ask me.   He can take it personally and be one mean-assed son of a bitch. A very calm, quiet, polite mean-assed son of a bitch.

Ok, perhaps that’s a little overwrought, but he sure does a good job at messing with the head of the news media. They are very uncomfortable and very lost as to how to deal with or cover him. And that strikes deep into the heart of my sense of whimsey.

Trump and Carson are playing with the media in masterful fashion – Trump good naturedly and Carson without mercy or relief. And it delights me to see them squirm. They know something is amiss but are clueless as to what.

I’m also very surprised and delighted with my fellow American citizens. Not only has Carson gleaned 35% in the polls, but he is well on track to raise MORE money from MORE small contributors than any presidential candidate in the HISTORY of the democracy. There are apparently a LOT of bright, concerned, good people across our land who get the coded message bright and clear. It’s time we act together and reclaim our land in a spiritual and political reawakening.

Yes, I gave him a few ducats.  And yes, I’ll no doubt vote for him. But I’m going to do something I rarely do for politicians.

I’m going to pray for Dr. Ben Carson. And I’m going to seek direct intercession to grant him wisdom, grace, fortitude and persistence and above all patience to unwind this mess and restore our great nation to its preeminent place as man’s last great hope for humankind – an ongoing political experiment in freedom, personal liberty, and the sanctity of human life.

Nonetheless, as always thy will be done. εἰς τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ Πατρὸς καὶ τοῦ Υἱοῦ καὶ τοῦ Ἁγίου Πνεύματος, in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sanctu.

Share this:

• Facebook
• X

Related