Do Not Let Him Operate On My Damn Brain
Okay, so today Ben Carson, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and part time brain surgeon, was testifying before the House Financial Services Committee.
Rep. Katie Porter, D-Calif., was attempting to ask Secretary Carson about disparities in REO rates. According to Porter, Federal Housing Administration loans have far more properties that become real estate owned, than other loans from Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.
“I would also like to ask you to get back to me, if you don’t mind, to explain the disparity in REO rates. Do you know what an REO is?” asked the congresswoman.
“An Oreo…” replied Carson.
“R, no not an Oreo. An R-E-O.” shot back Porter.
“Real estate?” asked Carson.
“What’s the O stand for?” said Porter.
“E-organization?” asked Carson.
Not to brag or anything, but I’m not a brain surgeon but I know what a Real Estate Owned property is. Do I get extra points for that?
Porter also wondered if Carson thinks the D in HUD is for deportation.
Probably so.
“D” for “Duh!”
1Can you imagine if he said
2“REO Speedwagon”????
Ben Carson, brain surgin’.
3If Carson was any good at his job, he would have been fired long ago, like Mattis. It’s the first cabinet organized according to the Peter Principle (reach your level of incompetence and stay there).
4“Ben Carson…was testifying before the House Financial Services Committee. It got weird.”
Sorry, those two statements are redundant.
5A preposterous video list of scandal ridden, inept bunglers, jackass braying, fools, knaves, neer-do-wells who were fired, quit or just collecting salary and bennies gigs. FROM LAST YEAR!
A lot of those incompetent dregs are still attached like coral to the this reef of chaos. A monstrosity government that oozes pustule policies from it’s orange ravenous head.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/list-officials-left-trump-administration/story?id=49334453
6Some time ago I asked why carson would quit being a noted surgeon at a young age to go into politics esp repub. DeBakey and other med leaders worked into their 80s-90s in their field. If they had gone into politics or other non-med work, likely they wouldn’t have done as well relatively speaking.
7Does anyone know why carson quit med at what should have been the height of his profession? My suspicion is that he made a serious mistake(s) and had to leave. Having some onset mental disorder as exemplified in this example could be reasonable explanation.
Trump put bosses in Cabinet departments to break the bureaucracy or to run departments he didn’t like so badly that they’d fail. He was sued for discrimination in housing rentals several times by the government, so naturally he’d put a complete nincompoop in charge of HUD.
8Carson today sure seems ‘off’ from his previously fairly illustrious medical career.
9.
It is very remotely possible that I may have crossed paths with this jackass many decades ago.
I’ll recount an incident that, IIRC, I previously mentioned here on the ‘Salon’ [years ago, search it].
Y’all consider this and decide for yourselves, the only one who could know for sure is Carson himself [as I couldn’t today identify them]:
When I was young [~21y/o], ~summer 1968 in the Detroit area, I was driving along [westbound, ~35mph] Outer Drive at the border of Lincoln Park and SW Detroit, near in front of the [fairly new] LP Hospital [on the other side of the divided boulevard]. I had my infant daughter [~<1y/o, born in that hospital] in a carseat, my windows were open. With my peripheral vision [initially], I noticed three teen boys emerge from some bushes, on the right, near the road, one of them threw a brick at my vehicle, as I turned to observe them. That brick landed in my back seat, just missing my daughter as it came through the window.
I immediately checked the baby, slowed down, and calculated a retaliatory action [this was long before cell phones]. I was armed [with a M1911 .45ACP], made a quick right turn on to an intersecting residential street in their direction, it could have been Deacon St. [map it out, see below], although the nearest homes were some distance north.
I began a search for these attempted murderers, with the very same idea in mind. I had kept an eye on them as they fled the scene, but soon lost track in the brush; drove around the area some [including on grass] and couldn't reacquire the 'targets', so left and went on my way [shaking with rage].
As an aside, a couple years earlier, a couple miles away, I had a black burglar who was exiting a business at 0'dark-thirty lined up with the barrel of my shotgun [<30 feet away and unaware]. I checked my fire because I quickly adjudged that a little property wasn't worth taking a life [I yelled at him to halt, he lit out like a rocket]. The 'brick incident' was very different, IMO.
.
Now read these excerpts from Mr. Carson's Wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Carson#Early_life_and_education
.
"…In 1950, Carson's parents purchased a new 733-square foot single-family detached home on Deacon Street in the Boynton neighborhood in southwest Detroit.[22][23][24] [–map it out…–]…In 1965, when Carson was 13, he moved with his mother and brother back to their house on Deacon Street.[33]…
In his book Gifted Hands, Carson relates that as a youth, he had a violent temper.
*** "As a teenager, I would go after people with rocks, and bricks, and baseball bats, and hammers," ***
Carson told NBC's Meet the Press in October 2015.[46] He said he once tried to hit his mother on the head with a hammer over a clothing dispute, while in the ninth grade he tried to stab a friend who had changed the radio station. "
.
Read the whole Wiki, then figure out a probability for my encounter. Geographically, back then, the location of this incident was precisely the 'black-white' border of the area.
The first recent major Detroit [race] Riot had been almost exactly a year before, July 1967, and the April 1968 one was just over by a couple of months; both had centered in an area a few miles away to the NE in Detroit. Racial tensions were near peak levels at that time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_riots
.
So, was he one of those three? Hmmm…what do you think?
And Carson’s response to the exposure of his ignorance was to send the congresswoman a pack of Oreos, and tweet about it.
10These people …
One must wonder if he tried some self brain surgery with the philosphy of a “Jesus take the wheel” true beleivers.
11Could explain a lot.
He House did some do it self surgery ( not brain) so if its good enough for fiction it is good enough for this group of doofusses. ( doofusi?)
Ben Carson is a prime example of an idiot savant. He may be “savant” in his narrow area of medical specialty (although now I doubt I would let him operate on my loved ones), but otherwise he’s just an idiot.
12The whole damned shit show and whose been put in charge of anything is Weird… Surreal… and the stuff of Political Parody Comedy!
13Ben Caron got out of medicine at a young age because of what happened the the conjoined twins he unjoined. Both were from Germany and returned there after they were released from the hospital. Neither did well. One eventually died and the other ended up with impairments. Not sure if he is till alive. The family was not happy from the day of release onward. They felt that the trouble the children had after surgery was a result of the skill of the surgeon – namely, Carson. But since there was as ocean between them, Carson kept touting himself as a first rate surgeon. I think someone wiser talked him into quoting the trade and doing something else.
14I did a (very) little digging on Carson a while back, and his ‘illustrious’ career is not borne out by the facts. He was known to do risky surgeries, with poor outcomes. The con-joined twins mentioned above was just one of the last examples. The ‘brilliant surgeon’ label was created for his political persona.
15Carson should have kept the teaching gig when he retired, instead of going into politics. He knows (knew? He appears to have undergone some sort of cognitive decline.) vast amounts about how to operate on brains, and barely enough about anything else to be allowed out on the streets by himself. The only thing he knows about housing is that he lives in a house.
16Carson should have kept the teaching gig when he retired, instead of going into politics. He knows (knew? He appears to have undergone some sort of cognitive decline.) vast amounts about how to operate on brains, but appears to know barely enough about anything else to be allowed out on the streets by himself. The only thing he knows about housing is that he lives in a house.
17@ maggie: It’s not as though Carson all by himself was in there mucking about in the co-joined twins’ brains. An operation like that one takes months of planning and involves dozens of people. They’re always terribly risky, and often have much less than ideal outcomes. The twins’ parents were undoubtedly briefed on the possible problems and, at the time, thought that separating them would be preferable to leaving them co-joined. An enormous number of things have to go exactly right for such an operation to produce two perfect, separate beings; I’m sorry they didn’t, but not surprised.
18Why does every Trump official who testifies before Congress, or at any rate, those who actually deign to appear, sound like a kid giving a book report for a book they didn’t read?
By the time Representatives Porter, Beatty, and Presley got finished taking him to the woodshed, I’m surprised he could walk much less talk. Sill, I suspect LizzyMom is correct and Carson is a savant at least, unlike the other members of Trump’s cabinet, he’s good at something.
19I am delighted with all of these new young Congress women. They are a delight to watch in action!
Thankful that the Repugs have nothing comparable comparable!
20Just as telling that Carson thought she was referring to Oreos, is that he actually thought she was asking about Oreos. Maybe it was a trick question.
21“Okay, so today Ben Carson, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development…. It got weird.”
Those two statements are redundant.
22