"The story of the surgery that made Ben Carson famous — and its complicated aftermath."

In The Washington Post. Excerpt:

Their mother would later tell reporters that they came home with the hope, instilled in them by the Johns Hopkins surgeons, that the boys might soon begin crawling, and then hit other milestones.... It soon became apparent, though, that the boys were hopelessly delayed, according to a 1993 interview with the Revue. Benjamin would moan occasionally, but Patrick remained completely silent; he had had a setback in the Baltimore hospital when he choked on a piece of food, going without oxygen for a short time. Years later, neither boy could get around on his own or feed himself....

When Freizeit Revue caught up with Theresia in November 1993, she said her children’s brain damage had destroyed her marriage. “Josef has never been able to cope with this blow of fate,” she said in the little-seen interview written in German and translated into English. She said Josef, who has since died, according to Theresia’s brother, became an alcoholic, lost his job, cheated on her and spent all their money, leaving her and the children to live “from hand to mouth.”“He never touched them,” she said. “He was appalled.” Unable to care for the twins on her own, she brought them to a home for disabled children, where they became wards of the state.

“The first thing I think of every morning is ‘today I’m going to get them,’ ” she said in 1993. “But then I can’t.” She said she had lost her faith in God. She remarried and had another child, and in 1993 was pregnant with another. “When we go for a walk with the children in their wheelchair, people look at me, as if I’m a monster,” she said. “I need this child. To heal. I still have to prove to myself that I’m not a monster.”

The highest rated comment over there is:

I'm not sure why people are so negative about this article. I don't like the guy or his politics, and I think he's nuts. But this article portrays a pretty brave doctor willing to take a chance to help two babies who would otherwise have had a miserable life. He gave them a chance at a better life. That it didn't work is hardly his fault, and the article doesn't paint it as his fault. Relax.

Second:

I don't see how this story in any way reflects unfavorably on Ben Carson. Some difficult ethical and medical decisions were made and the outcome was poor. Welcome to the real world where medicine often fails to live up to expectations.  In my opinion Ben Carson's surgical successes or failures have absolutely no bearing on his fitness for office. The fact that he is a Christian fringe fanatic makes him a no go for me. Ben comes across as dangerously unhinged when he shares some of his half baked theories.

"How stupid are the people of Iowa? How stupid are the people of the country to believe this crap?"

Asks Donald Trump after a highly comical reenactment of Ben Carson's knife-and-belt story.

"He took a knife and he went after a friend and he lunged! He lunged that knife into the stomach of his friend!"

Trump demonstrates with his own belt, which bends this way and that — see? — and is hardly a shield against knifings. He actually says: "Anyone have a knife you want to try it on me?"

ADDED: I think we can picture what it will look like if and when Trump's numbers start failing and/or he loses couple caucuses/primaries. He'll tell us off, calling us stupid. He gave us a chance. It would have been great, America could have been great again, but we just didn't get it, and that's it, he's gone. He thought we were smart, but we were stupid.

"In the current flap over some things that Dr. Carson said, the biggest discrepancy has been between the furor in the media and the irrelevance of his statements to any political issue."

Writes Thomas Sowell, noting that "the Pyramids are not an issue in today’s American political campaign."

Well, yeah, but the soundness of the mental processes of the candidates is always a central issue and never irrelevant.

By contrast, the media showed no such zeal to expose Barack Obama’s associations and alliances with a whole series of people who expressed their hatred of America in words and/or deeds. Here was something relevant to his suitability to become president. But the media saw no evil, heard no evil and spoke no evil.

And that was wrong, not something to somehow balance by not looking into Ben Carson's suitability as President. Even if it is true that Obama's ties to radical left-wingers were more relevant than Carson's kooky pyramid theory, I want to hear about any strange notions Carson has propounded in his years as a public figure. Does he study the facts of the real world and process them accurately and make appropriate conclusions? If not, I don't want him making the decisions that will affect us all. I agree that Obama did not get fully tested and America took a leap of faith, but that doesn't establish that it should be leaps of faith from here on.

"When I look at humankind’s great achievements, I also see the hand of God, and what astonishes me isn’t that He had to literally and specifically intervene—it’s that He didn’t."

"The miracle of the pyramids and Machu Picchu and the Mona Lisa isn’t God’s literal presence, but the capacity for genius He instilled in every human being whether or not they asked for it, whether or not they think He exists. There is an assumption of individualized divine intervention in Carson’s telling of his own life story, in the myths he’s created about himself. The fight with his mother, the knife hitting the belt-buckle: Carson has imposed a radical conversion story onto his trajectory, complete with miracles, because—I can only guess—the more mundane explanation (he was a smart kid who became a brilliant brain surgeon) is not satisfying to him. You can see the 'thug' tale as self-aggrandizing, but to me it is strangely self-denying—on some level, a kind of blasphemy. In making up a story filled with drama, he has failed to credit God for the original and true, if subtle, miracle within Carson: that a soft-spoken, nerdy young man born in inner Detroit did not have to become a thug at some point, that he was wise and respectful of his own potential without needing God to perform a parlor trick."

Writes Ana Marie Cox in "Ben Carson Thinks You’re the Crazy One/The real reason we should mock Ben Carson's pyramid theory? Because it reveals a very dim view of humankind." Read the whole thing. Apt analysis from a religious point of view.

Remember the time Ben Carson separated the conjoined twins Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear?

Watch the clip.

"So I’ve got to tell you, a couple of days of being asked about something that you put in your books? I gotta tell you, I don’t have a whole lot of sympathy."

"He should answer the questions forthrightly and directly. If he does, the American people will accept it. If he doesn’t, then he’s got a problem.”

Chris Christie has got to tell Ben Carson.

"Did he watch what I went through in January of 2014 for months and months of relentless attacks from people in the media and in the partisan Democratic Party when it turned out that I did absolutely nothing wrong? I haven’t gotten a note of apology from anybody yet... I’ve got the scars all over my back to prove that a lot of people jumped to conclusions.... He’s got to be able to do and say what all of us are responsible for in this business, which is to be responsible for his own personal story...."

Donald Trump questions the single belt buckle theory and the pyramid theory.

On "Meet the Press" this morning, Donald Trump was asked about Ben Carson:

Well, I feel badly for Ben. I've gotten to like Ben. And it's a tough thing. I mean, he writes a book where he went after his mother, hit her on the head, or wanted to hit her on the head with a hammer. Hitting a friend in the face with a lock, with a padlock, hard in the face, stabbing somebody, only to be broken up by a belt buckle. Which, if you know about belt buckles, they turn and they twist. I don't think they're going to stop a knife with the force of a strong man. And when he writes that he has pathological disease in a book, now he obviously wrote this book prior to thinking about running for office, I assume. But he said he has pathological disease.... Well, if you have pathological disease, that's a problem. I mean, he wrote it. I didn't write it. But he's going to have to explain a lot of things away. The scholarship situation, the dinner with Westmoreland when Westmoreland wasn't there. And the pyramids. You know, a pyramid is a solid structure, essentially. Other than a little area for the pharaoh. And you don't put grain in a pyramid because it's all solid.

He used the same material on "Face the Nation":
Click for more »

NPR interviews the rap artist who provided the rap for that Ben Carson ad that has come up for a certain amount of mockery.

NPR provides the text of the answers, but the questions are summarized. I recommend listening to the audio to get a sense of whether there's condescension toward the black Christian Republican (whose name is Robert Donaldson (stage name: Aspiring Mogul)). This was the best part, where he responds to the question whether it's condescending to use rap music to appeal to "a certain constituency":

When Obama ran for president and the whole music industry made a song — from Will.I.Am to Alicia Keys to Common Sense and everybody — "Yes, I can! Yes, I can!" That was definitely a rap song. And so for me, I see it as the exact same thing. So [Ben Carson] did a rap ad — he did a country ad, too! Is that a knockoff to people who like country music, because he has a country song that represents him? ...

What I'm basically saying is: What genre of music is sufficient to use for a presidential ad? Is it only classical music? Is it pop music? I never said that this is an ad to get the black vote. That was the way they marketed it; I wrote the song because Ben Carson inspired me. And if they're using it for that reason, I'm now talking to you and have this opportunity to have this conversation. So the song has done, to some degree, the goal that I initially intended to begin with.

Ben Carson's house is a monument to himself.

Or so it looks in these pictures in The Guardian.

Maybe that's just the museum wing.

The man's been in the inspiration business for 2 decades. How many motivational speeches has he given over the years? What plaques and statuettes and medals have been handed to him on these occasions? What effect has that journey had on his brain? Not as much as surgery, I take it, but still, what is his judgment like after all of that fol-de-rol?

Sitting in a booth in a diner, Ben Carson explains his campaign's new urban radio ad to Jorge Ramos.

You hear only the beginning of the ad in that video — as Ramos, after asking Carson about the ad, starts playing it on a mobile phone. You can play the whole ad here. And here's the discussion at Metafilter. Excerpt:

I was hoping for more of the "I'm Ben Carson and I'm here to say..." style rap popular among conservatives and corporate team-building consultants everywhere.

"...store your grain the Egyptian way."

"The Carson story is either a total fabrication or, if true, even worse — trying to hit mother over the head with a hammer or stabbing friend!"

Trump, tweeting, attacks Carson, and sharply reveals the weirdness of this particular accusation of dishonesty. The stories Carson has told about himself are not the usual resume padding. They're negative. You could say they're inherently believable, because why would a candidate tell tales against himself?

But the context of telling those stories was an autobiography written a quarter century ago. The tales of a violent temper lend drama to the narrative of impoverished childhood and salvation through religion. I'd like to know more about how this book was written and why. It was co-written by Cecil (Cec) Murphey, who's worked on other inspirational books, including "90 Minutes in Heaven," which doesn't sound as though it's rigorously framed in factual accuracy.

Salvation isn't very interesting if you are not a sinner. In the history of dishonest memoirs, what is more likely to be exaggerated and faked — the positive or the negative?

"Ben Carson Vaults to Lead in Latest Journal/NBC Poll."

"The result marks the first time since June that the Journal/NBC News poll has found a Republican other than Mr. Trump to be leading the GOP field. Some 29% of GOP primary voters rank Mr. Carson as their top choice, while 23% favor Mr. Trump. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz rank third and fourth as the top pick of 11% and 10% of Republican primary voters, respectively. Some 8% prefer former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. No other Republican garners more than 3% support."

The WSJ reports. Since the poll was both before and after last week's debate, we can't really tell what the effect of the debate was. But what surprises me — looking at the charts at the link — is that Marco Rubio declined a percentage point. And Bush stayed in the same place.

Live-blogging the big GOP debate.

1. Watch along with me. Comment. I'll just be expanding this numbered list of insights. What do we expect? Fireworks? Boredom? Somebody — Kasich?? — making a showy play for attention?

2. My son John is live-blogging too. I recommend that.

3. These CNBC commentators are horrible. Do they even know they're on television? Talking over each other, desperate, contentless. Ugh! They talk like they're drunk.

4. Biggest weakness? Kasich leads off by not answering the question at all, forthrightly refusing. Huckabee denies having weakness, or... he plays by the rules. Jeb says he's impatient. Rubio says he's not sure it's a weakness, but he's optimistic. Trump says he's "too trusting" and if people let him down, he never forgives. Carson says his weakness is not seeing himself in the position of President (until people convinced him). Fiorina says she was told she doesn't smile enough (and she smiles). Cruz says his biggest weakness is he's passionate, he's a fighter, and he's not the guy you want to have a beer with, but he's the one to drive you home. Christie points out the weaknesses of the Democrats. And Rand Paul complains about the budget deal, and he's beginning tomorrow to filibuster it.

5. Trump is asked if his campaign is a cartoon, and he says that's not a very nice question.

6. Carly wants the tax code reduced to 3 pages (from 73,000). The moderators are interrupting and arguing way too much.

7. Big cheer for Rubio's criticism of the Sun Sentinel for being biased in favor of Democrats. Jeb gets on Rubio for missing Senate votes, and Rubio catches him for hypocrisy.

8. Cruz launches into a criticism of the questions the moderators have asked so far. It's a vivid indictment and it gets a big cheer. This interchange ends in near chaos. Cruz really tried to intimidate the moderators.

9. This debate is so stressful and ugly. The moderators are so disrespectful and the candidates are all yelling. Almost all. Carson will never yell.

10. The audience (at the University of Colorado in Boulder) showed tremendous support for Ben Carson. It cheered wildly when he attacked the questioners for criticizing his "vetting process" because he didn't prevent a webpage from using a photograph of him.

11. Trump goes on about those terrible super PACs. And Rubio says: "The Democrats have the greatest super PAC. It's called the mainstream media." That gets a big cheer from the audience.

12. Subsidies are "a bunch of crap," says Carson.

13. Christie is highly critical of the moderators: "Even in New Jersey, what you're doing is rude."

14. Rand Paul wants "a government so small you can barely see it."

15. "In your heart of hearts, you can't wait to hear a debate between Hillary Clinton and Carly Fiorina," says Carly Fiorina.

16. Ben Carson thanks the audience for being so attentive.

17. Trump will make good deals for America because he made the deal that got the debate reduced from 3 hours to 2.

18. Who did best? Maybe Christie. Maybe Cruz.

19. Did anyone even mention Ronald Reagan tonight? What happened? That was weird. 

"Ben Carson has taken a narrow lead nationally in the Republican presidential campaign, dislodging Donald J. Trump from the top spot for the first time in months..."

"... according to a New York Times/CBS News survey released on Tuesday."

Carson has 26%, Trump 22%. The very quiet man is beating the very noisy man.

The distant third is Rubio with 8%, and Bush and Fiorina are dragging closely after him, each with 7%. Paul, Cruz, Huckabee, Kasich slog along in a dreary pack under the embarrassing number 4.

Did you realize there's another debate tomorrow? What's the best thing that could happen, I wonder. After Hillary Clinton's big week, last week, powered by the weakness of Republicans, what can these characters do this week to give nonGOP fans a sense that anything should or could change the trajectory toward Hillary Clinton's seemingly inevitable victory a year from now?

I'm picturing Trump blustering, Carson murmuring, and everyone else boring the pants off us. Will they — should they — attack each other or is it time to demonstrate that they have what it takes to stop Hillary? If the latter, what can they do that won't remind us of how ineffectual the Benghazi committee was in revealing her to be undeserving of the public's trust?

IN THE COMMENTS: People are accusing me of having somehow suddenly become a Hillary supporter. I respond:

Those who think I'm dedicated to Hillary are seriously deluded. Your delusion is part of a syndrome that is going to help her win. You are in a dream world in which the practicalities of winning don't matter. I'm trying to wake you up. If you are going to just say things like Wow, Althouse is in the tank for Hillary, then you are part of the problem you are blithering about.

After some defense of my use of the word "blithering" and more push back about my supposed in-the-tankedness for Hillary, I say:

I think Hillary is and should be beatable. I just don't see the Republicans getting it together to do that. I think that's what Jeb realizes and why he's blithering that he's got "a lot of really cool things" he could do other than run for President. With the normal candidates crumpling, you're left with a weird party that normal voters won't be able to take seriously. That's what I see down the road, and nobody who's complaining about my telling you that is saying anything that makes me think the situation is going to get better for Republicans.

Opinions voiced about voices — the shouting woman (Hillary) and the quiet man (Ben Carson).

On "State of the Nation" this morning, Jake Tapper, interviewing Bernie Sanders, played a video clip of Hillary Clinton getting off a great feminist sound bite: "I've been told to stop, and I quote, 'shouting about gun violence.' Well, first of all, I'm not shouting. It's just when women talk some people think we're shouting."

TAPPER: She's basically calling you a sexist... You're the one she's quoting, Senator Sanders. She is suggesting in public that you have a problem with women speaking out.

SANDERS: Well, you know, all that I can say is I am very proud of my record on women's issues. I certainly do not have a problem with women speaking out. And I think what the secretary is doing there is taking words and misapplying them. What I was saying is if we are going make some progress on dealing with these horrific massacres that we're seeing, is that people have got to stop all over this country talking to each other. It's not Hillary Clinton. You have some people who are shouting at other people all across this country. You know that. This nation is divided on this issue. ...What I was talking about, clearly, across this country you've got people shouting at each other. 

On "Meet the Press" this morning, Chuck Todd, interviewing Ben Carson, played a video clip of Donald Trump mocking: "We have a breaking story: Donald Trump has fallen to second place behind Ben Carson. We informed Ben, but he was sleeping." Asked to respond, Carson said:

DR. BEN CARSON: You know, everybody has their own personality. And if he'd like to do that, that's fine. That's not who I am. And I don't get into the mud pit. And I'm not going to be talking about people. I will tell you in terms of energy I'm not sure that there's anybody else running who's spent 18 or 20 hours intently operating on somebody.

CHUCK TODD: Do you think that people mistaken your soft-spokenness with a lack of energy?

DR. BEN CARSON: I think so. I have plenty of energy. But, you know, I am soft-spoken. I do have a tendency to be relaxed. I wasn't always like that. There was a time when I was, you know, very volatile.... As a teenager, I would go after people with rocks, and bricks, and baseball bats, and hammers. And, of course, many people know the story when I was 14 and I tried to stab someone. And, you know, fortunately, you know, my life has been changed. And I'm a very different person now.

Donald Trump activates the anti-Seventh-Day-Adventist prejudice against Ben Carson.

Here's how he slipped in the dagger:

I love Iowa. And, look, I don't have to say it, I'm Presbyterian. Can you believe it? Nobody believes I'm Presbyterian. I'm Presbyterian. I'm Presbyterian. I'm Presbyterian. Boy, that's down the middle of the road folks, in all fairness. I mean, Seventh-day Adventist, I don't know about. I just don't know about.

Religious prejudice is wrong... we all, most of us, know that, don't we? Or do we? We know it some or most of the time, except when we need to set it aside, such as when we choose a President, and it's got to be somebody we can trust with the nuclear button and everything else. It can't be a weirdo. We'll leave you alone as you pursue you metaphysical whimsy and even treat you with care and kindness. But for a President? Trump knows what the "folks" need: right down the middle of the road.

"I'm Presbyterian. I'm Presbyterian. I'm Presbyterian. I'm Presbyterian." 4 times he had to say it. Because "Nobody believes I'm Presbyterian."

Nobody believes.

How Trump reacts to the polls that show Carson ahead in Iowa.

"I love Iowa and I honestly think those polls are wrong.... Let me give you the bad news.... The biggest headline yesterday... 'Trump Falls to 2nd Place in Iowa Behind Ben Carson. We Informed Carson But He Was Sleeping.' Ben Carson is leading Iowa supposedly. Ben Carson is super low energy. We need tremendous energy... I don’t believe those polls, by the way, because both of those pollsters don’t like me... They made it seem like the greatest defeat in history... All day long, ugh my head."

From "Trump tees off on Carson, pollsters at Miami golf club rally/The businessman decries Iowa poll results on his home turf at Trump National Doral, calling the property a model for the country" at Politico.

Trump does have "tremendous energy," and you can see how he uses it. I wondered what it would be like to have a President who processes and talks about the news like this. When he doesn't like something, will he refuse to believe it and accuse the bearers of bad news of bias?

And it's hard to imagine just how much he hates this bad news about the polls. He's continually bragged about how he's way up in all the polls. And he famously said: "I'm not a masochist. If I was dropping in the polls where I saw that I wasn't going to win, why would I continue?" And after successfully mocking Jeb Bush as low energy and just as the Bush campaign is crashing, Trump's triumph is ruined by the "super low energy" Carson beating him in the polls, wrecking his favorite brag, forcing him into the beta whine "I don’t believe those polls, by the way, because both of those pollsters don’t like me."

The surgin' surgeon.

"Carson Surges Past Trump in Latest Bloomberg Politics/Des Moines Register Iowa Poll."

What's more puzzling, the popularity of Trump or the popularity of Carson?

Or the simultaneous popularity of Trump and Carson?

What's most puzzling?

The popularity of Trump.

The popularity of Carson.

The simultaneous popularity of Trump and Carson.

It's not puzzling at all.

 

pollcode.com free polls

Fiorina's peak — at 15% — is in the past. She's down 11 points to 4%.

That's 7th place in the new CNN/ORC poll.

Trump and Carson romp on the peak, at 27% and 22%, and nobody else is higher than 8%.

How does it feel, losing the dream of a tough female fighting Hillary? The embodiment of feminism as conservatism, gone poof.