Buzzfeed trolls Trump via FOIA!
Not sure where this goes best. Ben Carson just said:
That’s what America is about, a land of dreams and opportunity… There were other immigrants who came in the bottom of slave ships, who worked even longer, even harder, for less, but they too had a dream that one day their sons, daughters, grandsons, granddaughters, great-grandsons, great granddaughters might pursue prosperity and happiness in this land…
Even Fox News seems to realize how stupid that was.
vyshka
5916
And yet he somehow managed to become a brain surgeon
KevinC
5918
Who has apparently been performing brain surgery on himself as a hobby.
Wow. Ben Carson really seems to lack good reasoning ability. Very strange. How did he ever become an elite doctor?
It’s like there’s a part of his brain that is very good at what it takes to operate on a brain, but another part of his brain is just…dumb.
Carson proceeds to, er, argue with himself or something:
Nothing to see here! Everything is fine!
I suspect this was written by a flying monkey, due to the presence of a non-Trump word (“infighting”) and non-Trump punctuation (the comma.)
The tweet also didn’t end with a single exclamatory, such as Terrific! And yes, Trump would definitely have gone with “in fighting”.
mok
5926
Actually, alternative immigrants are, in fact, immigrants, according to the definition of the word. Choice has nothing to do with it.
Context is another matter, and much of context is via perception. Carson misspoke by speaking correctly.
Timex
5927
Ben Carson is such a great brain surgeon that he performs experimental surgery on himself and has left himself only mildly retarded.
Lantz
5928
I am not sure what your point is. You seem to both acknowledge the importance of the connotation of the word while also claiming it doesn’t matter. Carson ‘misspoke’ or ‘intentionally or unintentionally minimized the differences between voluntary and involuntary immigration’ due to his choice of words. I don’t know what ‘speaking correctly’ in this context means. Does anyone with proper sentence structure ‘speak correctly’ so the meaning of the sentence doesn’t matter?
If I lumped Japanese-Americans who were in internment camps with serial killers calling the group ‘incarcerated citizens’ would the fact that I am right by the definition have any impact on the fact that I was saying something horribly offensive?
rei
5929
mok
5930
You make my point.
Carson is one of those people that is careful with what words he chooses - not because of context, but because of the literal meaning. So when he was trying to be correct, and was correct, he was incorrect.
Lantz
5931
Oh sorry, I read your comments more as a defense then an explanation. Like always in P&R we can agree to agree :)
I get what you’re saying, and I understand that you’re not defending him, but this doesn’t track for me. Using “immigrants” to describe slaves shows a fundamental carelessness with wording. People that fall back on dictionary definitions without considering the way an audience will interpret their words are doomed to constantly handicap themselves. I don’t think there’s a need to dig into Carson’s inability to separate meaning from context. It’s enough to know that the guy is an idiot when it comes to communicating.
Those are some impressive photos from both inaugurations. Cool stuff.
What gets me about the difference isn’t what most people focus on, the area in the middle where it’s obvious Trump’s crowd does not stretch as far back on the National Mall as Obama’s does, but what’s happening off to the sides.
Compare the 1st, 3rd and 4th Trump pics with any of the Obama pics. The Trump pics clearly show nearly empty side streets and spaces between buildings, plus the area between the Washington Monument and Lincoln Monument (which is considerable) is pretty much deserted. Long rows of porta-potties sit unused back there. By contrast, the same areas in the Obama pics are crawling with people. Masses of people are jammed into the spaces between the buildings close to the Capital Building, and there are people all over the streets and as far back as the steps of the Lincoln Memorial (from which you wouldn’t have been able to either see or hear what was happening at the Capital Building).
I know, who cares, we all know Trump is an egomaniacal liar…but these photos from the Park Service show just what a whopper the first “official lie” out of President Trump’s mouth was, and should stand as a shining example of exactly why the man is unfit to serve as POTUS.
