Home Opinion Dr Jesse Lewis Sr ONE MAN’S OPINION By: Jesse J. Lewis, Sr.

ONE MAN’S OPINION By: Jesse J. Lewis, Sr.

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Dr. Jesse Lewis, Sr. is the founder of The Birmingham Times.

Politicians are a Different Breed!

If you do not want to be arrested while driving when drinking or intoxicated, then don’t drive or don’t drink.  One…or the other.

I have consistently mentioned to people that my grandmother who reared seven children reared me. I was the oldest of the seven children. I dropped out of high school and entered the armed services at 16 years of age.

If I were running for the President of the United State, don’t you know that the media would attempt to find the other six children, for the sole purpose of asking them how well did I take care of them. The other question would be how did you get into the service at 16.

This is something that I wrote and they are legitimate questions for the press to research.

The press would like to know how did some 16-year-old get to go to the service. My grandmother who made $2.50 a week quit that job and started making pies. She would not take or receive assistance from the government.

When I was born in Northport, Alabama in 1925, Black people did not have hospitals, just midwives who could not write or spell.  When I went into the service, they did not ask for anything.  They wanted your name and age then sent you off to fight the next week.  They did not ask anything, whether you had a criminal record or had been in jail – they cared less.

Dr. Ben Carson has a proven record of being an excellent doctor.  That does not qualify him to be President of the United States.

Michael Jordan in all probability will go down in history as being one of the top basketball players that ever lived.  He would also go down in history as being the top ten worst baseball players that every lived.  In other words, being good in one thing does not make you good at another.

By the same token, President Barack Obama is a terrible golfer.  I do believe that history will say that he was a great President.

Donald Trump said recently that he remains alarmed by Ben Carson’s claims of having a violent temper as a youth, but the real estate mogul said he doesn’t know if his Republican presidential rival has been dishonest.  Trump stood by his assertion that media made scrutiny of Carson’s accounts of his past is the beginning of his campaign’s end.  Trump also implied that Carson’s story about attempting to stab someone in his youth – only to have his knife broken when he hit a large belt buckle – was hard to believe.  He said Carson’s description of his childhood temper as ‘pathological’ is disturbing. He stated, “It’s a serious statement when you say you have a pathological disease, because if I understand it, you can’t easily cure it.”

Trump also cited Carson’s belief that the pyramids were built to store grain as another reason to question his judgment.

He even took a shot at Carson over ‘Saturday Night Live,’ which Trump hosted.  Carson has said he wouldn’t appear on the show, as the presidency is a ‘very serious thing.”  Trump said that he would have done it if they asked him.  You have to actually be asked and it is not easy to be asked.

These recent sayings by Ben Carson might be the kind of temporary run of bad luck that can happen to anybody. Or they might signal a more fundamental problem that could sink his campaign.

Eyebrow-raising comments have been streaming from the retired neurosurgeon.  He even told a CBS News reporter that the world is near the end of days, an apocalyptic disaster that would make any presidential policies or actions irrelevant, to say the least, coming from his comments earlier that he believes the universe was literally created over the course of six 24-hour days.

After the massacre at an Oregon community college that killed innocent people, Carson commented that he would not just stand there and let the gunman shoot him.  He said he would say:  “Hey, guys, everybody attack him!  He may shoot me, but he can’t get us all.”

Carson also ruffled feathers during an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer when, in defense of gun ownership, he said, “I think the likelihood of Hitler being able to accomplish his goals would have been greatly diminished if the people had been armed.”

Carson’s view is “historically inaccurate,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, explaining that “the small number of personal firearms available to Germany’s Jews in 1938 could in no way have stopped the totalitarian power of the Nazi German state.”

Undeterred, Carson called the ADL’s reading of history “total foolishness.” But the exchange showed just how difficult it is for nonpoliticians to understand and master the nuances of mass communication – not to mention the immense amount of historical, cultural and geopolitical information – needed to successfully campaign for the presidency.

Carson, like Donald Trump and Carly Fiorina, has enjoyed considerable political success in the polls so far simply by being a nonpolitician.  Carson frequently makes a point of emphasizing that he simply speaks his mind, unencumbered by political correctness.

In the first televised Republican debate of the season, Fox News Megyn Kelly ticked off a number of blunders to the candidates, specific to Carson she pointed out: “You’ve suggested that the Baltic States are not a part of NATO, just months ago you were unfamiliar with the major political parties and government in Israel, and domestically, you thought Alan Greenspan had been treasury secretary instead of federal reserve chair. Aren’t these basic mistakes, and don’t they raise legitimate questions about whether you are ready to be president?”

Good question.  Carson’s response was — “the thing that is probably most important is having a brain, and to be able to figure things out and learn things very rapidly” — isn’t a real answer but a promise to study hard and do better.  That, to some conservatives, isn’t good enough.

Neil Stevens of RedState, the conservative website, questioned Carson for serving as a longtime spokesman for a controversial nutritional supplement firm called Mannatech. “I can’t imagine considering anyone promoting this stuff being fit to be President of the United States,” writes Stevens.

Ed Morrissey of HotAir, another conservative website, questioned Carson when he cited the incidence of homosexual prison sex as evidence that sexual orientation is a matter of personal choice rather than a civil right that deserves legal protection. “If Dr. Carson wants to compete at the highest level, he’ll need to either learn the issues a lot better or learn how to parry the obvious media attempts to make him look like a nut from the fringe,” wrote Morrissey.

I’ve said it before; I’ll say it again.  Dr. Carson will not be the nominee for President of the United States of America.

NOW… Explain to me, how in the world could you put something in writing and the press ask you about what you have written, then you say ‘it’s a gotcha question.’

 

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