Dr. Ben Carson and the Convicted Dentist - Did their friendship result in hypocrisy

In the center of the image (taken in 2005) is Dr. Ben Carson who, as of this post, is seeking the Republican nomination for President. On the right is a dentist named Dr. Al Costa.

The two met in the 1990s and did charity work together. They then became best friends and business partners in various real estate ventures.

In 2007, Dr. Costa was charged with defrauding medical insurance by billing for procedures not performed. According to the charges, this began in 1995 and by the time Costa retired from dentistry later in about 2004 (he gave up his dental licence then), the fraud, per the charge against him, amounted to about $44,000.  In 2007, Costa pleaded guilty to most of the charges. A sentencing hearing took place in 2008. Dr.Carson testified as a character witness for Costa and asked the court for leniency. Costa took responsibility for his actions and showed remorse and was given a sentence of house arrest, community service and a $250,000 fine (in addition to restitution of the $44,000) but no jail time.

In 2012, Carson authored a book "America the Beautiful".  In the book he says the following regarding medical fraud, "I would not advocate chopping off people’s limbs, but there would be some very stiff penalties for this kind of fraud, such as loss of one’s medical license for life, no less than 10 years in prison, and loss of all of one’s personal possessions.

So the question, would seem to be whether Carson changed his mind or is a hypocrite. The fact that Carson is still friends with Costa might weigh the decision to the hypocrisy side.

But, there is an oddity in that 2012 book that overtakes this argument. In that book, Carson cites the case of an overzealous prosecutor hunting down a dentist (he does not name the dentist but it is surely Costa)  to gain publicity or penalty money.  

So, in effect, though Costa admits guilt, Carson says Costa isn't guilty. I think this might mean his plea for leniency was hypocritical if he stated Costa was guilty in that testimony but I can't get the raw testimony. (I spent considerable time looking for it - I suspect the testimony carefully was crafted to avoid acknowledgement of Costa's guilt).

So, although Carson may be guilty of a 2008 hypocrisy, it seems the 2012 book, assuming it is taken at face value, can not be a case of hypocrisy.

Here is an article from the AP on Carson (it has the image)
Here is an article from something called Rawstory (which has a lot of detail and direct quotes from Carson's book)
Here is an article from yahoo news - it is the one Irwin sent me that got me to look at this subject.

Not hypocrisy even though a contradiction

Recently, some students and faculty at Princeton University discovered (notwithstanding that this has been common knowledge for many decades) that Woodrow Wilson was a racist. There was, thus a series of motions and/or request and/or demands to have the name of Woodrow Wilson removed from buildings on campus.

The NY Times, essentially approved of this in an editorial in November 2015.

Going back a hundred years, however, the NY Times was a big supporter of Woodrow Wilson in both the 1912 and 1916 election for President of the US.

A hundred years ago, none of the current editorial board of the NYTimes worked for that newspaper. Even if they had, the time is enough for someone to change their mind. Of course, the NYTimes, in 2015 should have admitted that they were pro-Wilson in their 2015 editorial (they didn't) but that is just a mistake of detail.

 2015 editorial here


Links to 1912 and 1916 endorsement of Woodrow Wilson here.

Is the Spokesperson = the Department

rBack in October 2014 during Operation Protective Edge, then State Department Press Secretary Jen Psaki denounced Israel after an IDF air attack near a hospital in Gaza using the words 'appalling' and 'unjustified'. This was before an investigation was completed (probably before an investigation was underway).

Now in October 2015, the US carried out an air attack in Afghanistan.  State Department Deputy Spokesman, Mark Toner said many, many things but basically said (I'm paraphrasing) 'let's wait for the investigation'.

There are some differences in the two situations.

1. Maybe Afghan personnel called in the air attack in the 2015 case.

2. The weapons used by Hamas in 2014 and the Taliban in 2015 are probably different.

most interesting to me

3. Psaki is a different person from Toner although both speak for the Dept of State.

So what  may have here (ignoring differences such as 1 and 2 above) is that neither Psaki or Toner are hypocrites but the US State Department is.

Transcript of the 2015 press conference is here.

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Dr. Ben Carson on Meet the Press Constitution Hypocrite or Guy with an Opinion

Dr. Ben Carson is a neurosurgeon running for President of the US. He was on the TV show Meet the Press on Sept 20, 2015 (image shows Chuck Todd of Meet the Press on the left and Carson on the right).

Several people (e.g., my brother, PBS, Mike Gerson - as syndicated writer for the Washington Post, the Herald Tribute and other outlets, etc.) have implied that Dr. Carson is a hypocrite or possibly ignorant of the Constitution. This is with respect to the issue of a Muslim President of the U.S.

I'll quote Mr. Gerson in the Herald Tribute,

"...

What is the proper response from a prospective president to the question: Is being a Muslim disqualifying for the presidency?

Ben Carson answered that he “would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation” because Islam is incompatible with the Constitution. The Constitution offers a different reply: “No religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

Gerson here makes an inference that seems to be made by essentially everyone criticizing Carson but that I would not make.  The inference is that when Carson says, '...would not advocate...', Carson means, '...should be banned from being President...' .  

I see the two statements as different. To illustrate, I don't thing many people would advocate 'putting an ideologically committed Satanist in charge of this nation' (actually the President is not 'in charge' of the nation, the President serves the nation but that's another story).  To me, that doesn't mean that everyone who says that is a hypocrite, just that they have an opinion. I think most of those people who would not advocate 'putting...Satanist...' would none the less agree that the Constitution does not prohibit Satanists from serving.  Thus I don't find the statement hypocritical.

The fact that the issue arose for Islam is simply because some notorious and significant terrorist groups (e.g., ISIS, Boko Haram, Al Qaeda, al Shabaab) are self described Islamic organizations.

Gerson's piece for the Herald Tribute is here.

Policy vs blog at the NY Times

After the Charlie Hedbo terror attack in Paris, a number of publications showed the cover of the next issue with Mohammud saying "Tout est Pardonne" (all is forgiven). The NY Times published a story without the image. In any interview in Jan 2015,

“Out of respect to our readers we have avoided those we felt were offensive,” New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet told The Huffington Post on Monday night, shortly after the Charlie Hebdo cover was released online. “Many Muslims consider publishing images of their prophet innately offensive and we have refrained from doing so,” Baquet said.

Yesterday, the NYTimes, in a blog post, had an article on a protest some over some 'art'  which had an image of a portrait of Pope Benedict XVI made of condoms. The article had the portrait.

The blogpost indicates that the image of Benedict was meant to be negative, perhaps offensive,

Niki Johnson of Milwaukee, the artist who created the work, said in an interview that she disagreed with Benedict’s conservative social positions, including a statement that condoms could contribute to the spread of AIDS in Africa. The portrait, she said, is “not hate-based,” but rather a way to critique Benedict’s views while raising awareness about public health.“What I want to do is really destigmatize the condom, normalize it,” Ms. Johnson says.
 
A key issue here is whether the policy of the NY Times included blogs. If yes, they are hypocrites, if no, then not.

Interview with Huffington Post is here.
Blogpost with image of Benedict XVI is here.

Today, there was an interview given to the Washington Examiner. In the interview, the NY Times spokesman defended their blog and did not invoke the 'it was a blog' defense. The defense is someone incoherent but here is an interesting portion, 

"...Hundreds of thousands of people protested worldwide, for instance, after the Danish cartoons were published some years ago. While some people might genuinely dislike this Milwaukee work, there doesn't seem to be any comparable level of outrage...."

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that what the NYTimes means to say is something like, "Catholics don't kill you when they are insulted, muslims do" but the NYTimes obviously can't bring themselves to actually say that.
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said,
 

The NY Times and the Catholic Church

The NY Times was enthusiastic about the Pope's recent encyclical which called for action on climate change. From their editorial on June 19, 2015

 "...The timing of “Laudato Si” could not have been better. In December, delegates from nearly 200 nations will gather in Paris to make one more attempt at a global arrangement that would commit all nations to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, before atmospheric concentrations reach what some believe is the point beyond which truly intolerable consequences are inescapable...."

Back a few years ago Obamacare was beginning to be litigated on religious grounds related to drugs that cause abortion and so forth.  Then the NY Times was not so enthusiastic. From their editorial of May 27 2012,

"...Under the Constitution, churches and other religious organizations have total freedom to preach that contraception is sinful and rail against Mr. Obama for making it more readily available. But the First Amendment is not a license for religious entities to impose their dogma on society through the law. The vast majority of Americans do not agree with the Roman Catholic Church’s anti-contraception stance, including most American Catholic women...."

Interestingly, the 2015 encyclical also is against abortion and against gay marriage but the NY Times seems not to have noticed.

The two issues (abortion and climate change) are not the same and furthermore, it seems to me that abortion is more a legitimate religious issue than climate change. Anyway, it shows clearly that the NY Times is not above cherry picking pieces of doctrine they like and ignoring or dismissing as irrelevant doctrine that they dislike and, or course don't tell their readers about this in an honest and straightforward way.

Can Tweets be Hypocritical

Salon is an opinion website on the left of the political spectrum.

In the image are two tweets from Salon.com (slnm.us). One is from 2013 after the terror attack at the Boston marathon and says, 

"Muslims don't need to apologize for the Tsarnaevs" 

the other is from a few days ago and says 

"White America must answer for the Charleston church massacre"

Whether we have hypocrisy or not seems to be a matter of whether Salon.com is a unitary body or whether the individuals (they are different individuals) who tweeted for Salon.com are considered outside of their Salon.com affiliation.  Also the tweet from 2013 links to a summary of research which purports to back up the tweet. However, I am quite skeptical of research summarized by advocates, especially 'social science' research.

Günter Grass Dies; Was he a hypocrite? Yes- but small potatoes.

 

Gunter Grass died on April 13, 2015. I didn't get around to writing about this until today. Grass won the Nobel prize in literature in 1999. His early novels told stories with the setting being the 1930s and 1940s and, per almost all readers and critics, urged Germans to confess and repent for their Nazi past. In 1985, Grass criticized the visit to the Bitburg cemetery by US President Reagan and German Chancellor Kohl.

However, Grass himself had a Nazi past in that he served in the Waffen SS.  He revealed this in 2006 just prior to marketing a new literary product.  He may have considered his novels or his left wing politics to be a repentance but never said so.

Was he a hypocrite? Well, yes but not to an enormous extent as his service with the Waffen SS was relatively short (a few months in 1944). This assumes he did not participate in any atrocities (no evidence to date has been provided of such participation).

Was he smug? Yes. Opportunistic? Yes. Sanctimonious? Yes. Was he wrong on major issues (he predicted the reunification of Germany would lead to the militarization of Germany and a new military conflict caused by Germany)? Yes.  

He also wrote, in 2012, a famous poem that essentially said that Iran should get a nuclear bomb because Israel had one.

All the info in this (but not the image), is available from the wikipedia page on Grass.  

 

 

Facebook and the image of Mohammed

Two weeks ago, the CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, had a post on his facebook page (yes he is also a customer) that said, 

"A few years ago, an extremist in Pakistan fought to have me sentenced to death because Facebook refused to ban content about Mohammed that offended him..."

Now Facebook is cooperating on the censoring of websites with images of Mohammed where those websites come from Turkey.
.

Is Zuckerberg a hypocrite. Not in my estimation.

He merely didn't distinguish between US originating websites and those in other countries. He is also guilty of being pompous because he didn't do that.

Facebook, like other multinational countries, must obey the laws of the countries in which they do business even if those laws are stupid or tyrannical (in any event, Turkish citizens can easily access French or US websites and see all the images they want, including those purporting to be of Mohammed (it seems to me interesting that since nobody knows what Mohammed actually looked like, besides a few obvious things, e.g., he was male, he wore robes, he had a goatee or beard), nobody who is accused of drawing Mohammed is actually doing so).

The image is from a Washington Post story, here.

Meteorologist Gives Up Flying for Global Warming

There are a lot of conferences to attend if you are a climate activist or climate scientist. One such fellow, Eric Holthaus (first image), 
had been, by his own estimate, 75k air miles a year and gave it up for global warming (reportedly, he also had a vasectomy to stop overpopulation). 

He also counsels his fellow activists and/or scientists to do so. It's not that successful yet. 

The reports out of Davos are that hundreds of

private jets (and similar number of corporate jets and chartered small passenger load jets- 2nd image is of an Pharrell Williams, a hip hop performer/composer and climate activist tweeter on a private jet) have landed at this luxury destination to discuss climate change (aka Global Warming).

As a bonus, Holthaus gives additional information on Jeff Greene (he owns a 145' boat which seems to have cruised to a tropical destination some years ago and did damage to a coral reef).

Holthaus's post is at Slate, here.

Jeff Greene - Self Confessed Financial Hypocrisy

Jeff Greene is a billionaire, a major contributor to Democratic candidates and actually ran for the 2010 Democratic party nomination for a Senate Seat in Florida (he lost the primary and the guy who beat him lost in the general election). The image is from that campaign.

He was interviewed in Davos, Switzerland. He said that

 "...“I’m remarkably long for my level of pessimism. Our economy is in deep trouble..."

This is the first type of hypocrisy I've found where the hypocrite actually has a financial interest in being proven wrong (being long means his money 'bets' on the market going up).

There is another, more standard hypocrisy here. He flew to Davos on his private jet (with his wife and kids and two nannies) for the World Economic Forum and said, 

 “...America’s lifestyle expectations are far too high and need to be adjusted so we have less things and a smaller, better existence..."

That type of behavior is actually pretty common and Greene probably reasons that since his time is pretty valuable and his charitable contributions (he is sponsoring a conference on 'closing the gap' in Palm Beach, FL) are substantial, he should get a pass. 

The article with the quotes is here.

Is Senator Ernst a Welfare Queen Hypocrite

A website post (noted below) essentially charges her with hypocrisy although without using the word, "hypocrisy".

The basis of the hypocrisy is that Senator Joni Ernst (image on left) is for cutting waste in government but her family benefited from agriculture subsidies. There are a few problems with the charge, however. Of the $460k or so in subsidies noted by the post, the vast majority went to Ernst's uncle.  Ernst' father received about $38k in subsidies and this was over a 14 year period. Senator Ernst herself seems to have received zero in agricultural subsidies. Thus the specific facts contradict the theme of hypocrisy.

However, even had Senator Ernst received subsidies herself, she may not consider such subsidies as 'waste' or she might consider them 'waste' but be willing to take advantage of them since they are legal although she would like to end them. This is similar to my own feeling that dues paid to my synagogue (similarly anyone's dues to churches, temples, mosques, etc.) ought not to be considered charity for the purpose of schedule A of the IRS form 1040 because they are not as much 'charity' as would an equal gift to, say, the Red Cross or a Hadassah Hospital (I would be willing to see synagogue dues as 50% itemizable since the synagogue does some social work, counseling, etc). However, my opinion doesn't, in any way, require me to refuse to itemize my synagogue dues.

The website post with the information on Senator Ernst is here. 

The New York Times - Mohammud cartoon vs Piss Christ

This is yet another NYTimes issue (note logo as image).

 
Earlier this month there was a terror attack on the office of a magazine that published several cartoons with what is supposed to be Mohammad.

The New York Times, had in the past, published such pictures as the "Piss Christ". That is an image of a crucifix into which the artist, Andres Serrano, had placed his own urine. It was a pretty big photo; 60" by 40".

Is the NYTimes hypocritical for not publishing Mohammad's image while having published the Piss Christ as well as similar Christian-offensive art and some Holocaust denial art. Here we have a chance for an interesting distinction. The NYTimes's editor currently (and during the Mohammad image decision) has only been editor since mid 2014. Thus it is possible that, in some way, the NYTimes is a different paper than it was when the Piss Christ and other offensive things were published. Since this is such an interesting oddity, I don't think I'll call the NYTimes a hypocrite, at least until they publish something as offensive to Jews or Christians as the Mohammad images were to moslems. Even then, if they published, say another crucifix in urine but said specifically, "We are doing this because we know Christians won't kill us", that would still be enough to get me to judge them non-hypocrites (although it would be somewhat cowardly)..

A Huffington Post article recently on the NYTimes vs other newspapers in regard to the Mohammad image is here.

An article from 2012 in the Guardian on the 1989 photo "Piss Christ" is here.

One Image Many Hypocrisy Charges

There was a demonstration in Paris in support and/or in sympathy with victims of the January 9, 2015 atrocities which killed cartoonists, police and shoppers at a Kosher food market in Paris. the demonstration was on January 11, 2015. 

In the front row: Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu, Malian President Keita, French President Hollande, German Chancellor Merkel, Euro Council President Tusk, and Palestinian Authority President Abbas. Also attending were numerous other dignitaries from over 40 countries.

Hamas foreign affairs chief al-Zahar (second image) accused Abbas of hypocrisy (I'm not sure of what the hypocrisy actually is).

Turkish President Erdogan (third image) accused Netanyahu of hypocrisy for attending the demonstration. Erdogan says Netanyahu is a terrorist because of the Gaza deaths in last years war.

An official from Reporters without Borders (RwB) charged several officials of countries which persecute journalists (Egypt, Turkey, Russia, the UAE and Gabon) saying 

"Glad so many world leaders could take time off jailing and torturing journalists and dissidents to march for free expression in France."

Although,  the RwB official doesn't charge 'hypocrisy', this case is closer to being hypocrisy than the other two. In the case of the charge against 'Abbas', I can't figure out what the hypocrisy is supposed to be. In the case of the charge of Netanyahu, Israel made no effort to kill Paleos for their many cartoons depicting Netanyahu as evil, as a cannibal, etc.

al-Zahar charge of hypocrisy is here

Erdogan charge of hypocrisy is here.https://qu1ck51lv3r.wordpress.com/2015/01/12/erdogan-slams-netanyahu-for-attending-paris-rally/

RwB charge is here.