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Showing posts with label West point. Show all posts

Monday, November 9, 2015

Obama Gets Free Pass On Many Lies, Yet Carson Is Grilled Over Minutia.

Nit-picking Carson’s past, but not Obama’s

Posted on November 9, 2015 by Personal Liberty News Desk media questions

When they weren’t busy fretting over how Donald Trump’s appearance on “Saturday Night Live” would turn out, the mainstream media spent most of the weekend dissecting the nuances of Ben Carson’s personal story.

Did he really have an epiphany that helped steer him away from violence and poverty? Was he really even a “bad” kid? Was he really offered a scholarship to West Point? Did he really even say, in so many words, that Gen. William Westmoreland ever offered him one?

One thing’s for sure: If the answers to these not-so-burning questions are never known, it won’t be for a lack of probing. And that’s something that can’t be said for President Barack Obama, who has fabricated, embellished or given conflicting accounts of significant portions of his own personal narrative. Seven years into his presidency, there’s much about the man we don’t know — and that the media, so assiduous in parsing Carson’s past, has enthusiastically avoided finding out.

“What are cases in the past when President Obama misstated points about his biography, but the media did not cause a national firestorm or characterize him as a pathological liar?” Independent Journal’s Kyle Becker asked Sunday.

Becker surfed the Internet and came up with nine examples. He elaborates on each one at the link, but we’ll just bullet-point them and leave you with a question: How many more can you name?

The list:

“Obama’s Staff Corrects WWII Story” (New York Times)
Selma Birth Connection (Independent Journal)
“Obama Overstates Kennedys’ Role in Helping His Father” (Washington Post)
“Tale of British brutality toward Barack Obama’s grandfather probably untrue, book claims” (The Telegraph)
The heroic story of Obama’s step-grandfather dying while fighting the Dutch is untrue (New York Times)
“Obama Lied About Mother’s Health Insurance Problem” (Commentary)
Obama makes white Occidental College classmate “Regina” into African-American aka “composite girlfriend” (Washington Times)
President Obama’s “improbable love” narrative (Jack Cashill)
Obama and his mother not “abandoned” by father in 1963 (Buzzfeed)

Note Obama’s piece of damage control for item No. 6: the made-up story about his mother’s health insurance.

“In response to inquiries, ‘a White House spokesman chose not to dispute either Ms. Scott’s account or Mr. Obama’s memory, while arguing that Mr. Obama’s broader point remained salient.'”

But of course it did.

For the left, the end always justifies the means.

Another View Of The West Point Scholarship Brouhaha.

Robert Shireman Become a fan

Senior Fellow at The Century Foundation; former education official in the Obama and Clinton Administrations

Ben Carson and West Point's "Full Scholarship"

Posted: 11/07/2015 1:49 pm EST Updated: 11/07/2015 4:59 pm EST

In the kerfuffle over presidential candidate Ben Carson's claim that he was admitted to West Point, the news media have pointed out that the "full scholarship" part of his story adds even more confusion because, as the New York Times story today put it, "Technically, West Point does not offer scholarships. It is free."

Actually, no, West Point and the other military academies are not free, technically or otherwise. The enrollment agreement of the United States Military Academy at West Point (see page 43) commits the student, after the first year, to completing the training and then to serving a total of eight years in the Army. Failure to complete the training or service or refusing to "at all times obey the legal orders of my superior officers" results in having to repay the Army's cost of providing the education, which Icalculate at between $250,000 and $300,000.

Rather than "free," therefore, it would be more accurate to say that West Point provides cadets with massive student loans, ten times what the average undergraduate incurs, and then forgives those loans over an 11-year period depending on the Army's view of the borrower's behavior as a student and then as a soldier.ROTC loans - er, scholarships - come with similar military service commitments.

As with free phones connected to long-term contracts, "free" is frequently a marketing gimmick, verging on a deception. In the case of the military academies the lure of free does not seem to present major problems because cadets experience a full, intensive first year before they are on the hook for any repayment. One cadet told me that as the commitment deadline approached at the end of the second summer she was counseled to seriously think about whether she wanted to continue. She decided to leave. She gave West Point the old college try and, fortunately, was able to bow out, fully informed, before having a big debt to repay.

Forgivable loans marketed as free money can go awry, however, as in the case of a government program called TEACH Grants. The nation needs more excellent teachers, so in 2007 Congress thought an effective way to lure good students into teaching would be with an ROTC-like commitment. Under the well-intentioned program students receive "grants" that turn into loans if the student fails to teach in a high-poverty school for four years. Big mistake. As the policy group Third Way points out, undergraduate students drop out, change their majors and their career plans, cannot control whether they get hired or where they are placed, and, as the newest teachers in a school, are the first to get laid off. As a result, a whopping 75 percent of the so-called grants may end up as loans, revealing the program as a classic bait and switch. Few West Point students end up saddled with unexpected debt because the selection, the first year trial, and the fact that West Point is part of the Army that will be employing the graduates, all mitigate against the loan penalty ever being applied.

Like the TEACH grants, a deceptive claim of "tuition-free" is also what gave political appeal and national attention to a college financing approach Oregon lawmakers considered last year. The approach would require students to sign away a portion of their future income instead of paying up-front tuition, an idea that re-emerges every few of years since it was first suggested 60 years ago (each time it is portrayed as anexciting new concept). These pay-it-forward or income-share plans are intriguing but ultimately deeply problematic without adequate safeguards. And they are decidedlynot free.

Given all the media attention to student debt these days, here's my script for Ben Carson to explain his West Point claims: I was encouraged to apply to West Point but I decided that given the two or three hundred thousand dollars of loans and the long commitment I might as well become a doctor instead.

Carson Fights Back Against Lazy Lame Stream Media

Carson Fires Back at Liberal Media Attacks, Offers Proof of Narrative

(Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

By Greg Richter | Monday, 09 Nov 2015 12:27 PM

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Fighting back against media attacks on his credibility, GOP presidential front-runner Ben Carson took to Facebook to rebut two news organizations who have questioned whether he really attempted to stab a classmate in junior high and whether he took a particular course at Yale.

On Monday, Carson posted a photo of part of a Parade magazine story from 1997 in which his mother corroborated the story about him attempting to stab a classmate at age 14, only to be stopped by the boy's metal belt buckle.

"Oh, that really happened," his mother, Sonya, is quoted. "I sat him down and told that him you don't accomplish much by being a bully. You accomplish more with kindness than you ever do by being harsh."

Carson says he prayed to God to take away the flashes of anger he had experienced throughout this boyhood and that God answered his prayer.

CNN ran a series of segments late last week noting that none of Carson's high school classmates it contacted could verify the story on the attempted stabbing. Carson countered that none of his high school classmates would have known about the incident since he had changed by that time.

Sunday, November 8, 2015

Media Double Downs On Carson

Ben Carson: WSJ Didn't Interview White Students I Defended

By Greg Richter | Sunday, 08 Nov 2015 09:48 AM

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Ben Carson, currently battling Donald Trump for the front-runner position in the Republican presidential race, brushed aside the continuing questions about his background on the Sunday morning shows.

NBC's "Meet the Press" aired an interview with Carson made Saturday night at New York's JFK airport about questions to his claims he shielded white students in high school during protests over the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

The Wall Street Journal couldn't find evidence of the claim, but Carson told NBC the same thing he said when classmates said they had no memory of him trying to stab a friend or having a violent temper in his early teen years: "Why would they know about that unless they were one of those students?"

Perhaps one of the students will come forward, Carson, said, adding that perhaps they don't know about the controversy yet.

"Maybe they're not spending all of their time reading The Wall Street Journal," he said.

Carson said he is being "vetted" more heavily than any other presidential candidate "because I'm a threat."

The secular progressive movement sees him as "a very big threat because they can look at the polling data and they can see that I'm the candidate who's most likely to beat Hillary Clinton."

Carson was interviewed by telephone on ABC's "This Week," where he answered questions about discussing attendance at West Point when Gen. William Westmoreland visited Detroit.