What explains the riddle that is Dr. Ben Carson? The retired neurosurgeon turned Republican presidential candidate has consistently been polling second best in a field of 16 prospects, only trailing Donald Trump. Oh, and Dr. Carson is black. Don’t Republicans have a serious issue with our current president’s ebony complexion?

In a recent New York Times/CBS News poll, Carson is running nearly even with the frontrunner, Trump, 23% to 27%. The two “non-politicians” are head and shoulders above the remaining field of established politicians (excluding Fiorina).

The man who some have called as exciting as watching grass grow, continues to baffle political pundits. While his slow, carefully calibrated speech may make for good bedside manners, it doesn’t square with the type of presidential persona most Republican voters say they are looking for; hence, the huge support for the egomaniac Trump.

To understand Carson’s appeal, one needs to understand how deeply religious is this man. After all, this is the candidate who said he is only running for office because God directed him to do so (God Made Me Do It!).

A Gallup poll conducted from Aug. 1 to Sept. 8 on Republican candidates based on religiosity showed that Trump got a net satisfaction rating of 22 percent, compared to Ben Carson who topped it with 56 percent. While Trump likes to boast about his strong support among Evangelicals, Carson’s net favorability rating among the highly religious is over two and a half times higher than Trump’s.

To the highly religious conservative voter, it appears a candidate’s level of religiosity “trumps” all else… experience, enthusiasm for the job, policy positions, etc. In a way, Carson is like Trump… just as inexperienced and radical, but without the bombast.

Voters shouldn’t be fooled by Carson’s quiet, gentle exterior. The good doctor’s views in many ways are more extreme than Trump’s. Inside the chest of the acclaimed neurosurgeon beats the heart of a true right-wing fundamentalist.

One thing’s for sure. With Dr. Carson continuing to be a fixture in the Republican presidential debates, look for the sale of sleep aids to slump.

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Donald Trump is getting flak from all sides for not correcting a supporter who claimed President Obama is a Muslim, not an American. Both Democratic presidential frontrunners, Clinton and Sanders, criticized Trump for not pulling a “McCain” by standing up for our president. When confronted by a similar ill-informed supporter in 2008, McCain famously replied. “”No, ma’am. He’s a decent family man [and] citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues and that’s what this campaign’s all about. He’s not [an Arab].”

Megyn Kelly of Fox News, while addressing a group of Republican voters, affirmed Obama’s “not a Muslim,” labeling the comment “objectively ugly.” Republican presidential candidate, Chris Christie said Trump had “an obligation” to correct the questioner, and that he would have done so.

And I always thought American voters had a short memory! Apparently this affliction also applies to “news” reporters and politicians. It wasn’t long ago that Mr. Trump was a frequent guest of Ms. Kelly’s network, Fox News,  questioning President Obama’s birthplace. In fact, Trump claimed he had dispatched a cadre of investigators to the alleged Obama birthplace, Hawaii, to dig out the truth (unfortunately we never quite heard the results of that investigation, which Trump, in a Fox interview, labeled “shocking”).

If Orly Taitz is the “Queen of “Birtherism,” surely Donald Trump is the king.

The fact is that Trump either believes in his own conspiracy theory about our president’s illegitimacy; that he is a Muslim born in Kenya. Or he is just a master opportunist who jumped on a crazy theory, milking it for all it’s worth. In either case, how could anyone expect Trump to correct the bigoted supporter?

If Trump played the “birther card” as a cynical way to garner attention and publicity, he succeeded big time. There would be no way in hell he’d rise to a “McCain moment.” It would be political suicide. Birthers form a large part of Trump’s base and he would never dare alienate so many low-information voters.

Megyn, here’s a suggestion. Have Mr. Trump as a guest on your show. Then hit him with this question, “Knowing what we know now, do you still think our president is a Kenyan Muslim?” It worked great when you popped a similarly worded question to old Jeb!

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The more I watch and listen to Jeb Bush, the more I’m convinced his mother, Barbara Bush, offered him some sage advice when he was contemplating a run for the presidency: Don’t.

Jeb, the supposedly smarter Bush brother, has turned into a perpetual gaffe machine. He couldn’t handle the predictable, softball question served up by Fox’s Megyn Kelly about the wisdom of the Iraq war. And now, at last night’s presidential debate, he incredibly said that his brother kept America safe. When backed into a corner by Donald Trump, Jeb blurted out, “You know what? As it relates to my brother, there is one thing I know for sure, he kept us safe.”

Perhaps he will do what most politicians do when they’ve uttered something stupid; claim to have “misspoken.” But maybe not. Maybe the man is just as intellectually challenged as his big brother?

Or maybe Jeb just forgot that his brother’s presidency started on January 20, 2001, not September 12, 2001.

Maybe Jeb also forgot, or doesn’t know, that his brother and his administration were asleep at the wheel even though they had ample warning about a possible Al Qaeda attack; that upon leaving office the Clinton administration warned them about such a threat. Nope, George was on vacation that August 6, 2001, busy clearing brush on his ranch, when the infamous presidential briefing entitled, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.,” was “presented” to him.

George W. Bush kept America safe, Jeb… really? Tell that to the grieving families who lost loved ones on 9-11. Tell that to the families that lost sons and daughters in a war based on lies. Tell that to the wounded soldiers who came back from Bush’s Middle East folly missing limbs. Tell that to the killed Iraqi civilians. Tell that to a destabilized Middle East. Tell that to a destabilized world.

Jeb Bush and his establishment handlers are relying on Americans having a short memory or one that has been completely plastered over by conservative news outlets. Perhaps Jeb may turn out to be the Republican presidential nominee after all. If he is, should make for some lively debates with whoever becomes the Democratic nominee. You can be sure the Democrat will have a long and sharp memory.

Jeb should have known never to go against the advice of a wise old woman with white hair. After all, mother knows best.

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“American exceptionalism” is best defined as the belief that America’s values, political system, and history are unique among all other nations and worthy of universal admiration. Mostly employed by conservative Republicans, the phrase has been used as a bludgeon against any American who would dare think otherwise. Those not buying into this belief have been labeled unpatriotic; traitors to their country.

Unfortunately, today’s “American exceptionalism” is best defined in a negative sense. Americans are “exceptionally” behind other developed countries in many key metrics that define an advanced society. Let’s take a look:

Americans are “exceptionally” violent – As recently observed by President Obama, gun violence is much worse in the US than other advanced countries. Per population, we kill each other with guns at a rate 297x more than Japan, 49x more than France, 33x more than Israel.

Americans are “exceptionally” Stone Age – In a Michigan State University survey, only 14 percent of American adults thought that evolution was “definitely true,” while about a third firmly rejected the idea. In European countries, including Denmark, Sweden, and France, more than 80 percent of adults surveyed said they accepted the concept of evolution.

Americans suffer “exceptional” poverty -The United States ranks near the bottom of the pack of wealthy nations on the measure of child poverty, according to a recent UNICEF report. Nearly one third of U.S. children live in households with an income below 60 percent of the national median income. With 32.2 percent of children living below this line, the U.S. ranks 36th out of the 41 wealthy countries included in the UNICEF report.

Americans suffer “exceptional” income inequality – The U.S. is nearly the most wealth-unequal country in the world, according to Global Wealth Report 2013. Out of 141 countries, the U.S. has the 4th-highest degree of wealth inequality, trailing only Russia, Ukraine, and Lebanon.

Americans are “exceptionally” less educated – United States is ranked 12th among the world’s nations in the proportion of people between the ages of 25 and 34 who have college degrees. A recent International Student Assessment (PISA) showed that teenagers in the U.S. slipped from 25th to 31st in math since 2009; from 20th to 24th in science; and from 11th to 21st in reading, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Americans have “exceptionally” less health insurance – The United States is the only major country that doesn’t guarantee the right of health care to its citizens. The World Health Organization ranked American health care 37^th in the world, and in a recent study, the Commonwealth Fund ranked America’s health care system last on the basis of 21 indicative factors.

Perhaps Michael Moore best summed up “American exceptionalism”:

“This concept of American exceptionalism is the death of us. We know personally it does none of us any good walking around going “Yeah! Yeah!” That’s not the path to self-improvement. I mean, you can like yourself, and I do. I love the fact that I’m an American. I love this country. I love everything about what it means. But I also embrace the other side of it, and in doing so, it’s incumbent upon me as a citizen to want to help fix it.”

USA! USA! USA!

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