Ben Carson's Medical Career Could Have Begun at West Point

West Point graduates are eligible and allowed to apply for medical school,

Ben Carson could have begun his medical career at West Point then fulfilled his service obligation as a doctor.
He also had the option of having his civilian pre-med and medical studies funded by the Armed Forces. He should have known about that and that should have been readily available to him after his successful high school Junior ROTC career which Carson brags about.

All Carson did after high school was go to college and major in pre-med with no guarantee of admission to medical school.

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Since the 1947 desegregation of the Armed Forces, the military has been a highly respected source for careers in the African-American community.

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Ben Carson's misrepresentations disrespects:

•  West Point graduates who went on to medical school,

• Doctors whose undergraduate and medical school education were funded by the Armed Forces, and

• African-American who choose a career in the Armed Forces because they assess that the equal opportunity in the Armed Forces is more of a reality than in the civilian world.

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Ben Carson's misrepresentations now appear to be an attempt to promote himself as someone who heroically sacrificed a generous offer of a college education at West Point to pursue a medical career.

Carson's West Point story is not only pointless and meaningless, his misinformation can be confusing and harmful to others considering a medical career while seeking appointment to a military academy.

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Paul Ryan's Refusal to Work with President Obama on Immigration: Why History Matters

New House Speaker Paul Ryan says he will not work with President Obama on immigration reform.

Extremists have said President Obama cannot be trusted.

However, these same extremists also refused to work with Republican President George W. Bush and Republican Senator John McCain when they proposed immigration reform.

Based on that history, the extremists are unwilling to work with anyone on immigration reform which means a continuation of the system we currently have.

That means the agriculture, construction, and other big money interests will continue to make huge profits by using a pool of undocumented workers whom they can continue to pay low wages and employ in unsafe working conditions. 

Paul Ryan and other Republicans lack the courage to tell the extremists in their ranks that legalization is not "amnesty" and deporting 11 million undocumented immigrants would require:

• Turning the U.S. into a police state to find the undocumented immigrants, Everyone will be required to carry proof of citizenship or their visa at all times. Police will be allowed to randomly demand "show me your papers" and to set up residency and citizenship papers checkpoints.

• To prevent harm to our economy from the loss of the deported workers, a new program to immediately issue massive numbers of work visas for new immigrants to replace those undocumented workers being deported.

• A massive tax increase to fund those programs.

Ironically Paul Ryan's extremist free market Ayn Rand libertarian ideology probably would advocate open borders to allow the free movement of workers to seek the best deal for their labor. But his same lack of courage cited above suggests that he will not be discussing that either.

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Celebrate Native American Heritage Month By Ceasing Undocumented Claims of Native American Ancestry

President Obama just proclaimed November Native American Heritage Month.

To celebrate I urge all who claim American Indian ancestry to review their family history.

If they do not have documentation, I urge them to state their claim is based on undocumented family oral history or to refrain from continuing to make such claims until ancestry is documented. 

Claiming American Indian ancestry without documentation can be disrespectful of American Indians and is best discontinued.
Many claims are found to be family legend and not to be true.

I urge public figures who have claimed American Indians ancestry but have not provided any documentation to cease such claims.

Confirmation can be a family tree with supporting documents showing a direct descent from an American Indian.

Attempting to benefit from a claim of American Indian ancestry without documentation is a form of "white privilege" and needs to stop.

Europeans expropriated all American Indian land and almost completely exterminated them. Among the ways we can make amends is to cease falsely claiming to be descended from them.

Revised: November 1, 2015

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The Anniversary of Martin Luther's 95 Theses and the Roots of the Holocaust

October 31 is the anniversary of Martin Luther's posting of his 95 theses and the start of the Protestant Reformation.

Remembrances of Martin Luther are incomplete without acknowledgement of his antisemitism and its relationship to the Holocaust.

For 1,000 year prior to Martin Luther's posting of his Theses Germany and Austria were dominated by Roman Catholicism.

Tragically Martin Luther failed to reform Roman Catholic antisemitism. Instead he continued it. His writings are filled with vile antisemitism.

Almost 100% of the Germans and Austrians who actively committed the Holocaust or passively enabled it were Christians in good standing with about 50% being Roman Catholics and 50% being Lutherans.

Fourteen hundred years of antisemitic teachings by the Roman Catholic Church together with 400 years of antisemitic teachings by the Lutherans created a very fertile ground for the Nazi ideology of the Holocaust to emerge.

In the 1960s Pope John XXIII made great progress in purging antisemitism from Catholic teachings. 

His predecessors have done an extremely poor job of following up as antisemitism remains widespread among Roman Catholics.

With the number of Roman Catholics who actively and passively implemented the Holocaust, ending antisemitism among Roman Catholics should be one of the Roman Catholic Church's highest priorities (along with ending clergy sex abuse). 

As an recovering ex-Catholic I am most familiar with Roman Catholicism. I am not familiar what the Lutheran Church has done to purge antisemitism from its teachings and deal with antisemitism among its members.

In my teens among the first times i had questions about the moral authority of the Roman Catholic Church was when I learned of the Pope Pius XII's silence in response the Holocaust. 

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Concern About Police Use of Force is Not Advocacy of Violence Against the Police

Politicians and police leaders continue to falsely charge that citizens concerned over police use of lethal force are advocating violence against police, with Gov. Christie being the most recent.

An excellent report in the October 24, 2014 Washington Post on police use of force features the tragic death of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin Trooper Trevor Casper.

Trooper Casper was one of the 31 officers killed this year.

Trooper Casper was  murdered by a European-American bank robber and not by a politically motivated African-American.

How Trooped Casper died is probably how most of the other 30 died.

The only politically motivated murders of police this year of which I am aware are by right wing European-American extremists. (That is from my memory as I did not review the year's news for this post.)

This year two African-Americans who may be suffering from mental illness murdered police officers. If their psychotic delusions, hallucinations, and paranoia included political concerns, that does not change that their behaviors were related to their mental health problems and not to political ideology.

The Washington Post's data makes clear the central issues:

• 10 to 26% of the approximately 800 citizens killed by police this year were not have armed and were not have attacking either a police officer or civilians. 

• 25% of the civilians killed by police were African-American. African-Americans are 13.2% of the population. Their rate of death by the police is almost twice their percentage of the population.

Asking for changes in police procedures to end the police killings of unarmed citizens not attacking police or civilians and ending the racial disparity in law enforcement which is has resulted in African-Americans being killed by the police at twice the rate then their percentage of the population is not advocating violence against the police.

Misrepresenting our advocacy dishonors and disrespects the service and sacrifice of officers such as Trooper Trevor Casper.

When politicians and police leaders make such false allegations journalists need to ask them to cite specific attacks on police where such a link has been established. However a friend has repeatedly reminded me that may be expecting an awful lot of our current crop of journalists.

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A Wisconsin trooper faced down a gunman who planned to go out fighting

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2015/10/24/on-duty-under-fire/

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We Are All In This Together

The death of Master Sergeant Joshua Wheeler in the recent rescue of ISIS prisoners is a reminder that this is not a battle between Muslims and non-Muslims.

This is a battle between an extremist form of Islam and the rest of the world with most of the victims being Muslims.

Sergeant Wheeler died fighting side by side with Kurdish Muslims rescuing Kurdish and Arab Muslim captives from Islamic extremists.

Muslims such as the Kurds are our allies and fight alongside men women such as Sgt. Wheeler.

The anti-Muslim rhetoric in the U.S. is neither supportive nor respectful of the service and sacrifice of our troops such as Sgt. Wheeler.

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As much as I wish to share this in public, I am not emotionally up for the possible negative reactions.

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Sgt. Wheeler is from Oklahoma. I first learned his identity from the 45th Division Museum Facebook page in Oklahoma. While Sgt. Wheeler was not in the 45th, the 45th Museum covers stories about Oklahoma troops. 

Felix A. Cizewski, my late father, served in the 45th in WWII.

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Drug and Alcohol Testing Should be Mandatory in All Traffic Accidents Involving Injuries

An investigation has concluded that a bicyclist who was killed in collision with a car pulled into traffic and that the driver will not be charged.

However a careful reading of the news article indicates that the car driver shares responsibility.

The skid marks indicate that the driver was from 7 to 10 miles over the speed limit. Obviously that decreased the driver's ability to stop when a bicyclist pulled in front of them. The driver should have at least been cited for speeding.

The news reports that the officer assessed the driver did not appeared impaired nor smelled of alcohol. Subjective officer assessments of impairment are extremely unreliable and frequently inaccurate. They should be discontinued and replaced with science based breath and blood tests.

The driver apparently immediately contacted an attorney. On advice of the attorney, the driver refused a blood test.

That was the driver's Constitutional right. I have an equal Constitutional right to wonder why.

I hope the family brings a wrongful death suit against the driver.

Wisconsin law is notorious for enabling and shielding impaired drivers. That Wisconsin law allows a driver involved in what was ultimately a fatal accident to refuse a blood test may be another example.

Bicyclists should protect themselves by maintaining a high level of consciousness of the number of inattentive, speeding, and impaired drivers with whom they share the rode.

Wisconsin's implied consent laws should be amended to require blood tests of drivers involved in accidents that cause serious injuries or death.
Bicyclist in fatal Madison crash failed to yield to car, investigation concludes

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Has Senator McCain Forgotten How His POW Crimes Were Resolved?

The Army judicial process is deciding the fate of Sergeant Bernie Bergdahl, the soldier who was captured by the Taliban and released in a prisoner exchange.

Headlines report how outraged Senator McCain is that Army is recommending that sergeant Bernie Bergdahl not be charged with desertion, not be given a prison sentence, and not be given a punitive discharge.

While Lieutenant Commander McCain was a POW he was broken under torture. He then signed propaganda statements and made propaganda broadcasts for the North Vietnamese.

When he was released at the end of the Vietnam War, the Navy judicial system was very understand, generous, and forgiving.

Not only was he not prosecuted, he was so effectively shielded that during his presidential campaign his psychological fitness for office because of the trauma of being broken under torture was never raised as an issue not meaningfully discussed.

Instead of condemning the Army, Senator McCain should be commending them for showing Sergeant Bergdahl the same compassion the Navy showed Senator McCain.

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False Allegations Against Activist

After a Houston County sheriff's deputy was recently murdered, the sheriff and others blamed activists concerned about excessive use of police force for inspiring the murder. They specifically named Black Lives Matters.

Some reports suggest that the suspect has a history of mental health problems which is a more reality based explanation for his actions .

Over the last few days, reports have emerged that the murdered deputy, a married father, was with his lover when he was murdered. His lover is a witness.

The sheriff department's investigator started a sexual relationship with the witness during the investigation and has been suspended.

I hope this sufficiently compromises the prosecution case that they can no longer seek the death penalty.

I hope that this causes the Houston County sheriff's department to cease making false accusations against activists and focus on the very serious internal problems in their department.

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"Forward" Columnist Adds More Facts to the Correction of Carson's Remarks on Gun Control and the Holocaust

In the Forward columnist Jay Michaelson said that Ben Carson's statement is an antisemitic canard that blames the victims of the Holocaust rather than the perpetrators.

Michaelson adds historical facts to the Anti-Defamation League's correction of Ben Carson's statement about gun control and the Holocaust.

The ADL stated the absurdity of expecting the about 200,000 German Jews in 1938, less than 1% of the population, to have been able to effectively resist the Nazi state with handguns and hunting rifles.

Michaelson adds facts about the Polish Jews.

Michaelson cites the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising where Polish Jews resisted with firearms the Holocaust. The Polish Jews killed at most 24 Nazis. The Nazis killed at least 13,000 Polish Jews, most of them unarmed civilian residents of the Warsaw Ghetto.

To the ADL and Michaelson, I will add the resistance of the Polish Jews in the Polish armed forces in 1939. Polish Jews were about 10% of the population of Poland in 1939 and served in all positions including in combat and as officers.

In 1939 about 16,000 German and Austrian invaders were killed during their unprovoked war of aggression, conquest, and genocide against Poland.

From a statistical perspective as many as 1,600 were killed by Polish Jewish members of the Polish armed forces. (Art Spiegelman depicts the 1939 killing in combat of an invading Nazi soldier by a Polish Jewish soldier in his graphic novel Maus.)
Tragically, despite their best, gallant, heroic, repeated efforts, armed Polish Jews were not able to stop the Holocaust.

Acknowledgement: My friend Jeff Spitzer-Resnick shared Jay Michaelson's column with me. That allowed me to share my amateur historian's knowledge about subjects about which I care including the WWII history of Poland, the Holocaust, and relations between Slavs and Jews in Poland.

Why Ben Carson's Rant About Gun Control and the Holocaust Is So Dangerous

by Jay Michaelson, in Opinion, Forward, October 9, 2015

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Add the Holocaust to the List of What Ben Carson Knows Nothing

Headlines report Ben Carson claims the Holocaust would have been less likely if the Jews were armed.

That armed individuals could have successfully resisted the Holocaust is a propaganda lie used by American extremists to oppose gun regulations that the SCOTUS has repeatedly ruled Constitutional. 

To which Jews was he referring? 

The Jews of Germany? German Jews were less than 1% of the German population. 

Prior to the Holocaust, the Nazis destroyed all opposition in Germany, including potentially armed opposition.

Armed resistance by less than 1% of the German population would have not stopped their massacre. The Nazis would have shot them in their residence instead of taking them to death camps;.

The Jews of Poland? They were about 10% of the Polish population.

The Polish Jews were armed as members of the Polish armed forces. They resisted the Nazis from the first day of WWII. When the Nazis captured them, instead of being treated as POWs they were executed.

The Nazis together with their Soviet allies defeated the Polish armed forces which left all Poles, including Polish Jews, mostly disarmed.

After Poland's military defeat, armed individual Polish Jews had not more the ability to stop the Holocaust than did German Jews.

Polish Jews did their best to rearm themselves and resist the Holocaust. They were able to again resume armed resistance culminated in the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. As heroic as that was, the fighters knew that they had no chance of stopping the Holocaust and were instead choosing to die fighting rather than in death camps.

The only armed people who could have stopped the Holocaust were the armed forces of nations such as the United States in alliance with Czechoslovakia, Poland, Britain, and France. 

The only time those armed forces could have stopped the Holocaust would have been in 1938 or 1939 before the Nazis were at the peak of their military power and the victims of the Holocaust were still within reach of military rescue.

That misuse of the Holocaust dishonors the victims and those such as my late father who served in the fight to defeat the Nazis, liberate the camps, and rescue the surviving victims.

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Airport Level Weapons Screening at High Risk Locations

Seven years ago in 2009 a security guard at the entrance of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum gave his life stopping an armed European-American anti-semite from attempting a mass shooting.

When my wife Cheryl Robinson and I visited the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center we first passed through airport level weapons screening before entering.

I am not optimistic that we will soon find the political will to implement the gun regulations that the SCOTUS has repeatedly ruled to be Constitutional under the 2nd Amendment.

But we must do something now.

I very reluctantly suggest that we may need to use airport level weapons screenings at institutions assessed to be at risk for mass shootings. 

My reluctance is that will result in our schools, places of worships, museums, movie theatres, and other places at risk of mass shooting having secure perimeters with fences and barbed wire with one entrance with metal detectors, x-ray for our bags, and armed guards. Our nation will start to resemble a police state.

The reality is that may be one of the few effective ways to keep us safer in our nation that is suffering from an epidemic of gun sickness.

That is what kept safe the staff and visitors at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

That will also make people aware of the price we are paying to give a a handful of people a minimum of restrictions to purchase firearms. Perhaps that price will raise consciousness so we find our political will to deal with a problem that has resulted in over 400,000 non-terrorist deaths since 9/11.

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Firefighters Lives Matter

A few days ago a European-American firefighter in Lansing, Michigan was murdered by a European-American. 

The firefighter was volunteering at a muscular dystrophy fundraiser. The murderer was irritated at the traffic delays the fundraiser caused so with his vehicle he ran down the firefighter.

That hit me hard as my nephew is a paramedic and works with fire departments on the East Coast.

But this also reminded me of the demagoguery that has falsely accused those of us concerned about the use of force by police on minorities with inciting minorities to attack the police.

Those concerned about the police use of lethal force have been advocating changes in police procedures and criminal investigations and when warranted prosecutions of officers whose use of force violated procedures and crossed the line into a crime.

Both the President and the Attorney General have been consistent in their condemnation of all attacks on police and their support for the police.

Only the most vile type of demagoguery could distort that to claim that is incitement to attack our police.

Such demagoguery distracts from reality. When we are distracted from reality we are not supporting our first responders.

Our first responders are in most danger when responding to crimes and domestic violence from suspects of all ethnicities.

Our first responders are at risk from road rage as happened in Michigan.

When a person with mental illness cites a political reason for their attack on the police, we need to remain focused on the person's mental illness.

Most of the politically motivated attacks on our first responders have been by European-Americans who are on the right wing of the political spectrum. Politically motivated attacks by ethnic minorities are rare.

Firefighter, Black, and All Lives Matter.
This is an issue for firefighters and their families, African-Americans, and all Americans. (That was inspired by Hilary Clinton's recent speech in Wisconsin.)

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Why Does the NYT Ignore Serpico's Antisemitism?

I have long admired the courage of former NYC police officer and whistleblower Frank Serpico and appreciate whenever follow up stories appear about him.

He has settled in upstate New York.

Sadly I have discovered that he now writes a blog filled with the vile antisemitism most often seen in the writing of people suffering from a serious form of mental illness.

In other writing Serpico admits to heavy alcohol and marijuana use so the paranoia and out of touch reality of his antisemitic writings could be related to that.

Serpico is running for a seat on a local board not because of any local issues but because of a long standing dispute with a neighbor over trees on their shared property line,

The NYT article reported that local Democrats have long wanted Serpico to run for something.

In this and a previous article, the NYT did not do the very easy basic research that I did to discover the very troubling blog posts. That and other issues should be reported and should have disqualified Serpico from being considered as a candidate by local Democrats.

Serpico needs to acknowledge he has very serious problems and deal with them. Encouragement to run for office and NYT puff pieces enable his denial.

I hope others who are aware of this are now contacting the NYT. I hope in the next few days to see a letter to the editor with this information or an updated report with this omission.

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Did Christie Just Make a Campaign Killing Walker-Like Statement?

Republican presidential candidate and NJ governor Christie said jailed Kentucky clerk Kim Davis should just have been transferred to another job.

Christie statement suggests he oblivious to the fact that she's not a public employee but  the elected clerk. She can't be transferred to another position.

But being an "honest straight talker" means never to having to check that your opinions are based in reality before opening your mouth.

Just as Walker's string of incredibly stupid statements has done nothing to halt his declining poll numbers and may be among the reasons his candidacy fails, I expect this will do nothing to stop the fall in Christie's already low poll numbers which are already scraping the bottom or increase donations to his campaign.

For some reason right now Trump can get away with making nonsense statements not based in reality. Christie and Walker are not Trump and cannot.