I figured Armstrong had his greedy paws all over this one.
There’s this, too. Carson is the perfect mild-mannered know-nothing to run interference for gutting an agency that is ripe for corruption. They’re going to slash HUD’s budget, they’re going to allocate what remains to Trump’s buddies, and when they finally get caught, Gentle Ben will take the fall.
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I doubt anyone takes the fall for anything. This is no longer a democracy, it’s a pseudo-theocratic autocracy. Laws no longer apply.
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Ben Carson may be a great surgeon, but he is a liar and a religious zealot of the worst kind. He is perfect for a job in this cabinet because he is too stupid to realize how he is just become the very thing he fought against his whole life - the token Black Man. He is woefully incompetent to handle this department - and my guess: he will look to Donald and the Brats for all his guidance. He will ignore actual housing laws and the purpose of the department in favor of segregated housing developments, housing discrimination practices, and income levels as justification for heinous practices like Donald and his father used in the 1970s. He will institute religious standards for housing projects, and if you are not a follower of his faux form of Christianity, then I hope you like living on the streets. This nation just took a quick turn into Third World status!
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All of this is making Reagan and the Bushes look competent
Let’s just agree on “less incompetent”.
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Agreed, slipped on that
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It’s not because Carson is black. It’s because he’s a member of an even smaller minority – neurosurgeons. That’s a really very tiny demographic in this country, but neurosurgeons as a group have expertise not only in neurosurgery, but also in running a federal bureaucracy. It’s true! Neurosurgery residencies always include hours of training in HUD issues. Hey, neurosurgery isn’t all about neurology and surgery. You didn’t know that?
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According to Armstrong Williams their expertise extends to zoning, tax law, construction permits, enterprise zones, housing standards and inner city issues with safe, affordable dwellings. Medical school r hard.
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It’s pretty hard to be hopeful as we watch the entire socialist structure that the world started building for its people at the end of the last world war crumble and die.
Cause it takes us right back to where we started from, before the war.
I read the most ridiculous premise on Slate the other day - someone was arguing that we should go back to states rights, essentially, and have the power local. That’s supposed to save socialism and democracy except that’s where we were right before the Civil War broke out.
I will be very glad when something hopeful appears on the horizon again but it’s not there now - not with Italy coming apart (which is partly what Renzi’s loss is about, though there was more - the population just voted to let organized crime run the country forever;) and the EU hanging by a thread and the very worst of all possible worlds in charge of things everywhere.
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Well, duh, teenlaqueefa! Don’t you know that medical schools train doctors not only in medicine, but also in Egyptology and ancient grain storage and other important disciplines? That accounts for Ben Carson’s expertise in those areas. My son-in-law’s sister, a pediatrician, took a mandatory course in the history of Barbie dolls when she was at Johns Hopkins.
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And the president of South Korea is getting the bum’s rush and New Zealand’s prime minister yesterday announced his resignation, effective immediately.
And if the upcoming elections in France and Germany go to far-right xenophobes, the international alliance is dust.
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I know.
I don’t have a lot of hope it will hold right now. The entire globe seems determined to throw out everyone who knows what they’re doing and replace them with dancing bears and clowns and insult comics.
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It’s the *Parabalanis’ world right now. We just live in it,
*the ‘christians’ who mobbed up and murdered Hypatia and burned the Library of Alexandria.
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Carson is already understood to be an idiot. But he’s apparently an idiot with little self-respect as Trump savaged him pretty hard during the primary.
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I know. I myself can’t say I feel buoyantly hopeful, with a bright vision of a future that’s just around the corner. But I guess sometimes hope takes the form of whatever it is that keeps you trudging forward through the mud when you don’t actually feel hopeful. We’ve had a pretty good life because people who lived harder lives in the past envisioned a better one, so I guess we owe it to ourselves and the people who come after to try to do the same. It’s disheartening to see things regress. Just got to find sustenance in whatever works for you, and show this surprise-filled world what you’re made of.
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That’s so true. I’m just grateful right now that they didn’t do this to the generation before us who fought the war. At least they got the rewards that were coming to them.
And that was right.
we don’t really know how all of this is likely to end up so might as well be hopeful as not. 
PS - the Standing Rock Sioux won their battle and that’s very hopeful.
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Wonkette headlined that “Army Rides to Indians’ Rescue.” 
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I have nothing to add to this thread, Carson’s inexperience is frightening and trump’s stupidity is something we’ll have to make our peace with. But I’m proud to be among people like you two who can talk about larger issues and the importance of our past history in relation to what we’re confronting today. No one has answers unless that crystal ball has been shined up, but solid discourse instead of one liners always carries the day for me. 
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That is good.
There’s a Taos man who works at the hardware store in Taos and he’s a huge football fan, which alone is unusual, but his favorite team is the Cowboys. hahahahahahaha he gets teased unmercifully for that.
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