What is wrong with Conservative Men of Late?

Here is another man who I normally respect that has just gone around the bend. Ben Stein wrote an article regarding the imprisonment of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the IMF who has been accused of rape.

1) If he is such a womanizer and violent guy with women, why didn't he ever get charged until now? If he has a long history of sexual abuse, how can it have remained no more than gossip this long? France is a nation of vicious political rivalries. Why didn't his opponents get him years ago?

2.) In life, events tend to follow patterns. People who commit crimes tend to be criminals, for example. Can anyone tell me any economists who have been convicted of violent sex crimes? Can anyone tell me of any heads of nonprofit international economic entities who have ever been charged and convicted of violent sexual crimes? Is it likely that just by chance this hotel maid found the only one in this category? Maybe Mr. Strauss-Kahn is guilty but if so, he is one of a kind, and criminals are not usually one of a kind.

Oh, and he goes on:

3.) The prosecutors say that Mr. Strauss-Kahn "forced" the complainant to have oral and other sex with him. How? Did he have a gun? Did he have a knife? He's a short fat old man. They were in a hotel with people passing by the room constantly, if it's anything like the many hotels I am in. How did he intimidate her in that situation? And if he was so intimidating, why did she immediately feel un-intimidated enough to alert the authorities as to her story?

Since no one knows who this women is, she could be someone like me, who is 100lbs. It doesn't take much for a man to be stronger than me. Then he decides to talk about the alleged victim:

6.) People accuse other people of crimes all of the time. What do we know about the complainant besides that she is a hotel maid? I love and admire hotel maids. They have incredibly hard jobs and they do them uncomplainingly. I am sure she is a fine woman. On the other hand, I have had hotel maids that were complete lunatics, stealing airline tickets from me, stealing money from me, throwing away important papers, stealing medications from me. How do we know that this woman's word was good enough to put Mr. Strauss-Kahn straight into a horrific jail? Putting a man in Riker's is serious business. Maybe more than a few minutes of investigation is merited before it's done.

This is a very wealthy man who if he makes his way back to France will never see the inside of the courtroom and this possibly "lunatic" maid will never have her day in court. Did you forget about Roman Polanski, Mr. Stein? Just because he was denied bail doesn't mean he is not presumed innocent. Oh, I think it is time that you get that medication that was stolen from you refilled. It sounds like you need it.

A Dose of Reality

I came across a post about an interview that Ben Stein did on the Dennis Miller Show. Five Feet of Fury came to the conclusion that Stein was actually just another liberal because he made the statement that the tax rates on the "rich" will have to be increased in order to deal with our national debt. I don't agree. I think that it is high time we have an honest discussion on what we are facing.


Everyone in this country is going to have to give up something. Nothing can be taking off the table if we are truly going to fix this. There will be some in this country that will not be able to be taken of the public assistance that they are currently on, for a number of different reasons. But there are people on public assistance that can be phased out of the system. We are going to have to start doing means testing for social security and medicare. Give the very wealthy a one time payout and be done with it. They can pay for their own retirement and insurance. There are people in this country that can afford it on their own, Gates and Jobs as an example.

Corporate welfare has to stop. We are giving farming subsidies to very large companies such as Dole. They are a very successful and don't need government handouts. If we still need to help out the small family farmer we can do that in a different way. We may find that this is no longer necessary, or if it is necessary it can be done on a much smaller scale than what we are currently doing. The tax system MUST be simplified so that companies like GE are not paying anything.


The people on the left must realize that we cannot keep up the spending we are doing at the current levels and the right must realize that taxes will need to be increased in order to deal with the debt. It really is that simple. If we keep pretending otherwise the problem will never be solved. I honestly believe that people would be willing to pay slightly more in taxes IF the money is being used to pay down the debt. The problem becomes that the government ends up wasting it. So the spending must be curtailed.


Sadly, the polls are showing that we, as a country, are still not ready to deal with this problem. People are unwilling to give up the entitlements such as medicare and social security. Bring up cuts to military pensions and many on the right go crazy, just ask Michele Bachmann. She had to remove that off her website due to the backlash she faced when she brought up that topic. People have become dependant upon them. Social security was originally set up to be voluntary, and we are forced into this system and the American public just goes along with it without putting any thought into the fact that this system is actually damaging our way of life in this country. The lock box became too much temptation for the federal government and they have spent the money in ways it was never intended to be spent. Which, in part, has led to the debt that we are currently facing in this country.


The price of oil will continue to go up as long as the dollar continues to stagnate. Too many people in government are refusing to deal with the fact that since commodities are traded in U.S. dollars, our debt and interest is in part causing the inflation we are seeing on the world market. Of course it isn't the only reason, but to ignore this component is being dishonest.


So, is it that Ben Stein was being a typical liberal or was he only stating the obvious? Like it or not, we are all in this together and virtually every last one of us has to give up something. Until we admit this to ourselves we cannot have a rational discussion on how to fix these very real and very damaging problems.

Ben Stein on Taxes

Bowing To Tehran - Ben Stein

Bowing to Tehran

By Ben Stein

There are words for national leaders who attempt to appease their enemies while at the same time shaming and humiliating their friends. One of the kindest of the words is "naive."

This comes to mind because of President Obama's recent overtures to the terrorist state of Iran, while shaming Israel.

In recent months and days, President Obama has, once again, reached out a supplicating hand to The Islamic Republic of Iran, only to be met by mockery, sarcasm, and rebuff. He has also agreed to only the most modest of sanctions against the Tehran regime to induce it to abandon its nuclear weapons program -- a program which Tehran's Ahmadinejad has said he will not abandon no matter what the rest of the world does.

These love notes go out to a nation that has brutally repressed its own people, is training our vicious Taliban enemies in Afghanistan, has long been aiding factions killing Americans in Iraq…the same nation that killed 244 American Marines and other fighting men in the Beirut bombing of 1983 and seized the U.S. Embassy and kept our Foreign Service personnel hostage there for over 400 days.

These roses are going out to a nation which has shown absolutely zero interest in making peace with the United States.

At the same time, Mr. Obama has done all he could to humiliate Benjamin Netanyahu, Premier of Israel, because Israel wants to build 1600 apartments for its citizens in Jerusalem. This is in Jerusalem, Israel's capital. Not a settlement. The capital of a sovereign state.

The humiliation included personal insults and slights to Mr. Netanyahu, who had flown to Washington to plead with Mr. Obama to understand why Israel is doing what it's doing. Just by the way, I do not see Ahmadinejad flying to D.C. to speak to Mr. Obama at all. In a nutshell, Barack Obama is more concerned about Jews building homes in Jerusalem than about Iran building a nuclear weapon. This is almost unbelievable.

I guess the idea is that if the U.S. treats Israel badly, the Moslems and Arabs will like the U.S. better. Why don't we tell that to the Russians, who were Israel's sworn foe and against whom the Moslems fought desperately in Afghanistan -- with our help. Is Israel the reason Sunnis and Shiites kill each other in Iraq by drilling holes into each other with electric drills? Does President Obama really believe that making Israel give up building on a few acres in Jerusalem will change the mood of a terrorist state pledged to annihilate all of Israel -- and to do whatever it can to bring down "the Great Satan…" The United States of America?

Western nations have tried bowing down to aggressive dictatorships before. It was called appeasement in the 1930s and it led to World War II. There is absolutely no sign it will work any better this time. Dictators do not respect weakness. Israel knows it. Mr. Obama doesn't, but let's hope he will learn.

The American Spectator

My Thoughts on Watching the Dems Stab the Constitution on the Congressional Floor - Ben Stein's Thoughts on ObamaCare

1. This is a "bill" that is clearly not really a Constitutionally allowable legislative entity, eligible for signature into law. For it to be that, it would need to be identically passed in both houses. It was not. It was passed as a corned beef hash of vague promises in the Senate. Then a vote was taken in the House to eventually pass the same bill but with a few changes and a further vague promise to reconcile both versions. This is not how the Constitution defines a bill en route to becoming a law. This is just a demand by President Obama to submit to his authority, which the Democrats meekly passed. This is not Constitutional.






2. The slovenly laziness of the Majority to not even read the vague bits of the bill floating around is further evidence of contempt for law and the Constitution.






3. This is not how the U.S. government is supposed to work. This is how a South American junta does its work with a puppet legislature and a supreme Caudillo above law. This is, tragically, Barack Obama's America. It took a mere 14 months to get us from the government of Jefferson to the government of Trujillo.






4. The supine cowardice of the mainstream media here is almost beyond imagining. To fail to even notice the attack on the Constitution going on here is stunning and discouraging in the extreme.






5. For those of us who still believe in the Constitution, I offer the words of the great civil rights anthem, "We shall overcome, " and "We are not afraid." In that spirit, we continue the fight for the return to Constitutional government. Loyal to the nation and the Constitution, but most certainly opposed to the subversion or either.






As Churchill said, "In war, resolution. In defeat, defiance." And this is a war for Constitutional government. A war of words, to be sure, but a war we must win.






6. One more thought. If Mr. Obama's goal really is to protect life and health, the surest way to do that would be a right to life amendment to the Constitution. May we expect that proposal from Mr. Obama soon?


By Ben Stein

Ben Stein, Political Correctness, and Christmas

I found this nugget on Conservative Lakota's blog.  A great letter.  Something to make you think. 

My confession:







I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees, Christmas trees. I don't feel threatened. I don't feel discriminated against. That's what they are, Christmas trees.






It doesn't bother me a bit when people say, 'Merry Christmas' to me. I don't think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn't bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu . If people want a creche, it's just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.






I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period.. I have no idea where the concept came from, that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution and I don't like it being shoved down my throat.






Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship celebrities and we aren't allowed to worship God as we understand Him? I guess that's a sign that I'm getting old, too. But there are a lot of us who are wondering where these celebrities came from and where the America we knew went to.






In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different: This is not intended to be a joke; it's not funny, it's intended to get you thinking.






Billy Graham 's daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her 'How could God let something like this happen?'regarding Hurricane Katrina .. Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said, 'I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives. And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?'






In light of recent events... terrorists attack, school shootings, etc. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O'Hare (she was murdered, her body found a few years ago) complained she didn't want prayer in our schools, and we said OK. Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school. The Bible says thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself. And we said OK.






Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn't spank our children when they misbehave, because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem ( Dr. Spock 's son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he's talking about. And we said okay.






Now we're asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don't know right from wrong, and why it doesn't bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.






Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with 'WE REAP WHAT WE SOW.'






Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world's going to hell. Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says. Funny how you can send 'jokes' through e-mail and they spread like wildfire, but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing. Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.






Pass it on if you think it has merit.






If not, then just discard it.... no one will know you did. But, if you discard this thought process, don't sit back and complain about what bad shape the world is in.














My Best Regards, Honestly and respectfully,






Ben Stein