Free Republic

Bill O’Reilly spoke to economist Ben Stein about a potential Mitt Romney presidency, as well as what Stein thinks of President Barack Obama. Going beyond wanting Romney to win, Stein said Obama isn’t particularly smart. Smarter than “the average bear,” but not of the likes of President Richard Nixon. Stein began by speaking about he riots in Greece, warning those who think it can’t happen in America. Young people without jobs who are angry, and have nothing better to do, may riot, he said. It’s “fun for them. They can be provoked into doing it at a drop of a...

Ben Stein claims he's a victim of political discrimination. The conservative pundit and actor -- and former Nixon speechwriter -- alleges that his position on climate change had him kicked off a $300,000 acting gig, only to be replaced by a lookalike. Stein filed a discrimination suit against Japanese company Kyocera Corporation and New York ad agency Seiter & Miller Advertising, in Los Angeles Superior Court on Wednesday. He is claiming breach of contract, wrongful discharge and emotional distress, among other charges.

Author, lawyer and former game show host Ben Stein says politics are getting a little too personal, and believes candidates should not be judged by their "gossipy love life." Appearing on CBS' "The Early Show," Stein said the coverage of GOP president contender Herman Cain and allegations of extramarital affairs was getting to be too much.

"They're not doing anything right," Stein says in a way that somehow combines flat affect and high impact. "They don't accomplish anything specifically useful." So what would Ben Stein do? He'd do what he's done in the past. Stein used to write 7,000 word in-depth exposes on corporate fraud. "They were a lot of work but they eventually got some people prosecuted," Stein says. "They got some money recovered for stockholders." Stein offers that if the OWS crowd wants to do something helpful they should do the research necessary to direct and inform their discontent. Beyond method and means, Stein...

I have been reading about fiscal policy under Ronald Reagan in my father's splendid book, Presidential Economics. What I have learned or re-learned is that Reagan was confronted with a giant problem in his 1980 campaign. The problem was budget deficits from the Johnson/Nixon/Ford/Carter years along with high inflation and a stubbornly high unemployment rate. The conventional economic advice called for raising taxes or monetary restraint to lower the inflation. But the problem there was that those measures would almost surely also generate higher unemployment. Along came what my father calls "the economics of joy," which was supply-side economics. This...

Ben Stein, an economist, actor, and conservative writer, said taxes should be raised on millionaires and billionaires to help reduce the federal deficit. “I am in favor of greatly raising the taxes on very wealthy people, millionaires and billionaires. I wouldn't raise the taxes on people making $250,000 a year,” said Stein in a June 29 interview on The O’Reilly Factor, guest-hosted by Laura Ingraham. Earlier, on June 25, Stein had told Cavuto on Business, “We've got to raise taxes. There's just no way around it. The deficit situation is so serious that while I wish we did not have...

Ben Stein was on with Laura Ingraham, who was filling in for BOR. He was on there advocating massive tax increases on the wealthy. He claimed that the greatest economic growth in our nation's history occurred when taxes on the wealthy were highest. I always thought he was a smart guy, but I guess I was wrong. Did he sleep through the 80s?

Now for a few humble thoughts about Dominique Strauss-Kahn and his recent brush with law and journalism, bearing in mind that it's possible indeed, maybe even likely, that he is guilty as the prosecutors charge: 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...

Maybe I missed something, but wasn't that The Constitution of the United States of America that we just laid to rest this weekend? It was buried in a private ceremony by Mr. Barack Obama of Chicago as he silently signed America on to the One World Government some of us have been worried about for decades.Look at it this way: Where did Mr. Obama get the authority to commit United States forces to war in Libya? There was no declaration of war. There was no authorizing resolution by Congress allowing money to be spent on a war against Col. Gaddafi....

Promises, Promises By Ben Stein on 1.28.11 @ 6:10AM A few more humble notes for Mr. Obama about where we are today…. During the run up to the recent Congressional elections, I was on Larry King Live with a super smart man whose name I have forgotten. Larry asked a smart question. The question was, "Is Barack Obama a better campaigner than a President?" One of the men on the panel said, "Of course he is. When he is campaigning, all he has to do is promise things. When he's President, he actually has to do things."

On the web site About.com, a reformed Rabbi answers a question regarding what the "right" thing to do is when wished "Merry Christmas."

...In unbelievably difficult service in the Korean War, his unit was swamped, cut off, overwhelmed by hordes of Red Chinese crossing into Korea. In the worst cold weather imaginable, under fire, starving, acting Sergeant Charles Rangel, in a black unit led mostly by white officers, took a large group of men, led them by example, lifted their morale, as they fought their way out to safety. Men were being shot, freezing, getting captured all around him, yet he got most of his men out...

(CNN) - As Election Day gets closer, the rhetoric gets more intense, interesting and, shall we say, passionate. Here are some things you might have missed. Miller? Miller? Miller? Ben Stein - famous for his role in the '80s movie classic "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and his political/economic commentary - took to the pages of the Alaska Dispatch to blast Tea Party-backed Republican Senate candidate Joe Miller, calling him a "dangerous, stupid clown."

Tuesday Wow, am I tired. I just got back from my very busy working trip and here I am back in L.A. heading over to CNN to be on Larry King Live. The show is about the primaries. The other guests are Ari Fleischer, former press secretary for GWB, Alicia Menendez, a very pretty young woman in D.C. from some leftist think tank, and my old pal Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Congresswoman from the Democrats, a tough, aggressive fellow Semite from Florida. She is really, really tough. Really. No, not really at all. I like her a lot. I wish...

In short, Stein says No Way, No How and I believe him. I think he’s one of the sharpest minds in America today. (Therefore his movie, “Expelled,” has been effectively banned from public schools and dismissed unseen throughout academia!) Briefly, Stein observed that of the unemployed he knows, many have poor work habits and difficult personalities. At the moment I’m unemployed, and I’d have to concede that shoe fits me pretty well. But I’m unemployed more by choice than bad luck. Most of us are if you really dig–we’re not willing to take ANY job. I know how to get...

I am sixty-five now. I have lived through many recessions. The first one I remember clearly was in 1958 and the worst one, by far, until now, was the one in the late 1970s stretching into the early 1980s, when we had double-digit inflation and double-digit unemployment simultaneously. That should have been impossible, but thanks to union Cost of Living Adjustment contracts and skyrocketing oil prices, it was indeed possible. But the current recession, which really started with some very tense days in late 2007 and began in deadly earnest when Hank Paulson, possibly the most incompetent Treasury Secretary of...

It is time for Mr. Steele to go.

Ben Stein on why the GOP Opposes HC Refrom, Stein: "Why are so many Republicans against more government interference in the health care system and so many Democrats in favor of it? I think the answer is the a much higher percentage of Republicans are taxpayers than Democrats, and the Republicans are the people who are gonna be paying for it and the Democrats are gonna be the people receiving it" (Video)

Here is video of Ben Stein on MSNBC today calling for President Obama to "take a holiday from bashing Business - take a Holiday from bashing the Insurance Companies, the Oil Companies, the Banks, and just get on quietly with the job of governance of this country. It's a big enough job without alienating the Business sector." Stein said he too is "furiously angry at the banks," but he said they are "an incredibly important part of the recovery." He said once there is a real recovery underway, there would be plenty of time to deal with the banks. ....

These men were journalists trying to get a story. They didn't even touch a phone as far as I can learn. They were undercover reporters and TV operators. But that doesn't matter. Their real crime was disturbing the peace and quiet of the nation's liberal establishment and embarrassing ACORN. For this, these young overeager guerrilla journalists are charged with a federal crime. ("First Amendment? What's that?") Meanwhile, no charges against those thugs with the clubs at the polling place. Does this give you the feeling that maybe the prison orange for Mr. O'Keefe and his pals is a mark of...

In the entire history of jurisprudence of the United States of America, there are no cases that I know of more shameful than the prosecutions of several groups of day care operators on totally false, trumped up charges of child abuse. In the Fells Acres case in Massachusetts and the McMartin Pre-School case near Los Angeles and in some other cases in the 1980s, wildly, insanely fabricated charges were made against totally innocent men and women running child care centers. These charges involved such mental illness artifacts as that teachers at the schools put meat cleavers in the rectums of...

Here is video of Ron Paul and Ben Stein on "Larry King Live" getting into a heated argument over Ron Paul saying terrorist are motivated to hate us because we are "occupiers." (Video)When Ben Stein said that we should help the government of Yemen by stopping terrorists and murders, Ron Paul said "why are they terrorist? They're terrorists because we're occupiers." Ben Stein then called Ron Paul's claim that we are "occupiers" as "the same anti-Semitic argument that we've heard over and over again."

Thank you Ben Stein!!! This movie is a MUST SEE!

Here is video of Ben Stein last night on Larry King Live where he said Conservative Doug Hoffman lost the New York 23 Congressional Race because the Republican candidate "actively sabotaged" him, and was "shockingly disloyal" in endorsing the Democrat, Bill Owens. Stein was talking about liberal Republican Dede Scozzafava, who was anointed by GOP Party insiders as the candidate, but who eventually withdrew from the race after a revolt by conservatives who refused to support her liberal policies. Stein said Democrats should not be excited about winning a race where Republicans had such a "disloyal" candidate. . . (VIDEO)

I Only hope we find GOD again before it is too late ! ! The following was written by Ben Stein and recited by him on CBS Sunday Morning Commentary. 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...

Why is President Barack Obama in such a hurry to get his socialized medicine bill passed? Because he and his cunning circle realize some basic truths: The American people in their unimaginable kindness and trust voted for a pig in a poke in 2008. They wanted so much to believe Barack Obama was somehow better and different from other ultra-leftists that they simply took him on faith. They ignored his anti-white writings in his books. They ignored his quiet acceptance of hysterical anti-American diatribes by his minister, Jeremiah Wright. They ignored his refusal to explain years at a time of...

Appearing on CBS’s Sunday Morning, commentator Ben Stein ripped into CNN political analyst James Carville for claiming anti-Obama protestors were "classless": "the elitist anger of the liberal Democrats is boiling over as some ordinary citizens show they don’t like being pushed around....Contempt for the ordinary citizen is just not American and it does not win elections." Earlier in his commentary, Stein wondered: "I thought the Democrats were the party of the little guys and those who aren’t classy or well born...So now the Democrats are admitting they’re the party of the rich?" He went on to point out that Democrats...

Dear Mr. President: As a 64-year-old, lifelong fiscal conservative and Republican since Nixon, may I humbly thank you? In the eight months or so since you took office, you have succeeded in reviving a party, the GOP, that many had left for dead. 1) You have named men to office so wildly irresponsible, so extreme in their positions, so vulgar in their means of expression, that they have made the Republican Party regain its of gleam of gentility and good graces. I am not talking only about the tough guy/ballet dancer Rahm Emanuel, who screamed like a jilted drunken sorority...

Why is President Barack Obama in such a hurry to get his socialized medicine bill passed? Because he and his cunning circle realize some basic truths: The American people in their unimaginable kindness and trust voted for a pig in a poke in 2008. They wanted so much to believe Barack Obama was somehow better and different from other ultra-leftists that they simply took him on faith. They ignored his anti-white writings in his books. They ignored his quiet acceptance of hysterical anti-American diatribes by his minister, Jeremiah Wright. They ignored his refusal to explain years at a time of...

My sister nailed it many years ago when she said, "Your basic human is not such a hot item." Keep that filed in your head as I tell my little tale. About five or six years ago, roughly, I was solicited to write a column every two weeks for the Sunday New York Times Business Section. I was really thrilled. I have written for the Washington Post (when I was a teenager), for the Wall Street Journal edit page under the legendary Bob Bartley, for Barron's, under the really great Alan Abelson and Jim Meagher, for my beloved American Spectator,...

NEW YORK – Monotone TV personality Ben Stein has been stripped of his Sunday New York Times business column because of his work as a pitchman for a credit monitoring company. New York Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis released a statement Friday that said the newspaper decided it would not be appropriate for Stein to pitch for FreeScore.com while writing his column.

MON - FRI 6:00-7:00 Greenland 5:00-6:00 (EST) 4:00-5:00 CST 3:00-4:00 MST 2:00-3:00 PST 1:00-2:00 AKDT 11:00-Noon Hawaii Watch from your office or cubicle COMRADE PING! ANYONE WHO WANTS TO BE ADDED TO THE GLENN BECK PING LIST, PLEASE CONTACT rockabyebaby.

How far has Ben Stein sunk? Far enough that I feel compelled to resuscitate the Ben Stein Watch, just to share this unfunny and positively harmful TV ad which is now being aired: "I went to freescore.com and found out my score for free", says Ben, while an annoying squirrel holds up a sign with the word "FREE" in some horrible brush-script font. A few points are worth noting here. First, the score itself is not very useful to consumers. What's useful is the report — if there's an error on the report, then the consumer can try to rectify...

... What is President Obama doing about [the recession]? Perhaps too much. And, possibly, his efforts are too diffuse. When I think about the economy I think about a plump man who has just been hit by a truck while crossing a street and is in severely critical condition with internal bleeding. Instead of just stabilizing his hemorrhaging, the doctor decides that while the patient is unconscious, he might as well also do a face lift, some coronary bypasses and a stomach-stapling to keep him from gaining weight while he is recovering (if he does recover). After all, a crisis...

Here is some good news and some bad news. I'll give you the bad news first. I was on a panel of smart, pleasant men and women last week, discussing the economy and, in particular, how it is affecting people selling vehicles with tires and wheels. I told the audience that the Federal Reserve, which has unlimited power to print money, had a program called the Term Asset Backed Lending Facility (TALF) that would help dealers restock their showrooms. I said I knew it hadn't started yet but I thought it would start soon. A gentleman on the panel --...

No Tolerance Allowed: Stein declines university speech after 'hundreds' of angry emails by Christine Dao* Comedian/economist/lawyer Ben Stein backed out of delivering a spring 2009 commencement speech because of complaints to the university about his views on evolution. The University of Vermont’s president, Daniel Mark Fogel, was bombarded with angry messages, including one from British atheist and Darwin fanatic Richard Dawkins, after inviting Stein to deliver the university’s commencement speech. Stein had given a sold-out economics lecture at UVM on April 25, 2008, and it was for his economics expertise, not his views on evolution, that Fogel invited Stein back....

BURLINGTON, Vt. — Comedian Ben Stein has withdrawn as the University of Vermont's commencement speaker because of complaints about his critical views on evolution in favor of intelligent design. UVM President Daniel Fogel said he chose Stein based on the warm response to a lecture he gave on campus last spring. Fogel said, however, he was deluged with e-mail messages from people offended by Stein's views of science. When told about the criticism, Stein — who was to be paid $7,500 — backed out of the May 17 commencement, Fogel said. "I did not ask him not to come," he...

After hundreds of Darwinists protested, the University of Vermont withdrew an invitation they had made for Ben Stein to speak at their commencement, proving once again that Darwinists want no part of a debate between religious Darwinism, as taught in most universities, and actual scientific inquiry, as represented by Intelligent Design.

3 February 2009 Judge Jones gets multiple honorary degrees, Ben Stein has his withdrawn William Dembski Judge Jones, whose distinction prior to the Dover case was running the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board, now has multiple honorary doctorates for rendering his decision, which he cribbed from the ACLU’s Proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law. Ben Stein, who is an acclaimed actor, author, and economist, on the other hand, has just been denied an honorary doctorate at the University of Vermont: “This is not, to my mind, an issue about academic freedom or the openness of the campus to all...

Deep in Debt, and Now Deep in Worry By BEN STEIN NOT long ago, a woman in California called me for advice. She is divorced, with two children, and has a series of interlocking financial problems. She lives in a lovely home in a stylish inland enclave. It has an interest-only mortgage of about $2.2 million that requires a payment of $12,000 a month, very roughly. It was last appraised at $2.7 million, but who knows if it’s now worth anything remotely close to that price. The woman, whom I’ve known since she was a teenager, has no job or...

ABOUT two years ago, a little delegation from a major investment bank arrived at my home in Beverly Hills. These nice young people were from the bank’s “wealth management division.” I told them straight away that I didn’t have anywhere near enough wealth to make their trip worth their time, but they smilingly insisted that we could help each other. They told me that if I invested a certain sum with them, they would make sure that a large chunk of it was managed by a money manager of stupendous acumen. This genius, so they said, never lost money. He...

What's with Ben Stein, anyway? He's been acting a bit goofy for a while now, but what he said yesterday makes me wonder if he's lost it. Michael Medved had Stein on his show yesterday. Ben made several pronouncements: -- He supports the bailout. Moreover, he would bail out states if needed. -- He was vehemently opposed to the Sarah Palin pick for VP. I checked out a past YouTube video where he was quite vitriolic about it. -- He's for taxing the rich at a higher rate. OK. I already knew about this. But, WTFF??? No. I don't think...

A priceless scene appears in the movie, “Expelled”, when Ben Stein asks the leading proponent of Darwinism and atheism, Richard Dawkins, how life began. After sputtering for a few moments, Dawkins offers the thought that some advanced creature from outer space may have seeded life on earth, exposing the fact that Darwinists, who have an answer for everything, have no answer for this most basic question. Now that we know that every key relationship in the universe is based on six numbers (see note 1), that these relationships are crucial to life, and that there would be no life and...

I AM endlessly charmed by chatter about when this slowdown/recession will end. (snip) But this does not look like a typical recession. A typical recession is brought on by Federal Reserve tightening in the face of excessive demand and rising prices. The economy still functions normally, but purposeful credit tightening slows activity. When the Fed loosens up and money starts flowing, demand increases and growth returns. This, at least, is the pattern of the large recessions we have had since the Great Depression, which was a special case, as we shall see. Smaller recessions have been brought on simply by...

We are clearly in a serious slowdown. A slowdown this serious, fed by a credit shutdown, will not stop automatically or at least might not. This is way beyond a normal recession. At this point it might become self reinforcing and become like a Depression in which we reach what economists call a state of equilibrium far below full employment. This is what happened in the great depression and could happen this time. The main contributor to this unusual situation is a serious credit shortage, generated by fears fed by the collapse of Lehman and the problems at other lenders...

1) Have a fiscal policy that creates immense deficits in good times and bad, burdening America's posterity with staggering burdens of repaying the debt. *** 3) Have an energy policy that disallows producing our own energy and instead requires that we buy energy from abroad, thus making our oil prices highly volatile and creating large balance of payments deficits, lowering the value of the dollar and thus making the problem get progressively worse. 4) Have Congress mandate that banks and other financial entities lend money to persons they know in advance to have poor credit ratings or none at all....

From HC Forum today: Today, 06:37 AM Vinnster (Sept. 20, 2008) A Little Perspective With all the turmoil about the economy it helps to put things in perspective about just how lucky we are to be Americans in the greatest country on Earth and a place where, if you are willing to work you can fulfill your dreams. When I hear folks whining about how tough things are for them, yet they are holding a $3 cup of Starbucks, I just have to shake my head and think…you really are a spoiled brat that ought be down on your lazy...

Okay, here's my Republican Convention story. After I did my little tiny bit of reporting work from St. Paul's Xcel Center on Wednesday, I got into a taxi to head back to my hotel. Of course we got stuck in traffic. I asked my driver, a rugged looking fellow, where he was from and how he was enjoying the convention. It was as if I had uncorked a bottle of champagne. "Have you ever heard of Ogaden?" he asked me. "Yes, it's part of Ethiopia," I said. "Lots of fighting there." "It is a huge area. Seven million people. Government...

Bringing the intelligent design debate to high-def, Vivendi Visual has announced an October Blu-ray release for Ben Stein's controversial documentary 'Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.' Drawing lines in the intelligent design versus evolution debate (with Stein falling squarely on the side of the former), 'Expelled' was praised by religious leaders and condemned by scientists in equal measure. Released through the Vivendi Visual Entertainment label, the company has set a October 21 Blu-ray release for the incendiary doc, day-and-date with the standard DVD.

Just started watching Larry King for a lark. There are no larks on the show, but the harridan, Joy Behar, is hostessing. Her guests are three liberals and one supposed conservative, Ben Stein. First question: How did Obama do on his Tour of Iraq? The question goes to Ben Stein who falls all over himself praising Obama, gushing how wonderful and masterful he is, and ending up drooling over how Obama is the best he has ever seen in his lifetime. Naturally, the panel of libs agreed immediately and offered Stein free membership in the club. With conservatives like these...