Ben Stein rejects conservatives' Obama socialism charges
February 27, 2009 9:40 pm ET
Previously:
- County Fair: At CPAC, Gingrich says Obama's address to Congress was "the boldest effort to create a European Socialist model we have seen"
- County Fair: Fox & Friends asks: "Are we headed towards Socialism?"
- County Fair: Special Report takes a "fair and balanced look" at whether the recovery plan is "socialism"
The other right-wing media mogul you should worry about
Palin's book and Obama's bow: a media week to forget
Media Matters: The Palin chronicles
Ben Stein agrees with those on the left who say that Bush was asleep at the wheel while this economic crisis gained steam. He even says that Paulson is so culpable he might even be criminally liable!
It seems like, in too many ways, the Bush Administration purposely let the nation crumble in order to hurt the Democratic adminstration they knew were going to win in 2008.
I don't believe in MIHOP or even LIHOP when it comes to 9-11. But when it comes to the economy, or letting Afghanistan stagnate or ruining our ability to actually prosecute terrorists, I do believe that they tried to screw us.
Yeah, he's not as nuts as most, but he's still a wacko. Fortunately, UVM gassed him as their commencement speaker this May.
Times are tough enough without his lunacy.
More stunning than the comments of clocktower are that there are people like him that actually believe that all this happened within 30 days. i.e. the housing markey crumbling - it was FINE 31 days ago, right?
The reality is that this has been known for years, it's all been watched as it came on and the fiscally conservative republicans let it happen while they profited like mad before the bubble burst.
I had someone mention the DOW to me the other day, just aghast at how it's plunging. This is an educated man who understands that when it was going up it was because companies were profitable and paying dividends - dividends that came from outsourcing american jobs and industries to the point that there's no work left here for americans to do.
The Dow is not the end all in how we are doing as an economy. The fortune 500 could lay off half their workers and show higher profits and pay dividens - their stock would be in demand and the Dow would rise, yet our economy would be in worse shape. Likewise when it goes up, that doesn't mean that the people are prospering.
All the Dow means is those 500 companies aren't paying dividends and I'm NOT saying that the economy isn't in bad shape, simply that the shrieking about the Dow plummeting is just so much false noise that has a very limited meaning.
You do realize that the great socialist Ronald Reagan was the one who first nationalized a large banking corporation, right? The Continental Illinois Bank and Trust was nationalized in 1984. The FDIC took it over and spent nearly six years running the bank and selling it off in pieces. It worked rather well. Just as it was always meant to work.
Federal control of banks has existed since the FDIC was invented - some would even say it goes back as far as Alexander Hamilton. If you are unaware of this, I would suggest maybe you take a laptop up in the clocktower with you and perhaps get a historical perspective before you make a fool of yourself with your boogieman name-calling. No one is afraid of the word socialist anymore. It did not work when your ilk tried it against FDR and it is not working now.
Bueller? .....Bueller???
Hey, somebody had to do it!
Now I am completely and utterly dumb-struck: within a week's time David Brooks and now Ben Stein are repudiating the GOP's positions.
On one hand it is reassuring and on the other I have to scratch my head.
Didn't MMFA highlight a Glenn Beck interview with Ben Stein a few weeks before the election where they made all manner of untrue suggestions about Barack Obama? Now he seems content to own up to the party's failure. Go figure.