As the image and the tweet make clear, Dino Rossi ran into Ben Stein at the Spokane airport last week, and got him to contribute some money.
Good for you, Dino. And I’m sure the support of one of Richard Nixon’s speechwriters will go a long way toward persuading both teabaggers and independents that you’re a different kind of Republican, rather than, you know, the run of the mill corporatist hack you generally come off as.
But apart from the rather desperate sounding plea for more money (“Anyone else? Anyone? Anyone!!!!?“), the tweet got me thinking: in addition to airports and money, what else do Rossi and Stein share?
For example, the Wall Street reform bill on which Rossi finally broke his monk-like, issue-related silence… where does Stein stand on that? Rossi opposes it, erroneously saying that would leave taxpayers on the hook for another financial bailout; he even calls on Murray to “stand up to big banks” and vote it down.
And Stein? Well it turns out that Wolf Blitzer recently asked him about the bill on CNN’s The Situation Room:
BLITZER: Do you like this bill, Ben?
STEIN: I like it pretty well but it doesn’t really — it isn’t really needed. This recession was caused largely by fraud on Wall Street. There are already antifraud laws all over the place. They’re just not being enforced. This law doesn’t end too big to fail. It just has an orderly process for it. You know what? Too big to fail is not a bad idea. Lehman Brothers was too big to fail. By letting it fail the former secretary of the treasury Henry Paulson created this recession. So I mean I don’t even — I don’t even see what the problem is with too big to fail frankly. I think we’re operating from a lot of false premises here. Too big to fail is not a bad idea.
BRAZILE: Ben, at least use their money to fail and not the taxpayers’ money to bail them out.
STEIN: Well, maybe sometimes you do need to use the taxpayers’ money to bail them out. If we had bailed out Lehman Brothers we wouldn’t have had this colossal recession. It would have cost 10, 15, $20 billion to bail them out. Instead we’ve lost trillions because of this recession. A stitch in time as they say saves nine. We should have saved Lehman Brothers. It was too big to fail. We let it fail anyway and we got a catastrophic recession that hurt the smallest and weakest among us.
So Rossi opposes Wall Street reform because he says it leaves taxpayers on the hook for another bailout — even though the bill includes a Patty Murray sponsored amendment that prohibits exactly that — at the same time he’s touting a contribution from Ben Stein, who likes the bill “pretty well,” but opposes it because “Too big to fail is not a bad idea… sometimes you do need to use the taxpayers’ money to bail them out.”
Uh-huh. So which candidate is it exactly who voters can best rely on to “stand up to big banks”…? It’s hard to imagine it’s a Ben Stein Republican like Dino Rossi.
“But apart from the rather desperate sounding plea for more money (”Anyone else? Anyone? Anyone!!!!?“)…”
I’m no fan of Dino’s, but this isn’t a plea for money. There used to be a game show (on Comedy Central) called “Win Ben Stein’s Money.” That’s what the “anyone” is in reference to – to see if anyone else remembers that.
Donation? Dino was probably just asking for spare change to use one of those luggage carts.
Ben is like all other Republicans, i.e, if something hurts me, then government action is needed to reverse it; if it hurts you and not me, then you’ll just have to learn to stand on your own two feet.
Stein lost a lot of money when Lehman went down.
With Stein, he’s too glib to convince and too stupidly self involved to succeed.
Perfect for being a Nixon speechwriter!!
Sorry, but isn’t “Anyone else? Anyone? Anyone!!!!?” a line by Ben Stein’s character in Ferris Bueller’s Day off?
Anyway, Ben Stein is a lot stupider than he plays on television or in the movies. Lehman Brothers, who failed into bankruptcy in Sepetember 2008, did NOT cause the current recession, which began in December 2007 (a claim he made twice). I know because I can, you know, count.
To be accurate this needs to be put in past tense. The Obama admin. has been enforcing the laws. They’ve also been looking at possible anti-trust violations by Big Ag, for which I thank them.
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Anyone, anyone…
Just an attempt to be funny by Dino. Like everything else he does, it fell flat for me.
There was a discussion this morning about how “liberals Republicans” like Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush wouldn’t have a chance in today’s Tea-Party dominated Republican Party. Ben Stein was also mentioned, as an “intellectual conservative”.
But such a rush to provide comparisons tends to ignore the fact that these older Republicans were pretty outragious, as well.
Ben Stein once argued that Bernstein (a high school classmate of Stein) and Woodward should have kept there mouths shut about Watergate, because – in his reasoning – Richard Nixon would have prevented the fall of Cambodia and Vietnam, and therefore the blood of a million or more victims of the “killing fields” is on their hands. A patently ridiculous statement, yet the type of statement he gets away with simply because he’s become “an entertainer” and he still looks reasonable only in comparison with the real fruitcakes in the Tea Party.
Should we ask Dino if he shares Stein’s view that Richard Nixon shouldn’t have been accountable for his obstruction of justice which took place during the Watergate scandel?
I will give him credit for suggesting that his tombstone include the phrase “Bueller… Bueller…”
Yep!!!
As a senator he might have to sit though an impeachment hearing or two.
I’m off to enjoy the rest of this sunny day!
Stein comes across as a B-flat medium neocon: All in favor of “corporate socialism” but let-’em-eat-cake otherwise. It’s also a point of dogma with that tribe that the US would have “won” the Vietnam war (whatever that meant) were it not for the “hippies” and the radical leftist mainstream press–and they’re dedicated to making sure America gets into as many wars now and in the future to prove we’re not a bunch of wimps. Of course, almost none of ’em ever served in uniform. Like the line from Patton…”Our blood. His guts.”
I would call Ben Stein awesomely clever, but not particularly smart.
Conservatives do have a few people that they can point to on their side with outstanding vocabularies, but little ability to attach their words to a solid idea.
Even WFB Jr’s definition of a conservative as one who stands athwart history and says ‘no further’ is a generality that extends only to members of their own money/class.
There were none standing athwart history during the industrial revolution in England when farmers were being thrown off the land in favor of sheep and small producers were being put out of business and into the poorhouse.
Nope — no standing athwart there. In fact, the athwart standers of the day were tagged with (as they are to this day) with the opprobrious term of ‘Luddite’.
Where are the conservative voices decrying the destruction of the Gulf of Texaco? Nope — no athwart standing there.
The standing athwart has only to do with any extra benefits for working people — because conservatives know that capital does not create wealth — work does. And capitalists get to keep wealth by denying the worker the full value of his/her labor.
Ben Stein has a good game show persona, and his character in Ferris Bueller was brilliant. His views are a bit strange and emotional.
I seem to remember him defending/apologizing for Rumsfeld to the bitter end, on the basis that Rumsfeld is such a nice guy and was just doing his best for the country.
Not the best endorsement for a candidate.
rossi is a lot like bueller, no?
Ben Stein is also the lead actor, and one of the two writers, in the repugnant anti-empirical, anti-science, anti-evolution movie-screed Expelled.
When Stein suggests, in that deadpan, that Darwin’s ideas are to blame for the Holocaust, the phrase “banality of evil” might apply. That is, if Hannah Arendt hadn’t already put it to (even) better use in describing Adolf Eichmann.
Goldy–
ObaMao and the Democrats are doing so poorly based on their policy ACTIONS, that all you have to resort to is this nonsense. It isn’t working Goldy–
Thursday, July 15, 2010
With the Private Sector economy so incredibly poor, National Debt Skyrocketing and Unions plundering the National Treasury, it sucks to be a Democrat.
re 13: “Deficit spending doesn’t matter.” ‘Dick’ Cheney
You are both liars.
No, Bueller was funny and played by a liberal.
Keep in mind that Ben Stein, an economist, made incredibly bad predictions about the economy back in 2007:
Who’s the alternative to Patty Murray?… “Whose Shoes Will You Choose?”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0QOt7u-cHM
PAUL AKERS.
Oh the political rhetoric – how about electing an innovator, job creator, small business man, father, husband, an enlightened man who empowers his employees.
He is not a politician by any means. What a breath of fresh air. His name:
PAUL AKERS.
Visit his web site at http://www.akersforussenate.com. If you like what you see, host a meet and greet in your neighborhood and he will come and speak and have a question and answer period. Democrats and Republicans alike are supporting him. He doesn’t look at parties to divide us, rather he treats each person as having something valuable to say. He empowers people. He is full of common sense to ensure that we work together to get results.
Polls show that he is closing the gap – again, check out his website at http://www.akersforussenate.com.