Ben Stein's Diary
Stein, Benjamin J.
beN sTeIN’s dIary Heroes and Traitors by Benjamin J. Stein frIday T his is what it’s all about. I am here at the national convention of the Congressional Medal of Honor...
...Then they ultimately created derivatives around them that created a financial Doomsday Device, to paraphrase Buffett...
...Wall Street is just a bunch of big talkers and guys who think they’re tough...
...His name is Tibor Rubin...
...And Henry Paulson just sat there sucking his thumb and asking for even less regulation and Chris Cox did the same over at the SEC...
...I brought my pal Jane, whose mother survived five years in Auschwitz and lost her whole family to Hitler except for one sister, and her daughter Lizzie, a sweet child, to the event so Lizzie could see the men who allow her to live in a free country...
...I am here at the national convention of the Congressional Medal of Honor Society...
...You cannot imagine how hard I have worked for my savings and now because of major incompetence on Wall Street, major incompetence in the government, and (what I am sure is) a conspiracy to wreck the financial system, I am losing a huge chunk of my savings...
...There is no way to honor that man, his wife, his children, enough...
...Never in peacetime has so much damage been done to so many by so few...
...Phil DeMuth called to tell me the stock market was down 700 points and I felt sick...
...I told him I was blessed to be on the same planet as he was...
...These men and women, these families, are what it’s all about...
...The brave ones didn’t make it back...
...He thought they would be latent for a while and now they are blowing up the whole world...
...I went back to working at the meatpacking plant,” he answered with some surprise...
...It won’t be inflationary because it simply replaces one set of bank assets with another...
...He survived the war, just barely, and was liberated by American forces...
...with my wifey by my side...
...McCain and Sen...
...We did save...
...Just call 800-524-3469...
...The system has been hollowed out by thieves and gangsters in pinstripe suits...
...I think the wet work, as we spy novel readers call it, was done by cunning traders in New York and London...
...I could just see them crawling a few yards away and I just kept shooting...
...God gave them to us...
...I am wildly impressed...
...Everyone told us to save...
...Wall Street can be beaten down only by a man who is utterly unafraid of bullies...
...He used his survival skills from Mauthausen to scour for food and save many of the Americans from starvation...
...Cunning men sold them to the public...
...66 THe amerIcaN sPecTaTor November 2008...
...Then he was awarded the medal posthumously...
...The Marine colonel who gave us our awards kept saying how the men in the room had killed more “Commenists” than John Wayne and had ended “World Commenism...
...Then I dug myself out and just started firing away at the guys crawling towards us...
...His mangled self had been found 300 feet from his truck...
...NOTHING WORKED except having it in Treasury bonds or guaranteed CDs...
...Or something like it...
...Anyway, I gave my speech, took a nap, and headed home to D.C...
...So I went and it was a great ceremony and I shook the president’s hand, and then it was over...
...It was given to him by President George W. Bush...
...If not, there should be...
...Why was the market down so much...
...Obama on the radio...
...I started out in a hotel room in Philadelphia...
...Why did they do that...
...Humble...
...He is a fabulous guy and super polite...
...I wonder if there is a crime based on economic treason...
...But my wife was nearby—just November 2008 THe amerIcaN sPecTaTor 65 beN sTeIN’s dIary a few feet away—so I felt a lot better than I otherwise would...
...That’s what made all of the difference in this world...
...So I go to somebody’s office and take the call, and it’s someone at the White House saying President Nixon wants me at the White House the next month to give me the Medal of Honor...
...MichaelDeasOurRonOurRon buddies...
...I sat between Clint and a super woman whose husband had been awarded the medal posthumously for his heroism in fighting from a helicopter behind Communist lines in Laos...
...moNday A horrible, awful day...
...I just stayed around to fight five minutes longer than the other guys...
...But he was trying to be brave and was quite friendly...
...We citizens didn’t do anything wrong and we got looted fantastically...
...Just, “I did what anyone else would have done...
...We did...
...Because Americans are disgusted with Wall Street sucking money out of us like giant ticks, growing fat and bloated with our blood...
...ben stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer in Beverly Hills and Malibu...
...My favorite was a guy who was working in a meatpacking plant in Illinois and was in the Illinois National Guard...
...Mostly from small towns, which I love a lot...
...It is almost unbelievable the damage the finance people have done...
...That they go off and do acts of courage we can only dream of and we stay at home and worship money and show biz fame...
...After years in a displaced persons camp, he came to America...
...There were about a thousand men and women at the event...
...Then, he was asked beNJamIN J. sTeIN to accept the Congressional Medal of Honor...
...He was a butcher, then joined the Army and fought with astounding courage in Korea...
...Then, after I awakened in Philly, I went down to speak to a group of insurance people...
...He was deeply impressed by the “G.I...
...This is not an accident...
...What did you do after that...
...He single-handedly held off large assaults and saved many of his comrades...
...It is really, really sad...
...It was discovered that he was from Hungary...
...Really bad...
...And next thing I knew, it was a couple of years later, and my foreman comes over to me and says there’s a call for me from the White House...
...Treason...
...That’s John McCain...
...The North Koreans offered to send him home, a “free man”toCommunistHungary.Herefusedandstayed with his fellow prisoners...
...I was buried by the explosion of the first mortar round,” he said...
...No bragging at all...
...You cannot imagine how hard I have worked for my savings and now because of major incompetence on Wall Street, major incompetence in the government, and (what I am sure is) a conspiracy to wreck the financial system, I am losing a huge chunk of my savings...
...I asked...
...The other primary honorees are Bob Dole, my neighbor at the Watergate, and Clint Eastwood, and my dream girl, Laura Bush...
...I was invited here to Denver to speak to these nice people because I write and speak so often about how much we owe the military...
...There was a long cocktail hour where I spoke to many Medal of Honor recipients...
...Modest...
...Cunning men created these faulty mortgage bonds...
...He lost one whole leg and part of another and has serious brain injuries...
...We don’t want to give them still more money, especially under the supervision of Paulson, who never remotely did a thing to save us from the unfolding catastrophe and is only in it to help out his ultra-rich Wall Street This holiday season, give the gift of The American Spectator and receive an exclusive Ronald Reagan print, free...
...It is a stinky bailout, but it has to be passed anyway...
...The Nazis put him in Mauthausen and his family in Auschwitz...
...That they go off to fight and die and lose their limbs for us, and we pay almost zero attention to them...
...We diversified...
...But it might as well have been done by the Taliban or by al Qaeda...
...NONE...
...What else would I do...
...This is what all of these guys were like...
...Not quite, but wow, these are supermen...
...The brave ones’ bodies were never found...
...After one horrifying fight, he was captured and put in a North Korean prison...
...I was in the hospital a few months and then I went back to working at the meatpacking plant...
...Congress must make laws to annul these derivatives, which are basically economic treason...
...McCain is a doer who really is tough...
...I met so many brave men and women I felt good about America...
...I told the men and women what was on my mind...
...64 THe amerIcaN sPecTaTor November 2008 “Amazing,” I said...
...To tell the truth, it was one of the most dreary hotel rooms I have ever been in...
...I was especially moved by a soldier—23 years old—who had been blown 150 feet into the air when the Taliban bombed his armored truck in Afghanistan...
...Down to earth...
...beN sTeIN’s dIary Heroes and Traitors by Benjamin J. Stein frIday T his is what it’s all about...
...He was sent to Vietnam to guard an airstrip...
...Because the House of Representatives voted down the big bailout package for the banks...
...I met an astounding man whom I had read about...
...Just my view...
...frIday I am listening to the debate between Sen...
...They were incredibly cheerful, upbeat, and intelligent...
...I didn’t do anything special,” he said...
...That kind of thing...
...They told us to save most in the stock market...
...Wow...
...Back to the financial crisis...
...Well, probably they hate me because I want the rich to pay more taxes...
...The MC of the evening was Wayne Newton...
...Like a cheap hotel room from a film noir movie...
...I don’t want to numb your mind...
...I got wounded four or five times and I just kept shooting and their bodies piled up and all of my men were wounded and I figured I was dead anyway so I had betterkeepshooting.AndIdid,andafterafewhours, there just weren’t any more Viet Cong, and a helicopter came and took me away...
...But I think it was all a huge conspiracy...
...I think it’s because my parents grew up in small towns and Silver Spring, when I grew up there, was small and all-American...
...More cunning men sold them short...
...That they go off to fight for us and while they are gone, thugs and tricksters rob this country blind...
...He was a Hungarian Jew...
...Paid the most in history by the citizens to do the most harm in history to the citizens...
...I was watching it on TV but I found the facial expressions of the men distracting.Ontheradio,McCainisfar,farbetterthan Obama...
...The brave ones are buried...
...He had died in 1969, I believe, and it had taken 30 years to find his remains...
...This was human misconduct on a titanic scale, mostly having to do with credit default swaps, terrifying financial instruments that are, as Warren Buffett called them, “weapons of financial mass destruction...
...Clint was extremely pleasant and self-effacing, and still startlingly handsome at 78...
...But why doesn’t he make the obvious point thatnoonehastocutspendingtopayfortheimmense Wall Street bailout...
...Come to think of it, why has the McCain campaign never once contacted me about this subject I know so well...
...The moderator, Jim Lehrer, was trying to trick them, I guess...
...Maybe Lehrer didn’t know himself...
...Joes” he met and wanted to be one...
...That while they are getting shot, other human beings are looting America...
...It is always inspiring and this time was no exception...
...Because of anti-Semitism by his superior officers, Tibor Rubin was not recommended for any commendations at all until 1996...
...I went to sleep in a deep haze of gratitude...
...Anyway, this whole financial crisis plays to McCain’s strengths, if he would only realize it...
...I get along really well with small-town people...
...Jane, whose father lost his entire family to the Nazis, was deeply moved throughout the evening...
...Why doesn’t the McCain campaign make that point...
...This is a group that honors the men and one woman who have been awarded (never say “won”) the Congressional Medal of Honor...
...Obama is a great guy but has never taken on the special interests the way McCain has...
...One night he and his buddies were idling away the time when the Viet Cong attacked with mortars, grenades, and assault rifles...
...I grasped his hand (he was in a wheelchair) and kissed it...
...Mutual Insurance people...
...I am terrified about the stock market, but deeply, deeply, deeply grateful to these fine men...
...One man summed up his feelings...
...I also was in a pretty good mood because two days ago, I spent the afternoon at Walter Reed visiting sick and wounded soldiers...
Vol. 41 • November 2008 • No. 9
