JIMINY CARTER
EX-cellent choice of the very EX-President Carter.
All week I was suffering from EOW agent block, couldn’t come up
with anything even though I had seen it and read it. I am all too
willing to simply dismiss the man without giving him the
consideration he is surely due. Great job, So-o glad to have EOW
and everything else back.
— Roger Ross
Tomahawk, WI
I read this week’s Enemy Central column hoping and praying that you
would pick former President and Dolt-in-Chief Jimmy Carter as Enemy
of the Week for his idiotic comments regarding the “axis of evil.”
Thank you so much for answering that hope and prayer! I just wish
space had permitted you to quote more extensively from the AP
dispatch, on which you apparently based your fine selection.
This jackanapes called the turn of phrase not only “overly
simplistic” but also “counterproductive.” I actually believe that
Mr. Bush (who graces his high office nearly as much as Mr. Carter
disgraced his) intentionally employed his words to great effect. At
a stroke, he cleverly pushed these pariah regimes onto the
defensive; they’re scared and they’ve not stopped squawking since
the State of the Union.
At the same moment, he exposed the domestic and foreign critics
of his war against the terrorists and the states which harbor and
succor them. Left-liberals dare not declare their true opposition
to the war, indeed they publicly exclaim their full and faithful
support for the President’s efforts. But they search ceaselessly
for any opportunity to quibble, carp and cavil. And now one after
another has stumbled into Mr. Bush’s well-laid rhetorical trap:
Foreign Minister Vedrine, Foreign Secretary Straw, former Secretary
of State Albright, Majority Leader Daschle, all manner of clucking
commentators, now Mr. Carter.
According to the AP dispatch, Mr. Carter also blubbered that Mr.
Bush’s three words had seriously jeopardized progress made with
North Korea, Iran and Iraq in recent years, that it would take
years to undo the damage. In his speech at Emory, did he describe
the progress or damage, or did he just consider his conclusions
self-evident? The AP unfortunately does not say.
Then Mr. Carter drops a non-sequitur: the growing gap between
the rich and poor continues as the world’s greatest challenge
(there he gives us the peek behind the curtain: fighting terrorism
isn’t important and urgent, fighting world poverty is!). Yet those
dastardly terrorists falsely claim membership among the destitute.
“We are very concerned now about terrorism. Osama bin Laden is not
poor, he’s very rich — and the people who committed those horrible
acts on Sept. 11 were not poor.” I gather terrorists are evil not
because they murder thousands of innocent Americans but lie about
their income and assets. Wait, maybe terrorists kill because they
are rich. Who knows?
For all this unforgivable nonsense, Mr. Carter more than earned
his
designation as Enemy of the Week. Keep up the great work!
— Chip Halstead
Long Beach, CA
CRACKING THE HATE MAIL CASE
You are my favorite dot com, love everything you do. George
Drewyor has been a friend of mine for 30 years and I forwarded
one of your articles to him. See what happens when a bleeding heart
liberal reads the truth. Pleeeze keep up the great work. I pass on
your material to many friends.
— Bill Simons
LOVE IS ALL WE NEED
Just wanted to say I love this website! The articles and sarcasm
are
great and I am addicted. I log on and read the articles every
night.
Keep up the good work! Sincerely,
— Sandra Gentry
What a great surprise to find the American Prowler and the old gang
from the Spectator back in action….
— Evan Millard
Dickson, Tennessee
My mornings have gotten brighter since the arrival of
“Prowler.”
— Lee Rodgers
Talkshow Host
KSFO, San Francisco
HOW SWEDISH IT IS
Thank goodness the website is back!!! Re: last sentence in Jackie
Mason and Raoul Felder’s column
— I think Volvo is now owned by Ford. Best wishes and good luck to
“The American Prowler”!
— John Berrodin
Volvo’s owned by FORD!!
— John Rosengren
Not sure if last sentence about Volvo was facetious or not. Volvo
is at least partially owned by Ford and is sold as a Ford brand.
(Click here.) Love
the columns.
— Robert Paci
Cambridge, MA
Are you familiar with the fact that Volvo is now owned by Ford, as
Saab is by GM. After their recent consolidation, the largest
independent manufacture left is BMW.
— Joseph R. L. Simkins
Richardson, TX
GOVERNMENT CHEESE
Good article
by Ryan H. Sager. What if somebody took a portion of his welfare
money and put it in the collection plate of his church? Isn’t that
an even closer analogy? Surely the government couldn’t object to
that.
— Martin Andrucki
Bates College
WASHINGTON PROWLERS
Is Zogby being fair? Remember, Zogby’s
been showing up on talking head shows griping about profiling of
Middle Easterners. He’s been recounting some of his own
experiences. Looks like the aftermath of 9/11 has struck a nerve
and he can’t resist an opportunity to stick a thumb in the
administration’s eye.
— J. Lawrence
Your story about NPR and CPB was terrific! Please follow up,
keep an eye on ‘em!
As a (finally retired) radio DJ/PD/advertising
consultant/Manager/talk-show host who did-it-all (except
engineering) quite successfully — and having witnessed the
stupidity of their operation, wow! Your exposé may have been
a bit overdue, but we need more exposure on the cantankerous,
sanctimonious policymakers there. A sad joke.
Good work. More, please.
— Geoff Brandt
P.S. Wouldn’t it be terrific if they did try to go “independent”
(go “public” with an IPO) at NPR? It’d be fun. And I’d almost pay
to watch them flop.
TO BE ABSOLUTELY FRANK
Regarding Francis X. Rocca’s “Love Is All You
See”: If you want some great commentary on a DVD, rent “This Is
Spinal Tap.” There is commentary by the “band” itself, and their
dissection of this film is hilarious. In a nutshell, they hate the
film.
— Paul Strasser
Lafayette, CO
ADMIRAL SIR JOHN FISHER
Regarding R. Emmett Tyrrell’s “Stomping the
Barbarians”: Isn’t that what Hitler did in the Balkans during
WWII? Unfortunately for the local populace, it worked effectively,
and unfortunately, it worked.
— Duncan MacLachlan
HELLFIRE, NO BRIMSTONE
An excellent piece of work
by Jed Babbin.
We do not train our honorable warriors to do the dirty “wet
work” that our intelligence services should be doing. The ethics of
being a professional Soldier, Sailor, Airman or Marine preclude the
nastiness of assassinations and political intrigue, and rightly
so.
There is a revisionist trend to blame Jimmy Carter for the
decline of the CIA, but it was the abuses of the Nixon
administration, and the enthusiasm of the bureaucracies involved to
please the boss that caused the fang pulling. These excesses, if
left unchecked, would have been the end of our democracy, and the
secret police could easily be in charge. The CIA does need more
field hands, and a .22LR from a silencer is much cheaper than a
cruise missile. I think the current administration understands
this, and is acting accordingly.
Responsible leadership is the key. I can only hope that the
threat to America is taken seriously by the people of the USA to
make sure that responsible leadership becomes the norm.
— Lamar Johnson
Beaverton, OR
Jed Babbin replies: Responsible leadership is
the key now, as it almost always is. It really doesn’t matter
whether you blame Nixon or Carter: I blame Frank Church, whose
Senate Committee took the CIA apart. But you’re right that the
current administration seems to understand what needs to be done.
Ain’t it great to have grownups in charge again?
FOR THE LOVE OF MONEY
The problem Ben
Stein doesn’t address is the tendency of the plaintiffs’ bar to
bring these cases even where there has been no wrongdoing.
Defendants (typically, their insurers) almost invariably settle the
cases rather than risk having an inflamed, utterly confused jury
award huge damages. Everyone involved knows it’s a racket, and the
law was quite properly amended to raise the bar a little — but not
nearly enough; strike suits continue to abound, and are of no
benefit to society.
— unsigned
Note to my hero, Ben Stein: In your reasoned response to Patrick
R. Sullivan, who only tended to prove the old adage that “Figures
don’t lie, but liars sure figure,” I’d suggest that you might have
added a comment to the effect that the changes in litigation since
the passage of the PSLRA show how adept trial lawyers are at
adapting to changing ground rules in their relentless pursuit of
the buck.
Perhaps they could “Win [some of] Ben Stein’s Money”?
— Robert E. Johnson
Attorney at law, retired (and tired)
I’d like to ask Mr. Stein about where the mutual fund managers have
been during this debacle. One would think that managing trillion$
of the other people’s money and getting very well compensated for
it would motivate them to keep guard over questionable business
practices. After all, a collapsing pyramid will likely bury the
mutual fund industry along with the likes of Kenny Boy Lay and Gary
Winnick.
Then again, maybe this Fed-inspired bubble is the pinnacle of
man’s madness, the sort Humphrey Bogart portrayed in the “The
Treasure of the Sierra Madre.”
Extraordinary delusions for us all.
— Dan Leo
Miami Beach, FL
Ben Stein replies: The performance of mutual
fund managers in Enron and Global Crossing has been about as good
as their ability to spot the end of the tech bubble….
Mr. Stein makes the observation that “accountants are well-paid for
their efforts [in auditing] clients.” Actually, audits have become
commodities, and break-even may or may not be achieved on audit
assignments. Accounting firms, whether “Big 5” or otherwise, now
have to rely on finding additional work — “consulting” to make
profits.
It will be far more interesting to watch the dogfight over
banning “consulting” assignments (if the consultant has the same
tradename as the auditor) than almost any other show in
Washington.
It is also interesting to note that the AICPA, which was running
a big-time ad campaign and attempting to establish a “Global
Credential” to be self-awarded to CPA’s as some sort of swami/guru
know-it-all license, has NOT stepped up to the plate in any sort of
big forum and denounced the activity of Arthur Anderson.
Finally, methods recently invented by Arthur (and vaguely copied
by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, et al., to enhance “earnings” have to be
seriously examined by real-world credit analysts. “EVA” and
“EBITDA” are very hot — but what do they have with the ability to
pay off the debt??? Hmmm???
Great to see Ben back, in a forum fitting him to a “T,” and all
the
others, too!
— L.A. Stich
