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Ben Stein's Diary
Agony and Ecstasy
Dispatches from our hero’s private oasis. From Ben’s monthly print Diary.
(Page 2 of 3)
I really cannot get over that I can just open the fridge, take out a bag, get a fresh, delicious bagel, put it in a little shiny box and a minute later it comes out all toasty and brown. Then I can open the fridge again, get out perfectly fresh butter, apply it to the bagel, and enjoy it.
When I think of the work that the farmer has to do to get the wheat, that the utility has to do to get the electricity, that the coal company has to do to get the fuel to run the generators—it’s all a miracle.
This analysis does not even include where the steel comes from, where the eggs come from, where the tile on the counter comes from—or where I come from.
Then, there’s the real miracle: that at any moment, my big wifey will smell the bagel and come downstairs wanting one. Then, I get to spend part of the day with God’s greatest gift, big wifey, with her beautiful face, her smile, her perfect voice, and her charm.
Just the most modest breakfast is filled with miracles.
Lunch later in the day with “M,” a dear pal of many decades who recently lost his wife to natural causes at about age 63. He is permanently depressed and I can see why. He rarely told his wife how much he loved her and now hates himself for it. It is vitally important that you stop doing whatever you were doing just before you picked this up and go to or call up those close to you and tell them how much you love them. That is a matter of life or death.
I do almost everything else in my life wrong, but I do constantly tell the people in my life that I love them and how crucial they are to me.
I did get that little part right.
Now, I have to rest. I am VERY tired. If I do not wake up from this rest, please take my word for it that I love you, too, Spectator readers.
Sunday
Once again, here I am in my Garage
Mahal. I am happy because I have my dog, Julie Good Girl, next to
me. She does not like having her picture taken, but imagine a
white- and brown-spotted German Shorthaired Pointer of perfect
dimensions, and that’s Julie. I really cannot believe my blessings
at having this dog next to me, in a big, bright room, in peacetime,
with the temperature just right and the air just right in terms of
a small breeze, and my computer across the room.
It is PERFECT.
When I think of how the great masses of mankind have suffered and lived in extreme poverty and misery over man’s span on earth—and then I get to live like this—not in extreme luxury, not on a yacht, but better than that: next to my Julie Good Girl…. that is a blessing.
What shall I do today? I have to prepare for my trip east to the Richard Nixon Centenary Dinner at the Mayflower Hotel. That’s the day after tomorrow. I am looking forward to seeing Julie and David Eisenhower, Tricia and David Cox, Aram Bakshian, the DeMuth brothers, Wlady and Joanna. It will be swell.
I have to gather notes for a speech I plan to give to some GOP House members about the deficit. They won’t like what I have to say: We need a lot more taxes and we need fearless aggressiveness in cutting spending. But, as I say, as I have said a million times, we are racing toward default otherwise. We are soon going to have a $20 trillion national debt.
This doesn’t count the debt owed to ourselves for Social Security and Medicare. It counts in some ways the debt we owe to foreign nations because we run such an immense trade deficit. If you add in all of our debts, it’s a bleak picture indeed.
About the Author
Ben Stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Beverly Hills and Malibu. He writes “Ben Stein’s Diary” for every issue of The American Spectator.
EastTexasRancher| 2.28.13 @ 7:02AM
Dear Ben Stein,
I love your heart of gratitude. But there is a verse from Psalms you need to complete your life. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not unto your own understanding. Now, take a deep breath. Breathe in, breathe out, trust God.
B. Gunn
East Texas Rancher
Peppermint Tea | 2.28.13 @ 10:50AM
We TAS readers love you too, Ben.
Just not a much as the moochers you write a check to every month.
C Smith | 2.28.13 @ 10:54AM
Verses from Zechariah you need to complete your life:
After the time of Jacob's Trouble, (The Final Holocaust): "... saith the LORD, two parts therein shall be cut off and die; but the third shall be left therein.... And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried: they shall call on my name, and I will hear them: I will say, It is my people: and they shall say, The LORD is my God" (Zechariah 13:8-9).
"And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.
In that day shall there be a great mourning in Jerusalem, as the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon" (Zechariah 12:10-11).
http://theisraelofgod.blogspot.....aphat.html
TXRPLS| 3.1.13 @ 6:00AM
To: B. Gunn
Nice to know there is another christian in East Texas that reads Ben Stein.
W. Green
East Texas Surveyor
SCrouch| 3.1.13 @ 2:06PM
Even more than that...
S. C.
East Texas Engineer
Frank Drackman| 2.28.13 @ 7:13AM
Back when I had my own award winning blog I did a mean Larry King satire, you know the bit...
.....Why isn't tuna more popular?...
.....For my money nothing was funnier than Bob Hope in Black Face...
but Ben's onto something, and I'm not talkin about his affinity for Nordic Ice Princesses...
Just for fun, try to find the ratio of:
Blacks murdered by Whites/Whites murdered by Blacks.
Shouldn't be that hard right? $ 15 trillion deficit, Censuses that ask more personal questions than my Life Coach(AKA Mom)instead of just how many peoples live under my roof...
And to be fair, you can find the info, infact I know the answer, could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you, perhaps skewering the data...
And its a logial phallic-sy, because with E-ville White Peoples still being the majority(Barely) and Afro Americans 14% of the Population(seems like more) shouldn't the ratio be ummm roughly 3??
Except it's not, not even close...
Frank
Occam's Tool| 2.28.13 @ 7:37PM
Dear Ben, you bloody moron: an exercise in basic algebra.
Suppose that X = 3 Y.
Then, is .28 X equal to .70 y, greater than .70y, or less than .70 y. The answer is greater than .70 y. I mention this because .28 and .70 are the maximum tax rates in the Reagan and Carter administrations, and X and Y represent the DJI (as a proxy for the GNP) in those two administrations.
We need to GROW our way out of this mess, you demented baboon. The best way to deal with our mess is to start by approving drilling in ANWR and approving Keystone. Go from THERE.
Taxing productivity is a moron's game. See Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron."
What will work for poor Black families is very simple. Set up all aid given for children to be higher if the couple is married. See what happens. Simple intervention, complex good results. Complex intervention, simple (and bad results).
Frank: I think Ben refers to "Big" wifey in the same context that my wife is "She Who Must be Obeyed."
Frank Drackman| 2.28.13 @ 7:18AM
"Big" Wifey???
umm thats a joke right, like how morbidly obese people are called "Tiny", or how we called the blackest guy on my YMCA basketball team "Whitey"...
Frank
Bill8472| 2.28.13 @ 10:02AM
At least you didn't call him "Snowflake."
Marc Jeric| 2.28.13 @ 7:47AM
Ben Stein should apply his penmanship to this problem: We conservatives and Republicans are called names such as "right wingers", "naxis", and "fascists"; while our socialists and communists and racists call themselves "liberals" and "progressives".
Well - Hitler's party was officially "German National-Socialist Workers Party; Mussolini's party was called officially "Italian Socialist Party".
Lyneuss Fields | 2.28.13 @ 10:49AM
Your Conservatives are getting soaked by America's electorate, Marc. That's because you need to attract more Latino, Africans and Women. That's because our Tea Party friends don't handle dissent very well, or perhaps you've never heard their acronym RINO? The message here brother is to buy a bigger umbrella so we can all enjoy winning general elections.
Bill8472| 2.28.13 @ 9:59AM
George Orwell has observed several times that human social life involves an interesting phenomenon: there are things that we want that we perceive as desirable, but the means we have to employ in order to achieve the things we want are sometimes so bad that we can't bring ourselves to use them.
A dialogue on race -anywhere in the world, not just the U.S.- is one of those things. It would probably be a net good thing if blacks and whites could actually sit down and speak their minds. The problem is that one side gets offended and accuses the other of racism when that sort of thing begins. The means by which we discuss racial issues meaningfully is so repulsive to us that we can't do it.
C. Vernon Crisler | 2.28.13 @ 10:00AM
Maybe someone should write an article "I, Bagel" and explain to Ben the chilling effects on economic activity of higher taxes.
Bill8472| 2.28.13 @ 10:03AM
Kafka: "Gregor awoke one morning to find that he had turned into a giant bagel..."
C. Vernon Crisler | 2.28.13 @ 1:34PM
;-)
Occam's Tool| 2.28.13 @ 7:40PM
Yeah: I wonder how the inventor of the toaster oven would have responded to higher taxes...
Ben is an attorney you see. With few honorable exceptions that I have cited before (Luv ya, Tony and Big E!), attorneys are parasitic drones who invent and design nothing except idiocy and its means of application.
Lyneuss Fields | 2.28.13 @ 10:30AM
Thanks for pressing the panic button Ben. Anyone interested in verifying Ben's National Income Accounting, concerning America's debt and unfunded liabilities, can find the numbers on usdebtcolock.org. Seeing this “Monster on The Loose” should scare the hell out of everyone.
SUBVET| 2.28.13 @ 10:38AM
Ben.........you had me until the raise "taxes" part
I should just skip to the comments from now on.....your a mess.
Albert Constantine Jr.| 2.28.13 @ 11:08AM
That skipping is a much wiser course...
PCC| 2.28.13 @ 11:16AM
The U.S. government doesn't need more taxes. It needs less spending and more revenue.
To achieve less spending, it needs less government. To achieve more revenue, it needs higher economic growth.
To achieve higher economic growth, it needs lower tax rates and less regulation.
Most of all, the U.S. must COMPETE in a globally competitive world. Global U.S. businesses already understand this, but domestic businesses only understand this in a vague and episodic way, and the mass of the citizenry don't seem to understand it at all.
Yes, the Chinese and others want a bigger piece of the global economic pie for the betterment of their lives. Stop whining about it and do something about it.
Work harder, save more, lower taxes and regulations, put more effort into making the U.S. an attractive destination for investment by welcoming educated and well-capitalized foreigners and end the race-based, politically correct nonsense.
SUBVET| 2.28.13 @ 1:34PM
pcc........your preaching to the peanut gallery
untill the pain exceeds the pleasure nothing is going to change.
Paul A'Barge | 2.28.13 @ 12:33PM
Mr Ben (may I call you "Mr Ben"?), I asked Amazon to ask the publisher of the book to deliver the book in a Kindle edition:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/digit.....1591139104
BShep| 2.28.13 @ 3:30PM
I will never understand how Walter Williams, Paul Krugman and Ben Stein all can call themselves economists and no one ever objects. It would be as if they all called themselves black. Only one is but no one could point out this obvious fact.
Ben, anytime you want to show us peons the light and pay more taxes just start filing your taxes using the short form. You will get so much satisfaction from doing so and the almighty government will be better off too.
You might want to stop calling your wife “Big”. I’ve seen her picture, you are wrong about this too.
Occam's Tool| 2.28.13 @ 7:45PM
BShep: Mr. Willians is a brilliant man with common sense. Mr. Krugman is an idiot savant with one area of brilliance (his Nobel was well deserved; his NYT articles my dog has refused to poop on, shaking her head sadly---her poop deserves better than that.) Ben is just a spastic moron, whose comic shtick was based on his "appearing" to be verbally articulate and otherwise incredibly dense regarding human motives. To put it another way: Ben, Hollywood Call Girls are NOT an example of normal human moral functioning, nor are Hollywood actors. Nor are Washington Politicians. Nor are you.
As an UCLA psychiatrist in training who also treated multiple prostitutes, I know this. You seem to still be captivated by these people.
Let's rumble| 3.3.13 @ 9:45PM
No Ben, all we need to do is close a few loopholes. That's what your buddy Obama says. Why do you go off the reservation and say things like raise taxes? I don't consider anyone very smart at basic math that believes we could tax enough to raise a bjillions dollars let alone consider the effects on productivity. I just continue to NOT understand why you are given a voice here?