Ben Stein Gets It Right November 28, 2006March 5, 2017 MY LATEST PROBLEM Here’s my latest problem. I finally capitulated and gave my old cell phone to the Smithsonian. It was so old it didn’t even have a SIM card. Instead, I got a Motorola RAZR V3i. I can take a picture of myself and send it your phone. I can say ‘CHARLES’ and it will call Charles. I blew $2.50 to download a new ring tone – just to see if I could do it – and chose ‘Joy to the World.’ (I was inspired by the recent election results.) Now I can be walking off an airplane or sitting at dinner and suddenly a choir in my pocket will begin singing ‘JOY! . . . to . . . the World’ – and here’s my problem: it’s so surpassingly beautiful, I don’t want to cut it short by answering the call. So if you get my voice mail, just a wait a minute. I’ll call you back. A CONVENIENT DVD Jim Busek: ‘Not only did someone make a movie about MY HOUSE, it just became available on DVD. I am suggesting it as a Christmas gift to anyone who needs ideas.’ ☞ Me, too! Dennis Soohoo: ‘I just finished watching An Inconvenient Truth on DVD, literally, just minutes ago, and I wonder how an intelligent man like Al Gore was not elected President (I guess actually he may have been elected, but just was not allowed to serve). I wonder what kind of difference he could have made had he been our president for the last 6 years.’ ☞ All the difference in the world. ANYONE? ANYONE? Ben Stein, best known to some for his role in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, is a conservative. Writing in Sunday’s New York Times, he makes the case for higher taxes on the wealthy. Have I mentioned lately that the National debt will be around $10 trillion by the time Bush leaves the White House? EIGHT trillion of which will have been racked up under just 3 of our 43 presidents – Reagan, Bush, and Bush? Have I mentioned that annual interest on the debt already amounts to 40% of all the personal income taxes we pay? AOL ESCAPE Click here if you feel trapped. I haven’t tried it yet myself, but inch ever closer. FIGS Michael Irwin: ‘The only bad thing about figs is that if you recommend them to someone you have to know how to spell prosciutto, which, when combined with a fig, is how they taste best.’ ☞ Word’s spellcheck suggests it’s spelled ‘prostitute,’ but I think you have it right. (‘Prah-SHOOT.’)