DISCLAIMER: THE FOLLOWING "Cost of Freedom Recap" CONTAINS STRONG OPINIONS WHICH ARE NOT A REFLECTION OF THE OPINIONS OF FOX NEWS AND SHOULD NOT BE RELIED UPON AS INVESTMENT ADVICE WHEN MAKING PERSONAL INVESTMENT DECISIONS. IT IS FOX NEWS' POLICY THAT CONTRIBUTORS DISCLOSE POSITIONS THEY HOLD IN STOCKS THEY DISCUSS, THOUGH POSITIONS MAY CHANGE. READERS OF "Cost of Freedom Recap" MUST TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEIR OWN INVESTMENT DECISIONS.
Ben Stein: I'm mystified, Neil. Why did Mr. Obama want this deal so badly? Gives the Iranians sooner or later a nuclear bomb. Gives them a great deal of money. Gives them ballistic missiles. Takes our pressure of sanctions off them. Why did Mr. Obama want this deal so badly? What is the imperative for him to get this deal except some kind of deep-seated psychological identification with the Iranians, some kind of deep-seated hostility to Israel? I don't understand the motivation. Just seems there is nothing going on here to make him do this. And some might say what's the alternative? To bomb the sites. That's been done before. Bombing is a common theme in preventing from getting -- people from getting things.
Julie Roginsky: Somebody who knows a little bit about Soviet prolife ration, we never had American personally terrifying on military sites in the Soviet Union whether they were keeping to their agreements, yet Ronald Reagan did take that chance. Look, I will say this, Ben. Of course. But we have a way to verify too. I assume the IAEA is going to be verifying this. The IAEA is going to be able to verify this. If we get any inkling, our intelligence gets any inkling that the Iranians are cheating, we claw it back, the provisions off. Then maybe we bomb them like you said. Big difference between bombing the Iraq nuclear site, the Israelis did in 1981 or 1982 than bombing this. The French had built the nuclear development. The French have not built anything in Iraq. You can't bomb scientists' knowledge out of existence. You bomb it, they'll rebuild it.
Charlie Gasparino: And let's be clear when we compare the Soviets to the Iranians. You could make a really good case that Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Gorbachev, and I probably missed an interim one somewhere between those three, were more rational human beings. We are dealing with lunatics. To get to glen's question, what is president Obama after when it comes to this? I think maybe not destroying the state of Israel but I think eliminating it as a power, as anything of significance is probably his end game that there is a deep-seated leftist thought that Israel is the root of all evil in the middle east. And if you got rid of Israel sort of as a power. If you turned the country into something less of what it is with a Jewish identity, that, you know, everything would be okay.
Dagen McDowell: Right, because this Iran deal was not a treaty voted on by Congress. This was a deal that the president cooked up that was ratified by the U.N. Security Council. 98 to 1 Senate vote for this review of this agreement. However, in that, the administration acknowledged and promised that it had to submit to congress all of the information in this nuclear agreement. But they didn't do that. Here's what we found out, that you had -- the associated press is the one that told us that the IAEA was going to let Iran inspect its own site at Parchon. We find out from Senator Tom Cotton and colleague Tom Pompeo that the IAEA had all these side deals. This is something that's been shoved down America's throats, and once it goes through, no president will be able to turn it back because Iran will have the money and because all these other nations and their businesses will be doing business with this sponsor of terrorism.
Charles Payne: I think the one thing everyone is saying even Julie is the barn door, we can't close it afterwards because once they've got $100 billion, Iran to continue its campaign of terror in the region and to become more of a threat to everyone, including Israel, including Saudi Arabia and everyone else We can quibble about the next president because this was an executive order issuing their own executive order, but it might be too late.
Charles Payne: It's just great card. It's the ultimate. The left has a lot of different cards from the race card to the gender card, but the best card is the fair tax card. When in doubt, you want some vote, pull that out. We're talking about the economy. One, if you're trying to punish people for being successful in America, go with Bernie Sanders. If you're trying to ignite this economy which hasn't been ignited under Obama, you go with what everyone else is talking about. I did quibble with Jeb Bush. In a statement about 15 million more people not paying taxes, that's one of the problems in this country. Not enough people have skin in the game.
Dagen McDowell: They're looking for more money and they're looking for more revenue. He wouldn't be on this fine program because he'd be living in the Bahamas. The issue I have with all of these tax proposals even on the right is that they talk about we want a flat tax, we want fewer tax brackets. Oh, but you have to keep the mortgage interest deduction. These deductions that you get in the this country and the tax breaks we get. Here's dirty little secret. They need to broaden the base and figure out a way you can lower taxes, make it simpler, but you have to have enough revenue. You're not going to be able to deduct the interest on a $1 million home.
Ben Stein: I think we need a higher tax on very rich people and higher taxes on poorer people too. Everybody should pay at least some taxes.
Julie Roginsky: I think very, very, very rich, many of whom make most of their money off capital gains, which is i believed taxed at15 percent, while the rest of us get penalized for working our butts off and have to pay around 39.6 percent if you're wealthy like Charles, that's not fair to people like Charles. I'm advocating people who make $60 million a year, most of which is from capital gains.
Ben Stein: Well, not really. I mean, the laid people are totally psycho, lunatic maniac killers who belong in restraints. There are plenty of CEOs. There's no comparison here. Let's get out to the laid people. Let's get to the corporate wrongdoers too. What i don't like is this endless shaking down of American corporations and it's a shakedown.
Charles Payne: There's sort of an interesting kind of relationship that ben is talking about, and I think it's despicable that the executives that these Wall Street firms are able to take shareholder money and pay off the government. They don't go to prison. The government has been getting money from Wall Street, these billion dollar settlements over and over and over again. There need to be some laws.
Charlie Gasparino: Well, there have been a lot of perp walks, we should point out. Not necessarily Wall Street firms, but they went after a lot of top hedge fund guys. I would say this; they've been trying to go at them. Here's the absurdity of this thing. The Wall Street firms, these companies are established look the mob. There are buffers. What we're going to see here if they do this thing, we're going see a bunch of lower level that carry out like mob soldiers and the guys at the top go to jail.
Julie Roginsky: I agree with Ben Stein. You can be both at the same time, but i also agree with charley of what he said. If you are going to go after it -- if you are going to go after guys on Wall Street, go after the guys that are actually in charge and do it.
Predictions
Charles Payne: Biogen (BIIB)
Ben Stein: Diamonds (DIA)
Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first thing every morning to your inbox