The Player and the President

Anyone watching Sunday’s women’s final at the U.S. Open tennis tournament was treated to an appalling display of temper on the part of Serena Williams. At the beginning of the second set, Williams was judged to have hindered her opponent by shouting “come on” in the course of play. The point, and, as it turned out, the game, was awarded to Williams’s opponent, Samantha Stosur, who went on to win the match quite convincingly.

The Wacky World of Liberal Fundamentalism

The candidacies of Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, Bible-affirming Christians, predictably have ignited the liberal media’s zeal for exposing their allegedly odd if not wacko religious beliefs (see here). Support for some version of creationism, a faith in the efficacy of prayer, and actual belief in scriptural condemnation of homosexuality (among other religious views) are taken as prima facie evidence of presidential unsuitability. To be sure, millions of Americans (assumed to be ill-educated trailer-court denizens with rotting teeth and beer guts) may share these odd inclinations, but, at least according to liberal pundits, holding them betrays a lack of intellectual sophistication plus an aversion to modern science. Such antediluvian fundamentalism should, say the experts, have gone extinct with the Scopes Monkey Trials.

Raging At The Dying Of Their Light

Twice in recent years pleasant social events have been shattered by rage-filled outbursts when liberal men of a certain age learned that I disagreed with their views. In each case the rage with which perfectly polite disagreement was expressed suggested to me that more than political differences were involved. As time has passed, I have come to believe that the reactions I received represented a rage at the dying of all that which these men had embraced in the absolute certainty of the righteousness and soundness of their views, and their right to have them automatically accepted as the approved model for all right thinking people.

The President Who Wasn’t There

We have a president named “Obama.” If you believe your media — (hah!) — he is a kind of Űbermensch, a more-than-human giant intellect. Or, as one addled dork said two years ago, Obama must be A Light Bringer. That’s why the Norwegian Nobel Prize committee got the hots for him so bad that they had to give him the big prize before he did anything. Like Algore’s Peace Prize, it was awarded for postmodern (Po-Mo) — that is, completely fictional — good intentions. No actual achievements were wanted or needed.

Since Marxist college professors are not going to do this job for us, I will now perform a postmodern “deconstruction” of the so-called “president” of the “United States.” (Those sneer quotes are Po-Mo sniggers for things that are obviously fictional except that normal people think they are real. Like “money” and “freedom.”)

Cataracts, hips, knees and tonsils: NHS begins rationing operations

Hip replacements, cataract surgery and tonsil removal are among operations now being rationed in a bid to save the NHS money.

Two-thirds of health trusts in England are rationing treatments for “non-urgent” conditions as part of the drive to reduce costs in the NHS by £20bn over the next four years. One in three primary-care trusts (PCTs) has expanded the list of procedures it will restrict funding to in the past 12 months.

The left’s brilliant lie

Liberals want to take away your light bulbs, pickup trucks and family sedans, but they aren’t honest enough to admit it. On the House floor last week, Democrats insisted regulations prohibiting the sale of cheap sources of illumination beginning in January are about increasing consumer choice. Likewise, the Obama administration’s forthcoming 56-mile-per-gallon fuel-efficiency mandate for automakers is supposedly a boon for consumers.

“I continue to hear my colleagues promote the fantasy that government has banned the incandescent light bulb,” said Rep. Jason Altmire, Pennsylvania Democrat. “They think if they say it over and over again that it will be true. But it’s not true.” Proponents of the bulb ban also claim misleading efficiency increases. There’s a good reason to be skeptical; legislative acts don’t create engineering breakthroughs. The sole purpose of the law signed by President George W. Bush was to eliminate the sale of 25-cent light bulbs because the greens want to force everyone to switch to fluorescent lighting.

Home Depot Co-Founder: Obama Is Choking Recovery

Bernie Marcus co-founded Home Depot (HD) in 1978 and brought it public in 1981 as the U.S. was suffering from the worst recession and unemployment in 40 years. The company thrived, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs and redefining home improvement retailing.

But Marcus says Home Depot “would never have succeeded” if it launched today due to onerous regulation. He recently helped launch the Job Creators Alliance, a Dallas-based nonprofit of CEOs and entrepreneurs dedicated to preserving the free enterprise system. IBD recently spoke to him about jobs and the economy.