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.”)

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.