Monday, November 9, 2009 Midday

Banks are sitting on reserves instead of lending them out to entrepreneurs, and business owners are hunkering down because they’re afraid Washington’s massive new entitlement programs, deficit spending and employer mandates are going to cost them a fortune in new taxes and turn every new employee into a financial liability.

Ronald Reagan used to say that a rising tide lifts all boats. He meant that a good economy improves life for businesses large and small, and for individual workers, too. That’s only true, though, if the government doesn’t hang an anchor around everyone’s necks. Then a rising tide does nothing but drown you.

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There will be a substitute Miss England at the Miss World pageant this year. The runner-up is taking over after this year’s beauty queen, Rachel Christie, was arrested when she allegedly got into a brawl with Miss Manchester at a nightclub. I’ll bet the club could’ve sold tickets for that.

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A man in Essex, England, bought an old film can containing some unwatched silent movie footage. Experts now believe it might be “Zepped,” a long-lost World War One propaganda short about zeppelin attacks. It stars Charlie Chaplin, and is being hailed as one of the most important film finds of the past hundred years. The buyer bought it off of eBay for $5.68.

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You might know the horrible childhood neurological disease known as ALD from the movie “Lorenzo’s Oil.” It strikes up to 120 young boys in the U.S. every year, and is probably the worst of all degenerative diseases. Well, a ray of light: the journal Science reports that researchers in Paris tried a new gene therapy on two boys with ALD two years ago, and their condition has stabilized. It could be a major breakthrough. One expert said ALD is a disease that “never, ever stabilizes” on its own.

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The White House claims Fox News isn’t a real news network. Wonder how they’ll explain the fact that Saturday night, Fox was the only cable news outlet that aired Nancy Pelosi’s health care reform speech live. MSNBC was showing a crime documentary, and CNN had a rerun of “The Situation Room.”