Some clueless authoritarian statist writing in The New Yorker decides that federalism--i.e. the Constitution of the United States--has outworn its usefulness:

Federalism, often described as one of the great strengths of the American system, has become a serious impediment to reversing the downturn.

No, sir, federalism isn't the problem. It's precisely the LACK of federalism--in the high-handed, neofascist way Congress and President Clinton demanded that lenders start loaning money to people who couldn't afford to pay back the loans--and in the myriad of other ways that the Federal Government squanders the wealth of the nation. And yes, State governments squander plenty of our money too, but they at least seem to be somewhat accountable precisely because we demand balanced budgets from State governors and legislatures.

So Cash for Clunkers, originally "budgeted" (and I use that term extremely loosely, we're talking about Congress here) for $1 billion, is being expanded by 200% to three billion dollars.

Congress has a long, ugly history of severely underestimating the cost of their social engineering programs.

Remember this when your Congresscritter is in front of you telling you how much health care "reform" will cost.

The official Congressional prediction when Medicare passed in 1965 was that the program would cost $9 billion in 1990. The actual bill in 1990 was $66 billion. Today, it costs even more, and the program circles closer to the drain of insolvency every day.

We can't afford to have the government involved in delivery of health care.

We.
Can't.
Afford it.

UPDATE: How about this little fact:

While listening to a clip of doctor representatives of the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons, I wasn’t surprised to hear that internal polling of their members revealed that 65 percent of doctors would prefer to treat Medicare and Medicaid patients for free than deal with the government. That’s certainly my perspective.

In fact, in my own office, Medicare and Medicaid are not accepted, but we do affiliate with the free clinics around the county, as do many, many other doctors. Helping people heal is why most doctors go into the business. That the business is also intellectually stimulating and personally rewarding is often secondary.

Why would the majority of doctors prefer not to deal with the government’s health care system?

Yep, costs out of control, and the providers would rather give their services away for free rather than deal with it. More government health care, PLEASE (that's sarcasm, in case you're humor-deprived, or a Democrat).

1. No Bill shall become Law which has not been read aloud, in its entirety, in its final form, separately in each House of Congress, such reading being performed in a normal voice and cadence and in the English language. Such Reading must be performed by Members of the respective House of Congress, and may not be delegated to any other person. Such Reading must be made available to the People for viewing and listening by the usual and customary methods of communication of the day, and such Reading shall not occur between the hours of ten o'clock in the evening and eight o'clock in the morning in the time zone of the capital city of the United States of America. During such Reading, no fewer than one-half of all Members of each respective House shall be in attendance, awake, alert, and attentive to the Reader within the Chamber of that House for the entirety of the Reading. During the period of the Reading, that House in which the Reading is occurring shall do no other business within or without that chamber. It is the wish and the demand of the People that the full and undivided attention of that House of Congress shall be on the content of the bill being Read.

2. No Bill shall become Law, the text of which that has not been presented to the People in an easily accessible and widely used medium and format, for a period not less than seven days and one hour IN ITS FINAL FORM for Public review and comment before each House of Congress shall approve such bill.

3. In circumstances of National Emergency of War or of imminent natural disaster ONLY, the Reading of the Bill may be suspended by four-fifths vote of the total membership of each House, the House of Representatives and the Senate voting separately.

4. In circumstances of War or natural disaster ONLY, the seven-day-and-one-hour period may be suspended by four-fifths vote of the total membership of each House, the House of Representatives and the Senate voting separately.

The Tax Foundation: Tax burden of top 1% now exceeds that of the bottom 95%:

IRS data shows that in 2007—the most recent data available—the top 1 percent of taxpayers paid 40.4 percent of the total income taxes collected by the federal government. This is the highest percentage in modern history. By contrast, the top 1 percent paid 24.8 percent of the income tax burden in 1987, the year following the 1986 tax reform act.

. . . the bottom 95 percent paid 39.4 percent of the income tax burden. This is down from the 58 percent of the total income tax burden they paid twenty years ago.

To put this in perspective, the top 1 percent is comprised of just 1.4 million taxpayers and they pay a larger share of the income tax burden now than the bottom 134 million taxpayers combined.

Some in Washington say the tax system is still not progressive enough. However, the recent IRS data bolsters the findings of an OECD study released last year showing that the U.S.—not France or Sweden—has the most progressive income tax system among OECD nations. We rely more heavily on the top 10 percent of taxpayers than does any nation and our poor people have the lowest tax burden of those in any nation.

This is all well and good until the 1% decide to stop paying taxes. And they are quite capable of doing so, and doing quite nicely while doing it, thank you very much.

If you don't have any "skin in the game," you're not likely to take the game very seriously. That's just human nature. That's why people vote Democrat--they don't take the "game" of fiscal responsibility seriously. The first five months of the Obama Administration and a Democrat stranglehold on the Congress make that perfectly clear to everyone.

Passing thousand-page bills spending hundreds of billions of dollars without even bothering to read them is proof enough that Democrats simply don't take government seriously, and they don't take taxpayers seriously.

Taxpayers, on the other hand, are taking all of this increasingly seriously, and if the Democrats aren't careful, this could get really ugly really fast.

Time for the Democrats to curl up with a good book. Atlas Shrugged. (You can skip over the John Galt speech. though--everybody does.)

Remember this, when you see the news later tonight, or tomorrow.

Scientific literature survey finds no significant health benefit to organically grown food.

A systematic review of 162 scientific papers published in the scientific literature over the last 50 years, however, found there was no significant difference.

"A small number of differences in nutrient content were found to exist between organically and conventionally produced foodstuffs, but these are unlikely to be of any public health relevance," said Alan Dangour, one of the report's authors.

"Our review indicates that there is currently no evidence to support the selection of organically over conventionally produced foods on the basis of nutritional superiority."

Add organic food to the long, long list of things whose main purpose is to separate money from gullible people.

Of course, there will always be those who like to watch a little beetle crawl out of their half-eaten "organic" salad at an upper-crust restaurant, as happened to your humble correspondent a couple of years ago. I understand that the head chef, an organically-minded "elite" chef, is no longer at that restaurant, but even so, Snookums and I are in no special hurry to go back to that restaurant.

A particularly loathesome spam I just received:

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|auth_email="carlos5464@terra.es"
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Reply-To: [sgtjameslayton@aim.com]
From: "Sgt .James Clayton" [carlos5464@terra.es]
Subject: Your Assistance is Needed
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 2009 15:26:46 +0200
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To: undisclosed-recipients:;

I am Sgt .James Clayton jr. an Engineering military unit here in Baghdad in Iraq,My late 2 colleagues who died last week in a bomb blast and I found a huge sum of amount USD in Baghdad neighbourhood (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2988455.stm).Get Back to me via email
jamesclayton1941@aim.com
Regards SGT James Clayton

I Googled SGT James Clayton, and discovered, much to my chagrin, that I didn't get his complete message. Go ahead, do it. It's fun. I did howeveer discover that he's got a few other e-mail addresses, too. SGT James Clayton is a busy, busy boy:

sgtjamesclayton@hotmail.com
jamesclayton7@aol.co.uk
jamesclaytton7@aol.co.uk (added extra t)
jamesclayton@sify.com
jamesclayton101@gmail.com
sgtjamesclayton@mixmail.com
sgt-james-clayton@hotmail.com
sgt.jamesclayt@hotmail.com
sgtjamesclaytonusarmy@hotmail.com
sgtjclayton@katamail.com
sgtclayton_usmill@yahoo.com.cn

I'll personally do EVERYTHING I can to help, SGT James Clayton.

Yes. As much as I tend to agree with Palin's actual views on most things, she does need to find a better speechwriter. Or, a speechwriter.

Shatner can make anything sound . . . Shatneresque.

KAAAAAAHHHHHHHNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!

if all of this "Obama is not a native-born American" nonsense is disinformation coming from the Democrats themselves.

Officials in Hawaii (that's the Hawaii that has a Republican Governor--one of Sarah Palin's buddies, as a matter of fact) say they have the original safely tucked away, just as they should.

That's game, set, and match as far as I'm concerned.

Now, let's ask The Next Question:
Given that the whole issue is a farcical load of manure, who stands to benefit by extending the issue and making the gullible right-wing black helicopter crowd (with the delightful sub-set of those who suspect chemtrails in the water sprinklers) look even more out of touch?

It's not as if we don't have plenty to hold against Obama and the Democrats without wandering into Nirther/Truther/LaRouchie/Alex Jones territory, right?

But, it's the cool, clammy Dog Days of Summer, when news is (supposed to be) scarce, and we talk about weird and unimportant things (like completely re-engineering one-sixth of the economy without even bothering to READ THE FARKING BILL, for instance).

Just watch the video. I don't think any further comment is really necessary, is it?

OK, further comment is in fact necessary. I'm reminded that lots of people actually take Coast to Coast AM seriously. It's the CHEMTRAILS! THE CHEMTRAILS!

Via Ace of Spades HQ