BYRON YORK: New poll is bad, bad news for Obama, Democrats.

GREENHOUSE TREASON? Is the Obama Administration turning its back on nuclear power?

OF COURSE HE DOES: Dan Rather wants government-run news.

“CASH FOR CLUNKERS” RUNNING WITH TRUE GOVERNMENTAL EFFICIENCY:

Dealers reported problems with the government’s online system to get the transactions approved by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which is running the program.

Scott Lambert, vice president of the Minnesota Auto Dealers Association, said he was “astounded” to learn at a meeting Tuesday representing about 150 Minnesota dealers that not one has had a deal approved.

“We had dealers representing 1,500 to 2,000 transactions,” he said. “We asked how many had a deal approved yet, and not one hand went up.”

Lambert said the government has created a program that’s “so big and cumbersome that it can’t find a way to accept anything. We’re sending in good, reliable deals.”

It’s nerve-racking for the dealers, he said, because they have given the customer $4,500 and now the dealers need to be reimbursed.

Don’t worry, though — I’m sure they’ll do a better job with your prostate.

UPDATE: Moe Lane is not surprised. “Note that the program started on July 1, they only published the actual rules Friday, and they’re still working out how to get the dealers their money. If you’re shrugging over that, consider this: what’s essentially happening here is that car dealerships are giving $4,500 interest-free, unguaranteed loans to the federal government… and the determination of whether or not those loans get paid off is more or less going to be at the discretion of mid-level bureaucrats at the NHTSA. Even if they do repay every loan, it’s apparently going to take time for the system to smooth out; it’s an open question whether it’ll straighten out before the official end of the program in November. And the car dealerships – the only producers of goods in this particular equation, and the ones that the government is ostensibly trying to help – get all the headaches.”

Producers can’t catch a break under this Administration.

SAVAGE NATION vs. Halfwit State.

COMMERCIAL SPACE COMPANIES STEP UP PRESSURE FOR SUPPORT. So what do you think — pork, or valuable infant-industry support?

CANADIANS ON THEIR HEALTH CARE SYSTEM: Paul Krugman gets an unexpected response.

NEW YORK TIMES: Taxing Face Lifts and Abortions to Pay for Health Reform. But not tummy tucks, surely. That would be inhuman.

TEA PARTIES IN OHIO on Saturday.

UPDATE: Justin Binik-Thomas writes:

I do have one update if I may:

The conservative groups in Ohio have banded together for a Statewide tea party on Saturday (list under “additional information”).
Theme: State Sovereignty
Location: Ohio Statehouse, Columbus OH

Additional Information

1. Judge Andrew Napolitano is the keynote speaker
2. Conservative groups from Akron, Ashland, Ashtabula, Athens, Canton, Chillicothe, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Defiance, Findlay, Lancaster, Mansfield, Marietta, Marion, Marysville, Millersburg, Mount Vernon, Newark, Springfield, Ottawa, and Zanesville and associated metro areas have confirmed.

If anybody attends, please send pics, etc.

JENNIFER RUBIN: Congressional Reaction to the Crisis in Honduras.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN politicians’ flacks attack bloggers.

IN RESPONSE TO MY EARLIER POST ABOUT NON-LIBERTARIAN TRANSHUMANISM, reader Jason Bontrager writes:

What would they look like? They’d look a lot like Steve Stirling’s Draka. The superhuman Optimates who’d rule, for our own good of course, the rest of us mind-gelded Servus.

Eugenics + Genetic Engineering + New Soviet Man = Homo Drakensis.

And another reader sends this video. Which, in my opinion, isn’t even a worst-case scenario. . . .

ARRESTED: Bikini-wearing Carjacker. “Employees at the dealership weren’t convinced by her gun claims (according to police, the gun was actually a mobile phone), and took the opportunity to wrestle the bikini-clad woman to the ground and call the police. According to a police spokesman, Haley appeared to be under the influence of drugs or alcohol during her crimes.” Gee, go figure.

MSNBC: Poll: Obama loses ground on health care: NBC/WSJ survey also shows a drop in his overall job-approval rating.

CAR LUST: Looking back at Automobile Magazine’s 1994 All-Stars. Most hold up pretty well.

RASMUSSEN: Gap Widens Between Obama and Voters on Fairness of U.S. Society.

HYBRID POWER comes to aviation.

SHOCKER: Canadian copyright collecting agency subverting open debate on copyright. No stranger than the Canadian Human Rights Commission having lots of Nazis in its employ . . . .

“NIXONIAN SECRECY?”

AUTOBLOG: Hoping to snag a Jetta TDI with your clunker cash? Sorry, you may be too late!

INSTAVISION: I talk with Asheville Tea Party organizer Erika Franzi about taking on her local congressman (Heath Shuler) and local media (the Asheville Citizen-Times) and about bringing Tea Party organization to a hippie town. She’s a mother of four and a blogger — is it just me, or are the blogger-moms the main organizing force in the Tea Party movement? She says it’s because she cares about her kids’ future.

Check out the Asheville Tea Party website. She’s meeting with the publisher of the Citizen Times tomorrow.

UPDATE: More protesting moms.

GRASSROOTS VERSUS ASTROTURF: Tea Party Overwhelms Obamacare Advocates in Fort Collins. This kind of thing just keeps happening . . . .

UPDATE: Protesting ObamaCare at Obama’s visit in Raleigh.

SOFTWARE that cares.

THE BOOKER PRIZE nominees are out.

MARYLAND IS FOR PIE FIGHTS. “For a moment I considered asking if there was a back room where one could gorge on smuggled pies, but thought better of it. Such secret places would be only for locals and those known to the Mafia, not for transient gypsy engineers such as myself.”