Is Underwear a Legitimate Function of the Federal Government?

Here’s another entry for our UK vs US Government Stupidity Contest. Or perhaps it belongs in the great-moments-in-government-waste category.

The spendaholics in Washington have squandered $400,000 on underwear that detects cigarette smoke.

I’m not joking. Here are some details from CNS.

Coming Soon to Victoria’s Secret: Trendy and Sexy Government-Funded Underwear

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded more than $400,000 to a research project involving underwear that can detect when a person smokes cigarettes. …the project…so far has produced a “very early prototype” of the monitoring system, which — in its current state — fits like a vest. …“The modern methods of monitoring smoking, primarily you rely on self-report,” said Dr. Edward Sazonov, an associate professor at the University of Alabama… The PACT Sazonov created is a “very early prototype,” that fits like a vest with multiple straps and wires, far from the “non-invasive, wearable” underwear the project developers had in mind. “It’s not very user friendly,” Sazonov said.

And it’s definitely not taxpayer friendly either.

Why is Uncle Sam wasting $400,000-plus on ugly and clunky underwear? The excuse for this boondoggle is that it will help monitor whether people smoke.

I fail to see how this would promote smoking cessation. I assume 99.99 percent of smokers are aware that they smoke.

Or are we going to have some sort of nanny-state program with the government forcing people to wear the underwear so the snoops in DC can monitor our private lives.

But even if that type of intrusive system would work, why is smoking any business of the federal government? It’s certainly not one of the enumerated powers in Article I, Section VIII.

This is yet another reason why there shouldn’t be any discussion of tax increases. Any government that has $400,000 to spend on a cigarette vest obviously has far too much money on its hands.

P.S. An odious and ridiculous subset of the UK-US Stupidity Contest is anti-gun political correctness. You can read absurd examples here.

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Mocking a Rogue’s Gallery of Statists: Biden, Soros, Edwards, and Napolitano

I explained just a couple of days ago that it’s a good idea to mock politicians, both for the humor value and to deny them the approval they crave.

Well, a friend just sent me some posters, and four of them are very good.

Several years ago, I shared a couple of funny videos mocking Obama for relying on a teleprompter. Well, here’s a poster of John Edwards and Joe Biden enjoying a private joke on the same topic.

If you like Obama teleprompter humor, I also suggest you click here and here.

George Soros isn’t very popular on the right. If you’re one of the people who don’t like him, I strongly recommend you watch this debate he had with Richard Epstein.

But if you don’t want to deal with intellectual arguments, here’s a very amusing poster.

By the way, Soros actually is against misguided intervention – at least when it affects him.

Let’s now turn our attention to America’s national punchline. You can click here for a good Biden joke, which has the same theme as this poster.

You may also enjoy this satirical video about Biden’s home-defense advice.

Last but not least, you may recall my concern about the downside of amnesty. Well, this poster shows why I’m a bit worried.

Reminds me of one of these very good Jay Leno jokes.

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