The headline from the Grand Forks Herald:
Bush to provide nearly $800 million for drought-stricken farmers

I had no idea W had that kind of cash. I guess that wood business must really be paying off. It’s awful nice of him to pony up from his own funds instead of asking the taxpayers to pay for it though.

And poor George just can’t catch a break. Even while he’s shelling out the cash for the farmers and making Willie Nelson happy, Democrats are playing the blame game.

The State (South Carolina) headline:

Democrats blame Bush for Katrina’s slow recovery

I didn’t even know she was ill. To paraphrase a line from Everett Dirksen…Katrina, Katrina, my heart bleeds for Katrina. Who is she anyway?

and while I’m at it…

$800 million here, $800 million there, pretty soon you’re talking real money.

Bush,drought,Katrina,stupid headlines

Bob Smither has an excellent analysis of the benefits of the Fair Tax, which he supports. He takes special note of the thing I like most about the proposal – the fact that it puts the true and full cost of government in every voters face with every retail transaction:

The part of what we now buy that is actually someone else’s income, FICA, property, or corporate tax is about 48%. The federal take of this is about 22%. This is the only real tax that is collected – it is the only tax that cannot be passed along to others. As our state chair, Pat Dixon has observed, all the acrimonious debate about taxes only decides who collects the taxes, not who pays them.

Imagine if every American were to suddenly become aware of this fact! The Fair Tax makes this truth of economic life clearly visible to every consumer.

No longer would statists be able to pander to the voters with promises to tax someone else for promised government services. We would all know exactly who pays (all of us) and exactly what government is costing us. We would all know that the burden falls on everyone, as it already does, even if few of us realize it.

Any new government spending would have to come from the economic health of the economy, from increased revenues, or from a hike in the sales tax. No one could claim that the burden will be shifted to someone else.

Every cut in the size of government would immediately translate into more money in everyone’s pocket.

Why would anyone be a Democrat except to soak the rich? Why would anyone be a Republican except to seek protection from the Democrats?

Ah and if you’re asking “Who is Bob Smithers?” – He’s the non-Democrat, anti-Pelosi candidate for Tom DeLay’s old House seat.

Bob’s Campaign » Blog Archive » Fair Tax Talk

Bob Smither,Fair Tax,Tom DeLay

Apparently Michael Savage is right, Liberalism is a Mental Disorder.

A woman on a trans-Atlantic flight diverted to Boston for security concerns passed several notes to crew members, urinated on the cabin floor and made comments the crew believed were references to al-Qaida and the Sept. 11 attacks, according to an affidavit filed Thursday…
Mayo’s son, Josh, 31, described his mother as a peace activist and said she had been in Pakistan since March. She traveled there often since making a pen pal prior to Sept. 11, 2001, he said. The pen pal hasn’t been allowed to visit the U.S., he added.

Now I agree that some of the cases of people clearly just panicking from fear of flying have been overblown and the ducttaping to the seat of anyone who gets jumpy has gotten out of hand. But, this clearly is not such a case. She had a screwdriver and cigarette lighters in her bag and a bottle of water (they found out later) and asked the flight crew “Is this a training flight for United Flight 93?”

Moral to that story – if you’re a mentally deranged peace activist with a penchant for carrying contraband and urinating in public, don’t hop the next flight to a terrorist hotbed.

Woman Faces Charges in Flight Scare

I commented last week that I didn’t find it particularly “conservative” to back the Obama-Coburn bill to fund a government run budget search engine. I noted at the time that there were several good private sources for the information and that a plain text copy of the budget put online would allow it to be indexed by the real Google at little cost to taxpayers. Well, things have gotten even better on the private side with the unveiling of an earmarks database for the current proposed budget from Porkbusters. The Porkbusters site also led me to the 2005 Pig Book Summary from Citizens Against Government Waste. Again, I’d trust either of these sources over a search engine run by a federally funded bureaucracy with an inherent conflict of interest.

Speaking of pork, I’m led to wonder whether the proposed federal search engine bureaucracy would find its home in Oklahoma or Illinois.

Pointer from Club for Growth.

Obama,Coburn,pork barrel,Porkbusters