Not much of a rancher

Another pathetic George Bush press conference. He had essentially one talking point -- the absence of oil extraction from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, an issue that plays well with the loons, who imagine that there are billions of barrels of oil just waiting to be extracted through a tiny hole on which an endangered spotted oil is sitting and those awful liberals care more about the owl than the oil. Luckily that group is unlikely to be decisive in the November election.

Somewhat more unusual was his attack on "rich farmers" who he said were collecting massive subsidies and earning a windfall through high land prices. Which is sort of true and yet a strange point for him to make. Because farmers usually appear in his rhetoric as the case for abolishing estate taxes, with tales of farm parents unable to pass land onto their children because of those taxes. Apparently money is no longer a problem. And the more obvious case for curtailing subsidies in the face of a windfall is for oil, not land. Bush never mentioned that.