It's all TBOGG's fault. I usually don't have any trouble avoiding townhall.com, but after reading his excerpt from this Mona Charen column (warning: direct exposure while eating not advised) got me to go and look at the whole thing. And it's even worse than I thought.

It's titled At the trough. So, it's about...Halliburton? Nope. Farm subsidies to agribusiness? Try again. Corporate welfare? Got you swinging. It's about those lucky duckies, the poor!

Let's take a look (warning, again: not for the squeamish). Editorial comments in italics.

It's amazing, isn't it, that Democrats never worry about federal spending unless it is for defense. No, what's amazing is that people will print this tripe. Remind me, who was the last President to BALANCE THE FREAKING BUDGET? Clinton, wasn't it? And he wasn't a Republican last I looked.
And when you politely mention that the federal budget is a giant sinkhole of waste, they ignore you completely and come up with seven new programs that need "full funding" in order for life to be decent in America. Here's a good one. A "giant sinkhole", but there's no numbers to say what fraction of the budget is waste. The implication that government is the only place money is wasted, when anyone who's ever worked in any large organization knows better. And the implication that the need for new programs is somehow connected to waste in existing programs, though again no proof is offered. It must be one of those Saddam/al Qaeda type things, where it's obvious if you'll only drink the Kool-aid.

The president has asked for $87 billion to rebuild and solidify Iraq and Afghanistan. That's a lot of money. But the federal government spends $65 billion annually on student loans to college students -- enduring about a 40 percent default rate. Ummm...yeah, so? What's the connection, Mona? Would the country be better off if we did away with all those student loans?
We spend billions on hot lunches and breakfasts for schoolchildren, though the greatest health threat to the poor in America these days is not hunger but obesity. Oh, my. The poor are overfed, that's the problem. It couldn't have anything to do with the fact that it costs more to buy healthy food than to load up on stuff loaded with fats and carbs, or with the fact that our government keeps sugar artifically cheap so that it's easy to buy cheap food loaded with sugar, now could it? No, those lucky duckies are undoubtedly stuffing themselves on foie gras and truffles!

Besides, why can't poor children take their lunches to school in a brown bag, as my kids do? How much does a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, an apple and a yogurt cost? Classic. The Scrooge argument. Are there no prisons? No poorhouses?
Maybe $1.50. For a family receiving food stamps, it's even less. So why subsidize the lunches for children whose families already receive food aid in the form of food stamps? Why, indeed. How about because we've done studies, and we know that poor children don't get proper nutrition? How about because we know that children learn better when they're fed properly? Heaven forfend that any actual data interfere with a good rant, though.