Couldn’t Help But Notice (102507)
That Hugo Chavez is doing this is no surprise (video here):
Venezuela: Thousands Protest Constitutional Changes
The police dispersed protests near the National Assembly in downtown Caracas by firing tear gas into crowds of students. The protesters, who numbered in the thousands and had thrown rocks and bottles in the direction of the police, were gathered to voice opposition to President Hugo Chávez’s plan to rewrite the Constitution to allow measures including the elimination of his term limits and the suspension of due process rights in states of emergency.
That there is minimal press coverage is also no surprise.
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He didn’t use these words, but Harry Reid, in partially blaming global warming, and not arsonists, for the San Diego County, California fires, is actually blaming China (related blog post here). Reid then denies he said it — in the same press conference. Edited audio is here.
Of course, Reid is blaming something that, unless this year is different, stopped happening in 1998.
As you can see, my personally-invented term “globaloneyâ„¢” fits the circumstances.
An expanded version of this item is at Wide Open.
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Michelle Malkin has a complete roundup of what appears to be the final phase of The New Republic (TNR)-phony soldier Scott Beauchamp collapse. It’s not pretty. Journalism careers should end over this.
I think when all is said and done, we’ll learn that TNR was desperate to regain its credibility with the far left. Towards that end, it thought that a twisted-soldiers story might get them back in their good grace. Markos at Daily Kos has relentlessly criticized TNR for being too moderate, even as defectors to the Right (cough, cough).
In the process of trying to get their street cred, TNR threw what little judgment that might have remained at the publication overboard.
The Beauchamp saga is also one of persistence in getting at the truth by right-side bloggers like Malkin, Ace, Confederate Yankee, and, and….. Matt Drudge (link to the text of docs leaked to him is here; Drudge took down the original link yesterday). Interesting — Drudge despises the term blogger, seems to dislikes blogging and definitely dislikes certain bloggers, yet has been playing one on the Internet for over a decade. You’re obviously still doing great work, Matt, but sometime between this watershed 1998 speech, you philosophically lost your way.
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As blogged here several weeks ago, Robert Novak told you this was coming:
Corporations would see their top tax rate cut to 30.5% from 35% under a tax plan unveiled Wednesday by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., to fellow committee members.
Upper-income families, however, would pay for that repeal with a 4% surtax on incomes above $150,000 for a single earner or incomes above $200,000 for a married couple. That surtax would grow to 4.6% for incomes above $500,000.
It appears that the separate surtax doesn’t stand in the way of also repealing the the Bush tax cuts when the expire in 2010. If I’m correct (someone tell e-mail me if they think I’m wrong), the top individual rate would go from its current 35% to 39.6% under Rangel’s proposal to 44.2% starting in 2011.
