Couldn’t Help But Notice (040708)

RIP, Charlton Heston.

I don’t know how you can overstate the importance of the actor’s larger-than-life status to preserving our Second Amendment rights when they were most seriously challenged in the 1980s and 1990s. The public could hardly see supporters of the right to keep and bear arms as “gun nuts” as long as Heston was the face of the NRA.

Old Media bias clearly follows unfavored folks to their graves.

First, a hearty “bleep you” to David Germain of AP, for putting serial liar Michael Moore into the second paragraph of your Heston obit, adding four later paragraphs about Moore, and even providing a link to his site in the article’s text — as if most of Germain’s readers give a rip about what Moore did in response to Heston’s passing.

Also, this LA Times rundown of Heston’s films seems intent on finding ways to negatively critique either Heston’s performance or the films themselves, even quoting a Time review of “The Ten Commandments” that called Heston “ludicrously miscast.”

Covered in longer form at NewsBusters.org.

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Vermont is facing a $59 million budget deficit. The state’s population is just over 600,000. Per-capita, that would be the equivalent of over $1 billion in Ohio.

Jim Douglas, the state’s sort-of Republican governor, is holding the line on taxes and has proposed reductions in planned spending (other would call them “cuts,” but my bet is that year-over-year spending will still be higher after the reductions).

This editorial in a Brattleboro paper starts out by saying that there are no new sources of revenue available, but then about 2/3 of the way through supports “eliminat(ing) a tax break on capital gains” that would supposedly raise $21 million. It goes on to whine about the governor’s lack of leadership and engagement. From here, I have to wonder what else he’s supposed to do.

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Wal-Mart is making a false claim, according to the National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus:

Wal-Mart should discontinue the implied advertising claim that consumers can save $2,500 annually by shopping there, the National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus recommended in a statement today.

….. Wal-Mart has since dropped the claim from TV and magazine ads, though it remains on the retailer’s website. A spokeswoman said Wal-Mart has modified the website to make it clearer that people need not necessarily shop at Wal-Mart to get the $2,500 in savings.

I’d say that makes it an understated claim; Wal-Mart’s aggressive efficiency has benefitted everyone. Thanks, Wal-Mart.