Friday saw a couple of interesting events take place in the political world.

President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela received the constitutional reforms from the National Assembly he had been seeking, allowing him to now run indefinitely for re-election. This is only one of the 69 changes proposed for the Constitution, and final citizen vote for acceptance or rejection is to take place December 2.

Closer to home, President Bush has vetoed a $23 billion water projects bill that would focus on wetlands, flood control, hurricane mitigation and coastal restoration, revival of the Everglades, new locks on the upper Mississippi and Illinois rivers, etc. Bush called this pork-barrel spending, and claimed that "Americans sent us to Washington to achieve results and be good stewards of their hard-earned taxpayer dollars". Does that mean that he is going to reverse all of his spending programs? I wonder if KBR or another Halliburton subsidiary was named for the contract work on these projects if it would have been vetoed, or is that just being too cynical?

We can bankrupt the country fighting a war that was started for false reasons, and have billions of dollars of wasted expenditures due to the Vice President's cash cow getting contracts to rebuild what their war destroyed, but we won't increase funds for child health care, or take care of our nations wetlands and coastal areas, or rebuild our failing infrastructure.
Anyone on these boards able to explain this rich kid's priorities?

Hopefully, Iraq and Iran and the events unfolding in Pakistan with the "state of emergency" will keep Bush distracted enough not to pay attention to what Chavez is trying to accomplish.

You forgot to mention that Chavez arrested the protestors.

And good for Bush. Just $23 billion added in committee. About damned time he vetoed some pork. Had he done that more before the last election, he wouldn't have lost his majority.

The water bill passed both houses of Congress by more than 2/3 majority. Good chance that the 'pork' will be delivered on schedule.

Chavez has been pulling his political agenda since he came back from Cuba hugging Castro which I think I posted. If he could only make Argentina Oil worth more than Mexicos.

Besides the fact most major players pulled out of that market our beloved corner 7/11 /push support for comunism with a slurpee and gas from our hot dog toating fast food loving shelves.

Chavez wishes he had the support of Russia and china to push his agenda instead he is locking the country much like Pakistan at the present. Just no A queda on his borders. He wont step down in an election.