I have very mixed emotions on the bailout, but I am impressed by what Jonah Goldberg has to say in The Corner on National Review–

“Count me Out of the Bailout   [Jonah Goldberg]

Sorry for the radio silence. Among other schedule-busters, I was drafted at the last minute to accompany my daughter on a field trip to an apple orchard. Anyway, not that anyone has been waiting with bated breath to know what I think about the bailout, but I’ve decided I’m against it. I’ve talked to a bunch of folks I respect, listened to Mike Pence on C-Span this morning, read various pieces and examined the exposed viscera of a financially literate goat and I’ve decided there must be a better way. Basically, I think the bad paper should stay with the people who bought it. If we need to further capitalize the banks, create short term rules or cobble together other backstops, fine. But Paulson’s plan basically says, “I am the Lord thy God,” and that’s crazy. Also, it seems to me that Newt and the editors of NR are right when they worry that the Paulson plan essentially opens the door to unending government control of capital markets and that, too,  is just crazy. Even if I completely trusted the wisdom of Paulson and his bureaucrats — which I don’t — there’s no way that I trust the Dodds, Franks or the next Treasury secretary. Every day the markets don’t go off the cliff suggests to me that we can do this in stages and that Paulson’s do-it-my-way-or-it’s-the-Dark-Ages-for-us-all argument doesn’t hold water.”

Dean Barnett has a great post at The Weekly Standard.  Somehow, it just has a familiar ring to it.  I guess if we didn’t laugh at the situation, we’d cry. 

The following is reprinted from Little Green Footballs.  it was posted by The Jawa Report.

Our research suggests that a subdivision of one of the largest public relations firms in the world most likely started and promulgated rumors about Sarah Palin that were known to be false. These rumors were spread in a surreptitious manner to avoid exposure.

It is also likely that the PR firm was paid by outside sources to run the smear campaign. While not conclusive, evidence suggests a link to the Barack Obama campaign. Namely:

* Evidence suggests that a YouTube video with false claims about Palin was uploaded and promoted by members of a professional PR firm.

* The family that runs the PR firm has extensive ties to the Democratic Party, the netroots, and are staunch Obama supporters.

* Evidence suggests that the firm engaged in a concerted effort to distribute the video in such a way that it would appear to have gone viral on its own. Yet this effort took place on company time.

* Evidence suggests that these distribution efforts included actions by at least one employee of the firm who is unconnected with the family running the company.

* The voice-over artist used in this supposedly amateur video is a professional.

* This same voice-over artist has worked extensively with David Axelrod’s firm, which has a history of engaging in phony grassroots efforts, otherwise known as “astroturfing.”

* David Axelrod is Barack Obama’s chief media strategist.

* The same voice-over artist has worked directly for the Barack Obama campaign.

 

If you follow the link in the article in Little Green Footballs to the Jawa Report, you will find a further explanation of the research done and facts on which the conclusions of the article are based.

The New York Sun today published the speech that Sarah Palin had planned to give today at a rally in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza to protest the appearance here of President Ahmadinejad of Iran.  Click on the link above to read her speech.  We need this lady.  She has an intuitive understanding of how the world works, and she says what she thinks.

I am not a financial analyst, nor do I claim to fully understand what is happening in our financial markets, but I do have a few observations.

1.  Using the mortgage market as a social experiment was a really bad idea.  People with bad credit and limited income are not good credit risks to buy $600,000 homes.  Banks were forced to give these loans by a Congress who threatened them with not being able to expand if they did not give out a certain amount of subprime mortgages.  This mistake was aggravated by the fact that the local banks were not holding the paper on the loans that they were forced to make–they did not have to carry any risk for the loans they made.  The problem in this case was not a lack of regulation–it was an abundance of bad regulation.

2.  I am not in favor of having the government regulate salaries or bonuses of corporate executives, but I am forced to admit there have been abuses in this area.  Is there any way a law can be passed to say that when a corporate head receives a bonus, an amount equal to half of his bonus has to shared proportionally among all employees?  I would also like to see an investigation into the multiple million dollar bonuses paid to officers of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and some of the other players who were cooking their books during the time this crisis was developing.  I would like to see some of this money paid back in the cases where the government (that’s us–the taxpayers) has taken over the debt of these companies.

3.  We are back to “follow the money”.  The Senators and Representatives who have taken the most money from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have been the ones blocking any control on these entities since 1999.  The only way to clean up this aspect of the problem is to look at the list of who received the most money and voted against proper controls of these institutions and vote them out of office.  Throw the bums out!!  I am not objecting to campaign contributions, but when contributions align with votes that actually harm the people who are supposedly represented, it it time to get new representatives.

4.  One of the underlying causes of this problem is the psychology of ‘instant gratification’ that permeates this society.  We teach our children not to wait until marriage to have sex (if it feels good, do it!), and we raise our children with an expectation of having the standard of living right after graduating from school that it took their parents thirty or forty years to earn.  The concept of waiting for something or achieving something over a period of time has been lost in our culture.  The microwave is not evil–but we have become a culturally and financially microwaved society.  I believe that is also part of this crisis.

5.  This is not an original thought, but I have no idea who said it–Democracy is designed to be a three-legged stool–the government, the financial sector, and societal morality.  I think we are missing one leg of the stool. 

Breitbart.com is reporting that Hugo Chavez is buying combat and training aircraft from the Chinese.  For peaceful purposes only, I’m sure.

According to Hot Air, the New York Times printed this statement on September 30, 1999 relating to the changes in lending policies opening up the subprime mortgage market.

“In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980’s.

“From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,” said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.””

Wow.  Why wasn’t anyone listening?

There is an audio link at the bottom of this article to the Mark Levin Show and his comments on the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac meltdown.  The audio is a little long, but his insight into the history of this problem amazing.

WARNING:  The language on the audio link is a little rough and very passionate.

Just a warning–be aware that the new Barack Obama ad on John McCain and Social Security is not honest.  Fact Check has an article quoting both John McCain and the ad.  This is a basic scare tactic, and we as voters need to be well enough informed not to fall for it.

I have said before that Congress should be forced to live under the laws that it passes.  It was a silly dream, but it was mine, and I held on to it.  You know– the idea of paying for gas out of their own pockets instead of having it paid for by some fund, being under Social Security for a retirement plan, or having to deal with the real world of the medical care mess they helped create.  But it was only a dream.  However, a small part of it has come true–some of the people who blocked reform on the subprime mortgage mess are now being hurt by it.

Bloomberg News is reporting that Senators Nancy Pelosi and John Kerry are being severly hurt by what has happened to AIG recently along with fifty other members of Congress.  I guess what goes around does come around.  Maybe this will give them incentive to fix it!!.

1.  How come when Congress goes into overtime, it costs the taxpayers bazillions of dollars?

2.  It looks like in the stock market bailout, the federal government is going to wind up with a lot of foreclosed mortgages.  Are they smart enough to sell the related properties and reclaim at least part of the money so that the taxpayers’ burden will be a little bit less?

3.  Has it occurred to anyone that opening up offshore drilling and other natural resources would create jobs and income which might allow us to get out of our financial doldrums?  The drilling ban on the outer continental shelf expires September 30–if nothing is done to renew it.  It will be interesting to see what happens with this–opening up drillilng would be a definite boost to our economy–the exploration and preparatory work alone would create jobs, taxes, etc.  We need to be careful to make sure the oil companies have enough profit margin to take advantage of this opportunity when (and if) it happens.  (Just for the record, the oil company’s profit margin is about 7 percent–below the average profit margin of an American corporation.)  I would also like to note that American corporations are the most highly taxed and highly regulated in the world, making it extremely difficult to compete in the global market.  That is why many of them have outsourced and moved offshore.  By overtaxing and overregulating them, we have driven them (and their tax revenue) out of the country.  To see an example of this on a statewide basis, look at the states that are gaining industries and jobs and the states that are losing industries and jobs (Michigan is a prime example of high taxes, powerful unions, and overregulation).  People vote with their feet when they can.

I haven’t said a lot about the hacking into Sarah Palin’s email because I think it’s an obviously awful thing to do (to anyone).  But I do like this story from the American Thinker by Ethel C. Fenig–

“Let’s not forget Gawker which first published Palin’s hacked emails, writing

Now comes word that Anonymous, the fun-loving Internet trouble-makers based loosely around the message board 4Chan, gained access to another Palin email account: gov.palin@yahoo.com. It looks legit! The offending posts, screenshots, heretofore unseen family photos, and emails have all been deleted from Imageshack and 4Chan. But we have them.

“We didn’t publish Bristol’s phone number. (Tho we did call it. And we did publish shrunk screenshots of the emails.) You know also that we’d have no hesitation in publishing similar info about Obama or Biden. If we’re sleazebags, we’re equal-opportunity sleazebags.”

THEY TOLD ME THAT IF GEORGE W. BUSH WERE RE-ELECTED, no one’s email would be safe from the prying of jackbooted thugs motivated by politics, not national security. And they were right!

For everyone out there who is in favor of nationalizing health care, please read this Hot Air article.  The problem with letting the government care for us cradle-to-grave is that eventually the government wants to decide when the ‘grave’ part of that equation should happen.  Hitler called them “nonproductive eaters” and used that term to take away the humanity of the disabled, handicapped, and elderly so that he could kill them without disturbing the collective conscience of the population.  There were some people in the population who did object, but in a dictatorship, they can be dealt with swiftly.  When health care is under the control of the government, it will be rationed.  If you are over the age of fifty, this should be of great concern to you.

There is an article on the online opinion page of The Wall Street Journal talking about the current financial mess. It’s a fairly long article, but its headline is important– “Taking Revenge on the Rich Will Not Bring Recovery”.  It chronicles some of the things that went on during the 1929 depression that were not helpful in ending the depression.  We are not technically in a depression, but we definitely need to learn from past mistakes.

Just for the record, the top line of the DRUDGE REPORT states that the stock market is up forty points this month, 18 per cent over the past five years, and 44 per cent over the past 10 years.  We will come through this.

The National Review Online has an article by Jonah Goldberg that helps sort out some of the financial mess we are currently seeing.  One of his observations:

“The self-proclaimed angels in Washington will tell you they’ve been working tirelessly to expand the American dream of homeownership by making mortgages available to people unable to plunk down 20 percent on a house. Franklin Raines, the Clinton-appointed former head of Fannie Mae from 1998 to 2004, made it his top priority to make mortgages easier to get for people with poor credit, few assets and little money for a down payment.”

Sounds like a great business plan–lend money to people who probably can’t pay it back!!! 

Jonah Goldberg continues…

“Of course, there are other important factors at work here, having to do with changing technology among other things. And even if the bad mortgages weren’t in the system, we’d still have the hangover from the end of the housing boom. But the financial system could have handled that with the usual corrections. The biggest dose of poison entered the financial bloodstream through Washington. And some people warned us. In 2005, Fannie Mae revealed it overstated earnings by $10.6 billion and that it didn’t really know what was going on. The Bush administration pushed for reforms, but those efforts were rebuffed by Congress, with Democrats Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd taking point, because Fannie and Freddie have spent millions in campaign contributions.

In 2005, McCain sponsored legislation to thwart what he later called “the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system and the economy as a whole.”

Obama, the Senate’s second-greatest recipient of donations from Fannie and Freddie after Dodd, did nothing.

Meanwhile, Raines, the head of a government-supported institution, made $52 million of his $90 million compensation package thanks in part to fraudulent earnings statements.

But, ah yes, the greedy criminals responsible for this mess must be somewhere on Wall Street.”

Joe Biden says that paying more taxes is patriotic Yahoo News.  ‘Nuff said.

Little Green Footballs has an article about the person accused of hacking into the email of Sarah Palin.  He is the son of a Democratic state representative in Tennessee.

Just for the record, I don’t hold parents responsible for the actions of their 20-year old children who are college students.  However, even though this may have been a big joke to David Kernell (the hacker), I would like to see him punished severly.  Hacking is illegal and should not be treated lightly.  Computers and emails are used to communicate a lot of sensitive information, and there needs to be protection on the confidentiality of that information.  I am not a computer geek, so I’m not sure what is in place, but hacking into a public figure’s private email is tacky at best and criminal at worst. 

Just a note–the twenty or thirty ‘wolves’ that headed to Wasilla, Alaska, a few weeks ago seem to be having a difficult time coming up with serious dirt on Sarah Palin.  They did come up with a DUI her husband was charged with twenty years ago, but Barack Obama admits that he was using cocaine at that time, so I’m not sure how much of a deal they can afford to make of this.  They also tried the “troopergate” thing, but Bill Clinton already had a patent on that name; and as the memos relating to the situation are released, the charge of scandal is unraveling.  Sarah Palin is a charismatic, attractive lady, but it seems as if when it is all said and done, she lives a rather average life of balancing work, family, and career..

I’m giving out a few quick chutzpah awards tonight.  They don’t need a lot of explaining, but the recipients do leave me shaking my head in disbelief.

1.  According to Power Line:

“The younger son of the Rosenbergs — Robert Meeropol — is still on the road peddling the old-time religion. He is scheduled to speak at the University of Minnesota on October 6 on literary representations of the Rosenbergs. Meeropol is director of the Roseberg Fund for Children, which attends to “the educational and emotional needs of both targeted activist youth and children in this country whose parents have been harassed, injured, jailed, lost jobs or died in the course of their progressive activities.” I understand that the Rosenberg Fund will be considering grants for children of “activists” suffering adverse consequences of arrests at the Republican convention in St. Paul this month. (Not that there are any such consequences.)”

The fact that his parents have been proven guilty does not get in the way of his fund raising and activism–the chutzpah award goes to Robert Meeropol.

2.  According to the New York Post:

You gotta love Charlie Rangel.  As head of the House Ways and Means Committee, he doesn’t pay income tax on the rental income from an out of the country property, he uses a rent controlled apartment for an office (illegally), and now has a car stored illegally in the House of Representative parking garage.

The fact that he is the head of the committee that writes tax law doesn’t prevent him from ignoring existing current tax laws–the next chutzpah award goes to Charlie Rangel.

3.  The final chutzpah award goes to any member of the Democrat or Republican party who is currently complaining about the economy while simultaneously blocking any legislation that will allow us to use our own natural resources to provide energy, to create jobs, and to revitalize the economy.

This November, think about the message that we voters need to send to our Congressmen saying that business as usual is no longer acceptable.  All House and Senate votes are listed on the Congressional Websites www.senate.gov and www.house.gov.  Spend a little time on these sites, see how your representative votes, and cast your vote accordingly. 

There is an article in today’s The Weekly Standard that should be required reading.  The subtitle of the article is “Thanks to three American senators, China will be pumping Iraqi oil.
by Frederick W. Kagan”  This article is about the kind of political gamesmanship currently going on in Washington that should infuriate all Americans.  The people making decisions in Washington right now are doing much more damage to this country in the long run than most of us realize.  We need to wake up. 

If you want further information on the No Energy Bill the Democrats are proposing you can go the the House Minority Leader’s Website, but I found an article in The Virginian Pilot that I felt explained the bill in terms that even I could understand.  There are two main points that make it a ‘no energy’ bill.

1.  The states would not share in any revenues–therefore they would have no incentive to drill.

2,  There would be no drilling on the outer continental shelf less than fifty miles out–making any oil more difficult to obtain and putting many of the oil fields with the most potential off-limits.

This is a really bad bill, and passing it would be worse than doing nothing.

The democrats in congress today have no interest at all in helping us achieve energy independence.  This is a security issue as well as an economic issue.  If they are so unconcerned with our security and well being, they do not deserve to be in office and should be voted out as soon as possible.  They are definitely not representing the American people.

Accuracy in Media posted an article in February 2008 concerning the Global Poverty Act sponsored by Barack Obama.  This is the opening paragraph:

“A nice-sounding bill called the “Global Poverty Act,” sponsored by Democratic presidential candidate and Senator Barack Obama, is up for a Senate vote on Thursday and could result in the imposition of a global tax on the United States. The bill, which has the support of many liberal religious groups, makes levels of U.S. foreign aid spending subservient to the dictates of the United Nations.”

Does anyone remember what a mess the UN made of ‘food for oil’ or the peacekeepers raping women in Africa?  This organization needs to be kicked out of the country–not given more money.  The article continues…

“Senator Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has not endorsed either Senator Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton in the presidential race. But on Thursday, February 14, he is trying to rush Obama’s “Global Poverty Act” (S.2433) through his committee. The legislation would commit the U.S. to spending 0.7 percent of gross national product on foreign aid, which amounts to a phenomenal 13-year total of $845 billion over and above what the U.S. already spends.” 

We have already lost the war on poverty in this country by destroying the family in the black community and by handing out money instead of dealing with the root problems of poverty–lack of education, lack of the guidance of a healthy family unit, and a belief in the inevitability of failure.  Until we can solve our own poverty problems through education (school vouchers to remove children from failing public schools in certain communities) and support of families, we have no business throwing money overseas.

I have one personal story concerning poverty that truly opened my eyes to the difficulty in battling poverty.  I have children and grandchildren who were living in New Orleans during hurricane Katrina.  They came through relatively unscathed, but some of what they saw (and what we saw) was troubling.  For instance, many of the people of New Orleans received checks from FEMA shortly after hurricane Katrina.  New Orleans is to a large extent a miniature welfare state–there is tremendous poverty there (even before Katrina) and many of the people who received the FEMA checks had never seen that much money at one time before.  A fairly large percentage of that money found its way into the gambling casinos and strip joints.  Poverty is not totally about money–there are attitudes that have to be addressed also, and until they are addressed, there will be no improvement.  We have lost the war on poverty in this country–we need a new strategy that deals with the roots–not the symptoms.  Anyway, we don’t need to share our failure in this area with the rest of the world while taking money out of our own treasury.

There is an article in today’s Los Angeles Times about the confession of Rosenberg co-defendent Morton Sobell that the Rosenbergs were guilty.  Here are two quotes from the article:

“The Rosenbergs were Soviet spies, and not minor ones either. Not only did they try their best to give the Soviets top atomic secrets from the Manhattan Project, they succeeded in handing over top military data on sonar and on radar that was used by the Russians to shoot down American planes in the Korean and Vietnam wars. That’s long been known, and Sobell confirmed it again last week.”

“Nevertheless, after Sobell’s confession of guilt, all other conspiracy theories about the Rosenberg case should come to an end. A pillar of the left-wing culture of grievance has been finally shattered. The Rosenbergs were actual and dangerous Soviet spies. It is time the ranks of the left acknowledge that the United States had (and has) real enemies and that finding and prosecuting them is not evidence of repression.

Ronald Radosh, an emeritus professor of history at City University of New York and an adjunct senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, is the coauthor of “The Rosenberg File.”

The actions of these people caused death and injury to Americans in Vietnam and Korea.  In evaluating the case, that needs to be considered.  Are we ready to prosecute the leaks from the state department to certain newspapers that made it more difficult to track terrorist finances?  Just as the Rosenbergs caused the death and injury to our soldiers, the leaks to the New York Times may cost everyday Americans their lives because of terrorist plots that were not stopped.

This is not a post about abortion.  I am not a one issue voter, and although I believe Roe v Wade is not good law, I believe overturning it would simply kick the issue back to the states where it belongs (see the 10th Amendment).  I would like to see abortion end–it has become a million dollar industry, and that bothers me, but that is not what this post is about.

What do you do when a baby survives an abortion?  Can you legally kill it?  Does an unwanted abortion survivor deserve medical attention?  These are issues that we have to deal with.  I also feel that these are issues that will define us as a civilization.  If a baby is not worth medical care and can be put in a supply closet to die, is grandma worth medical attention?  I say this as a senior citizen with a more than vested interest in the answer.

The following is from BornAliveTruth.org.  Draw your own conclusions.

As an Illinois State Senator, Barack Obama opposed the Illinois Born Alive Infants Protection Act. The legislation defined any infant born alive as a “person” who deserves full legal protection.

The Illinois Born Alive Infants Protection Act was modeled after the federal version, with the identical definition of “born alive.” The World Health Organization created this definition in 1950. The United Nations adopted it in 1955.

Obama actively opposed the legislation in the Illinois State Senate. In 2001, he voted no in committee, spoke against it on the Senate floor, and voted present on the floor. In 2002, he voted no in committee, spoke against it on the Senate floor, and voted no on the floor. Obama was the sole senator to ever speak against it on the Senate floor.

The U.S. Senate passed the federal bill unanimously, with Senators Barbara Boxer and Ted Kennedy speaking in support of it.

The pro-abortion group NARAL expressed neutrality on the federal bill. On August 5, 2002, President George W. Bush signed it into law.

For four years Obama has said he would have supported the federal version, but that simply isn’t true. In 2003, as chairman of the Illinois Senate’s Health and Human Services Committee, Obama voted yes on an amendment that made the Illinois version identical to the federal one. However, he then voted no on the amended bill.

This article may or may not be related to the current political situation, but to me it is just interesting.  You have been warned!

I am reading a book by David Stick called GRAVEYARD OF THE ATLANTIC, Shipwrecks of the North Carolina Coast.  There is a chapter in this book dealing with German submarines operating off the North Carolina and Virginia coast during the World War I.  The story that caught my attention was the story of U-151, which laid mines and torpedoed cargo ships traveling that route.  She was commanded by Korvettenkapitan Von Nostitz und Janckendorf.  The U-151 attacked the British steamer Harpathian bound from Plymouth, England to Newport News.  The sub torpedoed the ship, the captain gave the order to abandon ship, and an injured man from the ship was treated for his injuries on the sub while supplies were passed from the sub to each of the lifeboats from the ship.  After sinking another ship, the Vindeggen, the sub towed the lifeboats with it rather than leaving them adrift.  Later that day, the sub sighted the Norwegian steamship Heinrich Lund stopped her, and gave her the choice of taking aboard the survivors it was now towing from two previous sinkings or being sunk.  They made the obvious choice, and sixty-eight people from two sunken vessels went safely home.

In contrast, U-152 commanded by Kapitanleutnant Franz headed for our coast left for our coast, but before the sub got here, she received orders to return home.  God smiled on us that day.  Although most of the other submarine commanders were concerned about the safety of the people aboard the ships they sank, Franz was not.  On his way to American, he sank two ships.  One he raked with shellfire, ignoring a white flag of surrender, and killing 215 of the 239 men on board.  The second, he attacked against orders and sent the nineteen survivors adrift in mid-ocean.

My point is this, every country has citizens that are noble and principled and citizens that are rogues.  Ninety-nine point nine per cent of our soldiers are honorable men, and we need to remember that when we hear of the occasional incident that occurs in the fog of war.  War is a horrible thing, but there are times when it is necessary to stand up to the bully on the block.  When we do it, even though it may not seem like our fight, we are ultimately protecting our own safety by removing a bully. 

That bastion of right wing reporting (only kidding) The New York Times reported five years ago that the Bush administration was trying to set up a new agency to oversee Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  Here is the link, New Agency Proposed to Oversee Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  Here is a quote from the Hot Air article recalling the events:

Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the National Association of Home Builders and Congressional Democrats who fear that tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing.

“These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. “The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”

Representative Melvin L. Watt, Democrat of North Carolina, agreed.

“I don’t see much other than a shell game going on here, moving something from one agency to another and in the process weakening the bargaining power of poorer families and their ability to get affordable housing,” Mr. Watt said.

Sounds a little like the Democratic denial of problems in Social Security, doesn’t it?  Nothing to see here, no crisis on the horizon.  Everybody just move along, now.  The Democrats had forced lenders to assume more risk at lower interest rates in the 1990s, as IBD points out today, and they didn’t want to countenance an end to their populist policies.”

This is the reason we need to vote people out of office until we get someone in office who will deal with the issues that face this nation and this nation’s economy.

I seem to remember the Democrats taking control of the House and Senate by charging the Republicans with corruption and saying that the Democrats would be much more ethical.  Yeah.  Right.  The man with hundreds of thousands of dollars in his capital hill freezer is still in the house, and now the head of the Ways and Means Committee has tax and income disclosure problems.  Please follow the link to the New York Post to see the further adventures of Charlie Rangel.