WASHINGTON: Democratic Representative Eric Massa resigned from the House yesterday to avoid an ethics probe that would tear his family apart. Massa charges Rahm Emanuel with smearing him due to his questioning of the Socialist Health Care bill.

Massa frankly admitted making inappropriate remarks to a staffer making a congressional enquiry unnecessary, however the House leadership wished to pursue the matter to pressure him to resign. Massa had voted against the health care proposal and Pelosi wanted him replaced with someone who would vote for it. Massa responded to a caller to his weekly radio show on WKPQ Power 105 FM:

The leadership of the Democratic Party have become exactly what they said they were running against. They have become exactly what we all ran against. You cannot effectively govern this country without the consent of the governed. The entire nation has said, “Let’s rewrite the health care bill, let’s find what we can agree upon.” No, no, no, no, we are going to ram this down the throats of the American people and anyone who stands in the way of doing that, is going to be smeared.”

Never mind the will of the people, Queen Pelosi will rule as she deems fit. King George was never this bad.

WASHINGTON: Charlie Rangel stepped down as House Ways and Means chairman yesterday amid a House ethics investigation. The ethics committee last week finally admonished him for accepting corporate-sponsored trips to the Caribbean.

News first broke of impropriety in June of 2008. While rent controlled apartments in New York City are increasingly hard to find, the New York Times reported that Rangel had four of them, including three adjacent units overlooking Upper Manhattan. The next month Rangel officially requested an ethics probe to clear his name over the allegations. Two months later he acknowledged that he owed taxes for rental income he did not report. Finally that month on September 25, 2008 the House ethics panel convened an investigative subcommittee. Meanwhile many other allegations came to light.

Nearly two years later the investigation has censured Rangel on the least of the charges, forcing him to step down. This amounts to a slap on the wrist which will move Rangel out of the spotlight to enable Democrats focus their attention on ramming healthcare reform down the throats of the American people. Left unadressed are several issues:

• Failing to report hundreds of thousands in assets, including mutual funds and stock
• Failing to report ownership in an overseas luxury residence
• Using his official position to raise money for a school named after him
• Tax evasion on unreported assets and other ethics violations

This month millions of Americans will grapple with the complex US tax code as they prepare their tax returns for the upcoming deadline. Many struggle to pay their tax liability to fund this out of control government. Charlie Rangel as head of the Ways and Means Committee was in charge of writing this tax code. No one would know better than Rangel the illegality of hiding nearly one million in unreported assets. Yet he holds himself above the law, depending on his cronies who are still covering for him.

This is all too often the case with the ruling class. They pass laws that others must obey, taxing the serfs who serve to finance their power and decadence. Meanwhile they exempt themselves from the very laws they impose upon others.

Pelosi promised to “drain the swamp” when she took control in 2006. Instead she has pumped raw sewage into the bayou and has spritzed her private cologne to cover the stench.

Obama is "Fixing" More Than Your Car

WASHINGTON (or is it Detroit?): The NIP was the first to call into question the Congressional witch hunts against Toyota. Our position was that all credibility of the National Traffic Safety Administration has been lost now that Obama is in the car business. Turns out we were right, but it goes much further.

When unions spend more than $60 million on an election, they demand results. That money put Andy Stern, head of the SEIU, in the White House more than any other visitor. Andy Stern warned us that the union thugs “prefer to use the power of persuasion, but if that doesn’t work we use the persuasion of power.”

Big money always means big influence. Unions came out on top when it came time restructure GM, ironic because unions were at the heart of the automaker’s troubles. Guess who receives barrels of union money:

We are told that 19 of the 36 Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee were given sizable checks by the UAW for their election campaigns. We also learn that 12 of 25 Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee got checks, too. In my opinion, such a conflict of interest puts Toyota at quite a disadvantage… Read more…

Maybe it is because Barack Obama is so out of touch that he does not even know how to pronounce “Marine Corpsman:”

President Obama pronounced “corpsman” as “corpse man” twice in the same address. This mispronunciation has caused quite a bit of ridicule about a man who ascended to the presidency based upon his rhetorical skills. Mark Whittington, Associated Content

Maybe they understand fakery when they see it, but whatever the reason, the video below demonstrates the heartfelt difference Marines feel when it comes time to recognize their Commander-in-Chief. The video shows you side-by-side comparisons of the troops responses to Bush vs. Obama. The difference is striking. At the end of the Obama clip even the commentator remarks on the “tepid response” of the troops to their CiC.

Obama’s obvious lack of familiarity with our armed services should give all concerned citizens pause when considering Obama’s recommendations on foreign and military policies. This video shows that our troops are concerned, shouldn’t you be too?

Market Manipulation?

WASHINGTON (or is it Detroit?): Just as one Federal investigation of Toyota is winding down, the National Traffic Safety Administration announced today that they are launching an investigation of possible flaws in Toyota’s steering system, this time in the bread and butter Corolla line:

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will open an investigation into a possible flaw in the steering systems for the 2009-2010 Corolla, likely to lead to another massive recall for Toyota, ABC News has learned.

NHTSA says it has received 163 complaints about the steering causing the Corollas to veer from side-to-side. A number of accidents and injuries have been tied to the issue, according to federal officials. ABC News

While the NIP does not dispute the seriousness any Toyota car accident, we do have serious questions about the frequency of charges leveled against the automaker by the Federal government. Could the steady barrage of charges against the automaker be market manipulation? Read more…

WASHINGTON: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” so goes Santayana’s Law of Repetitive Consequences. One thing you can’t criticize President Obama for is unwillingness to follow the example of Republicans. In 1988 presidential candidate George H. W. Bush pledged, “Read my lips, no new taxes.”  After Bush was elected he backtracked on his promise, which contributed to the undoing of his presidency.

Candidate Barack H. Obama promised in 2008 that those making less than $250,000 per year would not see “one dime” in tax increases:

“I can make a firm pledge,” he said in Dover, N.H., on Sept. 12. “Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.”

He repeatedly vowed “you will not see any of your taxes increase one single dime.” Breitbart

The NIP wonders if Obama remembers what happened to President Bush when he ignored his own promise not to increase taxes. Today Obama appears non-chalant about his promise to confine tax increases to “fat cats”: Read more…

NEW ORLEANS: Yesterday’s Super Bowl set a record for TV audiences, and also set a record for the most disgusting advertisement in NFL history. It’s hard to chronicle all of the offensive ads through the years, but certainly Motorola’s ad touting it’s new MOTOBLUR software has to be ranked the most offensive. While the commercial was not particularly graphic, it did have its share of innuendo and double entendre. What the NIP finds most offensive is that the commercial legitimizes the practice of sexting.

Sexting, the practice sending pornographic images of one’s self or other via text messaging or email, has been linked to all kinds of problems among youth in this country, even being linked to the suicide of one teenager. Back in 2007 cheerleader coach Victoria Schattauer in Goshen Ohio made history when she photographed herself with a student topless. The photo was sexted and emailed all over the school, and subsequently all over the country. The photos shocked the country because of their graphic nature involving a teacher and a student together, with the teacher taking the photo. Since then apparently lots of other coaches have followed suit, judging by a quick Google search of “coaches sexting.”

Motorola’s commercial shows actress Megan Fox taking a picture of herself in the tub and sending it out. Besides frying the local telephone lines the explicit photo makes the rounds to a teenage boy locking himself in a bathroom, a voyeuristic husband getting slapped by his wife, a gay couple slapping each other, etc., all in good fun, apparently in the judgement of Motorola executives. The trouble is that teens don’t need any more incentive to engage in sexting. This commercial does not help teens understand just how severe the consequences can be: Read more…