Great picture of Charlie Rangel on the Huff Post to accompany the story about him apparently giving up his Chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee (or is he? To sum up the story, yes he is, no he isn’t, yes he is, no he isn’t. UPDATE: Yes he is, but only “temporarily”). He’s wearing a black jacket, but it makes him look like Satan (or at least an old-school vampire – you know, before they got all ‘Lost Boys” and Twilight in the Loafers) wearing a black cape standing amidst the flames of hell. I always got a kick out of Charlie, but it appears he was bad, so I think he needs to go. I’m getting tired of politicians on the take (and, yeah, I think pretty much all of them are) – especially in New York State (the worst ones always seem to be from NYC; I guess Upstate politicians aren’t considered worth paying off – or maybe their prices are so low they fly under the radar). Except for our former mayor, Lee Alexander (best mayor Syracuse has ever had, except he got a kickback on every piece of business the City did), but he was from Jersey, so whattya expect?

The Senate has finally passed stop-gap legislation to extend unemployment benefits and keep highway dollars flowing, now that Jim Bunning (seen in this photo on the RMS Titanic, shortly before putting on a dress and jumping into one of the last available life boats) has stopped doing whatever the hell he was doing to prevent it. They’re calling it a one-man filibuster, but it was some other sort of bullshit than what we’ve come to know as a filibuster (even though the Senate defines a filibuster as an “Informal term for any attempt to block or delay Senate action on a bill or other matter by debating it at length, by offering numerous procedural motions, or by any other delaying or obstructive actions,” which I guess does make it a filibuster after all) . It finally passed 78-19, which show you what a load of crap the Senate rules are. But, nothing we can do about it, of course. The Democrats are too afraid of the Republicans saying mean things about them, and, besides, they want those rules available to them when they’re in the minority (not that they’d actually use them, of course, ‘cuz they’d be too afraid of the Republicans saying mean things about them).

The tea baggers are trying to recall NJ’s US Senator Bob Menendez. It doesn’t actually appear they have the right to recall a federal legislator, though. According to Menendez’s lawyer, there’s nothing in the US Constitution that allows a recall, although NJ is one of 18 states (plus DC) that has a recall procedure in place (along with Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington and Wisconsin). The tea baggers want to see if they can get the required 1.3 million signatures required under the NJ rules. Or something.

Some Air Traffic Controller brought his little kid to work at JFK, and let him clear a couple of flights for take off. The pilots in question didn’t seem to care, but apparently the FAA does. If Ronald Reagan was still around, he’d get this all straightened out (namely, by firing all the Controllers and hiring child labor at slave wages instead). Just one more reason to stay the hell away from airplanes.

Crap, it’s getting late. Time to fly. Sorta.