A Stitch in Haste

All politicians are, by definition, moral defectives.

Charlie Rangel is of course no exception:

He's been chairman for only eight months, but already Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) is more than daydreaming about what his official Ways and Means Committee portrait will look like. He knows one thing: It'll be top of the line.

In perhaps the most thorough and earnest letter ever written on the subject of a member of Congress's portrait, Rangel's campaign attorney sent a letter to the Federal Election Commission asking permission to use either campaign or leadership political action committee money to pay for the chairman's grand portrait.
...
So serious is Rangel about his portrait that he consulted an "art broker for eight museum-quality portrait artists" who advised that the cost is "consistent with other top portrait artists." Although the broker's Web site lists a base range of $30,000 to $50,000, "the estimated cost of $64,500 for Representative Rangel's portrait reflects a three-quarter body length size, important details and a custom frame," the letter said.

I don't care whether the $64,500 comes from taxpayer money, PAC money or lobbyist money. I don't care whether it goes to an independent artist, to a relative of Rangel's or to a business partner of a business partner of his.

The point is not how "untainted" the money may or may not be. The point is that this miserable, decrepit twerp feels a need to spend so much money on his own narcissistic vanity in the first place. Couldn't he settle for a well-done photograph? Wouldn't that be a case study in "leading by example"?

Such is the psychopathology of one of our leading "dedicated public servants." Spare no expense on a portrait that probably no one but he himself will ever look at.

And this is, lest we forget, the same politician who insists that we need a draft -- to inculcate proper selfless values ("shared sacrifice" were his exact words) in our nation's youth.

Sometimes you can just choke on the hypocrisy.