New York Post: Rahm Emanuel Freddie Mac board member during fraud years.

[UPDATE]: Welcome, Instapundit readers.

Funny how this sort of thing takes forever to make the papers. From Dick Morris and Eileen McGann:

RAHM’S ‘RENT’ IS JUST THE TIP OF ETHICS ICEBERG

[snip]

Consider: Emanuel served on the Freddie Mac board of directors during the time that the government-backed lender lied about its earnings, a leading contributor to the current economic meltdown.

The Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight Agency later singled out the Freddie Mac board as contributing to the fraud in 2000 and 2001 for “failing in its duty to follow up on matters brought to its attention.” In other words, board members ignored the red flags waving in their faces.

The SEC later fined Freddie $50 million for its deliberate fraud in 2000, 2001 and 2002.

Meanwhile, Emanuel was paid more than $260,000 for his Freddie “service.” Plus, after he resigned from the board to run for Congress in 2002, the troubled agency’s PAC gave his campaign $25,000 – its largest single gift to a House candidate.

That’s what friends are for, isn’t it?

Continue reading New York Post: Rahm Emanuel Freddie Mac board member during fraud years.

Chicago Tribune futilely calls for Burris’ resignation.

(Via Hot Air Headlines) It’s a lovely thought, but it won’t happen. If either state or Senate Democrats cared enough about the humiliation that they were putting the people of Illinois through with this sorry mess, they would have changed the law to permit a special election in the first place. But that wasn’t important. Keeping the seat in the hands of one political party?  That was important.

Heck of a thing when the most laudable motivation energizing any Democratic Party player in this affair is coming from the impeached former Governor of Illinois; even worse, the motivation is “stark, bloody-minded revenge.” Oh, Rod Blagojevich: why could you not have chosen to use your powers for good?

Crossposted to RedState.

And now, a tiger hugging a man.

tigerhug Provided via Cracked.com, solely for the purpose of allowing you to reset your brain and attitude for the evening and let you get your pulse down a couple of beats.

All that being said, though: bacon salt.. Bacon salt will make you happy. At least, it will make you happy if you also have mashed potatoes. And why don’t you have mashed potatoes, anyway? They’re not hard to make: scrub a potato down, cut it into quarters, dump it into boiling water, come back in a half hour, drain, add a little real milk, a little real butter, and, well, mash them up until it looks right. Then add the bacon salt and more butter.

Simple, really.

Moe Lane

A plethora of Trail of Cthulhu / Esoterrorist resources.

Although I should probably come up with something more squamous than “plethora.”

Anyway: I think that I’ve previously mentioned Trail of Cthulhu, which is Ken Hite’s exceptionally good sourcebook for 1930’s-style Cthulhu Mythos roleplaying (the default time period is actually the 1920s, which is of course a completely different style from a roleplaying standard) for the GUMSHOE system, which is an attempt to create a roleplaying game that is actually designed to accommodate mysteries and investigation.  It’s the same game engine that’s used by Robin Laws’ The Esoterrorists, which more of a modern occult-horror investigation/repression game.

Good gaming stuff, in other words – and Steve Jackson Games is selling supplements for both Trail of Cthulhu and The Esoterrorists as part of their PDF publishing service. Significant savings over the dead-tree version, instantly accessible, good stuff with which to get your geek on – a nice deal all around.  Check them out

US negotiating to reoccupy Uzbek air base?

You know, Uzbekistan. Where they BOIL PEOPLE ALIVE.

Not being content to embrace and expand a program of deniable third-party torture as a viable counter-terrorism tool, the Obama administration has apparently decided to try to mend relations with the nation of Uzbekistan (H/T: Instapundit):

Sources: US considers Uzbekistan as backup base

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States is considering resuming military cooperation with hardline Uzbekistan as a potential backup plan given the uncertain future of a nearby air base that is a main artery for troops and supplies for the widening Afghanistan war, U.S. officials said Thursday.

Defense officials say they are examining options for supply routes through a semicircle of nations from Central Asia to the Persian Gulf that could be used in place of a strategic air base in the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan.

This is, of course, in response to said air base being closed in response to Russian ‘encouragement’… which is in itself in response to the election of a new President of the United States. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves, here. Continue reading US negotiating to reoccupy Uzbek air base?

Burris changes story on Blagojevich relationship. Again.

We’re now up to version 4.0, and by now you have to wonder just what is on those FBI tapes. Whatever it is, it must be juicy:

Burris now acknowledges fundraising effort for Blagojevich

U.S. Sen. Roland Burris has acknowledged he sought to raise campaign funds for then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich at the request of the governor’s brother at the same time he was making a pitch to be appointed to the Senate seat previously held by President Barack Obama.

Continue reading Burris changes story on Blagojevich relationship. Again.

How the GOP can come back: A *practical* suggestion.

I think that RS McCain gets why we lost in 2006 and 2008 exactly right:

…the Democrats did something very smart after 2004. Instead of freaking out over those “values voters” and getting all down in the dumps, they got busy organizing and raising money so that when the GOP hit a long streak of bad moves and bad news in 2005-06, the Dems were ready to take advantage of it. A day of organizing is worth a week of blathering about “strategy,” and an hour of fund-raising is worth far more than a month of navel-gazing op-ed columns pumped out by the punditocracy.

But the pundits always want to over-intellectualize everything, because that’s what they get paid to do, and the consultants always want to talk “strategy,” because they’s what they get paid to do. Grassroots organizing, candidate recruitment and fundraising — those are the three things the GOP needs to focus on in the near term.

Read that, and read John Hawkins’ helpful six keys… and then actually do something about it.

Moe Lane

PS: Whining does not count as “doing something about it.” Neither does demanding that the Party drop everything to concentrate on your pet issue, stapling your hand to your forehead about how the awful Party never listened to you, and/or threatening to move out to the countryside with a full load of ammo and survival gear. All any of that does is depress people who are trying to actually fix things.

PPS: No, I don’t particularly care if you like that characterization or not. Was there anything else?

Crossposted at RedState.

Sheldon brings teh Webcomics Funny.

As Eric Burns might say.

Anyway, it was the zeppelins that ensured the link.  I’m a sucker for zeppelin war fleets. Thanks, Neil!

Moe Lane

PS: The cover of Fitzpatrick’s War is kind of evocative of this, but less than I remember. It’s an… odd book. A bit of a caricature, and more than a bit offensive to those it’s caricaturing, but well-written for all that.