Greetings loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader was surfing around the blogosphere and found an interesting travelogue from a young guy in China. What amused me was how he and some friends made their own Risk game. It amused me. It also amused me that his description of the game reminds me of Risk games I’ve played.

Carry on.

Greetings loyal minons. Your Maximum Leader has been thinking about many things, and thinking about what to write about them. I started off writing a little essay on toleration. But, now I find that my essay has taken the form of a political treatise about rationality. Perhaps I will be able to collect my thoughts and write something coherent….

Carry on my minions.

Greetings loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader finshed posting the Cuban joke and logged out of Blogger and noticed (as he always does) the newly updated blogs on the sidebar. It was there that I noticed this blog. Looking at the photos of this quaint French fishing village (which I take to be St. Pierre de Quiberon), I wonder if this Quiberon in Brittany is near the site of the not-nearly-famous-enough Battle of Quiberon Bay. (I will have to consult an atlas later…)

Your Maximum Leader has told a number of his most trusted minions that when he acquires a sailing yacht, it will be named “Quiberon Bay.”

Just a serindipitous moment to share with you my loyal minions.

Carry on.

Greetings loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader got a chuckle, as he often does, reading Jay Nordlinger’s latest on NRO. I will share the joke in case you don’t want to click through and read it yourself. (But you really ought to.)

“Castro dies and goes to heaven [bear with us]. When he gets there, St. Peter tells him that he is not on the list and that, no way, no how, does he belong in heaven. Castro must go to hell. So Castro goes to hell, where Satan gives him a hearty welcome and tells him to make himself at home.

“As they are climbing, two little angels see them, and one angel says to the other, ‘Would you look at that? Fidel has been in hell no more than ten minutes and we’re already getting refugees!’”

It made me laugh. But what doesn’t make me laugh is the suffering of the Cuban people at the hands of Castro and his cronies. What makes me angry is the love, adoration, and praise heaped by many Americans on Castro. I thank Jay Nordlinger for nearly every time he writes a column adding something about the suffering of the Cuban people.

Carry on.

Greetings loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader couldn’t pass up this headline from Reuters.

China says North Korea wants Nuclear-Free Peninsula.

Assuming the North Koreans really do want a nuke-free peninsula. (They don’t by the way.) They can achieve this goal easily by JUST DISMANTALING THE NUKES THEY HAVE!!!! But the nukes are more valuable to them as a bargaining chip to use with other nations to exact onerous consessions and preserve their crypto-Stalinist state. The path the North has taken to develop and deploy nukes is what is upsetting the equipoise of the region.

Of course, if you want to get the real skinny on what is going on on the Korean Peninsula you need to read the Poet Laureate’s (aka: the Big Hominid) site. Or his buddies, the Marmot, or Incestuous Amplification.

Carry on.

While this may be the domain of the BigHominid, the proverbial can of worms has been opened.

It’s a great moment in a parents life when a kid stops using diapers and begins to take pride in using the toilet. It’s even a happier moment when ones daughter comes into a room fulll of people and declares “I went big giant poopies!” or maybe “Daddy, I went green poopies!” It also leads to those moments where I wonder “What the hell did you eat today?” or maybe “I didn’t give her peanuts for lunch…”

It’s also a joyous moment in a fathers life when your child, for the first time, leans over while breaking wing in order to achieve maximum volume. I don’t think mothers care too much for that.

Greetings loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader got to surfing and chanced to find this item on someone’s personal blogsite… Your Maximum Leader doesn’t know Chuck, or Benjamin. But he does know about children’s poop. He remembers examining the Villainettes poop with all of the intensity of a Roman Oracle reading goat entrails…

Of course, now the Villainettes are the seers of their own poop. They happily report their poop divinations during dinner…. And you thought the Villainous Compound was all world domination and plotting. Pshaw…

Carry on.

Greetings once again loyal minions. From time to time your Maximum Leader likes to read over the obituaries. He is not looking for the really famous people, or the really common ones. He is looking to read more about the extrodinary people who may have not caught his attention. I think I have found one of those people. It seems as though Wilfred Thesiger has passed. From what I have read and heard, he seems to have been an extrordinary man. Certainly his treatment of the Marsh Arabs captured the lives of people destroyed by Saddam Hussein. Humm… I will have to learn more about him and read his works. Luckily, Amazon seems to have some of his works available.

Carry on.

Greetings again loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader realized that many of you might not want to pay for a subscription to read The Times of London. So, I added a link to the very good Daiy Telegraph (also of London). The (Reg. Req.) note next to the Times of London link simply means that paid registration is required. If you see any additional links on my page with the (Reg. Req.) legend, the meaning will remain the same.

Carry on.

Greetings loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader woke up a little early today to look at Mars. I plan to go to the countryside this weekend with Mrs. Villain and the Villainettes and hope to get a better look at the red planet through a friend’s telescope. Read all about Mars’ proximity to the Earth all over the internet. But if you are lazy and want your Maximum Leader to provide you with links… Try here, here, and here. And here is a photo of Mars taken from the Hubble Telescope. You should also look at the slideshow next to the photo.

Carry on.

Greeting loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader was just reading an excellent blog from Eugene Volokh. Your Maximum Leader’s Minister of Agriculture believes, perhaps partially rightly, that your Maximum Leader is not tolerant of homosexuals. I believe it is not that I am intolerant of homosexuals, It is that I object to giving “equal rights” in traditionally heterosexual areas (i.e.: marriage) to homosexuals. Would I discriminate against hiring a gay person? No. Would I deny them housing? No. Would I wish ill to befall them in some other way? No. I would like to delve into this a bit further, and perhaps tonight I shall.

Carry on.

E-mailed to me by a relative. Worth sharing. Attributed without confirmation to State Representative Mitchell Kaye
from GA. I have no clue who actually said/wrote this. But it’s funny and I like the point it makes.

The New Constitution

“We, the sensible people of the United States, in an attempt to help
everyone get along, restore some semblance of justice, avoid any more
riots, keep our nation safe, promote positive behavior, and secure the
blessings of debt free liberty to ourselves and our
great-great-great-grandchildren,hereby try one more time to ordain and
establish some common sense guidelines for the terminally whiny,
guilt-ridden, delusional and other liberal bed-wetters. We hold these
truths to be self-evident: that a whole lot of people are confused by the
Bill of Rights and are so dim that they require a Bill of No Rights.”

ARTICLE I:

You do not have the right to a new car, big screen TV or any other form of
wealth. More power to you if you can legally acquire them, but no one is
guaranteeing anything.

ARTICLE II:

You do not have the right to never be offended. This country is based on
freedom, and that means freedom for everyone — not just you! You may leave
the room, turn the channel, express a different opinion, etc., but the
world is full of idiots, and probably always will be … and like the rest
of us you need to simply deal with it.

ARTICLE III:

You do not have the right to be free from harm. If you stick a screwdriver
in your eye, learn to be more careful; do not expect the tool manufacturer
to make you and all your relatives independently wealthy.

ARTICLE IV:

You do not have the right to free food and housing. Americans are the most
charitable people to be found, and will gladly help anyone in need, but we
are quickly growing weary of subsidizing generation after generation of
professional couch potatoes who achieve nothing more than the creation of
another generation of professional couch potatoes.

ARTICLE V:

You do not have the right to free health care. That would be nice, but from
the looks of public housing, we’re just not interested in public health
care.

ARTICLE VI:

You do not have the right to physically harm other people. If you kidnap,
rape, intentionally maim, or kill someone, don’t be surprised if the rest
of us want to see you fry in the electric chair.

ARTICLE VII:

You do not have the right to the possessions of others. If you rob, cheat
or coerce away the goods or services of other citizens, don’t be surprised
if the rest of us get together and lock you away in a place where you still
won’t have the right to a big screen color TV, pool tables, weight rooms or
a life of leisure.

ARTICLE VIII:

You don’t have the right to a job. All of us sure want you to have a job,
and will gladly help you along in hard times, but we expect you to take
advantage of the opportunities of part time jobs, education and vocational
training laid before you to make yourself useful.

ARTICLE IX:

You do not have the right to happiness. Being an American means that you
have the right to PURSUE happiness –which by the way, is a lot easier if
you are unencumbered by an overabundance of idiotic laws created by those
of you who were confused by the Bill of Rights,”

ARTICLE X:

This is an English speaking country. We don’t care where you are from. We
welcome you here. English is our language and like the one you left behind,
we also have a culture. Learn it or go back to the country and the living
conditions you were fleeing.

Greetings loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader apologized for not posting yesterday. He was feeling a little under the weather and didn’t spend much time in front of the PC… But, he was stirred to post this as soon as he read it this morning. The average American eats 30 lbs of cheese a year. Amazing. If they say you are what you eat, I’d say Americans are likely made of cheese and ice cream. I suppose we go bad in hot weather very easily…

Carry on.

I believe this took place at a Cubs game. Ozzy Osbourne singing “Take me out to the ball game.” The link is from the web site for the baltimore radio station 98 Rock.

http://www.98online.com/kml/osbournes_baseball.mp3

Here’s the version of the event as told by the Chicago Sun-Times

http://www.suntimes.com/output/mariotti/cst-spt-jay19.html

It makes me yearn for the days when Ozzy bit the heads of bats and urinated on national monuments.

Greetings loyal minions. In answer to your AirMarshal’s question. The term “Turnpike” came about in 15th Century. Roads connecting cities were generally blocked for defensive purposes and a gate house or a turnstile was put up to limit movement. (Gatehouses were often guarded by soliders with long Pikes as well…) Tolls were charged along the road to pay for security and improvements. These were the Turnpike Roads. Later shortened to Turnpikes.

Your Maximum Leader knew this from his extensive study of 18th Century British Highwaymen. But he did receive some help from these web sites to nail down dates. The sites are here, here, and lastly here.

Carry on.

Richard III R.I.P.