Greetings loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader was cruising the blogosphere to read what many people are thinking about the Socialist victory in the Spanish elections. This is a very interesting article on that very subject. Thanks to the glorious creator of worlds for the link. As Allah noted, here is the money quote: “Countries too lazy to produce their next generation will not fight.”
Will not fight for anything really…
Carry on.
Greetings loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader wanted to pass along information from the Big Hominid’s site. It seems that the Big Hominid’s father (who by anyone’s assessment is a saintly man) has been in a nasty accident. While he is fine, the resultant costs of the accident are going to be difficult. If you have a few dollars to spare, please contribute a little something to defray the costs. Your Maximum Leader has.
In the meanwhile, your Maximum Leader hopes for the best for the Poet Laureate’s family.
Carry on.
Greetings loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader was catching up on some blogosphere reading and went over to see this interesting piece from Gregg Easterbrook. It is good to see a good “progressive” (as the Minister of Agriculture likes to say) come out and report on some of the positive news about our environment. If you read over the Greenpeace or Sierra Club websites you would think that all your Maximum Leader was going to be able to feed the Villainettes was toxic waste.
This is not to say that we can’t do more to clean up the mess we make, but it is good to hear nonetheless.
Carry on.
Greetings loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader was reading over the recent post from the Propaganda Minister and would like to comment.
You scored 15 points on the libertarian test! As Eddie Izzard would say in his great James Mason voice, “Great Jeezey Chreezey!” Your Maximum Leader had no idea. We do share a belief that military spending is rife with misplaced priorities. We do need to fund military benefits fully, we need to increase military salaries, and we need to eliminate big cold-war era weapons systems that we know don’t really serve us well in the battles we will likely fight in the present and future.
(NB: Some may remember that a few weeks ago your Maximum Leader linked to a group that wants to build naval strength. Your Maximum Leader, in the broadest context, wants to do this. But building naval strength doesn’t mean more supercarriers and accompanying battle groups. What we need are a new generation of ships that would serve as a “white water” (ie: near-shore) rather than “blue-water” (ie: deep ocean) navy. You can’t get a carrier battle group - comfortably - into a near-shore situation. Like the Persian Gulf. We need smaller, smarter ships.)
As for social security. It is not just that your Maximum Leader would like to eliminate social security, it is just sensible to assume it will have to be eliminated. It is a glorified pre-tax ponzi scheme that will collapse very soon under its own weight. Your Maximum Leader agrees with his Propaganda Minister in so much as he is disgusted by the political process surrounding social security. No one of any political stripe is able to speak sensibly about social security. The other week when Alan Greenspan made those off-the-cuff comments about social security benefits needing to be cut, an older acquaintance of your Maximum Leader was in a panic the next day. She was sure that her social security was going to be cut and she was going to be destitute. And frankly, that is the environment in which we live where social security is concerned. No one can say anything, not even those things that need to be said, about social security without being vilified as one who would allow the elderly of America to rot on street corners. Alas, both parties are equally good at this type of demogaugery.
As for my comments on the September 10th vs September 12th peple… Perhaps your Maximum Leader didn’t make himself too clear. It was not that he was agruing in favour of taking an emotional response in our foreign affairs. Your Maximum Leader believes that a significant number of Americans are trying to retreat back to a Sept 10th way of thinking. The one typified, as the Propaganda Minister puts it, by a belief that terror attacks on the US only happened in the movies. The Sept 10th people want to deny, in your Maximum Leader’s opinion, that it could happen again. This denial is made easier by the fact that there hasn’t been another significant attack on American soil since Sept 11th. (And who could have predicted that? Surely not your Maximum Leader.) To the Sept 10th people, if somehow the US would try to develop a new approach to the world’s problems (and the problems rife in the Islamic world) everything would be alright.
The September 12th people, on the other hand, realize that the world, and our approach to certain problems within it, needed to change. The policies that may have well served us in the past must be rethought and reworked. To the Sept 12th people, we have now had our wake-up call to the more pressing international problems, and need to take action.
As for the war in Iraq. As readers of this page know, your Maximum Leader was in favour of the war. He was in favour of the war for a number of reasons that were (and many were not) articulated by members of the Bush Administration. Your Maximum Leader is not too concerned that we have not found WMD in Iraq. What is significant is that Iraq had the capability to manufacture WMD, and had the inclination to give/sell/otherwise distribute them to others. By invading Iraq, we took an important step towards reducing the cooperation between states and terror organizations.
Your Maximum Leader will conceed that going into Iraq before completing our mission in Afghanistan, may not have been the wisest course of action. But by going into Iraq and Afghanistan, we have caused some significant other international developments. Libya’s “warming” to the desires of civilized nations is a good starting point. Syria is laying low. And even the Saudi’s seem to be taking baby steps towards clamping down on the terror groups in their kingdom.
Your Maximum Leader doesn’t believe the war in Iraq is a distraction. And while he normally is inclinded to agree with James Webb in these matters, in this case he will disagree. In the passage that the Propaganda Minister cites, Webb says:
“Bush arguably has committed the greatest strategic blunder in modern memory. To put it bluntly, he attacked the wrong target. While he boasts of removing Saddam Hussein from power, he did far more than that. He decapitated the government of a country that was not directly threatening the United States and, in so doing, bogged down a huge percentage of our military in a region that never has known peace. Our military is being forced to trade away its maneuverability in the wider war against terrorism while being placed on the defensive in a single country that never will fully accept its presence.” Webb added, “The reckless course that Bush and his advisers have set will affect the economic and military energy of our nation for decades. It is only the tactical competence of our military that, to this point, has protected him from the harsh judgment that he deserves.”
Your Maximum Leader has a few comments and questions. What was the right target? This is an item that has come up quite a bit. (And in your Maximum Leader’s mind, this question is akin to the “What would have been your plan Mr. Democratic Presidential Candidate for the war in Iraq?”) What was the right target Secretary Webb? Was Iran the right target? Indonesia? Saudi Arabia? Egypt? France?
The phrase that deserves some direct comment is this one: “He decapitated the government of a country that was not directly threatening the United States and, in so doing, bogged down a huge percentage of our military in a region that never ha known peace. ” Iraq may not have been directly threatening the United States, but how long to we allow threats to go unchallenged in the post-Sept 11th world? It is a difficult question without a single or simple answer. If Saddam Hussein had allowed UN inspectors back into Iraq and had made some reasonable effort to comply with UN resolutions, your Maximum Leader believes that he would still be in power today and the US would not be in Iraq. But, because his regime refused to comply in even the smallest token fashion, Hussein helped build the impression that he was a gathering threat to the United States. This certainly is a signifcant contributing factor to the US invasion.
Of everything the Secretary Webb said, the key words, in your Maximum Leader’s opinion, are “region that has never known peace.” This is the crux of the matter. Your Maximum Leader firmly believes that the very fact that the Middle East has been so unstable historically is important. The combination of political instability, cruel regimes, and economic exploitation coupled with religion is the primary cause of Islamic terror. If invading Iraq and helping to establish a state that is reasonably democratic, allows a free-market (ie: allows citizens to acquire property and wealth), and allows some western ideas of toleration to take hold is able to break the cycle that has existed up to this point; then our actions have been worth it. At this stage what else is possible?
Many critics of the war in Iraq say we should be going after Osama Bin Laden, not Saddam Hussein. Your Maximum Leader says they are both part of the problem. It is naive to believe that the capture or death of Osama Bin Laden will eliminate the threat of Islamic terror against the United States. The only way to break the cycle that causes terror is to change the environment in which terror is bred.
If that makes your Maximum Leader a raving Neo-Con, well… Perhaps he is. (But scoring 49 points on the libertarain purity test should help deflect some of those charges.)
Carry on.
Greetings loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader just read a fine post on the Volokh Conspiracy about arguments. Your Maximum Leader actually gets great joy from staking out a well-reasoned position with which he does not argee and then getting into an argument. The Minister of Agriculture enjoys this as well. The Minister of Agriculture might even remember a time when he and your Maximum Leader were taking a modern political philosophy class and your Maximum Leader decided to “spice up class discussion a little bit.”
As your Maximum Leader remembers it, the subject of discussion was militant lesbian feminism. The prof had assigned some readings by some truly militant lesbian feminist philosophers who argued that since in-vitro fertilization was a reality, mature men could have their sperm harvested and then eliminated. Then women could just run the world without male interference. Wile no one in the class was willing to agree with this extreme position, some of the particuarly “whipped” men in the class (in an effort to score points with girlfriends - who were also in the class) started to argue that historically men had been bad to women and that women were entitled to some sort of recompense.
After listening to their trite blather for a few minutes, your Maximum Leader leaned in towards the Minister of Agriculture and said something to the effect of “watch this.” Your Maximum Leader then proceeded to weave a logically consistent mysogynist argument. Eventually the civil discussion deteriorated into your Maximum Leader having to announce that women were essentially breeders and had no business at college, or even high school.
Needless to say, those in the class that didn’t know your Maximum Leader took great offence to all this. It was fun. Because sometimes it is fun and challenging to make an argument that you don’t believe in.
Alas, this tendency in your Maximum Leader drives Mrs. Villain nuts. She doesn’t believe in arguing a position in which you don’t believe. To her it is something like a lie. So she gets quite aggrevated when your Maximum Leader argues something just for the sake of argument.
Carry on.
Greetings loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader was just reading in the Washington Post and on the news wires how the Spanish Government appears to have arrested some Morrocans and Indians in connection with the Madrid Train bombings. It seems the Spanish Government is backing away from ETA as the perps.
If this is, in fact, a new Al Qaida offensive against the west (as some have speculated); your Maximum Leader will keep the peoples of Britain, Poland, South Korea, Japan, Denmark, Australia, the Czech Republic and our other allies in my prayers. Let us hope they do not have to suffer as the Spanish have.
Carry on.
Greetings loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is still trying to figure out what the heck happened to his archives. We’ll have to see what can be done to resolve this problem. (If any of you loyal minions are familiar with the Blogger loosing your archives problem, please feel free to contact us. Your Maximum Leader can be quite generous to those who help advance his nefarious plans.)
Thanks are in order to the Poet Laureate/Big Hominid. He was good enough to give me a copy of the title banner with a colour cartoon. This new title bar now graces the top of this page.
Your Maximum Leader also did some changes to the blogroll. He added a few sites he visits with some frequency, and sadly removed Mr. Green from the blogroll. In his most recent post, Mr. Green indicated that he is going to be giving up blogging. It is very sad really. He is a funny guy. But blogging can be a cruel mistress. You can write and write and write, and never feel like you have accomplished anything. Or you can not write and feel the pull of your neglected blog tugging at your pant-leg like a starving waif in a Calcutta slum. Fare thee well Mr. Green. Your Maximum Leader will keep your blog in his bookmark list and will check from time to time to see if you relent. Until that day, your Maximum Leader doffs his floppy (bejeweled) cap in your direction.
Carry on.
Greetings loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader would like you to know that if you are reading this you are actually on the site nakedvillainy.com. It is rather exciting that everything, except the archives, appears to be present. Your Maximum Leader will now try to recover his archives…
Carry on.
Greetings loyal minions and other readers. Your Maximum Leader has, for many years, owned the URL: nakedvillainy.com. If you had checked nakedvillainy.com you would have been directed to blogspot to read this blog.
Well, your Maximum Leader has taken a sort of plunge. While he will still be using blogger to publish this blog, it will now be hosted and updated at http://www.nakedvillainy.com. If you have bookmarked this site, please take a moment to update your bookmarks. If you are kind enough to link to this site, you would want to update your links.
Fare the well blogspot. It’s been nice while it lasted.
Carry on.
I feel kind of silly because I don’t know how to embed links in the text. Sorry.
Update from Your Maximum Leader: No worries. I went in and did a quick edit. We’ll have to give you a quick tutorial.
I scored 15 on the Libertarian test, probably because I favor reduced military spending and eliminating social security.
I probably don’t really favor eliminating social security, but I hate the politics around it. I’m also probably not in favor of reduced military spending, but I hate the money wasted on political weapons systems when military benefits and personal force protection efforts go unfunded.
Damn. Maybe I’ll have to take the test again.
Speaking of politics (and reading a little farther down the page to our dear Maximum Leader’s last big posting), I think both ‘Sept 10th’ and ‘Sept 12th’ thinking is wrong-headed. Before 9/11, I didn’t really imagine that kind of attack could take place outside of the movies. Obviously, I was wrong, as were all of us except the CIA and FBI experts that warned Bush before it happened. The day AFTER 9/11 I was hardly a new model of enlightenment: rather, I was deeply affected by sadness and fear. Those emotions were legitimate, but you don’t want to make important decisions with disabling feelings at the forefront. It’s time to move past 9/11 and look rationally at the world and the situation we’re in. Too many Americans, in my opinion, are still reacting out of fear, and fear combined with rampant patriotism leads to jingoism and hatred. Sure, I’ll make jokes about the French like everyone else, but ‘Freedom Fries,’ seriously?
Additionally, anyone for whom 9/11 reminds them of ‘why we’re in Afghanistan and Iraq’ (to quote Maximum Leader) has fallen prey to disinformation. Yes, we invaded Afghanistan because the Taliban tried to shelter Osama bin Laden. From the beginning, I’ve supported our efforts in Afghanistan. However, there was is no connection between 9/11 and Iraq, other than the fact that the current administration used our fear and anger to justify a war they had planned well before terrorism became the notable issue it is today.
Now you’ve got me on a roll. Linking the war on terrorism with the war in Iraq reminds me of an op-ed piece I read just this week. Selecting a few key paragraphs from the middle:
Last week…a senior CIA official told the Washington Post that thanks to the
war in Iraq, the CIA “is stretched beyond their limits.” That is, the lead
agency in the campaign against al Qaeda is suffering because of the war in
Iraq. And Bush’s commitment to (or obsession with) his elective Iraq war has
created large opportunity costs.It’s not just the usual anti-war types who have argued that Bush
undermined the war on terror with his war in Iraq. In December, the
Strategic Studies Institute of the Army War College published a report that
harshly called the war on Iraq “an unnecessary preventive war of choice
against a deterred Iraq that has created a new front in the Middle East for
Islamic terrorism and diverted attention and resources away from securing
the American homeland against further assault by an undeterrable al Qaeda.
The war against Iraq was not integral to the [global war on terrorism], but
rather a detour from it.”A few weeks ago, James Webb, secretary of the Navy in the Reagan
administration, made the same point more brutally: “Bush arguably has
committed the greatest strategic blunder in modern memory. To put it
bluntly, he attacked the wrong target. While he boasts of removing Saddam
Hussein from power, he did far more than that. He decapitated the
government of a country that was not directly threatening the United States
and, in so doing, bogged down a huge percentage of our military in a region
that never has known peace. Our military is being forced to trade away its
maneuverability in the wider war against trrorism while being placed on the
defensive in a single country that never will fully accept its presence.” Webb
added, “The reckless course that Bush and his advisers have set will affect
the economic and military energy of our nation for decades. It is only the
tactical competence of our military that, to this point, has protected him
from the harsh judgment that he deserves.”
The full op-ed piece is available here: http://laweekly.com/ink/04/16/news-corn.php. The piece itself deals with the 9/11 ads and is admittedly anti-Bush. However, I think the quotes I’ve referenced stand on their own. The war in Iraq is a distraction from the war on terror. I hate seeing our military wasted. I served for five years, as many of you know, and I hate seeing our people killed for a foolish neocon re-imagining of the Middle East.
For more on the thought process within the Bush administration leading up to the war in Iraq, I again post an article about Lt Col Karen Kwiatkowski and the Office of Special Plans: http://www.laweekly.com/ink/04/13/news-cooper.php.
Interested in that? Here’s a more detailed article written by Lt Col Kwiakowski herself: http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/03/10/osp_moveon/
Those are my quick thoughts, unintentionally not-so-quick, which I think stake out the position of the reasonable left. I’ve got more to say, but I suspect that’s enough of a post for now (many thanks for your gracious patience, Maximum Leader). You may now return to your regularly scheduled blogging.
Whitehouse.org has a much better set of Marriage Amendments than the ones I proposed awhile ago.
Go here, read them, and write your elected officials to express your support.
Greetings loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has just heard from his Poet Laureate. He scored 29 on the libertarian test. (Take the test.). Which is about where your Maximum Leader thought he would be. Your Maximum Leader was a little surprised at the score of 10 from the AirMarshal. I pegged him about 15-20. Ah well.
Carry on.
I was very moved by today’s Lilek’s Bleat.
To whet your appetite:
But at some point kids realize that when daddy said there weren‚ÄövÑv¥t any monsters, daddy was telling a lie.
Read the rest. He is dead on.
The Foreign Minister and Maximum Leader will, I believe, be impressed by their liberal gun-control supporting friend‚ÄövÑv¥s latest firearm achievement.
I was doing my daily barn cleaning yesterday evening, enjoying the sunset, and trundling the wheelbarrow over to the garden to dump another load of manure on the compost pile, when I spied three deer in the vineyard. The little bastards were working their way down the row, chomping away merrily. I dropped the wheelbarrow, went inside the house, unpacked my tool, and returned to mete out justice. The slamming of the screen door alerted them to their imminent demise. They promptly wormed through the deer fence and began making for the woods.
Every other deer I have shot has been a still target, and I used an arm rest for all but one of those shots. But I was not going to let all of the deer get away. They would probably return to the smorgasbord the next night and might bring more friends (there was a herd of eleven behind the house on Saturday). So I had to break their pattern.
I realized that even if I missed my shot, the round would expend itself in the gully and had no chance of flying off to an unknown location. I quickly snapped the rifle up, and shoulder-fired at the largest retreating doe. She was at a three quarter profile and about 150 yards away, moving at a trot.
When the round went off, she jumped and ran, entering the pasture and then vaulting into the paddock containing the wooded creek. I knew I had hit her because I could hear her laboring through the underbrush. Every other deer I have killed has simply flopped over.
Crap, I thought. I have just wounded her. Now I have to chase her to kingdom come so she won‚ÄövÑv¥t suffer.
I went back into the house to get another round (I never carry more than one round at a time) and a flashlight. I then trudged down to the woods to find her and put her out of her misery.
I didn‚ÄövÑv¥t need to look long and didn‚ÄövÑv¥t need the rifle. She was already dead. It is amazing that she was able to run fifty yards and jump two sets of fences. The round had caught her just where I was aiming and had blown through both lungs. The entry was about two inches lower than I would have liked, so it may have just knicked the heart ‚ÄövÑv¨ I couldn‚ÄövÑv¥t really tell as I cleaned the carcass in semi-darkness. But even if I didn‚ÄövÑv¥t hit the heart at all, how the heck did she get so far with no lungs?
I have no problem killing the deer. It has to be done if I am going to make any money from the vineyard. But I don‚ÄövÑv¥t want them to suffer either. So this kill was bittersweet. I am sad that she had a minute or two of pain. But I am also rather proud of the accuracy of the rifle.
It‚ÄövÑv¥s probably the scope.
