The Maximum Leader’s confessed editing of my posts explains how my analysis, which always begins and ends with “Bush=Hitler” has ended up appearing moderate when posted to the blog. I was so confused. No matter how hard I tried to be shrilly partisan, the facts kept myusteriously creeping into my post and making them squishy. Darn right-wing conspiracy!
Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader had a forehead-slapping “WTF?” moment when he read this:
S.Korea Says There Was No Big Blast in N.Korea.
Lemme see if your Maximum Leader got this right. North Korea said they were blowing up a mountain to make a power plant (re: uranium enrichment site); and that is what was observed. But the South Koreans now say that there really wasn’t any explosion.
Uh… Sure…
Humm… Let your Maximum Leader guess. That big mushroom cloud was really just a whole bunch of North Koreans having a fart-off on near Mt. Paektu.
Carry on.
Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is glad to see that the Minister of Agriculture has finally admitted that he is not tolerant of different political views. It is a relief to your Maximum Leader. Now he doesn’t have to go in and edit all the horribly intolerant posts (which the Smallholder fills with invective) and make the deeply repressed “independently principled” (aka: squishy) Smallholder show through.
But speaking about the case of the woman fired for the Kerry sticker on her car… Were your Maximum Leader advising the factory owner concerning the firing, he would certainly hope for more of an issue than a sticker on the workers car. Your Maximum Leader will not claim to be an expert in Alabama employment law, but those of us who want to mitigate the chances of being sued would act with more care in terminating someone.
Alabama is a right to work state, which really doesn’t have any bearing on this case except to say that your Maximum Leader doubts if the fired woman will have a Union legal fund to help her out should she choose to sue. (Of course, if Kerry doesn’t win the Presidency, John Edwards may chooseto do some pro-bono work for her and sue the pants off the factory owner. Thereby enriching himself, and putting all those factory workers out of jobs - which would be outsourced to Mexico or Thailand anyway.)
The more interesting point to know would be if Alabama is an “at-will” employment state. That is to say that all employees are “at-will” and generally employers don’t have to give much (any) reason to terminate someone.
However, it is always best to have some logical (documented) reason to terminate someone. For example, performance issues. Was the woman meeting any sort of performance quota? If she was not, easy answer - termination. Was the woman fulfilling all of the terms of her employment contract or following the rules set out in some sort of employee policy manual? Your Maximum Leader has known of a number of companies that have expressly written into their employee policy manual that open displays of political or religious affiliation (from desk decoration to protheletizing in the break room) are prohibited. These policys are generally carefully crafted by attorneys and explained clearly to new employees at the onset of employment by a Human Resources Manager. If such a policy existed at this factory, that could be a justification behind terminating someone. But your Maximum Leader thinks it might be a stretch.
Of course, the woman could just hope for the best and pray Kerry wins and gives her some sort of patronage job.
Carry on.
Greetings, loyal minons. Your Maximum Leader has just discovered that he has something in common with John Kerry. Something in common in the firearms department!
According to a quotation in Kimberley Strassel’s OpinionJournal - Taste peice today John Kerry said:
My favorite gun is the M-16 that saved my life and that of my crew in Vietnam. I don’t own one of those now, but one of my reminders of my service is a Communist Chinese assault rifle.
Wow! Your Maximum Leader has a Communist assault rifle too! Only your Maximum Leader would never get one of those cheap Chinese knock-offs. His is a genuine proletariat-made Soviet SKS. (With the 30 round banana clip and bayonnet!)
Who’da thunk it was possible?
Carry on.
example of permissible political intolerance.
The poor woman complains that her rights have been violated and that her boss can’t tell her how to cast her vote. She’s only partly right. Since the adaptation of the Australian ballot, she can cast her vote in absolute secrecy for whomever she chooses. But her employer’s decision to terminate her for displaying a Kerry sticker did not violate her rights.
I frequently hear private action censorship declared unconstitutional and unamerican.
Bovine contribution to soil fertility!
The First Amendment limited ONLY the federal government’s censorship of political speech. The Cardozo Doctrine’s interpretation of the 14th Amendment eventually extended most of the Bill of Rights’ prohibitions to the state governments (but, alas, ML and FM, not the Second). But private individuals and organizations can still decide what happens in their private spheres.
MTV’s decision not to show Madonna’s “Justify Me” video was not censorship.
Boycotting the Dixie Chicks is not censorship.
Refusing to buy records by Ted Nugent is not limiting his free speech (Nugent, to his credit, wouldn’t claim that a boycott of his music by PETA was wrong; unlike the Dixie Chicks he understands that he does NOT have a right to your money and adoration).
When a casino fires a third-rate lounge singer for praising Micheal Moore, it is not a violation of the principle of free speech.
When a distribution takes a pass on distributing the “Passion of the Christ,” it is not an example of governmental oppression of fundamentalist Christians. It is an example of criminally stupid business practice.
Even though Dr. Dobson’s e-mail exhorts me to resist the government’s cancellation of “Touched by an Angel” (and by extension the massive, systemic, unrelenting, overwhelming persecution of Christianity in America), I don’t start storming the barricades. I send back an essay explaining how capitalism works: Roma Downey got a pink slip because consumers didn’t watch her show. I send back a copy of the Constitution.
When my kids with pierced noses complain that businesses “discriminate” against them by hiring more presentable kids to work cash registers, they are refusing to own up to the fact that the exercise of freedom comes with consequences.
A theatre owner’s decision not to show Fahrenheit 911 is not censorship - he is merely exercising his own freedom to deterine what product he provides to his consumers.
Having defended the factory owner’s right to fire the whiney Ms. Gobbell, let me slip to the other side and call Gaddis an idiot.
If I owned a factory, I wouldn’t care what you believe if you make me money. If you show up on time and do your job, you can believe that Lyndon LaRouche is the second coming - as long as you don’t disturb your coworkers with your mindless drivel.
Gaddis has probably created a rather hostile workplace. While employees may not voice opposition to his open political proselytizing, I imagine that many of them do not work as hard as they could. A happy employee works harder than a bitter employee.
Ms. Gobbell appears to be a fine example of the product of a poor educational system. Not only does she have only a tenuous grasp of what the Constitution says, her lack of marketable skills has (er, I mean, had) her working at a job so unskilled and so replaceable that her boss could fire her in a fit of pique.
I have approached this from a purely “rights” point of view. The Maximum Leader, being a trained and highly knowledgeable human resources manager, once explained to me that there are all kinds of laws regulating what constitutes a offense worthy of termination. Perhaps he will weigh in on whether any such restrictions apply to Mr. Gaddis. And then I’d like him to explain how the interstate commerce clause has been elasticized to cover small intrastate businesses.
Greetings, loyal minons. Your Maximum Leader has read the Ace of Spades blog for awhile (but only got around to blogrolling it last night). You can imagine your Maximum Leader’s surprise when he read the most recent entry this morning….
Ace of Spades HQ: Whoreblogging: The Ace of Spades Sex-for-Money Online Diary
Well shuck your Maximum Leader’s corn and call him baldy. Ace’s article was fun fun fun. Read about his exploits as he attempts to cutler his way to fame and riches.
And this gives your Maximum Leader an excuse to once again use his new verb “to Cutler” again.
Carry on.
UPDATE: Great Jeezey Chreezy people! A minion just e-mailed your Maximum Leader and said he didn’t know what cutlering was! Your Maximum Leader posts the link to the first time he mentioned it; and you still don’t know what “to cutler” is? Allow your Maximum Leader to bypass your seriously deficient inference abilities. To Cutler: 1) to take it in the ass (ie: Jessica told Ann-Marie that she liked it when her boyfriend cutlered her after a night of hard drinking.); 2) to give it to someone else in the ass (ie: Fine Ass M. Ice shrugged and said, “Yeah, I cutlered that.”)
Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader will encourage the Poet Laureate to investigate these claims.
Carry on.
Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader enjoys reading about the dating exploits (or non-exploits depanding on your point of view) of JL. JL is the Celebate of Celibate in the City.
Well, if you just have a hankerin’ for how Postmodernist thought can affect you… Read this.
UPDATE FROM YOUR MAXIMUM LEADER: What the heck? No sooner had your Maximum Leader finished reading the wonderful “Welcome to the Desert of Real Life” post than it disappears! Your Maximum Leader has, obviously, disabled the link. (Not wanting his minions to suffer the indignity of a 404 error.) Well, visit JL’s site if you would like to read more about the adventures of a 28 years old Mormon woman on the prowl in Gotham.
Finally, something entertaining coming from the bowels of French thinking.
Carry on.
Greetings, loyal minons.
(Shout out to my peeps!)
Your Maximum Leader proudly affiliates Nakedvillainy.com with the Blog Pimp Alliance.
(Fine Ass M. Ice sez his posse is down wif the othah Pimps. Yo!)
The Blog Pimp Alliance has a dashing logo, forthwith displayed here.
(Da Pimps is showin’ their colors. Yo!)
Your Maximum Leader is sure that the Foreign Minister is happy to join the Alliance.
(Fine Ass M. Ice is knowin’ his donkey Sweet Chocolate Slick is cool with the playas.)
But, your Maximum Leader believes that the Smallholder, AirMarshal, Minister of Propaganda, and Big Hominid are lukewarm, at best, towards such an affiliation.
(Yo! Fine Ass M. Ice thinks D. Magical S. Quick, Reverend Air Loco, Crazy Eyes Director Flex, and Sugartastic Big Clinton would rather be hangin’ wif yo momma.)
Of course, your Maximum Leader is in charge here…
(Fine Ass M. Ice is da Man. And if you aint cool with it he’ll pop a cap in yo ass! Beeyatch!)
Carry on.
(Peace out my Brother!)
Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader, for the duration of this month, may also be addressed by his newly minted “pimp” name:
Fine Ass M. Ice.
You like? You must then Get your Pimp Name!
Yips to Robert the LlamaButcher.
Carry on homies.
Mirthful Ones will help you cope with the withdrawal while Kilgore safaris in Africa.
Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader finds the whole memo issue to be tiresome now. Although there probably is a great commentary on the nature of blogging in it. (Perhaps tomorrow.)
But your Maximum Leader figured he ought to point out one of the reasons that Killian’s secretary hasn’t been relied upon too much. She has already admitted to being a fierce Kerry partisan. She is hardly the source you would want to base a case upon.
Regardless of that, this whole issue is not doing anything for the Kerry camp. (Except keeping their man out of the news - which isn’t good.) And it isn’t doing anything for the Bush camp. (Because the issue is old and the story really hasn’t changed from the first time it was told earlier this year.)
Carry on.
CBS now admits that the Bush documents are “probably” forgeries - Killian’s secretary says she did not type those memos.
Right-wing Bloggers rejoice and proclaim victory over the biased media.
Funny thing, though.
While many bloggers have written extensively on Marian Carr Knox’s exposure of the forgerie, there hasn’t been any comment on the other part of Knox’s interview: the part wherein she says that the memos, while phony, accurately reflect memos she DID type. She says that Killian was very upset that Bush did not report for his physical and that Bush seemed to think that the Guard rules did not apply to him.
I thought we were damning people for selective reporting.
This answers my earlier post of questions about the scandal: Why didn’t the Bush people deny the contents of the memo?
Because Bush did refuse to follow an order and was suspended from his flying duties. Since Bush has stated that he only stopped flying when his unit transitioned to new equipment, it appears that the President did lie.
Analphilosopher has done an admirable job defining “lie” in a way that absolves Bush of many other missteps. For instance, when Bush signed a jury selection form certified that Bush had never been arrested even though he had a DUI, that wasn’t a lie because Bush’s staffer actually filled out the form and Bush didn’t read, and thus had no intention of lying. Bush didn’t lie about using connections to get into the Guard because he didn’t know that connections had been used by his father or other political operatives toadying up to his father. I know. It’s convoluted. But if it turns out that Bush was suspended for cause, I find it unlikely that he had forgotten and misremembered the reason he lost his wings. I’m looking forward to the Analphilosopher’s justification for this one.
Right-wing bashing complete, let me turn to the left.
Duck, Rob!
The paucity of documents about Bush’s Guard career does not, I repeat, does not indicate a cover-up. The fact that pay records and dental records and flying records and OER reports are missing or incomplete is not the result of some nefarious Pentagon cover-up.
The records are missing because that sort of thing happens. Officials misfile, destroy, misplace and otherwise lose records.
I have faced this myself as a researcher. As part of my master’s thesis, I traveled to Ripon, Wisconsin to look at jury service records*. The Courthouse’s archivist told me that the records had been transferred to the town library. The town librarian told me that the records had been transferred to the University of Wisconsin at Madison. So I drove a few more hours and learned that the records had been destroyed (!) after being transferred to microfiche. Hey, no problem - I wasn’t very concerned about the validity of these records - who would go to the trouble of forging jury lists from 1850s Ripon? So I head to the microfiche librarian. Who could not find them. Many records were purged to make room for new collections in the 1980s, but there was no record indicating whether the Ripon records were part of the dump. Was it a plot to derail me from getting an MA? I hardly think so.
Was that example too obscure? How about an example from military service?
I better not ever run for office. My foes (probably financed by the Maximum Leader) will comb through my military records looking for dirt. My medical records, like the president’s, won’t be easy to find. About three months before I got ye olde honorable discharge, my unit was given our permanent medical files to review for accuracy. Microfiche forms, x-rays, etc. I was busy with some silly officer task, so I just stuck my folder into my briefcase. Later on during the drill, I finished some paperwork for my civilian teaching job and dropped the graded essays on top of the medical file. When I was handing back papers the next Monday, I found the file. Oops. Well, I thought, I better not lose this. So I stuck it in the back of my file cabinet so I wouldn’t get it mixed in with school papers.
Two years later, I took a job in Virginia. As I cleaned out my file cabinets I came across the medical file. The Army didn’t seem to have missed it and it would have been a lot of trouble to find out who to send it to. So I tossed it.
The absence of these records will prove to the future MoveOn.Org supportrs that the army is covering up some horrible Smallholder war crimes.
By the way, I think the same sort of thing happened during filegate. Republicans make a big deal about records that were misplaced and later found. Hell, I challenge any reader of NakedVillainy to pull out your financial records of a failed investment that you made in 1994. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
Next post: I reveal that I, like the President, violated an order to take a physical.
The horror! The horror!
* The explanation of jury records that follow is of interest only to history geeks. Do not read any further.
I was looking for support for my thesis that assessed the intellectual tolerance of non-mainstream ideas during the serious flux of the 1850s as Americans who rejected both the regimentation of the factory system and the barbarism of the slave system sought a third path on which to organize communities. The former members of the Fourier phalanx utopian community integrated surprisingly well into the local milieu when their experiment collapsed. Their daughters intermarried well - generally moving up census-revealed wealth deciles in their selection of husbands. Former Fourierists ran successful (as measured by years of operation) businesses. Former Fourierists were elected as officers in the volunteer Civil War regiments. This evidence indicated that they were not held as outside the pale by more traditional villagers - their daughters (even though tainted by the crazy Fourierist idea of sexual equality) were sought after, people were willing to do business with ex-communitarians, and their potential for battlefield leadership was respected. But I wanted to see if they were trusted in governmental positions. Since there were only a handful of individuals elected to countywide offices, the percentage of Fourierists and traditional politicians wouldn’t be a very reliable guide. So I was looking for jury records - jury participation was not random in Wisconsin in the 1850s - jurors were selected from respected members of the community. If the jury lists (a favorite tool of social historians) revealed that Fourierites were proportionately represented on juries after a control for wealth-decile membership, it would be a pretty good indication that their judgment in civil affairs was respected.
Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader must concur with most of what the AirMarshal writes below. Your Maximum Leader stopped being enthused by hockey around 2000. No particular reason or trigger event. It was as though the game wasn’t as fun to watch or go to as in the days of your Maximum Leader’s youth.
The NHL needs a few things in your Maximum Leader’s opinion. First is a salary cap. Second is adoption of international rules concerning ice size. And third is contraction.
Numbers 2 and 3 are really hard for your Maximum Leader to say. He prefers the smaller “Canadian” style ice. And he prefers the Canadian game - which is rougher. But the international game is more appealing to many because it is wide-open, fast paced, and goal oriented.
As for contraction… One of the reasons for people losing interest in hockey is that the games are boring. They are boring because too many teams rely on defensive schemes to win games. They do this because there aren’t enough really talented players to make an aggressive offence work. This is the case because there are too many teams. Your Maximum Leader suggests the following teams be contracted: Tampa Bay, Atlanta, Carolina, Florida, Washington, San Jose, Calgary, Nashville, Columbus, Phoenix, and Anaheim. That is 11 teams. If your Maximum Leader had to choose a 12th it would be Dallas. Or if he could only pick 10, he would keep Washington - mostly for sentimental reasons.
The league only works when salaries are less than 75% of league revenues, and when league revenues are gate/stadium driven. Hockey, due to the need for ice and the lack (compared to Football, Baseball, and Basketball) of youth involved in the sport, keep the appeal of hockey limited. Geographic locations that are naturally suited to hockey being played are naturally the areas that should keep their teams and hope to thrive.
Who knows what will happen.
Carry on.
So ML and I have been fairly enthusiastic hockey fans in our past. For me, however, the 2003 playoffs were the straw that finally broke the camels back. Without going into too much detail, the Washington Capitals choked away a big playoff lead en-route to a typical choke. This, in and of itsself, is not enough reason to drive me away. But the failure of the team in that season, and the absolute collapse the following season were predictable, and a result of many wrong decisions, and it just got old seeing the crash comming every season, knowing why it happened and watching the team do nothing about it. It really is ashame in this case, because the Caps have a great owner… or rather, I think he SHOULD be a great owner.
But now Hockey is locked out. The operative question as voiced on ESPN radio this morning is “Does anyone care?” Or even “Will anyone notice?”.
Personally, I don’t care at this point. The league is a nightmare, and the product on the ice stinks. I doubt that they’ll actually fix anything in this lockout though. My prediction is that negotiations will resume at a fevor pitch around Christmas or New Year, and the league will resume in a trunkated fashion in January/February. Unf. Fans will NOT return as they did in ‘96, and the league will be playing to even more empty arenas than it’s used to.
Or maybe not. The owners really have to get a Salary Cap imposed. There can’t be revenue sharing, because there is no revenue to share. The NHL is practically paying TV stations to air its games now. Ratings and attendance are abysmal. So the only way to generate any savings is to cut salaries.
Who is to blame for the high salaries? See the New York Rangers, Philadelphia Flyers, Detroit edWings, Toronto Maple Leafs and maybe two or three other high dollar franchises, who can actually afford the money. Any other franchise who wants to compete pretty much has to match those salaries. So what you are essentially seeing is a war between big market teams and small market teams. And the Big Market teams will win regardless. They can afford the lockout, and they can afford the salaries now, and they won’t mind if a salary cap is imposed because they can probably figure out ways around it.
I think the League will get its Salary Cap. Look at the NBA and the NFL. Both have proven that there are ways around a Cap. The Naive Idealist in me always takes pause for a second when an announcer sayd “the Skins have the highest payroll ever.” I think “Wait a second, shouldn’t everyone be maxed out if they are using their resources efficiently?” Then I remember that the Cap, in reality, isn’t a hard fixed number but is a complicated thing, and there are ways around it.
So the big market teams will find loopholes to exploit and the small market teams will say “We can’t sign him… you know… the cap.”
What if they held a victory parade and the only guy who came was the big fat guy with the pins all over his Catsup stained retro jersey?
