Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader knows that when someone is down you need to kick them some more and take their stuff. By doing so you increase the chances of them never getting up and seeking revenge against you; plus you’ve got their stuff… (Note that down loyal minions… Free lesson today courtesy of your Maximum Leader channeling the spirit of Niccolo Machiavelli.)

Anyhoo…

Far be it for your Maximum Leader to wish anyone ill this Christmas season, but Michael Jackson really isn’t just anyone. He is, you know, a freaky-up-to-his-eyeballs-in-debt-pedophile. So regular seasonal conventions concerning politeness just don’t apply.

So it seems as though the now Bahraini-based Jackson is trying to renegotiate his debt and thereby hold onto his Neverland ranch as well as his considerable music title ownership. Those music titles famously include many Beatles songs. You know, your Maximum Leader hopes that one of those banks just calls his notes and takes his stuff. And furthermore, he hopes that Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Olivia Harrison and Yoko Ono pool their resources to buy the Beatles songs.

Excursus: Yes, your Maximum Leader mentioned Paul and Yoko in the same breath. Your Maximum Leader, while no great fan of Yoko creatively or politically, does believe that Yoko - as the heir to John Lennon - is the “rightful” owner of Lennon’s share of the Beatles collection. As he believes Olivia Harrison is the “rightul” owner of George Harrison’s share of the Beatles collection.

Well… Your Maximum Leader hopes that Jackson loses his stuff and decides never to return to America.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sometimes wonders about our neighbours to the north. While not a libertine by any extent, your Maximum Leader is surprisingly open-minded about many things. But he is sorta creeped out by the whole concept of “swingers clubs.” He has no objection to legalized prostitution or legal brothels. But sex clubs cross some sort of a line he can’t describe. They seem so tawdry and… 70’s…

Anyhow… It seems as though private swingers clubs are perfectly fine in Canada. So if that’s your thing you now know where to go.

And while your there give Skippy a call. He needs some lovin.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader promised you fluff… And fluff you shall have…

Just in time for Christmas your Maximum Leader gets confirmation of the black nature of his heart.

How evil are you?

Many thanks to Lemuel for the quiz.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is a father three times over. (Or should he say a father of three that he acknowledges… Heh.) His second and third children (Villainette #2 and the Wee Villain) were both born “naturally” (aka: vaginally). They were both fairly large kids. (9lbs 6oz and 9lb 3oz respectively.) And for both deliveries Mrs. Villain had no painkillers. Watching your (big) children being born and knowing your wife isn’t using anything to dull the pain is a pretty uncomfortable thing. Having stated that please allow him to enter this news item into the record with no further comment.

Oklahoma Woman Delivers 14lb Baby.

Okay… Your Maximum Leader will make one more comment… He’ll just assume that our very dear Sadie is not in any way connected to this story.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader, like so many bloggers, is a news hound. He reads the news constantly. Indeed, his reading of the news probably adds some unneeded stress to his life and will probably cut it short in years to come; but it is an addiction nonetheless.

Having said that, your Maximum Leader doesn’t feel like blogging about any of the very topical discussions out there right now. He feels like he should, and frankly you should too, try and take a little break before Christmas. A few days of frivolity and lightheartedness is likely a good thing for all of us.

This feeling of your Maximum Leader’s will likely pass. (Possibly by this afternoon actually.) So who knows what he’ll post over the next few days.

Should he decide to blog about non-lighthearted things he may decide to opine on: secret wiretaps, the NYC transit strike, the “war” on Christmas, Sadie’s suggested topic of feminism and its necessity in the USA today, and the ignorance of the DC city council when it comes to the proposed stadium for the Nationals baseball club.

Until your Maximum Leader has a change of heart, expect fluff.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader’s thoughts go out to the family of Phyllis Gretzky, including her son Wayne Gretzky. Mrs. Gretzky died of cancer yesterday.

Your Maximum Leader, a hockey fan, certainly hopes that the Gretzky family knows that millions of fans are keeping them in their thoughts and prayers.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader didn’t mention earlier that he was feeling sick this morning. The cause of this malady.

The Green Bay Packers vs Baltimore Ravens.

If you don’t know your Maximum Leader personally you may not know of his great (GREAT!) dislike of the city of Baltimore and its sports teams. So, that feeling made this drubbing even more painful to watch. So painful, in fact, that your Maximum Leader had to throw in the towel on viewing the game in the 3rd Quarter.

It pained him so…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader wonders if he’s given you all enough reason to come and visit Naked Villainy lately. He’s been gone a lot and the blog as sat without update for days. It really isn’t fair to all his loyal minions. Unfortunately, it may not get any better through the rest of the Christmas/New Years season. Your Maximum Leader will try for one update per weekday. But circumstances may dictate otherwise. And by circumstance he means loading music onto his PC for transfer to his new iPod. Well… That is one circumstance at any rate.

So, your Maximum Leader has been paying rather close attention to the recent p.r. blitz by the President. (President Bush that is. Although President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran has been doing his best to stay in the news. You know, with all those comments about the Holocaust being a myth and banning western music. We might elect some nutjobs to high office in the US, but you gotta hand it to the third world when it comes to electing the downright mad to office. But your Maximum Leader digresses…)

So your Maximum Leader has been seeing a lot of President Bush lately. And that is both a good and long overdue turn of events. You know for all the talk of Republicans being brilliant about getting the message out and finding a message and sticking with it, the President hasn’t done a very good job of communicating anything since getting re-elected. It is good to see the President trying to get his message out. (And by that your Maximum Leader means that it is good to see the commentary and debate generated by the President’s speeches. It is also good to see the sound-bite moments. Because, as we all know, the President is not an inspired (or inspiring) public speaker. Indeed, your Maximum Leader can’t bring himself to watch many of the President’s speeches - preferring to read them after their delivery.)

Some one on the President’s staff must have gotten up about a week ago and said to himself, “You know if the President actually got out of the White House and started talking to people about the war and whatnot we might not be stuck in this awful rut we are in…” It makes one wonder if they are really thinking at all in the White House.

But, the charm offensive is starting to work. According to polling information you Maximum Leader saw on TV the President’s approval numbers appear to be up 10 points. That is a good start. But there is a lot of communicating to do. Frankly, your Maximum Leader isn’t sure that any amount of communication will get the President above 0-55% approval in the polls. The war has become that polarizing and no amount of talk will change that. Indeed your Maximum Leader is more and more convinced that no amount of “good news” out of Iraq will change that. The lines are pretty hardened. If you were against the war (for whatever reason) you are likely to remain against it no matter what the outcome. If you were for the war you are likely to remain for it no matter how badly things seem to be going.

Your Maximum Leader, as you may recall, was very much for the war at the beginning. He still believes it was a sound course of action at the time, and remains so. He is, very, disappointed in our management of the war. We haven’t done all that we needed to do to insure a successful outcome. A successful outcome being a stable, moderate Iraq. The fault for mismanagement lays firmly at the foot of the President and his advisors. But, a basic principle guiding the war (at least from the point of view of Paul Wolfowitz and Dick Cheney among others) is still a good one. That principle being decades of the status quo hasn’t done anything to make the middle east a more stable place. A shake-up in the region might be needed to produce a more desirable outcome. Your Maximum Leader believes that the situation in Iraq can still turn out to have a good ending. But the power to create that good ending is laying more in the hands of Iraqis than Americans. Well… Allow your Maximum Leader to clarify. So long as Americans remain in Iraq it will give time to Iraqis who are interested in collective self-determination a chance to get a reasonably democratic government going and have that government establish its legitmate authority among regular Iraqis. If Iraqis want to rule themselves peacefully and not devolve into civil war it can happen. But it will not happen without US troops. Your Maximum Leader thinks that much should be clear to anyone with half a brain.

Your Maximum Leader hopes that our political leader don’t give up on Iraq. If for no other reason than we are (no matter how you look at it) responsible for the current political situation. We created the current situation in Iraq and we need to stay on until Iraqis can govern themselves. This might be a very long time. Certainly a longer time than between now and the 2006 elections. Your Maximum Leader thinks that the Iraqi people have made great strides in the past two years, and that more are coming. But they will only come with our continued presence and support.

Carry on.

There is a War on Christmas!

Thank goodness we have honest brokers like Matthew Staver and Bill O’Reilly to tell us the truth.

Good golly, my friends, one can unerstand Bill O’Relly - he is an entertainer giving his audience the red meat it craves and the sense of persecution it needs to feel. But supposedly Christian organizations being dishonest? I wis all of these cultural warriors would stop giving Christianity a bad name.

The department of social services showed up at my house this morning and took the wee ones into protective custody. Mrs. Smallholder and I were charged with felony child abuse.

Someone called the government and reported us for malicious cruelty.

We were raising the kids as Green Bay Packers fans.

The family of the bipolar man gunned down by air marshals after he claimed to have a bomb is suing.

The family believes that the air marshals should have found a nonlethal way of apprehending him.

Let’s review.

He disruptively stormed out an airplane and onto the tarmac claiming to have a bomb in his backpack.

Air marshals confront him, identify themselves, and tell him to drop the backpack.

He refuses.

The ir marshals order him (again) to drop the backpack and get on the ground.

He repeats his claim to have a bomb and reaches into the backpack.

The air marshals fire, dropping him in his tracks.

The air marshals did their friggin’ job.

This is not to say that I don’t sympathize with the family’s loss or the poor man’s mental illness. But in the real world, marshals do not have time to do a full psychiatric workup. They have to make split second decsions and they did.

Some of my bleeding heart fellows will whine that the marshals should have shot to wound or to knock the backpack out of his hands. I know that the Minister of Propaganda won’t join the chorus of limp-wristed lefties - this time. The Minister of Propaganda has served his country in the military and knows that shooting the weapon out of the bad guy’s hand is a silly Hollywood invention. No one with any training will ever shoot at anything other that the center of mass (excepting snipers from a prepared shot who will go for the sniper’s triangle).

I’ve done in a fair number of God’s creatures over the last couple of years. It is pretty easy to aim at a groundhog, control your breathing, and send an accurate round down range. Shooting ground hogs is nothing like shooting bad guys.

When in a situation where the target is fighting back, you don’t have time for calm reflection or breathing control. I have never, thank all that is holy, been in the situation, but I imagine being shot at - even when it is “to no effect” as Churchill called it - elevates one’s heart rate and breathing, two things that play hell with aim. Couple this with the fact that you are shooting pistols with open sights, and aiming at anything other than center of mass is foolhardy.

I have heard a former police officer describe being in a gunfight in a hallway in which both the criminal and the officer emptied their clips - and not a single round found flesh.

So the officers, in putting six rounds into the disruptive passenger in the space of a couple of seconds, demonsrated the efficacy of their training.

So if shooting to wound is out of the question, what was left, offering tea and crumpets as he reached into the bag which he claimed held a bomb?

The only correct answer was to kill the man.

Flame me if thou wilst.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has learned that the Crack Young Staff of the Hatemongers Quarterly have moved their site. They are now Munuvians. Go and visit their new site at http://hatemongers.mu.nu. Change your bookmarks, update your links if you blog. Visit over and over again… (Or at least once a day… Your call on that.)

Your Maximum Leader wishes “Chip” and the rest of the Crack Young Staff the very best with their move.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader can be so bad sometimes. He just up and left his loyal minions for a few days with no warning of his absence. Well… Sometimes your Maximum Leader’s life is like that. Just so that you don’t feel completely left out allow your Maximum Leader to recap his recent activities. Last Thursday night he sent a team of dwarves to fetch the Big Hominid from his American home and bring him forthwith to the Villainschloss. Your Maximum Leader and his Poet Laureate were then joined by the Air Marshal at the Villainschloss and we “hung out.” “Hanging out” included going out for lunch at a very nice little French restaurant in town, playing video games, and carousing.

Your Maximum Leader feels a little bit badly about interrupting carousing every few minutes to add another CD to his iTunes for his iPod. But he became a littel OCD about that. As it stands he’s copied about 1/3rd of his CDs over to iTunes. (For those of you keeping track that means about 3 days of music, over 1700 songs, and 5 GB of storage space.)

A good time was had by all. Your Maximum Leader only wishes that it could happen more often.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is celebrating Christmas early… You see, two people very close to him just gave him a Christmas gift. It is the greatest Christmas gift… It has occupied your Maximum Leader’s attention (and all of the memory on his supercomputer - he’s blogging on Mrs. Villain’s laptop) for the past few hours. It will likely occupy his attention (and time) for a while more.

What could this gift be you ask yourself…

An iPod.

Not just any iPod… But a super-cool iPod.

Yup. You guessed it. The 60GB Black iPod w/video.

It is soooooo cool.

Your Maximum Leader is loading his CD collection into iTunes. So far some artists added include: Elvis, The Cowboy Junkies, The Beatles, Johnny Cash, John Prine, Barenaked Ladies, Monty Python, The Who, and The Greatful Dead. After about 2 hrs of loading he has about 6 hrs of music and hasn’t crested the 1GB mark…

Ohhhhhhhhhhh….

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is off to a slow start this morning. His brain doesn’t seem to want to focus on anything. (So it seems.) But even with a slow brain he thinks of his minions and their need to read something…

First off… What the hell is wrong with you all? Your Maximum Leader knows that you all are busy with your lives and all. And he knows that you might be torn by the wide-ranging choices you have available to you… But really now, just go and vote for the Hatemongers. If you don’t there is no telling what will happen to “Chip.” Those salacious photos of Chip “fending off” the “advances” of Wonkette will surely be made public if you don’t go and vote for the Hatemongers right away. Your Maximum Leader knows that the competition in that category is stiff. Indeed, he is a regular reader of many of the sites nominated. But he isn’t going to take the wussy “Awww… They should all win something.” approach. Your Maximum Leader is an honorary Hatemonger! And that means something to him. Go vote! Your Maximum Leader has already voted 5 times today for the Hatemongers… You should do the same.

Secondly, if you’ve not read Outer Life recently your Maximum Leader highly recommends this post.

And lastly… If you have a subject upon which you would like your Maximum Leader to expound… Please feel free to suggest it.

Carry on.