Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader wonders how many of you might have read Pete DuPont’s article in the Wall Street Journal two days ago. It was linked on a number of big sites. Your Maximum Leader started a post about it, but didn’t publish it. He’s decided to just link the piece and give a taste.

The Europeanization of America by Pete DuPont from the Wall Street Journal.
So where is the new Obama administration likely to take us? Seven things seem certain:

- The U.S. military will withdraw from Iraq quickly and substantially, regardless of conditions on the ground or the obvious consequence of emboldening terrorists there and around the globe.

- Protectionism will become our national trade policy; free trade agreements with other nations will be reduced and limited.

- Income taxes will rise on middle- and upper-income people and businesses, and individuals will pay much higher Social Security taxes, all to carry out the new president’s goals of “spreading the wealth around.”

- Federal government spending will substantially increase. The new Obama proposals come to more than $300 billion annually, for education, health care, energy, environmental and many other programs, in addition to whatever is needed to meet our economic challenges. Mr. Obama proposes more than a 10% annual spending growth increase, considerably higher than under the first President Bush (6.7%), Bill Clinton (3.3%) or George W. Bush (6.4%).

- Federal regulation of the economy will expand, on everything from financial management companies to electricity generation and personal energy use.

- The power of labor unions will substantially increase, beginning with repeal of secret ballot voting to decide on union representation.

- Free speech will be curtailed through the reimposition of the Fairness Doctrine to limit the conservative talk radio that so irritates the liberal establishment.

Your Maximum Leader will point out that bullet point about Federal Spending increasing. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t give Bill Clinton and the Republican Congress quite enough credit for holding down the growth of the Federal budget. Consider this credit. Alas, what that point shows it that if Obama was to become President (which is likely now) we really really need a responsible Republican Congress to act as a counter-balance. Sadly, that is not in the cards either.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader realizes that there is quite a bit of “bad news” being reported. Lots of stories about how to manage on less. What to do about your retirement. How to keep your job…

Finally, news you can use to keep your bar well-stocked in economic hard times. Inexpensive Bottles to Help Keep You Afloat.

Your Maximum Leader admits he’s been reducing his Scotch consumption to keep costs down. He’s been drinking more Bourbon. It is sweeter and makes your Maximum Leader feel patriotic…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader asks rhetorically, “Does the final 2.5 innings of Game 5 of the World Series have to be played in Philadelphia?” Couldn’t you move it down the road to Washington?

It might be your Maximum Leader’s only chance to see a World Series championship awarded in DC…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader’s younger daughter came into his office today holding a manila envelope. She was grinning from ear to ear.

Your Maximum Leader got his Washington Capitals tickets today. (Partial season ticket plan…)

And then he learned that Alex Ovechkin wasn’t going to be in the lineup tonight as he is in Russia visiting his ailing grandfather. Your Maximum Leader hopes for Ovie’s grandfather’s recovery.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader hasn’t had a lot of time for blogging. To be honest, he’s grown weary of the news. He has been spending time with his kids and playing Medieval Total War II on the computer. (NB to Smallholder: Finished the Venice game. Unlocked all factions. Started game as Scots. Getting butt handed to him by English and Danes. Saved that game. Started another Venice game. Going well.)

Your Maximum Leader missed a chance to see Sarah Palin in Fredericksburg yesterday. He contemplated trying to for a moment. It has been forever since he’s been to a political rally. But, after calling friends, it was too crowded downtown and he didn’t want to have to deal with it all.

Your Maximum Leader thinks that McCain might pick up a surprise victory in Pennsylvania. But he also believes that McCain is going to lose Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and (sadly) Virginia. The only way that McCain gets Virginia is if there is huge turnout in rural areas and weak turnout in Northern VA and Richmond. Your Maximum Leader thinks that Hampton Roads will break for McCain. Northern VA and Richmond will only have weak turnout if the weather is bad AND most people think that Obama and Mark Warner will win going away and thus “it doesn’t make a difference if I don’t vote…” sets in. That confluence of events is a long shot. But it COULD happen…

Other things that COULD happen include: your Maximum Leader decides to foresake his family and blow his savings going to Venice for Christmas; the Washington Nationals winning the NL Pennant next year; and Jennifer Love Hewitt dumping her fiance at the altar proclaiming “No! I must throw myself at my Maximum Leader and hope for the best!”

These things COULD happen…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader found a little bit of bloggy goodness through our friend Buckethead.

If you ever played D&D you ought to click through on this link to read: Adventuring Party Politics: The Campaign is Getting Ugly.

Your Maximum Leader laughed and laughed.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader was too busy celebrating Trafalgar Day yesterday to have time to post anything… Here is some ADD-style commentary for you all…

In a comment to an earlier post, minion Huck Foley indicated that he was not going to be voting for Mark Warner in the VA Senate race because he didn’t want to contribute to a fillibuster-proof Democrat majority in the US Senate after the election. Actually, your Maximum Leader has thought of that very point in considering his vote. Indeed, that very reason is the only one he can think of to pull the trigger for Jim Gilmore. Alas, the Warner/Gilmore race isn’t even close, so it doesn’t make much of a difference. Your Maximum Leader is still planning on voting for Warner - but he might yet change his mind.

All these polls showing Obama with wide leads over McCain tend to be polls of “registered voters.” Your Maximum Leader is no pollster but he has always been of the mind that “registered” is not as good as “likely.” Polls of “likely” voters are much closer. He thinks these polls will tighten up some. He believes that Obama probably is not doing as well in Pennsylvania and Ohio as many people think. But in the end, he believes that Obama is going to win in a few days.

Your Maximum Leader still can’t decide on which team in the World Series to root for. Would you like to buy your Maximum Leader’s powerful ju-ju as a fairweather fan? He’s open to solicitations for temporary fandom.

Lastly, your Maximum Leader is all excited because he is going to get a short visit at the Villainschloss from the Smallholder this weekend. Your Maximum Leader will have to stock up on beer and snacks. Perhaps we’ll have a Bruce Campbell film-fest!

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader will subject you all to an open letter to our bloggy friend FLG…

Dear FLG:

Your Maximum Leader

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t know if this video is real or staged. Either way it made him chuckle.

See the video for yourself. Clicky the linky here.

Your Maximum Leader would have embedded the video here, but it is a little too wide to display correctly in his column.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader had a full day yesterday. One that required lots of driving around and socializing. It was a great day in fact. (NB to Kevin: Sorry for being a schmuck and not sticking around longer to help out tidy things up - especially in light of the length of your later absence.) But on the down-side of the day, your Maximum Leader didn’t get to see any football on TV. Neither did he watch “Meet the Press” in the morning.

So… Colin Powell endorsing Obama. Well… Your Maximum Leader can’t say that he predicted this, because he didn’t. Is he surprised… Well… A little. He thought that Powell might have just kept his thoughts to himself. But, he didn’t. Is this a big blow to John McCain? Not exactly. On the balance these endorsements don’t amount to much. Powell’s might carry a little more weight than most, but still that isn’t all that much. Is your Maximum Leader disappointed in Powell’s endorsement? Sure he is. Is it going to change his vote (or the votes of others who have already determined to vote one way or the other). Might the Powell endorsement sway an “undecided” voter? Possibly. Of course if you are still undecided right now it is likely that you are both stupid and easily swayed by the last person you spoke with. So you will keep on being undecided for a few more weeks…

At this point your Maximum Leader is expecting an Obama victory on November 4th. He will be sad for John McCain for a little bit… But then he’ll move on to being filled with black-hearted glee at an Obama presidency. Many prominent persons (Colin Powell & Christopher Buckley) and institutions (the Washington Post) have endorsed Barack Obama because of the potential he brings for change. The common theme of the endorsements are that he is new and fresh and can be a change agent. (The other common theme of the endoresments is that “Obama isn’t a typical liberal Democrat. Read his books and you’ll see.” (NB to Smallholder: Hummm….) Of course, the undercurrent of that line of thinking is that basically Obama is lying about what he will do upon becoming president. You should take a moment and read Skippy’s take on this.

As your Maximum Leader wrote back in February, he believes that an Obama presidency will be four years of soul-crushing for those who believe he can bring change to Washington and the nation. The nature of Washington, coupled with all the various crises facing the nation right now will not be terribly accomodating to a program of change put forth by a (prospective) Obama administration. Indeed it is going to be very nasty and messy.

In fact, your Maximum Leader is dismayed by our immediate future prospects regardless of who wins the Presidency. It hasn’t gotten to the point where he fears for his children’s future… But it is pretty bad…

Of course, the election hasn’t yet occured and anything is possible. Some polls say the race is “tightening.” Some polls say that Obama is widening his lead. Your Maximum Leader can only speak for what he sees and hears around him. Virginia seems rather evenly divided right now. That is a very bad thing for John McCain. There are going to be a lot of ticket splitters here. This is to say that these people will vote for John McCain for President and Mark Warner for Senate. To be honest, your Maximum Leader will likely be one of these. McCain should be far ahead now in Virginia. But Obama’s huge amount of money is keeping him in the race here and keeping volunteers in the streets. It is coming down to turnout. Your Maximum Leader suspects that it will come down to turnout and legal challenges in lots of areas. The prospect of lots of legal challenges fills your Maximum Leader with dismay. But, it is what our republic has come down to.

In other news…

Your Maximum Leader had written off the Tampa Bay Rays after their Game 5 debacle in Boston. But they have come back and won the game they needed to and are going to the World Series. (So we can see that your Maximum Leader’s predictions are worth crap.) Now it is a Phillies/Rays series. This is a difficult choice in terms of choosing for whom to root. Your Maximum Leader can’t really abide by the Phillies, but he is a National League type of guy. The Rays could be one of those “teams of destiny.” But he just can’t get excited about Florida teams in any sport… Mrs Villain has already declared that she will not watch the World Series because she can’t stand either team. Your Maximum Leader loves his baseball so he wants to watch… But he just doesn’t like either team…

As you can tell… Things are going just swimmingly here this morning…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader was thinking that it has been a while since he last posted anything relating to the RCBfA. Today is as good a day as any to make up for lost posting.

You see… Your Maximum Leader was reading about night in the most recent issue of National Geographic. More accuarately, he was reading about how night isn’t all that dark in many areas of the developed world and why that isn’t a good thing. Your Maximum Leader agrees. Night should be dark and the heavens not obsucred by light reflecting off cities and such…

But your Maximum Leader digresses…

So… There is, in this issue of National Geographic, a photo of a road sign proclaiming a street be “Milky Way.” The photo is shot at night and one can actually see the Milky Way in the background.

That got your Maximum Leader to thinking. He seemed to remember seeing a painting once called “The Origin of the Milky Way” in the National Gallery in London. At first he remembered it as a Titian. But later realized he was incorrect and it is a Tintoretto. For your viewing pleasure, Tintoretto’s “Origin of the Milky Way”:

Clicken to embiggen.

And while we are thinking of Tintoretto… How about his “Four women playing music.”

Again, clicken to embiggen. Sadly, your Maximum Leader hasn’t found too many string quartets of the type Tintoretto was painting here. This painting serves as a reminder to your Maximum Leader that he must go to Florence - where there is lots of art. (And presumably artful string quartets.)

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader, as you all surely know, is not a fan of legislation that is rushed through the Congress and signed quickly by the President. It almost always is rife with problems and unintended consequences.

To wit: the big “bailout/rescue” package just passed by Congress and signed by President Bush. According to the Washington Post in their piece entitled “Treasury’s Rescue Plan Hits Technical Snag”:

Banking regulators are working today to resolve accounting roadblocks that would hold up the government’s plan to revive financial markets by investing $250 billion in the nation’s banks.

The problem is this: Under existing rules, banks cannot count the Treasury Department’s investment as part of their core capital, the foundation of money that supports a bank’s operations. The very goal of the plan was to buttress those foundations, which have been eroded by recent losses, undermining the stability of the banks.

The Treasury’s initial investment in nine of the largest banks cannot go forward until the accounting issues are resolved, people familiar with the matter said. Regulators are now working to figure out how to change existing rules to accommodate the program, the latest in a string of ad hoc measures to address the financial crisis.

Yesterday, the Federal Reserve issued a rule, effective today, that suspends its long-standing objections to counting such an investment toward core capital. But other regulators have yet to act.

Beautiful. Just friggin beautiful. You’d think that someone might have thought of this while they were actually debating the law.

Friggin beautiful…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader turned in last night with the Tampa Bay Rays up 5-0 at the close of the 5th inning. He thought the Sawx were done.

Well… Obviously the Citgo sign bad ju ju wasn’t all that bad.

Sawx win.

If you want to read some painful stuff… Try out Thomas Boswell’s column today.

Or even better… Try this one from Tampa Bay Online.

Ouch.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader became a hockey fan early. As he’s surely noted here before, he became a hockey fan long before he became a baseball or football fan. He became a fan because he could go to games when he was young. The Capitals were so bad that he had easy access to cheap tickets. He bonded with the franchise. He’s been a Caps fan ever since.

This is not to say that he’s always been a hockey fan. Over the years the sport appears to have done just about everything it could to implode. He would watch finals games on tv. If there was nothing else on - he’d watch the Caps.

That started to change the year before last. Then last year you Maximum Leader got pumped up again about the team.

This year he bought a partial season ticket plan.

He is on the bandwagon.

One of the key reasons for his change of heart is Alexander Ovechkin. If you haven’t seen Ovie play, you have missed the most entertaining and exciting player that the NHL has to offer. Your Maximum Leader hasn’t seen a player stir up this much excitement since Wayne Gretzky used to come to town (with Edmonton).

You should take a moment to read the good piece on Ovie that ESPN has put up. Alexander Ovechkin: The Puck stops here. A taste:

Ovechkin’s transformation of Washington has been remarkable because DC puckheads are not accustomed to voting with their wallets. “Let’s be honest,” says Caps legend Peter Bondra. “Washington is not Hockeytown.” No wonder: When it first joined the league in 1974-75, it finished 8—67—5 with a 1—39 road record. Rod Langway, one of only four Caps Hall of Famers, arrived in 1982 from Montreal, where, he says, “18,000 people knew my entire life.” In DC, he adds, “it took two years for people to know me.”

Now, a Russian has turned the Verizon Center into a hockey mecca. During the playoffs, media from as far away as Edmonton and Europe were regulars at morning skates. Ovechkin has even reached across the sports aisle to appeal to the bases of other teams. “Alex has the confidence of the fans and the city,” says Hoyas hoops coach John Thompson III. “He has enthusiasm and cares about what he’s doing. He’s gonna make us win games.” Note the use of the word us. The Caps have Capitalized on Ovechkin’s dedication to a Washington rarity: trust.

Your Maximum Leader is excited. He is excited about the Caps in a way he hasn’t been since the trip to the Cup finals a decade ago. (In fact, he is more excited now because in the cup run you got the feeling that the Wings couldnt’ be stopped. And in fact they could not be stopped.)

If you didn’t see the Caps come back from a 0-3 deficit to win against the Penguins last night, you missed some great hockey. He hopes to see a lot more great hockey this season.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader, unforgivably, neglected to extend his congratulations to Stephen Harper and his (minority) government winning the late elections in our neighbour to the north.

Alas, Mr. Harper didn’t completely destroy the Liberals under Stephane Dion. But, the Liberals did lose 19 seats in the Commons.

Your Maximum Leader anxiously awaits his friend Skippy’s analysis.

Carry on.