Kate, You Need Help

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is writing this specifically for Kate Moss. Kate, if you’re out there (and your Maximum Leader knows you lurk around here waiting for the Minister of Propaganda to post) take heed.

This whole coke thing is beginning to affect your career. Affect in bad ways. The Swedes are dropping you from ad campaigns. Aren’t the Swedes like the most non-confrontational understanding pople in Europe? And they are upset with you? This isn’t good.

Kate, take your Maximum Leader’s advice. Call the Minister of Propaganda (send an e-mail - we’ll give you the number). He wants to help you through this. Don’t call any of those former boyfriends like Johnny Depp or anything. They didn’t have your best interests in mind. Not like the M of P. He’ll hold your hand and walk you through this.

Carry on.

The Other Shoe Drops

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sees that the agreement with North Korea lasted all of about 24 hours.

Your Maximum Leader is glad he didn’t get around to finishing his “Top 10 Things to Love About Kim Jong-Il” post.

Carry on.

Oktoberfest

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sees that those wacky Germans are embroiled in an electoral quandry of sorts. Stick with Schoeder or move to Merkel. Humm… Interesting to see how this will pan out.

Excursus: Where is the US Supreme Court on this? If Justice Breyer can cite international law in his decisions, couldn’t he offer to referree the formations of German government coalitions? Just askin…

But electoral results not withstanding, they are starting to party in Bavaria!

Can you find the Foreign Minister in this photo?

Well, your Maximum Leader can tell you that the elusive Foreign Minister is not in this photo

Carry on.

Hopeful News from Norkland

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sees that North Korea has agreed (in principle) to give up its nuclear program in exchange for cheap oil, cheap food, and security guarantees. The Rueters article is here.

This is a promising start for the week. Of course, as with all interactions with a xenophobic Stalinist dictatorship one will have to wait to see what Kim will actually do. He’ll agree in principle to just about anything to get himself some space and bargaining room.

The tenor of the various ministers negotiating in Beijing appears to be upbeat. So who knows, perhaps this is a breakthrough. Until he sees some progress on the North Korean side your Maximum Leader will remain sceptical.

Carry on.

One-Word Movie Reviews: The Extended Director’s Cut Edition

In honor of the fact that I worked as crew on one of this week’s movies, welcome to the Extended Director’s Cut Edition of One-Word Movie Reviews: TWO word reviews! Enjoy the extra depth and clarity of vision that only an extended version of the original work can bring you. . .

In Theaters:
The Constant Gardener: f***ing superb
Pretty Persuasion: f***ing convoluted
Just Like Heaven: f***ing okay

Viewed at home:
Kontroll: f***ing shrewd
Dead Leaves: f***ig frantic
Overnight: f***ing cautionary
The Boondock Saints: f***ing indulgent

F***ing Believe.

Smallholder: Libertarian Part the Third

Speaking of Kelo…

Let me get this straight.

I purchased my farm.

I’ll raise my family there.

I’ll build barns with my father.

I’ll spend 50 years improving the pasture.

I’ll build and maintain grape trellises and allow the vines to age to glorious perfection. I’ll use the grapes to make wine for my daughter’s wedding reception.

I’ll bury my dog - hell, family members - under the oak tree.

I’ll build hay bale forts in the loft with my grandchildren.

And then some developer can come along, evaluate my million-dollar views of the blue ridge, decide to build a hotel, convince Albermarle County to transfer my land under eminent domain, and win in court because higher tax receipts are “public use?”

No.

Not just no.

Heeeeeeelllllll no!

Sure, Virginia’s politicians are going to put legislative protections in place. But legislative protections can be overturned. I want my court to recogniuze a basic right protected in black letters in the Constitution.

Judge Roberts

Ought to be confirmed.

Under our system, the President gets to nominate and the Senate confirms. Since the Republican Party controls both the White House and the Senate, they would be perfectly within their Constitutional rights to put Jennifer Love Hewitt to the Supreme Court.

The Democrats can’t, under our system, derail a nominee.

That said, what they can do is hold the Republicans responsible for their choices and increase their chances to seize control of the White House and/or Senate.

And the Democracts are screwing the pooch on this one.

Screaming about Roe and civil rights won’t shift public opinion that far.

They ought to be screaming about Kelo. That’s an issue that could move the middle class, were it ’splained.

Kelo’s use of eminent domain to render private property insecure in the face of big developers was decided 5-4. Both O’Connor and Rehnquist voted on the side of the angels on this one. So the current vote, should another eminent domain case come before the court again, would be 5-2.

If Roberts is willing to show judicial deference to legislative prerogative, the only defence we will have against rapacious developers will be the right action of state legislators who depend on… developers for campaign contributions.

We need to get pro-private property judges on the court before Kelo becomes settled precedent.

Why aren’t the Democrats seizing on this issue? Eminent domain disproportionately affects the politcally unconnected poor. Middle class folks get nervous when you start talking about taking people’s houses. And many rich folks have a predisposition to protect private property. This is a win-win-win situation for the Democrats.

So you bombard Roberts with Kelo questions. He refuses to answer. In 2008 you argue that the American people ought to elect a President who will appoint justices that will protect private property.

But no, they’d rather grandstand for their core constituency that isn’t going anywhere anyway.

It Is Done

The AI Tech came yesterday.

With any luck, Bonnie is “caught.”

We’ll know in 22 days.

Cross your fingers.

Attention Naked Villains!

I am preparing a post, but need your help.

Please send the Maximum Leader a picture of you exercising your right to bear arms.

And, yes, Minister of Propaganda, you ought to trust me.

I imagine that the Foreign Minister has hundreds of photos of his gun-brandishing self. The MOP ought to have a few pics from his military service. I’m not sure whether the Air Marshal or Poer Laureate are gun nuts.

And should Sadie be included in the sample since she has posting rights, even if those rights are only exercised in drive-by moonings?

The Real Naked Villainy Babe

The Smallholder notes, with grim bemusement, the Maximum Leader’s feeble attempt to distract our readers from the real fairest of the fair. He discusses Jennifer Love Hewitt and Kate Moss, but excludes the ethereal beauty of Jamie Pressly from consideration?

We once had a poll for official babe of Naked Villainy. The Maximum Leader, following the hoary tradition of single party dictatorships everywhere, stuffed, as it were, the ballot box.

But the truth cannot be so easily surpressed.

The proof, as they say (or at least the Primer Minister of Singapore) is in the pudding.

JLH and JP both have new series debuting this fall - “The Ghost (snicker snicker) Whisperer” and “My Name is Earl” The American people, voting with their eyes and advertising dollars, will demonstrate once and for all that Jaime is waaaaay better looking than a glorified balloon smuggler.

Or a coke-addled anorexic.

100 Below: Musical History

Alexander looked over the lush greenery of Babylon. His body was wracked in pain. His thoughts were muddled. He had seen men, countless men, in the same condition. He knew his time was coming. Did he have a few more days? Hours? Could he muster up the strength to choose? He knew his son would never rule. But who would he choose? Ptolemy? Perdiccas? Arridaeus? Melanger?

No matter whom he chose he knew that after him there would follow days of kings, empires and revolutions. And he’d learned that blood looks just the same when you open a vein.

Two For The Road

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader will commend two posts to you before the signs off for an evening of fun with the villainous progeny and hour upon hour of Rome:Total War.

The first is a great post on the Jawa Report. As you all surely know, Dr. Rusty Shackleford was a constant advocate for Roy Hallums while he was held hostage in Iraq. Now that he has been released, Susan Hallums has thanked Rusty for his help. Bravo, Rusty! Bravo! You’ve done yeoman’s work in this. Your Maximum Leader hopes one day Roy will be able to write you as well.

The second is this interesting take on agribusiness from Phoenix. Her own agribusiness that is. It is an interesting counter-point to our own Smallholder. (Or is that Pointer-count?)

With that dearminions your Maximum Leader will sign off for the day. Good luck and

Carry on.

Love Match for Bonnie

For all of the Naked Villainy readers who visit our site every day, eagerly anticipating a cow insemination post, this one is for you!

Bonnie’s suitor’s semen has arrived all the way from Norway: Svarstad

I will breed her this year with a Norweigen Red Bull.

My goal is to get a heifer that has thrifty grazing genetics, hardiness, heterosis, longer teats, high fertility, and the potential to throw meaty calves.

Unlike the American dairy system that has used the factory model to turn cows from solar-driven grass eating machines into petroleum-driven (tractor-based forage harvesting) grain bins, many other nations have developed more profitable, sustainable small dairy systems based on intensive grazing. New Zealand’s system is the best known, but the Scandinavians are no slouches at grass-based dairying.

The Norweigen Red breed is a hardy one, devloped to graze the cold hilly upcountry. When I combine that with Bonnie’s Scottish ancestry, I ought to get a tough, healthy cow.

Most dairy cows, particularly Holsteins, are massively inbred. The advent of artificial insemination has allowed for rapid genetic progress in the creation of giant, short-lived cows that can turn grain into milk at astounding rates. However, since good bulls can sire thousands of offspring and new bulls are selected from the progeny of the previous good bulls, the genetic base has become narrow indeed - to the point that the inbreeding has seriously affected traits like fertility. One reason I chose the Ayrshire was because, of the dairy breeds, it had suffered comparatively less pressure genetic pressure - the suped-up Holsteins quickly pushed the minor breeds to the fringes on factory farms where size and ability to process grain were all. But even the Ayrshire’s genetic base is narrower then it ought to be. Heterosis is the biological principle in which crossbred offspring typically see major trait gains as the result of the efficacy or reducing inbreeding. Unfortunately, the heterosis is only valuable if you keep switching in outcrosses so it is not generally used with Holsteins because the offspring would be smaller and smaller as the more minor breeds played into a continuing rotation. Holstein milk production is so far above that of other breeds that even with heterosis, the next generation would have less milk production than the parent. For example, imagine a Holstein averaging 30,000 lbs/milk/lactation. Breed her to a good Holstein bull and you might get a heifer throwing 32,000 lbs. If you bred her to a Jersey bull with a PTA for milk in the 20,000 lb range, the resulting crossbed would throw around 25,000 based on averages. (It wouldn’t be right in the middle because there are other factors involved, but it works for our example). The heterosis affect might add a 10% gain - so the crossbred cow, while healthier, would only be expected to throw 27,500 lbs. The 4,500 pound difference would mean an extra $900 of milk per year. Even if the crossbred heifer has fewer health problems, greater longevity, less mastitis, and is thriftier (uses less food per unit of milk profuced), the gap might only close to $200/year. That inbred purebred differential gain of $200/year in the annual bottom line is a crucial improvement when you average that over hundreds of cows and have to pay a multi-million dollar bank not that you took out to build your free stall barn and manure lagoon.

Squeezing the last dollar out of production isn’t the goal of Sweet Seasons Farm. I don’t owe $100,000 on a combine, $40,000 for a tractor, $2,000,000 for a manure disposal system, or $500,000 for a milking parlor. The major capital expense at Sweet Seasons Farm has been the building of the barn, which was accomplished for around $6,000 dollars since it was built by the truty firm of Vater Smallholder & Son.

In the case of this small organic farm, the trade-off of slightly less production is minimized because I’m not starting from a Holstein base, what little drop will hardly be noticed, and animal health is a major goal as its own end.

The longer teat issue is also a function of being a small farm. The advent of mechanical milking machines has made teat size irrelevent to production - the vacuum pressure, unlike a farmer’s aching fingers, cares not how long a cow’s teats are. In fact, in a confinement situation where animals are crowded, long teats are a disadvantage because resting cows get stepped on by their herdmates. Animals that spend a great deal of time resting on manure packs also expose their teats to bacterial infection - and the longer the teats are, the greater the area exposed. So farmers have been breeding for smaller teats.

I milk by hand. I can barely get two fingers around Bonnie’s back teats. I wanted a cow with longer teats and found a bull that throws that trait in the Norwegian Red herdbook.

Norweigen Reds are also noted for their high fertiltiy and the heterosis will help on this level as well. Since I breed AI, this trait is important. It takes an average of three or four breedings for a Holstein to “catch” nowadays. Ayrshires average 2 or 3. It took 2 to get Bonnie in calf last year. Bonnie is a good cow that does not suffer from the environmental stress depressing fertility in confinement operations, rotationally grazes (which increases relative fertility), and doesn’t suffer from grain-induced acidosis, so she should be pretty fertile. But I want to keep breeding to make that trait better and better. Each breeding will run me around $40, so as a percentage of costs, can be a big slice of my tiny pie. Heterosis will also help.

Most dairy calves end up as veal. I raise mine to be petit beef. Dairy animals tend to be very thin and angular, so a larger proportion of the nutrition of the animals destined for the table goes into bone. If I could get calves that are blockier, they’ll gain weight faster and improve my paycheck at the end of the year. Norweigen Reds have many dual-breed charecteristics - the males are raised for beef, so my crossbreed, if male, should have a blockier frame than a straight Ayrshire calf.

As an additional bonus, Svarstad is homozygoously polled, which means that I will not have to dehorn the calf.

Oy! JLH and KM In The Same Breath

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader, as has become his habit of late, was over on I Don’t Like You In That Way reading the latest celebrity gossip.

BTW, your Maximum Leader agrees with Johnathan V at Galley Slaves that I Don’t Like You is the best gossip site out there. The Superficial isn’t the same without Brendon.

Anyho… Jenny at I Don’t Like You In That Way has a post in which two great love interests of this site are mentioned.

In one part of the post Jenny exhorts us to go and sign a petition asking the the lovely and talented Jennifer Love Hewitt (the unrequited platonic love of your Maximum Leader) just show her boobs. If you click through and read the petition you’ll find it quite amusing. (Your Maximum Leader might actually pay good money to see a “scene” with Jennifer Love Hewitt and Lacey Chabert.)

Of course, your Maximum Leader exhorts Jennifer Love Hewitt to just continue to be herself and maintain her good girl image. Once those (fabulous) breasts are exposed a little bit of mystique is lost. And her career could suffer.

Then Jenny goes on to say that Kate Moss is a coke junkie. She has some photos too. Sad. Your Maximum Leader hopes she is not. But if she is and wants an intervention, he’s sure the Minister of Propaganda would be happy to set something up.

Carry on.

Deadly Force

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is very gratified right now. Two reasons for this.

First, he just finished a very large and tasty calzone for lunch. He is, consequently, very full and sort of sleepy. But he feels really good.

Secondly, he just finished reading the two Smallholder posts immediately preceeding this one.

It is good to see the common sense evolution of the Smallholder (and Mrs Smallholder) on the issue of guns.

As th Smallholder stated, we discussed the use of deadly force to protect property. In the senario we created, Bonnie (Smallholder’s house cow) was being “rustled” by cattle thieves. Would Smallholder be allowed to use deadly force in the protection of his property?

Both the Smallholder and your Maximum Leader concluded, without full knowledge of the law, that one would probably NOT be able to use deadly force to protect property (in this case Bonnie the house cow). Your Maximum Leader grew curious on this point and decided to do a little researching.

He found what appears to be a reasonably authoritative web site on the subject. It is here. If any minion readers out there are lawyers in Virginia with knowledge of these things your Maximum Leader (and the Smallholder) would gladly partake of your insights.

NB to Lawyers who might respond: This is a purely intellectual and speculative exercise. Your Maximum Leader and the Smallholder would not, under any circumstances, consider your comments to be authoritative legal advice or a privledged conversation. Should either your Maximum Leader or the Smallholder need legal counsel we would retain the services of a licensed attorney in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Anyho…

The cited website states:

Even if [the] actions [of the person threatening the defendant’s property] were unwarranted or illegal, the defendant, as an owner of personal property, did not have the right to assert or defend his possessory rights thereto by the use of deadly force. In Montgomery v. Commonwealth, 98 Va. 840, 842-43, 36 S.E. 371, 372 (1900), we said:

The law is clearly stated by a learned judge in State v. Morgan, 3 Ired. 186, 38 Am. Dec. 714, as follows: “When it is said that a man may rightfully use as much force as is necessary for the protection of his person and property, it should be recollected that this rule is subject to this most important modification, that he shall not, except in extreme cases, endanger human life or do great bodily harm. It is not every right of person, and still less of property, that can lawfully be asserted, or every wrong that may rightfully be redressed by extreme remedies. There is a recklessness and a wanton disregard of humanity and social duty in taking or endeavoring to take, the life of a fellow-being, in order to save one’s self from a comparatively slight wrong, which is essentially wicked, and the law abhors. You may not kill, because you cannot otherwise effect your object, although the object sought to be effected is right. You can only kill to save life or limb, or prevent a great crime, or to accomplish a necessary public duty.” See, also, 1 Bishop on New C. L., secs. 839, 841, 850.

However, the defendant contends, and the Court of Appeals held, that these principles do not apply when there is a mere threat to use deadly force in protection of personal property. We do not agree. Moreover, the owner of land has no right to assault a mere trespasser with a deadly weapon. Montgomery, 98 Va. at 844, 36 S.E. at 373. For these reasons, we agree with the trial court that a deadly weapon may not be brandished solely in defense of personal property. Commonwealth v. Alexander, 260 Va. 238, 242, 531 S.E.2d 567, ___ (2000).

Your Maximum Leader looked up some of the cases and laws referred to on the page and they all check out. (Examine the Code of Virginia here if you like.) Thus your Maximum Leader is accepting the page as reasonably authoritative.

In the case cited above, Commonwealth v. Alexander, the facts of the case revolve the repossession of a car. The repossessor got beligerent with the (former) owner of the car; who in turn brandished a rifle at him (the repossessor).

So indeed it would appear as though one is not allowed to use deadly force to protect property.

Of course, one could try and claim self-defence undr certain circumstances. For instance… If the Smallholder heard Bonnie the house cow making calls in distress he might grab his trusty .307 before going out to investigate. Indeed, Bonnie the house cow, could be endangered by some sort of feral predator. If he approached and saw armed men attmepting to steal Bonnie the house cow he might reasonably assume that the men meant other foul play. One suspects that if the Smallholder approached in a non-threatening way and called for the cattle thieves to peacably depart (or at least release Bonnie) before he called the police; one might reasonably believe that one had discharged his requirement to peacably protect his property. If the armed thieves in response brandished their firearms one could suppose that his life was endangered and thus be allowed to use deadly force to protect his own life. Bonnie the house cow would, under that senario, be an incidental rescue in the whole affair.

Or perhaps not.

Overall the great Commonwealth of Virginia (generally) seems to give a fair degree of latitude to protection of self and property. One would hope that this rabidly hypothetical senario would never take place.

Carry on.

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