Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader forgot all about the Nats game today. This is to say he forgot it was a day game in the friendly confines of Wrigley Field.

Apparently the Cubbies forgot about the game too.

Nationals 13, Cubs 5

Hey! You there muttering that it was a lucky win…

When you only have 43 wins on the season, you cheer when you can.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader asks that you remember Richard III, King of England. He was killed in battle at Bosworth this day in 1485. He fought valiantly, if not triumphantly. He was the last Plantagenet to rule England. He was the last King of England to die in battle. And his death marks the generally accepted end of both the Wars of the Roses and the medieval period in England.

Richard III, By the Grace of God, King of England and France and Lord of Ireland.

It is from Shakespeare’s play Richard III that the name of this site is taken. The important lines come in Act One, Scene III:

But then I sigh; and, with a piece of scripture,
Tell them that God bids us do good for evil:
And thus I clothe my naked villainy
With old odd ends stolen out of holy writ;
And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.

Richard is, in your Maximum Leader’s opinion, one of the most maligned kings in all history. Shakespeare’s play, while vastly entertaining, is far from an accurate portrayal of history and the man as we now know him.

Your Maximum Leader, out of habit, will republish the famous Rex Stout New York Times obituary for King Richard:

“PLANTAGENET — Richard, great king and true friend of the rights of man, died at Bosworth Field on August 22, 1485. Murdered by traitors and, dead, maligned by knaves and ignored by Laodiceans, he merits our devoted remembrance.”

For those of you interested in learning more about Richard you might try the following links: Battle of Bosworth from the Richard III foundation, The Richard III Society of the UK, another Bosworth site from the US Richard III Society and finally the Wiki entry.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader was looking over some images of various actors playing Richard III in Shakespeare’s play and found some fun images… A selection of which he will share here.

Here is famous 18th Century Shakespearean David Garrick as Richard III.

Is it Obi-Wan Kenobi? Nope. Alec Guinness as Richard III.

Ah yes. From everyone’s favourite filmed version of the play, Laurence Olivier as Richard III. (Sorry to all that your Maximum Leader couldn’t find a good image with that wonderful hat he wears in the first act of the film.)

Your Maximum Leader’s personal favourite, Ian McKellan as Richard III. Your Maximum Leader owns the DVD of this movie, and he also saw McKellan perform it live at the Kennedy Center years ago. Kristen Scott-Thomas was Lady Anne. Grr baby!)

And in a production your Maximum Leader must have missed while it was in town…

Apparently someone cast George W. Bush as Richard III. While your Maximum Leader thinks the photoshop job is great, he isn’t sure that W. could pull off the whole play. Not his style.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has for many years now passed a building not too far from the Villainschloss. The building housed, until a few months ago, some outfit that did architectural drawing work and some construction site planning. He supposes that the gloomy housing market and downturn in the economy did the company in. As he said, a few months ago activity seemed to stop at the building and it appeared vacant.

It sat vacant for a while. It stopped drawing his attention as it didn’t seem to change. The big “Lease Office Space” sign in the front window was there. The grounds were well kept. It was just a nondescript commerical building waiting for a tennant.

Then about two weeks ago a whole bunch of “Mark Warner for Senate” signs appeared in the small grassy patch in front of the building. Your Maximum Leader thought nothing of it, as those signs have been popping up with regularity. (Mark Warner has been visiting the Fredericksburg area with some frequency.)

Then today he drove by the building…

There are tennants…

Mein Gott! The front plate glass window that used to sport the name of the architectural firm now has a big “O” with a red, white and blue flourish at the bottom.

Yes loyal minions… The regional office for Barack Obama for President has opened up right near the Villainschloss. (Your Maximum Leader believes that Obama and Mark Warner are sharing space.) The parking lot is filled with tiny imported cars. There seem to be some scrawny college co-eds going in and out. A pair of Direct TV dishes have gone up on the building. It appears to be a functioning hub of the Obama machine.

Your Maximum Leader will have to restrain his desires to drive in one day and attempt to “discuss” the issues with some of the volunteers…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader had a fun and exciting day yesterday when he had hoped to be blogging. It involved running kids around to late summer/early fall activities that are just beginning to start. Where has the summer gone?

Of course, if you’re a member of Congress you should be saying “Where has the year gone?” According to the Wall Street Journal this Congress has done less legislatively than any Congress of the past 20 years.

According to the WSJ piece:

Barring a burst of legislative activity after Labor Day, this group of 535 men and women will have accomplished a rare feat. In two decades of record keeping, no sitting Congress has passed fewer public laws at this point in the session — 294 so far — than this one. That’s not to say they’ve been idle. On the flip side, no Congress in the same 20 years has been so prolific when it comes to proposing resolutions — more than 1,900, according to a tally by the nonpartisan Taxpayers for Common Sense.

With the mostly symbolic measures, Congress has saluted such milestones as the Idaho Potato Commission’s 70th anniversary and recognized soil as an “essential natural resource.” As legislation on gasoline prices, tax fixes and predatory lending languish, Congress has designated May 5-9 as National Substitute Teacher Recognition Week, and set July 28 as the Day of the American Cowboy.

The resolutions, which generally don’t carry the force of law, can originate in either the House or Senate. However, some types of resolutions establish the federal budget, authorize the president to go to war, or condemn actions such as the genocide in Darfur. Even among the 294 laws passed thus far, many were symbolic in nature. Many of the post offices named by this Congress honor servicemen and -women killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the 435-member House, fully one-quarter of the workweek is typically devoted to debating and passing symbolic measures.

Now boys and girls, you may be saying to yourself “Self, my Maximum Leader is all for gridlock. Certainly he must be happy with how lazy the Congress is this session.” Well… Yes and no is the answer from your Maximum Leader.

Let us be clear here. Your Maximum Leader likes gridlock in Congress. But in his mind, gridlock denotes that someone is trying to get something done in the first place. You see… Here is what your Maximum Leader likes, Congress gets together in January and decides this is the year to pass a new Endangered Species Act. Then they sit around and actually debate the new Endangered Species Act and decide they can’t agree on anything and go home. That way you can feel like the public’s business is a priority. One could even argue that they tried hard and that it is better that they don’t make a law than pass a crappy law.

What Congress is doing isn’t gridlock. It is avoidance. Rather than debating the public’s business, they get together and say “You know we have this whole budget thing to get done by October. But the budget is no fun; let’s get a resolution together expressing outrage at the demise of the drive-in movie theatre! Yeah! That would be super-fun!” So basically we get the worst of both worlds. We (The People) don’t get intelligent discourse on important topics facing our nation; and we get a bunch of meaningless tripe that doesn’t advance any person, cause or belief.

If Congress is going to continue to do crap, your Maximum Leader has a suggestion. Just stop pretending to “work” all year. Just go back to the way it used to be. Start the new session in January and go home in May/June. Rather than just inventing work that doesn’t really do anything; just say “Fuck it. I’m going home to raise money and watch TV.” This might make the government a better place. (Probably not - but anything is worth trying at this point.) You might be saying to yourself, “Self, what about those budget bills? What about the people’s business?” To this your Maximum Leader says “pshaw!” Congress doesn’t pass a real budget until January anyway. Just forgo the months of wrangling and dismay. Just declare that it isn’t going to get done until January and pass a standard continuing resolution. That is what they do anyway.

So… Is your Maximum Leader happy with Congress being filled with a bunch of lazy slackers? Well… Yes and no. Yes he is happy because they aren’t doing much real work so they can only be screwing things up but so badly. No he is not satisfied with Congress because they aren’t even pretending to try and do the public’s business. So there. Your Maximum Leader is just as useless as Congress is.

At least he only has a blog…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has a few moments before dinner and wanted to type out a blog post. Of course a grandiose post concerning America and her future is percolating in his mind. Alas, there isn’t time to type it out now. So… What to do… How about a page out of the ole Elisson playbook?

Yup… Highlights from what has been randomly dished out by your Maximum Leader’s little black iPod. Here you go…

1) Blood Brothers - Bruce Springsteen

2) Let me clear my throat - DJ Kool If you would allow your Maximum Leader to be open with you here… Your Maximum Leader has about 10,000 songs on his iPod. A great many of them come from the CD collection of a relative of his who was a DJ for a number of years while in college. Your Maximum Leader believes that there are probably about 5,000 songs on his iPod that he’s never ever heard before. This song is one of those. It was just dished out randomly today and listened to…

3) Pictures of You - The Last Goodnight This song was randomly dished out to your Maximum Leader as well. It turns out that he had heard the song before and never knew the name or artist until now. So he gave the song a good rating and now it will appear on some other playlists he keeps on his iPod.

4) Young Americans - David Bowie This song and “Modern Love” by Bowie always seem to compete for the honor of being your Maximum Leader’s favorite Bowie song.

5) Jesus the Missing Years - John Prine

6) Flowers on the Wall - The Statler Brothers Yes. You guessed. Your Maximum Leader isn’t a huge Statler fan, but does like this song. Since it happened to be on the Pulp Fiction soundtrack, he owns it. Why is it that your Maximum Leader now only buys soundtracks of Quentin Tarantino movies? Because they fricking ROCK!

7) Anna Begins - Counting Crows

Hey Bartender - Koko Taylor This is another of those songs that your Maximum Leader didn’t realize he owned. He loves Koko Taylor, but just had never looked at this song title.

9) Concerto #3 in F - George Fredrick Handel

10) Leaving normal - Cowboy Junkies

11) Western Union - Elvis Presley Your Maximum Leader has nearly 775 Elvis songs on his iPod. Yup, you read that correctly… Nearly 775 Elvis songs. More accurately that is nearly 775 tracks. He has many versions of the same song. This is a result of your Maximum Leader owning many Elvis box sets. Sets like “The Complete 50’s Recordings” etc etc. If you ever want to hear an Elvis tune with your Maximum Leader you can bet he got it on the iPod…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has a question for you…

Background…

Your Maximum Leader was sitting today watching a few minutes of “The Sarah Connor Chronicles” that he has on the ole Tivo. As he was watching the beautiful and talented Summer Glau he wondered to himself…

Here is the question…

Would having sex with a Terminator “count” as actually having sex? Would it “count” as adultery if you were married? Afterall the Terminator isn’t a person. In this context one could suppose that the Terminator was nothing more than a really tricked out love-doll…

And before any of your Maximum Leader’s doctrinally informed friends make note of it… Yes, your Maximum Leader knows about Matthew 5:28. But even on that account if one is parsing - and isn’t that what we’re doing here - one could make a bit about the whole “woman” aspect of it. Jesus doesn’t say “But I tell you that anyone who looks at a robot covered in particularly sexy artificial flesh lustfully has already committed adultery with her/it in his heart.” Can you really have sex with a uber-sexy terminator? Isn’t really just masturbation?

Just asking.

Sad to what depths your Maximum Leader has dipped isn’t it? There is a war going on in Georgia. Inflationary pressures are rising. Hilary Clinton is going to have her name put into nomination at the Democratic convention (Kwame not welcome by the way - don’t bother RSVPing). Julia Child was a spy. And California burns. And all your Maximum Leader can choose to write about is some pointless non-ethical issue invovling imaginary killing machines that resemble sexy women.

Pathetic.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader had a good time with his family last night at the Washington Nationals game. That is to say that the time spent at the ballpark talking baseball with the family was good. The game was painful to watch. Painful if you are a Nats fan. You might have heard or read that the Nats were on the receiving end of a good drubbing by the New York Mets. The many Mets fans in attendance were happy. Your Maximum Leader would guess that at least a third of the 30,000 people in attendance were Mets fans.

By the way, who was it that was sitting a few rows in front of your Maximum Leader? Humm… Lets examine the photo…

Clicken to embiggen.

Yup… Just there under the elbow of that guy wearing the grey Pittsburgh Pirates shirt. In the blue button down shirt. That is George Will. Your Maximum Leader mentioned to him that his column earlier in the week was very good. He smiled and said thanks.

Sitting a little ways behind your Maximum Leader was Charles Krauthammer (who has a good column today - one your Maximum Leader isn’t sure he completely agrees with - but interesting nonetheless). So your Maximum Leader was sitting in the nexus of two great conservative editorialists. He could feel the positive vibe. In fact, it was the only positive vibe coming from the game. Did your Maximum Leader mention that the game sucked if you were a Nats fan.

Your Maximum Leader hears that Barry Bonds isn’t retired… Late season acquisition by the Nats? Probably not, but it could be entertaining…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is all excited today. By sheer chance 4 tickets to tonight’s contest between your Maximum Leader’s beloved Washington Nationals and the New York Mets landed in his lap today. Tickets come complete with parking pass. Parking in the “red zone” - which is closest to the ballpark. Looks like your Maximum Leader will be enjoying a little baseball tonight with his villainous family.

Go Nats!

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t have much to add to this graphic other than “Yup. This is all awesome stuff.”

Okay… Your Maximum Leader will add that he doesn’t quibble over most of the elements. But he does think that Elements 32, 33, 37 and 95 aren’t all that awesome. But that is likely just a personal bias. Your Maximum Leader isn’t all that excited about antimony, bromine and selenium either…

Many thanks to the totally tubular bloggers over at the Ministry of Minor Perfidy.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader knows that the Volohk Conspiracy is a much better and well visited blog than this one. But sometimes it just seems like even the big boys at Volohk just want to post something that is a surefire subject to get commenters running to their site.

The issue is, of course, slavery as a cause of the US Civil War.

Your Maximum Leader firmly believes that if he wanted to get comments going on a post, he’d just have to write something about slavery on the blog. Indeed, the Smallholder has done this a few times in the past to exciting results. More recently Ilia Somyn on Volokh has written posts that have gotten 260 comments, and 161 comments respectively. Damnation. That is a lot of yammering about the cause of the Civil War.

Frankly, your Maximum Leader believes that the State’s Rights argument was the reason for the Civil War. The “state right” in question was owning slaves. So the whole thing is a bit circular to him. State’s Rights = Slavery and Slavery = State’s Rights.

So… While we are on the subject here is a topic for you…

Resolved: Georgia had it commin’ and Sherman was the man to dish it out.

You can sign up for your side in the comments. Argue away.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is a regular reader of George Will’s columns (and has been for years). He doesn’t quote Will too much here. This is a factor of your Maximum Leader becoming an irregular posting type of fellow as well as the fact as Will gets so much coverage on other sites.

Well… Your Maximum Leader is citing Will today. Not for any specific thing he said in his column today. But rather because of the tenor and tone of the ending of his column today. It struck your Maximum Leader as filled with a deep melancholy - which he shares with Will. Here it goes:

What is it about August? The First World War began in August 1914. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact effectively announced the Second World War in August 1939. Iraq, a fragment of the collapse of empires precipitated by August 1914, invaded Kuwait in August 1990.

This year’s August upheaval coincides, probably not coincidentally, with the world’s preoccupation with that charade of international comity, the Olympics. For only the third time in 72 years (Berlin 1936, Moscow 1980), the Games are being hosted by a tyrannical regime, the mind of which was displayed in the opening ceremonies featuring thousands of drummers, each face contorted with the same grotesquely frozen grin. It was a tableau of the miniaturization of the individual and the subordination of individuality to the collective. Not since the Nazi’s 1934 Nuremberg rally, which Leni Riefenstahl turned into the film “Triumph of the Will,” has tyranny been so brazenly tarted up as art.

A worldwide audience of billions swooned over the Beijing ceremony. Who remembers 1934? Or anything.

Your Maximum Leader remembers George. He remembers and has been mentioning this very fact to his children every night.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is (generally) a proud resident of Stafford County Virginia. He lives just over the border between Stafford County and Fredericksburg. (And for those of you not Virginia residents, you might be interested to know that incorporated cities (like Fredericksburg) are self-governing and not part of the counties that surround them. They are seperate jurisdictions. So, the City of Chicago, IL is both a city, but it is part of Cook County, IL. Virginia is the only state where incorporated cities are not part of counties.) So while he might describe his residence as being “in Fredericksburg” he does this to denote a more common and compact geographic area and not a real political description.

So… Why does your Maximum Leader bring this up? Well, until recently, he felt that Stafford County, VA was a pretty well governed place. Sure he’s had little complaints here and there about stupid things. But they were all pretty minor. Last month there was a great debate swirling in the county. There was a proposal in impose a Business, Professional and Occupancy License tax. This mouthful of a tax was shortened to the BPOL tax. Basically, the BPOL is a tax that the Commonwealth allows localities to levy on certain types of businesses in their locality. He says certain types of businesses because some businesses that are regulated at the state level are not subject to the tax. The federal government is (as you would expect) also exempt from the tax.

What is the BPOL a tax on? It is a tax on gross receipts at a fixed rate. Regardless of a company’s profitability, they would be taxed. To give you an example. Let us say that you own a small business. Your company has gross receipts of $500,000. In Stafford the first $200,000 of gross receipts are exempted from tax, and the remainder is taxed at $.16/per dollar. So, your hypothetical company would owe $48,000 in tax. Of course, the tax doesn’t look at your expenses. So it is possible that your hypothetical company has $500,000 in gross reciepts and $450,000 of expenses. In this senario, your company profit would be reduced from $50,000 to $2,000. Isn’t that fun!

So… All of the localities around Stafford County have implemented a BPOL tax. Of the localities around, none of them have been growing at the rate that Stafford has. Stafford has been well regarded in the business community because of the low taxes and ease of doing business in the county. In an effort to lure businesses other localities have waived payment of the BPOL as an enticement. (Fredericksburg VA has done this quite a bit recently - so much so that one wonders why any business pays the tax in the first place. They should just threaten to move and ask the City Council for an exemption. But your Maximum Leader disgresses…)

So… The county that doesn’t have the BPOL has been growing and thriving (compared to the other areas). What does the Stafford Board of Supervisors decided to do to change this? Well… Implement a BPOL in Stafford of course!

Your Maximum Leader (being a civic-minded dude) has been to a few County Council meetings in the past. So he decided to go to this one too. Well… There were hundreds (literally hundreds) of citizens who showed up to speak against the BPOL. There were so many people in the courthouse that the fire marshal required that offices in the building be opened up for people to sit in and wait because it was a hazard to have them standing in halls. There were more people at this public hearing than your Maximum Leader has ever seen at a county supervisors meeting - ever. (In any jusrisdiction in which he’s lived - including Fairfax County VA. Indeed, there were more people at this county supervisors meeting than he’s seen in the galleries of the US House of Representatives when real business was being done.)

So… What were the hundreds of citizens there treated to? Allow your Maximum Leader to present into evidence this 10 minute highlight reel:

Alas, your Maximum Leader’s supervisor (Mr Schwartz) presided over this abortion of a public meeting. He is a complete and total putz. It makes your Maximum Leader’s blood boil to watch this.

FYI… Your Maximum Leader stayed at the hearing from 7ish when it began until about 10pm. The public comment period ended and the supervisors voted at 3am. Madness…

In case you are wondering (and the video isn’t clear), the BPOL was implemented (over the protest of the professional staff employed by the supervisors to run the county as well as hundreds of citizens) on a 4-3 vote. Sort of… As you might have seen from the video, it took a few tries for the supervisors to figure out what the fuck they were doing. Your Maximum Leader still isn’t sure that Supervisor Joe Brito knows who the fuck he is or what the fuck he’s doing.

So while your Maximum Leader is generally pleased with the governance of his state, he is now displeased with the governance of his county.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader loves the Olympics. He’s been a real couch potato while watching them on the TV. (Ironic isn’t it?) He’s been watching alone, with the family. He is NBC’s wet dream of Olypmic viewer in fact. He switches from one channel to another during commerical breaks to catch what is going on on another NBC affiliate showing the games.

So did ya catch that opening ceremony?

You know something? No country can do opening ceremonies quite like an autocratic state. What were there 20,000+ performers? It cost some humongus amount of money. You just can’t marshal those resources in an open society where private donations are funding the games. Your Maximum Leader told his Villainettes to pay attention closely. Not only was the opening ceremony interesting, but we’ll not see one quite like it again for a while. (Until another autocratic state gets to host the games.)

Your Maximum Leader was impressed by the lighting of the torch. He still thinks that Antonio Robello did it best in Barcelona in 1992. Remember Robello? (Visual reminder here for you:

As for the competition. How ’bout those American girls in the individual sabre? Gold, Silver, and Bronze. Your Maximum Leader watched the competition. That bronze medal contest was a damned close run thing. The sweep of the medals was great. It filled your Maximum Leader with patriotic pride.

He’s been watching the swimming contests. He thinks that Michael Phelp’s bid to win 8 golds is a long shot, but he seems to have karma going his way now.

What is up with our gymnastics team. They are all 4′11″ blondish and cute. What is Bela Karoly doing to our program?

And allow your Maximum Leader to ask a general question to all of you out there… What is up with Canada? Your Maximum Leader knows they sent a team. He hasn’t seen a Canadian in contention for anything yet. Are our northern neighbors all in track & field or something? One would think that Canada would be a competitive nation in the summer olympics. Hell, the Norwegians are winning medals. So what is up with Canada? Your Maximum Leader wouldn’t mind seeing some silver and bronze going their way. (Your Maximum Leader wants to hog all those gold for his own countrymen/women.)

Anyhoo…

Your Maximum Leader will be watching again tonight (and every night) for the next two weeks.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has only been following in the most casual way the trials of Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. He really doesn’t care. In fact, he is glad that a mayor other than the one in DC has been acting badly. (That affair by Villaragosa in LA isn’t really bad enough for your Maximum Leader to care.)

So… Your Maximum Leader must ask now that Kwame is jailed…

Will Kwame be the beyotch or will he have a beyotch?

Your Maximum Leader guesses that since he is not in the “general” population he will likely have one if he wants one. But if he was in the general… Oh yeah… He would be need to find himself some rouge and hose…

Carry on.