Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has seen that the good Smallholder killed his last post. Your Maximum Leader knows it is best to do the same.

So… That is that isn’t it?

Carry on.

I have killed this post.

Heh - in our mutual flashback to college days, I got caught up in a bit of one-upsmanship, to the point that I seem to have irritated the Maximum Leader.

Bad Smallholder! Bad friend!

Plus, on re-reading this post, it reminds me of what jackasses we were back in college. Thank God we are not those people any mor. Perhaps joking about college stuff gives a seal of approval to how we were. I don’t want to do that.

My apologies to our readers for dragging you through the mud with us.

On the plus side, it was good to hear from our old comrade in arms, Wallstreet. Here’s looking at you, kid.

We post about a wide variety of topics here at Naked Villainy. Many of the topics are controversial. We go hammer and tongs at each other over the Iraq War, gay marriage, tax policy, ethics, the morality of eating meat, and the nature of a just society.

And the post that has generated the most reader response was a throw away line about the Maximum Leader’s liason with the backup singer of a washed-up eighties rapper?

Good Lord. Ya’ll should be ashamed of yourselves.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is pained today. The pain comes from the absolute slapdown put on two of his teams last night. Yes, minions. Your Maximum Leader is talking about the Braves/Astros game and the Packers/Titans game.

First to Baseball… All your Maximum Leader can say now is “Go Sox!”

Your Maximum Leader has, for many many years, been a Braves fan. Why you ask? Well, your Maximum Leader, for reasons that shall not be explained here and now, has an almost pathalogical hatred of the whole state of Maryland. But, springing up from the bottom of the wellspring that is spite directed at Maryland the state is the black-blooded detestation of Baltimore. Growing up in the DC area, and liking baseball, generally equated to liking the Orioles. (And to this day Peter Angelos maintains that DC and Northern Virginia people are Orioles fans…) Well, since your Maximum Leader can’t abide by Baltimore, he looked around for another team to like. Philly and Pittsburgh were out - due to distance and inability to see the games on TV. He then looked south and found… Richmond, VA. Home of the Richmond Braves. Richmond was, and still is, the primary farm club for the Atlanta Braves. So discovering the R-Braves, and finding A-Braves baseball on cable, your Maximum Leader started following Atlanta.

Now, having given you the background… Your Maximum Leader can state that for at least 8 of the past 13 years that the A-Braves have been the least meaningful team in the playoffs. Your Maximum Leader thought, this Sunday afternoon, that the Braves might actually duke-it-out and beat the Astros in the NLDS.

Well, watching them last night disabused your Maximum Leader of that pipe dream.

Still speaking of baseball… Your Maximum Leader is now facing a dilema. Should he ditch the Braves in favour of the new DC baseball team? Or should he just remain true to the raise-your-expectations-then-dash-them-against-the-rocks-of-Mt.Taegus Braves? It is a tough question. He may just remain a contrarian who roots for non-local teams…

Like he does in Football…

Before getting to the Packers ame, your Maximum Leader expresses his deepest condolences to Brett Favre and his family. Your Maximum Leader can’t imagine how he must feel after his wife’s 24-years-old brother died in an accident while ATV’ing somewhere on Farve’s property. It is very very sad.

Well, what can one say about the Packers game last night? Try this on for analogy.

The Packers were repeatedly cutlered by the Titans.

And the Titans “forgot” the K-Y.

They also “forgot” to leave five bucks on the dresser on their way out.

Now the Packers are sitting at home wondering if he’ll call or does he just love me for my arse?

Oy! The Pack was “rode hard and put away wet.” (To quote Mrs. Smallholder.) It pained your Maximum Leader to watch the game. Indeed, he was watching both the Braves and Packers using the split-screen feature on his übertelevision. It felt sort of like how your Maximum Leader imagines being on the receiving end of a gang-bang would be. Not fun. By about 22:00 your Maximum Leader had resolved to just finish off the case of beer he had in the fridge and pass out on the floor.

It hurts less that way.

Moving on…

By the way, since he forgot to last week… Here is LAST WEEK’s TMQ.

And HERE is THIS WEEK’s TMQ.

Your Maximum Leader wishes Gregg Easterbrook would start up Easterblogg again. He really likes reading his stuff.

Your Maximum Leader also watched the Patriots game. Wow. What a team. Those Pats just know how to play together and win. Your Maximum Leader believes they will likely appear in another Super Bowl this year. But they will not go undefeated. Your Maximum Leader believe it is harder to go a whole season undefeated than it is to go a whole season winless. Your Maximum Leader predicts that the Patriots will have their Achilles’ heel discovered by the Chiefs on Monday, November 22.

The loss will remotivate the team who will go 15-1 in the regular season.

Hummm… Joe Gibbs… miserable… Your Maximum Leader is sure he is. But look at the crappy team he inherited! Joe will turn things around.

Pop quiz! Who’s suffering more: Joe Gibbs or Dave Wannstedt? That is a toughie. Your Maximum Leader will let you ponder that one.

One last football thought. Ben Roethlisberger. Football stud.

That is about all your Maximum Leader can stand to do right now.

Carry on.

Jack is up a couple of ounces over the weekend. He still isn’t where we want him to be, but it appears that we are now on the upslope.

Thanks to all who have sent well-wishes and to those who held a good thought for us.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader ha been thinking about the whole issue that he thinks of as “life blogging.” That is to say, blogging about real-life happenings and goings-on.

He started thinking about this subject yesterday morning when he read a post from Nicole who mused a-blog about telling her parents about her blog. And then she read the comments from that post, and mused some more.

Now, Nicole’s problem has not ever been a problem for your Maximum Leader. Everyone in your Maximum Leader’s family knows about this blog. Some of them even read it from time to time. But, on the other hand, your Maximum Leader never really blogs about the details of his life. Why? Because as a matter of course they aren’t terribly interesting.

Of course, the risk one runs with inviting your friends to blog with you is that they will reveal personal details. Like the Smallholder did yesterday with the whole kiss-from-the-Miss-America-runner-up and the so-called Vanilla Ice Backup Dancer. Your Maximum Leader would not have ever thought to blog about these two women from his past. And he’s not upset for them being brought up. Nor is he embarassed by knowledge that his sainted father or mother might read about them. Although he’s sure that those two stories are news for both parentals. Those stories are not news to Mrs. Villain. The Smallholder, seeing as he can’t hold his liquor, has already told Mrs. Villain both of those stories. And she doesn’t really care anyway.

What is interesting about the whole “who your Maximum Leader shagged” posts here is the amount of interest they seem to have generated among other readers. As your Maximum Leader noted yesterday, he received 4 (count ‘em - four) e-mails within two hours of the post going up asking him about the so-called Vanilla Ice Backup Dancer. That is quite a bit. Your Maximum Leader is no Überpundit, or even a Dr. Rusty. So when your Maximum Leader gets fan mail he stops and thinks about it.

What he’s been thinking about is what does this tell your Maximum Leader about his readership. On the one hand we have serious, thoughtful, contemplative, people who read this site. Like Bill for example. And while your Maximum Leader has never asked him what he likes best about the site, your Maximum Leader assumes that he doesn’t care at all about the fancy ball posts or the salacious details of your Maximum Leader’s bachelor days. Your Maximum Leader posits that Bill just scans over those posts looking for something more interesting. (Which by the way, your Maximum Leader hasn’t produced yet. He’s been working off and on - mostly off - on a long essay of the political philosophy sort. One day, he may finish it.)

On the other hand, there are other readers who like the more whimsical posts. Indeed one minion who wrote yesterday indicated that she skips most of the political stuff and reads only the interesting observations on non-political matters. (These readers are more likely to write your Maximum Leader it seems.)

And then there is the smallest subset of readers. Skippy. Who is serious, thoughtful, and contemplative; and at the same time very interested in the salacious details of life.

Excursus: By the way Skip-daddy. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t know if he should celebrate or lament for you on this 800th day of enforced abstainence. Unless he hears otherwise, assume he is lamenting for you.

So, having identified (or assumed) different readers and their likes/dislikes, where does that leave us? It leaves us i the situation that your Maximum Leader avoided discussing yesterday while musing on Michele’s post. Does one become beholden to a particular group of readers when writing?

Your Maximum Leader can see how it would be easy to become beholden to a particular type of reader. There can be benefits to focused writing. But it seems to your Maximum Leader that it would be sort of boring. At least for your Maximum Leader it would be.

Your Maximum Leader has no plans to change the manner of his blogging. He will wax polemics on politics when he feels like it. He will comment on other matters when he cares to. He will not share many details of his personal life - because most of them are boring. (Save for the fancy ball from time to time.) But that is not to say that there will not be some ribuld topics covered from time to time.

What you read is what you get. And that is how it ought to be.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader found an interesting bit on the Reuters news wire today. It was: Blogs Abuzz with Gossip in Caustic U.S. Campaign.

Now, your Maximum Leader didn’t jump on the bandwagon during the whole CBS - Bush Memo thingie. This was, in part, due to the fact that the monomania with the story throughout the blogosphere was just a bit too much for him. (That and the fact that your Maximum Leader just didn’t have anything to add to the din of voices.)

But something that the CBS story has done has been to cause the mainstream press and bloggers themeselves to examine the nature of blogging as it pertains to current news stories. Hence the title of the Reuters piece, blogs are gossip. (At least according to Reuters.)

Of course, not all blogs are gossip. Not all blogs are independent news sources. This is not to say that there isn’t a lot of gossiping on blogs. There certainly is. As far as your Maximum Leader can tell, gossip is all you get over on the Wonkette site. (No link to her. Your Maximum Leader excercises discretion concerning the trollops to whom he links.)

Here at Nakedvillainy.com, we don’t have a research staff. We are not “out there” looking for a scoop. We are sitting around* and commenting on items that evoke a isceral/hormonal reaction.

We are commentators. Sometimes we comment on current events, other times on life in general. We often comment on each other. But your Maximum Leader doesn’t believe that any one of us blogging here would claim - or frankly want - to be labled as a reputable source.

In the aforelinked article, the good language-neutral people at Reuters talk about “Self-styled Internet commentators.” Humm… Self-styled? Really now. Do you need proper credentials to be a “non-modified” commentator? What exactly would those be? Is a certain amount of TV face-time a requirement? Perhaps a requisite number of printed column-inches of material on the editorial page of a newspaper with a circulation larger than the number of people working at the Reuters offices in Brisbane? Aren’t a bunch of old guys sitting around in front of a general store in Frog Level, VA talkin’ politics all “commentators” of a sort?

Michele at A Small Victory, had a wonderful post a few weeks ago about the nature of “post-Rathergate Blogging.” There does seem to be a change occuring in a number of blogs. Some do want to move towards the strata of near-news sources. Some are cashing-in on new-found traffic. But a goodly number haven’t changed at all. To the best of your Maximum Leader’s knowledge, we haven’t changed here a bit.

But there are lots of things that could cause us to change. Michele touched on a number of them. Blogads for example. Your Maximum Leader has considered running blogads. (Just to get a few extra bucks a year.) But then there is a pressure that your Maximum Leader doesn’t want. How to justify a particular rate to advertisers? Should you care about your content out of consideration for advertisers? Of course, they are aesthetically nasty too. So there is that as well.

Aesthetics are the same reason that your Maximum Leader has never put a SiteMeter thingie on this site. They’re ugly.

Then there is a desire for more traffic. Really now, who doesn’t want more site traffic. But at what cost? Your Maximum Leader doesn’t obsess over his site server statistics. It is nice to know that we are getting about 200 unique visits a day, but if that number is still 200 in December that is okay. Your Maximum Leader appreciates blogging for the sake of blogging.

Ah well… This post really went nowhere… And that is okay. Because this is just your Maximum Leader’s blog. And he can do whatever he wants on it.

* Excursus: For those of you who care… While we “sit around” and blog what do we wear? Your Maximum Leader sits around naked except for his bejeweled floppy hat you see him wearing in the masthead graphic. The Big Hominid sits around with a white lab-coat covering his nakedness. The AirMarshal sits around in khakis, polo shirts, and wielding a slide-rule calculator. The Minister of Agriculture sits around in cow manure-stained Dickie overalls and an old, faded, John Deere cap. The Minister of Propaganda sits around in silk pajamas he picked up on Rodeo Drive with a bevy of young naked starlets feeding him peeled grapes. And the Foreign Minister has taken a shine to wearing Lederhosen that chaff his delicate cuticle; but he doesn’t feel the chaffing due to the copious amounts of beer he drinks. So there…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader isn’t sure which is worse. A pack of little old ladies having tea, or one Smallholder.

After reading the Minister of Agriculture’s post concerning Balls and Smallholder Women, your Maximum Leader is going to have to do some work to set the record straight.

First off the Minister of Agriculture saith that your Maximum Leader didn’t get so much as a sympathy kiss from the woman adjudged to be the second most beautiful in the land is just not true. He did in fact get kissed. He also got a little butt-feel in there too. But nothing more. It was just as well. Because she was a first-rate bee-yatch. What pains your Maximum Leader so about the misinformation from one of his trusted ministers is that the Smallholder knows the story and still gets it wrong.

Secondly, your Maximum Leader does really dislike Holiday Parties. They are all faux glitz and cheer. Give him a Fourth of July party anytime. Do you need some reasons ennumerated? Here are a few:

1) Nicer weather in July.
2) Barbeque. Your Maximum Leader has never seen a Christmas Party with ribs.
3) Girls/Women more likely to be scantily-clad in July than in December.
4) Outdoor fun. Ever gone out in your formalwear to play volleyball, baseball, football, badminton, or croquet in December? Your Maximum Leader didn’t think so.
5) No gifts involved at Fourth of July party. (Unless you consider that six-pack you bring over to be a “gift.”)

Those are just a few of the myriad reasons why Fourth Parties rock, and Christmas Parties suck.

Thirdly, your Maximum Leader (who is great and contains multitudes) will acknowledge that it is he of whom the Deuteronically challenged Smallholder is speaking in the matter of the so-called Vanilla Ice Backup Dancer. It is interesting that the Smallholder should bring this up. (And obviously many minions are interested because your Maximum Leader has received no fewer than 4 e-mails concerning that tidbit. That is 4 e-mails within 2 hours of the post going up.)

Your Maximum Leader has a few things to say on this subject. The Smallholder is being quite charitable when he says that “dating” occured. Your Maximum Leader would characterize it more as the young woman in question provided him with an outlet for his hormonal needs. Other than meeting for trists of a physical nature for a few weeks, we never spoke nor saw each other. Indeed, when she asked to go out your Maximum Leader demurred and said that it was best not to change the nature of our relationship.

And as for the claim of this woman being a Vanilla Ice Backup dancer, the Smallholder seems to be the only person privy to that information. (He must have learned it while he was an “Ice” groupie.) He’ll claim that other people knew she claimed to be a dancer. But everyone he can cite will also admit that they have only heard him repeat this claim. Not that it would have mattered at all. Your Maximum Leader never danced (well… danced to music… well… danced like regular danced…) with her. As he’s stated before in this space. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t dance.

Regardless, the woman in question was cuter than many with whom the slutty Smallholder “hooked up.”

Carry on.

That was a great post about saying you’re sorry and all that squishy stuff. But I think you made the mistake of saying that you were wrong a little too early M of A.

The election is in November

The electoral map given to you by our friend the M o’ P was taken from Zogby poll data (The only one that has Kerry ahead).

Here are some that show a different picture…

The Slate

and Rasmussen

and even those on the left will admit that these are NOT Repbulican biased sources

So… will the M of P say you were right for a Bush Blow out?

Back to the Trenches….

Two quick links before I ball out:

Annika has a very funny open letter to the President. I particularly enjoyed the handdrawn comments on the electoral map.

Lest Rob get a big head from my post saying that he was right and I was wrong, I refer him to Skippy’s Hollywood post.

Have a good evening!

The Maximum Leader has told us about his fancy ball.

I did in fact call him this weekend to ask how it went, but kept missing a connection.

I had assumed that a female reader had volunteered to replace Mrs. Villain since Mike didn’t call me and ask me to be his date. I was glad since I no longer look good in my cocktail dresses.

The Maximum Leader also treated us to this insight:

Your Maximum Leader does not want to sound too curmudgeonly, but he doesn’t really like holiday parties. He is not sure why. It has always been problematic for him. Perhaps he sees them as craven attempts to get together with people you only meet with once-a-year so that you can refresh your friendship. Perhaps he sees them as another step in the over commercialization of the Christmas holiday. Perhaps he doesn’t like getting all nicely dressed up and trudging through snow and ice to visit people. (All those damn dry-cleaning bills.) Your Maximum Leader loves Fourth of July parties, but Christmas (aka: “Holiday”) parties he can do without.

Your humble Minister of Agriculture believes that the real reason behind the Maximum Leader’s dislike of Christmas festivities is that he was horribly scarred by a date with a future runner-up in the Miss America pageant.

Staright dope.

The Maximum Leader once had a date with a woman judged to be the second most attractive female in America.

It seems she needed a polite, presentable date to show off at her father’s holiday party. Mike was a most sublime escort, fullfilling his small-talk duties with deboniar charm and erudite wit. And what did he get for hours of small talk and olite attention to his date?

Zilch.

Not even a sympathy kiss.

I for one, and I know I am joined by the legions of the Maximum Leader’s minions, believe that she should be first against the wall when the revolution comes.

To snub our dear leader in such a heartless fashion!

He is obviously so emotionally scarred that he still cannot enjoy himself at the end of December.

Speaking of attractive women from the past, the Maximum Leader has been bashing Smallholderfrauleins.

In my defense, I was enamored of Miss Anderson from her Lablatts Blue days. I found her decreasingly attractive with each successive plastic surgery. She is a parody of herself now and it is just sad.

And I will have to admit, Miss Pressly is starting to look “rode hard and put away wet,” but she still has a cool southern accent.

So laugh if you must.

At least I never went out with a Vanilla Ice Backup Dancer. Like some people who shouldn’t be throwing stones when they live in glass houses.

Just sayin’.

I read “The Caine Mutiny” this weekend while staying up with my wee son. The book kept me turning pages till the end, but when I finished, I can’t say that it was a really good book. And yet Captain Queeg’s character has become an essential bit of pop cultural literacy. My father-in-law tells me that this is the result of the popular movie instead of the book. I’ll have to rent the movie at some point.

At any rate, Queeg’s penchant for refusing to accept responsibility got me thinking about Annika’s post about the presidential debate, in which she writes, in her colorful argot:

The last question chosen by Gibson was for the president to name not one,
not two, but three fucking mistakes! The last question of the debate, mind you.
That was punk-ass biased, no question about it. And the Prez refused to play
that game. i’m proud of him. i liked his take too. Let the historians decide,
he’s the president and it’s not up to him. What the president couldn’t say, but
which is nonetheless the real reason is that, despite the demands of the
touchy-feely Oprahcized society we are now cursed with, no President of the
United States should ever admit to making one single mistake on questions of
policy while he sits in office. Never Ever Fucking Ever No Way Ever Never.

I wrote way back in April about my moment of clarity on this administration:

The other lightning bolt came from watching CNN. I caught part of a
Rumsfeld news conference. The SecDef was explaining to a reporter that “no one
could have predicted the insurgency”

What!?

What the Fuck!?

Many, many people predicted the insurgency.

My blogger colleagues will remember that I supported the morality of the
war to save the Kurds AND believed that we had to eliminate the long-term threat
the Hussein posed to our national interest. My one reservation was the fear that
the Bush team would fight the war on the cheap and fail to win the peace. I
should have placed more weight on that reservation, because it has come to pass.
Our failure to go in with enough force or to plan for the occupation has cost us
dearly. And the Bush team can’t see, or won’t see why this is a problem.

Months ago, Rumsfeld himself had gotten into a public pissing match with
the Chief of Staff over troop numbers. The Chief of Staff has said that more men
were needed to prevent the growth of an insurgency. Rumsfeld overruled him,
discounting the dangers ahead. And this same son of a bitch now has the temerity
to claim that “no one could have predicted the insurgency!”

I suddenly realized: Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld are so driven by ideology
that they are unable to modify policy to match reality. While this is obnoxious
on the domestic side of the slate (the ideological partisanship of the “Mayberry
Machiavellis” has been amply demonstrated by former players in the
administration), it is dangerous and immoral on the international front. If a
group of people who are psychologically incapable of questioning their tactics
lead us into an unwinnable war (and we can’t win this war on the cheap -
you need more troops to fight a guerilla insurgency than you do a traditional
enemy - you have to guard huge numbers of soft targets) and can’t change their
tactics, they need to be removed.”

We have seen more evidence of this refusal to adjust to reality in the last six months. Cheney and Bush’s refusal to accept the 9-11 report that Saddam had nothing o do with 9-11 is just one example. Bush chants, zen-like, about consistency.

Well, how that consistency working so far? The refusal to change tactics on the ground and the spouting of the Orwellian gem that the insurgent attacks have grown in number and intensity because we are winning prove that consistency is indeed the hobgoblin of little minds.

I really believe that admitting mistakes and looking for new solutions is an essential part of achieving one’s goals. If Bush cannot even critically examine his own past choices, how can we be sure that he will learn from those mistakes and do better in the future?

E.J. Dionne writes in today’s Washington Post:

When this campaign is over, Linda Grabel may become famous.

Grabel was the citizen-questioner at Friday’s debate who asked
President Bush an interesting question that may well set the tone for the rest
of this campaign.

Noting that the president had made “thousands of decisions that have
affected millions of lives,” Grabel sensibly wanted this piece of information:
“Please give three instances in which you came to realize you had made a wrong
decision, and what you did to correct it.”

The president’s answer was notable in two ways. First, he spent many
words not answering at all. He spoke vaguely about how historians might
second-guess some of his decisions and that he’d take responsibility for them.
He also asserted: “I’m human.”

Second, when Bush finally did admit something, he said this: “I made
some mistakes in appointing people, but I’m not going to name them. I don’t want
to hurt their feelings on national TV.”

There, in brief, are the core reasons why polls suggest that undecided
and independent voters are having a problem with this president. His tactic of
never admitting mistakes is backfiring in light of events. And when asked to
take responsibility, his first instinct was to direct attention to others by
speaking of his supposedly mistaken appointments.

Here is the actual transcript of the President’s response:

QUESTIONER: President Bush, during the last four years, you have made
thousands of decisions that have affected millions of lives. Please give three
instances in which you came to realize you had made a wrong decision, and what
you did to correct it. Thank you.

BUSH: I have made a lot of decisions, and some of them little, like
appointments to boards you never heard of, and some of them big.

And in a war, there’s a lot of — there’s a lot of tactical decisions
that historians will look back and say: He shouldn’t have done that. He
shouldn’t have made that decision. And I’ll take responsibility for them. I’m
human.

But on the big questions, about whether or not we should have gone into
Afghanistan, the big question about whether we should have removed somebody in
Iraq, I’ll stand by those decisions, because I think they’re
right.

That’s really what you’re — when they ask about the mistakes, that’s
what they’re talking about. They’re trying to say, “Did you make a mistake going
into Iraq?” And the answer is, “Absolutely not.” It was the right
decision.

The Duelfer report confirmed that decision today, because what Saddam
Hussein was doing was trying to get rid of sanctions so he could reconstitute a
weapons program. And the biggest threat facing America is terrorists with
weapons of mass destruction.

We knew he hated us. We knew he’d been — invaded other countries. We
knew he tortured his own people.

On the tax cut, it’s a big decision. I did the right decision. Our
recession was one of the shallowest in modern history.

Now, you asked what mistakes. I made some mistakes in appointing
people, but I’m not going to name them. I don’t want to hurt their feelings on
national TV.

(LAUGHTER)

But history will look back, and I’m fully prpared to accept any
mistakes that history judges to my administration, because the president makes
the decisions, the president has to take the responsibility.

The President is following Annika’s advice in this transcript. But I think Dionne is correct that Bush’s lack of reflection is harming him with the undecideds.

The question was a perfect chance for Presdident Bush to address the recent Bremer comments. Bremer’s comments, which unlike so many of the other criticisms leveled by former Bush staffers cannot be obscured by heaping calumny on the messanger, should given even die-hard republicans like Annika and the Maximum Leader pause. Skippy and I wrote about the criminal negligence of the post-war SNAFU awhile ago. But we are little blogger nothings. Bush’s chief Iraq lieutenant has essentially said Bush’s monomaniacal belief about the ease of setting up a democracy flew in the face of advice he was getting from his own people and allowed the insurgency to gather steam. And the President still refuses to face reality.

Does this scare anyone else?

“Staying the course” is not resonating with the American electorate. The longevity of the stupid internet rumor that Bush was conspiring to bring back the draft (aided by his political lackey Rangell of New York) testifies to the deep unease voters feel about the Iraqi war. The American people realize that the Iraqi policy is failing and want to know how we are going to win.

Kerry doesn’t have a coherant plan, other than a fanciful idea that the “allies” will help.

But Bush is pushing voters into Kerry’s arms.

If Bush continues to pretend he is infallible, Americans are going to elect Kerry. And we may be in an even worse mess if our leader is naive enough to believe that his personal magnetism and his quality of not-being-Bush is going to convince France to change policy and act against her own perceived self-interest.

As my father says: a pox on both their houses!

dsfd

Rob is a much better political analyst than I. I treally believed this election was going to be a blowout for Bush. The Minister of Propaganda argued that Kerry was a good closer and could still win. It appears that Rob was right and I was wrong*. Check out the latest electoral map.

An excellent rural memoir by Jeanne Marie Laskas contains a bit of excellent advice. When you are wrong, admit you were wrong and tell the other person that they were right. Refusing to admit your error doesn’t change the reality of your error. Admitting you were wrong is an excellent exercise in humlty and makes the other person feel good. How often do people tell us we are right. It doesn’t cost a thing. I highly recommend the practice.

I beg the Maximum Leader to consider adding Ally at “Who Moved My Truth” to the Blogroll. She will fit in well and is a good critical reader of some of our other favorite blogs like Bill’s Comments and Analphilosopher.

She is of a political inclination pleasing to the Maximum Leader, though she may be a bit squishy - I mean thoughtful - and does not parrot a party line. We need to support reasoned blogs, by God!

Libertarianism

Ally also does whimsy in a way that will appeal to the Naked Villainy cabal. I direct our collective attention to:

Real Men of Genius

Subservient Chicken

She is a feminist/citizen of our stripe - believing in equality not coddling.

Wells College

John Mayer Smackdown

Supermoms

Cultural Double Standards

Maximum Leader, I know that you can’t resist a woman who takes pictures of the Highlands. (Attention Foreign Minister: page two has re-enactors!)

Her blog might also be a good balance in the “ethics of eating meat” discussion we have been having over the last year or so. She is a moral vegetarian, but does not commit the fallacy of claiming equal moral merit for animals. Here is a piece - “Barbarism or Cuisine” she did on the SoDaMonk article I blogged about (indirectly) here.

I wish all consumers would start to think like this quote from Ally’s article:

“If I ever desire to eat meat again, I would purchase from small farmers with whom I am familiar and whose practices of which I approve.”

But I guess I’m naive to think that consumer preferences in the marketplaces can balance economies of scale found in factory farming.

So, Maximum Leader, does she make the blogroll?

The Smallholderette turned two years old today. My, has time flown.

I am very pleased with our young lady so far.

She is loving and gentle with her friends and her little brother. Other moms in the baby group often comment about her sweet disposition.

While she is starting to get mischievous, she does generally listen to her parents.

She loves to explore and learn.

She loves books!

She wants very much to be helpful and does indeed help with some household and farm chores (with supervision).

She enjoys life.

We had the grandparents over for a birthday dinner last night. She received books, an artist’s easel, and a handmade Poohbear quilt. We dined on a wonderful, tasty, and tender rib roast of Sweet Seasons Farm beef. Yum.

The Smallholderette spent time with each grandparent and was a happy little camper even when the hour got late.

Fatherhood rocks.