Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader notes with bit of suspicion that the Washington “Natinals” have not won a single game since your Maximum Leader noted (below) that they had won 8 games in a row.

Now… Your Maximum Leader started off his last Nationals post by stating that he did indulge himself in some silly sports superstitions. He debated then if he should write about the win streak. He didn’t come out and say that if he wrote the post the win streak would end… But… He wrote the post and behold the streak ended.

So this post is going to try and provide a little karmic energy to break the cycle of obviously bad juju that has been in the air since the last post.

The Nationals are beginning to look hapless again. They have lost their last 3. They were shut out last night. This is not to say that the Nationals are back to the way they looked a few months back. Nope. They haven’t regressed that much. But they aren’t scoring. They aren’t hitting too well. They aren’t pitching well… They are looking more like the 40-75 team they are.

The Nats go again against the Reds in Cincinnati tonight. There is no telling how the game will go… But the spectre of the 1962 Mets still hangs (tenuously) over the Nats.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader, for reasons passing understanding, just signed up on Twitter.

He now tweets.

Interested in becoming a follower?

Here is the feed. (Twitter.com/maximumleader)

Pithyness will follow.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader decided to make a second post and not update the one below…

Your Maximum Leader’s beloved sister and brother in law were just parented a second time. Your Maximum Leader’s sister delivered a healthy little girl. 7 lbs 6 oz. 19 inches long. 10 fingers and 10 toes (assuming you count opposeable thumbs as “fingers” - would it be better to describe them as 10 correct digits on hands and feet?)

Many congratulations…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is caught between conflicting emotions today.

Your Maximum Leader’s sister is, at this very moment, in the hospital. We hope very soon to hear the good news that she has safely delivered her second child. We don’t know if it will be a boy or girl, but we should know soon.

That is happy news.

Then there is the very sad news that Kevin’s mom (who is like a mom to me as well) will lose her battle with cancer sooner rather than later.

When I received word from Kevin about the diagnosis I was stopped at a red light. I had to pull over for a minute and cry.

It was a very hard afternoon.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader debated if he should write this post. While not a supersitious fellow, your Maximum Leader does indulge in some childish sports-related supersititions… So he debated with himself if he should write anything taking note of the Washington Nationals current win streak.

Yup. You read that correctly… The hapless “Natinals” have been winning lately. In fact they’ve won their last 8 games. In a few cases the Nats have even come from behind and prevailed.

It is pretty neat to say that you can watch some pretty good ball in Washington. The Nats haven’t been defensively inept. Their bats have been working. And their terrible bullpen has noticeably improving with each game.

To what can we attribute this turn-about?

Is it Jim Wriggleman as manager? That is likely part of it. Wirggleman has required more batting and fielding practice. He has also been more keen to stick with a “hot hand” in the bullpen rather than mix it up. Probably just as much as anything Wriggleman has done it is likely that the players themselves have also gotten tired of being losers. Regardless of their record, these players are pros. They are playing professional ball and thousands of others aren’t. These guys have to be motivated and proud to get to the bigs. It is possible that they collectively woke up and realized that if they want to stay in the the big leagues they need to cowboy up (as it were).

Your Maximum Leader believes that Mike Rizzo’s trade for Nyjer Morgan has been a real catylist for change on the team as well. With Morgan you have a baseball-smart high-energy guy who seems to have improved the lineup.

Your Maximum Leader should note that the Nationals’ record is 40-72. That means that it impossible for the 2009 Washington Nationals to finish the season with a worse record than the 1962 New York Mets (40-120). In order to retire the “gremlin bogey” number the Nats need to win one more game.

Today is a day off for the Nationals… On Tuesday the Nats face off against the Atlanta Braves in Atlanta… Here is hoping that the “gremlin bogey” is retired on Tuesday.

Go Nats!

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader, like many people who grew up in the 1980s, remembers the films of John Hughes as part of the cultural background of his life. He can’t think of a Hughes film that he’s seen (and there are likely a few he hasn’t seen) that he hasn’t either loved or liked a lot. Ferris Bueller, Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Planes, Trains and Automobiles. All of them great. Your Maximum Leader also remembers very fondly She’s Having a Baby one of Hughes’ lesser-known films.

Although your Maximum Leader doesn’t often get really emotional over the passing of people he’s never met, he actually does feel a little sad about Hughes’ passing. He seemed too young at age 59. Hughes had the ability to connect with a whole generation of move-goers, of which your Maximum Leader was one. Although Hughes was not particularly productive lately, his body of work is classic. Hughes will be remembered among Hollywood’s greatest directors. At least your Maximum Leader will so remember him.

Rest in peace, John Hughes. Your Maximum Leader prays you receive your heavenly reward.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sees that his beloved Washington Nationals have just completed a sweep of the Florida Marlins! Not only did they pull off their fifth win in a row - they came from a 6 run deficit to do it!

Bravo boys! Good job.

The Nats pulled out a 12-8 victory over the Fish. Each victory was sweet. Made especially good in the knowledge that the Marlins were leading the season series 9-0 before coming to DC this week.

Now before your Maximum Leader gets too carried away… He remembers that the Nats are still 37-72 on the season. That puts the gremlin bogey number at 49. The Nats only need to win three to avoid the ignominy of breaking the ‘62 Mets’ record as the worst team in history… Your Maximum Leader is even beginning to think his predicition of the beginning of the season that the Nats would lose fewer than 100 games might come true…

Go Nats!

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sees that Sonia Sotomayor has been confirmed to the Supreme Court of the United States.

Congratulations Justice Sotomayor. Your Maximum Leader wouldn’t have nominated or voted for you; had he had a say in the matter. But elections have consequences… Your Maximum Leader hopes that you have a fine career on the highest bench in the land. (He isn’t holding his breath in hopes that you will magically turn out to be a closet conservative on the bench… But he does hope that you’ll see things his way from time to time…)

There is one thing that bugs your Maximum Leader about this confirmation… Is Sonia Sotomayor really the first Hispanic to be named to the Court? What about Benjamin Cardozo? Doesn’t he count? Wasn’t he of Spanish extraction? Hummm… Quick google shows an archived Volokh peice addressing this very issue. Apparently directly of Spanish or Portuguese ancestry (not via Central or South America) is not traditionally within the bounds of “hispanic.”

Your Maximum Leader, being a contrarian - as well as plain difficult from time to time, will think of Justice Sotomayor as the first latina justice. Of course, he will (depending on where she winds up on the court) more likely to think of her as “another one of the one’s your Maximum Leader doesn’t agree with very often.”

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader hasn’t been as good a blogger as he has been. This of course begs the question of exactly what your Maximum Leader feels a “good blogger” is. In the case of your Maximum Leader he believes (for himself) being a good blogger is posting at least one or two little nuggets of moderate quality a day. If the nuggets are really high quality then one every other day is acceptable.

As any reader here can tell… Your Maximum Leader hasn’t been a good blogger in over a year.

Of course, not every blogger needs to fit into this definition to be classified a “good blogger” by your Maximum Leader.

Take for example the great Velociman. He has never posted daily. But his posts are high quality. Very high quality. The Velociman is great. So great that even the interwebs can’t contain him. The V-man has a book now. One that you can buy and have shipped to your very own residence. Not only that, but after you receive your copy of “A Trip of Goats” you can carry it around everywhere. Even the bathroom… Books are cool that way.

There are lots of good bloggers over there on the left side of this blog. One of them had your Maximum Leader worried for a little while. Rooked transfixed your Maximum Leader when he first read it. It was filled with mind-bending prose and imaginative stories that excited and delighted your Maximum Leader. Then Mr Perry, the extraordinary blogger behind Rooked, had some personal issues he needed to work through. The blog changed. It was no longer an imaginative outlet for gripping tales. Instead it was a father’s discourse about love, responsibility and regrets. Normally your Maximum Leader stays away from blogs that seem to become to “intimate” in his opinion. But your Maximum Leader didn’t get that uncomfortable feeling from reading a blog-cum-diary. Indeed, Rooked was very compelling reading. Then for a while Rooked was dark. Your Maximum Leader worried that he’d heard the last of Mr CS Perry… But, happily your Maximum Leader can say that Rooked is back. Your Maximum Leader is excited for the future and what is coming up on Rooked.

(NB to CS Perry… If any of the “Rookies” would be interested in becoming the official “Naked Villainy T-shirt & Thong babe” have them contact me… Oh and one more thing… I’ve never heard of any good coming from a Russian “mail order bride” type. And I actually know one guy who went down that path…)

So… Go and buy the V-man’s book and make sure to check in regularly on Rooked. Neither will disappoint.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is going through some technology DTs. With work progressing (slowly) in the Villainschloss his regular computer is disconnected from the internet most of the time and he’s not been able to post…

So for want of real content…

Here is the lastest from Jib-Jab. “He’s Barack Obama”

This video wouldn’t be as funny if many people didn’t think he was a superhero…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader asks you to “stop him if you’ve heard this one.”

Q: Do you know what Farrah Fawcett, Ed McMahon and Michael Jackson are waiting for in heaven?

A: Patrick Swayze.

Okay… That is bad. But it made your Maximum Leader laugh.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader’s upgrades to the Villainschloss continue to eat into computer time. Alas, they also eat into his TV viewing time. If this keeps up your Maximum Leader will be burning candles and reading old dusty tomes in a wingback chair and going to bed shortly after dark… Hey… That doesn’t seem like too bad a plan…

Your Maximum Leader feels that a day without reading Fear and Loathing in Georgetown is a day intellectually wasted. To wit this post that directs us to 3 page piece in the New Republic by Sean Wilentz in which Wilentz smacksdown of some of his critics. You know, every once and a while your Maximum Leader remembers why he wanted to be a history professor once upon a time. Reading this exchange between Wilentz and his critics is one of those times. He enjoyed the historical aspects of discussion itself, but also the cattiness of the exchange. Few things amuse your Maximum Leader as much as a bunch of distinguished professors arguing with each other. On the one hand it is so intellectual; and on the other it is so petty and personal. It brings a grin to your Maximum Leader’s visage.

Of course, FLG isn’t always intellectual on his blog… To wit: he link to portraits of a naked President Obama and his unicorn. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t know what to think of that upon which he just cast his gaze… It is disturbing…

In other news…

The Nationals have not been sucking recently. Indeed they have pulled off a few wins recently. It looks like the gremlin bogey number remains 53. Of course there are only 62 games remaining on the schedule. So it is quite possible that the gremlin bogey number will soon be unattainable. If your Maximum Leader were more statistically inclined he’d tell you what the chances of losing 53 of 62 games would be. So he’s hoping that the Nationals continue to not suck so badly.

Continuing in the baseball theme… Which is more impressive? A perfect game (such as the one pitched recently by Mark Buehrle of the White Sox) or hitting two grand slams in a single game (like the National’s own Josh Willingham). Your Maximum Leader is inclined to say that even though two grand slams seems to be more rare (in terms of instances of occurance) the perfect game is harder. He’d like to see the statistical breakdown of the chances of each. He imagines that building a statistical model to set up the odds of pitching a perfect game would be crazy… Of course the odds of hitting two grand slams in a game would be crazy too.

After Willingham hit his two slams on Monday, your Maximum Leader read somewhere that Frank Robinson (one of the greatest hitters ever) only hit two grand slams in his whole career - and those two were in the same game. Your Maximum Leader found it hard to believe that Frank Robinson could have only hit two grand slams out of the 586 home runs he hit during his career. So he looked up the stats and found that Robinson only hit two grand slams with the Orioles. He hit a total of 8 grand slams in his 21 year career. To be honest that seemed a bit low to your Maximum Leader. So your Maximum Leader looked up some other player stats… After a few looks that total of 8 doesn’t seem too low… Hank Aaron only hit 16 slams out of 755 total home runs. Barry Bonds hit 11 slams out of 762 homers…

Anyhoo…

Massive thunderstorms are upon the Villainschloss and your Maximum Leader thinks he’d better sign off now…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t have much to (intelligently) add to the converstation of the day… That said, he’ll opine anyway… Sort of like the President and the whole Henry Louis Gates, Jr. affair.

Speaking of which… Your Maximum Leader will admit to not knowing all the facts (more admitting that the facts seem to be in dispute). Having admitted that he doesn’t know (or isn’t sure of) the whole truth of the matter he feels that Professor Gates overreacted and acted poorly. He also feels that the police also acted poorly by arresting Professor Gates. Gates should have tried to be a bit more polite and civilized. The police should have been more calm and willing to walk away from an agitated man in his house. Your Maximum Leader thinks, from what he’s read, that Gates is the one who put race into the situation. The police, however, have to deal with these types of issues every day and should have handled it differently once the suspected break-in was no longer suspected. If you were to press your Maximum Leader and force him to try and lay blame on one side or the other he’d say (right now) that the preponderence of blame lays at the feet of the Cambridge MA police.

So your Maximum Leader will be joining his extended family for the Nationals/San Diego Padres contest tomorrow night at Nationals Park. Your Maximum Leader is hoping to see a win. In the back of his mind, however, is the dreaded “gremlin bogey” number of 54. Your Maximum Leader and his whole family have their red Nationals t-shirts ready for the game. We will root (root, root) for our beloved Nationals and hope for the best.

Your Maximum Leader got a political polling call on Tuesday night. It was odd. Normally your Maximum Leader doesn’t deign to answer the phone if he doesn’t recognize the number on the caller-id display. For some strange reason he went ahead and answered and chose to particpate in a 10 minute polling call. The topics covered in the questions were all political - and mostly local political questions. The opening salvo were demographic questions (which your Maximum Leader only answered if the choices were in his opinion sufficiently broad). Then came the name recognition for the various offices up for election this fall in Virginia. Your Maximum Leader was pleased to have identified all of the names except for the Democrat running for Virginia Attorney General, and an independent running for County Board of Supervisors. (Sadly, immediately after he indicated he had no idea who the independent was the young girl conducting the poll filled in the blanks and your Maximum Leader remembered that the fellow was a former member of the School Board - and an idiot. He wished for a re-do on that one.) The poll was remarkably comprehensive in scope. It sort of surprised your Maximum Leader by its length and detail. He can only imagine that it cost some serious money. At the end of the poll he learned that it was paid for by the campaign of Susan Stimpson, who is running for County Board of Supervisors. She wants to represent your Maximum Leader’s district on the Board. Frankly, she has his vote. He’s met her a few times and spoken with her. She is a good choice to be on the Board. She will be a great improvement over George Schwartz. Schwartz is a pompus ass. He’s done more to screw up the county than any other person in recent memory.

In case you care, your Maximum Leader will, this fall, vote thusly in the Virginia elections. Bob McDonnell for Governor. Bill Bolling for Lt Governor. Ken Cuccinelli for AG. Bill Howell for Delegate. Susan Stimpson for Board of Supervisors. There you go…

You know, if your Maximum Leader didn’t already have big plans for the whole weekend he’d be off to see the hardest working man in the blogosphere, Robert Stacy McCain at the Richmond Tea Party event this weekend in Richmond. Really. R.S. Mcain is the hardest working man in the blogosphere. He doesn’t just sit back and comment on crap (like your Maximum Leader) he actually goes out there and does the leg-work needed to DISCOVER THE STORY. Seriously. You need to go back and read some of his reporting on the case of fired I-G Gerald Walpin.

Your Maximum Leader recommends to you all FLG’s piece on Fair Trade. You should also very seriously consider the difference between “organic” and “regular” products. Mrs Villain was gobsmacked over the weekend when she actually did a serious comparison between an brand of organic peanut butter (8 oz for $4.00) and the regular Jif brand that your Maximum Leader prefers (16 oz for $2.99). Okay, that example didn’t really address Fair Trade products - but they are vaugely linked in your Maximum Leader’s brain.

Oh yeah… Thanks FLG for the link to Bacon Salt. Another product for which your Maximum Leader really has no need, but will buy anyway just to try… Smoked meat… Heh… (Click FLG’s link to get the joke.)

And in closing… With luck your Maximum Leader will be able to catch two episodes of “The Ascent of Money” tonight on the DVR. Yay!

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has been feeling rather funky for the past few days. He’s got a lot on his plate at the Villainschloss. Major repairs in the dungeon are costing more than anticipated. And now your Maximum Leader is facing a serious ethical/financial dilemma.

You see… Your Maximum Leader’s trusted hound got a cut on her left rear leg about two years ago. It was slow to heal, but it healed. We thought she was fine. Then she started licking the leg way more than she should. It got sorta nasty looking. But she stopped and it healed up again. Then at the end of last year she started the licking again. A wound developed. We took her to the vet. The vet prescribed some serious drugs for her. Our dog spent the next 8 weeks on various drugs recouperating. It looked like she was all healed up. Total cost of Vet and drugs: $800. About two weeks ago she started licking the leg again. We went back to the vet. The infection in her leg had returned. We got more drugs, but this time there doesn’t seem to be as much of a positive response to them. The Vet has now recommended we take her to a veterinary surgeon who could cut out the infection and see if there is something else in there causing the problems. Approximate cost: $2500. There is no guarantee of a favorable or final result from surgery.

Now your Maximum Leader is facing the massive amount of spending going on at the house, and the prospect of a massive amount of spending on the health of our dog. He has to admit that he has more than once wondered if he should even seriously consider spending the money on our dog. But every time he starts down that path of reasoning he feels like a heartless ass. At what point is a dog a dog and not a four-legged loving member of the family? Your Maximum Leader could probably swing the various home repairs and one surgery. It would require a bit of creative budgeting; but it could happen. If anything happened after that…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader wonders sometimes… Here are some of the things he’s wondering now…

What is the cost of nationalized health care in other countries to US healthcare providers, drug companies and research instititutions? This is to say that if a drug is conceived, developed, researched and orginally produced by a US drug company, but is sold in Britain for a price determined by the National Health Service and not the market; what is the cost that is passed along to US consumers who are in effect subsidizing the National Health Service of Britain?

Will your Maximum Leader have to buy “The Ascent of Money” on DVD to catch up on the episodes he missed? (NB: Nope, apparently he can watch them on-line or set up his DVR to catch the reruns. Joy! Thanks FLG for the recommendation!)

Why did your Maximum Leader not act on his hunch that a company he knows was likely to get a juicy government contract and buy some stock in that company? (NB: the company in question a month ago traded at about $3.50/share; they closed yesterday at $25.45 a share.)

Why would FLG accept sponsorship from the Vince Lombardi Service Area? FLG strikes your Maximum Leader as an Alexander Hamilton Service Area type of web site? (NB: your Maximum Leader is exploring the idea of a sponsorship arrangement with Yu Wan Mei right now. Krill! Yum!)

That is all for now…

Carry on.