Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has decided to make a few endoresments and predictions on ye olde blogge for the election tomorrow.

First off, if you are a resident of Virginia, your Maximum Leader feels that you can vote for both Constitutional Amendments with clear conscience. The first establishes that if there is a special election or appointment to a US House, State Senate, or State House of Delegates between the time that districts are redrawn after a census, and the next general election; that the old districts will be used. This amendment was put forth to correct a little bit of craziness we had here in the Old Dominion in 2001. We had a number of special elections for State Senate and House of Delegates and at the time it wasn’t clear if the new post-census districts were to be used or the old pre-census districts were to be used. This Amendment makes it clear that in this case the old pre-census districts are used.

The Second Amendment proposal just adds more elected officals to the official sucession to the office of Governor. Right now the succession is: Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, and Speaker of the House of Delegates. The new succession is: Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, Speaker of the House of Delegates, Successor to the Speaker of the House of Delegates, President of the State Senate, and Majority Leader of the State Senate. While the whole “successor to the Speaker of the House of Delegates” is quirky, it isn’t so quirky that one shouldn’t vote for the Amendment.

FYI, this will be the first year since he was eligible to vote and there have been mulitple Amendments to the State Constitution proposed that your Maximum Leader will vote for all the proposed Amendments.

On to more Endorsements.

Your Maximum Leader, as you may suspect, has decided to vote for the re-election of President Bush. All things considered, the President is most likely to give your Maximum Leader the type of leadership he is hoping for. This is not to say that the President is your Maximum Leader’s erfect choice. But he is a far sight better than is Senator Kerry.

As for the Prediction…

The Smallholder predicts a Bush win. Larry Sabato, eminent professor of government at the University of Virginia and pundit of whom your Maximum Leader hold in high regard, believes it may come down to a 269-269 tie. (Which means a Bush win.) Your Maximum Leader is going to come off his “too close to call” stance and say that one candidate will win clearly in the popular vote. That candidate will break the 51% mark. And that candidate will be George W. Bush.

But due to the way our Electoral College works, your Maximum Leader doesn’t think he can predict that outcome. Your Maximum Leader hopes that Bush will prevail handily in the Electoral voting; but with the legions of lawyers out there - fraud will be found or invented. Thus there is no telling what will happen.

And now for the “More!” part of this post…

Well… There really isn’t any more. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t have much to say. Except that if you are reading this and still undecided… Don’t vote.

Carry on.

UPDATE: There really is more. Your Maximum Leader reads that Annika has made predictions. But not only that, Annika is betting any liberal blogger to take Kerry to win (in what your Maximum Leader presumes is a straight Electoral win without interference from the courts) against her Bush to win with the loser shutting down their blog for good.

Aiieee! What a wager!

NB to Lovely Annika: Now Annika, your Maximum Leader respects your “balls” in making such a wager. And while he doesn’t think that that you will lose this one… In the highly unlikely case you do, you will be welcomed here at Nakedvillainy any time you want.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader was looking over the news wires and his eye drifted to one particular headline that made him choke on his tea. The offending headline is: ‘Cornhole’ Catching on Beyond Midwest.

Now in the Midwest, “Cornhole” is a game you play with little bags filled with corn. Sort of like horseshoes.

Where your Maximum Leader comes from, “Cornhole” is a verb. It has the same meaning as “Cutler.”

Perhaps you can see why your Maximum Leader reacted in the way he did.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is thrilled. Two (count ‘em - 2) reports of wild boar on the same day. The first was previously linked below. The boar in Germany caused a pileup on the highway. This time the boar was caught by fishermen as it swam in the harbour of a port town near Kobe, Japan.

Weird, wild stuff.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader thought he would post this if only to hear the wails and cries from the Big Hominid.

From nameless ct to global icon, Japan’s Hello Kitty turns 30.

Shhh! What’s that sound? Why, it’s the sound of Hominid testicles shrinking…

Carry on.

Bush wins, 273 to 265. Popular vote even at 48%. Nader and Badnarik each get 1.2%.

It will all come down to turn-out. Kerry’s folks are much less committed to their man; Republicans ought to pray for bad weather.

I think the closeness of this election speaks ill of both Bush’s policies and of Kerry’s campaign.

I bumped Badnarik’s numbers because I think many conservatives are so satisfied with Bush’s fiscal policy that some may jump ship (like Nader voters did to the Dems last time ’round).

Are there any other ministers who are willing to post their guesses and risk humiliation?

The Redskins have predicted the outcome of every election since 1936.

Washington’s go-ahead touchdown at the end of the fourth quarter is negated by a motion penalty against James Thrash.

James Thrash was born on April 28.

Smallholder was born on April 28.

Coincidence?

Skippy has turned in a grand total of four posts since October 9.

Is this what happens when Skippy “gets happy?”

It’s like Samson cutting his hair.

I miss my morning measure of malevolent misanthropic musings.

Ophelia, you have to help us out.

Dump Skippy. Dump him now.

Publicly.

As humiliatingly as possible.

Don’t be selfish and think of your happiness together. Sacrifice sanity so strangers can feel smugly superior to Skippy’s shitty souless span. Seriously.

Seriously, I’m happy for Skippy and hope he finds a way to return to his political commentary soon; his blog was one of my favorite things about the election season.

I get a well-deserved smack in the head from Bill’s Comments over my response to Ally’s post on what women want.

Bill is absolutely right; beauty is in the eye of the beholder. When someone is at ease wth themselves and is having a good time, their overall attractiveness quotient is more than the sum of the physical parts.

I can also see that, once love has sunk its tendrils into you, physical attraction will become even more divorced from the exterior reality. I was referring to the initial steps in dating, which for most of us, come prior falling in love.

For an atrocious example, consider a married couple. The man is seriously wounded in a IED attack while serving his country in Iraq. His wife, one hopes, would still find him attractive even though he might have some pretty heinous scars. Flipping the scales, a man who loved his wife will still be attracted to her falling breast cancer.

On a less heroic or tragic note, as pointed out by the Maximum Leader’s children, I’m no longer quite the svelte guy I was back in 1993. One hopes that Mrs. Smallholder finds my admittedly bulk-enhanced form mildly pleasing.

RANDOM COMMENT: The best ever thumbnail sketch of the Maximum Leader, his Foreign Minister, and the Minister of Agriculture: “You know, Mike, you and your friends look like a bunch of football players gone to seed.” Heh.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader knows that there are two things that when they make the news he cannot resist noting.

The first is anytime a Titun Arum plant makes news. (Generally when they are blooming. Since it is so infrequent.)

The second is anytime a wild boar (or pack of wild boar) makes news.

Thus here is your link: Pack of Wild Boar Causes Motorway Pileup

Carry on.

Do conservatives REALLY feel moral outrage over the moral improprieties of the left? Were people REALLY shocked and dismayed by Bill Clinton’s dalliance with an intern?

Or were people feigning moral outrage to score political points?

We have an opportunity to see in the coming months.

Bill O’Reilly stands accused of marital infidelity with an underling. An infidelity compounded by the fact that the woman was unwilling.

A conservative blogger’s analysis of the Bill O’Reilly case is here.

Essentially, this experience trial lawyer deduces that she had the man on tape. So there is very little doubt that he did the creepy things alleged in her lawsuit.

(Unresolved is why the heck she didn’t just hang up on him. She’s a real piece of work too, IMHO.)

Morality-pushers getting caught by their own rhetorical snares is nothing new. I , for one, never was that upset by Bill Bennett’s gambling. He may have lost a bunch of money, but it wasn’t a bunch of money to him. There were no victims. Bill Bennett’s gambling is morally the equivalent of me losing ten dollars to the Foreign Minister in a friendly poker game. The Smallestholders aren’t going to go hungry.

Rush Limbaugh’s drug addiction, while revealing him to be a hypocrite, didn’t victimize anyone but himself. While it probably wasn’t fair that he wasn’t prosecuted for his crime, that’s American justice: he beat the rap because he was rich, not because he had some conservative-black-hat-smoking-man-get-out-of-jail-free-mojo. His claims of being targeted by law enforcement were also ridiculous and put one in mind of Marion Barry’s “Bitch set me up!” defense. All in all, Rush’s actions, while illegal and disgraceful, weren’t all that bad.

The O’Reilly thing is much worse. He evidently abused his power with, he claimed, many different women.

He ought to be fired and villified.

His ratings are up.

Are people turning in out of curiousity? Schadenfreude?

Are conservatives rallying around the flag like they did with Rush?

We will have to wait and see what happens with his ratings. If conservatives (and Americans as a whole) really believe that people who make immoral choices ought to be held to account, his audience will wither.

I, for one, won’t hold my breath.

The chicken flock at Sweet Seasons Farm has gotten elderly. They are much older than a commercial flock ever gets. Although they are in good health, their age combined with the shortening of the daylight hours has reduced their flow of eggs to a trickle.

My original intent with this flock was to send them out to a well-earned retirement, letting them roam the farmstread as a new batch of layers took up the production slack. When I mentioned this plan to neighboring farmers, they were tremendously alarmed. If I let them roam freely, they would quickly attract every dog, fox, racoon, hawk, and weasel in Central Virginia. And one the predators dispatched the elderly ladies, they would turn their attention on my new flock and eventually find a way through the wire of the chicken tractor.

Boy, did I feel silly.

Well, the plan is now to dispatch them quickly and have stew chickens. Mrs. Smallholder is not very fond of this plan. She has, of late, been consructing elaborate explanations for the lowered production and working out fanciful plans that would allow chickens laying one egg every seven days to be economically feasible. Alas, biology and nature are conspiring against my dear wife.

So I’m going to prep them for the freezer. Next weekend.

Except nature intervened (she has a way of doing that).

When the Maximum Leader visited on Saturday, we took the kids out to check for eggs and see how the goat, sheep, lamb, and cows were. Everyone was perfectly happy (especially Bonnie, who chowed down on the scrapings from the Jack-o’-lantern the Smallholding and Villainous children made).

Two hours later, my wife made a horrifying discovery. One of the chickens was badly mauled.

Evidenlty a racoon (in broad daylight), reached through the wire mesh, caught a Dutch-spangled Hamburger hen by the leg and proceeded to try to rip her out through the mesh. I assume it was a racoon because I don’t know of any other animal that would have been able to cause the injury.

The poor girl was pretty torn up and was in shock, suffering terribly. There was little that could be done, so I resolved to end her suffering as quickly as possible. Moving away from the chicken house into the upper pasture (to try to minimize the smell of blood around the other chickens and, I confess, so that the other chickens wouldn’t see their colleague die), I called for Mrs. Smallholder to fetch a shovel.

The Maximum Leader quickly offered a machete out of his vehicle; the quick action saved the hen from another couple minutes of pain - the garage and tools were farther away. A quick whack and the deed was done.

She was a good chicken. I’m sorry that she had to suffer. I’m going to have to start taking some active racoon countermeasures.

As a side note, do you know anyone else who just keeps a machete in their car? Neither do I.

Don’t trifle with the Maximum Leader.

UPDATE FROM THE MAXIMUM LEADER: That would be not just any machete. But a real Soviet Spetnaz Survival Machete. Your Maximum Leader should add that one of the Villainettes cried on the way back to the Villainschloss for the chicken. But, her father and Mrs. Villain had to explain about how nature and predators work.

UPDATE FROM THE MINISTER OF AGRICULTURE: I read with sadness that the demise of poor henny-penny has left a legacy of emotional distress with one of the Maximum Leader’s children. I am a bit surprised, since we spent another couple of hours hanging out inside the Smallholder Shack and there appeared to be no ill-effects at that time. In fact, the Maximum Leader’s prgoeny semed downright cheerful as we watched a tape of my wedding and the wee Villains delighted in pointed out how thin Daddy and Uncle Mark were - in 1993.
I will have a longer post on childhood trauma soon - from Halloween.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader couldn’t resist the headline of this Reuters peice. Something You Don’t See Everyday… So your Maximum Leader clicked through. It seems as though a 20-something couple was having sex in the middle of the sidewalk in a busy shopping district in Berlin. The couple (understandably) didn’t stop when the police asked them to stop. (Your Maximum Leader imagines they were too concerned about what they were doing to hear.) Anyway. Each member of the par will be fined 100 Euros for “disturbing the peace.”

Your Maximum Leader wonders if the small fine is a price worth paying in exchange for the wonderful story value of why you had to pay the fine.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader just had himself a fine laugh at the latest from Will Derringher at Mirthful Ones. Smashing use of a cell phone in a public train to embarrass a rather rude woman. Good job Will.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader didn’t forget Friday Villainy. He decided to put up one long post for the whole weekend. (As it is unlikely that either he or the Smallholder will post anything. Which would leave the proverbial door open for the other Ministers…)

As Halloween is upon us, your Maximum Leader thought it best to return to the realm of literature for our weekly examination of villainy. As many of you know, your Maximum Leader loves monster movies. He particularly loves vampire films. And Dracula films are the best. As he’s blogged before, he loves all the Dracula films. Alas, this year his Frank Langella version of Dracula has died. It was on video and the tape has gone bad. But in it’s place he now has a Christopher Lee Dracula by Hammer. So there are some slight changes to the Dracula film fest.

Anyho… Your Maximum Leader will present for your consideration the passage from Bram Stoker’s novel “Dracula” that both scared and titilated him as a young man when he first read it. It is the final few pages of Chapter 3. Jonathan Harker, the diarist/narrator of this passage, has fallen asleep in a room of the Count’s castle. A room to which the Count has warned him not to venture. He wakes to discover…

I was not alone. The room was the same, unchanged in any way since I came into it. I could see along the floor, in the brilliant moonlight, my own footsteps marked where I had disturbed the long accumulation of dust. In the moonlight opposite me were three young women, ladies by their dress and manner. I thought at the time that I must be dreaming when I saw them, they threw no shadow on the floor. They came close to me, and looked at me for some time, and then whispered together. Two were dark, and had high aquiline noses, like the Count, and great dark, piercing eyes, that seemed to be almost red when contrasted with the pale yellow moon. The other was fair, as fair as can be, with great masses of golden hair and eyes like pale sapphires. I seemed somehow to know her face, and to know it in connection with some dreamy fear, but I could not recollect at the moment how or where. All three had brilliant white teeth that shone like pearls against the ruby of their voluptuous lips. There was something about them that made me uneasy, some longing and at the same time some deadly fear. I felt in my heart a wicked, burning desire that they would kiss me with those red lips.It is not good to note this down, lest some day it should meet Mina’s eyes and cause her pain, but it is the truth. They whispered together, and then they all three laughed, such a silvery, musical laugh, but as hard as though the sound never could have come through the softness of human lips. It was like the intolerable, tingling sweetness of waterglasses when played on by a cunning hand. The fair girl shook her head coquettishly, and the other two urged her on.

One said, “Go on! You are first, and we shall follow. Yours’ is the right to begin.”

The other added, “He is young and strong. There are kisses for us all.”

I lay quiet, looking out from under my eyelashes in an agony of delightful anticipation. The fair girl advanced and bent over me till I could feel the movement of her breath upon me. Sweet it was in one sense, honey-sweet, and sent the same tingling through the nerves as her voice, but with a bitter underlying the sweet, a bitter offensiveness, as one smells in blood.

I was afraid to raise my eyelids, but looked out and saw perfectly under the lashes. The girl went on her knees, and bent over me, simply gloating. There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive, and as she arched her neck she actually licked her lips like an animal, till I could see in the moonlight the moisture shining on the scarlet lips and on the red tongue as it lapped the white sharp teeth. Lower and lower went her head as the lips went below the range of my mouth and chin and seemed to fasten on my throat. Then she paused, and I could hear the churning sound of her tongue as it licked her teeth and lips, and I could feel the hot breath on my neck. Then the skin of my throat began to tingle as one’s flesh does when the hand that is to tickle it approaches nearer, nearer. I could feel the soft, shivering touch of the lips on the super sensitive skin of my throat, and the hard dents of two sharp teeth, just touching and pausing there. I closed my eyes in languorous ecstasy and waited, waited with beating heart.

But at that instant, another sensation swept through me as quick as lightning. I was conscious of the presence of the Count, and of his being as if lapped in a storm of fury. As my eyes opened involuntarily I saw his strong hand grasp the slender neck of the fair woman and with giant’s power draw it back, the blue eyes transformed with fury, the white teeth champing with rage, and the fair cheeks blazing red with passion. But the Count! Never did I imagine such wrathand fury, even to the demons of the pit. His eyes were positively blazing. The red light in them was lurid, as if the flames of hell fire blazed behind them. His face was deathly pale, and the lines of it were hard like drawn wires. The thick eyebrows that met over the nose now seemed like a heaving bar of white-hot metal. With a fierce sweep of his arm, he hurled the woman from him, and then motioned to the others, as though he were beating them back. It was the same imperious gesture that I had seen used to the wolves. In a voice which, though low and almost in a whisper seemed to cut through the air and then ring in the room he said,

“How dare you touch him, any of you? How dare you cast eyes on him when I had forbidden it? Back, I tell you all! This man belongs to me! Beware how you meddle with him, or you’ll have to deal with me.”

The fair girl, with a laugh of ribald coquetry, turned to answer him. “You yourself never loved. You never love!” On this the other women joined, and such a mirthless,hard, soulless laughter rang through the room that it almost made me faint to hear. It seemed like the pleasure of fiends.

Then the Count turned, after looking at my face attentively, and said in a soft whisper, “Yes, I too can love. You yourselves can tell it from the past. Is it not so? Well, now I promise you that when I am done with him you shall kiss him at your will. Now go! Go! I must awaken him, for there is work to be done.”

“Are we to have nothing tonight?”said one of them, with a low laugh, as she pointed to the bag which he had thrown upon the floor, and which moved as though there were some living thing within it. For answer he nodded his head. One of the women jumped forward and opened it. If my ears did not deceive me there was a gasp and a low wail, as of a half smothered child. The women closed round, whilst I was aghast with horror. But as I looked, they disappeared, and with them the dreadful bag. There was no door near them, and they could not have passed me without my noticing. They simply seemed to fade into the rays of the moonlight and pass out through the window, for I could see outside the dim, shadowy forms for a moment before they entirely faded away.

Then the horror overcame me, and I sank down unconscious.

Your Maximum Leader read this passage first when he was 12-13 years old. It had a powerful effect on him, on many different levels, at the time. When he saw this passage on film, he remembered the feels he felt so many years before. If you haven’t read the book, your Maximum Leader commends it to you.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader reads that a soon to be abolished baronial court in Scotland is pardoning 81 people convicted of witchcraft between 1500-1600.

The witches were convicted on the basis of spectral evidence. That is to say that witnesses against the “witches” were said to “feel evil spirits” or “heard spirit voices.”

Your Maximum Leader has to get in his two groats worth on this one. First off, where is the outrage that a soon-to-be-abolished reminant of feudal Scotland is exercising its powers and not just sitting around waiting to go away?

Secondly, according to the Witchcraft Act of 1735 it is a crime to pretend to be a witch. Your Maximum Leader wants to know if the accused weren’t just pretending to be witches.

And lastly, your Maximum Leader is noting down “spectral evidence.” Be warned that in the show trials of the MWO you may just hear that term again.

Carry on.