Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader will share some disjointed thoughts with you today.

As this blog approaches its 7th anniversary, your Maximum Leader wonders if he should drop the 3rd person schitck. Perhaps only for a little while. He might need a break from it.

Your Maximum Leader was speaking with someone here in town about goings-on. The person mentioned some vice busts in the area and pointed out some photos of the alleged “Johns” and the prostitutes. One of the prostitutes wasn’t a bad looking woman. But every one of the “Johns” was pretty damned ugly. Your Maximum Leader mused for a moment on how prostitution might be a good example of equal treatment in the marketplace. He also found himself wondering if the prostitute felt sorry for herself for having to have sex with some really ugly men…

Your Maximum Leader is excited about the 4th of July holiday. As he’s mentioned in this space many times, the Fourth is the best holiday on the calendar. (Let him explain why in a base way: Bikini-clad hotties, cook-outs and fireworks!) He will go out to the Chesapeake Bay to his In-law’s house and enjoy the water, fishing, some crabs, a little bourbon, and the aforementioned hotties, cookouts and fireworks.

Your Maximum Leader sees that according to some bogus poll of 238 “scholars” produced by Siena College, FDR was America’s greatest President. Theodore Roosevelt was number 2. Abraham Lincoln was #3. George Washington was #4. Thomas Jefferson was #5. Obviously these “presidential scholars” are idiots and deserving of only scorn. Any “greatest presidents” list that does not begin with either George Washington or Abraham Lincoln is pretty much crap. Your Maximum Leader is content with Lincoln and Washington and then all other comers. A very strong case can be made for FDR and TR as 3 & 4. But this crap being peddled by Siena College is just wrong. In case you want a real list of great presidents you can read your Maximum Leader’s greatest list from this past February. Let him close this matter with a plug for JAMES KNOX POLK as the greatest overlooked president in our history.

For now that is all.

Carry on.

UPDATED: Your Maximum Leader looked up the press release from Siena College in the hopes that he’d get their whole list and methodology. Well, here is what they are releasing out to the public. (NB to Polymath: Apparently the presidents worse than G.W. Bush are: F. Pierce, W. Harding, J. Buchanan and A. Johnson.) Your Maximum Leader isn’t sure of the first to categories in which the presidents are rated. They are “Background” and “Imagination.” Without some guidelines as to what those actually mean it is hard to judge what the hell someone means by saying that (for example) Thomas Jefferson had a better background than John Quincy Adams. Frankly, in terms of having the right “background” to be president (assuming - as your Maximum Leader does - that background means past experiences before becoming president) he can’t think of a reason why Thomas Jefferson would be ranked number one? Over John Qunicy Adams?! Okay, Jefferson was Ambassador to France and Secretary of State. But he was a crappy Governor of Virginia. (And he shouldn’t get credit for writing the Declaration.) In your Maximum Leader’s opinion the two men most qualified to be president by virtue of their background are John Quincy Adams and George Herbert Walker Bush.

Anyhoo… Siena College’s criteria (and hence their results) are suspect (and worthy of derision). Stick with your Maximum Leader’s assesments and you’ll go places.

Carry on again.