Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is a little disgusted. More than just a little disgusted perhaps.

Okay… He’ll concede that he is angry and frustrated at BP for the continuing problems in the Gulf. As more and more news comes out it seems more and more clear that BP really screwed the pooch on the Deepwater Horizon well. It is clear that BP will have to bear as much of the cost as is possible for them to bear in the cleanup and recovery of the area as a result of their ineptitude and failure.

That said, your Maximum Leader is disgusted at his countrymen for the hullaballoo over Carl-Henrik Svanberg’s “small people” comment yesterday.

No one in the America likes to be called “small people” it is insulting. But on the other hand no one seems to be very offended when we associate ourselves with being “the little guy.” We like politicians who lie and say that they will “fight for the little guy.” We want to “stand up for the little guy.” We feel kinship with “the little guy.”

Surely your Maximum Leader isn’t the only person in America who has (mostly unsucessfully) studied a foreign language. And furthermore he shouldn’t be the only person in America thinking that Carl-Henrik Svanberg is trying to make a heartfelt comment under tremendous stress and in a language that is not his native tounge. Your Maximum Leader wouldn’t be surprised in fact to learn that English is Svanberg’s fourth or fifth language.

WTF? We can’t cut a guy a break at all when he is trying to string together some words in a language that is probably not spoken by reflex in such a way that sounds both sincere and colloquial? Great jeezey chreezey. We can’t have a little understanding in this case. The news outlets that continue to report this story with (your Maximum Leader feels) no context are not doing themselves any service. Your Maximum Leader would like to see any big-name reporter go to Sweden and order off a friggin’ diner menu and see if they nail it.

NB to Carl-Henrik Svanberg: Your Maximum Leader apologizes to you for this specific incident becoming a big news story. Normally Americans are big-hearted people who appreciate it when you come to America and try to speak English. You happen to be in a tough spot and apparently we expected more from you in this instance than we would normally. If you would ask for a suggestion on how to handle this next time, your Maximum Leader would recommend that you either stick with scripted remarks or speak in Swedish and use a translator.

Lighten up everyone. That is an order.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader enjoys perusing Crumudgeonry. (And not just because Mike frequently posts photos of attractive women there in various stages of undress - but that does add to the experience.)

Mike posted a BP related funny today that made your Maximum Leader laugh and laugh.

Here is the video for your viewing pleasure. (Even though your Maximum Leader is posting the video here, that shouldn’t prevent you from going over to Curmudgeonry anyway…)

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has to out of his way to get news about goings-on in Canada in the US news. Call him crazy, but he likes to know what is going on with our great neighbour to the north (and largest trading partner). Your Maximum Leader likes Canada. He’s liked pretty much every Canadian he’s ever met. It is a good place.

But imagine how sad he is to know that the only news he can get (without going out of his way) about Canada is about a fake lake being made for the G-20 conference.

So your Maximum Leader feels he must call out his good friend Skippy and ask “So is this “fakelakegate” really the biggest news in Canada right now?”

And a good follow-up might be… “Really… Nearly a billion dollars to protect the G-20 summit? Couldn’t you just not protect some of the leaders attending and hope for the best? How about you skimp on protecting all the ones from a parliamentary democracy in that the PMs are likely just glorified party leaders and can be easily replaced?”

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has been following the whole gulf oil leak with growing feelings of dread and gloom. He was hopeful that the first capping device was going to work. Then it froze up and got clogged. Since then it has been one failure after another.

Are you ready for a prediction?

This gusher will be still be gushing on Election Day.

Yes. Election Day.

Your Maximum Leader has no confidence that anything is going to stop this in the near term. He also doubts that the “relief wells” that “should” be active in August will do the trick.

This is the worst ecological disaster since Chernobyl. And in some respects it might turn out being worse.

Just wait until hurricane season gets fully underway. Your Maximum Leader foresees oil everywhere along the gulf coast from Guatemala to the Florida Keys. At this stage he would not be surprised to find oil from this gusher wind up on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

Your Maximum Leader will wait to get a full and final report on what happened before he starts placing blame on any entity. It seems as though BP will come out holding the short straw in all this. But you can’t tell that right now with certainty. If BP is culpable, then we can all hope that they remain very profitable. Because if they go tits-up due to this the US taxpayer will be stuck with a clean-up bill. (Okay… Let’s be honest… The US taxpayer is going to be stuck with a big bill on this anyway. Lucky for us health care reform will save us so much money!)

Your Maximum Leader hopes you’ve seen the white-sand beaches of the Florida panhandle, because they aren’t going to be white for much longer.

Carry on.

UPDATE: Your Maximum Leader was recently reminded that Chernobyl is still worse in so many ways. Not the least of which is that the containment dome is collapsing and another will have to be built. This cycle will continue for centuries.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has been following the fall-out from the Israeli raid on the “humanitarian aid” ship from Turkey. Sure the Israeli’s, in this instance, might have been a little heavy-handed. But really, how much of a “blockade” are they really running here? Bascially the Israelis stop every ship and vehicle going into the Gaza Strip to search for weapons. The real “humanitarian” aid isn’t being stopped and turned back. (At best it is detained.)

Your Maximum Leader has, for just about as long as he can remember, be very pro-Israel. He’s not saying that Israel is always right and everyone else is wrong. That isn’t the case. But he will generally side with Israel all the time because they are the one beacon of civilization (as your Maximum Leader understands it) in the region.

Sadly though, Israel, like the West in general, is doomed.

How does one put it delicately? The Israelis are going to be fucked out of existance. Quite literally. They aren’t having enough babies. Demographically they are screwed. Before too long the (Westernized Jewish) Israelis are going to be a minority in their own country; out populated by (not Westernized and Arab) Israelis. Once that happens all bets are off.

(NB: If Bar Refaeli wanted to do something to help her country - which she probably doesn’t by the way - she’d get knocked up and start having all sorts of really really good-looking babies.)

Frankly… It isn’t much better in Europe. Europe will be the next to fall (after Israel). The day will come when non-westernized immigrants (mostly muslims) will be the ones running France and Germany. Of course, Western ideas of social/moral/political relativism will hasten the end.

Then it will be the USA, Canada and Australia as the last bastions of Western Civilization…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader apologizes in advance to the late Robert Frost (as well as to his fans and admirers everywhere).

Some say the world will end in fire, others say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire, I side with those who favor fire.
But if I had to perish twice,
I know that 225 British nuclear warheads combined with 5, 113 American ones would do the trick.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader just saw a piece on the Washington Post web site that struck him in a way that compelled (yes, compelled) him to post right away.

The piece is: NY mayor decries “terror gap” in US gun laws.

When your Maximum Leader read the headline he thought to himself, “Self, what is this ‘terror gap’ for US gun laws? Should this gap be closed if it exists.” Then he read the piece and started to get very very angry. To quote the piece:

New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg told a Senate panel Wednesday that he strongly supports congressional efforts to close a “terror gap” in the nation’s gun laws, which currently allow persons on a federal terrorist watch list to buy guns and explosives legally in the United States.
Testifying before the Senate Homeland Security Committee in the wake of the latest alleged terrorist plot against his city, Bloomberg (I) pointed to a new Government Accountability Office report showing that individuals on the terrorist watch list were able to buy firearms and explosives from licensed U.S. dealers 1,119 times over the past six years.
…
According to the GAO report released Wednesday, FBI data show that individuals on the government’s terrorist watch list were involved in firearms or explosives background checks 1,228 times from February 2004 through February 2010. Of those transactions, 1,119, or about 91 percent, “were allowed to proceed because no prohibiting information was found — such as felony convictions, illegal immigrant status, or other disqualifying factors,” the GAO’s Eileen R. Larence said in prepared testimony.
…
Bloomberg said a bipartisan coalition of 500 mayors supports legislation that would allow the U.S. attorney general to bar such purchases. He said the group also wants Congress to close another loophole that allows people to buy firearms at gun shows with no background checks at all.

“It’s just common sense to give the FBI authority to keep terror suspects from buying guns and explosives,” he said.

So just to be sure we are getting this right allow your Maximum Leader to summarize. If an individual appears on a terror watch list he or she should be denied the right to purchase a firearm.

This is the same terror watch list that gets 12 year old boys from Long Island added to it for some reason no one can quite explain?

This is the same terror watch list that only seems to harass people getting on airplanes but ultimately doesn’t seem to stop anyone from getting on a flight?

This is a terror watch list made up of “suspects” that haven’t actually broken any laws and are legally residing in or citizens of the United States?

Now just to be clear. Your Maximum Leader has no problem whatsoever with our existing process to strip a person of the right to bear arms. It normally involves a judge’s order in fact. Last time your Maximum Leader checked, it didn’t require a judge’s intervention to get one put onto the terror watch list. (And from what he’s read it might take more than a judge’s order to get your name off the watch list once it’s there.)

If you are illegal, you shouldn’t have a right to bear arms anyway. (That could be a subject for a separate post however.)

So we are all in favor of stripping people of their rights because they are suspected of something? Can we extend this process to other situations? Should murder suspects lose the right to habeas corpus because they are on a police watch list? Should an anti-war protester lose the right to free speech or assembly because they are suspected of wanting to cause mischief at a rally? Where exactly do you want to draw a line?

Your Maximum Leader will tell you where he’d like to draw a line. He’d like to draw a line on the side of suspects not being stripped of any of their rights until they are convicted of something in a court of law.

Then again, your Maximum Leader finds himself agreeing with Skippy on so many items he isn’t sure what to think of the world anymore.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has a few random thoughts to throw out there for your reading pleasure. Reading pleasure might be overstating the cast. How about he’ll throw out the random thoughts for your perusal…

First off… A note to Robbo. What the heck man? Every time you blog about the Nats playing well, they come back and get slaughtered. To wit. This post over at the Llamas is followed by the drubbing of last night. Ack. The Nats seem as they could show significant improvement over last season if they can get their pitching under control…

Secondly… Your Maximum Leader was polled last night on the subject of Governor McDonnell’s Confederate History proclamation. Sadly, your Maximum Leader’s opinions were not very well captured by the questions asked. They pretty much boxed you into either the Sons of Confederate Veterans camp or the we must remove all evidence of the Civil War that we don’t like camp. One of the questions, for example, asked if you supported keeping all of the monuments along Monument Avenue in Richmond that glorify various Confederate leaders as heros or if you support their removal. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t support their removal, but he also thinks a little balance is in order… Perhaps the lesson here is that your Maximum Leader shouldn’t participate in polls.

Lastly… Your Maximum Leader got a text from Joan yesterday that read: Am I the only southerner who finds it a touch scary when people from Boston or Nevada buy antebellum homes to “renovate”? Your Maximum Leader, although born and bred in Virginia, isn’t sure his “southerner” credentials are particularly strong. But as someone who actually does know something about antebellum homes his opinions are these: If the people coming to renovate the house are gay you have nothing to fear; they will do a great and accurate restoration. If the people coming to renovate are middle-aged empty nesters who are looking to retire, again nothing to fear. Pretty much anyone else from out of the area with no idea of the history of the house should be viewed with a wary eye. This opinion is formed by years of observation…

Carry on.

Greeting, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is not now, nor has he ever been in communion with the Episcopal Church of the United States. Frankly, he’s never been a member of any Episcopal/Anglican Church. He’s attended more than a few services in the Episcopal/Anglican Church, but that is about it.

Readers of this space are likely familiar with the ongoing secession of various Episcopal parishes in Virginia from the Episcopal Church of the United States (ECUSA) and their joining the Anglican Communion (under the auspices of a branch of the Anglican Church in Africa). The secession (schism if you will) has been the subject on an ongoing battle in the courts. You see the congregations that seceeded took their physical church buildings with them. Here is a little overview from the Washington Examiner.

If you happened to read that piece you might recall seeing that St. Stephen’s Church in Heathsville, VA is among those churches in the thick of the dispute.

So now your Maximum Leader is coming to the point… You might recall (from the last post) that your Maximum Leader went to visit his in-laws over the weekend. The path from the Villainschloss to the in-law’s runs through Heathsville, VA. For many years your Maximum Leader has driven by St. Stephen’s and always notices the wooden Victorian structure as he passes.

(NB: Indeed, he always tried to guess the age of the building as he passed. It is a little game your Maximum Leader plays in his mind while he drives across Virginia. He tries to guess the age of old homes or buildings based on what he knows of building styles and trends in VA. In the case of St Stephen’s he knew that although the congregation was established in 1664, the building was much later. He figured from the style of the church that it was likely built after the Civil War, but prior to 1900. He has toyed with dates from 1870-1880. And he learned recently from the church web site that the building dates from 1874.)

When St. Stephen’s left the ECUSA your Maximum Leader knew that there were bound to be some hard feelings. The tangible sign of the change came a little while after St. Stephen’s organized with the Anglican Communion. The sign was, in fact, the church sign. The old sign in front of the church was white with the crest of the ECUSA and it read “St. Stephen’s Church, Episcopal, Est 1664.” Then one day there was a new sign. It wasn’t white, but sort of gray. The crest of the ECUSA was gone and in its place was a symbol like a compass rose. The new sign read “St. Stephen’s Church, Anglican, Est 1664.”

Down the road about 50 yards from St. Stephen’s Church (Anglican); the first church sign appeared outside what had heretofore seemed to be a nice sized private home. Now within a stone’s throw of each other are a little white church which is St. Stephen’s (Anglican) and a nice house which is St. Stephen’s (Episcopal).

This past weekend, your Maximum Leader met his in-laws in Heathsville to go to the Farmers Market at the courthouse. While standing on the green behind the courthouse, he started talking to his father-in-law and a family friend about the church split. At some level your Maximum Leader knew that the split had to be hard on the tiny town of Heathsville. He knew that a significant portion of the original congregation (perhaps 20%) had not supported leaving the ECUSA. Those people are now the core of St. Stephen’s (Episcopal). He imagined that the Episcopal congregants were likely bitter and angry. Well, listening to the friend of the family describe it, the schism has torn some families apart. Two families were in fact pointed out to your Maximum Leader. They stood on opposite sides of the green. He is sure their physical position happened to be coincidence at that moment in time. But to hear the tale, these were close families. They were neighbors, friends, and at the distant cousin level related by marriage. Now they will not speak to each other. The kids no longer play together or even socialize at school. The adults avoid each other in public. It was sad to see. If your Maximum Leader had been more bold (and had the time) he’d have actually approached the people directly and asked them about the experience. He isn’t sure why he would want to hear the lurid details of the sad story from the actors themselves; but he does. He isn’t sure what he could learn from that. Perhaps it is a twisted voyeuristic tendency in him? At some level he wants to hear the story of what happened at the congregational level.

Your Maximum Leader isn’t sure that he’ll ever hear the tale directly from the people themselves. At some level just putting faces to what has happened in this tiny town has been enough to humanize the story…

In case you care to… Here are two web sites for you. St. Stephen’s (Anglican) and St. Stephen’s (Episcopal).

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader will share with you a number of thoughts he had over the weekend and actually wrote on a little scrap of paper in anticipation of making a blog post out of them. Sadly, they aren’t too pithy…

‘Tween girls (your Maximum Leader’s daughters for example) appear to only have two modulations for their voice. Inaudible whisper and wailing banshee.

Your Maximum Leader’s 10 year old daughter (Villainette #2) throws a tighter spiral with a football than he does.

Your Maximum Leader’s 5 year old son (the Wee Villain) throws a football at least as well, if not as far, as your Maximum Leader does.

Those last two observations hurt.

Pollen is a pain to clean off every friggin thing it touches.

Your Maximum Leader feels badly for the people of Poland. He wonders if the late President ordered the pilot to land the plane or if the pilot did it on his own authority. It is hard to imagine that the pilot of the ill-fated flight would make that call on his own.

The Washington Capitals lost their last regular season game to Boston on Sunday. It looks like the Caps have drawn the Montreal Canadiens in the first round of the NHL playoffs; which begin Thursday for the Caps.

Your Maximum Leader wonders if there is a special sub-set of screenplay writers in California who’s job it is to adapt hit hollywood movies into catchy porn films?

Your Maximum Leader is glad he doesn’t have to go to DC this week. Traffic and protests will render the city unbearable.

Your Maximum Leader forgot to mention last week that he went and saw “Clash of the Titans.” The fact that he took nearly a week to mention this event should tell you all you need to know. RELEASE THE KRAKEN!!!!

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t often find himself in pretty much complete agreement with an unsigned editorial published by the Editors of the Washington Post newspaper.

Today is the day he does find himself in agreement with the Editors of the Washington Post on the issue of Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell’s proclamation declaring April 2010 “Confederate History Month.” From the editorial page:

It’s fine that Mr. McDonnell decided to proclaim April as Confederate History Month; the Confederacy is an important chapter of history that merits study and draws tourists to Virginia. But any serious statement on the Confederacy and the Civil War would at least recognize the obvious fact — that slavery was the major cause of the war, and that the Confederacy fought largely in defense of what it called “property,” which meant the right to own slaves. Instead, Mr. McDonnell’s proclamation chose to omit this, declaring instead that Virginians fought “for their homes and communities and Commonwealth.” The words “slavery” and “slaves” do not appear.

Even more incendiary is the proclamation’s directive that “all Virginians” must appreciate the state’s “shared” history and the Confederacy’s sacrifices. Surely he isn’t including the 500,000 Virginia slaves who constituted more than a quarter of the state’s Civil War-era population, who cheered the Union and ran away to it when they could.

As James McPherson, dean of Civil War scholars, commented on learning of Mr. McDonnell’s proclamation: “I find it obnoxious, but it’s extremely typical. The people that emphasize Confederate heritage and the legacy, and the importance of understanding Confederate history, want to deny that Confederate history was ultimately bound up with slavery. But that was the principal reason for secession — that an anti-slavery party was elected to the White House. . . . And without secession, there wouldn’t have been a war.”

It’s difficult to understand why Mr. McDonnell, who in his inaugural address paid eloquent homage to former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, the grandson of slaves, and spoke movingly of slavery’s evils, would now trade in such glaring historical omissions. Charitably, we might suspect sloppy staff work; less charitably, we’d guess he is pandering to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a group that lionizes the Confederacy and pressed for the proclamation. It’s possible the governor thought he was being sensitive by eliminating the obnoxious glorification of the Confederacy’s “cause,” a word that appeared in a similar proclamation by former governor George Allen (R), whose idea of office decor ran to Confederate flags and nooses.

Okay… Your Maximum Leader thinks that the dig at George Allen was a bit gratuitous (although he’s sure his good friend Smallholder would disagree on that point). But the general thrust of the editorial is right on.

Your Maximum Leader thinks it is important to add one important observation. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t believe Bob McDonnell is a racist. In the brief time your Maximum Leader actually had regular friendly contact with (then Delegate) McDonnell your Maximum Leader never picked up any cue that might have signalled that McDonnell had a prejudiced bone in his body. This sentiment is echoed by UVA Government professor Larry Sabato who tweeted as much earlier today.

Your Maximum Leader wants to believe that this proclamation is a combination of the WaPo Editorial Board’s charitable and less-charitable explanations. He believes that staff in the Governor’s office decided to pander to the Sons of Confederate Veterans. (Of course your Maximum Leader can’t for the life of him understand why one would pander to them…) And that the staff decided to make a few minor editorial changes to the old proclamation and get it issued without much consideration.

This belief should not, and frankly does not, absolve the Governor of ultimate responsibility. His signature went on the proclamation. He is responsible for knowing what is in the proclamation and for questioning why such a proclamation was needed (or any way called for). Someone on the Governor’s staff should have asked what the hell was going on with the proclamation and given some pushback. Your Maximum Leader can’t understand why neither the Governor nor his staff seemed to have an inkling of the outcry the proclamation was bound to cause.

This whole incident is a sad misstep by a Governor who doesn’t need missteps. He had a very successful General Assembly session and has really been on-message and on-task since being elected.

If your Maximum Leader were advising the Governor, he’d advise a public mea-culpa and amend the proclamation to denounce slavery and encourage study of the full (and accurate) history of the American Civil War.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader tried a few news break posts a few years ago. (2004 to be exact. Including this one that was slightly notorious for the last line.) Do you remember news breaks? The networks would drop one commercial from a prime-time break and give you a 30-45 second review of the top stories nationally. (Remember Jessica Savitch’s famous final news break in 1983?) Your Maximum Leader used to miss the old news breaks… But now with the proliferation of 24 hour news networks they don’t have much of a place in regular broadcasts.

There are of course, local news breaks during prime-time. They exist to entice you to stay up to watch the 11pm news…

So… Here is a news break for you…

Abortion threatens to derail health care legislation, again.

Watch out! Another runaway Toyota.

Biden tells off Israelis in Israel.

Andy Richter is a professor of show business.

La Lohan can’t work, so she sues babies.

The popcorn you are eating has been pissed in. Film at 11.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has in the past expounded on the architectural/sculputral style he likes to call “Totalitarian Gothic.” He first introduced this term to you all in this post in Sept 2006. For those of you who have visited Washington DC, you will see quite a bit of “Totalitarian Gothic” sculpture and building. Afterall, the Federal City as we know it was built in large part in the 1930s, when Totalitarian Gothic was pretty chic.

Now, you may have gathered that your Maximum Leader is a fan of Totalitarian Gothic. Well… He is and he isn’t. In some circumstances it is fine. But in others it is not.

Which brings him to the object of this post…

The impending memorial to Martin Luther King Jr. on the Mall in Washington. Not exactly on the Mall but pretty close, near the Tidal Basin across from the Jefferson Memorial actually…

According to the Washington Post, the monument to MKL is ready for pickup in China.

If you have no idea what this monument looks like you can see a graphic by clicking here.

Now… Before anyone goes berserk over these comments… Your Maximum Leader is not a racist bastard who doesn’t think Martin Luther King Jr. should have a monument on the Mall in Washington. A monument or other memorial is just fine. Your Maximum Leader just really doesn’t like this one.

So… Where to begin… Let us start back in the 1980s when the Congress of the United States decided to put a statue of MLK up in the Capitol Building along with other great Americans . The bust that was put in the Capitol is here. Now let us look at some of MLK’s company in the Rotunda of the Capitol. Here are: Jackson (in bronze), Garfield (in marble), Reagan (in bronze), and Washington (a bronze replica of the much greater marble which resides in the Virginia State Capitol and which the Federal Government has tried to appropriate from time to time with no success). At the time your Maximum Leader thought that the MLK bust in the Capitol was ugly and not in keeping with the style of monumental statuary in the Capitol building. Now he finds himself harping on the exact same issue, only this time the problem is writ large.

Writ 30 feet large to be exact.

The MLK monument near the tidal basin has a lot of problems in your Maximum Leader’s opinion. The first one is scale. If you clicked onto that graphic you would see that the statue of Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial is 19 feet tall. The MLK monument is 30 feet tall. That is just too big for a statue on the mall. Way too big.

Now you may be saying, “Hold on there, the Lincoln Memorial building is much taller than 30 feet. Shouldn’t you compare apples to apples?” Fair point. If you want to consider the whole MLK monument as a you would a building, then you are faced with a classical temple versus a large rock with a man coming out of it.

The scale of the large rock with a man coming out of it is just too great. It will dwarf many of the trees (cherry trees in many cases) in the area. Also, in terms of human scale it is not approachable. One of the many things that works with the Lincoln (or Jefferson) Memorial is that you are faced with an impressive ediface, but then the statue is scaled down proportionally and you can “feel” closer to it. The MLK carving is just huge. It will be five times taller than a tall man. Five times taller! Not only that, MLK will just be staring off into the distance above the visitor. The strength of the Lincoln statue is that he looks down to the visitor. Your Maximum Leader just can’t think of a way in which the MLK monument works on the National Mall. Not a one. It is too big, too impersonal, and too out-of-place.

When your Maximum Leader first saw the MLK monument the first thought that popped into his head was, “Dear God. It looks like something Kim Jong-il would have built in honor of his father, Kim Il-sung.” It does. The impersonal face. The crossed arms. The imperious look. It does seem like a monument more akin to a communist dictatorship than a democratic republic. (Indeed, in the MWO expect to see many similarly scaled monuments to your Maximum Leader. They will be omnipresent.)

Our National Mall is a communal space for the Nation. The monuments that adorn it should reflect, in scale, in material, and in composition our democratic ideals. The Lincoln Memorial harkens back to classical Athens. The Jefferson Memorial harkens back to Republican Rome. The WWII Memorial is a bit of a stretch with its monumental arches, but it fits closely enough to be passable. The Washington Monument is a bit out of place, but it is the distinctive mark (along with the Capitol Dome) on the city skyline. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t see how an artificial mountain with a man coming out of it will work in this communal space.

Your Maximum Leader doesn’t like it. No he doesn’t. Not one bit.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is preparing for more snow. He is sick of the stuff frankly. He made a last trip to the store to get some extra charcoal. This is in case the power at the Villainschloss goes out, he’ll grill food. Sadly, his back-up generator will not be able to be repaired for about 2 weeks. That, put succinctly, sucks. But there is naught he can do but complain about it.

Your Maximum Leader noted that Venice’s Carnival started this week. (NB: Effectively, Mardi Gras in New Orleans began Sunday night.) Sadly, your Maximum Leader is not in Venice, but snowbound in Fredericksburg. According to a Reuters report, there is still hotel availability at some higher-end Venice hotels right now. The bad economy seems to be putting a little bit of a damper on the celebration. You can see a Reuters video report on this story by clicking here.

The snow that is headed towards your Maximum Leader has not yet arrived. It was originally expected to begin about midday. It looks now as though it will not start until later this evening…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader hasn’t had much fun this weekend. The snows started on Friday night. The Villainschloss lost power at about 9pm Friday night. So your Maximum Leader went to engage the backup generators. Guess what happened?

Nothing.

The back-up generator was non-functioning. Your Maximum Leader tried a few different fixes he could think of. But no go.

Lucky for us the power came back on after about two hours. Your Maximum Leader went to sleep and woke up Saturday morning to the snowstorm continuing in full force. Guess what happened then… About 5pm on Saturday the power went out again. This time it didn’t come back until about 5pm on Sunday. By that time your Maximum Leader and the family had dug out the driveway, sidewalks, and porch. Your Maximum Leader had also chopped wood for the ole woodstove.

Your Maximum Leader is sore all over. Did he mention that he slipped on some ice today and scratched his knee something horrible. (He didn’t know it was bad until Mrs. Villain said “Is that blood all over your pants?”)

Needless to say the prospect of 6-12 more inches tomorrow/Wednesday is not anything to which he’s looking forward.

Hope you are warm and injury free.

Carry on.