Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader knows that President Obama has said that he wants to focus on the problems that really affect Americans. Your Maximum Leader will suggest that since we are wasting stimulus money left and right we waste some money in a good way. And he knows a problem in need of a fix.

America armed, but guns not loaded.

Yup. We are in a huge ammunition crisis. Have you tried to buy ammo recently? Yikes! It is hard to come by and expensive. Your Maximum Leader should probably sell some of his stash of Russian-made 7.62 ammo. He’s got more than he’ll ever use (short of him becoming a solider-of-fortune or the coming of the zombie apocalypse).

Actually… We don’t need the government helping on this. Market forces are at work. Factories working 24/7. Prices reflecting demand. It is almost like an invisible hand is guiding the market…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is still funkified. In a bad way. He’s contemplating blaming Kanye West. But honestly other than what he’s read on the interwebs recently he’s doesn’t know a damn thing about Kanye West. He appears to be dating some bald woman - who other than her baldness and rash of tattoos would be pretty attractive. He seems to drink a lot too. Oh yeah. He’s a jackass too.

But your Maximum Leader’s funky mood is not likely related at all to Kanye…

Since your Maximum Leader is all out of sorts he hasn’t felt like blogging… But if he were to blog about politics and current events recently he’s probably write something similar to the two most recent posts from everyone’s favorite blogger, Skippy.

In the first post to which your Maximum Leader will direct you, Skippy discusses the stupidity of the Obama Administration’s position on trade with China. Your Maximum Leader is a free-trader and someone who believes in living up to treaty obligations. So many of Skippy’s critiques of the Bush (and now perhaps Obama) Administration’s positions on trade strike a chord with him. The prospect of opening a trade war in the middle of a deep recession with our major creditor nation seems like… How does one say it? A bad move? It just keeps getting worse and worse for the ole US of A doesn’t it? Sometimes the best course is to keeps your wits and steer a straight and steady course. Health care reform/takeovers and trade wars in the middle of a downturn when confidence is already shot isn’t a good move.

The second post to which your Maximum Leader will direct you is the whole Conservative vs. Republican divide. As time has gone by your Maximum Leader has realized that he is more and more a “conservative” and less and less a “Republican.” He’d consider voting for Libertarians, but they are a little wacky for his tastes. The only two items with which your Maximum Leader will have to respectfully disagree with Skippy in this post are these. While it is absolutely true that Reagan spent piles of money without doing much to try and balance a budget, the overriding plan was to defeat the Soviet Union. Once that was done budget balancing would become a higher priority. The second minor quibble is that there are plenty of conservatives in the Republican party, but they just don’t seem to do much in terms of directing the debate.

Your Maximum Leader hopes his funky mood will disappear soon.

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 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 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.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t know if you happened to catch this article about travails of Dave Carroll and the Sons of Maxwell.

Apparently the baggage handlers at O’Hare played catch (poorly) with Dave’s guitar. United didn’t want to pay up for damages…

Dave is a musician… So he wrote a song about the ordeal.

They also made a video (that you can watch here as it is too wide to embed here).

Good on you Dave Carroll and the Sons of Maxwell… Way to stick it to the legacy carriers…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has been spending time with Mrs Villain as she is picking new appliances and flooring for the Villainschloss. Last night your Maximum Leader spent his quality bloggy time at Sears trying to get that elusive extra 10% off of a front-loading washing machine.

Oh the thrills…

Your Maximum Leader doesn’t have much to say about the major stories of the day… But here are a few quick thoughts…

First off… Your Maximum Leader has grown weary of the Michael Jackson tributes. He doesn’t plan on watching any of the tribute today. Indeed, he’ll miss as much as he can and is able to given the huge amount of news coverage. Your Maximum Leader feels pity towards Michael Jackson. With the preponderance of news coverage given to the story his pity is turning to disgust. He doesn’t want to feel disgust towards Michael Jackson…

Secondly… Sarah Palin. Your Maximum Leader has never been a strong bandwagoneer for Governor Palin. He thought that with some time and more experience she could be the type of politician that he could support. She was not ready for the spotlight of a national campaign when John McCain selected her to be the VP choice. He had hoped that she would finish her term as Governor and move into getting different policy experience. (Job at a think-tank. Roving ambassador. Something.) Then she would be ready to more seriously campaign in 2012 or 2016.

That doesn’t appear to be plan now. Your Maximum Leader can’t get himself past one word now with Sarah Palin. That word is quitter. She is a quitter. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t care what the pressures are on her. She was elected to be the Governor of Alaska. She has a duty to serve out her term. If your Maximum Leader were an Alaskan citizen he’d be spitting mad. As it is, he is just done with Sarah Palin. (Not that he was ever with her in the way that so many are.) He can’t get past the quitting. Sure she’s been dealt a bad hand. The press loves to go after her and it would be hard to just “go back to being Governor.” But that is what she needed to do. Your Maximum Leader would be angry as hell if he were Palin given how her family is being mistreated in the press. But the solution is not to quit but to hunker down and do the best job you can as Governor and then move to the next stage of your career. If you can’t handle the horrible attacks on your person and family that comes with national politics, just finish your term and quietly fade away. Someone with half a brain should have told her that if she has any aspirations to higher office then she do the right thing - which she didn’t. Sorry Sarah, but your Maximum Leader doesn’t approve.

Thirdly… Your Maximum Leader’s beloved Washington Nationals Baseball Club are showing some signs of life and improvement. He thinks that they are better now than they were a few weeks ago. They still suffer from a crappy bullpen. But even there some minor improvements can be seen. He hopes that his predicition that the Nats will lose fewer than 90 games will come true… But it is likely that the Nats will be in the 95-105 loss category this year. That is an improvement over losing more than 120 and becoming (officially) the worst team in history…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader and his lovely wife spend a lovely long weekend at the Nemacolin Resort (with a brief foray to Pittsburgh for the Pirates/Royals game on Saturday night). And what has been going on in the meanwhile?

Ed McMahon - dead.
Farrah Fawcett - dead.
Michael Jackson - dead.
Billy Mays - dead.

Great jeezey chreezey!

On the flip side…

Abe Vigoda - lives!

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has been following the goings-on in Iran since the late presidential elections. He has been gobsmacked by the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s claim that the elections couldn’t be rigged. He has also been reading accounts of what has been going on in the streets.

Which brings him to the “Fear Is Gone” page on the Wall Street Journal Editorial page today. You should go and read the accounts that the WSJ is publishing from people in Tehran.

Your Maximum Leader hopes that the protesters and opposition figures are able to move the government. He isn’t sure where he wants the government moved however. (And by “government” he means the Ayatollahs running the country.) He doesn’t forsee the possibility of a full coup that throws out the religious leaders. But some other resolution would seem in order.

This is not to say that a full revolution that does oust the current government and the Ayatollahs would be a bad thing. It is just that it would be such an unpredictable thing. Your Maximum Leader’s inherent distrust of all revolutions (even ones that on their face he wants to wholeheartedly support) is getting to him. If we have learned anything about revolutionary fervor we should know that you can’t predict their outcomes.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sees that there has just been an explosion at a North Carolina factory that produces “Slim Jim” meat-sticks.

Riddle me this… How would you be able to tell the difference between victims and exploded product?

The spicy taste?

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader had a nice weekend. He and Villainette #1 managed to sneak away to DC for a little bit and see the Abraham Lincoln exhibit at the American History Museum on Saturday. That was fun. He also managed to help Mrs Villain clean some of the gutters on the Villainschloss. (They had become filled with tree pollen.)

The whole Villainous family wished fare-thee-wells to his sainted in-laws as they are starting a vacation that will take them to Ecuador, Peru and the Galapagos Islands.

All in all it was a nice weekend.

Your Maximum Leader wonders what will happen this week…

GM is in bankruptcy court now. Your Maximum Leader is sure that the Obama Administration will again play fast and loose with contract law in the restructuring. Of all of the current administration’s policies and actions the handling of the automaker bankruptcies is the most distressing. They have no regard for the law or how the law has been applied for years. It is terribly distressing.

Your Maximum Leader caught some sort of blurb on tv this morning talking all about the Obama’s “date” to New York City over the weekend. Is this just another favorable press story about the Obamas? Is it really news worthy? Speaking of this… Did you read Robert Samuelson’s piece in the WaPo today? The Obama Infatuation. Samuelson writes:

The Obama infatuation is a great unreported story of our time. Has any recent president basked in so much favorable media coverage? Well, maybe John Kennedy for a moment, but no president since. On the whole, this is not healthy for America.

Our political system works best when a president faces checks on his power. But the main checks on Obama are modest. They come from congressional Democrats, who largely share his goals if not always his means. The leaderless and confused Republicans don’t provide effective opposition. And the press — on domestic, if not foreign, policy — has so far largely abdicated its role as skeptical observer.

Obama has inspired a collective fawning. What started in the campaign (the chief victim was Hillary Clinton, not John McCain) has continued, as a study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism shows. It concludes: “President Barack Obama has enjoyed substantially more positive media coverage than either Bill Clinton or George W. Bush during their first months in the White House.”

This comes as no big shocker to anyone of your Maximum Leader’s political persuasion. He does believe it is important to note this in that one suspects that the voices from the center and left will start to sound off against Obama more and more. One hopes that very soon someone of the left will start to open their eyes and look around and realize that they have to be more critical of him if they care at all about the ideals they purport to uphold.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sees that a Pennsylvania Newspaper (The Warren Times Observer) ran a classified ad calling for President Obama to “follow in the steps of Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy!” According to the AP story picked up by the Washington Post no one in the classified section caught the connection between the four presidents listed in the ad. The newspaper is cooperating with authorities (read the Secret Service) to track down the person who placed the ad.

Your Maximum Leader would be willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that the ad was placed on-line through one of those classified ad aggregator websites that so many smaller papers use to allow readers to place ads on-line with little fuss.

Whoever placed the ad is a complete idiot. Your Maximum Leader hopes ill befalls him (and he’s pretty sure that when the Secret Service catches up with the ad-placer ill will befall him).

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader loves himself some Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Yes he does. He’s never been much of a Dunkin Doughnuts guy. Always Krispy Kreme. When that red “hot” sign is on those original doughnuts are just like little edible orgasms.

Apparently those edible orgasms aren’t good for your arteries… or your sewer pipes. To wit: Fairfax County (VA) is suing Krispy Kreme becuase “grease and other waste” from a KK factory are clogging the county sewers. The county claims that the discharges from the factory were so bad that the local sewer pumping station began to smell like doughnuts.

And a sewage pumping station smelling like doughnuts is a negative how exactly?

Your Maximum Leader is hoping that justice (and little bits of edible heaven) prevail in a court of law.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has noticed that this has been a rather eventful week in terms of news. Lots of interesting stuff to comment upon.

The most important happening of the week must be the North Korean nuclear test. One supposes that the election of Barack Obama hasn’t changed too much in terms of US/Korea relations. Is this the “test” that Joe Biden suggested would come in the first six months of the Obama presidency? Could be. Your Maximum Leader isn’t sure that Obama’s reaction has been any different than John McCain’s would have been (or George W. Bush’s for that matter) had he been elected president. It seems like Hillary Clinton and our diplomatic corps are working to get China on board with whatever the long-term plan is going to be. All in all your Maximum Leader seems sort of sanguine on what will go on in the Koreas. It is good to see that South Korea (and US troops there) are on high alert since the North has started being more bellicose than usual. Your Maximum Leader can’t see “our” side starting anything. And if the North decides to “start something” (either at sea or along the DMZ) then the S. Korean/US/UN forces will respond proportionately. It is difficult to imagine a senario that gets out of hand. Although, if things do get out of hand it will be very ugly very quickly with the potential for a million casualties in Seoul alone. This pot will continue to boil slowly for a while yet…

The next biggest story is President Obama’s nomination of Judge Sotomayor to fill Justice Souter’s* seat on the Supreme Court. Your Maximum Leader has been reading the usual suspects (like Volokh) to get more information on Sotomayor. She is about what your Maximum Leader expected of Obama. She will be a strong “activist” and “liberal” justice if confirmed. Some of her past comments concerning the wealth and variety of experiences a hispanic woman would bring to the court (and to the justice system at large) make your Maximum Leader cring. They seem, on their face, to be completely contrary to the notion of “equal justice under law” (the motto that is carved into the very stone of the Supreme Court building). Indeed, her comments remind your Maximum Leader of the moment he knew he was a “judicial conservative.”

Your Maximum Leader hadn’t bothered to think hard about the Supreme Court or its role in our Republic until he got to college. Sure he wanted Reagan to get the judges he wanted because “our side” won the election and that is the way things went. By the fall of 1987 your Maximum Leader was a freshman at college and Robert Bork had just been rejected as a nominee to the Supreme Court. That fall Judge Leon Higginbotham came to speak on campus and your Maximum Leader went to listen to Judge Higginbotham’s speech and lectures. By the end of a question and answer session between students and Judge Higginbotham your Maximum Leader had had an epiphany. The moment that stands out was one where a student was asking Judge Higginbotham about sentencing in drug cases. As part of his answer Judge Higginbotham commented that a white kid from the suburbs of Philadelphia should get a harsher sentence for a coccaine conviction than a black kid from the projects in Philadelphia. His rationale went that the white kid had a different environment where he was better able to know the concequences of his actions, thus should be punished more harshly than the black kid who had a different life experience. Now, your Maximum Leader knows that the judge was speaking hypothetically and very broadly; but the very notion of unequal treatment based on socio-economic grouping (and race one should add) opened your Maximum Leader’s eyes to notions of justice and the role of judges. When your Maximum Leader hears the replayed comments made in the past by Judge Sotomayor, his heckles are raised and he immediately starts opposing her and thinking her a bad choice for the highest bench in the land.

Of course, your Maximum Leader isn’t sure how Republicans can conceivably stop her nomination. Smearing her like Democrats smeared Robert Bork (or Clarence Thomas) doesn’t appear to be an option. It isn’t an option because of the politics of it. None has balls enough to risk being made to look like a bigoted racist - which is how any attack will be countered. Indeed, an interview your Maximum Leader recently saw with Chuck Schumer (Arse - NY) seemed to confirm his suspicions of how the “counterattacks” will come.

Yes… It has not been an uneventful week…

Carry on.

* - A sharp minion and frequent commenter (Hey Maggie!) noted that your Maximum Leader wrote first that Justice Breyer was retiring. Your Maximum Leader knew that it isn’t Breyer but David Souter who is retiring. Your Maximum Leader supposes that it was wishful thinking on his part that he wrote that it was Breyer… Sorry…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minons. Your Maximum Leader is still working on real content here… But until the real content materializes here is something for you…

How about a caption contest? Here is the photo:

You caption the photo. Your Maximum Leader will think of some prize for the lucky winner.

Thanks to our friend Irish Elk for the link that lead us to this photo.

Have at it!

Carry on.