Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader always enjoys the Wall Street Journal opinion pages. They have thoughtful commentary and are almost always educational.

To wit: today’s piece by John Steele Gordon entitled “A Short Banking History of the United States.” In the piece Gordon lays the blame for the current financial crisis squarely at the feet of the responsible party… Here is the quotation:

How could the richest and most productive economy the world has ever known have a financial system so prone to periodic and catastrophic break down? One answer is the baleful influence of Thomas Jefferson.

Read the whole piece.

Although your Maximum Leader doubts that either John McCain or Barack Obama will start casting aspersions at TJ, your Maximum Leader will.

(Shakes fist at sky) “Damn your eyes Thomas Jefferson for our current banking crisis!”

There you go…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader likes Rob Long’s writings in National Review and NRO very much. That guy is funny. Did you catch his piece today?

Super Size that Rescue.

Great piece from opening:

McDonald’s, as you know, maintained a complex and highly-leveraged commodity futures operation, and recent events in the financial markets have made our risk-management strategies impossible to maintain. All along, as we faced a softening demand for our products and in the wake of our increased exposure to losses in the commodity derivatives market of beef futures, hog swaps, egg instruments, bun swaptions, potato debt flotations, and partially-hydrogenated vegetable oil puts, it was our intention to reach some productive and effective understanding with our creditors and our business partners. Unfortunately, due to market conditions, that was not to be.

Effective close of business today, the McDonald’s Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Federal Department of Agriculture. They wisely — and quickly — stepped in to provide management with a credit facility, in exchange for ownership of the company. If you’ve seen the recent news about what the Treasury Department has done for AIG, the troubled insurance giant, you’ll understand what happened here. It’s basically the same, but with fries.

Read the whole thing. It is good.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sees that those damned people in Shelbyville just keep doing things to make our lives more interesting…

By more interesting your Maximum Leader means more interesting (and painful) for people other than him. You might think from the tone of these lines so far that your Maximum Leader might be ready to engage in a little schadenfreude. Well you would be wrong. For he gets no joy in reading that a man might have had his penis “accidentially” removed while in surgery. Apparently the poor bastard on the receiving end of his johnson being removed was in surgery to have a procedure done so that he wouldn’t suffer from swelling. (NB: isn’t “swelling” normal for that particular appendage?) While the surgeon was poking around he thought he detected cancer and swiftly removed the whole cancerous appendage.

One hopes the biopsy results were positive.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader (as you are certainly tired of hearing) is still having PC problems so his posting has been infrequent. He has also been watching lots of TV recently. That is generally a bad thing, but he’s been watching mostly baseball, football, The Sarah Conner Chronicles, Burn Notice and True Blood. Between TV and family, he’s been neglecting you all - his reason for blogging… So… To bring things up to date… Here is some short pithy commentary for you…

Saw the President on Tee Vee last night. He still can’t deliver a speech worth a damn. But he gave a fine (short) rationale for what he wants to see done. No major complaints on that.

McCain suspending campaign to work on economy. Think it is a bad idea in general. Too easy to cast as partisan and desperate move. Presidents should multi-task. But it does show that McCain is serious in his beliefs about “putting country first.” He should (at least) keep ads on the TV.

Bailout package… Very complex issue. Need to do something to get credit moving again. Probably should find way to buy up non-performing financial instruments. Just the ones that aren’t performing - not the ones that are “sub-prime” or could prove to be non-performing. Buying assets (mortgage backed securities) and holding them seems like a reasonable solution as the assets will presumably be more valuable in future. Your Maximum Leader suspects that some closer oversight (ie: regulation) of investment banks is going to have to be done in future.

Postpone the Presidential debate on Friday? Bad move. Later in season makes gaffes harder to recover from. Just do it and get this party started. Your Maximum Leader overheard someone in coffee shop yesterday say “Isn’t this election gonna be over really soon? I can’t stand much more.” Ditto that.

Obama and Biden will be holding a rally in Fredericksburg this weekend - Saturday afternoon… Your Maximum Leader might actually go and see them. Emphasis on the “might.” He might choose to stay in the Villainschloss bitterly clinging to his guns and faith.

Nats gonna lose 100 games. Damnation.

Mets gonna blow playoffs? Likely. Cheering.

Packers will (likely) win the NFC North and make the playoffs. Cheering.

Sex robots? Why… Yes please… Make mine a Sophia Loren (circa 1960) model… Or a Jennifer Love Hewitt (circa 2005) model… Humm… One wonders how the licensing would work for that?

Get your flu shots. Don’t be a statistic.

Be afraid… Chinese in space…

Please keep your pants on. The doughnuts will be right out.

Your Maximum Leader knows lots of people will mock this story about Sarah Palin recieving a blessing against witchcraft. Hell… You know… Your Maximum Leader will accept whatever blessings you choose to bestow on him. Just to be clear, he might think some things you might bless him for could be silly… But he’ll accept the blessings in the spirit in which they were given. Perhaps we could all stand to be a little more grateful…

Just to be clear… Your unstinting loyalty to your Maximum Leader is also appreciated. (Potentially silly) blessings notwithstanding.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is a regular reader of George Will’s columns (and has been for years). He doesn’t quote Will too much here. This is a factor of your Maximum Leader becoming an irregular posting type of fellow as well as the fact as Will gets so much coverage on other sites.

Well… Your Maximum Leader is citing Will today. Not for any specific thing he said in his column today. But rather because of the tenor and tone of the ending of his column today. It struck your Maximum Leader as filled with a deep melancholy - which he shares with Will. Here it goes:

What is it about August? The First World War began in August 1914. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact effectively announced the Second World War in August 1939. Iraq, a fragment of the collapse of empires precipitated by August 1914, invaded Kuwait in August 1990.

This year’s August upheaval coincides, probably not coincidentally, with the world’s preoccupation with that charade of international comity, the Olympics. For only the third time in 72 years (Berlin 1936, Moscow 1980), the Games are being hosted by a tyrannical regime, the mind of which was displayed in the opening ceremonies featuring thousands of drummers, each face contorted with the same grotesquely frozen grin. It was a tableau of the miniaturization of the individual and the subordination of individuality to the collective. Not since the Nazi’s 1934 Nuremberg rally, which Leni Riefenstahl turned into the film “Triumph of the Will,” has tyranny been so brazenly tarted up as art.

A worldwide audience of billions swooned over the Beijing ceremony. Who remembers 1934? Or anything.

Your Maximum Leader remembers George. He remembers and has been mentioning this very fact to his children every night.

Carry on.

Greeting, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is making a note to himself. The note says don’t take a long distance bus trip in Canada. If you do you might be snoozing on the bus and one of the other passengers suddenly decides to stab you and cut off your head with a hunting knife.

Really… It happened.

Your Maximum Leader supposes that he understands the immedate reaction of the other passengers and bus driver to flee the bus and get away from the killer. But at some point wouldn’t you think that someone ought to have tried to intercede before the attack got to the severed head stage? Your Maximum Leader doesn’t know how he would have responded if he were there. But it appears as though only after the bus was cleared did the driver and some others go back in to try and stop the attacker.

Awful stuff.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is not a whining socialist. He is not a gamy-handed collectivist. He is not a isolationist. That said, he is in favor of the government keeping some people employed for their whole lives. Those people would be the nuclear scientists working on building, improving, and keeping going America’s nuclear arsenal. A good number of those people work at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Some of those people are being laid off. Per the Associated Press:

Because of budget cuts and higher costs, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory laid off 440 employees May 22 and 23. Over the past 2 1/2 years, attrition and layoffs have reduced the work force of 8,000 by about 1,800 altogether.

According to a list obtained by The Associated Press, about 60 of the recently laid-off workers were engineers, around 30 were physicists and about 15 were chemists. Some, but not all, were involved in nuclear weapons work or nonproliferation efforts, and all had put in at least 20 years at the lab.

Some lawmakers and others said they fear the loss of important institutional knowledge about designing warheads and detecting whether other countries are going nuclear.

Also, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said job reductions at Lawrence Livermore and two other big U.S. weapons labs represent “a national security danger point.” These unemployed experts might take their skills overseas, Feinstein said.

[…]

The possibility is also on the mind of the nation’s top nuclear weapons official, National Nuclear Security Administration chief Tom D’Agostino.

“Always in a situation where people leave under less-than-ideal circumstances, we worry about that, and it’s something I assure you we’re looking at closely,” D’Agostino said. “I’m always concerned about the counterintelligence part of our mission, and we have an active program to go make sure we understand where we’re vulnerable and where we’re not.”

Asked to elaborate, NNSA spokesman Bryan Wilkes said the agency is “always on guard for foreign entities approaching our employees, active or retired, but it’s their responsibility to alert us to those circumstances.”

The NNSA is aware of no instance in which a U.S. nuclear weapons scientist had gone to work overseas, he said.

He said the agency regards the possibility of a hostile government picking up laid-off workers as “highly unlikely,” in part because these are American citizens who have responsibly held high-level clearances for many years, and because federal law provide stiff penalties — which range as high as life in prison — for divulging nuclear secrets.

[…]

Lawmakers and others have expressed concern that wave after wave of work force reductions will diminish the lab’s expertise. D’Agostino said he could not guarantee that national security would not be harmed.

With a self-imposed nuclear test ban in place since 1992, maintenance of the warhead stockpile — Lawrence Livermore’s top responsibility — is performed on supercomputers. So is the task of designing a new generation of warhead, which Lawrence Livermore won the right to do last year.

The layoffs have reduced the lab’s roster of experts with invaluable experience they had gleaned from taking part in actual nuclear tests, Sale [a laid-off physicist who until recently worked at Livermore] and others said. “Designing, building and seeing a device go off is very different from designing a device and handing it to a computer jockey,” Sale said.

Democratic Rep. Jerry McNerney, whose district includes part of the lab, said the stakes are especially high as the United States tries to divine through science what other countries are doing inside their weapons programs.

[…]

Los Alamos, the New Mexico laboratory that built the atom bomb during World War II, cut its work force last year by about 550 through retirements and attrition, and Sandia, also largely in New Mexico, plans to shed dozens of workers.

Congress cut $100 million from Lawrence Livermore’s budget in the fiscal 2008 budget, and the lab has been hit with an additional $180 million in unexpected costs from its transfer last year to a new management company, lab spokeswoman Susan Houghton said.

So it seems that your Maximum Leader joins California Senator Diane Feinstein (D) in her concern over these lay-offs. Your Maximum Leader and Senator Feinstein doesn’t see too many issues on which he and the Senator agree. (Although it is possible that there are on plenty of mundane issues that never bubble up into the media on which they agree.)

Your Maximum Leader is a free-trader. The downsizing of American Airlines, United Airlines, GM and a host of other companies don’t scare your Maximum Leader. He is disappointed that these companies haven’t found ways to get healthy and competitive faster; but those are the breaks. That said, your Maximum Leader does fear that our national security is too seriously jeopardized by the outsourcing of our defence related industries. He is also worried about what is happening to our nuclear scientists. He doesn’t advocate permanent employment as policy. But he is willing to make an exception for people who can help a hostile power develop the weapons needed to destroy us.

Before you think your Maximum Leader has gone all soft on you… Yes, he knows that brainpower alone isn’t enough to get a bomb. You need materials, specially engineered equipment, etc etc. Let it be known that your Maximum Leader isn’t convinced that non-proliferation protocols work well. He doesn’t want to tempt fate by letting our brain-power proliferate too…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader probably loves rice more than anyone else in his family. He was quite distressed recently when he went shopping at one of the local “warehouse/price club” stores and couldn’t buy the 20lb bag of rice he was searching for. In fact all they had were 5 lb boxes of Minute Rice. Your Maximum Leader wonders if Minute Rice is actually rice. Anyhoo… Lucky for him he was able to nab a 25 bag of rice at another store.

Your Maximum Leader still isn’t sure what exactly caused the run on rice in this nation. The US is a great exporter of rice. There must have been some supply chain glitch that caused rice to be hard to find (in bulk at least - there didn’t seem to be a problem if you just wanted a small bag of rice).

That said, your Maximum Leader does know that in other rice producing nations - particularly those in Asia - there have been a number of factors that have contributed to rice price spikes and rice shortages. Drought has been the major factor. Your Maximum Leader read that one of the hardest hit nations was the Philippines. The Philippines has been an net importer of rice for decades now. And in this rice crunch the Philippines has been suffering. Your Maximum Leader read, with some pleasure, that Japan has agreed to sell down some of its rice surplus to the Philippines. According to the piece in the Washington Post, Japan has agreed to sell 200,000 tons of rice to the government of the Philippines. Sadly, that only puts a small dent in the problem the Philippines has. According to the reporting at the WaPo, the 200,000 tons will last about six days at current rates of consumption.

Now you might think that your Maximum Leader would want to comment on the problems of the Philippines in getting rice. That might be a good topic on which to ruminate, but that isn’t the part of the article that got your Maximum Leader to thinking. This is part that got him thinking:

The deal with Japan, though, is substantially different from the purchase agreements Manila is making with Southeast Asian countries. Japan is selling off imported rice that its people do not eat and that its government imports only because it must — under international trade rules.

Although Japan grows far more rice than it needs, it has to import about 700,000 tons of the grain a year under the terms of a 1993 World Trade Organization agreement, which obligated Tokyo to open its protected rice market to foreign competition.

The stockpile of imported rice peaked two years ago at 1.9 million tons, when Japan began using about 25,000 tons a month to feed livestock.

The emergence this spring of an acute rice shortage seems to have provided Japan with a way of unloading the unwanted rice in a way that is both acceptable to its international trading partners and good for its image.

Under WTO rules, Japan needed the approval of the United States — principal supplier of the rice it reluctantly imports — before it could reexport the grain. The Bush administration said Friday that for the sake of easing world rice prices it would back the plan to sell the stockpile.

Japanese consumers, for the most part, do not like the taste of imported rice. Even if they did, they could not buy it in Japan. Their government, to protect local rice growers, keeps it off the market and stores it in refrigerated warehouses. Japanese-grown rice costs at least double the price of imported rice.

This is one of those pieces of international trade pacts that just gets your Maximum Leader fuming. Now, your Maximum Leader realizes that American rice farmers have wanted to sell rice in Japan for decades. Further he realizes that the Japanese shouldn’t protect their rice farmers in the way they do. But to have the Japanese government buy rice and stockpile it - and eventually feed it to livestock - is just ridiculous. There are many countries that need rice - hummm… Like the Philippines or Bangladesh. Those rice importers would seem to be better targets for American rice farmers.

Your Maximum Leader also wonders about the whole “Japanese don’t like the taste of imported rice” bit. This could be because the rice that the US tries to sell in Japan is a longer grain rice with less starch than the rice you traditionally find in Japan. Your Maximum Leader bets that if American farmers grew “japanese” breeds of rice and tried to sell those in Japan the response would be better. This assumes that the market could be opened.

This appears to be another example of where well-intentioned politicians get together and make bad trade pacts (or laws) and wind up badly interfering in market functions that shouldn’t have been interfered with.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sees that the lovely Phoenix has chimed in on his recent Valentines Day post. Your Maximum Leader would like to get Phoenix and Mrs Villain together for a little while. Perhaps Phoenix’s love of firearms can somehow be transmitted to Mrs Villain. Alas, your Maximum Leader’s lovely wife is not a big firearms fan. Although we did go shooting at Nemacolin Resort not too long ago. She claims to have enjoyed it - although your Maximum Leader has his doubts.

And just in case you were wondering… Yes… Men do love flannel. It is special enough and sexy enough to be a Valentines Day gift. Frankly it is special enough and sexy enough to be a suitable gift any time. (Although your Maximum Leader would say that it is a better gift in fall and winter.) You know what is sexy ladies? Allow your Maximum Leader to tell you. The most sexy thing out there is (obviously) a woman wearing a Naked Villainy t-shirt, tank top, or even a Naked Villainy sweatshirt. If you are not going to wear the Naked Villainy swag… The NEXT most sexy thing out there for a woman to wear is her man’s flannel shirt. And just in case you aren’t clear on your Maximum Leader’s meaning here. The ONLY thing the woman should be wearing is her man’s flannel shirt. Since there might be chirren readin’ this here blog, your Maximum Leader will not go into further detail. But you can see where this is going? Can’t you?

By the way… Your Maximum Leader is fond of LL Bean’s (poorly named) Scotch Plaid flannel shirt in the Lindsay tartan. Your Maximum Leader likes Lindsay because his own clan is very close to Lindsay (but not Lindsay). He further says that the shirt is poorly named because “Scotch” is a distilled beverage and “Scottish” is the adjective that one would use to describe things from or invoking being from or like Scotland. So it should be a Scottish Plaid shirt…

Anyhoo…

Robbo also is on-board with disliking the consumerist spin to Valentines Day. But in good Robbo fashion he puts forth his assertion in true Oxford Union fashion. Speaking of the Oxford Union… Have you read about the recent presidential election held by the Oxford Union? Sexism. Racism. Voter irregularities. Good stuff… Go and read all about it.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t do much in the way of photos on this site. Not much at all. That is in part because once that photo is out on the interwebs you never know what is going to come of it. Your Maximum Leader refuses to post photos of his children on the internet for this reason (indeed, he doesn’t even email photos often).

So… It was with great interest that he read this peice on the Washington Post. The piece describes how big corporations are lifting photos from the internet to use in their advertising. Here are some excerpts:

Under the banner of “intellectual property,” record labels warn you not to bootleg their songs. Hollywood studios warn you not to download their movies. Intellectual property has lately seemed the concern of corporations trying to protect the artist from the grabby public.

But in an increasingly user-generated world where the public is the artist, sometimes it’s the big boys who get grabby. And the questions that arise are about ownership, but they are also about fairness, and changing culture, and ultimately, the search for authenticity.

[…]

Photographers (even amateur ones) automatically own the rights to their own work (even online). That means others can’t use a photo without permission.

But sometimes, through “fair use,” it actually is okay to use a photo without permission. Fair use can include scholarship or parody, and is determined by a number of criteria.

Further: sometimes, individuals… can decide to give away just part of their control. For example, permitting use of a photograph as long as the source is credited.

[…]

Says Lawrence Lessig, the Stanford legal scholar who created Creative Commons, when asked about the issue of corporations borrowing photos: “There’s really no excuse for [these companies] except that they think it’s not important to protect the rights of the amateur.”

[…]

What’s noteworthy…, Lessig says, “is that bloggers, a community typically associated with piracy, are rallying in support of copyright.”

He says average individuals are increasingly thinking of themselves as artists, whose work has value — or at least deserves respect. Lessig predicts that as the average Joes have their own material appropriated, it will eventually result in better behavior from both individuals and corporations.

Very interesting stuff. Your Maximum Leader knows that he’s used some photos without attribution. He does know better (and does try to provide attribution - in the form of a link mostly). Appropriation of web images by big corporations without trying to get permission is wrong, in your Maximum Leader’s mind at least.

Be careful with your images people….

Carry on.

Huckabee victory
Evangelical power
Beware New Hampshire

Moneybags Romney
Outspends seventeen to one
Not good investment

AWOL John McCain
Chosen by thirteen percent
Will he rock Concord?

Somnolent Thompson
Fails to excite Iowans
Law and Order bore

Ron Paul – ten percent!
Libertarian triumph
Stoners celebrate

Hillary derailed
Who’s inevitable now?
Obama, momma!

Demagogue Edwards
Own success puts the lie to
Two Americas

Richardson, Biden
Dodd are dead on arrival
The Veepstakes begin

Via Volokh:

The last post of a milblogger.

The last two paragraphs choked me up.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader isn’t sure what to think of this week. Today certainly felt like a Monday, although it was definately a Wednesday. The abbreviated week is nice, but it does seem to upset (on some level) the regular flow of time…

So… Iowa caucuses tomorrow… Predictions? Anyone? Here you go… On the Democratic side: Obama wins narrowly over Hillary Clinton. Edwards a distant third. Richardson fourth. Other Dems decide to call it quits after results. Four way race going into New Hampshire. On the Republican side: Romney narrowly edges out Huckabee. McCain polls third. Thompson fourth. Rudy fifth. The five (and Ron Paul) remain in contention in New Hampshire. Republican field will not clear out until February.

Your know… Your Maximum Leader has a “thing.” Actually, he has many “things” but this one relates to Egg Nog. He doesn’t think that one should drink Egg Nog after the Feast of the Epiphany. He doesn’t know why this is, but it is. He has a fresh half gallon of Egg Nog he bought right after Christmas. Alas, his Egg Nog consumption was low over the New Years holiday. He now is going to have to go through lots of Egg Nog in a few days.

Your Maximum Leader’s lovely wife, Mrs Villain, buys skim or fat-free milk when she does the grocery shopping. Your Maximum Leader mostly buys 1% (or sometimes whole - or what passes for whole in stores now - when he buys whole milk he pretends he just grabbed the gallon from “the wrong shelf” when asked why he bought whole milk). Now he will urge Mrs Villain to buy 1% milk at the store… For the sake of your Maximum Leader’s prostate.

Your Maximum Leader believes that all-you-can-eat buffets are - essentially - wagers. Bets if you will. The restaurant is betting that they can prepare more food than you can eat (and make a profit) for the price they charge. In most cases, given the quality of buffet food, it is a bet the restaurants win. Then again there are people like Ricky Labit. Ricky apparently doesn’t like losing bets with all-you-can-eat buffets.

And finally… In a sign that “science” has in fact reached to new lows… Apparently a bunch of intrepid researchers have determined that male macaques “pay” for sex with female macaques. Yes… female macaques are, apparently, all whores who wontonly exchange intercourse for… wait for it… grooming. According to the piece:

Michael Gumert of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore made the discovery in a 20-month investigation into 50 long-tailed macaques in Kalimantan Tengah, Indonesia, New Scientist reports on Saturday.

On average, females had sex 1.5 times per hour.

But this rate jumped to 3.5 times per hour immediately after the female had been groomed by a male — and her partner of choice was likely to be the hunky monkey that did the grooming.

Market forces also acted on the value of the transaction.

If there were several females in the area, the cost of buying sex would drop dramatically — a male could “buy” a female for just eight minutes of nit-picking.

But if there were no females around, he would have to groom for up to 16 minutes before sex was offered.

The work supports the theory that biological market forces can explain social behaviour, the British weekly says.

Your Maximum Leader isn’t sure that the males are “paying” for sex in the sense of prostitution - as seems to be implied in the article. The males are more “exchanging” sex for the primate equivilent of spa treatments. (Try paying Trixie down on the corner in spa treatments and see how far that gets you…)

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader realizes that in this very space he (and his good buddy Smallholder) has joked about feeding his (our?) enemies (or others who have done him (us) wrong) to Smallholder’s pigs. We, of course, do this in good humour and for a laugh. Your Maximum Leader does know that pigs are greedy little buggers who would just as soon devour you in an instant as oink for a cob of corn. Your Maximum Leader love pigs (and thinks that they are the most perfect non-pet domesticated animal in all God’s creation), but knows that they have a nasty streak…

Apparently others know this too… To wit, the case of Robert “Willie” Pickton of Port Coquitlam British Columbia. Mr Pickton was just convicted of the murder of six women from the Vancouver area. He may also be responsible for the deaths of up to 70 women. According to the Reuters article:

Pickton is accused of killing 26 Vancouver prostitutes, and prosecutors say they are preparing for a second trial to deal with the remaining 20 murder charges.

Pickton, 58, lured the women to his farm in the Vancouver suburb of Port Coquitlam with money and drugs, killed them, and cut up the bodies and disposed of the remains using the pigs and a rendering plant.

Investigators found human remains on the farm, including severed skulls and feet. A woman who lived briefly in Pickton’s trailer testified she saw him cutting up a body in the middle of the night.

Jurors also viewed a taped jailhouse conversation in which Pickton told an undercover officer after his February 2002 arrest that he had killed 49 women and planned to make it 50.

Pickton’s legal defense team argued the human remains did not prove he was the killer and that police ignored other suspects. Pickton did not testify during the trial and rarely showed emotion.

The jury’s failure to convict Pickton of first degree murder meant it did not agree with prosecutors that he planned the murders in advance.

To your Maximum Leader this sounds as though the prosecutors weren’t doing their job very well, or that this Pickton fellow had a brilliant defence team. Since this article comprises the whole of what your Maximum Leader knows of this case, he will leave it to more learned fellows (and he’s thinking Skippy here) to fill in that which he doesn’t know.

It is really too bad that Canada is so civilized that they can’t execute people… Or give out non-concurrent life sentances for mulitple murders…

Carry on.

President Bush has caught a great deal of flak for vetoing the SCHIP program. He may very well hate poor people, but I don’t think this veto was driven by a hatred of wee Horatio Algers.

I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but:

George was right.

Please don’t take that as an endorsement of his asinine leadership. When Bush claimed that he was vetoing the bill because her was financially responsible, I laughed at his dishonesty. The drug hand-out to seniors was twenty times more expensive than the SCHIP. The real difference is that old people can vote and poor kids can’t.

However, the SCHIP program was too generous. Setting the bar at three times the poverty level was way to high. Supposedly a family of four with an income of 60 odd thousand dollars is within three multiples of the poverty level. As George Will points out, when the median income is 48 thousand, saying that the bill is to help poor people is silly.

The numbers projected for its cost were based on adding uninsured kids to the system. The real cost would have been much more. Our Congress, being economic retards, failed to understand that other people might react to incentives.

Economics, after all, is the study of human responses to incentives.

Let me ’splain.

I’m a public school teacher and a farmer. My wife prepares taxes during tax season.

We also pay $330 a month in health insurance through my school job. The school system kicks in about twice that, so the dollar value of my health insurance is close to $1000 a month. If we only got insurance for ourselves and left the kids off the bill, our contribution would drop to $140/month.

We would have qualified for SCHIP. I earn 50k as a teacher, 5k as a farmer, and my wife pulls in around 5k during tax season. We are withing three multiples of the poverty level for a family of five.

Mrs. Smallholder is a bit to the left of your humble Smallholder. She was enraged by Bush’s veto. I argued, respectfully of course, that old George was right (even a blind pig occasionally finds a chesnut). I pointed out that we would qualify. Mrs. Smallholder said that we wouldn’t join the system because we already have health coverage for the kids. Your humble son of the soil replied that we’d save over two thousand dollars a year - of course we would take it.

And here’s where I got in trouble. I linked children’s insurance to drought payments to farmers. Mrs. Smallholder, you see, has been after me to fill out paperwork to claim our share of “drought emergency” payments. Sweet Seasons Farm doesn’t have a drought emergency. I stock appropriately and don’t overgraze. I’ll be grazing deep into December. But the heavy hand of government subsidies pays you per cow owned. I find this abhorrent. The government is basically subsidizing overstocking and erosion and the term emergency is a joke. We have had an “emergency” four of the last five years. So I refuse to take the government dime.

Don’t think I’m too noble. It is easy to take a principled stand to turn down $280. If I owned a hundred cows, I would probably take a hit from Uncle Sam’s breast.

So I told Mrs. Smallholder that if she wanted me to take drought insurance then she would of course save $2000 by shifting the kids into socialized health care. Best of all, her mother agreed: “You pay your taxes. Take every dime to which you are entitled.”

Incentives.

It is all about incentives.

If you give away health insurance, many families will drop their expensive employer-provided plans and glom on to the government teat. Anyone who tells you otherwise doesn’t understand economics or human nature.