Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is pleased to report that it appears as though the various renovations to the Villainschloss are completed. It is now just a question of moving some stuff around and getting everything back to normal. The renovations have caused the summer to be a bit tense among the whole family. So we are looking forward to a quiet long weekend to get our wa back.

Your Maximum Leader has, for the past few weeks, been storing up items upon which he wanted to comment at length. Alas, he couldn’t find time to do so. Rather than just discarding these items he’s decided to just dump some ideas in one post.

First up… Have any of you been following the abomination that has become the America’s Cup? Your Maximum Leader had some links that he’d planned on sharing. Alas, many of them are no longer functioning as the pieces have moved or changed or expired. To hit the high points… Basically the America’s Cup will be held in the Persian Gulf. The yachts will be trimarans. TRIMARANS! They will also allow motorized winches to be used on board. WTF? Really now… WTF? Your Maximum Leader thought that the requirements for the boats were determined a long time ago - and called for monhulled boats. Your Maximum Leader has only been marginally interested in the America’s Cup at best… And now all these changes have just set him off. It is crap.

Did you happen to notice this bit on the Washington Post concerning the possible discovery of a portrait of William Shakespeare done during the Bard’s lifetime? Fascinating stuff. Your Maximum Leader has seen the “forgery” portrait at the Folger Shakespeare Library and knew about it’s history. That said, these new researches and attempts to establish that the portrait actually shows Shakespeare are pretty interesting. Your Maximum Leader imagines that there is a National Geographic special in this story… Your Maximum Leader’s favorite passage from the article:

The hunt for a likeness of the bard in his heyday has turned up various candidates over the centuries, almost all of them illegitimate. Up to now, the painting with the most credible claim as a life image is the Chandos portrait, the star of London’s National Portrait Gallery. It shows a dusky, writerly-seeming man with receding hair and an earring. But its provenance is unclear. The search is complicated by the fact that a 1770s mania for Shakespeare souvenirs resulted in a spate of good forgeries. The Janssen portrait held by the Folger was thought to be one of those. The “Searching for Shakespeare” exhibit was therefore really a show about likely and, mostly, unlikely contenders. Cobbe and Laing wandered through the viewing, looking at bogus bards, until they arrived at a far wall, on which the Janssen portrait hung, on loan from the Folger. The oil-on-wood is legitimately dated to 1610, but it was discredited in 1937 when new X-ray technology showed the brow had been over-painted to make the sitter bald. It fell from grace under the supposition that it was altered to look more like the Droeshout. In 1988, the Folger restored the original hairline and exhibited it as an interesting mistake.

The Janssen showed a close-bearded man in a scallop-edged lace collar — in almost every detail, a replica of the unnamed courtier on the Cobbe family’s wall. The one who was not Sir Walter Raleigh.

After a moment, Laing said, “Don’t you have one of those?”

“Yes,” Cobbe said, nonplussed. “Rather a better one, actually.”

Your Maximum Leader will have to get to the Folger and see what he can. Of course it would be better to travel to Stratford upon Avon and see the whole exhibit…

Did you see the piece on Yahoo news about more people making their own bacon? Nope? Your Maximum Leader saw it. You can clicky here to get it yourself. The money quote:

“There is nothing bacon does not improve. Bacon is the new black,” says [San Francisco Chef Ryan] Farr, whose charcuterie company produces 4505 Chicharrones, the pork snacks favored by several San Francisco bars and restaurants. “I have five vegan friends who close their eyes when they eat them and pretend they are potato chips,” Farr says. “Bacon is the gateway meat.”

Bacon is a gateway meat… Wonderful! From experience your Maximum Leader can assure you that it leads to ham. If the Lord hadn’t wanted us to eat pork he wouldn’t have made the pig so darned tasty and easy to domesticate…

Your Maximum Leader is growing more and more tired of the “health care debate.” He should put extra emphasis on the quotes around the word “debate.” As your Maximum Leader mused earlier, there is no debate. There is only shouting. There is no meaningful discussion. Normally at this point the ossified battle lines either decide to actually battle or just decided to forget to fight. Your Maximum Leader hopes that the battle will not be joined at all in Congress and the bills will just die off until some other time. Republicans could show some real leadership in promoting a market based solutions along with legal reforms. Tort reform for malpractice and allowing insurance companies to compete across state lines would be a nice start. Also, one might as well consider the plan that your Maximum Leader blogged about in June of 2004.

Those are the big items on your Maximum Leader’s mind right now. Alas, there were some other bits he thought might make interesting posts, but they were too topical and their time is past…

More later.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader read an interesting opinion piece on the WaPo last week. It is Today’s Town Halls a Departure From de Tocqueville, Rockwell by Phillip Kennicott. In it Kennicott spends a whole opinion column without giving his opinion on the whole topic of “town hall meetings.” Your Maximum Leader will remedy this by giving you his opinion of “town hall meetings.”

Your Maximum Leader is a strong advocate of thoughtful debate. He enjoys going to listen to people (hopefully people with some measure of expertise) discuss issues of the day. He imagines that he would greatly enjoy participating in one of the (mythological) town hall meetings depicted by Norman Rockwell (and mentioned/debunked in Kennicott’s piece). Participatory democracy has its place in small homogeneous groups, like small close-knit rural communities or in Robert Nozick’s ideal minimal states. The keys to having such a town hall meeting work are listening and thoughtful response.

Alas, what passes for a “town hall meeting” today is not at all what your Maximum Leader wants to think about as a “town hall meeting” except in as much as the meeting might take place in a town hall or other public building. Let us first agree to call these meetings “Q&A sessions with ‘decision makers’” because that is what they really are supposed to be. You get a Congressman or Senator (or Administration Official - or President Obama) standing in front of a bunch of people answering questions that are asked. Nothing is actually to be decided at these meetings. No policy is actually going to be made. No amendments offered to legislation. No county codes adopted. These are glorified question and answer sessions.

Of course, when you add uncertainty, fear, arrogance, and single-mindedness to a question and answer period you get what we’ve been seeing around the country in the past few weeks. These aren’t really question and answer periods. They are open mic sessions at your local school where you can say whatever crosses your mind. This goes equally for the citizens and the “decision makers.” There are no subject matter experts (for the most part) at these meetings. The decision makers don’t know what the hell they’re doing. And the angry citizens don’t know much except that they are angry.

These meetings should be called “name-calling recrimination meetings.”

This is not to say that your Maximum Leader isn’t sympathetic to the average citizen who is afraid of what his government is contemplating doing to the nation’s health care system. In fact, your Maximum Leader is just as appalled as those people who seem to make the highlight reels on every newscast. If your Maximum Leader were to attend one of these shindigs he would not be inclinded to call people “nazis” (unless he were sure they actually were) or reference how they will surely meet with a dire heavenly judgement (like the President said once, that judgement is above his pay-grade). Your Maximum Leader would really have liked to ask the President at his “town hall” one question. That question would be “Mr. President, where exactly can I find the legislation that constitutes your health care plan? I’d like to read your plan and not one of the dozen proposals in front of Congress that is not your plan.” To your Maximum Leader’s knowledge President Obama references his plan a lot; but no one has read the legislative text of that plan. One could stop a lot of “misinformation” about death panels and such if you actually had a single presidential plan to which to refer…

Ah well… Your Maximum Leader has thought that in the mainstream public forum true political discourse is dead in America. You have to go to small blogs and niche publications to get real discourse and discussion. It is out there; but you will not find it at NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN or Fox…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sees that Sonia Sotomayor has been confirmed to the Supreme Court of the United States.

Congratulations Justice Sotomayor. Your Maximum Leader wouldn’t have nominated or voted for you; had he had a say in the matter. But elections have consequences… Your Maximum Leader hopes that you have a fine career on the highest bench in the land. (He isn’t holding his breath in hopes that you will magically turn out to be a closet conservative on the bench… But he does hope that you’ll see things his way from time to time…)

There is one thing that bugs your Maximum Leader about this confirmation… Is Sonia Sotomayor really the first Hispanic to be named to the Court? What about Benjamin Cardozo? Doesn’t he count? Wasn’t he of Spanish extraction? Hummm… Quick google shows an archived Volokh peice addressing this very issue. Apparently directly of Spanish or Portuguese ancestry (not via Central or South America) is not traditionally within the bounds of “hispanic.”

Your Maximum Leader, being a contrarian - as well as plain difficult from time to time, will think of Justice Sotomayor as the first latina justice. Of course, he will (depending on where she winds up on the court) more likely to think of her as “another one of the one’s your Maximum Leader doesn’t agree with very often.”

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is going through some technology DTs. With work progressing (slowly) in the Villainschloss his regular computer is disconnected from the internet most of the time and he’s not been able to post…

So for want of real content…

Here is the lastest from Jib-Jab. “He’s Barack Obama”

This video wouldn’t be as funny if many people didn’t think he was a superhero…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader’s upgrades to the Villainschloss continue to eat into computer time. Alas, they also eat into his TV viewing time. If this keeps up your Maximum Leader will be burning candles and reading old dusty tomes in a wingback chair and going to bed shortly after dark… Hey… That doesn’t seem like too bad a plan…

Your Maximum Leader feels that a day without reading Fear and Loathing in Georgetown is a day intellectually wasted. To wit this post that directs us to 3 page piece in the New Republic by Sean Wilentz in which Wilentz smacksdown of some of his critics. You know, every once and a while your Maximum Leader remembers why he wanted to be a history professor once upon a time. Reading this exchange between Wilentz and his critics is one of those times. He enjoyed the historical aspects of discussion itself, but also the cattiness of the exchange. Few things amuse your Maximum Leader as much as a bunch of distinguished professors arguing with each other. On the one hand it is so intellectual; and on the other it is so petty and personal. It brings a grin to your Maximum Leader’s visage.

Of course, FLG isn’t always intellectual on his blog… To wit: he link to portraits of a naked President Obama and his unicorn. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t know what to think of that upon which he just cast his gaze… It is disturbing…

In other news…

The Nationals have not been sucking recently. Indeed they have pulled off a few wins recently. It looks like the gremlin bogey number remains 53. Of course there are only 62 games remaining on the schedule. So it is quite possible that the gremlin bogey number will soon be unattainable. If your Maximum Leader were more statistically inclined he’d tell you what the chances of losing 53 of 62 games would be. So he’s hoping that the Nationals continue to not suck so badly.

Continuing in the baseball theme… Which is more impressive? A perfect game (such as the one pitched recently by Mark Buehrle of the White Sox) or hitting two grand slams in a single game (like the National’s own Josh Willingham). Your Maximum Leader is inclined to say that even though two grand slams seems to be more rare (in terms of instances of occurance) the perfect game is harder. He’d like to see the statistical breakdown of the chances of each. He imagines that building a statistical model to set up the odds of pitching a perfect game would be crazy… Of course the odds of hitting two grand slams in a game would be crazy too.

After Willingham hit his two slams on Monday, your Maximum Leader read somewhere that Frank Robinson (one of the greatest hitters ever) only hit two grand slams in his whole career - and those two were in the same game. Your Maximum Leader found it hard to believe that Frank Robinson could have only hit two grand slams out of the 586 home runs he hit during his career. So he looked up the stats and found that Robinson only hit two grand slams with the Orioles. He hit a total of 8 grand slams in his 21 year career. To be honest that seemed a bit low to your Maximum Leader. So your Maximum Leader looked up some other player stats… After a few looks that total of 8 doesn’t seem too low… Hank Aaron only hit 16 slams out of 755 total home runs. Barry Bonds hit 11 slams out of 762 homers…

Anyhoo…

Massive thunderstorms are upon the Villainschloss and your Maximum Leader thinks he’d better sign off now…

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 has not been asked to run the Islamic Republic of Iran; and frankly it has never been an aspiration of his. Your Maximum Leader is not a Muslim. Neither does he speak Persian. Those two issues alone would likely preclude his installation as Supreme (Maximum if you will) Leader fo the Islamic Republic.

Of course your Maximum Leader has read the inner monologue of current Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khameni. Until reading that your Maximum Leader has never really thought about being the unquestioned leader of a medieval theocracy on the verge of gettng nukes. It could be a real gas.

But then your Maximum Leader reads shit like this (from the Jerusalem Post via the Wall Street Journal) in which a member of the Basiji (a paramilitary militia in Iran loyal to the Supreme Leader) confesses to the following:

He said he had been a highly regarded member of the force, and had so “impressed my superiors” that, at 18, “I was given the ‘honor’ to temporarily marry young girls before they were sentenced to death.”

In the Islamic Republic it is illegal to execute a young woman, regardless of her crime, if she is a virgin, he explained. Therefore a “wedding” ceremony is conducted the night before the execution: The young girl is forced to have sexual intercourse with a prison guard - essentially raped by her “husband.”

“I regret that, even though the marriages were legal,” he said.

Why the regret, if the marriages were “legal?”

“Because,” he went on, “I could tell that the girls were more afraid of their ‘wedding’ night than of the execution that awaited them in the morning. And they would always fight back, so we would have to put sleeping pills in their food. By morning the girls would have an empty expression; it seemed like they were ready or wanted to die.

“I remember hearing them cry and scream after [the rape] was over,” he said. “I will never forget how this one girl clawed at her own face and neck with her finger nails afterwards. She had deep scratches all over her.”

Damn! Damn! Damn! DAMN! Gawd! Your Maximum Leader read that and wanted to go find Ali Khameni and sodomize him with a sun-dried and splintering axe handle. Sadly, that type of degredation would be too good for Khameni. Your Maximum Leader doubts that any techniques he could pick up from anyone short of the bastard love-child decendent of Stalin, Pol-Pot and the Marquis de Sade would do the trick. Your Maximum Leader thought, for a moment, that putting Khameni in a cell with a few of the mothers of daughters who suffered the brief “marriages” to their Basiji husbands might be suitable. Alas, it would surely be too quick. Any means of death that didn’t last at least 90 days would be to short.

Your Maximum Leader jokes from time to time about lining people up against the wall and them getting what they deserve. But unfortunately some people, and Ali Khameni might be one of them, don’t ever get what they deserve.

If your Maximum Leader were ever to find himself as Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran there are many who would have to pray every second of their short lives that the worst thing that would befall them is that they would get dragged out and shot.

Just to go on the record, Ali Khameni wouldn’t even get the benefit of a show trial.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sometimes hears of, or reads a story, that simmers slowly in his consciousness for days or weeks. Then, after properly stewed and triggered by something, the rant comes… In this case the story has been stewing for a few weeks and the trigger was a piece on APM’s Marketplace today.

So it is that your Maximum Leader is going to rant for a moment about slavery guilt…

In late June your Maximum Leader first started to see the news articles. They were predominantly British articles. A number of scholars are beginning to go over the records kept by the British government concerning reparations paid out to compensate slave owners when Britain outlawed slavery in the whole British Empire (in 1833).

Your Maximum Leader remembers a Financial Times article detailing how two old-line British firms may have profited from slavery. The big firms were the Rothchild Bank and the law firm Freshfields. The Financial Times article opened:

Two of the biggest names in the City of London had previously undisclosed links to slavery in the British colonies, documents seen by the Financial Times have revealed.

Nathan Mayer Rothschild, the banking family’s 19th-century patriarch, and James William Freshfield, founder of Freshfields, the top City law firm, benefited financially from slavery, records from the National Archives show, even though both have often been portrayed as opponents of slavery.

If you go on to read the whole piece you would see that Freshfield and Rothchild were, in fact, abolitionists. In the case of Freshfield, his firm acted as trustee for Caribbean slave owners and set about getting reparation funds on behalf of the clients. In the case of Rothchild, the bank sought reparations for slaves that were collateral for broader transactions.

Now, one can certainly make a case that Freshfield and Rothchild could have instructed their firms not to deal at all with slave owners and not to agree to act as trustee for slave owning estates or use slaves as collateral for loans. So your Maximum Leader isn’t trying to put them completely off the hook here… But there is profiting from the slave trade and slavery, and then there is what Freshfield and Rothchild did. It may be a matter of degrees here, but perhaps these are important degrees to examine. If a lawyer is a trustee for an estate, he damned well had better do what he can to effectively and profitably manage the estate on behalf of its beneficiaries. And in the case of a bank, if you have chosen to accept slaves as collateral in a loan transaction, then when the government is removing the collateral’s value and offering reparations; the bank needs to take the money.

Your Maximum Leader is not sure how Freshfield and Rothchild are villains in this story. Especially given the large role the Rothchild Bank played in financing the reparations the British Government made…

But the part that sets your Maximum Leader off is the chorus of people who believe that the sins of the dead should be revisited on the unrelated living… This is especially true in how your Maximum Leader views the calls in the US for reparations for slavery. The Financial Times points out in their piece how JPMorgan has set up scholarship funds to “repay” the decendents of slaves in the US as a way of saying “We’re sorry” about the role some predecessor banks mortgaged slaves. The FT piece also mentions how Aetna and New York Life have apologized and paid for “educational efforts” to in essence make up for insurance policies they wrote on behalf of slave owners.

There is also the fact that the US Senate passed a resolution (which contained clauses saying that the resolution couldn’t be admitted into evidence in a court of law) apologizing for slavery.

If one views institutions like banks and insurance companies (and the US Senate) as continuing entities across time, then one might (just barely might) be somewhat justified in asking them to own up to a wrong they did in the past and say their sorry. Your Maximum Leader is not trying to let these companies off the hook for other transgressions they may have committed in the past; but he is willing to draw a line about slavery in America.

It would behoove people to remember that there was this thing called the American Civil War. That war was all about slavery. The war ended slavery in America. There was no reparation for freed slaves paid to rebellious slave owners. There was no compensation issued for destroyed farms and cities in states in rebellion. Northern bankers weren’t repaid for lost collateral and property they had claim to in the South. Insurance policies weren’t cashed out. The pro-slave and anti-slave forces pretty much took sides and decided the question on battlefields. Upwards of 650,000 men were killed or wounded fighting for the Union to decide the issue of slavery. Your Maximum Leader will suggest that those men paid in blood any reparations that might be owed slaves. He further suggests that it is wrong to extract monetary reparations from people who have never owned slaves or suffered as slaves.

It is not for your Maximum Leader to decide how the British should or shouldn’t settle the question of who might be owed what for profiting off slavery. But from what he’s read the case against Freshfield and Rothchild seems quite overblown. If he had to offer advice he’d recommend a heartfelt and tearful apology. Because this is more about how people feel things should be than actual wrongs. After an apology, move along…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader must have been asleep on the throne yesterday to have missed the story about Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s comments about Roe v. Wade. He saw a piece on Justice Ginsburg’s interview at No Sheeples Here and started to wonder how he missed the story in the first place.

Here is the NY Times interview in question. The quote is on page 4.

Your Maximum Leader’s take on what Justice Ginsburg said is this: At first she (Ginsburg) thought that part of the reasoning behind Roe was so that the Government could start funding abortions through Medicaid in an effort to keep down growth in “populations that we don’t want to have too many of.” Later she realized that Roe wasn’t a step for government-funded population control.

Great jeezey chreezey! Did she really believe that the Supreme Court of the United States was, in deciding Roe, opening the door for the Congress and Executive of the United States to begin engaging in a eugenics program aimed at (one assumes) the poor, the undereducated and minorities? Does that seem way beyond the pale to anyone else?

Your Maximum Leader is stupified…

(NB: Why is it that reporters always feel the need to comment on the appearance of prominent women they interview? The Times piece mentions that Justice Ginsburg was “wearing an elegant cream-colored suit, matching pumps and turquoise earrings.” Why did we need to know that? If the subject of the interview was let us say, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson (okay… the Times wouldn’t interview her, but let us pretend) would the description of her dress be a little more catty? More along the lines of “the GOP “Breck-girl” wore a couture white silk blouse and black skirt with a string of Mikimoto pearls that cost more than a family under the poverty line earns in a year.” Just wonderin’.)

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader thinks very highly of his friend Skippy. Your Maximum Leader agrees with Skippy 96.8% of the time on political matters. And although your Maximum Leader is a generally buttoned-down type of guy, he has a libertine streak in him and enjoys Skippy’s non-political (read: sex) posts a lot.

Well… Your Maximum Leader was looking over the news wires this morning and saw a photo. The photo shows Presidents Obama and Sarkozy apparently checking out the rather fine posterior portion of a young woman walking past them at the G-8 Summit in Italy. Now… Your Maximum Leader’s stream of consciousness went something like this: Look at Sarko; always checking out a fine shape. Wow.. It looks like Barry is checking out the girl too… Nope… Barry is probably checking where he is stepping as he doesn’t want to pull a Jerry Ford… Do you think Carla will have to “punish” Sarko for being a “bad boy” at the summit? Damn… Silivo Berlusconi should always host these gatherings… You know… I wonder if Skippy has seen this photo?”

Well… Of course Skippy has… You can read his comments on it by clicking this linky…

Skippy, good job…

Carry on.

UPDATED: Carol at No Sheeples Here has a link that shows a second photo in which Barry and Sarko are obviously checking out a fine arse…

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader was visiting with the Smallholder a few weeks ago. During the visit the subject of nationalized health care came up. The Smallholder made a point that your Maximum Leader has now heard at least twice more from others in discussion.

As it stands, there are bureaucrats in the health care process. They exist in private insurance companies, hospitals, and other for-profit health care providers. For the private insurers the job of the bureaucrats is to enforce policy and keep down costs to maximize profits.

Your Maximum Leader is not disputing this point here. But this is where the comments by Smallholder and others come into play… Their point is this: If there are already bureaucrats involved in the healthcare process; then why not eliminate the maximize profit part of the equation and have a bureaucrat who will be more responsive to the needs of the patient.

Your Maximum Leader more clearly articulated his objection to this premise today than he has before. So he will post it here. The problem with the premise being put forth here is that the government bureaucrat will in fact be more responsive to the needs of the patients. The assumption is that the current functionary’s job is to deny (needed) procedures in the interests of maknig more money for the company. Why does one assume that a government functionary will approve procedures differently? Regardless of who is running the program the job of the bureaucrat is to enforce rules and contain costs. The government will have to maintain a budget for healthcare. (One presumes…) It can’t just approve any procedure for anyone at any time. Additionally, there will be rules (as there already are in Medicare and Medicaid as well as in the private sector) to be enforced. The rules will state what procedures will be covered at what time. It is wrong to assume that the rules will be more favorable to patients than those extant today.

It is an assumption many people make… And it is a wrongly reasoned one.

Oh… You should also check out FLG’s post on power and the left in the context of health care.

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 sees that Palmetto State Governor Mark Sanford has fessed-up to having an affair with a woman in Argentina.

Well… More accurately he’s been having an affair with a woman. The affair was discovered when he jetted off to Argentina to have a little Father’s Day fling with the woman. It is unclear to your Maximum Leader if the woman is in any way related to Argentina - except perhaps in the “she likes to have sex” there way. Your Maximum Leader is sure that Argentina is a great place. If he ever gets a chance to visit (which he has always wanted to do), he will likely do so with Mrs Villain. He also imagines that whatever it is that makes American men horny in Argentina will affect him. Lucky Mrs Villain will be with your Maximum Leader so there will be no need for resignations, apologies and recriminations upon his return.

Your Maximum Leader wonders if the woman is in fact Andrea Rincon? You may recall that last week your Maximum Leader mentioned rumors that Bill Clinton had “tapped” Ms. Rincon. (A rumor that persists this week.) What would be the chances that Governor Sanford also “tapped” Ms Rincon?

Great jeezey chreezey! If Andrea Rincon had been liasing with both Clinton and Sanford that would be a heck of a story! Not only that but your Maximum Leader would have to declare that Ms. Rincon would be the sexiest woman in politics so far this year!

Riddle your Maximum Leader this, how many more prominent Republicans will be caught cheating on their wives? 2 more? 3 more? Your Maximum Leader should run an over/under pool on this… He will say the number is 2. Over/under two more prominent Republicans caught cheating on their wives by the end of 2009.

Never fear loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has never cheated on Mrs Villain. He doesn’t ever plan on cheating on Mrs Villain. Of course, if the dreamy Jennifer Love Hewitt (or very desireable Grace Thorsen) happened to proposition him; he would be sorely tried.

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.