Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader kept a small pad with him during his recent trip to Las Vegas. The purpose of this pad was to jot down random thoughts he had that might make a good blog post. Now, he’s just decided that the jottings themselves will be come the blog post… Here we go…

Ugly women with big fake boobs. There are many of them in Vegas.

Neon gives one’s skin an unhealthy look at night.

The Bellagio is showing it’s age. Although only 10 years old, it could use new carpets, fresh paint, and new upholstrey.

The casino ceiling in Mandalay Bay is too high to be comfortable - but probably helps in dispersing cigarette smoke.

Ashley Dupre is hot. But, she has a small tattoo that is distracting.

Eliot Spitzer isn’t going to be gettin’ any for a while… Even if he tries to pay for it.

There are many better things to do with $80 large.

Okay… Maybe there are a few things better to do with $80 large.

Drunk guys playing blackjack near you isn’t much fun if they are loud and obnoxious.

Foie Gras is sooooo damned tasty…

Foie Gras and bacon is damned close to heaven on a plate.

Is creme brulee out of fashion? You can’t find it anywhere.

Smoked salmon, capers, cream cheese, and red onion on a salt bagel is a good way to start your morning.

The Wynn is cool.

How much water does Vegas have? Is there really a future there?

Cab drivers in Vegas are more chatty than in other cities.

Why is it that although I’ve been staying up until midnight or 1 am, I can’t sleep past 5am?

Ceasar’s casino is better than Bellagio’s because they don’t use shuffling machines.

$5/hand single deck blackjack is fun.

Ben Bernake has the toughest job in the world right now.

I didn’t understand Keno until a waitress explained it to me. After understanding how it works, I find myself wagering $10 on six numbers for 5 games over breakfast. Is that the sign of a problem?

Barry Manilow doesn’t look 64.

Penn & Teller rock.

I don’t like eating at the Palms. The restaurants are okay, but priced like they are superb.

There are many hawt young things at the Palms.

Since I don’t like eating at the Palms, and I’m not big into the night life, is there a reason for me to go to the Palms ever again? Probably not.

I’m glad I bought new sneaks at Niketown. Walking everywhere is killing me.

These new sneaks are Da Bomb.

Sports books are fun, even if you don’t bet.

Putting $2 on Georgetown to win the whole deal… UNC and Kansas be damned!

Haven’t seen one person in the whole city wearing apparel of a sports team I give a damn about…

For your money, a Bentley is a better ride than a Maybach. The difference is the leather.

Sadly, I missed the all you can eat sushi at some place near the Hard Rock. I also didn’t go to Nobu - again… Damn…

Lobster omlettes seem just a little indulgent for breakfast. Just a little…

Saw Pete Rose in a memorabilia shop at Ceasar’s. He looked pathetic. I wasn’t going to spend $100 to get a signed ball and photo. Damn Pete Rose. Lousy bastard.

Glad to be going home…

There you have the thoughts… Some not even in third person…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader wonders if anyone in America still has a working coal fired furnace in their home. Further, your Maximum Leader wonders if anyone has a coal stove in their home anymore.

When your Maximum Leader was very young he remember a neighbour having a small coal-fired stove in their parlor. He remembers the hissing sound the burning coal made. He also remembers the room as being very very warm. He can visualize the bucket of coal next to the stove and the small shovel hanging on the side of the bucket.

He remembers the coal as being very comforting.

So… Does anyone out there use coal to heat their house any more?

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has had a post about “the media” festering in his brain for a while now. He has, until now, been overtaken by events and not able to get out his thoughts. But yesterday, Howard Kurtz’s Media Notes column in the Washington Post caused him to resolve to actually sit down and write out the post.

In case you missed the Kurtz piece, here is the link. Here are some salient points from the piece:

To a striking degree, the candidates are picking their spots, carefully choosing which media operations they will court and which they will ignore. That leaves some of them preaching to the political choir, but also shields them from especially aggressive questioning.

The new media order has been spawned by a 500-channel universe and a polarized climate in which news organizations are increasingly viewed, fairly or unfairly, as leaning to one side or the other. And with a cornucopia of choices, politicians tend to gravitate toward what they see as friendly arenas.

[…]

The Democratic candidates, meanwhile, have refused to debate on Fox News, even for an event co-sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus. In the last nine days, however, they were happy to face off before liberal bloggers at a convention staged by the Web site Daily Kos; at an event co-sponsored by Logo, a gay-themed network operated by MTV; and at an MSNBC debate moderated by Keith Olbermann, one of President Bush’s fiercest critics.

“Republicans like Fox because it plays to their primary voting constituency, and Democrats like to boycott Fox because it brings cheap applause from their primary voting constituency,” says Mike Murphy, a GOP strategist and occasional panelist on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “The Democrats make a mistake by boycotting Fox, because they’re going to need red states to win. And Fred Thompson makes a mistake by communicating only through the medium of Sean Hannity.”

[…]

The new approach is reminiscent of the 1992 campaign, when it was considered radical for presidential candidates to go on MTV, Larry King and Arsenio Hall, and there was much teeth-gnashing about the bypassing of the traditional media. But eventually the candidates had to deal with the major news programs, and that will undoubtedly happen this season as well.

In the meantime, staying on safe ground not only prevents the candidates from reaching a broader audience, it deprives them of the chance to develop their reflexes by swinging at fastballs.

The emphasis on that last line was added by your Maximum Leader.

Let your Maximum Leader state a few things up front. He has not watched more than two minutes of any of the candidate’s “debates” live. He has only seen the sound bites played on major news outlets the day after. He has seen some of the candidates interviewed on various channels. (Almost always the “Today” show or something on Fox News.) In case you didn’t know, your Maximum Leader believes that campaigning more than 1 year before the election is unseemly. (Excursus: Although your Maximum Leader is not a big fan of such laws, he would support a law that prevents people from raising or spending money in pursuit of the office of President of the United States before the September/October the year before the general election. And while he is engaging in a little excursus, campaigning is — in general — pretty unseemly.) He is deliberately doing what he can to avoid paying attention to what the candidates are saying or doing at this point. Okay… That is out there… Now to move on…

Are your Maximum Leader and Newt Gingrich the only people in America who think that these “debates” insult the intelligence of every vaguely sentient American? Really? This is a serious question. What the hell are we supposed to learn from these “debates?” Nothing that is what. Having all those candidates (regardless of party) trot out on a stage, stand behind a podium, and patiently wait their turn to speak is an exercise in futility. Actually, the exercise is for the candidates, who have to learn to stand still behind a podium for long periods of time without seeming fidgety. And we all know how important it is that our Presidents aren’t fidgety. Not being fidgety is right up there after an understanding of foreign affairs, a rudimentary understanding of economics, being tall and having even teeth in terms of qualifications for the office. Your Maximum Leader thinks that all those things are in the Twenty-second or Twenty-fifth Amendment, but he isn’t sure which one.

These “debates,” frankly, should offend every American. This “debate” format doesn’t even pretend to be educational or elucidating. The candidates are asked a softball question by a friendly moderator (or friendly union member, or friendly “regular American” posting on You Tube) and then given a few seconds during which time they can recite a talking point off their campaign web site. It disgusts your Maximum Leader and if you have half a brain it should disgust you too.

Your Maximum Leader thinks that these moronic testaments to mediocrity should be abandoned as rapidly as possible. They should be replaced by candidates debating a single thoughtful question. Here is your Maximum Leader’s plan… The candidates are paired off in a series of Lincoln-Douglas style debates. Each debate would have a single theme. Each candidate would be be allowed a 30 minute explanation of their position and plan on the theme. Then each candidate would have a (30 minute) chance to rebut whatever the other candidate said. If a candidate didn’t want to participate in these debates they would have to drop out of the race and donate any money they raised to a charity (the name of which would be drawn from a hat).

Of course, no candidate would agree to this debate format. Do you know why? Because not a single candidate out there could actually string together a cogent 30 minute statement on a single topic. Can you imagine Hillary Clinton, Barak Obama, Mitt Romney, or Rudy Guiliani speaking on their plan for Iraq for a full 30 minutes? Your Maximum Leader can’t. Well, that isn’t exactly true. He can imagine them speaking in platitudes and obfuscations for 20 minutes and rephrasing the sound bite of their position on Iraq for 10 minutes. He can’t imagine them starting off with their own assesment of the situation in Iraq then moving to a point by point analysis of what they would do to “solve” Iraq if they were elected.

Do you know a second reason why no candidate would agree to this debate format? Because they know no one would broadcast it. And now loyal minions, your Maximum Leader actually reaches the point at which he wanted to begin. He claimed to have this festering rant against “the media” at the beginning of this post, but up to this point he’s just been bloviating about the “debates.”

Your Maximum Leader has come to believe that the major television news outlets are largely responsible for the dumbing down of the political awareness of the typical American. He blames all of the major news outlets equally. Insofar as your Maximum Leader is concerned it is a pick ‘em. NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, Fox News are all equally bad. They have all sunk to the same level. That level is that they will provide continuous coverage to an Los Angeles car chase that lasts 90 minutes, but they will not give a reporter 90 minutes to provide a serious analysis of an issue facing our nation.

Now you may say to yourself, “Self, my Maximum Leader must be wrong. There are hour-long programs with knowledgeable people discussing issues on those news channels.” Well… Take a moment to actually watch one of those programs. They are hour-long certainly. But that hour is filled with 30 two-minute segments in which agitated nitwits pontificate as rapidly as possible to “make their point” before the pompous moderator cuts them off.

And we wonder what happened to our national attention span.

Okay… “We” don’t wonder all that often about our national attention span. Your Maximum Leader wonders about it. He seems to remember that the “attention span” of your typical American was 20 minutes at some point in the 1970s; but only about 7 minutes by the late 1990s. Alas, he can’t find a good comparative analysis by a reputable scientific source after Googling for about 5 minutes. (Heh… The irony is lost on him by the way.)

Your Maximum Leader suspects that Americans started to lose their ability to pay attention to anything about the same time CNN launched Headline News. You see, before Headline News you had to watch hours of CNN before you got to the “main” news stories of the day. CNN was, at the time, filled with lengthy reports on all manner of subjects. (They even devoted time — hours of time — to news that was important in other countries. You know, those places that aren’t America…) At some point the geniuses at CNN decided that it would be neat to have a channel that just repeated the same news over and over again every thirty minutes. They would devote particular segments of that 30 minutes to “hard news” and “sports” and two minutes to Jeanne Moos. That way a busy American would only have to watch 30 minutes of CNN to know everything they needed to know about what was going on in the world.

Unfortunately… Soon there came tickers, and crawls at the bottom of the screen. Then slowly all TV news became processed so that the story could be told quickly. (Excursus: Some of you might be thinking at this point “Hey the “network” evening news programs have always been 30 minutes long… So this isn’t a big change.” To this your Maximum Leader says that in the “glory days” of network news people actually read newspapers. Your Maximum Leader believes that readers of newspapers generally have longer attention spans and better understanding of just about anything…)

Your Maximum Leader would like to see a serious news channel start up. A real serious one. One that only shows in depth reports. One that doesn’t have crapulent commentators with purple faces yelling at one another. One that actually takes the time to research a story from mulitple angles so that a viewer might actually come away from a piece actually knowing something…

Then again… This is a blog you’re reading. One that isn’t known (at least lately) for lengthy exposition on particular subjects. (Heh. The irony is not lost on your Maximum Leader. We can’t all be Mr. Poulos afterall.) Odds are that if you are still reading this you likely do have an attention span longer than your typical American… Unless you were just skimming for the familiar closing words of

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader knows a few techie types who will be rushing out on June 29th to get themselves a new iPhone.

Your Maximum Leader will not be one of them.

He just go himself a new Motorola Razr. He is replacing the first generation Razr he got when they first came out. Which brings him to a little rant…

Your Maximum Leader’s old Razr worked just fine. He got a software upgrade on it and everything just seemed to be peachy with it. Then it started getting to the point where his Razr’s battery wouldn’t hold a charge. He could hardly get 20 minutes of talk out of his cell phone on a full charge.

Now… Please know that your Maximum Leader fully understands how and why batteries (rechargeable batteries) wear out. He knows it happens. And he wasn’t surprised that his Razr’s battery started to give up the proverbial ghost after 2.5 years of heavy use.

The part that pisses off your Maximum Leader was that when he went to AT&T (or Cingular - or whatever synergistic name they happen to have now…) to buy a new battery he was informed that a replacement battery was $55. He was also informed that with a 2 year service commitment a brand new Razr (that would get some sort of TV streaming stuff) was only $50.

Talk about a waste. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t consider himself an “environmentalist” but he knows that making and disposing of batteries is about a dirty a business as you can have. So it seems particularly egreigous that the phone makers and resellers would price it out so that new phones are “more economical” than new batteries. It seems very wrong on one level.

At any rate… Your Maximum Leader will not be getting an iPhone… He’s going to be enjoying his Razr until the battery can’t hold a charge…

Carry on.

From today’s Washington Post:

During that spree, police spent three minutes rushing to the building and then about five minutes carrying out the complicated process of breaking through the building’s doors, which Seung-Hui Cho had chained.

A timeline of Cho’s morning and the final moments of his life emerged Wednesday during a news conference by police who are still struggling to figure out why the 23-year-old student carried out the rampage.

The five minutes police spent breaking into the building proved to be crucial as Cho moved through Norris Hall unimpeded, with police locked out.

Authorities eventually blew their way into the building, and as they began to rush toward the gunfire on the second floor, Cho put a bullet through his head and died, surrounded by his victims.

State police spokeswoman Corinne Geller praised the officers’ response time, noting that had police simply rushed into the building without a plan, many would have likely died right along with the staff and students. She said officers needed to assemble the proper team, clear the area and then break through the doors.

“If you go in with your backs turned, you’re never going back,” Geller said. “There’s got to be some sort of organization.”

People are second-guessing many decisions that happened at Tech. To a large extent, many of the criticisms of the Tech Administration are monday-mornign quarterbacking driven by people’s grief-fueled need to assign blame. However, the idea that Police took five minutes on the scene to get organized is galling.

Why did they have to go through the doors? Were there no first floor windows they could break into? I don’t know the layout of the building, but one assumes there were alternate entrances availble to highly motivated rescuers.

If I was a cop, I cannot imagine wiating five minutes while ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY rounds were fired. Screw waiting for organization/blowing the doors. I’m going in the window.

Cho evidently killed himself when he heard the cops running up the stairs. Imagine if they had arrived four minutes earlier. How many people would still be alive.

Since my former student was in the last room Cho entered, you can be damn sure that Heidi wouldn’t have taken three rounds.

The police were too cautious. If a crime is ongoing, the first objective should be to put the shooter down.

I’m told Heidi is doing better.

In class, she was a pleasant, hard working kid who got the highest score possible scoreon the AP test. She was hard-working and unfailingly polite. She was a quiet kid, but I recall her mischevious grin when she was up to mild mischief.

It boggles my mind that a kid who always did the right thing could end up in the middle of something like the Tech shooting.

Our local paper devotes a portion of the editorial page to “Quotable Quotes.” In today’s paper, two of the selections were:

“I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.” - Abraham Lincoln

“We have already lost all but our honor by the last war, and I must say, that in order to be men we must protect our honor at all hazards and we must protect our wives, our homes, and our families.” - Nathan Bedford Forrest

Your humble Smallholder almost had an aneurism. What are the odds that they’ll print my letter to the editor?

Dear Sirs,

The “Quotable” section from March 29’s paring of quotes from Abraham Lincoln and Nathan Bedford Forrest was astounding. Both are actual quotes, but when combined together they cast doubt on the DNR editorial staff’s collective judgment.
The Lincoln quote in which he claims no desire to interfere with slavery where it exists should have been placed in the context of Lincoln’s wartime maneuvers to keep the border states in the Union. Politicians routinely tailor their comments to their audiences and a wise man looks at a politician’s actions rather than his words to determine the politician’s true intent. Lincoln did end slavery, so one ought to take quotes like the one you published with a grain of salt. However, since folks who want to deny that slavery was the cause of the Civil War have popularized Honest Abe’s quote in public discourse, it is possible that the selection of the uncontextualized quote was the product of ignorance and not malevolence.
Unfortunately, the DNR opens itself to the charge of racist malevolence when the Lincoln quote is then paired with Nathan Bedford Forrest’s statement about the mission of the Ku Klux Klan. When Forrest lamented that the South had lost “all but our honor,” he was talking about the collapse of slavery and the loss of white supremacy. When he promoted the protection of “our wives, our homes, and our families,” he believed that the protection required the maintenance of white superiority through terrorism and murder.
If the DNR staff is aware of Forrest’s role in the emergence of the Klan as an instrument of white superiority, choosing to quote this monster is indefensible.
If the DNR editorial staff was unaware of Forrest’s racial atrocities, their lamentable ignorance of basic elements of American history undermines the credibility of the DNR’s editorial analysis.

Sincerely,

Smallholder

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader, after finding the Bruce Campbell ad below, was just browsing around on You Tube. While there he found a small bit from Eddie Izzard’s comedy routine “Dress To Kill.”

Izzard is one of your Maximum Leader’s favorites. Give a listen. But use headphones or something because (as with all comedy it seems nowadays) the routine is rife with the ole F-*** word.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader realizes that his comments are disabled. Some readers are kind enough to tell your Maximum Leader that his RSS feeds and archives might be intermittently available as well. Your Maximum Leader will have to poke around under the hood of his blog a little more to see if he can resolve some of these problems. In the end he thinks he’ll have to change hosting companies to ultimately finish these problems.

Anyhoo…

Your Maximum Leader doesn’t get many e-mailed messages about his postings. (NB: Minion Molly, are you still out there? Your Maximum Leader is curious.) But from time to time he gets a little bit of virtual goodness tha is a fun e-mail. He recently received such a message. It came from loyal minion Buckethead from the Ministry of Minor Perfidy. Buckethead writes:

Dear Maximum Leader,
The last few days, I’ve been frustrated by the lack of comments on your bloggy thing. Toast is toast not because of warmth, but because of dryness. Granted, that dryness is often introduced by heat. The perfect toast is crunchy in a thin layer on the outside of the bread, and warm and moist goodness on the inside. Also, who cares which backstabbing medieval eye-tie despot (is there any other kind?) is better? The real question is which emotional state is preferable: fear, or apathy? Additionally, don’t get me started on the Red Dawn. I would have loved that movie unreservedly had it not been for the fact that the guerrilla group shared a mascot with the university of Michigan. Finally, Mary Magdalene is probably buried somewhere in the south of France, because the Da Vinci Code is all true, true I say.

Well… What can we say about all that? First off, your Maximum Leader hopes that Buckethead will not be offended by your Maximum Leader posting his e-mail. Your Maximum Leader has been wanting to post more than he has, but finds that actually writing a post is a problem. Thus, having at least part of a post pre-written for you seems like a great idea!

Now… To address Buckethead’s issues:

Your Maximum Leader, like Buckethead, realizes that toast has to do with dry and not just heat. The question was posed rhetorically because your Maixmum Leader was home at the time with the wee Villain and Villainette #1 who were both suffering from the same stomach flu. Villainette #1 announced that she was going to make some toast. Then she proceeded to put a piece of bread into the microwave for 15 sec on high. She announced that this was “her” idea of toast. This struck your Maximum Leader as some sort of heretical idea. “Her” idea of toast. She might as well have been saying “my personal truth” or some such nonsense. So, we talked for a little while about what makes toast toast. She still hasn’t been won over by your Maximum Leader’s oratory on toast to come around to the fact that warm bread is not toast. But she will. You Maximum Leader thinks she is just being a contrairian…

Your Maximum Leader must differ with Buckethead and say that there is a difference between one medieval potentate and the other. In the end, your Maximum Leader thinks it is better to be Grand Duke of Florence. Reasons being these: 1) Absolute monarchy vs. Some weird system whereby the Doge is elected and still suffers oversight by the city fathers; 2) More artists patronize Florence and more artists are Florentine than Venitian; 3) Better chance of having a family member become Pope; 4) Machiavelli wrote for Florence; 5) Your city, while it might flood from time to time, wasn’t always sinking into a lagoon.

Frankly, those seem like pretty compelling reasons…

And lastly… Dan Brown… Gawd your Maximum Leader thinks about Dan Brown and wonders if that sumbitch is waking up every day laughing at everyone who bought his book, bought tickets to the movie, or created some DaVinci Code knock-off book that probably pays him some sort of royalty. If Dan Brown isn’t laughing his arse off every day - he ought to be.

Direct comments, questions, desperate pleas for help, or photos of yourself (if you are cute and female) to your Maximum Leader at either address on the left side nav bar.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t know what to think of the world sometimes. He just doesn’t. Really. He was pretty busy on Friday and didn’t have time to blog. As readers know, he generally doesn’t blog over the weekend. (The weekend being time for your Maximum Leader to spend time with his family, friends, and himself…) Then you come back on Monday and get whammy-ed by the news.

Three Amish girls killed in their school by the milkman.

A popular (gay) Republican Congressman resigns because he’s been “e-mailing” Congressional pages. This Congressman had been leading the subcommittee that handles issues of missing and exploited children. Who knows what the Republican Leadership knew and when?

Bob Woodward’s new book says that Colin Powell was fired, the White House knowingly misled the American people - and continues to do so, and that the CIA might have actually warned Condoleeza Rice of an impending attack on the US.

Various videos of the September 11th terrorists and Osama Bin Laden are released and available. (See them courtesy of Dr. Rusty.)

And finally… Although he was ready… Fidel Castro didn’t die. (At least according to his best bud Hugo Chavez.)

Really now… That was one hell of a weekend. And we haven’t even begun to talk about sports or local news…

Your Maximum Leader wonders what the hell is going on in the world sometimes. It makes him shake his head and wonder what sort of a world his children will live in.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sees on the news wire that one Melinda Duckett has killed herself after taping a segment on the CNN Nancy Grace show. Now let your Maximum Leader state, up front, that he is sure that Ms Duckett’s family is likely quite shaken and griefstricken due to the disappearance of Ms Duckett’s son and her subsequent suicide.

But Nancy Grace?

Great jeezey creezey! Your Maximum Leader has never appeared on Nancy Grace’s program. Your Maximum Leader will never appear on Nancy Grace’s program. Indeed, your Maximum Leader has not watched a complete episode of Nancy Grace’s program. After a few minutes of watching Nancy Grace, your Maximum Leader wanted to either kill her - or himself.

Frankly, whenever it comes down to killing himself or someone else; your Maximum Leader always chooses killing someone else. When the MWO comes, Nancy Grace will be dragged out and shot - for the good of humanity and the TV viewing audience. That woman is completely insane.

Now your Maximum Leader does get angry when victims are “forgotten” or “aren’t heard” (to the extent that those cliches mean anything). But he would prefer to channel his anger into socially constructive avenues. He likes voting for tough prosecutors. He likes spending his tax money on the police. He likes community watch programs and involvement. He does not like ranting like a mad woman on CNN and coming off as only slightly sane.

But, Nancy Grace doesn’t mind those things. Who really watches Nancy Grace? Really? I think that Jeff (of Beautiful Atrocities and Agent Bedhead fame) might have watched her once or twice. But he’s a smart, hip, fellow. He may mock her… But to mock does not require regularly tuning in…

One wonders if some overly ambitious lawyer will approach the Ducketts and convince them to sue Grace for some sort of trumped up civil wrongful death suit… Talk about irony…

Carry on.

Is it just me or is the incorporation of instant messaging into standard English a sign of the approaching apocalypse?

It’s just me?

Ok. Never mind then.

But if you do want to laugh out loud, I offer you this gem from Agent Bedhead:

“Jessica Alba is everything Paris Hilton is not: poised, gracious, publicly well behaved and physically attractive. (Okay, they’re both ot-nay oo-tay ight-bray, if you know what I mean. But Jessica is adorably dumb, like a cocker spaniel puppy, while Paris is more like that tick-infested possum that keeps rooting around in my garbage cans.)”

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader comes out of his hole to blog. And what does he choose to blog about? The raging war in the Middle East? The raging civil war in Iraq? The raging lunatic running North Korea? The raging hormones of millions of teenaged boys?

Nope. He’s going to be blogging about Andrea Yates.

As he is sure you’ve read by now, Andrea Yates was retried for the murder of her children and has been found not guilty by reason of insanity. According to Reuters Yates:

who is being treated with anti-psychotic drugs, looked stunned and tears welled in her eyes when the verdict was read. She hugged defense attorney George Parnham, who also defended her in the first trial, before she was led away by a court bailiff.

Awww… Poor little psychotic not-mommy. Your Maximum Leader, who in most cases is a font of human compassion and mercy, has a hard heart where Andrea Yates is concerned.

In point of fact, your Maximum Leader is disgusted by all the good Christian people who are all to happy to forgive Andrea Yates for her crimes. The leading forgiver? Ex-husband Rusty. Says Ex-hubby and chief forgiver Rusty Yates:

“It’s a miracle,” tearful ex-husband Rusty Yates said of the verdict. “The prosecution spent five years trying to come up with a motive in this case and missed the most obvious one — that she was psychotic.”

Huh? This ridiculous line is aped by the jury foreman. Here is the part about the foreman:

Todd Frank, foreman of the six-man, six-woman jury agreed, saying that while some jurors wanted a finding of guilty, it was impossible not to see that Yates was very ill.

“It was very clear to us all that (the doctors who cared for her) believed she had psychosis before, during and after” the crime, he told reporters.

“I hope this will help to prevent something like this from every happening again,” said Frank, a 33-year-old marketing manager.

Your Maximum Leader shudders to try and parse the complete imbecility of this statement. From time to time your Maximum Leader is filled with respect for “common man” when he is asked to serve on a jury. And then, most of the time to be honest, your Maximum Leader remembers why there will be no jury trials in the Mike World Order. People are stupid and shouldn’t be so empowered in capital cases. (Of course, there will be many show trials in the MWO… Those will be well populated with juries of “common” people.)

So, Mr Todd Frank is glad to offer up that Andrea Yates is mentally ill. Great. Remember Rusty Yates said that the prosecution was looking for a motive? Well… Apparently Mr Frank and his compatriots on the jury were looking for a rational motive too. Perhaps they should have been considering if Andrea Yates could tell right from wrong at the time of the crime. You don’t need a motive in this case. You need to establish if Andrea Yates could tell right from wrong. Apparently the chuckleheaded jury was more concerned about making sure the defendant got “help” and less concerned about the drowned children.

You know… Your Maximum Leader would be happy to have a new choice for juries in this type of case. Guilty and Insane. That way you get the best of oth worlds… You could just declare a defendant insane, get them treatment enough to make them sane; then execute them because they are still guilty as hell.

Ah well… One hopes that Andrea Yates spends lots of time in the maximum security mental hospital for the criminally naughty. She is getting off easy. Your Maximum Leader hopes that she gains lots of comfort from the continued friendship of ex-hubby and chief-forgiver, Rusty…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader reads on the news wire that heroin users are being warned by public health authorities that a significant amount of the US heroin supply has been tainted. Yes… Tainted. Tainted with fentanyl, a powerful narcotic, which according to the article is 40 to 100 times stronger than morphine.

What? We’re warning heroin users that their drug of choice, a drug that could kill them through a number of side effects, has been tampered with and could kill them…

Why?

Wouldn’t it be better if we just let them use the tainted stuff and die? Wouldn’t the long-term health-care/law enforcement costs to society be lowered as a result of a few hundred (or a few thousand?) heroin users just killing themselves with bad stuff? Doesn’t it seem weird that “the government” is warning people who consume an ilicit substance that the substance in question isn’t safe for consumption? Is it all just a conspiracy to have heroin addicts move to a domestic product like crystal meth?

Your Maximum Leader doesn’t know the answers to those questions he poses (hetorically). But he does know he wouldn’t be putting out any warnings.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sees that there have been a number of robberies and attacks on the Mall in Washington DC. For those of you not from the Dee Cee area, or those of you from another planet, “The Mall” is the long, tree-lined expanse of green in the center of the city. The Capitol, Smithsonian, White House, and various public monuments all surround this open space.

For decades the Mall has been a crime-free area in a city riddled with crime. It was an area of the city where your Maximum Leader never thought of being attacked or victimized by criminals. Apparently no longer should that be the case.

Call your Maximum Leader heavy-handed, but he hope they find the criminals responsible. He also hopes the thugs violently resist arrest and have to be shot and killed to protect the lives of the arresting officers. Yes… It would be good if ill befalls the criminals.

Carry on.