Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader reads that Yassir Arafat is holled up in his Ramallah compound and barring the Grim Reaper from the door. Or, as the headlines put it in late 1970’s-era Soviet fashion, “very sick.”

Now let it not be said that your Maximum Leader wishes ill upon any man. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t want Yassir to suffer. That is suffer any more than the many victims of his decades long terror campaign against Israel suffered before dying.

Be that as it may, your Maximum Leader did stop to think about what would happen after Yassir Arafat died. Your Maximum Leader pondered this question from the point of view of the Arab/Israeli question. He wasn’t focusing on what to actually do with Arafat after he died. Luckily for all of us, Iowahawk has been thinking about it for us. Top Ten Uses For A Dead Palestinian Nobel Laureate.

Brilliant!

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sees that those wacky Munuvians are back up. So, the first place he went to look was the lovely Annika’s site. He needed to see if she had posted her promised piece on shoe fashion.

And so she has: annika’s journal: Fash-ism Tutorial For The Maximum Leader

Male minions! You must go to Annika’s site and read what she has posted. Look at the photos. Learn them. Know them. Impress your girlfriend, spouse, or casual female friends with your wide-ranging knowledge of ladies footwear. Double your pleasure by commenting to your lovely sex partners by commenting on her stylin’ d’Orsay pumps with ankle strap as you remove them and gently caress her calf…

Ahem…

But that is not all! The Divine Minion Molly also sent your Maximum Leader a slew of e-mails all containing photos of the shoes of which he knew nothing.

So it seems your Maximum Leader has been properly schooled. By two women…

Heh. “Schooled.” By TWO women… Heh.

He now knows something of the different types of ladies footwear out there.

Your Maximum Leader will likely spend the next few days looking at women’s feet and trying to work out the classification system. Before too long, he will be shooling the Villainettes…

Carry on.

I enjoyed the Maximum Leader’s link on the book collecting habit. oth Mike and I are inveterate bibliophiles. My wife requires me to hand over my wallet before she lets me go into a used book store.

My wife and I live in a century-old two over two farmhouse. It is cramped and genteely collapsing around our family. But I love the dining room. The previous owners installed built-in bookcases around two entire walls. It houses almost half of my books and I love being able to pluck a book off the shelf for a quick ten minute read.

When Mike and I visited Seward’s house and Sagamore Hill, I returned and smugly told my wife that since both of these great men had bookcases in every room of the house, she should let me install a bookcase in every room of our house.

She looked at me, rolled her eyes and said “look around.”

We have a bookcase in every room of the house.

At the very least, I explain to Mrs. Smallholder, my vice runs to books and not booze, drugs, or hookers. She might sometimes think a crack whore addicition would be cheaper.

Even bookcases have an emotional claim on your Minister of Agriculture. My daughter’s bedroom has two bookcases; one made by her Maternal grandfather and the other built by a paternal great-grandfather from scrap wood left over at the Rockford Moose Club where he checked coats.

When my grandmother died and the family divided her furniture, we took a bed built by my great-great-great Uncle (who also helped build the benches for an important 1854 meeting in his hometown of Ripon, Wisconsin) and a cheap, mass-produced faux wood bookcase that my father gave her when he got back from Korea in 1954. My wife thinks this bookcase is ugly, and she is right. But it is a part of family history. Even if it had not been a reminder of Vater Smallholder’s overseas adventure, I would still remember it as the place where Grandma kept “Uncle Wiggly” books for the grandchildren.

The bedroom bookcases are mass-produced items; fiberboard white Walmart specials. They date to when my wife and I were in college and will probably be workhorses until we can afford something better - probably about when Jack finishes graduate school.

The Maximum Leader has a great collection of books AND some very nice bookcases. His skilled father-in-law handcrafted a couple of glorious, dark brown edifices. My favorite Maximum Leader bookcase isn’t handcrafted. It’s a mass-produced cheapo bookcase. Perhaps the Maximum Leader would like to tell the story of when someone broke into his apartment and, instead of robbing him, left a bookcase.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader saw an interesting sounding quiz on Pejamesque today. He took it and scored 50%. He presents to you the: Al Gore or the Unabomber? A quiz.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader knows that we’ve been spending lots of time on the Electoral College here at Nakedvillainy. And he also knows that we aren’t the only ones talking about how the election might turn out (electorally speaking).

Your Maximum Leader has been waiting to see if any news source would report on any of the really unlikely senarios that could come up. And behold, the Washington Post obliges.

Your Maximum Leader thinks a tie is quite unlikely. What is more likely is the senario of Bush winning the popular vote and losing the Electoral vote. While he recognizes that many would view such an outcome as a bit of delicious karma, frankly your Maximum Leader (who can - intellectually - appreciate that view) thinks it would be a bad outcome.

Anyway. Read the post and conjure up your own electoral nightmares.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader always feels relaxed and refreshed after reading Enoch Soames’ blog, The Charlock’s Shade.

Yesterday, your Maximum Leader wrote a note to himself to be sure to direct his readership over to this post: Ones own library…. He read it last night and loved it. Be sure to click through to the full article on the Chronicle of Higher Education website.

And following other links on The Charlock’s Shade, your Maximum Leader found a fine post on Wagner. Specifically listening to Wagner’s operas in a large opera house versus a smaller opera house. Your Maximum Leader has heard Wagner’s Ring Cycle produced at the Washington Opera house (before it ws refurbished); and he’s heard “Die Walkure” and “Der Fliegende Holländer” at the Harrison Opera House in Norfolk, VA. (He’s also seen some Wagner at the Met in New York, but his memory of the music is not as clear as the others.)

As you might imagine, the Harrison Opera House in Norfolk is quite smaller and more intimate than the Opera House at the Kennedy Center in Washington (or Constitution Hall - where the Washington Opera performed most of its last season). And your Maximum Leader’s memory bears out what James Panero is writing on Armavirumque. The music at Harrison was “ringing and resonating.” You could feel it deep into your bones. And frankly, that is the way Richard wanted it.

Mrs. Villain frequently chides your Maximum Leader for playing his copies of Sir Georg Solti’s recording of the Ring very loudly. For some reason she doesn’t like your Maximum Leader “feeling the music in his bones” while in the Villainschloss.

BTW, if some loyal minion out there wants to really really really show how much they love their Maximum Leader they would buy him the Solti recordings on CD. As much as it disgraces your Maximum Leader to say it. His current copies are a combination of LP records and tapes. Weep…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t know how long or detailed this post will be, or even if he will actually publish and keep it up. But reading the word omnibenevolence in the Smallholder’s post about the Packers struck a chord in him.

Your Maximum Leader and Mrs. Villain frequently disagree over the characteristic of Omnibenevolence in God. Mrs. Villain’s beliefs are quite straightforward. God is all-good and all good things come from him. Evil, bad, germs, disease, disasters, and all other non-good things are not part of God’s creation. They are errors.

NB to readers: Just to let you all know. Your Maximum Leader will not broach any further discussion of Mrs. Villain’s beliefs here. He only described them to put his beliefs in a little context.

Now your Maximum Leader believes that God is beyond our comprehension. And to the extent that it is possible to know such things, God created and emcompasses all things. Good and Evil are all part of God and God’s creation. God is beyond typical moral appelations like Good and Evil.

In this context, God is both responsible for Good and equally responsible for Evil. That is responsible to the extent that we can understand God.

Your Maximum Leader, while certainly demi-godish, does not presume to understand or even guess at God’s plan for anyone. But it certainly does seem as though God is witholding good things from Brett Favre and the Green Bay Packers.

Or, as your Maximum Leader’s Catholic upbringing tries to remind him, God doesn’t give unbearable burdens to those who cannot handle them.

What a post. Damn.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader started down his list of blogs he reads every morning when he discovered that all the Munuvians appear to be down. (”The piper is down. I repreat, the piper is down.”) So, your Maximum Leader shot off a little e-mail to a few good munuvians letting them know (in case they didn’t already). One of those good Munuvians, Robert the Llamabutcher (So? Charley teels me you’re a bootcher.), wrote back accusing Rusty of hogging bandwidth and crashing the party. Which may or may not be the case.

Anyho…

Robert said that your Maximum Leader really had to read the Lieks bleat today. So, your Maximum Leader interrupted his normal reading to do just that.

It was worth it.

Turn. Go. Read the Bleat. Now.

Carry on.

One wonders about this whole omnibenevolence thing.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is anxiously anticipating tonights game four of the World Seris. There will be much rejoicing in Beantown (and across the Red Sox nation) if they Sox should pull it off. Your Maximum Leader believes that they Sox can do it and will do it. The Card’s pitching has just come apart in the World Series. Your Maximum Leader looks at the games and wonders how the Cards even got to the World Series with pitching like this… This could be the game to do it.

But then again… A long-time Sox fan told your Maximum Leader yesterday that if there is a curse it will work out this way: The Sox will lose the next four games to the Cards. Then the Sox’s accomplishments against the Yankees will be forgotten. And the woe that is being a Red Sox fan will be compounded 100 fold.

But really, your Maximum Leader thinks the Sox will pull it out tonight. Go Sox!

Your Maximum Leader wonders how he could have forgotten to link to this week’s TMQ column? Gross negligence on his part. If only members of the 101st Airborne Division had been sent to the Villainschloss to secure your Maximum Leader’s computer from misuse by Mrs. Villain the link would have been posted yesterday.

The Packers did well last weekend. That is a good thing. For many different reasons. But the main one is that your Maximum Leader has always disliked the Dallas football franchise. He can’t put a finger on why this is. It is an irrational dislike he’s sure. But your Maximum Leader is comfortable in his dislikes.

Speaking of the Packers… Your Maximum Leader has learned that he has just scored tickets to see the Green Bay Packers take on the Washington Redskins this Sunday at 1pm EST. He’s told the tickets are very good. (Mrs. Villain thinks the seats are the very posh ones where you have real people come up to you and you order á la carte food which is brought right to you in your seat!)

These tickets have caused two dilemas for your Maximum Leader. The first is should he wear his Brett Favre jersey to the game. Your Maximum Leader believes in supporting his team, but he is torn about this game for completely irrational reasons.

You see… The AirMarshal and your Maximum Leader were talking on the phone the other day and the conversation went something like this:

AM: You know that in Presidential election years when the Redskins win the game immediately preceeding the election, the imcumbent wins.
ML: Really?
AM: Yup. And when the Skins lose, the incumbent loses.
ML: Really?
AM: Yeah. So if you really want Bush to win, you’ll have to root for the Skins against the Packers.
ML: Humm…
AM: How’s that for irony? Sucks to be you.

Okay. That may not be a true transcript of the conversation, but it does summon up the essence of the dilema. So let us see if your Maximum Leader has this down. Skins victory = Bush re-elected. Packers victory = Kerry elected.

Damnation. That is a tough choice. On the one hand, your Maximum Leader almost feels as though he should wish the Packers to “take one for the nation” and lose. But on the other hand, if the Packers don’t win this game making the playoffs becomes so much harder and this could be Favre’s last chance to win another Super Bowl.

Of course, there is no emperical relationship between Redskins victories in games preceeding Presidential elections and the outcome of the election. It is just an interesting coincidence. This has been a year when all sorts of long standing records appear to be being broken. (i.e.: No team coming back from being three games down in a series and winning the series.)

Well, your Maximum Leader will have to keep thinking this one over.

Should he wish for a tie?

Carry on.

UPDATE: Here is a Washington Post peice on exactly what the AirMarshal was talking about. Wow! What a statistical coincidence. Since 1936 when the Skins have won at home on the Sunday efore the election - the incumbent wins. And from the article it seems as though your Maximum Leader isn’t the only one with a funny feeling about the game.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader presents you with a sign that beer can do strange things to a man. Or even to a monk. Buddhist Monks Fall for Beer Girls.

Let us just hope it all works out and isn’t just a bad case of celibacy mixed with beergoggles.

Carry on.

I had a rather disconcerting experience last Friday.

I decided to stop in Staunton to visit Vater Smallholder and see how his colonoscopy had gone. Assuming that things had all checked out, I was planning on delivering a bit or ribbing too. Rectal examinations are always humorous as long as the snaky pipe is in someone else’s rear.

When I pulled off 81 at Route 275, there was a heinous accident just ahead of me. I didn’t actually see the hit since I was on the turn of the exit, but probably would have heard the screams of shearing metal if I hadn’t been jamming to the Black Eyed Peas. Three cars up, a driver pulled onto 275 without looking and was hit at about 50 or 60 miles per hour. The cars crunched, slipped across two lanes and slipped into a narrow ravine. As I completed the exit turn, the car wheels were still spinning.

One car had flames coming out of the engine compartment.

I slid my trusty F-150 into a ditch and ran across the highway. I was the first person to reach the burning car and pulled the driver’s door open. The woman inside had a broken nose and was spewing a bit of blood. She was also obviously dazed.

I hesitated. If the flames were rampaging around the car, I would have pulled her out without a second thought. But now that I was standing next to the vehicle, I could see down into the engine block (the hood was accordion crumpled up against the windshield. Looking back, I’m not quite sure how that happened - the whole front was crumpled, but the hood was crumpled more than the body of the engine compartment). The flames were just little flickers and what had at first appeared to be smoke turned out to be a cloud of escaping steam.

So I hesitated. If the fire wasn’t that bad, did i still justify pulling her from the vehicle? What if she had a head or spinal injury? Would moving her cause more damage?

This hesitation lasted maybe five seconds while my brain wrestled with the best solution. Then a voice behind me said: “I’m a nurse. Let’s get her out.” Grateful for direction, I followed orders.

The nurse had been in the car behind me. When I looked around, there were over a dozen people pulling over and running to help. I had one of those “God bless America” moments - all these people were rushing to help total strangers.

The careless driver was in worse shape. He was bleeding profusely, his nose was airbag mush, and he was clearly incoherent. He was rolling from side to side in his seat and moaning. We decided that we had to stabilize him until help arrived (several people had dialed 911 on their cell phones). But we couldn’t get to him - the impact had crushed in his door and we couldn’t pop it open. The other doors were locked.

A couple big truckers and I grabbed the edge of the doorframe that had bent outwards and pulled it back just enough for a skinny teenager to reach his arm in and unlock the back door. We jerked it open and the teenager crawled through the car to open the passenger door. Another nurse had arrived at the scene and crawled in to administer first aid with an EMT kit. We tried to tell the man to sit still but he kept flailing around so someone sat in the backseat and held his head against the headrest.

I’m glad his car, crumpled side and front as it was, did not catch fire - we couldn’t have gotten the man out of his vehicle because the engine has pushed the dashboard back into the passenger compartment, trapping the man’s right leg.

Help took fifteen minutes to arrive, but when it did arrive it arrived in force - two fire trucks, two ambulances, an EMT vehicle and a fire sedan. When it became obvious that all the helpers who had stopped were getting in the way, I said goodbye and continued on to my parents’ house.
Driving away, the adrenaline drained away and I began to get the shakes. I kept thinking about that moment of hesitation.

My brain often stops to consider the pros and cons of each situation. This is generally an asset, but in a crisis situation it is a liability. What if the nurse hadn’t been right behind me? I probably would have ended up pulling the woman out of the car anyway, but what if she had had a neck injury? I don’t think she did because by the time I left she was sitting up and talking to the paramedics, but it was a possibility. How bad would you feel if, trying to be helpful, you paralyzed a spinal cord victim?

Thinking about that critical moment hesitation, I had to stop and thank God that my military hitch ended before I had to make any decisions more important than who would get a three day pass. I imagine that in a combat situation, there will always be several possible courses of action. Good leaders make decisions instantly and carry them out. Would hesitation to consider the pros and cons of each action end up getting soldiers killed? Thank God I will never have to find out.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader wanted to write this yesterday; but he was too tired to blog in the evening. So, we return to our ongoing discussion of the Electoral College today. (Is this still “Part the First, Subpart(b) or have we moved to (c)?)

Your Maximum Leader will first comment on why he thinks “Anti-Faithless Elector” laws will not withstand Constitutional scrutiny. To address the Smallholder’s point. Your Maximum Leader believes his position is sticking with a strict construction of the Consitution. Historically, states have been able to manage the terms and condiditons of election (except in matters expressly defined by the Constitution). But, as you can imagine, the federal courts have been more activist in their attempts to redress real (or imagined) greivances. Thus, the states have less authority to regulate how elections are conducted. Your Maximum Leader would like to see states be able to (if they so desired) set up a situation in which pledged Electors for all political parties on the ballot are slated. And those Electors are pledged, and perhaps pledged under penalty of law, to vote a particular way. It is a little nonsensical to believe that a state would be keeping with the letter and spirit of the Constitution if they slated one set of Electors to vote a particular way regardless of the outcome of the popular vote.

As this type of restriction (pledging under penalty of law that an Elector will cast a vote in a particular fashion) is not explicitly allowed (or prohibited) in the Constitution, your Maximum Leader feels that should a court ever review a “Faithless Elector” law they will just make up some decision to suit their purposes. Given the way courts have ruled over the past 60 or so years, it seems likely that a federal court would want to take descretionary powers away from states and give it to some federal entity.

Your Maximum Leader doesn’t believe that “Faithless Elector” laws should be unconstitutional. He just believes that federal judges would make them so if such a case ever came up.

Just your Maximum Leader’s feeling… Anyway…

So, after our little posts of last week, your Maximum Leader got some messages from others concerning our Electoral College discussion. Loyal minion JohnL of TexasBestGrok (still the best blog on the internet for aircraft cheesecake and Sci-Fi babes polls) writes:

You can pass along to the Smallholder that I really meant no offense to Molly the Democrat. I admire gun-toting Democrats, a sadly endangered species. I am in fact unaffiliated with either major political party here in Texas.

While it’s no secret to readers of my blog that I will vote for President Bush this time around, it has nothing to do with Party affiliation. It has everything to do with war and taxes. Bush will fight to win the war and seek to make tax relief permanent. Kerry? I’m not sure about the details of all his “plans,” but in short I’m sure he’ll surrender to the Islamists and raise my taxes to boot. I disagree with much of the Republican Party platform, and even more so with the Texas Republican Party platform (which is quite a bit stronger on social conservatism than
on general principles of individual liberty). I guess I’m a South Park Republican, or, under my own terminology, a “clothespin” Republican (see here) who would likely be voting for the Libertarians this year if they hadn’t nominated an anti-war moonbat.

My pointed words were aimed at puncturing the righteous indignation of the Democrats (whom I perhaps unfairly conflated with Molly), who so recently ran a ruthless party machine in Texas. Doesn’t mean I approve of the Republicans’ tit-for-tat, but I do find irony a delicious snack.

Yours in free-market villainy,

JohnL

Your Maximum Leader mut tip his bejeweled floppy hat and say “hear, hear” to JohnL’s love of savory irony in the Texas Democrats being upset that the Texas Republicans learned a thing or two about redistricting from them. The Texas redistricting fight is a perfect illustration of the lesson that neither party really seems to learn. The great wheel of Karma spins around and sometimes you’re on the winning side; and sometimes you come back as a dung beetle. Texas Dems should feel nothing but embarassment over the behaviour of their elected representatives in the Texas House. It was pathetic.

And from what your Maximum Leader knows of Texas Democrats (and of Molly) he feels he can say that Molly does appear to be a rare bird in the flock. And we all here don’t think you meant any offense by lumping Molly in with other Texas Democrats. Really, how were you to know?

You know, your Maximum Leader does think of himself as a conservative. It just so happens that the primary conservative party in the US right now is the Republican party. This does not mean he blindly votes the party line. He can say that while he hasn’t ever voted for a Democrat for President or the House of Representatives; he has voted for Democrats for US Senate, State Senate, State House of Delegates, Mayor, County Supervisor, and Sheriff. Your Maximum Leader does measure the candidates as a whole and votes for the one most aligned with him. He has never felt as though a vote for a third party candidate was a good move. Mainly because as much as I might favour a party like the Libertarians in the abstract, they are oftentimes a bit too wacky for serious consideration.

And, interestingly enough, shortly after JohnL wrote his e-mail your Maximum Leader received an e-mail from the Divine Minion Molly. She wrote:

Dearest Maximum Leader,
I’ve come out of Astro mourning briefly to respond to your wonderful post on the Electoral College. You truly did it justice. Thank you for taking up for me. I’m not a “whiney Democrat”. I just wanted a nice discussion on the Electoral College without the snide goose references. I hadn’t even thought of the redistricting fiasco when asking your thoughts on the Electoral College. I could go on a good rant about Tom DeLay sticking his nose in everything but I won’t.

To JohnL- I’m a 7th generation Texan so my ancestors were probably in the Democratic Party machine after Reconstruction so I’ll take full responsibility for it. Also, he needs to add Claudia Black from Farscape to his Sci Fi Babes.

To Smallholder- I loved your diagram on the filtering between the people and the presidency. I think this is important. The Founding Fathers set it up this way because they didn’t trust the “common people”. Also, I don’t have a concealed handgun permit, so my gun stays at home unless I’m going to the shooting range.

To clarify my position, I favor the proportional allocation plan that is trying to be passed in Colorado. I think more people would vote if they thought their vote would count.

One of the reasons I do like your site dearest Maximum Leader is that you welcome all views on any subject. Plus, you’ve just gotta love someone who speaks about himself in the third person.

Sincerely,
The Divine Minion M
(Not Molly the Texas Democrat)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Blah-dy, blah. It is nice to know that you favour proportional allocation of Electors Molly. But your Maximum Leader really wants to know if you own some mules, t-straps, kitten slides, or strappy sandals? Really now… Let us not get off track talking about the Electoral College or redistricting when we can consider footwear!

Okay… Moving on… The first comment your Maximum Leader must make to Molly is this, “What good does your gun do you at home?” (But if it is there unattended, your Maximum Leader hopes it is in some locked container.) Anyhoo…

Molly, your Maximum Leader is pleased that he lived up to expecations in the Electoral College discourse. He is also sure that the good Minister of Agriculture has as well. Also, Claudia Black does seem quite attractive. Click here for work safe pic. Perhaps JohnL will have a women of Farscape poll. (Alas, your Maximum Leader has never watched Farscape. But he hears that his Villainous Sibling does.) And your Maximum Leader thanks minion Molly for the kind words about writing in the third person. It is much harder than it seems.

As for Tom DeLay’s nose, your Maximum Leader does believe that a US Congressman who doesn’t stick his nose into redistricting in his state is not deserving of being a Congressman. Admittedly, DeLay had a larger role than your Maximum Leader would have thought appropriate in the whole matter. But nonetheless, the problem appears to be with the Democrats not liking the taste of sour grapes.

But back to the matter of the Electoral College…

The more your Maximum Leader thinks about it, the more he believes that moving to proportional allocation of Electoral votes is not something to which we as a nation would look forward. The more your Maximum Leader mulls it over, the more he believes that widespread adoption of proportional allocation would: 1) increase the already insane amount of money candidates spend on elections; 2) would not actually increase the number of candidate visits to out of the way places in an effort to court votes; 3) would result in narrow popular vote/electoral vote outcomes to lead to more polarized politics (lack of mandate); 4) send elections to the House with terrifying freqency; 5) not improve the nature of or character of the national debate.

Well. That seems to be all the pithy commentary your Maximum Leader can summon up right now. He supposes we are back to talking fashion again. (BTW, the lovely Annika wrote your Maximum Leader and said she might come up with a women’s footwear primer for our edification! Yay!)

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader the NTSB has officially blamed pilot error for the crash of American Flight 587 in November 2001. You remember this one? The one that crashed into the neighbourhood in New York? The one everyone feared was a terrorist act just a few months after September 2001?

Well, according to the news wires, it was the pilot applying too much pressure to the rudder. Sadly now, Airbus and American are duking it out over who, ultimately, is going to pay.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader can’t believe his luck. Knowing that the Minister of Agriculture is a “clothes horse” and can pull off just about anything; your Maximum Leader thinks it is time for the M of A to trade in that John Deere cap he wears around the farm for something more stylish. Ah yes. This should do quite well.

Carry on.