Rule 5 Sunday – Under My Wheels

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Mr. G kicks off this week’s Rule 5 roundup with the obligatory sweater puppies, this time from Clemson, and follows it up with some from Duke. Also contributing to the collegiate enthusiasm is Mind Numbed Robot, with a fine assortment of da puppies, some of them actually in sweaters. Three Beers Later closes out the subject for this week with some Bruins cheerleaders of extraordinary fineness.

Fishersville Mike notes the arrival of the UFL in Virginia with a pic of the Destroyers’ dance team director, which is nice, but not really in the same league as this Juliana Moreira video linked by Three Beers Later.

Oddly, the POH Diaries and Maggie’s Notebook were the only folks who submitted some Liz Taylor Rule 5 this week. Maggie’s also favors us with a nice spread of Bond Girl Olga Kurilenko with some bonus beefcake for the ladies.

The ever-reliable Soylent Green serves up some NSFW Andi Muise For Alpha Proxima Day. And, of course, we have the obligatory (and, of course, NSFW) weekly underwear review.

Having decamped to Scotland, the Rio Norte Line sticks to his theme of babes from the UK with some Kelly Brook pix. Eye of Polyphemus, on the other hand, strengthens my interest in Sucker Punch with this Vanessa Hudgens pic. Continuing in this cinematic vein, Nation of Cowards presents a comparison of Adrienne Palicki in the new Wonder Woman costume with Lynda Carter in the old one, including a bonus assortment of Palicki photos.

Proof Positive contributes a tasteful examination of Sarah Chalke and Cathy Lee Crosby as Vintage Babe of the Week.

Dustbury observes Reese Witherspoon’s 35th birthday and also provides us with some Zooey Deschanel wallpaper from Your Highness.

The Jerseynut draws our attention to the brave and beautiful Pakistani actress Veena Malik, who ripped a mullah and his talk-show host enabler new ones this week. He also collects a nice assortment of Malik photos in this post.

The DaleyGator helps us finish strong this week with a slideshow of Siobhan Parekh, a bikini girls video, some Natasha Yi videos, and wraps up with some most impressive Rule 5 linkagery of his own.

The Camp of the Saints begins the endgame here with an excellent post on Marika Fruscio, with bonus quote from Camille Paglia! He then favors us with still pix of Juliana Moreira, a look back at Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman, Rule 5 linkagery starting with Eva Mendes, congratulations on ToM’s six millionth hit featuring Rule 5 Poster Gal Christina Hendricks, and finally, a restorative pair of Alyssa Milano pix.

Thanks to all for their contributions! Links for next Sunday’s Rule 5 collection should be sent to Rule 5 Wombat.

Ace Miffed At Portman For Doing What She Does?

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by Smitty

I’m afraid I don’t grasp the nature of the criticism of Natalie Portman, whose Black Swan flick I still haven’t seen. Come to think of it, my only knowledge of the lady is that the Slashdot crowd fantasizes about her petrified, naked, and covered in hot grits.
So what if she was also acting at the time she accepted the award for Black Swan, and may or may not have personally performed some of the scenes herself. Doesn’t the Oscar performance itself become a meta-component of the movie?
In this classic scene, the immortal Bea Arthur explains to a Stand-up Philosopher (which calling informs thespians, bloggers and politicians alike) on the nature of the game in a tough economy:
If we want acting to conform to any sort of standard, we need to re-emphasize the stage tradition, and reward actual talent.
Portman may be the Hollyweird equivalent of AutoTune, but that is what we’ve sought.

New York Times Sends an 11-Year-Old Girl to Interview the Jonas Brothers

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Or the equivalent thereof: Shridar Pappu’s profile feature on “Washington’s New Brat Pack” pulses with so much fanzine breathlessness you might think it was February 1964 and the Beatles had just landed in New York:

In only a few years, these young men and others like them have become part of the journalistic establishment in Washington. Once they lived in groups in squalid homes and stayed out late, reading comic books in between posts as more seasoned reporters slogged their way through traditional publications like “The Hill” and “Roll Call.” Now the members of this “Juicebox Mafia,” as they were first called by Eli Lake of The Washington Times, in a reference to youth, have become destination reading for — and respected by — the city’s power elite. . . .
On Friday evenings it’s not uncommon to spot them at rock places like Black Cat or the 9:30 Club, or . . . in grungy enclaves like the American Ice Company. . . .
But they’ve also rerouted the aspirations of young journalists here, for whom a job in print media was once the holy grail. . . .

Pappu’s wet-your-pants hyperventilating enthusiasm about The Next Big Thing(s) in Journalism is rather difficult to reconcile with the February Meme o’ the Month, The Death of Blogging.

Less than five weeks after we were told that the cool kids are doing that Twitter thing, we are now told that these particular 20-something blogger/journalists are Woodward, Bernstein and Justin Bieber all rolled into one gigantic influential wad of pure awesome.

Amanda Marcotte — whose “godbag christofascists” 15 minutes of fame as The Next Big Thing ended even before anybody ever heard of Rielle Hunter — is appropriately bitter:

Hey, NY Times, 2006 is calling.
They want their narrative back.

Ms. Marcotte notes that “all the members of this curious tribe of bloggers-turned-professional have penises. And they’re remarkably pale of skin tone.” But of course, beyond their white maleness, it is the fetishistic obsession with youth — What All the Cool Kids Are Reading! — which provides the justifying rationale for Pappu’s story.

Frances Martel of Mediaite sees the rise of the Juiceboxers as showing “just how quickly a young consumer of media can become a young producer of media on the web, and how those young producers of media can quickly find themselves shifting roles from proteges to role models.”

Which is to say, the cycle time between being this year’s New Pop Sensation and next year’s Golden Oldies Classic has been accelerated, if only because the MSM editors in charge of assigning these trendspotting pieces are (a) so completely clueless as to what the hell anyone actually wants to read about, and (b) increasingly desperate to attract the younger readers who their consultants tell them are the Key To The Future.

So some editor at the New York Times assigns an article on the Young Kids Who Write What the Young Kids Read and — just like last month’s “Blogs Are So 2003″ idiocy — we get a brief glimpse into the self-obsessive insecurities that rack the minds of the fools presiding over the Decline and Fall of the Sulzberger Empire. (Has Bill Keller resigned yet? Because I’ve got $20 that says he’s gone before May 1.)

What the MSM Emperors With No Clothes can’t grasp is that their obsession with youth — New! Improved! Kid-tastic! — is symptomatic of their fatal disease. Go down the list of the New Media carnivores feasting while the Old Media sinks into the tar pit, and it’s not a bunch of fresh-out-of-college punks:

  • The biggest thing in cable news? Fox, where the No. 1 primetime show is anchored by a 61-year-old guy who used to do Inside Edition.
  • The biggest thing on the Internet? The Drudge Report, run by a 44-year-old guy who got his media training from reading the morning papers while working the third shift at 7-Eleven.
  • The biggest thing on the radio? Rush Limbaugh, 60-year-old former p.r. guy for the Kansas City Royals.

We could run down the list much further than that, of course — e.g., 57-year-old Tina Brown recently hired 57-year-old Howard Kurtz at the Daily Beast — but the point is still the same: Whatever is killing the Old Media, it’s not because their New Media competitors are all Pretty Young Things providing readers with New! Improved! Kid-tastic! coverage.

The desperation with which the New York Times has recently flailed around in search of The Next Big Thing — “It’s Facebook!” No? “It’s Twitter!” No? “It’s Bloggers!” — betrays the encroaching sense among courtiers inside the castle that the king has lost control of the situation on the other side of the moat, where the peasants live.

And they are now haunted by an eerie sound: A distinct low rumbling noise, as if in the far distance there were many millions of boots treading steadily toward them, marching like an Army of Davids.

UPDATE: A belated hat-tip to Donald Douglas at American Power. Donald had Tweeted me the link to his post on Saturday, and I clicked through to the NYT article from there. But, by the time I sat down to write Sunday, I was just looking at the NYT article and had forgotten where I’d gotten it from.

Also: The dog ate my homework.

Sure, Trump For President, But Of What?

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by Smitty

Dr. Helen has come out in favor of The Donald as a potential candidate for POTUS. I don’t think I’m overstating her there.
However, if he’s no more serious than the current example, then I wouldn’t vote for him as President of Hair Club for Men. We need limited government and fiscal sanity. The Trump/Christie/Whoever stage shows can go, for all I’d support them.
Demand substance; reject style.

05Apr: Walker’s Wisconsin Waterloo?

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by Smitty

John Nolte at Big Government updates us on the status of the case of the Union vs. Governor Walker in Wisconsin. It’s an excellent overview, worthy of your full attention. The gist is that if one of the four conservative judges on the court, Prosser, is lost on the 05Apr election, then the court would flip to Lefty, and all semblance of rule of law, common sense, fiscal responsibility, reason, representation of the people, etc., could go straight down the tubes. One wishes one was engaging in hyperbole there.
In the face of such journalistic excellence, there was only one thing this blog could do: dispatch Sissypuss the Blog Kitty for a video exclusive. Here, our gritty, intrepid back-alley correspondent has captured two of the three sitting Lefties on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, discussing their day in their usual seriousness:
This blog is still waiting for an official denial from The Troglopundit* of the rumor that these judges had raided Trog’s personal lingerie collection, NTTAWWT. If he’s too embarrassed to admit the loss of these unmentionables, this blog understands in advance.
We here at ToM are willing to go to extreme lengths to help great bloggers like Trog achieve important milestones like a million pageviews, and we’ll cheerfully toss his dignity under the bus to do it. You’re welcome, Trog.

*I may have invented a new category, the ‘begging-the-question link’ with this one.

Even Mark Steyn Misses The Point From Time To Time

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by Smitty

Steyn’s NRO article “The Art of Inconclusive War“, subtitled “Why is it that the United States no longer wins wars?” is another fine outing, but ultimately dances around the issue of the lack of victory in war, as evidenced by actual peace.
Bottom line up front: homo bureaucratus is here to manage problems, not solve them. Once you grasp that the whole war question is now merely a variation on the theme of the Iron Law of Bureaucracy, mystification can then give way to frustration. Verily, the power, policy, and process are far more important than any actual outcome. The intent justifies the means, and any negative ends are the fault of the Demonized Conservative of the Day (DCD).
Steyn’s article begins by laughing at Kinetic Military Action’s blatant contradiction of everything Candidate Obama said about foreign entanglements. The 2008 campaign was a virtuoso sunshine-up-your-backside performance, which can only be topped by the same rubes insisting on getting fooled again to the tune of the Who. I have faith in Mitt Romney’s capacity to bring such a debacle to pass.
After considering some of our NATO allies, Steyn floats the question:

. . .let us consider why it is that the United States no longer wins wars. Okay, it doesn’t exactly lose (most of) them, but nor does it have much to show for a now 60-year-old pattern of inconclusive outcomes. American forces have been fighting and dying in Afghanistan for a decade: Doesn’t that seem like a long time for a non-colonial power to be spending hacking its way through the worthless terrain of a Third World dump? If the object is to kill terrorists, might there not be some slicker way of doing it? And, if the object is something else entirely, mightn’t it be nice to know what it is?

Mark, your insistence on some kind of rationale here is touching, even quaint. In the case of Afghanistan, we’re flipping the COIN. A lot of coin. Afghanistan is The Ultimate Shovel Ready Project. I say that neutrally. The American policy is to dump a pile of blood and treasure here buffing up the infrastructure, while showing the Afghan forces how to handle the kinetic side of things. ATAMO*, and Afghanistan is a modern, stable country. Sorry if faith-based foreign policy leaves you underwhelmed. Recall it took Moses two generations in the Sinai to get anywhere with the Israelites.
Here comes the tell:

I am by temperament and upbringing an old-school imperialist: There are arguments to be made for being on the other side of the world for decades on end if you’re claiming it as sovereign territory and rebuilding it in your image, as the British did in India, Belize, Mauritius, the Solomon Islands, you name it. Likewise, there are arguments to be made for saying sorry, we’re a constitutional republic, we don’t do empire. But there’s not a lot to be said for forswearing imperialism and even modest cultural assertiveness, and still spending ten years getting shot up in Afghanistan helping to create, bankroll, and protect a so-called justice system that puts a man on death row for converting to Christianity.

Oh, you medieval Crusader, you! This pre-Cold War analysis neglects the fact that the National Security Act of 1947 was really the Team America, World Police Act. The US, prior to the Cold War, never maintained a substantial navy or army. Yet here we sit, two decades after perestroika, a solution in search of a problem. If we don’t like the policies of the current administration, the proper venue is the ballot box. Nothing short of trimming the ambitions of the national security strategy will amount to much.
Steyn applies his old-school thinking to Libya and comes up confused. The headache only comes if you’re operating under the assumption that the policy should make sense beyond the next opinion poll. By pointing his waffle maker at Tripoli, BHO has made up 10 points on the Rasmussen WTF Index. See how that line moved? That’s a BFD in the race for re-election.
Steyn appears to be on an appropriately cynical course as he concludes:

The United States is responsible for 43 percent of the planet’s military spending. So how come it doesn’t feel like that? It’s not merely that “our military is being volunteered by others,” but that Washington has been happy to volunteer it as the de facto expeditionary force for the “international community.” Sometimes U.S. troops sail under U.N. colors, sometimes NATO’s, and now in Libya even the Arab League’s. Either way, it makes little difference: America provides most of the money, men, and materiel. All that changes is the transnational figleaf.

Remember that all that money was borrowed. As the US government devolves into a full-on ponzi scheme, the Shiny New World Government (courtesy of King George) will pay the US to flex where needed, and ensure that the remaining independence of the countries in the world is reduced.
We’ll get there. More little spats will occur, and the US’s political independence, like its energy independence, will be eroded, and her sovereignty punted upstream to faceless, soulless, unelected, cosmopolitan twerps.
“A Republic, if you can keep it?” Sorry, Benjamin.
(Wow, this is a dark post. I should go review that McDonnell video for a pick-me-up.)

Update: Linked at Maggie’s Notebook.

*And Then A Miracle Occurs

Thanks Guv, You Do Us Proud

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by Smitty (gracious hat tip to Cubachi)

One derives a great deal of satisfaction from the privilege of voting for genuine Americans like Bob McDonnell. You can tell the difference between a good leader and another Ruling Class stiff by the way a good leader draws the audience up to a higher level through a speech, as opposed to stepping down to the proletariat elevation for a few minutes of gumflap.
More important than the words are the actions. And this is what differentiates a good leader like McDonnell from one who Bloviates Hubris Often.

It is a privilege to reside in a state rife with solid leaders like McDonnell and Cuccinelli, (not to mention Patrick Murray, whom I hope shall muster another attempt to unseat Moran next year) providing leadership today in the fine tradition of Washington, Jefferson, and Mason. I look at these guys, and then consider the rot on the north bank of the Potomac, and figure that there is no way these slack-jawed Progressive idiots can succeed in destroying America.

Parenthood Is Noble

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by Smitty (via Insty)

Of all the lies of the modern Progressive movement, an overarching falsehood is that fatherhood and motherhood are not good. This is implicit in things like the Overpopulation Myth and the Gender/Sexuality Are Socially Constructed Myths. It’s been explicit in the feminist assault on motherhood.
The result? Virginia Postrel can meaningfully title an article ‘Mommy Track’ Without Shame.

But most want children, and once they have kids, these “talented and creative” women, “are willing to trade some career growth and compensation for freedom from the constant pressure to work long hours and weekends.” 

Instead of treating such women as pathetic losers to be jettisoned for a new crop of recruits, she argued, companies should recognize them as a “precious resource.” Such women could bring experience, continuity and talent to middle-management jobs traditionally occupied by short-termers on their way up or “mediocre” men whose ambitions outstripped their ability.

I submit that the real problem here is that women are fed a logical OR here: motherhood OR career.
This is steeped in falsehood. Motherhood IS a career, and anyone who’d condescend toward my mother for raising three well-adjusted children has outed him- or herself as a godforsaken fool.
Furthermore, I’d assert without proof that those saying that parenthood in general and motherhood in particular are somehow worth less than materialistic career pursuits:

  • are directly responsible to the cratering of the birthrate,
  • hasten the insolvency of the bogus social welfare programs they espouse,
  • are among the least happy members of the Brave New World they’ve created,
  • systematically project their failure on conservatives,
  • foam at the mouth when they hear the name “Sarah Palin”.

In summary, the falsehoods that threaten the long-term survivability of the American Dream tend to collect in heads which begin with false premises like ‘Parenthood sucks’.
For an excellent related post on the ignobility of treating sexuality as a video game, see The Camp of the Saints. I cannot resist preserving this particular gem:

Liberals, knowing that everyone has messed up at some point or another, would have us believe that hypocrisy involves nothing more nor less than stating the existence of an absolute moral truth.

Again, one is left to wonder how anyone believing that God is absolute moral truth, for one example, a Christian, can associate with the Left.

Update: linked by That Mr. G Guy.

Update II: more thoughts at The Underground Conservative

From the likes of Ward Cleaver, Jim Anderson and Mike Brady on TV in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s to Cliff Huxtable and Jason Seaver in the 1980s, Americans saw positive images of Dad on TV. Now where are they? Gone. At best, Dad is an idiot. A moron. If he’s even there. Sorry, but Homer Simpson is not a positive role model for a father.

Good point.