Here's something I don't get

And like a great many things, I'm sure this is just an "age" thing, 'cause I'm old and stuff, but I saw this pic of Madonna's daughter Lourdes Leon out and about the other day and something caught my eye:

And no, I'm not talking about those eyebrows that practically have a life of their own. But her nose ring.

In truth, I find the overdoing of tattoos and piercings on the younger generations to be a bit off-putting in general. But I've come to appreciate the artwork of some of the ink being done and some of the jewelry kids adorn themselves with isn't completely horrible.

But of all the questionable (to me) piercings, I don't get the ring through the nose. There's a cultural significance to that, and it isn't good. It conjures up the notions of chattel . . . slavery . . . involuntary submission . . . subjugation . . . all things I would think a young, supposedly independent, feminist-type woman of today would find abhorrent and would seek to distance herself from.

And yet I see more and more young ladies with a ring through their nose. Maybe they're trying to re-appropriate negative imagery, and if so, more power to them. But to me, the right way to do this is just let it die out and disappear into the dust bin of history.

But like I said, I'm just an old man. Maybe I just don't get it.

Effing finally!! Thank you.

In a recent column at National Review online, writer Charles C. Cooke puts out there for far more viewers than I could ever to hope to reach, exactly what I've been saying since we started the 2016 campaign for President of The United States:

"Whatever he might claim before his adoring crowds, Trump is not in fact an antidote to Barack Obama. He is his parallel."

Thank you, Charles! *man hug* I have said repeatedly that we do not need another petulant, thin-skinned wanna-be king in the White House just because he's running with an R after his name. Or as Cooke puts it:

"As has been made abundantly clear by his incessant mewling and pathetically thin skin, Donald J. Trump is not in fact an unwaveringly resolute tough guy of the type you would hope to find standing next to you in the trenches, but an insecure attention seeker who cannot help but pander to his audiences’ prejudices."

Precisely. As Charles Krauthammer pointed out recently, Trump is running his campaign like a reality TV show. He's simply in it to win it. He doesn't really care about being President, he simply wants to win the contest to feed his ego. Honestly, can you truly imagine this vulgar cretin constrained by the office and all it entails for four years? If elected, Trump could conceivably be the first President to step down voluntarily before his term is up because he simply didn't like the job.

We saw and heard TV pundits and analysts, particularly after the last debate, give Trump a pass as he showed a distinct weakness on substantive policy discussion -- whether domestic or foreign. The boilerplate apologies go along the lines that Trump is so far out in the lead, he really didn't need to have a great debate, just be gaffe free, blah, blah, blah.

In fact, both Trump and Dr. Carson do badly in substantive debates because neither has any experience actually running anything. And both are staggeringly ignorant on foreign policy and domestic economic policy. Dr. Carson is a good, honorable, decent man. And I like him personally. But the time when a nice guy could just amble into the White House and run this country armed with only simple ethics and desire ended over a hundred years ago. You need to know how to politic and craft policy and work your political opponents to create compromise to get things done. Something that despite the incessant vitriol leveled at George Bush, he managed to do quite well. And this is where our current President has failed so dramatically. Unable to get his own party to enact legislation when they controlled both houses of Congress. Or just pass his own budget. Once! In eight years!! Ridiculous!!!

Barack Obama was elected on a plate of childishly simplistic rhetoric. And we have seen how that has failed to translate to actual achievement. Thus Obama rules as King via executive order. Something we fought a war to free ourselves from a couple of hundred years ago.

Cooke points out this very thing in his article about Trump:

"In Trump’s world, America will be restored to glory when his handpicked team of experts is permitted to experiment upon the public outside of the usual constitutional limits. Nowhere in his rhetoric will you find any reference to America’s pre-existing cultural and legal traditions, or to the necessary bounds that free men insist be imposed upon the state. There is no talk of "freedom"; no reflexive grounding of ideas in the Declaration and the Federalist Papers; no conceptual explanation or underlying philosophy. There is nothing, except will to power. By his own admission, Trump’s are the politics of doing enthusiastically what works in the moment; of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt; of the administrative state and of bureaucratic expertise."

Again, precisely. Trump's standard remark when pressed is "Trust me" or "We'll get it done" but never how. We heard this all before. Eight years ago. Are Republican voters so stupid as to fall for this again? I hope not. But at least others are starting to point the problems with Trump as President.

Glad I'm not the only one saying this stuff now.

---

One more thing.

Trump and Carson, and to a lesser extent, Fiorina, all as outsiders will have to have a coterie of advisors working with them to inform their President when making policy decisions. We've seen what happens when you pick a group of radical leftists to advise a President (Obama), so I think it would be good for the voters to learn who would have the ear of each of these candidates if they reach the Oval Office.

Don't you?

Rose McGowan is not amused

As I mentioned previously, Bruce Jenner was named Glamour Magazine's Woman of the Year. I chose not to wax enthusiastically disgusted over this but my former vision of pale-skinned hotness did not hesitate to let the world know exactly how she feels about it via her Facebook page:

"Caitlyn Jenner you do not understand what being a woman is about at all. You want to be a woman and stand with us- well learn us. We are more than deciding what to wear. We are more than the stereotypes foisted upon us by people like you. You’re a woman now? Well fucking learn that we have had a VERY different experience than your life of male privilege. Woman of the year? No, not until you wake up and join the fight. Being a woman comes with a lot of baggage. The weight of unequal history. You’d do well to learn it. You’d do well to wake up. Woman of the year? Not by a long fucking shot."

I think what may have set Rose off, was Jenner's remark in the issue's interview about how he struggles to find clothes to wear. Not sure about Rose these days. She seems to be rapidly turning into your crazy Aunt Rose going off wildly on any particular issue that finds the sweet spot in her anger zone.

Last time she went off, it was over some casting director asking her to show up in a tight sweater for an audition for a movie where she would have to wear a tight sweater. Yeah, I know, I don't get it either. I love my Rosie, but her most memorable career moment is probably when she wore this to the MTV Awards:

So it's not like she waving Oscars at the folks who piss her off. But she does have a career to maintain, and like any good liberal, once she got savaged by the SJW's who demand absolute fealty to their agenda, Rose quickly backed down and offered this lukewarm qualification:

"Let me amend this by saying I’m happy for what she’s doing visibility wise for the trans community, and I’m happy she’s living her truth, but comments like hers have consequences for other women. How we are perceived, what our values are, and leads to more stereotyping. If you know you are going to be speaking to media about being a woman, maybe come to understand our struggles."

I think I would have been happier had she shown some backbone and stood her ground over her comments, but you just don't see that much any more from folks in the public eye.  *sigh*

Interestingly, there's a whole war brewing in the LBGT community over the fact that the LGB's don't think the T's deserve the same blank check civil liberties appeasement that the militant gays are pushing for. I think there is actually a "Drop the T" petition on one of those online petition sites. The T's are pushing back by calling the LGB's trans-phobic and discriminatory and every other name that the LGBT community has been leveling at Christians and conservatives who take a dim view of their aberrant sexual orientation for years.

There's a certain sense of Schadenfreude watching these groups go after each other like this.

In closing, here's a couple of pics of Rose doing . . . I'm not sure, maybe body-casting or something. I don't know. But she's topless and still has the body to show off like that. So there ya go.

Which is the bigger embarrassment?

That Glamour named Bruce Jenner it's Woman of the Year? Or that GQ named President Obama it's Man of the Year?

Frankly, in my opinion, the pronouns in both cases are mis-used.

Christina Milan has a nipple ring too

As we saw earlier with Kendall Jenner, it turns out that Christina Milan is also sporting a nipple ring these days. However, unlike Jenner, who hinted at hers at a family birthday party, Christina showed hers off in a see-thru shirt at a Disney premiere because . . . who knows? I guess that's how we dress for kiddie movies now.  *sigh*

That should about do it for Rhonda Rousey

In case you haven't watched SportsCenter this morning, last night Holly Holm definitively knocked Rhonda Rousey out to win the Women's UFC title.

With Rousey already pushed into the second round of a fight for the first time in two years, Holm landed a crushing left to Rousey's jaw:

Rousey was staggering around punch drunk when Holm landed a solid elbow to the Champion's jaw that left stunned her badly. After dismissively throwing Rousey to the canvas, Holm waited for Rousey to struggle to her feet then landed a brutal kick to the head that sent Rousey to the canvas for good:

Falling on top of her downed opponent, Holm threw several punches that missed cleanly until one landed solidly on the helpless Champion and they ended the fight.

Unlike the former golden girl of the UFC, Gina Carrano, who was much better looking, Rousey had little qualms about exploiting herself in photoshoots and other media endeavours, which made her a bigger star in the entertainment world than perhaps she deserved.

Howevery, just as in the case of Carrano, a decisive loss such as this (I saw one fight stat that said Rousey was hit more times in this one fight than in her 11 previous wins combined) will probably signal the end of Rousey's ubiquitous media presence. I doubt we'll see any more mesh bikini sets, Carl's Jr's commercials or Expendables sequels in her future.

Update:

Oops, silly me, still more media love to mine with Rousey here. The December issue of ESPN Magazine has the dethrowned Champ on the cover along with a glowing puff-piece on Rousey and how she's dealing with getting destroyed in that fight. I don't doubt that Rousey's a great fighter, but her quotes about the fight seem a bit self-serving to me. She goes on about how she was basically out on her feet from the first round when Holm delivered a thunderous blow that split Rousey's lip and knocked several teeth loose. According to Rousey, she refused to trust the messages sent by her body and just soldiered on towards the inevitable loss. Okay, maybe so, but the look at what a warrior in defeat I am vibe in the article has me shaking my head.

The media will continue to ignore Holm, despite her engaging personality, and the fact that she's just as attractive, if not more so, than Rousey. There was a time when the fighter who dethrowned a Champion was feted by society and the press. Guess that time's gone now.

Oh, and Rousey's still going to the Marine Ball with the marine who asked her. Isn't that special? And btw, that whole thing about asking celebs to the Ball needs to stop. It was clever the first time, now it's just tedious.

As if I needed another reason to dig the Duffster

There's a lot of reasons to be digging on my Duffster. I mean, she's totally adorable. And of course . . . that ass and them legs. And now this --

That's right. There's my Duffster walking out of a California gun store with a Glock and a bag of ammo!

OH.HELL.YEAH.

All that hotness and now she's a shooter too. *sigh*   How much can a guy take?