Rule 5 Monday -- ginger hotness

No Rule 5 Sunday out of deference to the 9/11 tributes. So instead we have some Rule 5 Monday action.

This week's submission is a redhead named Gabe. I think she might have been part of that fill-in-the-blank model dot com wave that flooded the net some years back. When every chick thought she was going to make her fortune with her own "modeling" website.

Judging by the look of those expensive sets she's posing in, I'm guessing she's shooting in some dude's house. Actually, from the look of those windows and awnings, it looks like a house here in Florida.

Go figure.

Update: more Gabe/Gabrielle hotness available here.

click on the thumbnails for the full-sized image

Rule 5 Sunday suggested by this.

Hat tips:
Jake Finnegan
The Daley Gator
The Classic Liberal
sayanythingblog.com

Death by a thousand cuts

By now you've seen the picture:

Swaggering, alpha male cowboy governor Rick Perry grabbing the arm of the frail and frightened looking Ron Paul and menacingly wagging a finger in the Senator from Texas' face during a commercial break at the Simi Valley debate earlier in the week.

Predictably, the internet exploded with the meme of Perry abusing the elder statesman. A google search of the event turns up about 375,000 responses.

Liberal bloggers naturally jumped at the image of a stout cowboy type brutishly intimidating a frail septuagenarian as it fits in with their push grandma off a cliff characterization of conservatives.

And without a scintilla of evidence or a transcript of the verbal exchange or third party verification, conservative bloggers gleefully joined in the assault on Perry's character. There could be little doubt of the net's righteous rage in this case. Pictures don't lie.

The bottom line, without question, is that Perry is obviously a thug who brutally manhandles anyone who gets in his way. His disgraceful assault on a fellow Republican and respected member of Congress is beyond the pale. Clearly the man belongs nowhere near the White House and should not be considered as the Republican candidate.

Except . . .

Except . . . well . . . it didn't really happen.

Ron Paul himself has stated publicly that he and the Governor had "no cross words" during any of the commercial breaks in the debate, pointing out that he and Governor Perry had never actually met before. The event was so insignificant to the Senator that he could not even remember what was said between them.

As I've stated before, I believe Rick Perry will end up being the Republican candidate for President. And all these conservative pundits and bloggers are going to have to walk back all these things they've said about the now candidate of their party.

As I've also stated previously, I believe Sarah Palin will happily endorse and support a Perry candidacy. Over at Conservatives4Palin the normally level headed Nicole Coulter couldn't spit out a post bashing Perry fast enough when the picture came out. Her post is full of sneering snide remarks and clips of Perry being less than graceful in several occassions.

Now imagine how the Democratic election machine is going to use these kinds of slams against a candidate Perry. All they'll need is someone to solemnly read the actual posts while running the videos and they've got a ready-made political commercial. A commercial made by over zealous conservatives dismantling one of their own.

Again, I've said this already -- bloggers like Michelle Malkin say they are vetting the Republican candidates unlike their Democratic counterparts in the last election. Wrong. You are destroying anyone and anyone who applies for the position, because no one can live up to the purity ideal set by those who don't actually have to run for office.

The common consensus is that the undecideds, the middle of the political spectrum voters, who will decide the election. Well, how are conservatives supposed to woo undecided voters when they present a candidate that they've spent the last year savaging at every turn? How are you going to convince an undecided voter to cast a vote for someone you've called a "thug" a "crony capitalist" and worse for over a year?

Examine each potential candidate's career. Go ahead and point out things that look like conficts of interest. Give us all the background you can find on each and everyone applying for the biggest job in the country. But the smarmy, snarky, holier-than-thou character assasinations have to stop. They serve no purpose except to embolden, empower, and arm those in the opposing party.

During the debate, Newt Gingrich said that everyone on the stage would rally behind the eventual candidate because their mission was to defeat the incumbant President. At this rate, whoever is left standing, will have already been defeated by his/her own party.

It is and always should be a day of remembrance

I remember being at work and walking by the break room. One of my co-workers was watching the television intently. I asked what was going on. He said a plane had just crashed into the World Trade Center. I stood there watching with him as the horrible tragedy unfolded.

For days afterward, even though I did not know anyone who perished in the cowardly attack, it just felt like a psychic punch to the gut. Over 3000 lives snuffed out almost right before our eyes. Certainly nothing like it had happened in my lifetime before Sept 11, 2001. And thankfully, nothing since either.

With the loss of life and concurrent acts of bravery that occurred on that day, I am always mystified at attempts by the liberals who say the emotion of the day must be defused, neutered, so that conservatives cannot claim the tragedy as a rallying point.

The President himself has repeatedly said that the day must become a "day of service" to better honor those who perished. I cannot disagree more strongly. This was not a natural disaster -- a hurricane or tsunami or some such. It was a cowardly act of terrorism and should be remembered as such -- a war-like attack on U.S. soil that killed thousands of innocent Americans.

You never hear anyone suggesting that Dec 7th be transformed into a "day of service" to honor those who died at Pearl Harbor! How is this any different? Because the PC police demand we not mention that the planners and those who performed these heinous deeds were Muslims?! Acting according to their faith?!

Rubbish!

You want to honor those who died that day, then remember who murdered them and why.

Late night hotness . . .

Yeah, so I've got this antique chair . . .

Well this has been some political overload

Last night's debate and the President's job speech tonight -- that's a lot of fodder for pundits and writers and such to be sure.

Let me add my two cents -- first with tonight's job speech by the Prez.

yawn

Talk about same old, same old -- tax the rich and bring back the good ole WPA. What is this, 1911 or 2011?! Does anyone really think we need more roads and bridges?! Are we really short on infrastructure in this country?! And how long will those jobs last? Through the election, perhaps? Come on, talk about transparent.

Oh and how are we going to pay for all this? According to the Prez, just pass my bill dammit and come back in two weeks and I'll let you know how we'll fund the darn thing! Seriously?! This has to be a first in my lifetime. I cannot remember any President putting forth a bill or program via the installment method. Although this is similar to the Obamacare debacle, where Nancy Pelosi said they'd have to pass the bill to see what was in the bill. Maybe the Prez thinks everyone has forgotten how that worked.

I haven't.

Here's hoping the Republicans laugh this joke of a plan out of Washington and propose something that actually makes some sense.

Now, as to last night's debate:

If there was a winner, I'd say it was Rick Perry only because the entire debate seemed to be focused on destroying him, and he came through pretty well. He made a crack at one point about feeling like a pinata with everyone taking shots at him. And I thought it was glaringly obvious that the moderators were trying to pit everyone against him.

Sort of played right into the hands of those who've complained that the liberal media is out to knock Perry off.

I liked that the Texas gov. wouldn't back off his criticism of Social Security even when the moderators basically lined everyone up against him and let them tee off. Perry stood his ground and I'll be interested in seeing all these conservative bloggers who've been griping that no one will speak out on entitlement reform back him a little now instead of shrieking Gardasil at every mention of his name. I also liked his smackdown of Karl Rove. Got to hand it to the guy, he comes across as in charge and confident.

Mittens did a decent job, took the bait when offered him and attacked his main rival Perry at every opportunity. I appreciated that he stuck up for Perry over the above mentioned Gardasil situation.

Michelle Bachmann did okay for the few times they let her speak. She had her "deer in the headlights" moment when MSNBC's token hispanic threw a gotcha question at her about illegal aliens already in the country. She recovered well and danced around it better than I would have.

If Ron Paul didn't kill his election hopes with his loopy comments about the border fence, I don't know what his supporters are smokin'. Dude is a nutbag and I liked that Perry gave him a good smackin' when they traded barbs about letters each had written in the past.

Newt's going nowhere, but he ate that Politico guy's lunch over his support of a school choice bill back in Reagan's day. Why these guys try to trip Newt up over history is beyond me. For all his faults, Gingrich has an encyclopeadic knowledge of this country's history and the memory of a super computer.

Cain, Huntsman, and Santorum just seemed to be filling out the stage. And that's pretty much what they're doing in the election.

As to the debate itself -- I don't know if it's because the Prez is not being primaried or maybe I'm just noticing it for the first time, but I'm getting a little tired of the moderators spending all their time trying to get the candidates to attack one another. Newt cracked about it at one point, and he's right -- they're up there to make sure Obama is a one term president period. There are enough policy issues and troubles with this country, what voters want to hear are the candidates positions on them and their plans for our future. Not what Jon Huntsman thinks of Rick Perry's stance on man-made global warming.

As an aside -- I don't watch much MSNBC, 'cause I have taste and intelligence, but one thing that struck me were a couple of the commercials during the broadcast. The one from a California citizen's group that wants to curtail legal immigration to improve the job market in California.

?!?

I'm just sitting there staring at the tv going , wtf was that? Do they run nonsense like that all the time?

And the one with pseudo-intellectual Rachel Maddow (but she's a lesbian wearing manish clothes and geeky glasses, she has to be smart!) using a dam as a backdrop to talk about big project abilities of this country. Yeah? Think they could build a dam like that nowadays? With all the eco-hysteria in this country? There could be a raging river ready to wash away New York City and Maddow and her flannel wearing hipster doofus eco pals would be chaining themselves to trees and shrieking about some squirrel that was going to lose it's home and blaming . . . someone . . . probably conservatives, for building the city where it is anyway.

Sheesh. No wonder that network only has three viewers. Who watches that crap?

The Postmaster General doesn't get it

So maybe you've heard . . . the Post Office is kind of out of money. PMG Donohoe is telling anyone who will listen that when our fiscal year ends in September, we'll have enough cash to keep working for only about another week. Then it's no job, no mail delivery, a couple of hundred thousand workers added to the unemployment rolls.

There's quite a bit of sturm und drang around work over this . . . obviously, and now we're getting little dvd updates from the PMG about what's going on and so forth.

In today's video missive, Donohoe points out how mail volumes have declined about 20% over the last four years with a concurrent decline in first class volume of 26%. He conveniently leaves out the increase in parcels and express mail, but as with global warming hysterics, he's trying to paint the gloomiest picture possible.

The PMG races through a list of things we (that is us rank and file types) are going to have to endure to keep the PO viable, including more route adjustments to offset what they believe will be a steady decline in mail volume -- they're assuming the same rate of decline as seen the last four years. Setting aside the foolishness of assuming a linear rate of decline, I got the impression the PMG was suggesting we begin increasing route sizes now, to prepare for a future volume decline.

Here's my thing -- we've already increased route sizes nearly 20% over the last two years. And as I was on the route adjustment teams, I am expertly qualified to point some things out here. A carrier can only cover so much territory in an 8 hour day. The whole point of the adjustments was to right-size the routes, that is, remove any undertime to maximize efficiency. And we've done that. Mail volume cannot drop low enough to create significant undertime again.

And let's assume they just arbitrarily increase route sizes again, by 20%, and suggest we manage the mail to keep ourselves to 8 hour days. Unlikely, but this is just an instructive scenario here. The best example of what would happen can be seen with our competitor -- UPS. On a normal day, the UPS guy has no problem getting done with his hundred or so deliveries. But when Christmas season is upon them . . . yeah, that's when you see the big brown trucks out until 10 at night.

But they're allowed to do that. We are not. We have the five o'clock window of operations to deal with. An inviolate off-the-street time that is cause for discipline if it is broken. So how are we supposed to get all the mail delivered when they won't give us the time to do it? And we won't have extra personel because they've decreased the work force to save money. Do we just not deliver the extra stuff? How is that good customer service?

Missed in all this is a quicky mention of the possible closing of 300 of the 500 mail processing centers. Wow! That's 60% of the facilities! If volume is so low that we can reduce processing capacity by 60%, then why do we have so much personel employed by mail processing?

The PMG also mentioned when he first came on board, that he found three duplicate levels of management/administration in the Post Office. Wow! That's a lot of unecessary bodies too! I could also point out here how delivery supervisors have nothing to do once the last carrier hits the street every day. So basically they just sit around getting paid at their supervisor's pay rate to answer the phone, surf the web, go to lunch, smoke cigarettes, etc.

Something could be done in those couple of areas that would save tons of money without overwhelming the workers sweating in the 110 degree Florida sun every day!

But no, PMG Donohoe is dutifully trumpeting the same old nonsense we've been listening to for years -- cut down office time, make the routes bigger, more automation (like we could afford that!), and so on. I had some hopes for this guy when he first came in, but like his predecessor, Donohoe seems only interested in making a name for himself and riding things out until he can collect his golden parachute retirement package.

"Obama's bullet train to bankrupcy"

Tell me again why this woman isn't Presidential.

It's a long speech, but worth the listen. She takes a lot of shots at the current president along with some advice on/warnings to, the Republican candidates. Probably missed by many was what I thought was a suggestion of term limits for congressman. An idea who's time has probably come.

She points out the millions of jobs available in the energy sector if Washington would simply allow the industry to open up. And the point about these jobs not costing the government money, that is, not adding to the deficit, to create them was well put.

She had a number of quote-worthy moments of her own in the speech, but I liked that she also quoted both Kennedy and Reagan as well. She had something about us being "...born the heirs of freedom" that I thought was a nice touch.

I'm sure the media haters on both sides will be pouring through the speech to pick out any mis-spoken words or grammatical errors on her part. My prediction right now is that you'll see something about "status quo" popping up on various lefty sites and news outlets.

I've already seen a couple of comments in the left wing media about the speech, where the writers went out of their way to mention she was reading off notes . . . seriously?! We have a President who brings teleprompters to speak to kindergarten children, and they mention Sarah Palin using notes in a speech?! Pathetic.

Watch it yourself and judge. I'm impressed.