Archive for September, 2008

It is wonderful news for an anxious bride-to-be to learn that when it comes to selecting a bridal gown that will makes her dream wedding all the more special, there are plenty of choices. A bride has many options to choose from, making it practically a given that she will be able to find the perfect wedding dress to suite her style.

When beginning a search for a wedding gown, it is a good idea to tap into the considerable resources that are available on the internet and also through the many bridal magazines and books available. It is easy to find stunning pictures of designer wedding dresses that will very quickly give you an idea of what you will find when you set foot inside a wedding dress shop.

Many of today’s brides enjoy putting technology to work for them and scouting the internet for various bridal gown styles they think might suite them. But before making a decision, it is strongly suggested that you step away from the computer and get out to at least a few wedding dress shops so that you can try on your special gown first. Even though there are plenty of people who buy many articles of clothing online or from catalogs, that’s really not the best way to go for a wedding dress.

One of the biggest problems that brides encounter when they are shopping for their wedding gown is choosing the right style that best flatters them. While it is easy to fall in love with a designer wedding gown in a magazine that is draped over the frame of a model, it is often disheartening when that same dress, even in the correct size, does not have the same look at all when the bride tries it on. This is one of the reasons why it is so important to set aside enough time for trying on many different wedding gown styles before buying.

There are two major reasons for being very careful and selective about the choice of the wedding gown. First of all, the bridal dress is probably going to be the most expensive item of clothing that the bride has ever purchased. And secondly, and most important, is that for her wedding day the bride wants to feel her most confident and sexy and having the perfect wedding dress for her body shape and size is essential for that to happen.

A bridal dress can be found in just about any style that one can imagine. Styles range from ultra-formal to moderately formal and even to semi-casual. The formality of the wedding dress should reflect and match the overall style and tone that is being set for the wedding and should also match with the groom’s attire for the day.

Unless the bride has the body of a fashion model, she should expect to have the bridal gown altered so that it fits perfectly. This would be true regardless of whether she was able to find the perfect wedding dress off the rack, or if it was custom ordered. There should always be extra time allotted in order to allow for alternations.

The market for wedding dresses is absolutely huge. Designers such as Vera Wang make their fortune off designing those one of a kind specialties that makes every woman feel like a beautiful princess. The wedding dress is the focal point of the ceremony. All eyes turn to look at the bride on that special day and is it any wonder. Those satin creations gently mold the body and provide this ethereal glow. But picking out the right dress can be a frantic dash between stores. Rest easy because there is a better way to find your dress. Click here to see how: Wedding Gifts For Parents also Free Shoes with the Purchase of Select Bridesmaid and Special Occassion Designers
and at Wedding Party Gifts

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Wedding Bands – Hand Crafted Wedding Bands

Today, millions of products are machine made. That includes many fine wedding bands. There is often some input by a superb craftsman to select and set a stone, for example. But much of the process is carried out by highly sophisticated systems.

But there remains no more sophisticated system than the skill in the mind, eye and hands of a master jewelry maker. That skill is much the same as it was centuries ago, but now brought to new heights with modern tools. Yet the careful focus, the precise direction and other attributes of the craftsman are still the essential elements when these master craftsmen design a wedding ring.

That craft, handed down generation after generation, may be less visible today. But it is still just as vital to making a fine wedding band as it ever was. The most sophisticated computer programs can barely begin to simulate even elementary human movements. And none come anywhere close to duplicating the creativity of expert jewelery makers.

Those skills are nowhere more evident than in the hand crafted wedding bands that are available today. For those looking for a truly unique engagement ring or wedding band, one that will never be found anywhere else, a hand crafted ring is your guarantee.

Imagine the delicate, complex scrollwork evident on a classic white gold band. The master’s hand is everywhere evident. The unique sworls, the individual petals and other touches could only have been created by that unique person. At the same time the level of skill is so high, that it might seem as if the ring was made by machine. That’s the mark of a true expert.

Picture a titanium ring in a contemporary design. The subtle sheen is the result of the master’s attention to detail. The dark cable running down the center was selected by careful thought with an eye to the design of the whole. This two-tone masterpiece could only have been made by a single person striving to create their best work just for you.

An 18kt yellow gold comfort fit band sports a delicate wave of rose gold down the center. Asymmetrically at one top corner is a small round-cut diamond. It was cut by the hand of one who has trained for decades to acquire the needed skill. It was mounted with equal care and attention to this unique creation.

A braided tri-color band shows clearly the hand of the artist. The design could only have been conceived by someone concentrating on the task at hand. It could only have been executed once. To create the same ring over again would violate the canon of artistic principles.

The result in each case is a one-of-a-kind work of art to be displayed as proudly on the hand as a fine sculpture is on the table. Consider a hand crafted wedding band and design a wedding ring that lifts the soul of the wearer as it did the artist.

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Kathleen Parker Talks Turkey (In Kawasaki Glasses)
Parker on Palin in the National Review. And I’m with Parker on the problem and the solution:

As we’ve seen and heard more from John McCain’s running mate, it is increasingly clear that Palin is a problem. Quick study or not, she doesn’t know enough about economics and foreign policy to make Americans comfortable with a President Palin should conditions warrant her promotion.

…Palin’s recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League.

No one hates saying that more than I do. Like so many women, I’ve been pulling for Palin, wishing her the best, hoping she will perform brilliantly. I’ve also noticed that I watch her interviews with the held breath of an anxious parent, my finger poised over the mute button in case it gets too painful. Unfortunately, it often does. My cringe reflex is exhausted.

Palin filibusters. She repeats words, filling space with deadwood. Cut the verbiage and there’s not much content there. Here’s but one example of many from her interview with Hannity: “Well, there is a danger in allowing some obsessive partisanship to get into the issue that we’re talking about today. And that’s something that John McCain, too, his track record, proving that he can work both sides of the aisle, he can surpass the partisanship that must be surpassed to deal with an issue like this.”

When Couric pointed to polls showing that the financial crisis had boosted Obama’s numbers, Palin blustered wordily: “I’m not looking at poll numbers. What I think Americans at the end of the day are going to be able to go back and look at track records and see who’s more apt to be talking about solutions and wishing for and hoping for solutions for some opportunity to change, and who’s actually done it?”

If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself.

…Only Palin can save McCain, her party, and the country she loves. She can bow out for personal reasons, perhaps because she wants to spend more time with her newborn. No one would criticize a mother who puts her family first.

In the IHT, David Brooks explains what’s missing:

In the current Weekly Standard, Steven Hayward argues that the nation’s founders wanted uncertified citizens to hold the highest offices in the land. They did not believe in a separate class of professional executives. They wanted rough and rooted people like Palin.

I would have more sympathy for this view if I hadn’t just lived through the last eight years. For if the Bush administration was anything, it was the anti-establishment attitude put into executive practice.

And the problem with this attitude is that, especially in his first term, it made Bush inept at governance. It turns out that governance, the creation and execution of policy, is hard. It requires acquired skills. Most of all, it requires prudence.

What is prudence? It is the ability to grasp the unique pattern of a specific situation. It is the ability to absorb the vast flow of information and still discern the essential current of events – the things that go together and the things that will never go together. It is the ability to engage in complex deliberations and feel which arguments have the most weight.

How is prudence acquired? Through experience. The prudent leader possesses a repertoire of events, through personal involvement or the study of history, and can apply those models to current circumstances to judge what is important and what is not, who can be persuaded and who can’t, what has worked and what hasn’t.

Experienced leaders can certainly blunder if their minds have rigidified (see: Rumsfeld, Donald), but the records of leaders without long experience and prudence is not good. As George Will pointed out, the founders used the word “experience” 91 times in the Federalist Papers. Democracy is not average people selecting average leaders. It is average people with the wisdom to select the best prepared.

Sarah Palin has many virtues. If you wanted someone to destroy a corrupt establishment, she’d be your woman. But the constructive act of governance is another matter. She has not been engaged in national issues, does not have a repertoire of historic patterns and, like President Bush, she seems to compensate for her lack of experience with brashness and excessive decisiveness.
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I really need some help. I cant handle it that Ive been dumped for another woman by a man who I’m hopelessly still in love with. This happened 6 weeks ago and I still feel as much hurt now as I did when I found out. Initially, I did cry loads and lose alot of weight and had
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Bye-Bye, Europe!
The Netherlands’ Geert Wilders, in a speech in New York, said he sees America as the last man standing against Islamization. An excerpt:

Many European cities are already one-quarter Muslim: just take Amsterdam, Marseille and Malmo in Sweden. In many cities the majority of the under-18 population is Muslim. Paris is now surrounded by a ring of Muslim neighbourhoods. Mohammed is the most popular name among boys in many cities. In some elementary schools in Amsterdam the farm can no longer be mentioned, because that would also mean mentioning the pig, and that would be an insult to Muslims. Many state schools in Belgium and Denmark only serve halal food to all pupils. In once-tolerant Amsterdam gays are beaten up almost exclusively by Muslims. Non-Muslim women routinely hear “whore, whore”. Satellite dishes are not pointed to local TV stations, but to stations in the country of origin. In France school teachers are advised to avoid authors deemed offensive to Muslims, including Voltaire and Diderot; the same is increasingly true of Darwin. The history of the Holocaust can in many cases no longer be taught because of Muslim sensitivity. In England sharia courts are now officially part of the British legal system. Many neighbourhoods in France are no-go areas for women without head scarves. Last week a man almost died after being beaten up by Muslims in Brussels, because he was drinking during the Ramadan. Jews are fleeing France in record numbers, on the run for the worst wave of anti-Semitism since World War II. French is now commonly spoken on the streets of Tel Aviv and Netanya, Israel. I could go on forever with stories like this. Stories about Islamization.

A total of fifty-four million Muslims now live in Europe. San Diego University recently calculated that a staggering 25 percent of the population in Europe will be Muslim just 12 years from now. Bernhard Lewis has predicted a Muslim majority by the end of this century.

Now these are just numbers. And the numbers would not be threatening if the Muslim-immigrants had a strong desire to assimilate. But there are few signs of that. The Pew Research Center reported that half of French Muslims see their loyalty to Islam as greater than their loyalty to France. One-third of French Muslims do not object to suicide attacks. The British Centre for Social Cohesion reported that one-third of British Muslim students are in favour of a worldwide caliphate. A Dutch study reported that half of Dutch Muslims admit they “understand” the 9/11 attacks.

Muslims demand what they call ‘respect’. And this is how we give them respect. Our elites are willing to give in. To give up. In my own country we have gone from calls by one cabinet member to turn Muslim holidays into official state holidays, to statements by another cabinet member, that Islam is part of Dutch culture, to an affirmation by the Christian-Democratic attorney general that he is willing to accept sharia in the Netherlands if there is a Muslim majority. We have cabinet members with passports from Morocco and Turkey.

Muslim demands are supported by unlawful behaviour, ranging from petty crimes and random violence, for example against ambulance workers and bus drivers, to small-scale riots. Paris has seen its uprising in the low-income suburbs, the banlieus. Some prefer to see these as isolated incidents, but I call it a Muslim intifada. I call the perpetrators “settlers”. Because that is what they are. They do not come to integrate into our societies, they come to integrate our society into their Dar-al-Islam. Therefore, they are settlers.

Much of this street violence I mentioned is directed exclusively against non-Muslims, forcing many native people to leave their neighbourhoods, their cities, their countries.

Politicians shy away from taking a stand against this creeping sharia. They believe in the equality of all cultures. Moreover, on a mundane level, Muslims are now a swing vote not to be ignored.

Our many problems with Islam cannot be explained by poverty, repression or the European colonial past, as the Left claims. Nor does it have anything to do with Palestinians or American troops in Iraq. The problem is Islam itself.

Allow me to give you a brief Islam 101. The first thing you need to know about Islam is the importance of the book of the Quran. The Quran is Allah’s personal word, revealed by an angel to Mohammed, the prophet. This is where the trouble starts. Every word in the Quran is Allah’s word and therefore not open to discussion or interpretation. It is valid for every Muslim and for all times. Therefore, there is no such a thing as moderate Islam. Sure, there are a lot of moderate Muslims. But a moderate Islam is non-existent.

The Quran calls for hatred, violence, submission, murder, and terrorism. The Quran calls for Muslims to kill non-Muslims, to terrorize non-Muslims and to fulfil their duty to wage war: violent jihad. Jihad is a duty for every Muslim, Islam is to rule the world – by the sword. The Quran is clearly anti-Semitic, describing Jews as monkeys and pigs.

The second thing you need to know is the importance of Mohammed the prophet. His behaviour is an example to all Muslims and cannot be criticized. Now, if Mohammed had been a man of peace, let us say like Ghandi and Mother Theresa wrapped in one, there would be no problem. But Mohammed was a warlord, a mass murderer, a pedophile, and had several marriages – at the same time. Islamic tradition tells us how he fought in battles, how he had his enemies murdered and even had prisoners of war executed. Mohammed himself slaughtered the Jewish tribe of Banu Qurayza. He advised on matters of slavery, but never advised to liberate slaves. Islam has no other morality than the advancement of Islam. If it is good for Islam, it is good. If it is bad for Islam, it is bad. There is no gray area or other side.

Quran as Allah’s own word and Mohammed as the perfect man are the two most important facets of Islam. Let no one fool you about Islam being a religion. Sure, it has a god, and a here-after, and 72 virgins. But in its essence Islam is a political ideology. It is a system that lays down detailed rules for society and the life of every person. Islam wants to dictate every aspect of life. Islam means ‘submission’. Islam is not compatible with freedom and democracy, because what it strives for is sharia. If you want to compare Islam to anything, compare it to communism or national-socialism, these are all totalitarian ideologies.

This is what you need to know about Islam, in order to understand what is going on in Europe. For millions of Muslims the Quran and the live of Mohammed are not 14 centuries old, but are an everyday reality, an ideal, that guide every aspect of their lives. Now you know why Winston Churchill called Islam “the most retrograde force in the world”, and why he compared Mein Kampf to the Quran.

Wilders’ film, Fitna, is here:

Horrible images, brought to you by Islam. (That’s my old neighborhood by the World Trade Center in New York City.) I believe, that in my lifetime, the Mona Lisa will be painted over and France, and other European countries will become totalitarian Islamic states. Sounds crazy, huh? And that’s part of the problem. But, it’s not so crazy, and that’s the sort of thing McCain overlooked in picking Palin, and the thing the Democrats only pay lip service to. Frankly, Wilders’ film is what’s missing from the debates.

Oh, and somebody e-mailed me about an Atheists Alliance conference. I’ve been invited before. Lately, I’ve been writing my book day and night to make my new post-identity theft deadline, so I’m not really going anywhere. But guess who else apparently didn’t get to go? Surprise guest Ayaan Hirsi Ali, because they had some problem getting them to allow her on The Queen Mary where the conference was held, because too many Muslims want to murder her.

Paris photo by Gregg Sutter
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