Wedding Maven

For the longest time I have been interested in helping people plan weddings and events. I especially love working with color and creating an overall experience. My ideas for wedding range from the casual eco-weddings to the most formal and fancy. My current fancy for decorating at events is monochromatic: white on white, red on red, cream on cream, green on green. You can do variations on the color and add a subtle metallic accent like silver, gold, rhinestone, copper, platinum, pewter, etc.

Another interesting subtopic is eco-weddings complete with more casual hemp wedding attire or more formal hemp/silk gowns, or conscious clothing. Check out organicweddings.com for more information. In keeping with my promotion of Marin County business, there is a high end ($8 per person high end) vegan wedding cake designer, Hannah's edible art, that really does make works of art. You can also get green invites or make your own at Green Field Paper Company , recycled organic paper, and twisted limb paperworks. You can order organic flowers from organicbouquet.com and organic flowers and Meyer lemons from Fairfax Fresh in Fairfax, California. There is an organic caterer in Berkeley, California called Back to Earth. In Portland, Oregon there is Zen Catering and Artemis Foods. In the San Luis Obispo area of California there is Affaire L'Amour. There is vegetarianweddings.com , which serves most Southern California, but also serves the San Francicsco Bay. There is Ferrari Catering and Event Planning in Inverness, Calfornia (415-669-7285, which specializes in local produce of Marin County.

Serving the East Bay, Marin, Peninsula, San Francisco, Silicon Valley, and Wine Country is Aimee Alan, who is another organic caterer. More organic caterer links:
http://www.areyoubeingservedcatering.com/
http://www.auberginecatering.com/aboutus/aboutus.cfm
http://www.thegreentable.net/
http://www.lovemoregourmet.com/catering_m.htm
http://www.lydiasorganics.com/catering.html
http://www.risingsuncatering.com/about.htm
http://www.sandysgourmet.com/index.html
http://www.annwalkercatering.com/index.htm

Then you can check out eco-friendly wedding favors at ecoparti.com, and get your rings at greenKarat.com, or you may opt for wooden rings. Want to register for green products like organic sheets and towels? Register at GreenSage.com. Plan your wedding at Mendocino's Brewery Gulch Inn.

What Were They Thinking?

I am not the first person to coin the phrase -- "New World Mayhem"

Remember Bush Senior's New World Order? Remember Bush Junior telling us way back in 2003 that the world was safer with him in office?

Looking at the way things are...not so much.

I almost cringe when I load CNN wondering if next there will be a mushroom cloud or something crazy like that in the Middle East. Let's hope it never gets to that point, but with the jokers running our foreign policy who the heck knows. The Bush Administration was told that if they wanted to make a difference in the Middle East, he has to first deal with the Isreali-Palestinian conflict. Instead he went off into Iraq and made things worse -- friggin scary worse.

I could see even before we entered Iraq that we didn't have a plan after we invaded and could foresee what was going to go down. If you invade a country you should go with at least as much or more than you would if you are merely repelling a force back to their own borders. We went with half as much and never could get Iraq secured. Oh yeah, and by the way, no one likes a foreign invader, no matter how supposedly well-intentioned. Bush was wrong to assume that we would be greeted as liberators.

If we weren't bogged down in Iraq we could do a better job in Afghanistan and build some cred with the Middle East being an honest broker in the Isreali-Palestinian conflict.

Given the West's less than stellar record in regime change in the Middle East -- What were they thinking?

Requiem for a Nutjob

In her new book, “Godless,” right-wing pundit Ann Coulter writes of the 9/11 widows:

These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzies. I have never seen people enjoying their husbands’ death so much.

It has been my long standing opinion that Ann Coulter is a nutjob. She spews jaw-dropping comments like the one about 9/11 widows almost joyously -- not unlike a sociopath, who was no conscience. I don[t call her a nutjob because of her politics, but how she comes off and from other people's observations who have met her. Really, there is something wrong with her.

She cares little about the fact that those that grieve and speak out were fathers, mothers, as well as wives. She cares little about what it is like to lose the father of your children in such a horrific way and what it does to families. It is pretty godless to attack those who channel their real grief to make our nation safer. One can debate whether what the advocate will make us safer, but personal attacks mean that Coulter has no real rational leg to stand on. You can take on the liberal point of view and proposed policies without the ad hominum attacks.

Sorry Ann, someone who was actually victimized by terror carries more weight than you a nutty conservative who has not been victimized. I happen to know that there are victims who represent the wide spectrum of political belief and I respect their views regardless of whether I agree with them.

This chick thinks she can talk about what is godless or not blows my mind, as she has not a shred of anything resembling Christianity or respect for God.

Full Transcript (from thinkprogress.org):

LAUER: Do you believe everything in the book or do you put some things in there just to cater to your base?

ANN: No, of course I believe everything.

LAUER: On the 9-11 widows, an in particular a group that had been critical of the administration: “These self-obsessed women seem genuinely unaware that 9-11 was an attack on our nation and acted like as if the terrorist attack only happened to them. They believe the entire country was required to marinate in their exquisite personal agony. Apparently, denouncing bush was part of the closure process.” And this part is the part I really need to talk to you about: “These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by griefparrazies. I have never seen people enjoying their husband’s death so much.” Because they dare to speak out?

COULTER: To speak out using the fact they are widows. This is the left’s doctrine of infallibility. If they have a point to make about the 9-11 commission, about how to fight the war on terrorism, how about sending in somebody we are allowed to respond to. No. No. No. We have to respond to someone who had a family member die. Because then if we respond, oh you are questioning their authenticity.

LAUER: So grieve but grieve quietly?

COULTER: No, the story is an attack on the nation. That requires a foreign policy response.

LAUER: By the way, they also criticized the Clinton administration.

COULTER: Not the ones I am talking about. No, no, no.

LAUER: Yeah they have.

COULTER: Oh no, no, no, no, no. They were cutting commercials for Kerry. They were using their grief to make a political point while preventing anyone from responding.

LAUER: So if you lose a husband, you no longer have the right to have a political point of view?

COULTER: No, but don’t use the fact that you lost a husband as the basis for being able to talk about, while preventing people from responding. Let Matt Lauer make the point. Let Bill Clinton make the point. Don’t put up someone I am not allowed to respond to without questioning the authenticity of their grief.

LAUER: Well apparently you are allowed to respond to them.

COULTER: Yeah, I did.

LAUER: So, in other words.

COULTER: That is the point of liberal infallibility. Of putting up Cindy Sheehan, of putting out these widows, of putting out Joe Wilson. No, no, no. You can’t respond. It’s their doctrine of infallibility. Have someone else make the argument then.

LAUER: What I’m saying is I don’t think they have ever told you, you can’t respond.

COULTER: Look, you are getting testy with me.

LAUER: No. I think it’s a dramatic statement. “These broads are millionaires stalked by stalked by grief-parazzies”? “I have never seen people enjoying their husband’s deaths so much”?

COULTER: Yes, they are all over the news.

LAUER: The book is called “Godless: The Church of Liberalism.” Ann Coulter, always fun to have you here.

She and Michael Savage need to hook up.