iPandora

All gems are not found in comments around the blogosphere.

Here’s one I found by Gina Dalfonzo on The Point:

“…I thought the goal of schools was to teach kids lessons that would help them in life, not lessons that mom and dad would have to undo in order to give the kids any hope of breaking into the job market. Silly me.”

So what jewels have you found on your travels among the steamy babble of the Interweb?

You don’t have to agree with them. They may be just as shiny an example of stupidity as lucidity. Just make sure to link and attribute.

McCain may not be with conservatives on many social issues, but he’s definitely with us on fiscal issues. He’ll at least work hard to keep America from going broke.

Three articles across the internet today highlight the heart of this issue: the willingness of the candidates to spend money which you’ve given them in self-serving pork projects.

Buying votes with your cash.

First, from the Washington Post: Candidates Earmarks Worth Millions:

Working with her New York colleagues in nearly every case, [Sen. Hillary] Clinton [(NY)] supported almost four times as much spending on earmarked projects as her rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), whose $91 million total placed him in the bottom quarter of senators who seek earmarks, the study showed.

Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the likely GOP presidential nominee, was one of five senators to reject earmarks entirely, part of his long-standing view that such measures prompt needless spending.

In the Boston Herald (winner of todays Most Absolutely Annoying And Alliterative Headline: Blustering Bubba Blasts Barak for Babbling Baloney) editorial, The Race For Earmarks, the editors note that Hillary sent $342 million to her own constituents, putting her in the top ten porkers. McCain, on the other hand, was against earmarks before that was even beginning to become popular.The porkers which inhabit Washington desire power. It is not altruism which drives them, but instead a compelling desire to get as many people subscribing to their ascendancy by giving them money.

But whose money do they use? Yours.

If it were their money there would not be an issue, except for the ethical implications of graft and cronyism and what they say of the character of the individual engaging in them.

Further insight into the candidates philosophies can be seen in who they get money for:

As a campaign issue, earmarks highlight significant differences in the spending philosophies of the top three candidates. Clinton has repeatedly supported earmarks as a way to bring home money for projects, while Obama adheres to a policy of using them only to support public entities.

McCain is using his blanket opposition to earmarked spending as a regular line of attack against Clinton, even running an Internet ad mocking her $1 million request for a museum devoted to the Woodstock music festival. Obama has been criticized for using a 2006 earmark to secure money for the University of Chicago hospital where his wife worked until last year.

McCain, for his seeming contempt for many social-conservative causes, respects the citizenry enough to protect their investment in government.

It reminds me of the story of Davy Crockett, who, when a disaster struck his home state while he was a member of Congress, and his constituents begged that he send federal money to help the stricken area, said that he would not.

He stated that money spent by the government can only be used in ways which benefit ALL citizens equally.

If only more in the current crop of public megalomaniacs servants would espouse this truism.

But the porkers currently running for the Democrat nomination do not.

The Scheming Communist Operative, Hillary, does what is best for her and only, ever, what is best for her. If this involves giving your money to someone she thinks can pave her way to power, that’s what she does.

The Idyllic Communist, Obama, only gives to “worthy causes”.

The problem is, people (you and I) are much more efficient and effective at getting money to worthy causes:

• We are better at choosing those causes which are actually worthy.
• We’re less likely to be duped in significant numbers and for substantial amounts of money than the government with its fat-handed largess.
• And it doesn’t cost as much for us to get our money to those causes which are worthy, so more money gets to them overall and less is wasted in the endless iterations of bureaucracy.

Hillary is a smart (not intelligent, just smart) and conniving operative with one goal, her own supremacy.

Obama is an intelligent and misguided idealist. He wants to solve all the world problems, but everything he claims for his plans have all been tried before, and failed. Over and over again.

The picture which comes to mind is that of Kranzy October, the Russian Revolution in “Red” October of 1917.

The idealists, mostly young Russians, many of the Jewish Russians seeking a Utopian society free of the perceived inequities of the Tzarist system followed headlong into the dismal black of Communist Russia. The smart ones saw chance of personal aggrandizement and turned coat. Spying on their idealist brethren and reporting false crimes until they were the only ones surviving. Lenin rose to power in this era not through altruism and idealism but through corruption and power-lust, scheming and buying his way to the top.

Hillary is a Lenin-type, while Obama is a type of the dead idealists.

Both are dead wrong in their goals, but each have their own reasons, methods, and paths to achieve the death of our Great Nation.

Obama is not naive, but he is not a leader.

Check his closet for skeletons.

Kindred on the battlefield of culture. Brothers in the fight of moral excellency. Trained and battle-hardened soldiers on the front lines of American society.

Dinesh D’Souza and David Limbaugh are two men I respect greatly, both for their principles and for their courage.

Of all the substantive columnists I read regularly, these two are those I read the most reliably, popping out of Google Reader to read them on their home sites more consistently than any other writers of the hundreds of articles I peruse each day.

Recent columns from each of these two are noteworthy and well worth reading and I encourage all to add them to their regular reading.

•  Dinesh D’Souza – How Christians Ended Slavery
  

  [W]ho killed slavery? The Christians did, while everyone else generally stood by and watched.

• David Limbaugh – Observations on the Presidential Races
  

  It’s disappointing to watch candidates from both parties accept the premise that criticizing your opponents’ records and pointing out their inconsistencies and lies is engaging in dirty politics. It is not dirty but obligatory to draw distinctions between you and your opponents. Dirty politics is distorting one’s record or spreading lies about a candidate.

• Dinesh D’Souza – Are Atheists Cultural Christians?
  

  In The God Delusion, Dawkins portrayed the Christian God as a wicked, avaricious, capricious, genocidal maniac. Dawkins even blasted Jesus for such offenses as speaking harshly to his mother. Yet if the Jewish and Christian God was such a monster, what sense does it make for Dawkins to embrace the cultural influence of that deity?

• David Limbaugh – Conservatism’s Identity Crisis
  

  [F]or Republicans, there’s a fierce intramural debate not just over how conservative the party should be but also over the very definition of conservatism.

I know this is a little old, but with news such as this, it’s time to start remembering we are each and one of us John Doe.

Dear Muslim Terrorist Plotter/Planner/Funder/Enabler/Apologist,

You do not know me. But I am on the lookout for you. You are my enemy. And I am yours.

I am John Doe.

I am traveling on your plane. I am riding on your train. I am at your bus stop. I am on your street. I am in your subway car. I am on your lift.

I am your neighbor. I am your customer. I am your classmate. I am your boss.

I am John Doe.

I will never forget the example of the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93 who refused to sit back on 9/11 and let themselves be murdered in the name of Islam without a fight.

I will never forget the passengers and crew members who tackled al Qaeda shoe-bomber Richard Reid on American Airlines Flight 63 before he had a chance to blow up the plane over the Atlantic Ocean.

I will never forget the alertness of actor James Woods, who notified a stewardess that several Arab men sitting in his first-class cabin on an August 2001 flight were behaving strangely. The men turned out to be 9/11 hijackers on a test run.

I will act when homeland security officials ask me to “report suspicious activity.”

I will embrace my local police department’s admonition: “If you see something, say something.”

I am John Doe.

I will protest your Jew-hating, America-bashing “scholars.”

I will petition against your hate-mongering mosque leaders.

I will raise my voice against your subjugation of women and religious minorities.

I will challenge your attempts to indoctrinate my children in our schools.

I will combat your violent propaganda on the Internet.

I am John Doe.

I will support law enforcement initiatives to spy on your operatives, cut off your funding and disrupt your murderous conspiracies.

I will oppose all attempts to undermine our borders and immigration laws.

I will resist the imposition of sharia principles and sharia law in my taxi cab, my restaurant, my community pool, the halls of Congress, our national monuments, the radio and television airwaves, and all public spaces.

I will not be censored in the name of tolerance.

I will not be cowed by your Beltway lobbying groups in moderates’ clothing. I will not cringe when you shriek about “profiling” or “Islamophobia.”

I will put my family’s safety above sensitivity. I will put my country above multiculturalism.

I will not submit to your will. I will not be intimidated.

I am John Doe.

Michelle Malkin started this here and here. And Hot Air has put together a bit of Spartacus with a bit of voice-over for this:

Originally posted December 18th, 2006.

Pastor told a story of a Christmas play written and performed by K and 1st graders for a church. The play proceeded normally enough until Joseph and Mary arrived at the stable at which time there’s a knock at the “door” and Joseph welcomes a Doctor in a white coat and bearing a stethoscope. The doctor proceeds to Mary who is behind some hay bales and groaning and straining sounds occur normal to a birth scene. After the final cry and a baby wail the Doctor comes out to Joseph who has been pacing nervously across the stage during this time and says to him “Congratulations, it’s a God.”

What wonder must Joseph and Mary have felt in that time. They knew better than any other the amazing nature of the child Mary bore. Perhaps they didn’t grasp the all the implications pursuant to such an event, but the amazement factor itself must have been nearly overwhelming.

As good Jews they were well aware of the awesome nature of God and knew only a little of the Love He showed completely through His son. They knew Him as unapproachable and Holy. They couldn’t even say His name. And yet here He had given them a son, His Son, His ONLY Son. He’s entrusted them His heart. And in the same way He’s taken the ultimate risk with each of us, He’s given each of us His heart through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, whether we accept it or not. Think of the father, mother, lover, going out on a limb, as it were, setting themselves up for endless hurt and betrayal if their son, daughter, lover, ignores their love and spites them. God gave His life, laying it on the live for each one of us, individually. No greater love has no one than this, than that He lays down His life for another. Christmas is only the beginning, Easter is only the epic moment in time when timeless God Himself changed the course of His Story to our dim eyes. The end comes when each of us dies and is brought to reckoning. It won’t be a “were you good enough to shave off enough days of purgatory” as the Catholics believe. It won’t be a “am I in a good mood did you kill enough infidels or do other feats to further Islam” such as Muslims believe. It will be “did you accept my gift.”

When the good Doctor says “Congratulations, the baby is healthy, and it’s a God” He’s given to each of us a gift that we can accept or reject. All the rest are just bonus points, or filthy rags, as Paul calls them.

Danielle from Missiles and Stillettos has posted an article regarding an American Muslim who came to the aid of American Jews who were being verbally and physically assaulted on a NY subway by several people who had wished them Merry Christmas, to which they had replied with Happy Hannukah.

While I’m saddened deeply by the aggressors involving Christmas and by inference the birth of Jesus, I know Jesus is capable of defending His name.

I am glad to see there is a least one Muslim who has not lost his head.

Listening today to the Michael Medved show, just before the 1pm (PST) break a caller describing himself as having used to be pro-war and conservative says that he now does not support the war. Citing declining numbers supporting the way and the unpopularity of President Bush, he claimed he just does not want to hear about soldiers dying anymore.

First of all, for a man, he is a poor specimen. Character is the measure of your ability, desire, and record of doing what you ought especially when it is difficult, the way is long, and there is much opposition. The difference between pigheaded stubbornness and character is found in the morality and ethics of your method and goal. Manliness, often caricatured in the idea of refusing to ask for directions, is an especial talent at or willingness to proceed with what is perceived to be the correct course of action to reach a particular goal, without regard for the opinion or denigration of others. This is their strength and their weakness, but it is a weak man who wilts in the face of opposition, especially opposition that does not face them but faces their country, the family, the life, their standards and their beliefs. If anything, a true man is stronger when others are being harmed than when he himself is the only one at risk.

This weak man goes even beyond the self-inflicted ignominy of bowing to the canard of “everyone else is doing it” in saying he doesn’t want to hear about soldiers dying. Granted, he wants that to be accomplished by removing the troops from “danger” by bringing them home and ending the conflict (at least the part of the conflict that involves our response to the naked aggression and lust for our death which is espoused and championed by our mortal enemies, the Islamofacists). But his wording, he doesn’t want to “hear” about their deaths is appalling. What kind of weak-spined excuse for a man (most women I know have more courage and honor than this sorry person) is it who can’t stand hearing about death? It’s the kind of man who would rather hide his head in the sand while a poison which creates zombies whose only desire is for the death of all that is good and right on the earth takes over the Europe and then eats the heart out of America.

How dense must one be to ignore the hatred in the screams of Imams around the world and here in America calling for the destruction of all Jews and those who do not subscribe to their hatred?

I’m saddened and appalled by this. I would like to meet that man in a dark alley and… well, no it’s not right. I would protect and defend him as I would any other.

A short piece I wrote several years back, but which I feel is particularly applicable to my current state as well.

When God blesses you there is no doubt you’ve been blessed.

When God blesses the sun shines like there’s no tomorrow, and it shines on you.

When God blesses, your heart fills beyond its dry and broken walls to fill you, it spills out and around, filling until you cannot keep to yourself the joy you’ve been given.

I thought that I’d experienced the Everest of fullness, but oh how scarce and thin that seemed when viewed through the lens of His great love. I thought I’d seen His best for me, but how insignificant that was against the backdrop of the new reality He painted before my eyes. I thought I’d lived the fullest, but it was empty. Now I’m full.

Full of the goodness that only comes from Him. Full of the goodness that only comes from sharing His plan with another. Full of His plan of relationship.

When God blesses, you’re taken to the atmosphere and shown everything, promised it, and given it.

When God blesses, the blessing sneaks up like a thief, but a kind thief bearing a jeweled robe and crown, for you.

When God blesses you there is no doubt you’ve been blessed.

All my reading and perusing today seemed to be along the lines of the problem of Islam. There are several gems which I’d like to bring to y’alls attention.

The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) has put together rebuttals to the Amanpour slander-fest, CNN’s “Holy War”. I have not seen, nor do I care to see (as I like to avoid those things which will certainly shorten my life by raising blood pressure and depleting IQ) this series but I’ve heard naught but the most steady slamming of its vociferous and detestably slanderous lies. Even others in the MSM have taken shots at the show.

CAMERA breaks its rebuttals down into three separate articles :

1. God’s Jewish Warriors – CNN’s Abomination
   

   “God’s Jewish Warriors” (is) one of the most grossly distorted programs to appear on mainstream American television in many years. It is false in its basic premise, established in the opening scene in which Jewish (and Christian) religious fervency is equated with that of Muslims heard endorsing “martyrdom,” or suicide-killing. There is, of course, no counterpart among Jews and Christians to the violent jihadist Muslim campaigns underway across the globe, either in numbers of perpetrators engaged or in the magnitude of death and destruction wrought.

2. God’s Muslim Warriors — CNN’s Double Standard
   

   While much of the program was informative and fair (in contrast to the propagandistic nature of Part One,”God’s Jewish Warriors”), there were serious flaws and glaring omissions. Among the most important shortcomings, extremist Muslim beliefs and practices were often minimized and many of the key causes for the spread of Muslim supremacist beliefs went unexplored.

3. God’s Christian Warriors— CNN Slurs Christians
   

   At the end of this segment, devoted to “God’s Christian Warriors,” Amanpour left viewers with a warning that society cannot ignore “the millions of people who feel their faith is being ignored, is being pushed aside and who are certain they know how to make the world right.”

   Given the huge levels of religiously motivated violence taking place in the world today – most of it perpetrated by Muslims against Muslims – Amanpour is right. Religious fundamentalism cannot be ignored.

   But if Americans are going to determine how to respond to religious extremism on both an international and societal level, they surely cannot rely on Amanpour’s coverage of the issue. In her coverage of “Christian Warriors” Amanpour demonstrates a predictable inability to discern the difference between Christians in the U.S. who organize politically to affect public policy and suicide bombers in the Middle East who target civilians in an attempt to intimidate their opponents into submission.

So there you have it. CNN thinks I’m as likely as Sadr to kill and maim and destroy life and property merely because I believe that God (not Allah, the false god) has standards and rules and promises blessing to those who follow them. God, unlike the false demon Allah, forbids the killing of people except when they themselves have killed and are judged worthy of that judgment, instead reserving the right to vengeance to Himself and urging us instead to love and seek to turn those who disagree with us with tangible acts of mercy and humility.

Allah, the demon, requires that each of his servants be enactors of bloody retribution on those they deem his enemies. Humans cannot judge the heart or the motives, only God the Just Judge can do that. We have limited means of determining the real events while God with His infinite knowledge and wisdom and insight into each our hearts and minds is the perfect Judge and protects both the innocence of the innocent and the guilt of the guilty with His reserving that vengeance to Himself.

Islam also breed distrust and dishonesty among its adherents. It is permissible to lie in certain circumstances in Islam: when dealing with infidels (that’s us) and when your wife asks if you love her (that makes me mad and sad). In much the same way as Mormonism, the female in Islam is a second-rate baby machine whose purpose here and hereafter is to please the men by providing sexual service in a place of servitude,bringing (male) progeny for the man to further his name. The infidel exists only to be given one chance to convert and then to experience immediate destruction, often in humiliating and horrific manner. There is no acceptance. There is no forgiveness. There is no choice.

Who reads I, Pandora? With the wonders of modern technology I can see each visitor to my site, their approximate location (this will be affected by anonymizing proxy services) around the world, which sites they’ve come from and what pages they read, how long they were there. And if you’re a member of the site or on other sites this service monitors I see your screen name.Call it big brother, call it information leverage, it is nice to be able to see what is popular, what search queries reach my site, and just how most of y’all find I, Pandora.

In the days following the bridge collapse tragedy in Minnesota there was a steady flow of international visitors to my site, though the article was little than my brief and heartfelt sympathies towards those affected and those who lost and links to the major news coverage. The international visitors were primarily inbound from google searches where I, Pandora featured prominently in the results. The visitors came from Latvia, the Dominican Republic, Belgium, Hungary, and South Africa. These are not regulars, and they probably left soon after coming through the news links I provided.

No, the real readers of I, Pandora are my friends, the bloggers. Of all the feeds in Google, I do enjoy reading some of these most of all.

• There’s Grit, the yankee half of the dynamic duo at Conversations With Brit & Grit. His humor and the cross the pond banter make his site a real jewel and a pleasure to read.
• There’s Neil from 4Simpsons, which name, I assume, refers to his family. He has a sharp mind and a sharp wit and beats them regularly against all comers.
• There’s Barb, from Barb’s Blog, a small and cozy place where you are as likely to read about her latest photography trip as about the latest in political opinion.
• There’s J Ingersoll, a friend I met many years ago at a music class. There were four of us, including the teacher, in that class and we had good times (I didn’t pass). J writes sporadically as PrinceParavel, yes, that would have to refer to Lewis’ Narnia.
• There’s our friend Random (whose name is only a little less conspicuous than anonymous) who I first found (or maybe it was that he first found me) when he comment spammed on I, Pandora, advertising for his own blogs (which are several and bare of original content). Random copies articles that suit his fancy at freestate.tv, faction3.us, and congresscheck.com, that I am aware of.
• There’s John Kaiser, from totaltransformation and the new JJKaiser blog. I must admit I’ve not read his sites often, but when I do I appreciate his breadth of topic and the humor with which he approaches the topics.
• A brief visit from the Mercurial Scribe, after I found we were born the same month in the same year.
• Steve, from NextStopLauderdale, which I assume means he’s one of my Floridian readers, or that he wishes he were one. His brief shots on primarily political issues are always easy to read and fun to comment on.
• A late shot from blogger UrbanConservative (last post as of this writing was last November. His articles have promise and he has corrected me regarding the content schedule of his blog. He posts twice monthly and the top post is “sticky” meaning it “sticks” to the top of the page and you have to scroll past it to get to the regular content.

This is by no means an exhaustive listing either. I’ll post tomorrow on my current blogroll. But this is for all y’all out there who make me want to keep writing here.

Here’s to you.