Leona Lip's Blog

2003-05-20T20:32:00.000-04:00

Squirrel Diaries
Today I went to the dump looking for treasures. What I found there was garbage. So far I am not so impressed with my own dumpster diving skills, but I still hold out hope they can be developed. Why garbage, you ask? Because I'm looking for free stuff to decorate my apartment with. My rent is so high that I cannot afford real furniture.

I am amazed how I can spend my entire day avoiding real work. After my trip to the dump, I took my dog to the chiropractor to have her spine realigned. My mutt has been running amock in the woods and as a result has thrown her back out. Thirty-eight dollars later, my poochy is still limping. I'm not sure this chiropractic business is quackery designed to make everyone feel good or a real benefit to my dog. I've decided the worst thing in life is to feel helpless.

Finally, I get home and to work. Sitting at my desk, I hear much distressful chatter eminating from the other room. My dog alerts me that the sound is coming from the critter room. (I have six orphaned squirrels I'm raising, two grays and four small reds.) I rush in to find a red squirrel in the gray squirrel cage. (How this happened remains a mystery, but I can tell you that the reds have a propensity for getting themselves in a pickle.) He's on his back, kicking and screaming, and the two grays are huddled in a corner alarmed by his outburst. All I can think of is that perhaps one of the grays had pushed him over? After quick examination -- he had no scratches, bruises, or any other evidence of abuse that I could see -- I returned him to his three siblings. But this did not stop the fuss. The little red remained panicked, sitting on his hunches, waving his little arms about wildly and screeching at the top of his tiny lungs. All other squirrels were hiding under fabric. Finally, after much petting and reassurance, he settled down long enough for me to go into the kitchen to warm up some milk. Calcium does wonderful things to baby squirrels. It makes them calm and sleepy. Just the thing.

2003-04-24T08:21:00.000-04:00

Give Us Back Our Democracy
In a speech in the Senate on 19 March, the first day of war against Iraq, Robert Byrd, the Democrat Senator from West Virginia, asked: 'What is happening to this country? When did we become a nation which ignores and berates our friends? When did we decide to risk undermining international order by adopting a radical and doctrinaire approach to using our awesome military might? How can we abandon diplomacy when the turmoil in the world cries out for diplomacy?'

2003-04-22T11:08:00.000-04:00

Senator reveals deep-seated homophobia
Hard to believe that Pennsylvannia Republican Senator Rick Santorum made the following statement: "If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual (gay) sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything."

2003-04-20T11:13:00.000-04:00

Isreali continues U.S. policy of shooting journalists
A Palestinian cameraman was shot in the head by an Israeli soldier while he was covering a skirmish between troops and rock-throwing Palestinians on the West Bank city of Nablus on Saturday. Although, the press were wearing brightly colored vests that said "press" on them, it didn't stop Isreali troops from opening fire on them.

2003-04-18T12:39:00.000-04:00

Saddam's double still lurking in Baghdad
Saddam clones are running loose in Baghdad. Either that or he is a quintuplet. An April 9th tape of Suddam was released today, and the U.S. has fallen back on its usual claims that either the tape isn't real or that it's Saddam's double. There's even a statement that the Saddam on this tape looks older and fatter than the one on the April 7th tape. So apparently, like many of us, Saddam overeats and forgets his night creams when under stress.

2003-04-18T08:55:00.000-04:00

The charade continues
On April 8, the U.S. dropped four 2,000lb bombs on the Baghdad residential area of Mansur, where they thought Saddam was living. Now the U.S. is claiming that it's going to take weeks of sifting through the debris to find evidence of Saddam. Yet, just yesterday, Robert Fisk visited the site and saw no evidence of anyone sifting through the rubble. So why is the U.S. lying? Rumsfeld says that finding weapons of mass destruction is a higher priority then figuring out where Saddam is. But if that's the case, why not just allow the U.N. to go back in and finish its job?

2003-04-17T14:40:00.000-04:00

Broken promises
President Bush promised that Iraqi war criminals would be brought to justice. Why then did U.S. officials allow the entire Iraqi cabinet to escape? The capture by the Americans of Saddam's half-brother and the ageing Palestinian gunman Abu Abbas, whose last violent act was 18 years ago, is pathetic compensation.

2003-04-16T20:00:00.000-04:00

A pond of slime
I haven't seen any articles by my favorite reporter Robert Fisk in days, and I'm worried. He and his wife, a reporter for the London Times, have been staying at the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, which was invaded by U.S. soldiers a few days ago. I hope he's okay. From what I understand, the hotel has become a grim place, where the swimming pool has turned to slime.

2003-04-15T10:10:00.000-04:00

A whiff of fascism
Traits of classic fascism include: strong nationalism, expansionism, belligerent militarism, meshing of big business and government with a corporate/government oligarchy, subversion of democracy and human rights, disinformation spread by constant propaganda and tight corporate/government control of the press. Sound like any place we live?

2003-04-15T10:06:00.000-04:00

A stern message to the press
First they bomb the Palestine hotel, where over 200 journalists are staying, and now they raid the hotel, pointing M-16s in the faces of journalist, supposedly looking for Iraqi fighters.

2003-04-11T06:48:00.000-04:00

More grist for the Hollywood story mill
Boy, this is the sort of thing that turns my stomach. They're making a movie about Private Jessica Lynch and her "dramatic" rescue. I had read in a previous article that the rescue really was not that dramatic. There were no guards around the hospital when the Apache helicopter simply landed and the soldiers simply walked in and got her.

2003-04-10T12:26:00.000-04:00

Syria, Iran: Are they next?
Yesterday I read the most chilling of articles in the Christian Science Monitor. Emboldened by their "success" and undismayed by the world opinion of democratic countries, who have actually listened to their citizens, and bolstered by the sheep attitude of everyone jumping on the bandwagon, the Defense department neocons are now eyeing Iran, even announcing outright to the world their "plan" to bring the rest of the mideast under US rule, toppling ruler after ruler.

2003-04-08T22:43:00.000-04:00

The war that keeps on killing
I'm reading up on the use of depleted uranium in amunition and let's just say it's scary. Of course, the Pentagon says it's perfectly healthy. But these post-Gulf War babies tell another story.

2003-04-08T19:21:00.000-04:00

It's all a game
I cannot resist. Here it is, the mother of all flash games: Gulf War 2. Also have a gander at AOL Ashcroft Online.

2003-04-08T17:19:00.000-04:00

Picking off the journalists
Camera equipment was clearly visible on the balconies of the Palestine Hotel, a known base for hundreds of journalists. But that didn't stop an American tank from spewing its load, killing two journalist and maiming others. General Buford Blount claims the tanker was firing at snipers, but journalists on the scene say he's lying through his teeth.

Another journalist was killed the same day when the office of Al Jazeera was bombed. Accidents? Maybe not, according to an article in Outlook India about killing the truth.

2003-04-08T14:04:00.000-04:00

On television it looks so clean
Our antiseptic worlds spare us from the spray of blood and sight of gaping wounds. Meanwhile, in the hospitals of Baghdad reporter Robert Fisk wonders how to explain to a man that his child must die for "George Bush's fantasies and Tony Blair's moral certainty and for Mr Wolfowitz's dreams of 'liberation' and for the 'democracy'..."

Editor & Publisher has a so-so article on how papers are covering Iraqi civilian casualties.

2003-04-08T09:18:00.000-04:00

An American apology for our imperialistic, racist, bible thumping leader
America has been hijacked by the religious rich and placed under the self-righteous dominion of people who, like their British predecessors, are convinced that great wealth and power are the direct result of favoritism by the Judeo-Roman God of the west.

2003-04-07T20:48:00.000-04:00

Tin soldiers and Nixon's commin'
Oakland, California police fire rubber bullets at protesters, who stumble away with grapefruit size lumps on their backs and faces. What sort of stern warning is this?

2003-04-07T19:05:00.000-04:00

Where is Cheney?
Has anyone seen Vice President Cheney? In the past few days, all I have seen of him have been some old videos of him playing with his grandchildren at the local park and briefing army commandos in his underground bunker. In neither case did he hold up a daily newspaper or say anything relevant, so there's no way of telling whether the tape was current or not. And in one case, the temperature was over 90 on the day the tape was purported to have been made, and he was warmly dressed in a hat, shirt, jacket, tight-fitting pants, and boots. If you spot him, let me know.

2003-04-07T16:11:00.000-04:00

Who would name a tank after one testicle?
Purveying the smoky remnants of an American tank, un-embedded journalist Robert Fisk and several baffled Iraqis want to know why a soldier would call a tank a ball.

2003-04-07T12:40:00.000-04:00

2003-04-06T19:26:00.000-04:00

I knew I wasn't feeling well today when I made three packages of Jell-O, two raspberry, one orange. I would have made Tapioca pudding as well, but the many ingredients didn't fit into my budget. Oh, speaking of budgets, has anyone been paying attention to the U.S. economy? I guess, watching the Iraq war in real time has been sort of a distraction.

But here’s some numbers: even without the war, the budget deficit would have exceeded $300 billion this year. This year’s deficit could rise to $400 billion. In fiscal year 2004, it’s likely to be higher.

Recently Bush asked Congress for $75 billion to finance the war, but many experts are saying that the combined costs of war and reconstruction will likely be closer to $200 billion. Ouch.