After a month of problems my frankenstein computer, my main man, Gordon, is back up and running. I had to wait until I could afford a replacement motherboard for him, and have been using his slower, less helpful brothers until I could perform the necessary surgery on him. As soon as I get everything reorganized I’ll be able to do the webcam and a few other things again as well as work on my 3d modeling homework AT home!
July, 2002
To all the gURLs I’ve loved before…
I want to give a shout out to all the people who have linked to this site. I have much love for you and I’m working on a better system to showcase link friends other than the dropdown menu I’m currently using. In the meanwhile, here are some of the ones (in no particular order) that have been linking to LNS. Thank you!:
- Full Bleed Drublood, you rule. Where do you find all of those great veggie recipes?!
- My Single Mom Life One tough but sweet cookie. This Mama don’t take no mess.
- Hairy Toes and the Lemonade Rhino Joan has enlightened me in the ways of women. I am eternally grateful.
Have I missed anyone?
UPDATE:
Ouch. I forgot fellow Austinite and sexy fire dancer *sizzle*, Dragonfly Jenny. Please forgive me!
- No shoes, no shirt, no teeth…no problem! Jenny makes me want to simplify my life and get an airstream. I’m still thinking about those yoga classes to meet hot older (older than me!) women.
- Spleenville Andrea Harris, don’t know her well yet, but I’d like to.
Study links combat, domestic violence
I’ve been in some pretty wild discussions regarding the recent murders of military wives by their husbands at Ft. Bragg. I wish I had had this story to back up some of my statements. From UPI:
WASHINGTON, July 29 (UPI) — As authorities continue to investigate the murders of four women at Ft. Bragg, N.C., in the space of six weeks, a recent study by Yale University suggests that in at least three of the cases combat experience in Afghanistan may have had something to do with it.
The Yale study reviewed data collected from 2,500 men between 1992 and 1994. Of those, 7 percent had been involved in combat, most of them in Vietnam. Those 7 percent were responsible for 21 percent of the cases of spousal abuse reported in the survey. …
Reports of military domestic violence have actually declined for the last several years, but the Pentagon fears that does not mean abuse is down.
“We believe this reduction may be partly attributed to fears of an adverse impact on career progression and underreporting by commanders and senior noncommissioned officers,” Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. John Keane wrote in a memo to Army officers in December.
US coverup of wedding massacre
The UN is keeping secret a report on the Afghan wedding massacre in which nearly 48 people were killed and 100 injured. The report is being presented to both the puppet government in Kabul and to the United States. The US has engaged in a coverup of the massacre arriving hours after the incident to clean up blood, shrapnel, and bullets. They then told the UN they needed several weeks to investigate and collect evidence no doubt paying off the poor locals and making sure everyone saw what they were supposed to.
Yankee GO home
“A group of South Korean students has stormed a US Army base in Seoul in a protest over a traffic accident last month which killed two schoolgirls.”
The US has 37,000 troops stationed in South Korea. Why? The Koreans don’t want them there. The cold war is over. North Korea is crippled. Why are we there wasting tax dollars and creating enmity?
Italian police planted petrol bombs on G8 summit protesters
From the Independent:
Italian police planted two Molotov cocktails in a school where anti-globalisation pro-testers were sleeping to justify a brutal crackdown during last year’s G8 summit in Genoa.
A policeman has confessed that he planted the explosives following a year of acrimony over the handling of security at the summit where a protester was shot dead by the police.
White House seeking Iraqi ties to Al-Quaeda
This war is sick. There is no connection between Al-Quaeda and Iraq. If there were the US would have already invaded Iraq to secure the oil riches there. There are definite ties between the US and Al-Quaeda, but no one wants to talk about that. From USA Today:
WASHINGTON � Bush administration lawyers have concluded that establishing a link between al-Qaeda terrorists and Iraq would provide the legal justification the White House needs to attack Saddam Hussein’s regime, U.S. officials say.
An intensive effort by U.S. intelligence to establish a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq is being driven, in part, by a conclusion reached in recent weeks by White House and Pentagon legal and legislative advisers. They believe that connecting Iraq and the Sept. 11 attacks would allow the administration to avoid debates at the United Nations and in Congress over what some would call an unprovoked strike.
The administration has sought the connection since the first days after Sept. 11.
Bush as an affable Big Brother
On the Bush team’s use of slogans and phrases. From the Boston Globe:
Clinton had a similar approach from time to time, former aides say, as did Gore during his presidential campaign, but neither as frequently as Bush has. ”What’s different about the Bush administration is not that there’s a backdrop. There’s always a backdrop,” said Jennifer Palmieri, a former Clinton aide who is now the spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee.
”What is eerie about his backdrops is the repetitive slogans that you see over and over again,” Palmieri said. ”It almost appears to be a subliminal attempt to persuade voters to believe his rhetoric… but there’s very little beyond the backdrop. There’s no substance to back it up. There’s a problem when your slogan doesn’t connect with reality.”
More Bush corruption
Who would benefit from the privatization of Social Security? Bush and the rest of those bloodsucking elites he surrounds himself with. It’s outright corruption and Americans are bending right over for it and asking for seconds. From the NYTimes:
But there may be a third reason. Ask yourself: Who would benefit directly from the creation of “personal accounts” under Social Security?
Those personal accounts won’t be like personal stock portfolios. The Social Security Administration can’t and won’t become a stockbroker for 130 million clients, most of them with quite small accounts. Instead it’s likely that a privatization scheme would require individuals to invest with one of a handful of designated private investment funds.
That would mean enormous commissions for the managers of those funds. And those who would be likely to benefit showed their appreciation, in advance: During the 2000 election, according to opensecrets.org, campaign contributors in the two categories labeled “securities and investment” and “miscellaneous finance” (basically individual wheeler-dealers) gave Mr. Bush almost six times as much as they gave Al Gore.
Here, too, Mr. Bush’s past is prologue. I reported in an earlier column the story of Utimco, the University of Texas fund that, while Mr. Bush was governor and the current secretary of commerce, Donald Evans, headed the U.T. regents, placed more than $1 billion with private funds, many with close business or political ties to Mr. Bush himself. Among the beneficiaries were the Wyly brothers, who later financed a crucial smear campaign against John McCain. (“Bush reveals his poisonous colors” was the headline of a piece about that campaign, written by the online pundit Andrew Sullivan.)
Could America’s retirement savings really be used to reward the administration’s friends? Ask the teachers of Texas. In one of many odd deals during Mr. Bush’s time as governor, the Texas teachers’ retirement system sold several buildings without open bids, taking a $70 million loss, to a company controlled by Richard Rainwater, a prime mover behind Mr. Bush’s rise to wealth.
Ordinary murderers get the death penalty in Texas, and this corrupt shitheel gets to be president of the most powerful nation on earth. Life sure has a way of kicking you in the nuts.