A new Bush plicy is starting to be used throughout government and it’s been properly licensed from The Donald. People in government who speak out against Bush policies or are critical of actions taken by the White House are being either forced out of office our outright fired for their criticisms. Just ask former U.S. Park Police Chief Teresa Chambers who was fired recently for criticising a lack of funding and support for our Nation’s parks.

“The American people should be afraid of this kind of silencing of professionals in any field,” she said. “We should be very concerned as American citizens that people who are experts in their field either can’t speak up, or, as we’re seeing now in the parks service, won’t speak up.”

National Park Service officials said Chambers broke rules barring public comment about budget discussions and prohibiting lobbying by someone in her position.

Shouldn’t she be the one lobbying for more funding if she sees a glaring lack of it? This makes no sense and appears, at least to me, to be politically motivated. Personally, I’d like to know ahead of time from the people in charge that we need more funding, more officers, etc. I’d also like it if they weren’t fired for telling me such things.

Ever since Bush’s crappy foreign policy, horrible stance on the environment and the consisten eroding of my rights made me mad I’ve been shopping for a political party to register as and vote for. Easy you say. Wrong. Both Democrats and Republicans play to special interests, generally abuse the government and, overall, suck. So who do you vote for?

You vote for a viable alternative.

The Libertarian Party is an interesting hybrid of the Democratic and Republic platform, most of which are common sense. The end result is a great platform that includes all sorts of things I agree with and a few I don’t.

1. They would eliminate the income tax. How? By drastically reducing the size of the federal government. This includes ending military welfare to defend countries like Japan and NOT bailing out failing industries.
2. They promote the legalization of drugs as a way to both reduce crime and reduce tax burden (no war on drugs means we don’t have to pay for tons of DEA agents).
3. Privatize the running, control and operations of federally protected lands to such environmental groups as the Nature Conservancy.
4. Abolish foreign aid.
5. Abolish Social Security. I like this idea the more I think about it. Let ME invest my money how I see fit – I don’t need the government’s help.
6. They aggressively believe in freedom of speech, which includes staunch support for the free and unrestricted use of cryptography and censorship.
7. Abolish the current welfare system.

All of the above makes a ton of sense to me. Who better to run our nation’s parks than the tree hugging hippies? How better to get rid of the violence the drug trade produces than to make it legal? The running theme throughout the entire platform is that the people who vote Libertarian do so because we trust people to run their own lives. It’s a party that promotes responsibility.

They have a great ad on their site that says the following.

I’m George W. Bush and you can trust ME to run your life.

…

I’m John Kerry and you can trust ME to run your life.

…

I’m Ralph Nader and you can trust ME to run your life.

…

I’m Michael Badnarik and I trust YOU to run your own life.

Classic. So this year I’m voting for the Libertarian Party and I highly suggest you look into it as a viable alternative.

The 9/11 commission is standing next to their findings that al Qaeda and Iraq had only limited connections. Cheney and Bush have both insisted, publicly, that Iraq and al Qaeda had a working relationship and that “we don’t know” if they were involved in 9/11.

“After examining available transcripts of [Vice President Dick Cheney’s] public remarks, the 9/11 commission believes it has access to the same information the vice president has seen regarding contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq prior to the 9/11 attacks,” the commission said in a written statement.

That statement comes in the wake of an interview Cheney gave last month on CNBC. During that interview, Cheney said “we don’t know” whether Iraq was involved in the attacks. Asked whether he had information the panel did not, the vice president said, “Probably.”

After Cheney’s statement on CNBC, the commission asked the vice president to come forward with any additional information he could provide about any ties between al Qaeda and Iraq.

I’ve got a couple of questions …

1. Why does the VP have more information on 9/11 than the 9/11 commission?
2. If it would clear the air with regards to apparent contradictions between what the 9/11 commission found and what the Bush administration said leading up to the war in Iraq as well as comments made since the commission’s report, then why wouldn’t the administration give the commission said information?

The answer to that could be as easy as they don’t have any more information and are simply trying to confuse the public with doublespeak. I hope this isn’t the case, since there are over 3000 families out there that deserve to know all the facts.

I saw the movie Fahrenheit 9/11 on opening night. Why? Because that’s what tree hugging hippies do on a Friday night in Ann Arbor, MI. How was it? Well, that’s hard to say. First of all, the content is not ground breaking for anyone who has actually been paying attention and connecting the dots for themselves over the last few years.

There are two things that more does a great job of; breaking down the facts into small digestible pieces and showing the real consequences of our actions in Iraq. He makes a few arguments about Bush & Co. and the war in Iraq and mulches them into small bite size chunks. His arguments are as follows.

1. The Bin Laden family and other high level Saudis were allowed to leave the country right after 9/11 without being questioned. Moore’s argument is a valid one here; if you committed a crime the police would surely want to question your entire family as soon as possible.
2. Moore asserts that the close connections between the Bush family and the Saudi royal family is the reason they were allowed to leave. This is a plausible argument, but is certainly leaning towards conspiracy theory.
3. The reasons given to us for war, which, at the time the President made his case, were weapons of mass destruction, were lies. The fact that Iraq had no WMD is well known and currently there is much debate on links between Iraq and al Qaeda.
4. Bush is evil and stupid. I think you can only be one or the other, but I could be wrong. Moore does use a lot of gratuitous Bush snickering clips, etc., which don’t add to his argument and really are only there for laughs

Nothing really ground breaking here for those of you who actually watch the news and read once in a while, but what makes this movie so powerful is the fact that it breaks down the lies behind us going to war and the consequences of us going into Iraq (if you don’t like seeing the results of our military actions then this movie is not for you).

Now all of the GOP’s out there are condemning this movie, but what makes me so angry is that, in their blind allegiance to the party, they ignore the following facts.

1. Bush said the main reason for invading Iraq was that is posed an immediate threat and possessed WMD’s (he even had sattelite photos!). We now know they did not, in fact, pose a threat or possess WMD’s. Some make the assertion that the WMD’s were smuggled out to another country leading up to the war. If that was, in fact, the case then Bush HAS NOT MADE US SAFER; he’s merely shifted where the WMD’s are located.
2. Once it was clear there were no WMD’s the GOP started to shift the reasons for war. First it was the much contested Iraq-al Qaeda link and then it was “we’ve liberated them!” and now they espouse the virtues of having a Democratic state in the Middle East. First off, your party’s leaders are trying to justify a war while ignoring the fact they either lied about the WMD’s or screwed up the efforts to secure those WMD’s. Second, the terrorist links are vague at best. Finally, did anyone ever think to liberate Iranians or N. Koreans? Do they even want Deomcracy?

NOTE: The following list of scenes I liked a lot contains spoilers.

1. I find it disgusting at how the patrons of the conference for war contractors talk about how much they are helping the country, etc. These vultures profit from the horrors of wars. There is a great clip about a soldier who makes $3k/mo. and is assigned to guard the oil fields where guys driving 2.5 miles and back make three times that a month.
2. The look on the Senator’s face when Moore asks him if he’d like to sign up his son to the armed forces to figh in Iraq is simply classic.
3. I didn’t like looking at the scenes of dead bodies and blown up babies, but I’m glad that millions of people out there are going to finally see what we’ve put the Iraqis through.

So, in short, the movie doesn’t bring any major new information to the forefront, but does break down the misdeads of the Iraq war and Bush & Co. quite well.