Andre's Executive Order

With the incoming Republican controlled house in the new year, I thought I would take a shot at the party that put them there and see what my readers think. Yea, I know, surprise surprise, I'm taking a stab at the Republican party again. The way I'll structure this is a simple question posed to my hypothetical Republican reader. Why do you vote Republican? I vote Republican because I believe in small government and fiscal responsibility. Once upon a time Republicans believed these things, but those days seem long gone. No matter what you think the role of government should be, Republican administration has done nothing but increase the size and cost of government since Ronald Reagan. Conservatives tend to get lost in this truth by trying to make distinctions between military and domestic policy, the allocation of tax dollars to 'necessary' and 'unnecessary' projects and over-reach, but at the end of the day, government has ended up bigger and more expensive on R...

Ted Koppel, a living paragon of news reporting in the last thirty years, wrote a recent op-ed piece lamenting the death of objective journalism in today's media while taking direct stabs at Fox News's Bill O'Reilly and MSNBC's Keith Olbermann. His claim was that such modern commentators were purely political partisans designed to feed a profit machine by preaching vehemently to the choir and, for the most part, devoid of actual objective fact and analytical journalism. I have linked the article as well as Keith Olbermann's response on his show to the piece, but I believe this deserves some additional commentary I haven't seen offered yet. Ted Koppel is wrong. But first, a point about the responses by both Olbermann and O'Reilly. Both men responded defensively. They challenged the objectivity of Koppel's work and time, Olbermann pointing out the idealization of objective news simply ignored the reality of the subjective commentary provided during Koppel...

Do you want to know? The conservative revolution going on in the Republican party right now is ugly. What is being proposed by the new generation of would-be senators and congressmen from the right is a mix of misinformation, embarrassing radical positions, and ridiculous fear tactics that border on the kind of paranoia normally reserved for liberal extremists. Riding the wave of it all is a generation of extremely weathy opportunists who are taking advantage of the Citizen's United decision to pump more money into campaigns than we have ever seen in the history of our country. If you listen to Republican leadership, they will repeat over and over “nothing to see here, please vote as you see fit in November, the choice is clear between failing politics today and the promise of new leadership.” However there is something to see here. The question is, do you want to know? Three things. Three elements are combining to hijack American conservatives into voting some of the most dangerou...

Maybe you've seen me write about 'voting against your interest' or talk about people's 'interest' when it comes to politics. I realized today that some of my readers might not understand what I mean when I use 'interest' this way. So today's article is about probably the most important topic I could bring up prior to an election: Voting with your interest – what it means, and how to do it. If you go to dictionary.com, you'll find that the word 'interest' has at least 15 definitions that range across a wide variety of subjects and professions. This list is hardly exhaustive, and in context of what we will be talking about briefly today, I will be using the following definition: Interest – The state of being affected by a law, political policy, or party platform that directly contributes to the advantage and/or profit of the subject. In short, your political interest is how the decisions of a politician or party furthers the things that mat...

I went to see President Obama speak last night at the University of Wisconsin campus. For the first time since I started blogging, I listened to what he was saying from the perspective of a critic. I tried to think divorce myself from the natural energy and power that his speaking evokes at least enough to focus on what he was saying and think about what he was asking for. First, let me describe the scene. My wife and I both went and took our 8 year old god-daughter with us to the rally. I had done as much research as I could in advance, and saw that 15,000 were likely to attend. Turns out nearly 27,000 showed up, filling the Library Mall where the event was held and overflowing onto the hills surrounding campus. The crowd was surprisingly supportive and protests were mostly absent or low key. I personally was expecting less of an involved crowd, but the tone of the gathering was very high energy. We arrived at about 3:30pm, which was when they started letting folks into the central ar...

I want to rip on Christians a bit. But understand, that like most of my rippings, the point is not to tear apart one of the world's most important religions or denigrate it's followers, but rather to examine what has become of this religion in the eyes of Americans. I want to discuss a division within the Christian faith and how it's affecting American's understanding of what it means to be a Christian. First, a note on the social conservatism overall. The current atmosphere in politics has conservatives feeling disenfranchised and in many ways betrayed by the Republican party. This has lead to the tea party movement. I've written before, and continue to believe, that the tea party is an internal revolution within the Republican party who just happens to share a common enemy in liberal politics. The new movement has tried to differentiate themselves from the GOP by becoming even more conservative – radically so. The reason for this isn't hard to grasp; Classical...

Let's talk for a little bit about fear. Fear is the single most important emotion in politics. It is important because nothing motivates action in people like fear. Anger and outrage are close, but they lack fear's staying power. Most people simply can't stay actively angry at something very long. They can dislike it after the anger has faded, or hold a grudge which means when opportunity to act against the source of their anger presents itself they'll take it, but the actual anger is as transient as flame; it rages hot then cools to smolder at best. Fear, on the other hand, is a aching, gnawing manifestation of uncertainty that reminds us over and over of the awful things that could or might be. It is not actual loss or change or evil or harm, it is the POSSIBILITY of these things looming on the horizon that generates fear. Fear is an emotion in advance of a fact, that piece of the puzzle that arouses us to be ready for whatever bad effect might be coming. In American ...

So I digress... sort-of... I had a discussion on Facebook over the last 2-3 days dealing with gun control, and interestingly enough, it shed some light on topic of socialism, capitalism, and the economic expectations of Americans when it comes to politics. So how did a discussion about gun control shift to economics? Well first let me briefly state the nature of the argument. My position on the issue is that owning guns is a fundamental right, but one that must, like all rights, be balanced against society's overall interest in safety and maintaining order. To this degree, I am in favor of gun control that limits ownership of certain kinds of firearms to the military or police forces, and I am in favor of reasonable laws that measure the judgment and fitness of a gun owner before they are allowed to purchase one. I am aware that our attempts to create laws to do both have been less than perfect, but I think the bottom line is that we need to try to keep guns from those too stupid, ...

This is another one of my multi-day explorations of some ideas we find filtering through the political topics of the day when we're not busy trying to argue about church placement. Socialism : An economic system in which the production and distribution of goods are controlled substantially by the government rather than by private enterprise, and in which cooperation rather than competition guides economic activity. What ... does this have to do with any party in the United States? The answer really is "it doesn't" but the use of the word Socialist as an attack on Obama during 2008 has proven viral and now tends to crop up in any discussion where the government seeks to manage economic affairs. For the next few entries I want to explore one of the core differences between true conservatives and progressives: The level to which the government should be involved in economic systems. To start, let's put the other two biggies out there: Capitalism : An economic and pol...

Let's do a little exercise: "President Obama is wrong for this country because..." - You finish the sentence, paragraph, or paper. The rules of this game are only three and very simple. First, If you decide to answer, you must address the policies and decisions actually made by the President. You may not talk about wildly generalized or speculative concepts such as Socialism, his birth date, his place of birth, or any other distraction issue not related to what he is DOING (or not doing) for America as President of the United States. Second, be specific. No generalities. I don't want people repeating the favorite pundit's catch-phrases from media playbooks used against every Democrat from Carter on forward and calling it good. "He spends too much","He hates business","He's ruining our military." These wildly generalized claims all beg for support. Address specific uses of executive power by the president related to his term so far...

When did it become a sin to be wrong? In today's media, employment and even social environment, we have adopted a policy of never admitting to any wrong. We avoid being wrong in ways that suggest that should be discovered that we lacked the requisite 'rightness' we might be fired, ostracized or humiliated in a way from which we might never recover. Just watching the discussions between otherwise sane and reasonable people about important topics and you see a wide variety of 'wrongness avoidance'. What do I mean? You all should recognize these: If the facts start to prove your position untenable, change the subject to something related. “But John, there was no meeting in your yard and we have film to prove it.” “See, this is what you people do, you invade privacy and think because you got some secret film you can invalidate my cause!” If evidence runs against you, attack the speaker, and reference generic 'experts'. “There were no weapons of mass destruction....

The American people have it right. Newt Gingrich's made the ridiculous to the point of comical statement on the issue of a 'ground zero' mosque saying it would be okay 'when Saudi Arabia allows churches'. Never mind the entire controversy is one grounded in the Constitution that applies only to sovereign territory of the US. This was like saying we'll allow you to speak freely when they can speak freely in China. No, you'll do it now, because I'm an American and here we have rights. Meanwhile the 'professional left' framed the issue as purely one of fundamental rights and ignored the issue of common sense, common decency and emotions entirely. But despite both sides' stupidity, it seems Americans have figured it out. The polls on the subject say about 70% of Americans are against the construction of the Islamic cultural center in lower Manhattan. However nearly 90% of Americans agree they have the right to do so. If you read my article 'M...

So have you been following the primaries at all? If you're like most of America, the answer is no. If you aren't a candidate, working for a candidate, or a political junkie like me, watching either party play the game of deciding who they will put up in the general election is about as exciting as watching mold develop on those bananas your kids swore they'd eat if you bought them. However this primary season is a little different, particularly for me and my interest in the long term health of Conservative politics in America*. This season, we are seeing the disintegration of the ability of the Republican National Convention to control the kind of candidates that get nominated. Throughout the nation, the RNC has supported the kind of candidates they normally do, but the voters, ever more rightest these days, have instead nominated an entirely different breed of Conservative. Marco Rubio, Ron Paul, and Sharon Angle are just a few examples of Republican nominations that prese...

I try to write every day. Today, however, I'm not feeling so well. However despite missing today's entry for the most part, I have done some work on what will be tomorrows. I hope tomorrow is to talk about voting particular in regards to the 2010 elections. I want to talk about not voting, about how to vote, and about how much work any patriotic voter really should do before November. Of course I won't be telling you who to vote for. If I did, you'd ignore me anyway. However I do hope to get folks thinking about what they really want out of the 2010 elections and what makes the most sense for the long term health of their political views and the country. Now for an unabashed call for free marketing. We ALL know people who are sick and tired of the false war waged between the right and left. Give them this site to read. Encourage them to come, follow the blog, and comment. I'm very certain that the best politics of our country have happened in the places where differ...

I'm listening to Rush Limbaugh. I'm not listening to him to get mad. I'm certainly not listening to him to learn anything about conservative politics. Instead I'm listening to him because I consider the right wing media, particularly Rush, to be the genesis for the modern hate we feel between right and left. It's a hate grounded in how he structures his claims and information and then presents them to his listeners. All in all, this is part of my ongoing effort to dissect the increasing wedge driven between conservatives and liberals that keeps us from talking to each other and in many cases encourages us to hate each other. When did it become wrong to disagree? When did the desire for a certain economic approach or spending plan or foreign policy become reason to turn a fellow American into a conspirator against the American dream and an enemy? Rush doesn't lie per se. Rush interprets. But he interprets in a way that encourages the average listener to carry con...

So let's be clear about the New York Islamic Cultural Center including a mosque being proposed for central New York. 1.The proposed site about 2 blocks away from ground zero. 2.There is at least one Jewish synagogue and one Christian church within that distance. 3.Over 650,000 Muslims live in New York State. 4.Muslims were killed in the 911 attacks. So a foreign radical fringe group of a religion widely practiced in the United States effectively attacks and kills thousands of Americans on US soil in 2001. The emotional impact of this attack cannot be overstated, nor should the grief of those who lost loved ones be underestimated. Now New York Muslims were no more a part of the 911 attacks then New York Christians were a part of the Northern Ireland terrorist bombings of the 80's and 90's. There simply is nothing to suggest that the religion of Islam is to blame for the violence that some of its radical members inflicted on our nation. However there is an argument to be made...

It's a slow news day. Ed Shultz is complaining about a congressman's excessive golf, and Limbaugh seems preoccupied with the same 3 talking points that were old two years ago. Seems political talk on both sides is taking the day off. So I'm using the space to just shed light on what I'm doing here. As I hope my readers understand, a lot of what I do with this blog is to create honest dialogue between voters regardless of where you might sit on that left/right line. I want people to stop defending their political party and start thinking about the issues that face them and the people who claim to represent them in making decisions to face them. I tend to vote Democrat. But even if I agree with the Democratic platform, I am more than just a party member. My life is more complex than that. There are things about my world view that don't align with social idealism or worker politics that often permeate the Democratic agenda. It is unfair to me and my family to just vote...

“For our opponents to say, as they have repeatedly, that there is no rational reason for limiting marriage to a man and a woman except for animus and bigotry is to spurn 7 million Californian voters, 70 of 108 judges, the vast majority of state legislatures and electorate after electorate who support marriage between a man and woman.” Andrew Pugno, the general counsel for Protectmarriage.com, released this as a press release just after closing arguments in the case that would overturn California's Proposition 8. This sentiment has been, more or less, a summary of the backlash against the decision that overturned that gay marriage ban. The outcry from social conservatives immediately lit up the airwaves and blogosphere, with comments about legislation from the bench, activist judges, and the anti-American nature of defying the will of the people, once again proven by a judiciary that went against a strong majority of voters who supported the law. But let's be clear. Marriage is ...

Many progressives don't exactly understand the gay marriage issue as it applies to Christian conservatives. I'm not going to make a lot of friends on my side of the isle by writing this article, but I think it's something particularly liberals need to wrap their minds around. Social and religious conservatives are in a tricky place when it comes to gay marriage. Now I'm not talking about the paranoid homophobic component of the anti-gay movement that borders on paranoia, I'm talking about the average conservative – particularly Christian – who gets caught between their religious morality and their sense of social conscience. Now to progressives, this issues seems incredibly obvious. Marriage is a bundle of benefits from the government and a means by which couples can form lasting relationships. However it started, homosexual relationships are happening and many are lasting. Therefore denying them the legitimacy provided to other lifetime bonds is pure discriminatio...