Andre's Executive Order

On the 28th of September, Kentucky senator Rand Paul blocked an oil and gas pipeline safety bill. The bill was supported by Republicans and Democrats as well as the Oil & Gas industry. It was designed to help remedy the exceptional number of explosions, spills, and deaths associated with our aging pipeline infrastructure. It would have called for automated cut off switches and certain new safety standards that the industry thought would be wise but wanted standardized across all providers to ensure the costs of the safety measures would be shared across the industry. The Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation committee unanimously approved it's passage. Rand Paul's reason for single handedly using Senate rules to block it? Principle. Ideology. He is against government regulation. Let's talk about ideology. Ideology is the collection of principles, beliefs and ideas that we hold dear and use to steer our decisions. For many, our ideology is our religion whi...

So this is the part where I address offer some magic bullet answers to current conservative positions that to me are hard to defend even from a conservative point of view. I'm going to just very briefly make some suggestions about a broad spectrum of political issues and invite discussion here on facebook about them. This is my version of a top ten list for light consideration by moderate conservative and independent thinkers. Read to the end before you get mad. Immigration Everyone in complicit in this situation. Everyone caused illegal immigration. The government failed to secure the borders and ignored the issue too long. Private industry was quick to use illegal labor all across the US, increasing demand and opportunity for illegals while remaining actively resistant to laws that would toughen enforcement on them. Illegal immigrants were, well, immigrating illegally. And us, the consumers and citizens, enjoyed the fruit of cheap labor without protest until we started seeing ...

In the CNN/Tea Party Republican debate, Ron Paul was asked about a hypothetical involving a 30 year old man of middle class means with a job who decides not to get medical insurance. The man suffers a medical calamity and is in need of care to save his life. The question posed to Paul was: 'should society pick up the check.' Paul says: 'that would be the expectation of the welfare state but the man had made a choice and needed to live with the consequences of that choice.' “So should society let him die?” was the continuing pressure from CNN moderator Wolf Blitzer. Several people in the crowd yelled “Yes!” What does this mean? To American conservatives it is a code of orthodoxy. A statement of faith concerning the role of individual responsibility and self determination taken to an acknowledged extreme but asserted with vehemence. The point is not to cheer a man's death, but to make a firm statement and rail against government involvement in the lives of citizen...

Republican senator Paul Ryan from Wisconsin is charging people $15.00 to come to his 'town hall' meetings. While he avoids putting it that way, he does it because the protesters in Wisconsin will shout him down, yell, and express their outrage in a way that makes him almost unable to speak. The anger against Paul Ryan is a rage that comes from fear and resentment over his policies and a belief that Paul and others like him are hijacking the job they were voted in to do for another agenda. Democrat Anthony Weiner of New York had a strange and almost teenage pseudo-sexual exchange with women across the country involving photos sent over cell phones. The outrage over his odd behavior, not quite cheating but strangely morally disturbing, got so bad that he resigned his congressional seat under pressure from the minority leader and others. Republican Michelle Bachmann of Minnesota broadcast a response to the presidential State of the Union address speaking for nobody at all and ...

I wanted to write briefly about how hard it is to be married to a public school teacher. Particularly in recent months, with all the protests and bitter battles over benefits and state salaries, I thought I'd chime in and really let you see how much of a pain in the ass it is to have a teacher as a wife. It's hard to do my taxes at the end of the year and realize just how much of our income was spent on school supplies and specific tools for student needs that the district couldn't or wouldn't provide. It's equally hard to keep my mouth shut about it because I know she will defend those expenses to her last breath. It's hard to watch her leave every morning at 6:30am and know that if I'm lucky I'll see her at 7pm that night. Once in a while she's out by 4pm, but usually I don't see her until after dark, and there are times – frequently – that I get that call from school saying 'go ahead and eat, I won't be back until after 10.' ...