Nothing pulls the country together like a good crisis - or so Washington would have us think.
However, there is almost a crisis-of-the-week. I can just imagine some of those strategy meetings deep inside the caverns of the White House. They probably already have crises calendared through the 4th of July and are working on the rest of the year.
Afterall, Rahm Emmanuel, the President's Chief of Staff, likes to say, that "we can't let a good crisis go to waste."
What he means is that each crisis gives them another opportunity to insert themselves into our lives. If there isn't a real crisis - and there hardly ever is - they invent one.
There was the subprime crisis, the banking crisis, the Wall Street crisis, the AIG crisis, the Citi crisis, the automaker crisis, the Fannie and Freddie crisis, the health care crisis, the global warming crisis that morphed into the climate change crisis, the energy crisis, the swine flu crisis that became the H1N1 crisis that morphed into the worldwide pandemic (thank you UN and WHO), the budget crisis, the deficit/spending crisis, the Social Security crisis, the Medicare crisis, and the unemployment/jobs crisis.
Only a couple of these are serious and deserve any attention - and they hardly rise to the level of crisis - except for the budget and spending, and those are easily fixed.
A few crises that have come and gone that probably didn't receive the level of attention worthy of a true crisis because they didn't have the desired outcome for the Administration. These include the the 2016 Olympic Games crisis, the Bob McDonnell election crisis, the Chris Christie election crisis, and the Scott Brown election crisis.
Then there are a few ongoing crises that Washington seems to be fine with allowing to continue unabated. These include the Nancy Pelosi running-off-her-mouth crisis, the Harry Reid foot-in-mouth crisis, the Nancy Pelosi see-the-world-on-our-dime crisis, and the TOTUS malfunction crisis (including when the President speaks without it).
Seriously, we do have a few issues in this country that do rise to the level of crisis because they have the potential to do serious damage to our country. We have a Constitutional crisis because both the President and the Congress ignore it and the Supreme Court reinvents it to serve their idea of what this country should be. We have a PC crisis because everyone is so afraid of being intolerant that we are in danger of eroding our core values and principles. We have a leadership crisis because we just want our country to fit in with the rest of the world and for everyone to like us. Get out the big stick.
We have a jobs crisis, but not for the reasons that most people think. We need to encourage business formation and entrepreneuship but that doesn't play well in Washington. The unions, you know. Washington has lost its way and is no longer committed to capitalism. Unemployment needs to rise to somewhere between 35-50% in DC (as we shut down all of the unnecessary bureaucracies) to start driving home this message.
We are a great country but we are drifting off course. Stand up for free enterprise. Stand up for the patriots of the 1770s. Stand up against these veiled attempts (disguised as crises) to take our country away from us. Stand up for a central government that is controlled and bound by the Constitution.
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