The Crisis Lobby: The Obama administration’s mantra – never let a crisis go to waste – has turned the normal news cycle into an Orwellian nightmare. Now, whenever anything bad or seemingly bad happens, we’re faced with some new federal regulation, tax, bureaucratic agency, or all of the above, to respond to the “crisis” and prevent its ever happening again. Take the Gulf oil spill… Instead of putting every effort into capping and cleaning the spill, the Obama administration put most of its energy into denouncing the oil industry and placing a moratorium on future deep water offshore drilling. Why are we drilling so far offshore in the first place? It might just be all the environmental restrictions that don’t allow us to drill closer to shore, in other areas up and down America’s coast or in ANWAR. So it’s ironic that “saving the environment” actually destroyed it, but that’s how unintended consequences work. The Unintended Consequences Factor ratchets up exponentially when the federal government strays farther and farther from its limited Constitutional mission. So when you hear a lot of bad news about obesity, be afraid. Be very afraid.

Dueling bumper stickers: I was driving to Target the other day to partake in some rampant consumerism. Before I did my little part in destroying the planet, I noticed a car with two bumper stickers. One read, “Obama ’08,” the other, “I love my country but fear my government.” This puzzled me, because if one fears their government, is it prudent vote for the candidate who promises more of it? The problem with voting for more government is that, eventually, some right-wing fascist will be in power and abuse the hell out of the behemoth you helped create in the first place by voting for big-government guy (or gal). George W. Bush, for instance, would have been less likely to constantly violate our rights had the federal government been limited to begin with. It’s not a good idea to create an infrastructure that allows the next Hitler unfettered access to almost unlimited power.