Christina’s Common Sense

Once again proving that he has no shame and no standards, Rev. Jeremiah Wright (I’d like to have a chat with whoever sat on his ordination council) appeared at the National Press Club this morning and proclaimed the attacks on him as attacks on “the black church.”

Excuse me? The black church?! Is this guy kidding? If a white pastor went to the Press Club and talked about “the white church,” he’d be out on his ear with the American Commie-Lib Union all over him like ugly on an ape! But Jeremiah Wright can say it and nobody bats an eye.

People say America is a racist country. They’re wrong and at the same time they’re right. Blacks are no longer enslaved or forcibly segregated from the white population. This has been replaced by a belief that black people cannot be racist. We now have a society in which black people can say anything they want and white people have to pussy-foot around everything for fear of offending blacks. That is not racial equality.

And the best thing? Obama has said, and I quote: “The fact that he’s my former pastor I think makes it a legitimate political issue.” 

Whatever you say, Barack! Hope you’re having as much fun engineering your electoral demise as I am witnessing it.

I developed an interest in Silent Cal after reading his autobiography (which I reviewed here) in my American Presidency class. Today in said class the professor played various sound clips of early-20th century presidents, but Coolidge was conspicuously absent. However, a portion of a speech he gave about lowering taxes is on YouTube.

Could Coolidge run in our current media age with that nasally Yankee accent? I have my doubts. Never mind his penchant for cutting taxes…

For all his years in politics, John McCain seems not to understand that his business is the game of rewarding your friends and punishing your enemies. In fact, he frequently gets it backwards.

Today, McCain has issued a decree to pull an anti-Obama ad in North Carolina featuring Rev. Wright. McCain claimed it to be dishonorable and says he wants to run an honorable campaign. Apparently, that means not calling out the fact that your opponent has listened—or not listened, depending on who you believe—to his preacher calling for God to damn America.

An “honorable campaign” does not mean letting your opponent walk all over you. That is not honor, it’s suicide. Having served a couple of decades in the Navy, McCain should know a thing or two about honor. There is nothing dishonorable about calling out your opponent’s mistakes. That is politics. If McCain can’t deal with that, he should go find another job.

Linda Daves, chair of the North Carolina Republican Party, has said that she will run the ad anyway because it’s her job to point out the weaknesses of the Democrat party. When Norah O’Donnell accused her of playing the race card, Daves replied that it has nothing to do with race and that as chair of the North Carolina Republican Party, it’s her duty to do what’s best for the party.

John McCain should drop to his knees and thank God that his opponents are so maladroit. Otherwise, strategies like this would ensure his defeat in November.

Whenever I read a conservative book, I like to put on my liberal hat (yes, I do have one) and see how well the author can convince me. So the question for Steven F Hayward in The Real Jimmy Carter was: could he convince me, a diehard hemophiliac liberal Jimmy Carter lover that the object of my admiration is detrimental to my country?

The answer, sadly, was not really. While Hayward’s book is easy to read, not terribly long, and a well-done work, he offers little of which my liberal hat wouldn’t already be aware. I already knew that Carter wasn’t a great president, but that he tried really hard (and as a liberal, that’s what matters to me). The fact that Carter’s good friends with Yasser Arafat is perfectly fine in my book. When Hayward criticizes Carter’s criticizing the Bush administration, I see that as Carter just doing his job. Hayward said almost nothing to dissuade me from my adoration of St. Jimmy.

However, when I took off my liberal hat and put on my conservative one, Hayward did a great job. Despite his inability to persuade my inner liberal, he really does marshal good evidence and arguments in his defense (and that shouldn’t count against him; what do such things matter to a liberal?). He cites unflattering characterizations of Carter by his White House and campaign staffers, plus contemporary news accounts of Carter’s meddling with current affairs, both of which are excellent insights into Carter. These debunk the perception of Carter as a righteous saint and show him instead to be a self-righteous loser.

So on the conservative end of things, Hayward hits a home run. On the liberal end, he walks to first. Still, The Real Jimmy Carter isn’t a bad read, if you’re already convinced that Carter was an awful president and are just looking for some affirmation. Or if your history prof happens to assign it.

Well.

I didn’t have a high opinion of Time Magazine before. Now it’s so low it would need to go up to reach zero.

In an upcoming issue, Time has ditched the red border in favor of a green one. The reason, of course, is to make green “the new red, white & blue.”

That’s dumb, but really nothing new from the eco-freaks. But what has me en fuego is the picture on the cover, which depicts the famous Iwo Jima flagraising photo with a pine tree in place of the flag. According to the magazine’s editor, “There needs to be a real effort along the lines of World War II to combat climate change.”

Yes. Your monitor is working.

I’m not hopping mad about this just because Iwo Jima happens to be my favorite WWII battle (but I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t a factor). I’m not even hopping mad because the idea that global warming is a crisis on par with Pearl Harbor is ludicrous (even though it is). I’m hopping mad because this picture puts environmentalists In the same category as the Marines who fought on Iwo. They’re not, and only a fool would think they are. Time has some nerve belittling the sacrifice that allows them to make such wrongheaded statements. I hope they hear from some Marines about it. But somehow, I don’t think I have to worry.

Sometimes I think I ought to become a reporter so I can go to the Press Correspondents’ Dinner. It might be worth it to witness speeches like this.

Dick Cheney, making fun of the press and himself:

Mitt Romney, on why he dropped out:

Or maybe I should get myself into a position where I could give one of the speeches.

I blogged the other day about how government-run healthcare is an unmitigated disaster for Europe and Canada, and it will be for us too. However, that’s not to say our current system isn’t also a disaster—it is. Would we have a call for socialized medicine—excuse me, universal healthcare—if our current system was doing everything right?

When you ask “What’s the problem with American healthcare?” The response will doubtless be, “Not enough people are insured.” According to the 2005 US Census, about 15% of the American public does not have health insurance. That means about 85 %—8-9 out of 10 people—do have health insurance. And really, that’s a good percentage. To listen to the Democrats this year, you’d think 85% of the American public wasn’t covered.

Now let me ask; does insurance really make your life easier? But of course it does! It pays for everything from chemotherapy to a tonsillectomy to an MRI to a routine physical. For $5, you can go see the doctor. Isn’t that a good deal?

Well, not really, according to Jonathan Kellerman at the Wall Street Journal. If you believe Kellerman, American healthcare will benefit if we have fewer people insured. Health insurance, responding to our demand that it cover everything, has done so. But at what cost? The cost of rising co-pays for patients and impossible paperwork for doctors. And contrary to popular belief, health insurance makes doctor visits more expensive. They can’t cover every runny nose for free, so they gaffe you for more than you’ll ever use. We don’t need more insurance—we need less. Less insurance will, by Kellerman’s analysis, drive down the cost of healthcare and make it more available. And isn’t that what we all want?

What do you think of the Vietnam War?

If you’re like most Americans, you don’t think highly of it. And why should you? For over a decade our country was embroiled in a war that was a resounding defeat. Not only that, but the American military flagrantly disregarded international law, engaged in indiscriminate killing of civilians, and committed genocide against the North Vietnamese. Right?

If that’s what you think, you need to read America in Vietnam.

I will not kid you. This book is drier than the Sahara in July. But it is an excellent look into how Vietnam’s legacy does not match up with its reality. It’s really very impressive work, especially considering that Guenter Lewy is a political scientist (at The Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy, no less) and not a historian. Also, unlike most people who dare take America’s side in the Vietnam conflict, Lewy is no apologist for the war. It’s very hard to tell from the book which side he is on, as he spends the first half of the book raking Gen. Westmoreland over the coals and spends the second half pointing out what fools the historians and academics have made of themselves in post-Vietnam years (which, at the time the book was written, was only about 5).

If you want to know the side of Vietnam your overgrown hippie history professor doesn’t want you to see, you should read America in Vietnam. In fact, even if you are the overgrown hippie history professor, you should read America in Vietnam. It will provide a different perspective that has been largely buried for over 30 years.

The government has repeatedly demonstrated its incompetence to run anything. From car registration to education to its own (all too numerous) agencies, the government has done nothing but make life more complicated, more expensive, and lower in quality. Yet for some reason there seems to be this idea that when it comes to extending health coverage to every living human being in the country, government will miraculously be cured of its inherent flaws.

This notion, of course, has been proven wrong many times by our neighbors across the pond, who now have such a healthcare crisis that they are implementing steps to return to a more free market healthcare system.

The problems with British healthcare include do-it-yourself tooth extractions, critically ill patients being left in ambulance holding patterns while they wait for a doctor to become available, and mandating that patients discuss only one illness per visit. As if that weren’t enough proof, Canadians (who also have universal healthcare) are coming to the US to get the medicine they need—and some of them are suing their government to pick up the tab.

American healthcare is a mess. I won’t deny that. But we must not confuse the need to fix it with the idea that it is the government’s job to do so. How much would you trust a friend who kept letting you down? Better yet, how long would he be your friend? Not long, I’ll bet. So why do we trust the government when it keeps letting us down and its programs are shown not to work? I can’t see why. Our healthcare system needs help, but government action is demonstrably not the answer.

The Boston Red Sox had their home opener last Tuesday, and I just had to be in Michigan. However, since they were playing the Tigers the game was carried out here, and I got to see the last part after spending 2 ½ hours in Constitutional Law Hell. Unfortunately I missed the beginning and therefore the flyover. It would seem that I missed a very eventful flyover.

It’s been said, “There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots.” Into which category does this poor chap fall? You be the judge.