Those in favor of national health insurance seem to believe that universally available health care is preferred over good health care. But the flaw in this argument is that universally available health care is already available. Private health insurance is available to anyone who can afford it. For those who can’t afford it there is Medicaid, SCHIP and charitable institutions. You might be denied knee replacement surgery under Medicaid but that will also be denied under a national health insurance plan.

There is also the false assumption that a national health care plan will ensure that everyone is covered. If the plan is universally available but voluntary not everyone will opt to pay for it. If participation in the plan is mandatory how will the cost be collected from those unable to pay? The cost won’t be collected from those unable to pay so we’re back to the system we have now: health insurance plans that are available to those able to pay and public assistance for those that aren’t.

How can a political party that depends on a majority for its power be a true friend of a minority? They can’t. They can only be a true friend to a collection of minorities with common interests. And that collection has to be large enough to constitute a majority. But if this collection of minorities has sufficiently common interests and numbers to place a particular party and president in power are they truly a minority? The mathematician in me says no.

Since slavery, the most racist act committed by this country was the inclusion of all citizens of African descent in a single group. That group is the “black minority.” It doesn’t matter how rich or poor you are or how educated or uneducated you are; if your ancestors were African you are in that group. It doesn’t matter if you are among the most poor, uneducated and disadvantaged in the land; if your skin is white you are not in that group. It is a blatant classification of a large segment of our population on their ethnicity alone.  Jeff Foxworthy’s classification of rednecks makes more sense; he specifies hundreds of criteria, each of which can qualify you for membership in the group.

African-Americans are not alone; Hispanics, for example, have their own group. But why should Hispanics be classified separately from blacks? Aren’t their needs similar to those of blacks? I would think that the needs among blacks or among Hispanics taken separately are at least as different as the needs of both taken together. The answer is that combining the minorities might be politically threatening; if they’re all combined they may no longer constitute a minority. But an astute, populist political party can claim that it is their duty now to represent the interests of the new majority.

It seems to me that all this thrashing about over the supposed under-represented minorities is much ado about nothing. What happened to representing all the people all the time? And treating everyone equally?

(Perhaps I shouldn’t raise the question posed in the title of this post; Obama may want to create a new White House Czar for that purpose.)

But that’s exactly what President Obama wants to do in closing Gitmo, give in to elements that want to harm us. He says that it has become a symbol that helps Al Qaeda recruit terrorists to its cause. He provides no evidence to support that claim but so what if it is true? Should we cease to defend our country when doing so encourages our attackers? Should we not punish our attackers when doing so infuriates their supporters? No, the only effective way to deal with them is to punish them hard and often.

Placating the enemy is never an effective strategy; it is only seen as a sign of weakness. Irritating them as often as possible is better; when angry they will make mistakes.

It’s interesting that Obama apparently believes that the radical elements around the world are stupid enough to not notice that he is just moving the detainees from Gitmo to other prisons in the US. That is, he plans to close Gitmo, not release the detainees. Or, he thinks that the radical elements are upset about the symbolism of Gitmo itself rather than the fact that their comrades are incarcerated.

Anyway, I’ve long questioned the idea that there is an endless supply of hothead fanatics ready and willing to give their lives for the cause of destroying the US. If Gitmo has been such an effective recruiting tool where are they and what have they done? To the US homeland, that is. I think it’s more likely that immediately after 9/11 they celebrated a lot and then started to ask themselves what they really accomplished. The US mourned the loss of the victims but hardly skipped a beat on the whole. And they recognized that things were now a lot tougher on them. They all had to leave Afghanistan and go find new digs (literally) in Pakistan.

Perhaps too they came to believe that the 9/11 attack just turned out to be a huge recruiting tool for the Americans.

But Obama knows that probably half the people who heard his comment will think he is talking about achieving a balanced budget — that is, no deficit spending. His team probably budgeted more than they meant to spend so that he could make this boast.

Based on a discussion I heard on Morning Joe this morning Obama apparently used the word “privacy” instead of “piracy” in making some remarks on the rescue of the ship captain taken hostage by pirates. He reportedly said something like: We have to take steps to eradicate privacy. Most likely he was reading from a teleprompter and the teleprompter had it wrong. Will this be Obama’s “misunderestimate” moment? Don’t count on it.