HotAir’s Selection of HotAir’s Best Posts of 2010

I am please to pass on to you Prager fans HotAir’s selections for the top 20 HotAir posts for 2010: 

Thank you to Ed Morrissey and the folks at HotAir.   Happy New Year to all!

HotAir’s top ten posts  of 2010:

http://hotair.com/archives/2010/12/31/hot-airs-top-50-posts-the-final-top-10/

HotAir’s top posts, 11-20 of 2010:

http://hotair.com/archives/2010/12/30/hot-airs-top-50-posts-11-20/

Walter Williams, the Welfare State, and the Black Family

Walter E. Williams’s Autobiography: Up from the Projects

I found the following at Mark Steyn’s website, Steynonline:

“The welfare state has done to black Americans what slavery could not have done, what the harshest Jim Crow laws could not have done, what discrimination could not have done, and namely break the black family.” – Williams

• Walter E. Williams website | The Hoover Institution
• Newsmax: A Pioneer Among Conservative Economists“Amongst all the people that we knew, my sister and I were the only kids without a mother and a father in the household. Today, it would be exactly the opposite. Today, it would be a rare thing to find a mother and father in the household in the project in which I grew up.” – Williams

Christmas Party, December 2010

Roger Kimball at Pajamas Media wrote the following article about the 2010 “Holiday Season”:

“Yes, I know it’s old news now. Frosty the Snowman nixed as a white “male icon” that helps “to substantiate an ideology upholding a gendered spatial/social system.” NPR’s Nina Totenberg apologizing for uttering the word “Christmas” (think of all she had to apologize for and she picks Christmas!).  The preposterous, pre-fabricated holiday of “Kwanzaa.” The greeting “Merry Christmas” banned at sundry companies and municipalities throughout the domain formerly known as Christendom. All in a day’s work for those wishing to target Christianity in the name of political correctness.

And yet we must not let familiarity inure us to preposterousness. Nor should we make the common mistake of assuming that because something is preposterous it is not therefore seriously harmful. It is sometimes difficult to get our minds around that fact that something can be both preposterous and malevolent. And yet history is full of examples, from Nero and Caligula on down. How silly they seemed — until, of course, their silliness turned toxic.

With that in mind, I offer the following exchange of emails to readers. It was sent to me by one of the parties to the exchange, a doctor who has suffered through the increasingly intolerant and politically correct atmosphere of a large Midwestern medical practice. Our story opens with a seemingly innocuous invitation to a “holiday party” a couple of days ago:

Sent: Monday, December 20, 2010 11:56 AM
To: MED STF ALL
Subject: REMINDER: LUNCH in the Lounge!

You’re invited to celebrate the season at the Med Staff HOLIDAY LUNCH!

When: TOMORROW! Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Time: 11:30am – 1:30pm
Where: Physician Lounge

Ho, ho, ho, right?  But my friend thought he would ask the obvious question.

Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 2010 8:43 AM
Subject: RE: REMINDER: LUNCH in the Lounge!

I have a question.  What holiday is it that you are celebrating?  Could it be Christmas?

Heaven forfend! Anything but Christ-mas!  But here is the response, res ipsa loquitur:

Hello ——:

We don’t celebrate one specific holiday. We honor all holidays celebrated by the members of the medical staff with this one non-specific holiday lunch.  I hope you can join us.

And here is the response:

Interesting.  So this is the only holiday lunch you have all year.  Then why have it 4 days from Christmas.  What other holiday is there this time of year?

Uh-oh:

I just tried ringing you, but got your assistant’s voicemail. I would be happy to talk via phone with you about our robust physician event schedule. Do call when you get a chance.

Also, since we are talking, we noticed you do not have a professional photo up on our website. I invite you to have that taken during our monthly photo sessions in the Physician Lounge. The next one is taking place tomorrow, Wednesday, December 22 from 7:15 – 8:15am. If you are unable to attend, I will alert you to the next session in January.

Have a wonderful day!

You have to love that “Have a wonderful day!”

My friend was right on this communiqué with the obvious response:

I would love to see a copy of your 2010 robust physician event schedule.

Thank you.

That request apparently put a spanner into the works. For  the next installment in this little drama comes not from the perky administrator but from a chap identified as “Vice President of Medical Affairs/ Chief Medical Officer”:

Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 2010 3:02 PM
Subject: recent emails

—— , I hope all is well. The physician relations office told me that you had some issues with the announcements for the Medical Staff Holiday party, I told them I thought your comments were joking and that you were not one to complain about anything. They took your comments seriously so I hope I am right and your comments were not really directed towards them. They are a great group that have the sometimes difficult task of keeping 1,000 docs happy.

I certainly hope the note describing the lunch  was not offensive, I am sure you realize how important it is to be politically correct these days. . . .

To which missive my friend replied:

Dear ------,

I cannot even begin to imagine what I said in my email that would have disturbed your staff.  It was a simple question and it was serious.  I have had a ten year, ten dollar wager to anyone who can find the word “Christmas” on any poster, announcement, etc., etc. at [Name Withheld to Protect the Preposterous]. So far, I have not had to pay anyone.  They do celebrate Diwali, Iranian New Year, Black History month, etc. etc. (No St. Pat’s, . . . although they used to).  If we cannot defend our culture, we are doomed to lose it.

The response from your staff is, however, typical.  Afraid of the word “Christmas.”  Prove me wrong and send me the robust 2010 physician event calendar.

I won’t bother to print the response to that, because it was a non-response, an effort to deflect the question, and the request for the “robust physician event calendar” with a faux-chummy inquiry after mutual friends.

My friend ended on a note of resignation:

So I guess I can’t expect the robust physician event calendar for my article: The Hospitals that stole Christmas.

Right he is, but even more to the point is his observation that “if we cannot defend our culture, we are doomed to lose it.”  What happened to this country that we are no longer able to celebrate its core founding values and spiritual markers?  It may seem like a small, a silly, thing that bureaucrats enforce a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy when it comes to the Judeo-Christian values and rituals that formed America. But my friend is right. Unless we as a civilization band together to acknowledge and defend who we are as a culture we will in effect be committing cultural suicide. This is part of what the great political philosopher James Burnham meant when he observed that “civilizations die, in truth, only by suicide.” Keep it in mind as you swill the egg nog. Merry Christmas.

Eric Holder Still Covering for Black Panther Scam

The following article was written by J. Christian Adams at Pajamas Media:

“Erik Holder’s ‘Made up’ Defense”

“He claims that the New Black Panther case is a “made up controversy.” Holder would be well-advised to retreat from this position. Too many stories, too many incidents are known by too many people

Sometimes politicians make the mistake of listening to their staff at their own peril. Eric Holder is making that mistake when it comes to some of the biggest scandals on his watch, such as the dismissal of the voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party. Holder’s interview with Charlie Savage of the New York Times shows that he has adopted a dug-in partisan position instead of a cautious and reasoned one.

For an attorney general facing increased scrutiny from Congress, this partisan approach is damaging to the Department, and probably to Holder’s tenure as attorney general.

In the interview, Savage asks Holder about the New Black Panther dismissal. Despite the fact that the New Black Panthters were captured on video with weapons and fascist-style uniforms at the entrance to a polling place, Holder said: “There is no there, there.” Really? Heady stuff from the attorney general.

When asked about the fact that Holder’s Civil Rights Division is hostile to racially equal enforcement of the law from top to bottom, Holder again deploys another cliché, calling it a “made up controversy.” Holder doubled down: “All I have on my side with regard to that is the facts and the law.”

Maybe Holder has the facts and law on his side in Oz, but not in the United States of America. Holder would be well advised to retreat from this inflexible position. Too many stories, too many incidents are known by too many people. But maybe Holder’s flying monkeys aren’t too eager to tell him there is substance to the allegations — after all, they are part of the problem. Nor can the flying monkeys keep the facts bottled up forever.

Or more likely, Holder knows full well the truth of the allegations, but agrees with the efforts of his flying monkeys to impose a vision of civil rights enforcement that doesn’t protect everyone, but only protects Holder’s political allies.

Holder is gambling that enough people will react with partisan loyalty to disbelieve the allegations of unequal law enforcement, and enough of the rest of the public can be tricked to buy peace. But truth has a funny way of floating to the surface, even if it takes time. That’s a gamble Holder doesn’t want to take. The bodies always surface.

Imagine how quickly the whole matter would go away if the Department confessed error. You’d never hear about the mess again. But a racialist ideology is a nasty and sticky thing, not easily escaped or excused by those who adopt it.

Congress also deserves answers regarding why Holder’s staff didn’t tell the truth in House and Senate Judiciary oversight proceedings, including in written responses.

Senators John Cornyn and Jeff Sessions have done a spectacular job holding Holder’s Justice Department accountable on a wide range of issues. With increased Republican numbers in Congress, Holder would do well to stop listening to his staff and figure out the truth on his own.

Some credit is due Charlie Savage of the New York Times for even pressing the attorney general on the New Black Panther dismissal. Bob Schieffer can’t say as much. Savage could bolster his credibility by making the same inquiries of this Justice Department as he did to the Bush DOJ. For starters, he could examine the preposterous hiring practices in the Civil Rights Division since Obama’s inauguration. The more time that passes without an inquiry from Savage and the New York Times, the more partisan his badgering of the Bush DOJ appears.

Holder, who claims to spend long nights at his kitchen table reviewing death penalty certifications, would do well to spend some time also reviewing the New Black Panther case files before he embarrasses himself again.

Holder might also inquire why congressmen threw King and Rosenbaum out of their offices during Black Panther briefings. The most important thing Holder might ponder at his kitchen table is why two successful and award-winning DOJ attorneys stuck their necks out to describe a culture of hostility to race neutral enforcement of civil rights laws. Even worse, numerous current DOJ attorneys corroborated the testimony to the Washington Post.

If Eric Holder wants to be taken seriously these last two years of the term, he would do well to find ways to engage in reasonable discourse and jettison the campaign-style rhetoric. More and more facts are going to emerge through congressional oversight about the DOJ’s rotted approach to enforcement of civil rights laws, and Holder will not be able to divert attention to these details with bluster.

Instead of circling partisan wagons, Holder would serve his own interests by boring deeper into the truth of the New Black Panther case. Instead of spouting spin crafted by underlings, he should learn the truth, especially when the underlings drafting his talking points are the same people who bungled the dismissal, like Steven Rosenbaum.

Rosenbaum has drafted error-filled responses to Congress, and others, even though his fingerprints are all over the mess. The role of Rosenbaum, King, and Karen Stevens (another partisan staffer) in developing false responses to Congress should be one additional line of inquiry by oversight committees. It will be hard for Holder to spend his dwindling political capital to defend the factual errors of these three.

Credible operations compartmentalize such things. The Bush DOJ didn’t have Monica Goodling drafting responses to Congress. The Holder DOJ has delegated the job of preparing talking points for the attorney general and drafting responses for Congress to the very people who caused the scandal in the first place. Add Holder’s New York Times interview to the list of examples where it seems amateurs are running the federal government.”

Comment:  I wonder if there has ever been an Attorney General who has been more dogma driven than this Marxist, Erik Holder?

On Last Day As Governor, N.Y. David Patterson Warns of Looming Pension Crisis

“Governor Patterson Sounds Pension Alarm”  is the title of David Patterson’s opinion page article in today’s New York Daily News.  He writes:

There is a new crisis on the horizon that threatens the solvency of local governments and the recovery of the U.S. economy: teetering public pension funds on the verge of insolvency, with the retirement security of millions of working Americans hanging in the balance.

In 2011, the health of these public funds will take center stage with the very real possibility of significant write-downs in pension asset pools at a time when most funds can ill-afford it. And while these problems were not created in a single year, immediate action will be required to avoid driving our economy deeper into the ditch of recession.

The structural problems of our public pension funds have started to emerge, and no amount of wishful thinking can replace the hard work of reforming them. We all have a stake – employers, employees, organized labor, government, regulators, lawmakers, investors and investment managers. Yet there exists no consensus, or even an informal dialogue, on how to proceed.

What is indisputable is that those solutions will require shared sacrifice.

However, I believe that all parties can rise to the occasion and that innovation is often borne from crisis. Pension managers must consider possible revenue expansion ideas in addition to difficult changes to their benefit plans. Union leadership must be prepared to support radical reform of plan benefits and the administration of those benefits – no long-term fix is possible if the structural challenges continue to be ignored. And public officials need to stop avoiding tough choices if their goal is long-term solvency. Rhetoric will not ensure the survival of the public pension funds and defined benefit plans.

No one will be immune if the public pension funds suffer a meltdown. It will have a devastating ripple effect, straining already underfunded government programs due to increased caseload and taking badly needed spending out of an economy that needs every penny of it. For its part, Wall Street should recognize that a public pension fund is not simply a large attractive pool of capital, but a collaboration of countless contributors; a tapestry of lifetimes of work sewn together by millions of working Americans. And far from demonizing the financial sector, labor unions should recognize the important role Wall Street can play in providing creative ideas and solutions to improve fund returns and overall health.

Wall Street versus Main Street is a false binary. The true solutions lie in their imaginative intersection. As New York‘s governor, I know all too well that government administrators and pension managers need astute and trusted financial partners. They need experts who can help mitigate long term solvency risk, who don’t exploit each situation for maximum gains and who distinguish between their personal financial incentives and the greater needs of society.

Solving the public pension fund crisis is both a financial and moral challenge. We can neither dun the taxpayer for past irresponsibility nor abandon working people in the sunset of their lives. It is incredible and unfortunate that many still refuse to recognize that another financial disaster awaits. Have we learned nothing?”

Paterson is governor of New York

Democrat Regrets Language on “Death Panels” (Should have been sneakier?)

“Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) is distancing himself from a memo sent by his office that urged health reform advocates not to advertise new end-of-life counseling regulations to avoid reviving talk of “death panels.”

The weeks-old memo recommended that end-of-life advocates celebrate a “quiet” victory out of concern that Republican leaders would “use this small provision to perpetuate the ‘death panel’ myth.”

Blumenauer now says he regrets the letter’s secretive language, which has only bolstered conservatives’ claims that the Obama administration tried to sneak the provision in under the radar.

“If I had seen the memo, I would have suggested it be worded differently,” Blumenauer told The Hill.

In the memo, first reported on Dec. 26 by The New York Times, Blumenaeur’s office expressed concern that new attention to end-of-life care planning could doom an end-of-life provision included in a Medicare regulation issued last month.

“Thus far, it seems that no press or blogs have discovered it, but we will be keeping a close watch and may be calling on you if we need a rapid, targeted response,” the memo read. “The longer this goes unnoticed, the better our chances of keeping it.”

The original House healthcare reform bill included a Medicare provision reimbursing doctors for advising patients on end-of-life care, but was dropped from the final bill after some conservatives said it could have led to government-run “death panels.” The fact-checking website Politifact labeled that claim its “lie of the year” in 2009.

A similar provision was included in a 2,000-page Medicare regulation issued Nov. 29, reigniting debate over death panels and sparking accusations that the Obama administration was usurping the will of Congress.

The Wall Street Journal editorial page, for example, compared the regulatory process under the Obama administration to a “black-ops exercise.”

The Nov. 29 regulation contains a pared-down version of the House end-of-life provision that calls on Medicare to reimburse doctors for discussing end-of-life care in annual wellness visits created by Democrats’ healthcare reform law. The regulation had escaped public scrutiny until the Dec. 26 Times report.

Blumenauer introduced similar legislation in April 2009, along with three Republican co-sponsors – Reps. Charles Boustany (La.), Geoff Davis (Ky.) and Patrick Tiberi (Ohio). But the provision became a political lightning rod during the highly partisan healthcare reform debate, with Republican leaders – including former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and Sen. Chuck Grassley (Iowa) – claiming that end-of-life care planning was part of the Obama administration’s efforts to withhold expensive life-sustaining treatments from the elderly and seriously ill.

The Obama administration defends the new regulation as a continuation of a policy enacted under former President George W. Bush.

A law passed in 2008 said that orientation visits for new Medicare beneficiaries – which were first enacted in 2003 – can include voluntary “end-of-life” planning discussions. The new regulation said that the same end-of-life discussions could also take place during the new annual wellness visits created by the healthcare reform law.

“This was a reasonable thing for the administration to do,” Blumenauer said.

Though some Republicans have portrayed the regulation as a back-door attempt to legislate through regulation, a Democratic health policy consultant said he would be “shocked” if the White House knew in advance that end-of-life consultation was included in the massive regulation.

“Political people in the White House wouldn’t have wanted this to happen” because of the bad political optics, he said. “But they’re not watching the regulations being written.”

The source opined that House Republicans would now make this a prime target for repeal.

“It doesn’t help that advocates wanted to keep it quiet,” the source said, “because it’s impossible to keep anything quiet in this town.”

Democratic strategist Bill Galston agreed Blumenauer’s office hurt Democrats’ defense of the provision by trying to keep it a secret.

“It was stupid,” Galston told The Hill.

Blumenauer said he expects that some will try to keep the death panel myth alive to score political points, but he doesn’t expect congressional Republicans will make a legislative effort to limit end-of-life care planning. He said they will be too focused on repealing the entire reform law.

“This is a little target,” Blumenauer told The Hill.

If Republicans try to revive death panel claims when they return to Congress next week, Galston said Democrats must be willing to fight back.

“If [Democrats] are not prepared to drive a wedge between reasonable political debate and fantasy-propelled conspiracy theories,” he said, “they don’t deserve to be in the political game.”

Story was written by Jason Millman at The Hill.  Julian Pecquet contributed.

(Comment:  Marxists prefer night squads…..when there is no light to expose their actions to establish State control over citizen lives.   Within the Left there are constant and countless efforts to expand the State, among them the drive to  liberalize  euthanasia.  A citizen should be encouraged to decide when he or she has lived long enough and the State will assist the decisionas and procedures on all fronts.   No one has the right to live longer than another unless you are a Marxist in charge of ‘running the shows’.   (Orwell’s Animal Farm in full color!)

This is not yet a popular ‘State-given right’ for Americans  to obey in the USofA.   (Too many of yesterday’s damned Christians haven’t yet seen the  Democrat-Marxist light.   Once murder at the beginning of life wasn’t very popular either.   But that is before sex became the most important entertainment  in all facets of  human life.)

It was just a matter of time Leftists would concoct a schedule for the end of life.  It will become a human right to die when the Obama State advises.   It’s only a matter of time the Right to Die will become an established lefty Bill of Right.