Henry Hill: You know, we always called each other good fellas. Like you said to, uh, somebody, :You’re gonna like this guy. He’s all right. He’s a good fella. He’s one of us.: You understand? We were good fellas. Wiseguys. See, it’s the highest honor they can give you. It means you belong to a family and crew. It means that nobody can f#@% around with you. It also means you could f#@%  around with anybody just as long as they aren’t also a member. It’s like a license to steal. It’s a license to do ANYTHING. As far as Jimmy was concerned with Tommy being made, it was like we were all being made.

Many in America have been surprised by the magnitude of the Tea Party uprising, but perhaps none more so than Barack Obama.  As people are inclined to do when threatened or under pressure, the President fell back on what he learned cutting his teeth in Chicago politics; brute force.

Recall the summer of 2009.  Traditional values-loving Americans, all over the country were so shocked by the bailouts, cap and trade and other big government expansion programs that they took to the streets in numbers never seen before.  Liberals were shocked that the political right had figured out the playbook of the political left.  As the Congressional Summer recess got underway, leftist politicians found their town hall meetings packed to the rafters with angry people asking tough questions.  As the bloggers streamed the footage and America got a nearly daily dose of another Democrat politician getting hammered, it became clear that the left was unprepared.

Protesters were disparaged as “tea baggers” and Astroturf, but name-calling is not what they do in Chicago.  It might be over the top to say the President himself ordered the hit, but what about his people?  What he said of the conservative protestors is “If they are going to hit us, we will hit them back twice as hard “.  Within two days, a black man distributing patriotic flags and buttons, found himself struggling under a tremendous beating from as many as four separate assailants.  The Service Employees International Union members got the President’s message.  The SEIU members sporting their purple people beater shirts picked their first victim.  Perhaps most disturbing, the attack began with a black union member coming unglued on a black man who did not share his leftist political beliefs all the while calling him a “nigger”.   Is this a hate crime?

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As the Federal Communications Commission pushes forward in crafting its national broadband plan—anticipated to encompass controversial net neutrality provisions— the agency is attracting newfound criticism from key members of the U.S. Senate, reports Congress Daily (via nextgov).

Setting aside tersely-worded warnings from Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Sen. John (Jay) Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) regarding the prospect of the FCC submitting a broadband plan that is “complicated, esoteric, filled with grandiose ideas and dependent on protracted rulemaking to implement,” the Committee as a whole is reportedly concerned about the overly highbrow nature of discussions regarding the plan:

“There’s growing concern within the Senate Commerce Committee that the process has become too academic. Dozens of workshops designed to provide the public with an opportunity to learn about the plan and interact with the agency have featured Ph.D.-level policy discussions that even some telecom experts have difficultly understanding.”

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Today, in 1775, the United States Marine Corp was founded.

Semper Fi.

Last week, right after the Fort Hood shootings by Major Nidal Malik Hasan that killed thirteen people and wounded thirty, the Council on American Islamic Relations showed up on PBS and MSNBC with their three standard talking points, here paraphrased:

1. So sorry about the dead and wounded, but…
2. The media’s real concern should be the possible backlash that could maybe happen sometime against Muslim Americans… and most important…
3. IT IS FORBIDDEN to report or analyze the shooter’s jihadist motivations!

Or as Nihad Awad, Executive Director of CAIR instructed MSNBC’s Chris Matthews:

“I’m really not happy to see that his religion is becoming the subject…even if this guy uttered the words Allahu Akhbar or God is great, so what? It tells me that this is an isolated incident…We need to find out how he thinks and what he did, but I will NEVER come to the conclusion that religion is the motive…”

Media outlets like leftwing MSNBC and PBS give CAIR airtime because of the group’s claim to the title of “America’s largest Islamic civil liberties group.” But that claim rests on a smoke and mirrors illusion of political support from Muslim Americans and the U.S. Congress. That political support for CAIR seems to be diminishing and indeed nearing the vanishing point. In fact, much of their current support appears to derive from foreign sources. As a matter of stated policy, CAIR openly solicits and accepts donations from foreign embassies, foreign organizations and individuals from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait and other Middle Eastern states.

However, even that foreign support can’t conceal the reality that CAIR is a rapidly shrinking organization that may be approaching obsolescence. A look at just three printed programs distributed in 2006, 2008 and 2009 to attendees at CAIR’s annual fundraisers, and their most recent publicly available IRS tax documents, shows an unrelenting downward trend in their public support over the last five years. The numbers don’t lie, and they are drawn from CAIR’s own public documents.

So you don’t have to wait for Hollywood’s remake next year of The Incredible Shrinking Man ; a real-life remake is going on in Washington starring the controversial lawfare and lobbying group, The Incredible Shrinking Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR).

Let us count the ways that CAIR is shrinking:

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Dressed as ‘zombie soldiers’ killed in combat, ‘ghosts of war victims,’ witches and healthcare fairies, members of Code Pink menacingly paraded in front of a captive audience of children one block from the White House, who waited along the sidewalk in front of Decatur House just off Lafayette Park for a Halloween party hosted by President Obama.

Last Saturday, the President hosted several hundred military families for trick or treating. Also invited were children of White House staff and about 2000 children from eleven D.C. area elementary schools.

In a press release published at their website, key Obama ally Code Pink  – a group co-founded by one of Obama’s top funders Jodie Evans, announced they were targeting military families for what can only be called psychological abuse by conducting a macabre protest of the war in Afghanistan as the families waited in line to enter the White House grounds.

Remember those good ol’ conservatives supposedly standing up for South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham’s move to the far-Green fringe on cap and trade? And remember how it turned out they weren’t so good ol’ conservative?

It would be nice if Republicans — claiming to be the party of small government — would start demanding small government policies instead of signing onto the biggest tax increase in the history of the world.

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Today marks the twentieth anniversary of the destruction of the Berlin Wall, the most visible symbol of the Iron Curtain that divided the Free World from those in bondage. Only a few short years before, Ronald Reagan famously challenged Gorbachev to “tear down this wall”. Two years after the fall of the Wall, the Soviet Union had collapsed.

Can there be a sharper contrast than the hopefulness with which we watched the Berlin wall torn down, and the nightmare we find ourselves in today? Individual freedom was suddenly within reach of half a continent who were enslaved by the utopian dream fabricated by Marx and implemented by Lenin and Stalin. Incredibly, those who still believe in that utopia are running our White House and our Congress. How did we move in twenty short years from defeating the evil empire—not with bullets, but with the immense power that comes from a free people, each acting in their own self interest, outperforming those of the great Soviet collective in every way—to electing Barack Obama, whose policies more resemble those that came out of the failed Soviet state than America?

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The fall of the Berlin Wall marked a resounding victory for freedom and human dignity.  On this day 20 years ago, a long-standing symbol of division and oppression crumbled under the weight of a revolution inspired by leaders whose faith in God and commitment to freedom changed the world.  Years in the making, that movement dismantled the Soviet bloc in a matter of months, erecting in its place a number of young democracies that our nation now counts among its staunchest allies.

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Barack Hussein Obama has advised us not to rush to judgment about the massacre at Fort Hood. “We don’t know all the answers yet. And I would caution against jumping to conclusions until we have all the facts,” said the President in a statement he delivered from the Rose Garden (while George W. Bush was in Fort Hood).

Obama doesn’t want us to jump to the conclusion that the shootings at Fort Hood were a terrorist attack by an Islamic jihadist, Major Nidal Hasan. Obama would rather we forgot that Nidal Hasan screamed “Allah akbar” before he mowed down scores of patriotic Americans and gave away Qurans with his business card before his act of jihad. Hasan also gave his landlord two week’s notice – showing that he planned this for a long time. He didn’t just snap.

Obama wants us to ignore that Hasan went to a mosque where a jihadist imam preached hatred of America. The same imam was “spiritual adviser” for three of the 9/11 hijackers who attacked America on Sept 11, 2001. Obama would rather we didn’t know that when Hasan was asked his nationality, he didn’t identify himself as an American, but as a Palestinian. Obama doesn’t want us to rush to judgment about how Hasan spoke approvingly of the shooting death by an Islamic jihad terrorist of a Little Rock Army recruiter in June. Obama doesn’t us to draw any conclusions from how Hasan reportedly was heard saying, “maybe people should strap bombs on themselves and go to Times Square.”

But Obama says, don’t rush to judgment.

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Twenty years ago today, a figurative and literal tear appeared in the once seemingly impenetrable Iron Curtain–the Berlin Wall came tumbling down.  Soon after, millions of East Germans and others under Soviet domination would rise up and demand their freedom.

That day, November 9, 1989, will be remembered forever as one of the greatest in the history of human liberty.  Throughout the East Bloc, communism would begin to fall.  Millions would begin to experience political and social freedom for the first time. Families, separated for nearly 30 years would be reunited. And, throughout Eastern Europe, the fall of the Berlin Wall would create an opportunity to expose communism’s violent and merciless legacy.

In the United States, though, the anniversary will pass with barely a mention.  With a few noteworthy exceptions (see here and here), the American media has treated the event as an opportunity to praise Mikhail Gorbachev, condemn the West, and lament the coming of crony capitalism in Russia.

Not wanting to let the opportunity pass, some of my colleagues at the Competitive Enterprise Institute have produced a short video commemorating the fall of the Berlin Wall .

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The Democrats are holding a press conference at this afternoon to blast Senator Tom Coburn’s demand that new programs and increased spending approved by Congress be paid for.

At issue is a veterans bill that the Senators would like to pass and issue press releases praising themselves for supporting over Congress’ Veterans Day vacation.  Problem is the bill is not paid for and therefore is just another bounced checked to be charged to future generations of Americans who are already inheriting the $12 trillion debt created by Congress’ reckless addiction to borrowing and spending.   In addition to not being paid for, the bill discriminates against many vets who sacrificed for our nation and were injured as a result.

coburn letter –

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It has been more than three months since Kenneth Gladney was viciously attacked by SEIU employees. The assault wasn’t an accident, but a deliberate attempt to intimidate and silence tea party activists and town hall protesters. The morning of the Gladney assault, the White House presented to Senate Democrats a ‘battle plan’ to quell the protests. The White House advised Democrats “punch back twice as hard.” Gladney was the first casualty.

The Gladney beating took place at a forum on ‘Aging’, sponsored by Rep. Russ Carnahan. Carnahan had been caught flat-footed by earlier protests. This time he was more prepared; the day before the forum, Sara Howard took over as his communications director. Ms. Howard is a veteran leftist activist, holding senior positions with SEIU.

SEIU and partisan hacks like Media Matters have tried to spin away the Gladney beating. They would have you believe a 130 lb diabetic, recovering luekemia patient, picked a fight with men almost twice his size. The police report puts an end to that lie.

GLADNEY PART 2.1 –

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For the Left, one of the most defining images of the previous administration can be summed up in three words “ My Pet Goat.”

If you remember, when President Bush was informed of the second plane crashing into the World Trade Center, while his photo op with school children at the Emma  E. Booker elementary school was about to start. For the next several minutes, (much maligned by Michael Moore, in “Faranheit 9/11″) we saw a man confused by the situation. It has been joked about by comedians as him wanting to see how the story ended.

Every time I watch this footage, I always saw a strong man, who knew that twenty school children had looked forward to their chance to read to the President, for weeks. He decided they would not be disappointed. And knowing that this was an attack on the United States, the President did his best to neither disappoint nor alarm the children.

I’ve always imagined his narcissistic predecessor bolting straight out of the room and into a bunker, stepping over any children in his path. In reality, what could the President do? In that moment of confusion there really was nothing that could be done, other than have him sit there uncomfortably, and pretend that everything was normal. It takes a strong man not to flinch under adversity.

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Twenty years ago today, the Berlin Wall was breached and Soviet communism, at long last, entered its death spiral.

After claiming approximately 100 million victims in the 20th century,communism was dismissed to the ash heap of history. But those who suffered under its boot heel have largely been confined to the history books when not forgotten altogether.

Author and historian Lee Edwards set out to correct this oversight with the creation of the Victims of Communism memorial and online museum, dedicated to those who perished because of Communist regimes between 1917 and 1989.

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On Feb. 13, 1985, I stood in the Theaterplatz in Dresden listening to Erich Honecker give a speech.  The speech was not simply one of those standard commie stemwinders to which those of us reporting from Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union were accustomed.  For one thing, we were gathered outside the newly restored Semper Opera House, designed by the architect Gottfried Semper in 1841, rebuilt after a fire in 1869 and long considered one of the glories of 19^th-century musical architecture.  For another, it was bitterly cold, at least twenty below zero on the Fahrenheit scale if not colder.  For a third, all Honecker wanted to talk about – at great length – was the U.S. missile defense system, then under consideration by the Reagan Administration.

This was odd, because the occasion we – and by ‘we” I mean the western press, opera dignitaries, the local nomenklatura (party bigwigs and apparatchiks), the East German Stasi officers assigned to shadow us, and their KGB bosses – were there to witness was the celebratory re-opening of the great opera house, destroyed for the second time on the night of Feb. 12-13, 1945 “by Anglo-American bombers,” as the commemorative poster helpfully reminded us.  (I have my copy, suitably framed, on the wall of my home.)  If memory serves, Honecker, however, had very little to say about Semper or the opera house or the work we were about to hear, Weber’s Der Freischütz, which had been playing the night the city was incinerated.  Instead, the little party boss – I had run into him in the Bellevue Hotel across the river, where the westerners were staying, and was pleased to see that he was as unimpressive in person as he was on television – went on a prolonged rant about die Sternkriege, the so-called “Star Wars” program that even then was setting off protests among the “peace demonstrators” in western Europe, England and, of course, at home as well.

As we stood there, shivering and bored, my colleague and friend, John Rockwell of The New York Times (who, like me, spoke fluent German) leaned over and said: “Personally, I think Star Wars is bullshit, but it really has these guys scared.”  John was right: Star Wars pretty much was bullshit, especially at the time, but it nonetheless terrified the technologically backward Soviets and their satellite marionettes, and it set off the inexorable forces (as Marxists like to say) that just four years later would bring down the Berlin Wall.  Reagan was playing poker with a lot of chips but lousy cards, raising the rear ends off the morally, culturally and fiscally bankrupt Soviets.

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I am a man with no chips on his shoulders and no axes to grind. I just want to be an accepted member of society. I want to make my own way in the world. A free man in a free country. On August 6, 2009 my manhood and my civil rights were reversed back to the 1960’s. I was working as a vendor at a townhall event on Aging, hosted by Rep. Russ Carnahan, in St. Louis. I was selling my buttons and flags.

A group of people with purple t-shirts were leaving the rally. As the group walked past me, I offered one of the gentlemen a Gadsen flag and a button. The man turned and looked at my board and said, “who in the fuck is selling this shit?”

I replied “I am Sir, would you like a flag or a button?“

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Twenty years ago today, the Berlin Wall fell. The picture below isn’t from that day, but it speaks volumes about what the Wall represented. In this photo, an East German guard takes his chance to run for freedom as the Wall was being constructed in 1961.

The guard’s flight to freedom should inspire us. In the comments, tell us where you were on this day in 1989. Commit to remind at least one person of today’s anniversary. We don’t expect Big Media to note the date.

From the Daily Mail:

The collapse of communism was actually a slow-burning process. Its moral and political bankruptcy became obvious decades before that glorious Berlin day in November 1989

Twenty years ago today, supporters of freedom and human rights cheered and wept for joy as the Berlin Wall was torn down by jubilant young Germans.

To so many, that heady day seemed to herald the emergence of a better world. The spectre of communism had finally been laid to rest. Liberty had triumphed over tyranny.

The end of the Cold War even led some to proclaim that this was ‘the end of history’  -  which was to say that liberal democracy was now the dominant and unchallengeable force in the world.

However, the 9/11 attacks on America tragically proved this to be absurdly over-optimistic. The eruption of radical Islamism revealed that, while the West may have been rid of one enemy in the Soviet Union, another deadly foe had risen to take its place. So much is, sadly, all too evident. (more…)

An observant Muslim with an apparent history of support for suicide bombing shoots up an American Army base. Think you can guess his motives?

If you said religion or politics, you’re not a member of the conventional media. In the first 24 hours after the shooting, media reports portrayed suspect Nidal Hasan not as an angry Islamic extremist but as a victim, both of post-traumatic stress disorder and more broadly of American foreign policy.

In a piece posted at Truelsant.com, psychologist Todd Essig claims that Hasan was “wounded by war…. before he first pulled a trigger.”  Mental health professionals, he writes, can be victims of “vicarious traumatization,” a disorder that can prove “contagious and deadly.” Keep in mind that Hasan was never deployed to a war zone. Apparently he caught it at the office.

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