The end of the fanatical Iranian regime is an event of world historical significance. Persia was once a great civilizations for thousands of years before the radical Islamists took over. For 47 years they destabilized the Middle East, killed Americans, and thousands upon thousands of its own people. Finally they have been deposed and can no longer threaten other countries with subversion and destruction. The Trump administration and the Israelis deserve a lot of praise for this and hopefully will see it through to a successful conclusion.
@MUGGER2023@CrispinSartwell "Tyranny" is a ridiculous stretch and maybe you need to be in Iran or Venezuela or China to know the reality of it. This administration is robust and not shy about exercising power but that is hardly tyranny.
NEW YORK ON THE PRECIPICE
New York has been declining for decades, hemorrhaging people and businesses, largely due to gross mismanagement by elected officials. But that will be accelerated many times over if Zorhan Mamdani becomes mayor.
Who is Mamdani? He is the son of radical parents who own a guarded luxury villa in Uganda. His father believes that Lincoln was equivalent to Hitler, yet he has a professorship spewing garbage to students. As for Zorhan, he has never seriously worked or supervised more than a handful of people, he has never run anything, yet he is poised to take over the financial capitol of the world. He is more than a Democratic Socialist. He talks about seizing the means of production which makes him an outright communist. Well over 100,000 American lives were lost fighting against this ideology, along with a hundred million other people who were killed by communist regimes.
He is slick and has managed to fool a lot of gullible people with promises of free stuff, which supposedly will be paid for by richer, whiter people. But the rich can simply leave. It is the middle class and homeowners who will bear the brunt of his expenditures. He is a relatively recent arrival and not a real New Yorker. Native New Yorkers are not supporting him. His support comes from the foreign born and affluent young radicals who have moved here from other parts of the country. They have not been educated in American values, but against them.
He is a Marxist and a nominal Muslim which gives him a convenient identity, but in all his pronouncements he is far more Marxist than Muslim. In fact Islam is even less compatible with Marxism than Christianity. He is also a hypocrite, not just because of his well-to-do family. He wants to eliminate all educational gifted programs, yet he himself went to the Bronx High School of Science, which is one of those schools. He is blatantly anti-semitic and opposes a Jewish state. He does have a minority of Jewish support, but they are more left than Jewish.
Under Mamdani public safety will be infinitely worse. He wants to close the Rikers Island prison, he has been militantly anti-police, and will appoint judges that will free criminals into the city far more than they do now. They in turn will also make life miserable for the banks, who have already moved most of their jobs out of state. His regimeΒ will terminally damage the finance industry, which in all likelihood will abandon New York, leaving only a shell of its former presence. So will many other businesses, leaving only mom and pop small businesses that canβt move, and who will be burdened with even more onerous taxes. Unemployment will rise when the job creators are gone.
But the city will not totally collapse. There is simply too much critical mass for that to happen. However the New York we have known and loved will be but a shadow of itself. The wheels of commerce will grind to a halt, achievement and ambition will evaporate, infrastructure will continue to rot, public services will be diminished under incompetents, and the quality of life will greatly decline. But the left will have achieved the βequityβ it wants- everyone remaining will be equally miserable.
Much of the damage could be mitigated by the state, which has a lot of power over the city, but given that Governor Kathy Hochul has endorsed Mamdani there is not much relief to be found there unless she is voted out next year.
I was born in New York and have lived here all my life. I have thought about leaving, like many others, but then think why should I leave? This is my home and I will still stay and fight. But then again if things go from miserable to intolerable I may have no choice.
I was pleasantly surprised to receive my passport renewal within ten days. That without requesting expedited service. Huge service improvement over the last time.
Avoid British Airways and Heathrow as a transit hub. Just awful with a lot of unnecessary anxiety. Gates weren't posted until the last minute leaving almost no time to take a tram to the right one. Unlike most other airlines even if you pay for premium seating you can't choose your seats until the day before, unless you fork over another $150 for each seat!
Returning from Eastern Europe after a few weeks, it is clear the communists never succeeded in destroying their cultural heritage. Today American influence, not always good, is ubiquitous, especially in modern facilities, technology and especially among the young.
@SpliceToday2022 An excellent detailed description of a part of Brooklyn that has been described so well before. I live nearby and wound up in Caledonian emergency room a couple of times when renovating my house. The pleasant odor from the bakery used to permeate the area.