Brit Hume shared a post that explains just how dangerous what Mamdani said really is:

 Twitchy  

"Zohran Mamdani says they will get rid of rugged individualism and bring in the warmth of collectivism in New York City. Yikes, right? Oh sure, they pretend collectivism is a good thing but we assure you ... it is not."

Brit Hume shared a post that explains just how dangerous what Mamdani said really is:

Dominic Pino: "Dan Klein and I are editors of a new book of quotations from Edmund Burke. In his final years, Burke wrote with burning vitality in defense of liberty and against radicalism. He seems to be speaking directly to us today. Get a taste in this new piece:"

"The warmth of collectivism": 

"A hilariously bad metaphor, if you know how collectivist heating worked in the USSR. In Soviet Moscow, they had a centralized heating system for the whole city. Heat was centrally generated and then distributed through a network of pipes to houses and other buildings. The service was very, very cheap to the end users. Hooray! Workers of the world, unite! But people got what they paid for." . . .

"A thermostat in your house would be too individualist, so they didn't exist. The level of heat was set collectively by government administrators. "They had to base their decisions on weather forecasts because it would take about 12 hours for a temperature change to work its way through the system. So when the forecasts were wrong (which was often), the heat level was wrong too. "On top of that, every building is different. So no matter what heat level the government chose, some people would be too cold and others would be too warm (except for the times when the heat ran out due to shortages, then everyone was cold). "People in buildings that were too hot would open the windows, even in the middle of winter, wasting heat that could have been used by others. And because there were no price signals, they hardly faced any costs when they did so.

"The heating system didn't even have meters for individuals to measure their usage. Officials in post-Soviet Moscow estimated that the whole system used about as much natural gas per year as all of France. "The collectively owned underground pipes that carried the heat suffered from the classic problem: If everyone owns them, then nobody does." The pipes fell into disrepair and would be replaced by above-ground temporary pipes (which could go anywhere since nobody owned the land either). And they would stay that way for years. That is, if you were one of the lucky ones who got temporary pipes in the first place. Others were just left out in the cold." "So yeah, if I was trying to promote collectivism, I probably wouldn't use a heat metaphor in winter. There are a lot of people who lived in collectivist countries who would dispute its association with warmth.

Dave Barry: The Year in Review

 Substack

. . . " Technically Greenland belongs to Denmark, which doesn’t want to sell it to us, but the harsh military reality is that the entire Danish army has fewer weapons than the entourage of a mid-tier American rap artist."

. . . "In other Washington news, the hearings for Trump’s cabinet nominees produce the greatest oratorical moment in the history of the U.S. Senate, if not the world, when Bernie Sanders, questioning Robert F. Kennedy Jr., points to photographs of two infant garments with anti-vaccination slogans and demands to know “ARE YOU SUPPORTIVE OF THESE ONESIES?”

[During Trump's SOTU], "This message does not go unchallenged by the Democratic members of Congress, who, in a bold display of Resistance reminiscent of the civil-rights marches of the Sixties, take courageous high-impact action in the form of...Holding up little paddles." . . .

In June Trump launched the mission to end Iran's nuclear program: . . . "The bombing mission is called “Operation Midnight Hammer,” a name that was chosen over these candidates:

-- “Operation Big Stomping Boot of Consequences.”

-- “Operation FAFO.”

-- “Operation You Talkin’ To ME?”

-- “Operation We Have Come To Chew Bubblegum And Destroy Your Nuclear Facilities, And We Are All Out Of Bubblegum.”

-- “Operation Enrich THIS, Motherf****rs.”

In August: "But by far the biggest story in August, if not of all time, is that OMG OMG OMG Taylor Swift announces her engagement to the Future Mr. Taylor Swift, who presents her with an engagement ring believed to be the first piece of manmade jewelry visible from space."

Only a sampling; much, much more Barry here.  A serious mention is made about the murder of Charlie Kirk by Barry, but we will leave comments on that to numerous other posts, letting Dave Barry be Dave Barry. The Tunnel Dweller.

Will the next Jewish diaspora to America help us win another world war?

the Aspen beat  

"What that next wave of Jewish immigrants can do is to help us – help humanity – win another world war, this one against radical Islam. In the meantime, they can help us cure cancer or generate limitless electricity or put a man on Mars."

"Guess what these men have in common: Albert Einstein, Leo Szilard, Hans Bethe, and Edward Teller.

"Everyone knows about Einstein. He won a Nobel Prize for his work on the photoelectric effect, did revolutionary work on the relativity of time and space (all in his mind without a laboratory), fled Nazi Germany in 1933, had wild hair in his later years, and, most importantly, co-authored a letter to President Roosevelt explaining the potential for a nuclear bomb.

"That letter is credited with persuading Roosevelt to launch the Manhattan Project. The ensuing nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki put an end to WWII. By avoiding a full-scale invasion, the bombs probably saved over a million Japanese, American, British, Australian and Chinese soldiers and civilians.

"Einstein became a U.S. citizen in 1944, a year before the bomb was first tested at Los Alamos.

"Leo Szilard was the other co-author of that letter. It was Szilard who conceptualized the notion in 1933 that incredible amounts of energy could be released in a nuclear chain reaction by splitting the uranium atom. It might have been the greatest Eureka! moment in science since the day Isaac Newton conceived of gravity when he was hit on the head with a falling apple. Szilard fled Europe in 1938 and became a U.S. citizen five years later.

"Hans Bethe was a prominent physicist of the early 20th century. He fled Germany in 1935 at age 29 and became a U.S. citizen in 1941. Like Szilard, he worked on the Manhattan Project. He won the Nobel Prize in 1967 for his work on nuclear reactions over the course of a prolific career, and died in 2005 at age 98.

"Edward Teller fled Germany in 1935 and became a U.S. citizen in 1941. He, too, worked on the Manhattan Project. He was later dubbed “the father of the hydrogen bomb.” (While the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs used nuclear fission, the hydrogen bomb uses fusion, which delivers much more bang for the buck. Hydrogen bombs have been successfully tested, but never used in warfare.)

"OK, one thing these men obviously have in common is that they were all great physicists." . . .

More...

Glenn K. Beaton is a writer and columnist living in Colorado. He has been a contributor to The Wall Street Journal, RealClearPolitics, Powerline, Instapundit, Citizen Free Press, American Thinker, Fox News, The Federalist, and numerous other print, radio and television outlets. His most recent book is "High Attitude — How Woke Liberals Ruined Aspen"

Mamdani on 9-11: would he have been "America's Mayor"?

I think, judging by the voices of those cheering Mamdani, they also support Hamas' invasion of Israel, Luigi Mangione's murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and keeping Jewish students from attending college classes. TD

Mamdani Names Al-Qaeda Defense Attorney As New York City’s Chief Counsel

. . . "New York City Councilwoman Vickie Paladino responded to the appointment, saying, “Less than 25 years after thousands of New Yorkers were killed on 9/11, the Chief Counsel of New York is going to be an Islamist lawyer who came to this country after 9/11 specifically to defend the very Al Qaeda terrorists we were fighting against. The fact that our immigration system post 9/11 even allowed him to step foot into the country is a monumental failure. Disgraceful isn’t a big enough word for what’s happening here. The federal government must get a LOT more involved in New York. We cannot allow these people to go unchecked.” . . .

Anxiously awaiting Mamdani's statement on Iran events

Iran reacts to Mamdani win: from Islam triumphant to democracy masterclass:   

Tehran lawmaker Abolghasem Jarareh declared in parliament: “Zohran Mamdani’s victory shows the strength of the slogan ‘Death to Israel!’”

 Mamdani's Chilling Inaugural Remarks Are a Harbinger of Trouble to Come

"Mamdani's words on Thursday are words of foreboding. New Yorkers had ample warning, but they chose to turn a blind eye to history. It isn't going to be pretty." 

What to know about Mamdani’s economic vision as he prepares to take office . . . "New York Apartment Association CEO Kenny Burgos said the policy could deter developers. "I don’t know any investor or builder who would want to build in a city where the mayor is threatening to cap revenues," Burgos told FOX Business.

"Ed Elson, a business analyst and co-host of the "Prof G Markets" podcast, echoed that concern, saying rent freezes undermine supply. "Paradoxically, they disincentivize construction, which causes rents elsewhere to rise," he said, calling the policy "too good to be true." . . . Economics 101: price controls result in shortages. TD

"But if his administration stumbles and the feeds keep promising more than he can deliver, it could harden a sense among young voters that 'even the internet's mayor couldn't change anything,'" Literat said.

"Collectivism" — he spoke the word, as if a wedding vow.

Ann Althouse 

. . . "The idea that a few bureaucrats know what’s best for all of society, or possess more information about human wants and needs than millions of free individuals interacting in a free market is both false and arrogant. It has guided collectivists for two centuries down the road to serfdom -- and the road is littered with their wrecked utopias.' " 

"Mamdani said it, he highlighted it: "We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism." He promised it. He attributed warmth to it.

"The link goes to my post yesterday with that quote as the title. In the comments, I wrote: "He's saying the words that have been left unsaid in the past. In that way, he's like Trump."

"Who are the other American politicians who might have said "collectivism" — in a positive way, not as a way of criticizing somebody else? Bernie Sanders, who swore in Mamdani, doesn't use that word.

"This blog has a 22-year archive, so I did a search to see how "collectivism" has figured into our discourse. I found 14 items, and I don't think any of them count as a positive use of the word in the style of Zoran Mamdami. 

"Here are all the past occurrences of "collectivism" on this blog, in chronological order:

"February 27, 2008: From the NYT obituary for William F. Buckley: "Mr. Buckley declared war on this liberal order, beginning with his blistering assault on Yale as a traitorous den of atheistic collectivism immediately after his graduation (with honors) from the university."

"August 12, 2008: David Brooks, watching the Olympics opening ceremony in China: "We’ve seen displays of mass conformity before, but this was collectivism of the present — a high-tech vision of the harmonious society performed in the context of China’s miraculous growth."

"December 7, 2008: Quoting someone: "[T]he pro-car lobby requires abstract arguments... From Hitler to Margaret Thatcher, car advocates have seen them as literal engines of change; vehicles by which to remake society, whether on the basis of individualism or collectivism."

"January 11, 2009: Quoting someone: "Sure, I am all for abominating racism like any other form of odious collectivism... but this hypersensitivity to any politically incorrect use of language is really annoying." . . . More...

All in the name of collectivism:

Holodomor Was A Man-Made Famine That Killed Millions

The "warmth" of collectivism

Videos on the effects of unfettered collectivism