- On New Years Day, Zohran Mamdani was officially sworn in as the Mayor of New York City. Despite his being an out front, unapologetic communist, a small majority of NYC voters (50.78%) voted this past November to usher in such an ideology.
There's an old saying: when people tell you who they are, believe 'em. As such, this excerpt of Mamdani's speech garnered the most attention.
Mamdani: We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism pic.twitter.com/JYtcr7c350
— Acyn (@Acyn) January 1, 2026
The "warmth of collectivism." WaPo writer Dominic Pino couldn't help but point out that such a political system is anything but "warm."
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.
To quote another NYC mayor - "The people have spoken … and they must be punished."
- There is not a single event in America which progs and their media lapdogs love to demagogue more than mass shootings. And you can draw a clear distinction between the shootings which serve their agenda and those which puncture leftist narratives. Specifically, the volume of coverage increased for the former but is all but buried for the latter.
The Covenant School shooting in Nashville, TN is Exhibit A.
Even though it's been nearly three years since that awful incident, the quest to obtain the shooter's confirmed manifesto had seemingly dissipated. Why? Well...........
The FBI on Monday released new writings by Covenant School killer Audrey Hale, who identified as a transgender man when she killed six on March 27, 2023, revealing the killer listed hatred for religion as reason to attack the Christian elementary school she once attended.
Hale included the motivator in a list of “advantages” and “disadvantages” the killer titled, “The Covenant School – Alternate Target / 2nd Choice,” which also noted her past history at the school, her knowledge of its layout, but also listed that it was a “bigger school,” and a “private school,” as well as a “school/church,” which meant “more revenue real estate.”
The killer wrote as her last item in the list of reasons to select Covenant as her target, “Christian school (hate religion).”
In the previous section of Hale’s writings released by the FBI, which were dated throughout 2018 and 2019, the killer wrote that she considered her Christian religion an impediment to her emerging views on sexuality and gender identity.
“I have suppressed and hid my real gender identity for so long, and a big contributor to it – the nemesis of my true peace within myself – is my spirituality of being a Christian,” wrote Hale in one entry.
In another, the killer opined, “I feel my Christianity is being crucially at threat [and] hangs on a [slender rope] in the balance. It is my sexuality that wants me to cut the rope.”
This 12+ year old tweet by Dave "Iowahawk" Burge has stood the test of time.
Journalism is about covering important stories. With a pillow, until they stop moving.
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) May 9, 2013
Indeed.
- As of Monday, CBS Evening News will feature a new weeknight anchor as Tony Dokoupil will assume that role. And given Dokoupil's message to viewers, new Editor-in-chief Bari Weiss's continued overhaul of standards (feature, not a bug) at the network will have an immediate impact.
"On too many stories, the press has missed the story. Because we've taken into account the perspective of advocates and not the average American. Or we put too much weight in the analysis of academics or elites, and not enough on you."
— CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) January 1, 2026
That changes now. The new CBS Evening News… pic.twitter.com/NKdvRJjYCS
For those attempting to dismiss Dokoupil's seemingly refreshing tone, I'd ask you to look back at some of his work at CBS, particularly his pushback of pro Palestinian author Ta-Nehisi Coates. A staunch defense of Israel is something you haven't seen often (if ever) at the big three networks.
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