New Yorkers are discovering that the bright new shiny object isn't always the best. More often than not the worn, the tried and the true, weathered one works out best — especially when it comes to choosing political leaders.
Liberal actress and activist Debra Messing found that out last Saturday en route to a meeting.
"Sitting in a taxi trying to get to an appointment. Should take 20 minutes, we are at an hour and ten minutes and counting.
"The streets are a disaster. It hasn't snowed in 5 days and the streets still haven't been cleared. Poor ambulance sitting in essentially a parking lot with sirens going. I'm praying for the person needing emergency care," Messing said.
"I’ve lived here for 15 years (this go around) and this has never happened. The plows have always worked around the clock to get the city back to working," she added and then asked, "I wonder what happened?"
She knows what happened. Zohran Mamdani happened.
The 112th mayor of New York City happened.
But she was at least lucky to be sitting in a warm, somewhat comfortable cab.
Others weren't so fortunate.
The mayor reported that as of Monday, the death toll in the Big Apple climbed to 16 since the start of the cold snap — 13 from hypothermia, the remaining three also died outside, but from drug overdoses.
"We are continuing to do everything in our power to get every New Yorker into a shelter where they will be warm," Mamdani said at the press briefing.
This is a reversal from his initial orders. Previous mayors regularly used police and sanitation crews to dismantle makeshift encampments, often to move the inhabitants into shelters. Mamdani actually campaigned on a proposal to allow them to remain.
He told reporters Monday that none of the 13 who died of hypothermia were found in their tents and shanties, but they were still not housed inside proper shelters.
Mamdani added, "The cold is showing no signs of stopping, so neither will the city's efforts." He should have thought of that on January 19 when the temperature plummeted, bringing the snow and ice along with it.
Mamdani delivered his most famous, most quotable line at his inauguration on January 1 — but it achieved fame and became quotable for reasons he’d never intended.
The new mayor ironically promised New Yorkers that he would "replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism."
So much for "the warmth of collectivism" — 13 died from that "warmth."
New York City voters elected as their mayor a 34-year-old communist with a dual U.S.-Ugandan citizenship (suggesting the divided loyalties that go with it). He'd been an American citizen less than a decade — since 2018.
Prior to being elected to run what was the greatest city in the world and the world’s financial center, Mamdani worked for four years — from 2015 to 2019 — as a mediocre hip-hop and rap artist.
For another four years he was a New York State Assemblyman with a mediocre record.
Townhall writer and columnist Amy Curtis, who recently released a new book “Gaslight,” gave the perfect response to the Mamdani debacle: “Communism’s body count rises.”
The situation is reminiscent of the final scene in the 1957 blockbuster film, “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” in which Colonel Nicholson (portrayed by Alec Guinness) is a British inmate at a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp located in Thailand.
When the prisoners are ordered to build a railway bridge across the Kwai River, Nicholson is obsessed to construct the best built, best engineered bridge possible, as a demonstration of Western superiority.
It’s not until the film’s final scene, when construction is complete and the first train is approaching that he realizes that all he did was to aid the enemy in their war effort. He proclaims, ”What have I done?”
When New Yorkers went to the polls last November, they had far better choices, including GOP candidate and Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa.
Even former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who ran as an independent in the general election, would have been a better choice, despite all his issues.
Instead they chose zero-experience Commie Mamdani — the bright shiny new object.
Right about now, every person who voted for Mamdani must be asking themselves the same question Col. Nicholson asked in "Bridge on the River Kwai": "What have I done?"
Michael Dorstewitz is a retired lawyer and is a frequent contributor to Newsmax. He's also a former U.S. Merchant Marine officer and a Second Amendment supporter. Read more Michael Dorstewitz's Insider articles — Click Here Now.
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