"Bolsheviks can't even organize a picnic." — Ada Shelby, Peaky Blinders The numbers are in. One store. Thirty million dollars. Opening in 2029. Mamdani budgeted $70 million for five stores. The first one alone is projected to cost $30 million — nearly half the entire program's budget, for a single location. A private operator opens a grocery store for $3 to $3.5 million. … [Read more...] about Ada Shelby on Zohran Mamdani’s Grocery Stores
Hochul’s Second Home Tax Is a Press Release, Not a Policy
New York Governor Kathy Hochul has announced her support for a proposal backed by mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani to impose a new tax on second homes in New York City valued at five million dollars or more. The stated justification is simple: the city needs money, wealthy people own expensive second homes, therefore those homes should generate additional revenue. It is the … [Read more...] about Hochul’s Second Home Tax Is a Press Release, Not a Policy
JD Vance’s Pride in Abandoning Ukraine Is a Confession, Not a Boast
JD Vance recently declared that cutting off funding to Ukraine ranks among his proudest achievements in the Trump administration. The statement deserves to be taken seriously — not as a policy position, but as a moral self-portrait. A man who considers the abandonment of a democratic nation under active military assault one of his finest moments has told us exactly who he … [Read more...] about JD Vance’s Pride in Abandoning Ukraine Is a Confession, Not a Boast
France’s Irrelevance in Lebanon Diplomacy
France's exclusion from the Washington talks on Israeli-Lebanese normalization should have been a diplomatic scandal. A historic ally, the self-appointed guardian of the Levant, the country that wrote Lebanon's constitution and still commands the largest European contingent in UNIFIL — locked out of the most consequential Lebanon negotiation in thirty years. The story writes … [Read more...] about France’s Irrelevance in Lebanon Diplomacy
Why Islamabad
There is a version of the Pakistan-as-venue story that writes itself as a footnote — a logistical convenience, a neutral location, a country that happened to be available. That version is wrong. The selection of Islamabad as the site for US-Iran ceasefire negotiations is a strategic choice with consequences that extend well beyond the talks themselves, and understanding why … [Read more...] about Why Islamabad