I have been clear over the years how blessed we are to live in our little corner of Penn’s Woods. This time of year, I would like to be talking about this in reference to everything that is going on around us. Veterans Day and all that we do to honor these special Americans has just passed. Thanksgiving and all that accompanies it is only a couple of weeks away, and Christmastime will be here before you know it.

For those of you counting, there are about 45 shopping days till Santa comes down the chimney.

And by the time you read this, you may have seen the first snowflake.

As fall winds down, I look forward to featuring state champions on our cover, such as this week’s Hughesville cross-country team. Congratulations to Coach Griffin Molino and his Spartans. Our cover has had quite a few fall state champions over the years, and every year, I’m hoping to see one of our football teams crash the cover. If I could have any writing gig in the county, it would probably be Doc Masse of the Sun Gazette’s sports column. All positive, all about local athletes, and no columns like I feel necessary to write this week.

As I sit here penning this, a framed copy of my Dad’s column, “The Visits and the Answers,” hangs on the wall. It was featured in our pages on November 12, 2003, and was about his trip to New York City to find out what happened to Ladder 11, which, if you remember, was the crumpled-up fire truck underneath the American flag and that picture often viewed in the aftermath of the events of September 11, 2001. I write about the events of that day every year. This year, my title was ‘What We Can Never Forget.’ It included a paragraph I’ve used many times over the years, “In an hour and 42 minutes, almost 3,000 lives were lost to Islamic terrorism. The fallen included 343 New York City firefighters who gave their lives trying to save as many folks as they could. 23 NYPD police officers and 32 Port Authority police officers who also died in the line of duty to help fellow Americans on the worst day in American history.”
There had been prior attacks against our Nation by Islamic terrorists in the name of jihad prior to this day. However, history records this as the day the actual War on Terror began. A battle of biblical proportions that has everything to do with the differences in Judeo-Christian values and Muslim values. It can be traced back to the 7th century, when the religion of Islam was founded in the name of Muhammad and based on the Quran.

I will stop here and remind everybody that there are good Muslim people living amongst us, not everyone subscribes to the hardcore Eastern world culture of the Quran, many have lived in our country for generations, and want the same things you and I do.
The most recent problems have been caused by mass migration of Muslim people into Europe and the wide-open borders of the United States of America. This has not gone well in the United Kingdom and Europe. A simple summary is it has caused the overtaking of certain cities by population and then election. They do not want to assimilate into the country they have immigrated to; they want to grow Islamic beliefs and make it the culture and governing power of where they now live.

This leads me to it was with great disbelief, sadness, and anger that I witnessed the election of a mayor to New York City who is a Muslim democratic socialist. I would have never guessed that only 24 years after those horrific attacks of 9/11, Zohran Mamdani would be elected by New Yorkers to hold the highest position in city government. Let’s be clear, I don’t know which part of this is harder for me to swallow. A Muslim mayor now being in charge of New York City’s fire and police departments, or the fact that he is proud to be a democratic socialist, which is more like a communist.

This is New York City, the financial capital of the world, upon which Lady Liberty shines her torch. If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere, and Americans from all walks of life have become legendary in whatever walk of life they’ve chosen. What about all the veterans and servicemen and women now serving that, since 9/11, have done everything possible to help defend and protect not only New York City but all of America from the threat of everything Zohran Mamdani could be about? His promises are fiscally ridiculous and impossible. They could only be accomplished if you were living in a socialistic/communistic country with 100% government funding available and public dependency on government was a given by all.

I don’t know which is more frightening to watch: the decline of cognizant health by President Biden, and the fact that he was just left to serve out his term with an auto pen, or the fact that Mamdani got over a million votes to become the mayor-elect of NYC. I’d better stop here.

May God Help and Bless America.