Dick Bishirjian

It is painful to lose a friend to an accident, as occurred recently to Dr. Angelo Codevilla. But sadness comes also with the death of those we knew and some we knew only by reading their books or opinion essays.

One of these latter was Sir Peregrine Gerard Worsthorne whom I knew only by reading his columns in the Daily Telegraph of London.

Like many American political conservatives today Worsthorne wrote of his country in 1997 “this is not a country I recognise or am particularly fond of any more.”

If you are interested, you may want to read his In Defence of Aristocracy published in England in 2004 by Harper/Collins.

What is the purpose of a college education?

In 2013 the author Tom Wolfe asked and answered that question.

Communist authoritarian Danny Ortegas was reelected President on November 7 in a fraudulent election in which Ortega detained 40 opposition figures earlier this year, including seven potential presidential candidates.

Why do I care?

I will smoke an occasional cigar and prefer a lighter “smoke” provided by Dominican broad leaf tobacco in what is called a “Connecticut” wrapper.

That’s when I recalled Anthony Bourdain’s visit to Nicaragua and his “No Reservations” program that aired in March 2011. While the ordinary people in Nicaragua struggle to survive and some are compelled to scavenge for food in garbage dumps, Ortega amassed a fortune of more than a billion dollars.

Bourdain, certainly held no sympathy for free market economics, but he knew gross injustice when he saw it and severely criticized Ortega.

When my supply of cigars had dwindled to three “Churchill” sized “Connecticut” cigars, I noticed how many Nicaraguan leaf cigars are low cost. Tobacco is grown on plantations, but who owns the plantations in Nicaragua?

The American “Bike Lobby” is run like the organized crime syndicate organized by Pussy Galore in Ian Fleming’s Goldfinger.

I’m not anti-bicyclist, but I am against the bike lobby that imposes bike lanes on the rest of us.

My city government was beguiled–fooled is a better word–by this political lobby and some routes I take in my car have been reduced by half in order to create “bike lanes.”

In the course of a week I’ll be lucky if I see one bicyclist and maybe two vagrants using a bike lane, usually cycling towards me from the wrong direction.

I think anyone could win a seat on City Council on a “No Bike Lane” platform, but until we rid ourselves of these Progressive “purer than thou” cyclists, here’s what we need to do.

License all bikes using bike lanes!

No license tag, no entry on a bike lane.

Charge $5.00 a month or $60 a year for a bike license.

That will clean out the nuisance cyclists and clear those bike lanes for use by true bicyclists.