Aw, it’s been a year – time flies

 

England down the drain

The Royal tots celebrate their first anniversary.  I suppose when we lose our own hegemony, sell off our last aircraft carrier and are populated by pensioners with fogged memories of  lost glory we’ll grasp firmly to this sort of diversion too. I give us maybe twenty years.

The current President of the United States is so contemptuous of his fellow citizens that he assumes they won’t remember what he said two days ago

Sunday, April 29, 2012: White House: “Obama isn’t politicizing death of Osama.“

You Tube is proving it impossible for the Big Lie to get the traction it used to, even with the cooperation of the New York Times.

April 27th, 2012:

No, poverty doesn’t cause crime, stupid criminals cause crime

One of two defendants charged with killing waiter for his iPhone makes $1,000 a week at cable company. Caught when they tried to sell the stolen phone on EBay for $400.00. Guess they figured too many of their peers are getting captured when they boast of their crimes on Face Book.

Now we can stop worrying and get some sleep

John Rowland relaxes on Democrat headquarters stoop

John Rowland’s life-time pension,with full medical insurance, kicks in this week. $50,000 per year, with an additional $10,000 coming from the feds in a few years. So what’s our disgraced former governor been up to since getting out of jail? According to the linked article, collecting on a no-show job and kicking back some of the funds to his political benefactor. What a country.

UPDATE: I deliberately chose this picture and wrote this caption to elicit a response from Dollar Bill and, predictable as rain, he didn’t disappoint (see his comment, below). There’s nothing I can do to get DB to see the absurdity and humor in life – that opportunity passed at his birth – but in an attempt to brighten his bleak world, I thought I’d pose a simple logic problem that even he’ll be able to answer and perhaps feel a bit better about himself:

1. All humorless people are stupid

2. Dollar Bill is humorless

3. Dollar Bill is  …………………………………………

Y’a think?

31 kids at UConn Danbury  ”paint party” taken to hospital for acute alcohol poisoning. ”Advance planning was key” officials say. You’d think the best kind of advance planning would have been the cancellation of this event, since everyone knew what was coming. Love the euphemism “a patient-producing event”.

The concert was billed as “The World’s Largest Paint Party,” and featured a mix of high-energy electronic music, dancing and cannons that deliver paint blasts into the audience.

Matthew Cassavechia, the director of emergency medical services for Danbury Hospital, a division of the Western Connecticut Health Network, said that during routine special events planning, he did a historical analysis of Dayglow concerts and discovered that they were “patient-producing” events.

Cassavechia said he traveled to a recent Dayglow concert in Hartford, where he said more than 40 patients had to be taken to the hospital.

“Upon the discovery that it was a patient-producing event, we developed a comprehensive plan to make sure that while concert attendees have fun, they are also safe and well cared for,” Cassavechia said.

That plan included the deployment of a mobile field hospital on loan from the state Department of Public Health. The preparations, he said, allowed the patients to be cared for while not overwhelming the city’s or the hospital’s emergency services.

“There was a lot of planning that went into this,” Cassavechia said. “No matter what event comes to the city, we have to make sure we are prepared. That’s what the public expects of us.”

Cassavechia declined to comment on specific medical conditions that arose during Friday’s concert at WestConn, citing privacy laws. He did say there was some “substance abuse” at the show.

Paul Estefan, Danbury’s emergency management director, said the advance planning was “well worth the effort.”

Steinmetz said alcohol was not sold during the event, and that those attending were checked before entering the building.

Mayor Mark Boughton said that while binge drinking “sometimes goes hand in hand with an event like this, it “crosses the line” when dozens of people need medical assistance.

“The university may want to re-evaluate if they are going to host this event again next year,” Boughton said.

Recorded at the Round Hill Club’s Men’s bar

Playing (at) politics

 

(not) just resting

Greenwich Democrats to name three, if they can find three, candidates to lose in next election.

Greek suicides up but will they finnish the job?

 

Move south, save a life

More Greeks are committing suicide these days and “experts” blame the country’s economic woes, but how then do they explain the gloomy outlook of people further north?

There are no reliable statistics on 2011 but experts say Greece’s suicide rate has probably doubled to about 5 per 100,000. That is still far below levels of 34 per 100,000 seen in Finland or 9 per 100,000 in Germany. Attempted suicides and demand for psychiatric help has risen as Greece struggles to cope with the worst economic crisis since World War Two.

People aren’t so happy in Sweden, either.

Some people just won’t wait their turn

Woman charged with DUI after crashing into liquor store. Maybe she was following orders beamed down from those helicopters.

Since when were helicopters given authority to order up auto accidents?

And why would we listen? Two helicopters called for new Hartford crash.

Heh

Housing prices hit “bottom” (for fourth year in a row).

The writer points out that even in the worst of the recent years, house prices rise in the spring before resuming their descent in the fall, each time a little lower. Don’t expect  much of an argument from me. What we’re seeing here in Greenwich is an undersupply of well priced houses and a large pool of buyers who want to buy.

That will sort itself out but while you’re waiting consider these two houses in Riverside, 8 Long View and 5 Gilliam Lane . The two are around the corner from each other, with Long View that little stretch of gravel road connecting Armstrong and Gilliam. 5 Gilliam is brand new, 8 Long View was built in 2008.

Long View reported an accepted offer yesterday with a rumored price of $3.350. Those same rumors say that 5 Gilliam has an a/o at $3.250. If there’s only a $100,000 difference between a house like Armstrong that’s got a far, far better location and a better yard and Gilliam, which fronts on Riverside Avenue  and has no yard, then that says to me that there aren’t enough houses to go around.

California Dreaming

 

Waiting for the welfare check

Obummer tries to Californicate the nation. Here’s how the green movement is working in California. Or not working. Four more years and the community organizer will have solved emissions pollution in America, if not the rest of the world, because he’ll have shut down our industry.

Rockefellers want a better address, Inland Wetlands seems ready to give them one

(The new) Zaccheus Mead Lane

Indian Spring Land Company, a Rockefeller land-owning company with 124 acres to develop in Glenville, wants to use Zaccheus Mead Lane as an ingress, surely because Zaccheus Mead is more prestigious than Glenville Road. To that end, the company has applied for a “forestry permit” which would allow them to pave 1,700 feet of road and start developing.

The Rockefellers insist that the road and its Zaccheus Mead locus are temporary – neighbors harbor their suspicions, and rightly so, if even the slightest cynical eye is used to assess the situation here.

The neighbors wanted IWWA to conduct a public hearing, the IWWA says it’s too late for that and perhaps it’s true – there was a deadline of 65 days after the application filing date of January 23rd to request such a hearing and that deadline has elapsed. I don’t know why the Zaccheus Lane residents slept on their rights so long – I was aware of this project months ago, and I live on the other side of town but regardless, look for continued entertainment as this goes forward. Zaccheus Mead types tend to have lots of money and that means lawyers and that means trouble! Or at least a great food fight.

With friends like these …

On guard

Greenwich residents Mr.  and Mrs. Edward Krumeich reelected to state Democrat Party leadership.

We’ve worked hard to develop relationships with other members of the State Central Committee and have been very visible, vocal members,” said Krumeich

If the looting of Greenwich by state democrats is an example of Krumeich and his fellow town Democrats’ “relationship” with the Hartford crowd then why don’t they save gas and stay home?

The real problem with our local party is not that their mob friends won’t honor their “relationship”,  it’s that Krumeich et als share the same collectivist sympathies as the Hartford rapists. I once owned a wonderful dog,  Casey, a huge fierce-sounding labrador who, had a crook shown up at the door, would have let him in and shown him where the valuables were stored. Think of Ed as a big friendly labrador and you won’t be disappointed at his propensity to roll over and demand a tummy rub.

Brave soul

To boldly go where no man has gone before ...

A third condo unit on Sound View Drive has found a buyer, leaving something like fourteen to go, plus the whole second phase which has been a dirt lot for six years now and probably will remain in that state for the foreseeable future. But yes, there’s an accepted offer reported today for Unit 44B. Asking price was $1.995 million, down from $2.975 but I wonder whether that’s enough to compensate for the risk of buying here with so many units unsold and the inconvenience of living on the steepest slope in Greenwich with trucks downshifting 24 hours a day as they pass to and fro from I-95 to the commercial establishments on Route One?

Someone obviously thinks so. But how do you suppose those two other lonely buyers feel, the one who paid $3 million a couple of years ago and the dumb fool whose broker sold him the first one back in 2008 for $3.525 million, over and above the asking price of $3.350?

Westchester special?

11 Partridge Hill (photo not by EOS)

New listing on the New York border, 11 Partridge Hill Road (didn’t know it existed before now, did you?) off of Lake and even past Mountain Laurel, a contemporary on six very nice acres, priced at $3.339 million. Contemporaries aren’t particularly popular in Greenwich nor is this far northern location but this close to Westchester, where contemporaries and property taxes proliferate, it could be tempting. I don’t have any Westchester clients at the moment so I don’t think I’ll spend the gas to see this next week. Next year, if gas has come down, I’ll go.

And here’s one that’s not selling, even with Photoshop clouds

3 Ashton Drive, 10,000 square feet of interesting taste, has been dropped to $6.975 million, down from last year’s price of $11.750 million and already below the 1.4 ratio for current assessment. It’s now just 59% of its original price; how low can it go? Tune in next year and find out.

We were just talking about this

542 Lake Avenue closed, selling for $5.3 million (I’d been guessing $4.9 ish). Started off asking $6.595 million but still managed to sell for about 1.65 X its assessment, more than the 1.4 ratio that’s I’ve seen so many houses sell for. 9,627 sq. ft., if you’re into cost per foot calculations (I’m usually not).

If people understood this threat, Obummer would go down in a landslide.

So like, listen, I've got these like tickets to an Obama fundraiser that cost my dad like $40,000 each and like, he can't go so I was wondering ...

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s been making noises about banning cellphones for years but now he’s really getting serious about it. And he’s not talking about handhelds, he wants to ban all cellphones, period.  Statistically, he’s right: handhelds and built ins produce exactly the same distraction and there are bound to be more accidents, but are 200 million Americans really ready to give up using them? Of course, the great thing about Obummer and his crowd is that they don’t care whether you’re willing, they just effect the change, and screw you.

Did you know that LaHood is also pushing for mandatory breathalyzer devices in all cars? I’ve heard horror stories of these things – not only are they expensive $200 a month to calibrate, for instance, but they can fail and if they do, you aren’t going anywhere, often for days. That’s fine for drunks – gives them time to sober up, maybe (unless they have a vodka stash in the trunk) but if, just as a for instance, you’re a mother trying to get three young kids to school and the god damned car won’t start, you’ll probably get angry. Too bad for you, says Ray – if it saves the life of just one child, is any inconvenience too great?

Dumpster diving

82 Buckfield Lane

82 Buckfield Lane is out of foreclosure, title has passed to (one of the) lenders and Capital One is offering it for sale at $1.850 million. Good luck with that. Grossly inconvenient location way up north near the Indian casino (well, way up north, anyway), 2 acres in a four-acre zone and with much of that acreage under water in the form of a pond. Still, it’s a great big house and a decent yard, what there is of it, and probably should have sold before the bank got its claws into it. It’s biggest problem was the mortgage debt: $2.997 placed in 2006 and four more in lesser ($275,000 – $480,000) in the following years. Some of those four may have been refinances of earlier ones but there was at least $3 million and as much as $4.5 million piled on top of this house. That explains its asking price of $4.790 back seven years ago but it didn’t help it sell. And by the time it hit $2.399 in August 2011 it couldn’t sell, because there was no equity.

In any event, the bank’s got it now and it’ll be ripe for the picking in another six months or so. It will certainly be around at least that long unless the bank’s agent actually looks at what he is selling – right now, he describes it as built in 1968, no doubt confusing the house that was originally there with its replacement erected in 2004. On-line buyers are unlikely to be interested in a 1968 house.