Is Chris Matthews gay?

This TV reader who four years ago admitted he felt tingling up his leg when the Great One spoke is still stirred to orgasmic fervor by the man – so much so that a profound lust seems the only explanation – unless Matthews is just a deranged, senile old liberal, but how could that be?

Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC’s “Hardball,” raved about a speech President Obama made to American troops during his surprise visit to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.

“I imagine being a soldier over there — this is what you want to hear,” Matthews said, as if he was wearing military fatigues.

Matthews also likened the leadership of President Obama to that of Henry V of England.

“It was right out of Henry V actually, a touch of Barry, in this case, in the night for those soldiers risking their lives over there,” Matthews said.

Whew! Elizabeth Warren finds an ancestor who didn’t come over on the Mayflower. Now she can go back to demanding protection as a minority.

Warren isn't the first white to pretend to be an Indian, but at least this guy stayed silent about it.

Heartless bitch

That was then

Michelle Obama evicts her own mother from the White House.

The eviction notice came April 30 when the first lady told fellow Democrats at a fundraiser that she shared their values. “My family, we lived in a little bitty apartment on the South Side of Chicago over my aunt’s house [and] my

Hey, she couldn't cover the rent

mom still lives in that house to this day.”

However, the first lady’s mother, Marian Robinson, has lived in the White House since March 2009, when Essence Magazine announced her move from Chicago to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

“She will stay as long as her son-in-law and daughter want her to stay there,” Angela Burt-Murray, the editor of Essence Magazine, said in an April 2009 “Today” show interview.

The first lady’s effort to distance herself from her mother’s White House stay comes as both she and President Barack Obama try to stress their middle-class roots, amid a stalled economy and high unemployment.

The cost of visible first family trips — to Spain, Hawaii, Martha’s Vineyard and other locations — has spurred some level of resentment among Americans, whose income has stalled since 2008, even as their costs for gasoline, health care and education have risen.

Oh for Allah’s sake

 

So Dick Blumenthal and I were just giving the SEALs some swimming lessons and, as long as I'm over here, I thought I'd address the nation on what a cool dude I am

Obummer has flown to Afghanistan, at our expense, to put on a TV show boasting about his killing Osama. At least Mr. Mission Accomplished limited his victory jaunt to California, a far less expensive place to visit.

With private school over for the season, I assume Michelle and the girls have tagged along for this educational junket too, accompanied by a dozen of the girls’ best friends.

Another 2007 peak hangover

 

79 Dingletown

79 Dingletown is still for sale, posing as a new listing but at least offering a new price, $5.695, a significant reduction from its 2009 ask of $7.125 million and  more than a million less than the $6,787,500 the owners paid for it in 2007. They added a bunch of improvements since buying it including a pool, so you get all that for free plus save a million from the 2007 price. Could be an attractive deal.

79 is a typical BSF house by which I mean it’s built with great care and lots of quality but has the standard layout and nothing that makes me covet it. Whether its new price will convince you that you need this house is, of course, up to you. Certainly there are a lot of homes in the $5.5-$7.5 range to choose from, so take your pick and drive your bargain.

I tell you, the place is buzzin’

Yet another fast sale in Cos Cob: 19 Licata Terrace, asking $1.695, has an accepted offer just 8 days after being listed. While on the subject, I received a very polite phone call from James Licata yesterday (he’s in Florida) taking issue with some of my rude comments about his recent legal difficulties. The story he told was far different from what’s available on Google and in fact, he claims it was he who was the victim of bad people rather than being one himself.

Here’s the fascinating thing: Although I’ve only just started looking into what he told me, everything I’ve seen so far checks out, including this recent Connecticut Appellate Court decision awarding Cindy Licata $500,000 from her “financial advisor” Ray Chodos. That’s not chump change and clearly Chodos was at least engaged in, as the jury found, the negligent misrepresentation of material facts”. That’s a polite way of saying that he lied.

Again, I’ve just begun working on what Mr. Licata told me and I’ll post more later but if its true, it would make a great book: corrupt lawyers, bribed judges and completely crooked bankers engaging in mortgage fraud and outright theft. Real estate slows down from about the end of May and won’t really resume until September so maybe I’ll devote some of that free time to writing this up – it’s got the ingredients for a great tale.

2 Lauder Way’s a real poser

So I went to see 2 Lauder Way at today’s broker open house and it’s as beautiful as I’d hoped it would be after its renovation. The owners have redone everything – new quarter-sawn oak floors, new kitchen, baths, wiring, etc. It’s basically a brand new house but retains the grace and charm of an old classic (even if it was built in 1967). And the huge (for this neck of the woods) 2+ acre yard has a tennis court and pool with plenty of play space left over. Add in its superb location and what’s not to like?

Well, the price, for one. The sellers paid $4+ and clearly just poured money into the project so I think the assessor’s estimate of $3.9 million is way off base. But how off base? I really can’t tell. My gut tells me this is not going to sell for $8 million, not now and probably not even in a better market but if I had eight million burning a hole in my pocket I’d certainly want to see this house. I’m guessing $6.5, eventually, but that’s just a guess. I wouldn’t be surprised if it sold for more, or less – someone is going to love this house and its location, it’s just a question of how much they’re willing to pay to express that love.

While snowplowing was a bust, the warm winter must have allowed Cos Cobbers to get an early start on lawn mowing

4 Kenmondo

And they’re out buying Cos Cob houses!! 4 Kenmondo (would you live on a road called “Kenmondo”? I wouldn’t) sold for $1,357,500 (plus free snowplowing for a year if and when needed) after asking $1.950 million 476 days ago. It does annoy me that our GMLS still provides false data on pricing – they changed the old days on market scheme of cancelling a listing and then bringing it on the next day to reset the DOM, but they continue to show later asking prices, not the first. Which I think does the seller no favor because buyers love to see huge mark downs – it creates a sense of value, even if that first price was delusional.

And just one street over from beautiful Kenmondo, 11 Serenity Lane found a buyer in just twelve days even though it was asking $1.695 million. Gentlemen, start your mowers.

From shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in one generation

 

Voodoo economics

Bolivia joins Argentina and Venezuela in nationalizing energy sector. Worked like a charm in Venezuela and will bring down Argentina and Bolivia too.  Back to chewing coca leaves and subsisting on sticks and dirt for them, and I won’t feel the least pity. As Robert Heinlein said, it’s just “bad luck”.

Accepted offer in Old Greenwich

5 Ben Court has an a/o – last asking price was $3.295 million. Not a bad house, not at all a bad street, but zero yard, which I thought buyers liked. Not so, apparently.

But this one did meet some buyer resistance: it started off life as a resale in May of last year at $3.6 million, a hefty price that, when the agent asked me, I said was too high. I suspect it was the owners rather than the agent who insisted on this price – after all, they’d paid $3.125 million for it in 2004 and probably thought the value of their house had gone up since then. But they eventually saw the light or at least a dim glimmer of it and after two price reductions, found a buyer. I wouldn’t think they’ll get as much as that 2004 price but these days, who knows? They might even have a bidding war on their hands. Sheesh.

The war on women continues

Or is that “Warren Woman continues”? Regardless, bloggers who discovered that she claimed “minority status” back when she was starting her law teaching career are now being accused of “sexism” for daring to point out that she doesn’t look all that Native American to them. The Warren camp isn’t arguing that the lady is in fact an Indian – she dropped that claim once she made it onto the tenure track at Harvard – but rather that the mere exposure of a female political candidate as a liar is part of the Republican war on women. Uh huh. Too bad Richard Blumenthal, Mr. Harvard swim team, Mr. Vietnam combat veteran, isn’t a girl because he could have avoided all sorts of embarrassing questions back in the last election cycle.

By the way, if Elizabeth Warren is an Indian because she watched Gunsmoke as a child then we all screwed up our own college and law school applications. I saw every episode of F Troop and McHale’s Navy, for instance, which should have entitled me to claim veteran status and  made me a member of the Hekawi Indian tribe. I couldda been a contenda.