So why is Walter Noel still sunning by his Round Hill pool?

Noels hide the loot

For that matter, why is Ruth still enjoying her stay in Old Greenwich? Peter Madoff, brother of Bernie and former compliance director [sic] for Madoff’s security firm, will plead guilty tomorrow. Ten year sentence, disgorgement of $143 billion dollars (which presumably he doesn’t have, so that part’s easy) and forfeiture of all assets not safely hidden in the Caymans.

Greenwich Fairfield Group also claimed to have a compliance department and they performed their duties in that regard exactly as Peter Madoff did. So again, why isn’t Walter sharing a cell with his Round Hill Road neighbor Raj?

They could have just dropped into Whole Foods and discovered that some primates still do

No tree bark stuck in OUR teeth, thanks to Tom’s Toothpaste and hemp dental floss!

Scientists: Human ancestors ate tree bark. Well maybe our current crop of sticks, dirt and bark eaters will also evolve out of existence.

Exhausted from fund raising and golf, Obama heads for the cool mountains of Colorado for a little R&R

We can’t go over there, Mr. President, there are some former home owners looking for you

Of course forest fires have been raging out there for the past two weeks but since Obama couldn’t be bothered to even place a call to Colorado’s governor in all that time, he obviously isn’t aware of any problem. When he learns of this, will he send Michelle in his stead? Where is Michelle these days, anyway?

George Bush, by the way, has called the Governor but then he’s not running for reelection and so has time on his hands.

Readers of the comment section of this blog may remember Dollar Bill’s furious denunciation of “Tea Baggers” a month ago when similar fires struck New Mexico, demanding to know if small government types were satisfied with the destruction their philosophy, if not their acts (we haven’t taken control yet) have caused.

Turns out, DB should be directing his hysteria towards himself and his fellow “environmentalists” for suing to prevent the use of fire retardants in National Forests and towards their Messiah, who slashed the Forest Service’s fire-fighting fleet by 75%

As fire rages out of control on the edge of Colorado Springs, threatening lives and property, it is time we listen to those who have warned us about the negative effect environmentalists and President Barack Obama have had on the federal government’s ability to fight fires.

Much of what’s burning is the Pike National Forest, which is federal property. Yet it took almost three days to get federal fire fighting aircraft off the ground to begin dumping meaningful loads of slurry to slow the fire’s growth. Because the Forest Service has a shortage of planes, Air Force C-130s finally joined the effort Monday afternoon to battle a fire that began Saturday morning.

[...] The Obama administration canceled the government’s contract with Aero Union — a company with 60 employees that had been under contract with the Forest Service for 50 years. Though it canceled that contract, the administration had no plan for an immediate replacement. Aero Union CEO Britt Gourley told Human Events the administration provided no details on why the contract was ended.

“They didn’t want to talk about it,” Gourley said of Obama administration officials.

 

The illegal ones? Hey, have a blast!

Officially approved GAR noisemakers

Cops: handle legal fireworks with care. Right: carefully dispose of them, unused, in the nearest waste basket. If I ever handled a legal firework at all, carefully or otherwise, it was a gross oversight. How do you know whether a firework is worth your time? Officer Krupke offers this advice:

The easiest way to ascertain if a firework is illegal is to determine if it flies around or explodes; those devices are against the law.

Say, those sound like fun! Non-flying, non-exploding joy sticks. Whoop-de-doo and Happy Fourth. Here’s a better test; one I haven’t used in forty-five years but which I’m sure still works: stick the suspected firecracker in a mailbox (not your own mailbox, dummy), light its fuse and back off – if the box disappears, you’ve got the good stuff.

Pretty standard occurrence here in Greenwich

 

From Bonus Army to Bonus Babies, it all ends in dust

San Francisco couple buys house blocking their Bay view for $4.2 million, tear it down.  Bought it out of foreclosure, it was once priced, if not worth, $7 million. This is pretty common here in town but I suppose it strikes people in the hinterland as odd.

Obama to illegals: come on over and take our jobs, our welfare and our women, …

Disappointed diners return home

But don’t you dare embarrass me by showing up at my fund raisers! Unless you’re a married gay couple, of course.

What little real estate activity there is ….

372 Riverside Avenue

272 Riverside Avenue (April contract) sold for $3.7 million, asked $3.850. A client/builder of mine sold two similar houses at 288 and 290 Riverside Avenue in 2008 for $3.8 and $3.850, respectively. In 2010 #290 was sold by Nokia, who clearly just wanted to get rid of it given Nokia’s business difficulties, for $2.850. These sellers also paid $3.850 in 2008 so they lost a bit of money at $3.7, but of 2010′s sales price was any indication of market value then, those prices have obviously come back almost all the way.

 

 

Down in Lucas Point in Old Greenwich 203 Shore Road, asking (after reduction) $2.950 has an accepted offer. One half acre is all the land left around this 1904 house but still nice and Lucas Point is, to my mind, one of the best Old Greenwich neighborhoods. Someone is going to be very happy here.

The science is settled

Al Gore goes a hunting

Study: Dinosaurs not cold blooded after all.  In fact, they were cute and cuddly and extremely empathetic.

Why we’re changing this firm’s name

There’s a card for every loafer

Even Fudrucker is (or should be) embarrassed by this one: Woman fired for refusing to let low life buy cigarettes with EBT card.

Whiton said a young man came in to the store to buy two packs or cigarettes on May 29. When she asked him for his ID, he handed her his EBT card.

EBT cards are used for both food and cash assistance programs. There are two types of cards: one can only be used for food. The other can be spent on anything and used just like a debit card.

Whiton said she did not think EBT cards could be used to purchase cigarettes and refused to sell to him. The two “had a little go-around” as the line got longer behind him, said Whiton.

“I made the statement, ‘do you think myself, that lady and that gentlemen should pay for your cigarettes?’ and he responded ‘yes,’ ” Whiton said.

Well why not? Didn’t his president promise to take money from other people to pay his mortgage? Obummer’s leading by example.

Who (except for small-government cranks) predicted this would be the result of the Americans Disability Act?

 

Kafirs are SO stupid!

The latest federal requirements for meeting “reasonable accommodation” standards are out, and require elevators for all public pools (including motel mini-pools), limits on the slope of miniature golf course greens and the admission of mini-horses into businesses.

So who’s crazy?

May home contracts up nationally; flat in Greenwich

 

Adding it all up

The numbers are up in many areas of the country.

Here in town, we had 60 single family contracts last month, compared to 63 in May 2011, just 44 in May 2008, 56  in 2007 and 66 in 2006.

Here’s how Greenwich contracts sorted by price bracket (note that these are final asking prices so don’t reflect actual selling price or original ask)

<$1 million, 2012:16; 2011:16; 2008: 10; 2007: 13; 2006: 13

$1-$2,  2012: 20; 2011: 22; 2008: 13; 2007: 20; 2006: 22

$2-$3, 2012:12; 2011: 12; 2008: 12; 2007: 10; 2006: 11

$3-$4, 2012; 4; 2011: 3; 2008: 6; 2007: 8; 2006: 10

$4-$5, 2012: 2; 2011: 2; 2008: 1; 2007: 1; 2006: 6

$5-$6, 2012: 4; 2011: 7; 2008: 1; 2007: 2; 2006: 2

$6-$7, 2012: 1; 2011: 0; 2008: 2; 2007: 3; 2006: 0

>$7, 2012: 1; 2011: 0; 2008: 0; 2007: 2; 2006: 1

News you won’t find in the New York Times

It’s about Time(s)! Off for a drop-in visit to Eighth Avenue headquarters

Another successful test: US downs target missile over Pacific

The NYT devoted plenty of ink ridiculing Reagan’s “Star Wars” project and dutifully reported on each and every failure as the missile-interceptors were being developed. I remember hearing on NPR (!) years ago a brief, late-night report that the first successful hit had been accomplished and I looked in the paper for the next two days hoping for more detail, to no avail. The Times may have subsequently decided that there was indeed room to print stories of successful interceptions – I haven’t read the thing for several years – but I’m unaware of any, just as NPR never slipped again in its reporting (not even later that morning, doubtless because of swift intervention by its news editor).

Certainly yesterday’s test wasn’t deemed worthy of disturbing the Time’s reader.

Maybe if they posted signs in Spanish?

One way street trial unpopular in Byram

Obama (and every Democrat for the past thirty years): “We can’t drill our way to energy independence”

Expanded oil drilling helps US wean itself from Middle East 

HOUSTON—America will halve its reliance on Middle East oil by the end of this decade and could end it completely by 2035 due to declining demand and the rapid growth of new petroleum sources in the Western Hemisphere, energy analysts now anticipate.

The shift, a result of technological advances that are unlocking new sources of oil in shale-rock formations, oil sands and deep beneath the ocean floor, carries profound consequences for the U.S. economy and energy security. A good portion of this surprising bounty comes from the widespread use of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a technique perfected during the last decade in U.S. fields previously deemed not worth tampering with.

Here’s a collection of quotes by Democrats and greens (redundant) on the subject.

As for the Community Organizer, in his own words: