CT. Lottery Commissioner Fudrucker:”well the poor and the stupid should pay their fair share, too.”

Crocodile tear

Connecticut’s new Keno game is bringing in twice its projected revenue. Total annual cut for the state might be $70 million (minus 25% that must be handed over to the state’s faux-Indian tribes, so $52,500,00). “On a billion-dollar budget deficit that’s not worth much more than a warm bucket of piss,” Commissioner Fudrucker told FWIW, “but if you figure it’s  coming from the same morons who’ve kept us Democrats in Hartford all these years and let us make this mess, theres a certain justice to it; they’re finally paying for their stupidity, albeit in a small way. I figure Greenwich residents should be pleased.

“And oh yeah: we bumped cigarette taxes up again July 1st and we now have the highest cigarette taxes in the nation. We’re on a roll.”

Message fail

SS DiCaprio (Albert Gore Suite, stern)

Leonardo DiCaprio invites his friends to fly half-way around the globe to honor him and celebrate his commitment to global warming.

The reception – the grand-sounding Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation Annual Gala To Fund Climate and Biodiversity Projects – will be held on July 20 at the Bertaud Belieu Vineyards on the French Riviera.

Celebrities including Kate Hudson, Charlize Theron, Cate Blanchett, Marion Cotillard, Penelope Cruz, Robert De Niro, Scarlett Johansson, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Kevin Spacey are all expected to attend, along with a host of international rock and pop stars, supermodels and tycoons.

And while a table seating 12 people at the gala costs up to £125,000, the real price will be paid by the environment.

If just one guest among the 500 invitees chooses to fly the 12,000-mile round trip from LA to St Tropez by private jet – a notoriously environmentally unfriendly way to travel – they will produce 86 tons of carbon dioxide greenhouse gas.

Even those who use a scheduled flight will be responsible for releasing seven tons of CO2 – leading green campaigners to ask why the event could not have been held in Hollywood or in St Tropez during May’s Cannes Film Festival, when many of the guests would have been there anyway.

Robert Rapier, an environmental analyst, said: ‘DiCaprio demonstrates why our consumption of fossil fuels continues to grow. It’s because everyone loves the combination of cost and convenience they offer.

‘He believes that no sacrifice is necessary; just Government policies that can provide him with a solar-powered yacht or jet, or that give individuals low-cost renewable energy on a broad scale.’

One guest who attended last year’s gala said: ‘It’s basically a big party for Leo and his showbusiness friends and models. The models, of course, do not pay for tickets, and neither do the VIP guests – they get to have a nice big free party.’

The Mail on Sunday has learned that guests opting for the Grand Earth Protector Package – ‘prime dinner seating for 12 guests’ at a table near to DiCaprio – costs £125,000. The more frugal Earth Protector Package – seating 12 at a slightly more distant table – costs £82,000, while those content with social Siberia can choose the Ocean Steward Package, at a mere £58,000 for 12 diners.

It is estimated DiCaprio has potentially emitted up to 418 tons of CO2 this year alone because of his globe-trotting. In contrast, the average American produces just 19 tons on flights each year.

Democrats drop requirement that aliens learn English or pay taxes before becoming citizens

English? We don’ need no stinkin’ English

I’m convinced that these people are just unwitting dupes, and don’t see how they are destroying our county. Of course, who they are the dupes of is a deeper question.

Politico: Democrats 2016 platform drops English requirement for citizenship 

The 2016 document contrasts sharply with the 2012 version, which also touted the need for comprehensive immigration reform, but stated that undocumented immigrants should “get right with the law, learn English, and pay taxes in order to get on a path to earn citizenship,” language unpopular with Hispanic and immigrant rights groups.

Convention platforms of both parties are non-binding, but they serve as a prediction of where the respective parties are going. 2012, for instance, saw the Democrats reverse their 2008 stance on gay marriage, and four years later, it’s the law of the land.

News you can’t use

At least, I can’t. Greenwich Time’s out with a story from the AP, “How Michigan’s new budget will affect you”. Until I saw that headline, I had assumed Michigan’s budget decisions did not reach into Connecticut but, always eager to learn something new, I clicked on the article and to my disappointment, learned only that I’d been right: Michigan’s new budget will not affect me.

I don’t know whether the actual newsprint version of our town’s formerly local paper includes such filler, but it’s a shame to see even the internet pipelines clogged with such stuff.

Even if the worst were to happen, at least Hillary won’t have to switch parties

Absentee balloteer

Felons register as Democrats, overwhelmingly

A new study of how criminals vote found that most convicts register Democratic, a key reason in why liberal lawmakers and governors are eager for them to get back into the voting booth after their release.

“Democrats would benefit from additional ex-felon participation,” said the authoritative study in The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

The authors, professors from the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford University, found that in some states, felons register Democratic by more than six-to-one. In New York, for example, 61.5 percent of convicts are Democrats, just 9 percent Republican. They also cited a study that found 73 percent of convicts who turn out for presidential elections would vote Democrat.

Which explains, of course, the concerted push by Democrats to legalize voting by felons before November.

Cos Cob sent a contingent, but they got lost on the Jersey Turnpike

Jeremy Davis runs to daylight

“Just wait ’til they have to come up here for the snowblower championship”, vows Bible Street resident Augie Chimblo.

Arkansas Rototiller racing tournament crowns a champion.

The Clintons must be getting desperate

Losing his touch, or a loser client?

They’ve brought out their old consiglieri, Lanny Davis, to pen what, if such a thing is imaginable, is the most laughable defense of her yet.

Now that she [Lynch} has categorically stated exactly that, the day after the meeting, are there any facts left to doubt her? {Nope. She said it, I believe it, that settles it – praise jesus!]

Is it even plausible that [FBI Director] Comey – whose record of political independence, professional integrity, and strength of character is beyond question — would allow his judgment to be affected by President Clinton briefly visiting with AG Loretta Lynch to talk about his grandchildren and other personal topics? [And golf, Lanny – don’t forget about the golf game she said they discussed, even though no one can find someone who actually saw the heart-weakened ex-President playing golf in Phenix’s 112-degree heat]

So what do we have here? We have a media storm ….  It’s a storm fed by partisan attacks from Republicans  [Democrats have joined in to; don’t you read The New York Times?] who are desperate to change the topic from the reckless and dangerous man they are about to nominate, rushing to the microphones with pure innuendo, calls for “recusal,” a “special counsel,” “outrage,” blah blah blah.

Yes, of course President Clinton and the attorney general, with the wisdom of hindsight, must regret their innocent meeting talking about grandchildren in the middle of this extreme-journalist/partisan-cable-TV-fueled complex that feeds on itself and the innuendo it spreads to create an “uproar,” and then the media justify the need to keep reporting the “uproar”– which is not based on a single fact.

Yes, we are in the age of innuendo, which has become a surrogate for fact, where reputations can be forever harmed by an accusation that makes it to the headlines, further fed by the near hysteria of cable news’ 24/7 “breaking news” breathless coverage … and all the time, not a single fact reported to substantiate the negative “fear” that the FBI investigation “may” be compromised.

Yes, we are in the age where it’s not the substance of what happens that makes it improper, but the “appearance” of what happened. Optics now matter more than substance? Seriously? [Well yes, Lanny, avoiding “even the appearance of impropriety” is a standard for judges and the U.S. Attorney General- based on your behavior, and the Clintons, I’m beginning to think they don’t teach that at Yale Law School]

It is my opinion, based on lots of evidence, that the FBI investigation will continue without political influence, led by a former Republican deputy attorney general, and that the FBI’s recommendation on whether any crimes were committed in the handling of the emails will then be reviewed by professional prosecutors in the Department of Justice who will make the decision, entirely on the merits, whether there is sufficient evidence to bring a case. (It should be remembered that the FBI investigates – it is not a prosecutor or a grand jury.) [I think Lanny’s preparing us for the day when the FBI does recommend prosecution and the “professional prosecutors” of the DOJ decide not to do anything about it.]

Whatever outcome, is there anyone – anyone – on the cable shows, in our national political leadership, or among journalists and lawyers, who believe in the Constitution and the presumption of innocence? [How do you feel about taking away 2nd Amendment rights from citizens even suspected of being eligible for the secret no-fly list?]

Is there anyone willing to say  “Enough”? Anyone willing to say: “Let’s stop – let’s wait for the facts”?

I am willing to say, enough.

Anyone want to join me?

This tactic worked in the past: it was the genesis of the “Moveon.org”campaign, but this time, it’s failing. That Lanny Davis, a master at this stuff, is reduced to scribbling such arrogant, on-its-face blather, is a wonderful sign, for those of us who don’t want to join Davis and his clients in their march to the coronation.

No wonder she took such care to delete her “personal” emails

And we’ll help the litlte darling grow up the be a commodities trader, just like his granny

The State Department has fiercely resisted releasing Hillary’s emails, only (partially) yielding when court orders began flying; its latest stall came this week lawyers for State told a hudge that they couldn’t comply which his July deadline and would’t be able to come up with the supoened documents for another 27 months. As the secrets are slowy revealed, drip by drip, it’s obvious why.The latest:

Hillary used her position of Secretary of State to help her son-in-law’s failing hedgefund

In 2012, [Marc] Mezvinski, the husband of Chelsea Clinton, created a $325 million basket of offshore funds under the Eaglevale Partners banner through a special arrangement with investment bank Goldman Sachs. The funds have lost tens of millions of dollars predicting that bailouts of the Greek banking system would pump up the value of the country’s distressed bonds. One fund, exclusively dedicated to Greek debt, suffered near-total losses.

[N]ewly released emails from 2012 show that she and Clinton Foundation consultant, Sidney Blumenthal, shared classified information about how German leadership viewed the prospects for a Greek bailout. Clinton also shared “protected” State Department information about Greek bonds with her husband at the same time that her son-in-law aimed his hedge fund at Greece.

Clinton’s deputy in charge of economic policy was Robert Hormats, a former vice chairman of Goldman Sachs. Hormats and Clinton shared an extensive email trail about the possibility of bailing out Greece, including classified materials, and internal state department memos about the debt from the U.S. ambassador to Greece.

… In May, Blumenthal, emailed two “confidential” memos about the Greek debt situation to Clinton. Hormats was included in the email loop.

The first memo, Blumenthal told Clinton, is “based on conversations with German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble and those close to him … the information comes from an extremely sensitive source and should be handled with care. This information must not be shared with anyone associated with the German government.”

The unnamed spy reported that in secret meetings with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Schauble had searched for a politically acceptable way to bail out the Greek debt in order to avoid collapsing the economies of Greece, Italy, Spain and Ireland.

The second memo was classified and blacked out by State Department censors when Clinton’s emails were released. No doubt, it was informative.

In June, Clinton’s deputy, Jake Sullivan emailed her “a depressing snapshot” of reports that Greek banks were failing and that Merkel was against a Greek bailout. The next day, he reported “re: Greece” that Ambassador Dan Smith “just spoke to the Central Bank Governor and assessed that the economic situation was “ok for now” provided that “small depositors put money back into the banks.”

A few days later, Clinton asked Sullivan for a confidential state department report, “Solidarity Bonds Greece Revised.” He sent it to her adding, “If you like, send it on [to] WJC,” presumably a reference to William Jefferson Clinton.

Clinton ordered an aide, “Pls print two copies” of the Greek bond report. The report was blacked out as a “protected” document when the emails were made public.

… The emails show that Clinton did at least one official favor for her son-in-law. In August 2012, she forwarded Deputy Secretary Thomas Nides an email from Mezvinsky lobbying on behalf of his former Goldman Sachs colleague, Harry Siklas.

Siklas and Goldman Sachs were invested in a deep sea mining venture called Neptune Minerals. Siklas asked Mezvinsky to broker a talk with Clinton about “current legal issues and regulations” on deep sea mining. Clinton ordered Nides to “follow up on this request.”

Nides replied, “I’ll get on it.”

“When we left the White House, Bill and I were broke and in debt.”

Who can blame her?

Pedestrian’s critical after she’s run over by a pickup truck.

The parents deserve this, but do their children?

NYC’s elite private schools are segregating students by color and instilling white shame 

An elite Manhattan school is teaching white students as young as 6 that they’re born racist and should feel guilty benefiting from “white privilege,” while heaping praise and cupcakes on their black peers.

Administrators at the Bank Street School for Children on the Upper West Side claim it’s a novel approach to fighting discrimination, and claim that several other New York private schools, such as  Riverdale Country School, Brooklyn Friends School and Little Red School House, are teaching a similar thing.

What’s amusing here is that the notoriously liberal upper west side elite are forking over $50,000 a year so that their children can come home from school and berate them. These schools and their customers deserve each other.

Anshu Wahi (dot head Indian, not Elizabeth Warren Indian) is the school’s Director of Diversity & Community.

[Her] extreme diversity program is based on the premise that America is still plagued by “systemic racism,” which she claims she saw first-hand while serving as a juror hearing criminal cases in Brooklyn. She told parents she was shocked to learn that every case involved a minority defendant. In the same May 2015 meeting with parents, she cited the GI Bill as proof of “white privilege,” claiming the popular post-World War II legislation only benefited white soldiers and their heirs, when in fact, black enrollment in colleges exploded under the GI Bill.

Most recently, parents were upset with her airing a documentary film lionizing leaders of the violent Black Panthers movement. On May 31, the Bank Street School screened “Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution,” which depicts Panthers founder and convicted cop-killer Huey Newton as a martyr.

In 2013, moreover, parents expressed outrage over an email from Wahi that seemed to sympathize with Muslim terrorists after the Boston Marathon bombings.

The April 17, 2013, message — “From Anshu, our Director of Diversity and Community: The Boston Marathon — Another Perspective” — advised students and parents to “be mindful of stereotypes and dangerous ideas” regarding “Arabs (and) Muslims.”

It linked to an article titled “Let’s hope the Boston Marathon bomber is a white American.”

Idiot mobile

The other sticker says “War is just terrorism with a bigger budget”, but you already guessed that, didn’t you?

Seen parked on a Portland street.: “Question Technology”. The proud owner presumably has investigated the technology of vehicle that she drives, so she marvels at its ABS system, its fuel injection and even its motor itself. When she returns, she’ll drive back to her commune while talking on her cellphone with her gender-neutral “it”, discussing what they’ll watch with their TiVo tonight.

 

The reason colleges no longer learn their students is that they don’t want their victims to figure it out

Apparently this is supposed to be ironic

Berkeley “Income Inequality Experts ” earn more than $300,000 per year.

North Carolina Law School Poverty Law expert earns $250,000 per year teaching one class per semester.

Median salary for a women’s studies” professor is $100,000 per year. The average hourly earnings for a graduate with a women’s studies degree? Eleven bucks an hour.

As The Donald might say, “there’s something’s going on.”

And a new listing

7 Meadow Place

Nothing but some rental units reported as pending today, but we did get a new listing: 7 Meadow Place, in Old Greenwich, asking $7,965,423, the last numbers of which I assume were obtained by counting down from 6 and reversing the 2 and the 3 because, … well because. That would be a silly way to price a house, but then, this is a silly price, so appreciate the symmetry and move on.

Direct waterfront, excellent views (as you’ll note below), with a teardown house. While FAR would allow almost 8,000 sq.ft. to be built on this 0.57 acre lot (R-12), there are many other restrictions on property in the VE and AE zones, as well as set backs, so I wouldn’t want to opine on how large a house you can build.

As noted, it is nice land, but for $8 million, I’d expect a house.

Here’s the description as penned by the broker. It’s cruel to say it, but the prose is as silly as the price.

Property Description

QUALITY GREENWICH WATERFRONT COMES DOWN TO THREE ELEMENTS: (1)VIEW; (2) SUNSET OVER THE WATER IN WINTER & SUMMER AND (3) VIEWS OF NEW YORK CITY ALL THE REST ARE POSEURS. A HOUSE CAN BE BUILT ANYWHERE, THAT IS A MINOR DETAIL. BUT IF YOU HAVE A GREAT LOCATION, IT IS UNIQUE AND A FOREVER HOME. CAN YOU SEE 100 YARDS OR CAN YOU SEE 20 MILES OVER THE WATER? A SUNDOWN OVER THE WATER IS NEVER THE SAME. SOMETIMES IT IS A BIG SHOW THAT LASTS FOR AN HOUR OR SOMETIMES IT IS A MINOR SHOW. BUT YOUR DAYLIGHT ALWAYS LASTS LONGER WHEN U FACE THE SUNDOWN. IT CHANGES ALL THE TIME, WIND, NO WIND, HIGH TIDE, LOW TIDE, WINTER ICE, SHIMMERING SUMMER LIGHT, IT IS NEVER THE SAME. AND IF YOU CAN’T SEE NYC DURING THE DAY OR HER SHINING LIGHTS AT NIGHT, YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE MISSING.

So much for June contract, today saw four new July ones, three of which are in Cos Cob, where the affordable housing is

24 Sinawoy

24 Sinawoy, asking $940,000. A 1924 house, 1,400 square feet, this one’s going to need a lot of work, but for what passes as entry every housing in Greenwich, it could be a charmer. And depending on how restrained its new owner are in renovation costs, they should make out in the future.

59 Valleywood

59 Valleywood Road, also in Cos Cob, asking $1.225 million. The seller paid $1.075 for it in 2004 and fixed it up nicely. Valleywood’s a good street.

21 Lia Fail

21 Lia Fail, Cos Cob asking $1.495 million for just 3 of its (apron.) 6 acres. You can’t subdivide this piece, even though it’s in the Ra-1 zone, and you certainly can’t the remaining piece. I think the sellers may have made a mistake only selling the one lot, because, it may prove difficult to sell the other. They paid $2.2 for the entire parcel in 2004.

But of far more interest, to me, is the marvelous marble amphitheater on the grounds, built by the husband of the former owner, Madelyn O’Neil, in 1940. O’Neil’s husband, an architect and set designer, built it in the late 30s, employing the same masons who’d just finished building the Lincoln Memorial in D.C. and, during those Depression years, were looking for work. The amphitheater served for years as a neighborhood theatre, until the neighbors complained too much and ended it.One dubious distinction: Jane Fonda performed on the stage as a very young Greenwich Academy student. No mention of her appearing with any Viet Cong or other communists, though.

Madelyn O’Neil’s obituary is here. She, and her extended family, were an astonishing crew, in the very best way.

And leaving Cos Cob for the more mundane mid-country, but on the street with the funny name, 18 Dingletown has a contract. It’s asking $1.899, which I suppose is sort of about the right range for this perfectly nice, if boring home. It sold for $2.4 million in the crazy years – 2005, in this case), and then again during the crash – 2012, for $1.735. Those buyers; the current sellers, spruced it up a bit and put it back up for sale in 2015 at $2.295 and, a year and some price cuts later, have a buyer. One hopes they didn’t spend a lot of money on that sprucing up, because it’s not coming back.

18 Dingletown Road

Contracts May-June

A reader asked, so I looked it up. Looks like we saw the following numbers of contract for single family homes in May and June:

May, 2016: 108

May, 2015: 132

June, 2016: 106

June, 2015: 115

 

And the anti-humanity faction grows again

You can be sure there are no chemicals in OUR food!

VT’s law requiring “genetically modified” foods to be labelled takes effect today.

Related story: 100 Nobel Prize winners in medicine accuse Greenpeace of killing children

More than 100 Nobel laureates have come together to sign a letter accusing Greenpeace of “crimes against humanity” for the environmental group’s anti-scientific stand against genetically modified organisms, in particular the group’s effort to stop the use of a kind of rice aimed at eradicating vitamin A deficiency, a scourge that has killed millions in the last decade and blinded tens of millions more. The victims, according to the World Health Organization, are mostly children and pregnant mothers.

While dozens of the 107 Nobel Prize-winning signers are in fields such as physics and economics with little specific relevance to the safety of GMO foods or efforts to fight deadly global health threats, 41 of the Nobel laureates hold the distinction for their work in medicine. They represent Nobel winners from virtually every year from 1989 to 2014.

In the past, Greenpeace has blithely ignored the views of scientists, such as those convened by the National Academy of Sciences, who have repeatedly found genetically-modified food perfectly safe for humans and the environment.

 

Here’s the letter:

To the Leaders of Greenpeace, the United Nations and Governments around the world

The United Nations Food & Agriculture Program has noted that global production of food, feed and fiber will need approximately to double by 2050 to meet the demands of a growing global population. Organizations opposed to modern plant breeding, with Greenpeace at their lead, have repeatedly denied these facts and opposed biotechnological innovations in agriculture. They have misrepresented their risks, benefits, and impacts, and supported the criminal destruction of approved field trials and research projects.

We urge Greenpeace and its supporters to re-examine the experience of farmers and consumers worldwide with crops and foods improved through biotechnology, recognize the findings of authoritative scientific bodies and regulatory agencies, and abandon their campaign against “GMOs” in general and Golden Rice in particular.

Scientific and regulatory agencies around the world have repeatedly and consistently found crops and foods improved through biotechnology to be as safe as, if not safer than those derived from any other method of production. There has never been a single confirmed case of a negative health outcome for humans or animals from their consumption. Their environmental impacts have been shown repeatedly to be less damaging to the environment, and a boon to global biodiversity.

Greenpeace has spearheaded opposition to Golden Rice, which has the potential to reduce or eliminate much of the death and disease caused by a vitamin A deficiency (VAD), which has the greatest impact on the poorest people in Africa and Southeast Asia.

The World Health Organization estimates that 250 million people, suffer from VAD, including 40 percent of the children under five in the developing world. Based on UNICEF statistics, a total of one to two million preventable deaths occur annually as a result of VAD, because it compromises the immune system, putting babies and children at great risk. VAD itself is the leading cause of childhood blindness globally affecting 250,000 – 500,000 children each year. Half die within 12 months of losing their eyesight.

WE CALL UPON GREENPEACE to cease and desist in its campaign against Golden Rice specifically, and crops and foods improved through biotechnology in general;

WE CALL UPON GOVERNMENTS OF THE WORLD to reject Greenpeace’s campaign against Golden Rice specifically, and crops and foods improved through biotechnology in general; and to do everything in their power to oppose Greenpeace’s actions and accelerate the access of farmers to all the tools of modern biology, especially seeds improved through biotechnology. Opposition based on emotion and dogma contradicted by data must be stopped.

And it’s not just Vitamin A, naturally. Across the third world, rising sea levels and soil depletion are both causing widespread starvation: salt-tolerant crops could spare those people, but the anti-GM crowd is having none of it:

GM salt tolerant crops, if they existed, would be a band-aid solution to a problem that intensive and chemical agriculture has caused. The sensible answer to salination of soils is prevention by sustainable farming and water management techniques. If it’s too late for prevention, then the soil must be rebuilt by incorporating plenty of organic matter into it and planting different crops in stages according to its recovery.

This sounds very much like Miss Gore and her friend’s opposition to natural gas: let the poor people freeze whilst the proper people figure out how to come up with a Church of Gaia approved solution. That may take a few decades or so, but does that matter? The proper people will be just fine, thank you for asking.

And attention, Whole Foods shoppers: you are here today because your better forebears started genetically modifying foods 11,000 years ago.

National Academy of Science: Evolution in Agriculture: The Domestication of Wheat

When humans understand a phenomenon that occurs in nature, they often gain increased control over it or can adapt it to new uses. The domestication of wheat is a good example.

By recovering seeds from different archaeological sites and noticing changes in their characteristics over the centuries, scientists have hypothesized how wheat was altered by humans over time. About 11,000 years ago, people in the Middle East began growing plants for food rather than relying entirely on the wild plants and animals they could gather or hunt. These early farmers began saving seeds from plants with particularly favorable traits and planting those seeds in the next growing season. Through this process of “artificial selection,” they created a variety of crops with characteristics particularly suited for agriculture. For example, farmers over many generations modified the traits of wild wheat so that seeds remained on the plant when ripe and could easily be separated from their hulls. Over the next few millennia, people around the world used similar processes of evolutionary change to transform many other wild plants and animals into the crops and domesticated animals we rely on today.

In recent years, plant scientists have begun making hybrids of wheat with some of their wild relatives from the Middle East and elsewhere. Using these hybrids, they have bred wheat varieties that are increasingly resistant to droughts, heat, and pests. Most recently, molecular biologists have been identifying the genes in the DNA of plants that are responsible for their advantageous traits so that these genes can be incorporated into other crops. These advances rely on an understanding of evolution to analyze the relationships among plants and to search for the traits that can be used to improve crops.

 

This was last week’s news, but the WSJ provides a nice summary today so …

How did a top Clinton donor end up as a State Department security advisor? 

Don’t feel bad if you’ve never heard of Mr. [Rajiv K. ]Fernando, because you arguably never should have. Mr. Fernando is a one-time Chicago securities trader who in July of 2011 somehow found himself sitting on the International Security Advisory Board, with the ability to access the nation’s most sensitive intelligence.

Mr. Fernando had no background that would have qualified him to sit on the ISAB alongside the likes of former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, former Defense Secretary William Perry, a United Nations chief weapons inspector, members of Congress, and nuclear scientists. That Mr. Fernando didn’t belong was apparent. “We had no idea who he was,” one board member told ABC News. So how exactly did he get there?

We now finally know, thanks to State Department internal emails that the government was forced to turn over to the watchdog group Citizens United. And thanks to ABC News, which began digging into Mr. Fernando’s bizarre appointment when it first happened.

In August 2011, ABC requested a copy of Mr. Fernando’s resume from the State Department. This, the internal emails show, sent a press aide reeling to find answers to how a trader had ended up on the ISAB. Even the aide noted that it was “natural to ask how he got onto the board when compared to the rest of the esteemed list of members.”

The response came only a few hours later in an email from Wade Boese, chief of staff for an undersecretary of state: “The true answer is simply that S staff ( Cheryl Mills) added him,” Mr. Boese wrote. “Raj was not on the list sent to S; he was added at their insistence.”

S, in this situation, stands for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Ms. Mills, a longtime aide, was her chief of staff. Why would Hillary want to entrust the nation’s secrets to a man with no intelligence experience?

Here’s what we do know: Mr. Fernando, before his plum appointment, had given between $100,000 and $250,000 to the William J. Clinton Foundation. He had been a top bundler for Mrs. Clinton in her 2008 presidential run, and later a major Obama fundraiser. He gave tens of thousands more to a political group that helped Hillary pay off her 2008 campaign debt by renting her email list.

The 2011 emails reveal that the State Department knew it had a problem on its hands. “We must protect the Secretary’s and Under Secretary’s name,” the press aide warned. Ms. Mills, the messages say, asked staff to “stall” the news organization. Damage control came in the form of Mr. Fernando’s quick resignation, on grounds of “additional time needed to devote to his business.” Uh huh.

This is how Hillary Clinton operates. Donald Trump, for all the trouble his out-loud musings cause him, can nonetheless take credit for perfectly distilling, in five short words, what would be the defining nature of another Clinton presidency: The politics of personal profit. Give money to the Clinton Foundation; get special favors. Figure out a way to slip the Clintons some speech money, or cattle-futures trades, or donations; get rewarded in the political arena.

This is also why Mrs. Clinton kept control over her home-brew email server. The Citizens United release shows that messages about ISAB appointments were forwarded to Mrs. Clinton’s personal account—where they fell into a black hole. Were there email discussions about the personal-profit merit of appointing Mr. Fernando? Ask Mrs. Clinton’s webmaster, Bryan Pagliano. Or not. He recently invoked the Fifth during a deposition 125 consecutive times.

News organizations have also noted that Mr. Fernando is missing from the State Department website listing former ISAB members. So the department has also scrubbed the national record of actual facts. Much as it deliberately cut a portion from the video of an uncomfortable press briefing, or as the administration attempted to censor the transcript of the Orlando shooter’s 911 call.

As for Mr. Fernando, a message left on a cell number that appeared to belong to him was not returned. But he’s still bundling—this time for Mrs. Clinton’s 2016 bid. A peek at the Clinton Foundation website shows he continued to donate and is now listed as having given between $1 million and $5 million. If he keeps that up, he’ll likely be in the running to become President Hillary’s own secretary of state.

As I noted yesterday, the State Department has yet to produce a single document or an honest answer about any of Clinton’s secret dealings except under court order. It has stonewalled the press for 7 years, just like the rest of the administration, and continues to do so: Just today, it told the judge who has ordered it to produce all emails concerning the Clinton Foundation by July that it will need 27 more months to comply, We are living under the rule of a completely lawless government.

It’s business as usual at the Clinton White House

I did not have sex with that woman – is that what you’re asking?

Bill meets the Attorney General for a 30 minute private chat on the tarmac in  private (presumably unburied) jet, to “talk about our grandchildren and how old friends are doing”. Nothing whatsoever about the ongoing FBI investigation into his wife’s email crimes, and certainly they didn’t broach the subject of the House Report on Benghazi that was to be released three hours later. “Why, that would be wrong!:

Even National Public Radio is appalled.

A strange thing is uniting Democrats and Republicans in Washington: the widespread disapproval of a meeting between Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former President Bill Clinton on an airport tarmac in Arizona.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Bill Clinton Met Amid Email Investigation

Lynch told reporters that the impromptu conversation on her government aircraft in Phoenix on Monday centered on social issues, from talk of grandchildren and Clinton’s golf game to their recent travels. Nothing came up, the attorney general said, about any ongoing Justice Department investigations.

But the chat took place in the midst of an FBI investigation into the security of Hillary Clinton’s private email server, which she used to conduct government business as secretary of state. And that’s creating a major appearance problem for the presumptive Democratic nominee for the White House and the top federal prosecutor in the coOn CNN, Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., praised the attorney general for her law enforcement bona fides but offered this advice: “I think she should have said, ‘Look, I recognize you have a long record of leadership on fighting crime, but this is not the time for us to have that conversation. After the election is over, I welcome your advice and input.'”

He put her in a very difficult position.

The No. 2 Republican in the U.S. Senate, John Cornyn, had been calling for a special prosecutor to investigate the Clinton email setup since last September. In congressional hearings since then, Cornyn has pushed the attorney general about the independence of the inquiry and whether the White House was receiving updates on the status of the case.

Cornyn said the disclosure of the meeting between Bill Clinton and Lynch only heightened his concerns. “‘This incident does nothing to instill confidence in the American people that her department can fully and fairly conduct this investigation, and that’s why a special counsel is needed now more than ever,” Cornyn said in a statement.

From the standpoint of legal ethics, Lynch did nothing wrong, said New York University law school professor Stephen Gillers. Gillers said he didn’t think the attorney general needed to recuse herself from overseeing the email probe. But Gillers took a sterner tone with Bill Clinton.

“It was the height of insensitivity for the former president to approach the attorney general,” Gillers said. “He put her in a very difficult position. She wasn’t really free to say she wouldn’t talk to a former president,” after Clinton boarded her plane in Arizona.

“He jeopardized her independence and did create an appearance of impropriety going onto her plane,” Gillers added.

Gillers said he takes Lynch at her word that no sensitive law enforcement matters came up in the 30-minute airport chat.

But, he said, the episode “feeds the dominant narrative that the Clintons don’t follow the usual rules, that they’re free to have back channel communications like this one and that’s true even if we assume as I do that nothing improper was said. The public will be suspicious.”

Y’ah think? If there are two more brazen criminals in politics right now than Bill and Hillary, they’ve somehow kept under the radar. Four more years? Really?

The elite strike another blow at the poor, “for their own good”

Al Gore’s daughter has been arrested for protesting  natural gas pipeline construction project that, when completed, will bring more natural gas to New England.

Miss Gore, her bio shows, is a graduate of The Cathedral School, Harvard University and Columbia Law School, and is married (though now separated) to a biotech venture capitalist. It is unlikely, in other words, that she has suffered financial difficulties in the past nor is she likely, much as we might wish it, to do so in the future. But what about the people she wants to deprive of natural gas?  Different story.

Natural gas produces 28% less CO2 per heating unit than fuel oil which is something Miss Gore and her Buddhist friends who accompanied her to Boston profess to be concerned about. Far more important to real people, as opposed to glitterati nitwits like Gore, is the cost of heating their homes. Here’s the  Massachusetts Department of Energy calculations on the difference between fuels : Natural gas, $879 ; fuel oil, $2,248; propane, $2,569. There are no other heating alternatives in New England (leaving aside wood stoves: impractical in cities, highly polluting elsewhere). There are no unicorn shit/biomass plants, no solar energy plants, nothing. The choice for a New England homeowner is to use one of those three fuels or freeze in the dark. We know what Miss Gore would choose for the peasants – I wonder whether Donald Trump would agree?

There’s a buyer for every house, but sometimes it can take a while to find him

48 Locust

48 Locust Road, waaaay up to our west, reports a contract It was asking $1.850 million yesterday, but it started off at $2.950 in 2007 and stayed around there through 2009 before being pulled. It’s been back on for 400 days now at this price, and patience seems to have paid off.

The buyers paid $2,397,500 for it in 2005 and must have spent some real money renovating it, so that isn’t such a good deal. I liked the house, a lot,; but hated the price, back when it was for sale back in 2005 because, although it was in rough shape, it still had a lot of its 1850 charm and the grounds were beautiful. The grounds are still nice, but I don’t see any of the original farmhouse left which, to my taste, is too bad.