Here’s a boost for open immigration

Eight-year-old girl raped by four boys. Her father blames her, doesn’t want her back. Fresh from Liberia, it seems, where this is the controlling ethos, but why are they here?

Newspapers fight back

The Associated Press, owned by 1400 newspapers in this country, wants bloggers (and Google) to  stop doing this. If you link to their content they want payment. The counter argument, that links drive readers to their member papers, doesn’t seem to mollify them because they can’t seem to make money from readers. Well if it happens, my guess is that bloggers will work around it. Blogging became a worldwide phenomenon on September 11 and the days and weeks after that tragedy, as readers wanted the latest news and scoured the world internet to find it. Individual papers never understood that desire or responded to it: for example, Greenwich Time updates its web site once a day, after the print version has been set. That’s typical, and readers are no longer content to wait 24 hours for updates. So I think this is just one more losing battle in conventional journalism’s doomed battle to survive.

President Obama apologizes

The Prez called the Cambridge officer and apologized. That was good enough for the officer, it ought to be good enough for all of us. There are enough problems facing our country. Besides, it’s a class act for the powerful to admit they’re wrong. Good for Obama.

The shape of things to stay

Greenwich YMCA circa 2020

Here’s one to watch

26 Mohawk Lane

This huge (13,000 sq.ft.) house was listed at $8 million in 2006 and I never thought it would sell for anywhere like that amount – not on Mohawk Lane, off of Stag Lane, off of Stanwich and in one of the less convenient areas of town. It took years but it did sell, and for $7.5 million. Shows what I know.

And now I may be about to be shown up again because it’s back on the market for even more, $7.850 million and I still don’t think anyone will pay that much, four-car garage and elevator notwithstanding. I mean, couldn’t I at least get a pool for that kind of money?

But we’ll see. Someone liked it enough to pay through the nose for it last year and maybe there’s another ..er, “buyer” waiting in the wings now, too.

land values sinking

I haven’t seen 109 Dingletown Road yet because it just came on today but it’s 1 1973 builder’s special with a weird layout (just 2 bedrooms upstairs, for instance), no updates and those magic code words “not a drive by” which of course means, it is a drive by – keep going. But it’s on 2.3 acres of land so it must be worth something as a building lot. Its assessed value is $1.9 million so someone in the assessor’s office thought it was worth a fair bit of change a few years ago. Its opening price today is just $1.649 – significantly down from where it would have started in 2005. And where it ends up ….

Obama channels Nixon: it’s the media’s fault!

Obama now says that the press is to blame for him calling that Cambridge cop stupid. Too bad that newsconference was televised.