Walt’s advice for other manly men

Dead men walking

She's also a member of the NEA and teaching your kid

Well voting, anyway. Two million or so.  Who knew there were that many Democrat zombies?

Reward your friends, punish your enemies

This one's for you, Chuck!

Obummer cuts funding for Republican Kansas’s bio-security project, restores it for Democrat Chuck Schumer’s Plum Island, New York facility. 300 jobs @$75,000 and up, gone. I’m not a huge fan of our entire Homeland Security Agency and in fact I’d like to see it abolished but this seems pretty typical of security as practiced by Obummer.

Of course, Plato warned against exactly this behavior in a democracy; no one listened then and they aren’t listening now.

TOPEKA, Kan. — Kansas officials were stunned and upset Monday to learn that President Barack Obama recommended no additional funding for construction of a new biosecurity lab, jeopardizing a high-visibility project that the state had seen as a powerful engine of economic growth.

The spending plan from Obama also said the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will reassess the viability of the National Bio- and Agro-defense Facility planned for Manhattan, near Kansas State University. The project would cost an estimated $650 million and would replace an aging facility at Plum Island, N.Y.

The Junior League gets to work

Ridding Greenwich of park poopers and keeping our Sound Waters clean. Nice work, ladies.

Organic, local and sustainable too!

I have the best readers in the world

Kat Fountain busking

Kat’s string band picked up over $1,000 from readers of this blog alone in their quest for a new used van. She still isn’t impressed by her old man but you guys bowled her over.

Thank you, from her and of course from me.

Water taxi, but not yet a van

No real estate action

I’ve been out with buyers almost every day the past few weeks – just got back, in fact – and I’m hardly the only agent who’s busy, but there sure isn’t much being reported in actual, you know, sales. Prices are still too high for the most part but we’re beginning to see some rationality even in new listings. The problem, as I see it, is that the bankers are having to adjust to the new world of limited bonuses and that makes them unhappy. After someone has found a house he likes at, say, $3.5, it’s tough to reconcile himself to a $2.1 house. Naturally, he wants that $3.5 house for the $2.1 price. Hey, I represent buyers almost exclusively so I hope my guys can get the house they want but there is going to have to be some major adjustments on the sellers’ part for that to happen.

Or the sellers can hang on and wait for the banks to recover. That could happen, I suppose – maybe in five years?

And here’s our next school facilities director

Didn't know the gun was loaded

Maine football coach and math and science teacher (in Maine, they rank duties in order of importance) quits after posting nude photo of himself on Facebook. I understand how one can be too dumb to teach math, but football?

I suppose this qualifies her to be our next school superintendent

Greenwich school facilities director quit unexpectedly Friday – the second one to do so in the past two years. It’s got to be those pizzarollis they serve on the GHS lunch line.

Off to the open house (singular) tour

Greenwich realtors head for open houses

Public schools are closed this week, no doubt so the children can stay home and consume wholesome organic foods prepared by their power nannies, so there’s not much for real estate agents to gnaw on. A few retreads in the way Back Country that, at $4 a gallon for gas, aren’t worth revisiting, one overpriced one in the same area – same response – and one that, while priced reasonably for its location, promises to be old and decrepit. But I won’t know that until I see it so off I go.

I do see one listing described as “ready for the modern family” and if it weren’t so far north I’d be tempted to go see it (again) – I’ve always wanted to meet the Jetsons.

Works for me

Upgrade to First Class, danke

The Professor opines on the TSA

TSA UPDATE:  Fliers griping over Obama ‘grope hike’.MY own take is kind of harsh:

Glenn Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor and TSA critic who blogs at Instapundit.com, slammed the fee as good money after bad — the TSA has been widely criticized for incompetence and abusive searches.

“I’m not against user fees,” Reynolds said. “But this is not a user fee. This is a fee for being used. I don’t think the TSA does any good at all. Every dollar that goes to them is a waste. More dollars is more waste. I think the TSA should be abolished.”

Reynolds, a gun rights advocate, said that with a reported $32 billion total package of proposed airport fees and cuts, “for that kind of money, they could give every frequent flier a gun, which would do more to stop hijackings than the TSA clown show.”

Walt might say that a new $8 federal fee for a grope is a pretty good deal but as for me, I want more for my money than a 6’4″ bully in a rented uniform grabbing my genitals. In fact, I’d rather just keep my money and be left alone.

Your government works even on Valentine’s Day

Reception's great since I removed the condom from the phone

Got $700 to spring for an iPhone but can’t afford a ten-cent condom? New York City’s got an app for that. When you’re spending other people’s money, neither logic nor restraint applies.

We just noticed?

Members of the RTM are concerned that Greenwich seems to be charging too little for its assets and they’re paying particular attention to Greenwich Plaza, which generates little to no income for our town, thanks to a 70-year-lease (with a 20-year extension).

Long Island Sound - now you see it, now you don't

I was 14 when this deal went down but even at that tender age I was amazed at the power local politicians had to enrich themselves and their friends at the expense of a town asleep at the wheel. If, as the Godfather said, “one man with a briefcase can steal more than one hundred men with guns”, politicians make lawyers look like the losers they are. I’m sorry now I didn’t remember that lesson as I made my career choices.

Lowell Weicker – you recall the fat fraud, don’t you? The man who brought the income tax and gambling to Connecticut? – Lowell was first Selectman back in 1967 with aspirations for higher office which his close friend, Greenwich resident and real estate developer  Harry Ashforth was willing to fund, but “for a price, Ugarte, for a price”. And that price was that Weicker “rented” Ashforth the air rights next to the Greenwich train station for a handful of magic beans and a sackful of cash delivered to “Applejack Farm” and Ashforth got to build his office complex. Until those buildings went up, there was a wonderful view of Long Island Sound from anywhere on Greenwich Avenue; not after.

So the town got screwed, Ashforth got rich(er) and Lowell shook the dust off from this podunk town and headed to Washington. The rest, sadly, is history.

Why we need more working women – it keeps them out of our schools

Giving a new meaning to "cat food'

Despite studies showing there is no correlation between school cafeteria junk food and child obesity our local PTA groups are gearing up to force tofu on our kids. They want to implement a “sustainable food menu”, whatever the hell that means, rid the halls of, horrors, frozen fruits, meat and vegetables and substitute “fresh” tomatoes for canned ones. This for a school system that can’t teach math or produce college graduates.

“Better healthy and dumb than brilliant and stuffed with trans fats”, says Heather MacAlister, PTA’s Vice President for Stupidity and Useless Gestures. “We’ve seen what happens when we send bright, poisoned children into the world,” she continued, “they ruin it! So why spend any more time doing that when we can devote the school day to activities like Diversity Week, acting classes for the Mediocre and Talentless and sustainable backyard gardening? Let the Chinese rule the world; we’ll be the healthier and happier for it.”

Just out of curiosity, where does one find a fresh tomato in Connecticut during February? Blueberries? Foie gras? And who, other than a hack who’s figured out how to scam well intentioned, bored and over educated mommies, is John  Turenne, “consultant and president of Wallingford-based Sustainable Food Systems”, the food guru who, for a fee, will attempt to substitute  chicken drum sticks for their cousin, the chicken nugget? Everyone loves a fraud artist and Greenwich attracts them by the dozen, but do we need this particular one in our schools?