Huh – coming up to 10 million

That didn’t take long

A friend of Clint’s sends along this post-debate aftermath shot.

The Tingle’s Gone

Chris Matthews’ melt-down after Obama’s performance.

Greenwich Time completes its conversion to a Democrat mouthpiece

A quick scan of the Internet shows an almost universal consensus that Romney whupped Barry’s ass in tonight’s debate. Our Greenwich Time, however, saw it differently and only grudging admits that Romney “held his own”.

Screen shot, Greenwich Time 11:15 pm

And now I remember why I don’t watch presidential debates

I did try, but turned it off. Lies from Obummer, mindless repetition of his handlers’ talking points and that’s it from our president. And as a debater, Romney is a fine Olympic Games organizer. When Obumpski refers to the economic success of the Clinton years the only response needed is “Clinton wasn’t president these past four years, you were – how’d that work out?”

Romney should be relentless in keeping the heat on Obummer’s actual record because Obummer is doing everything he can to avoid that scrutiny. The lackey press is on board with that effort – this was Romney’s chance to go over their heads and speak truth to the American public. He wasn’t doing that during the few minutes I was watching.

Bah.

It was pablum like this that inspired me to write about real estate to begin with

A reader sends along this story from Westport, written by an agent desperate to maintain the illusion that all is well. If you thought the Greenwich market was bad, Westport’s has passed through rigor mortis and is relaxed again, limp and beginning to stink. The author describes the situation as “a little unsteady” but hell, stretched prone on the ground, limbs outstretched and begging for it from the rear is about as steady as it gets.

It was quite a unique week for real estate sales in Westport. The average sales price for the six homes that were sold was less than $700,000.

—

Out of the nearly 320 homes currently for sale, there are 81 homes available under $1 million, and as things go, more of those “lower tier” properties sold last week than they have in any seven-day period in years.

There have been various and varying reports about the state of the real estate market in Fairfield County, and also in Westport. Some are extremely positive, and others point to a still distressed and bleak market

—

All that being noted, while some segments of the market are doing better than others, its certainly not continued “doom and gloom” as far as values are concerned, and one week doesn’t mean the bottom is about to fall out. We are in recovery mode—it’s still just a little unsteady.

If it comes in X-Large, I may buy one for Fudrucker

Republicans rush out a new campaign T Shirt.

Well, it might lessen the pain of watching it

Daily Caller proposes a Debate Drinking Game. They claim that you’ll be on your ass by 9:15, but I think that’s being conservative.

Even Riverside can’t always work its magic

89 Summit

89 Summit Road has cut its price from $2.250 million to $2.199. Purchased at the height of the 2007 market for $2.275, Riverside has yet to return to that level in this price range. Decent house, I thought, and perhaps this is its price.

16 Indian Head

16 Indian Head Road, $4.195  (down from $4.495) has just had its listing period extended because it couldn’t be sold this year – so far. This is a very pretty house, beautifully renovated, on 0.8 of an acre, great yard and really good location. The problem is, as I see it, that there are a lot of other houses in the low $4’s and buyers for this range are kind of sparse and definitely choosy. The owners paid full price, $3.945 million, in 2005, and again, we’re just not back to that level, for the most part.

Damn it, how many of us curmudgeons are now going to have to pass out Halloween candy?

California (and what happens in California never stays in California, alas) requires sex offenders to post signs on residences saying, “no candy at this house”.  That’s fine for convicted child molesters, I suppose, but what about those of us who, having stopped loading apples with razor blades years ago, now content ourselves with hiding behind our curtains in a darkened house – what will the neighbors think?

Maybe I’ll just give out Halloween meats.

How can I miss you when you won’t go away?

 

17 Sherwood

17 Sherwood Avenue, that bank-owned antique property listed at $1.895 million and reported as having an accepted offer back on September 21, is back. Don’t know what happened, but this sold for $3.150 in 2007, and while it has a sort of funky layout, it also has beautiful land, a nice pool and a brand new kitchen, among other amenities. Seems like good value, to me.

If it were done when t’is done, then t’were well it were done quickly.

 

Sky by PhotoShoppe (fluffy clouds extra)

126 Parsonage Road has been marked down today to $3.925 million. It started off in February, 2011 at $4.975, so this has been a slow climb down to get to a million dollar reduction. The house sold new, by the way, for $3.650 million in 2001, so this new price looks pretty good.

What the media won’t tell you: Obama was for cutting Medicare before he was against it

Because, despite all evidence to the contrary, even Obama is bright enough to understand that to save it in any form it has to be reduced to a sustainable level of spending. We haven’t heard from that useful idiot Dollar Bill today – wonder if he knows that Hitler’s invaded Russia and it’s time to begin demanding the opening of a second front now?

JOE SCARBOROUGH, HOST: Wait. So you’ve got a document where Barack Obama is saying we’ve got to cut Medicare $250 billion, which I think is responsible. But his campaign team is going out there every day saying, “Watch out. We’re not going to cut Medicare, but Mitt Romney is.”

WOODWARD: Yeah, and, I mean, it’s not just his campaign team. It’s the president himself. He says, “We’re going to reform and strengthen Medicare for the long haul the right way by reducing the cost of health care – everyone would agree with that – not by shifting it onto seniors.” Well, in his own documents, he says, “We have to do this.” When I talked to him, he realized and said very openly that it’s irresponsible to not address this.

SCARBOROUGH: Let’s play a clip that you were alluding to. Go ahead and roll it.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA, JULY 21, 2011: All the Democrats felt that for Democrats to join with Republicans in anything that could be painted as a Medicare cut when there was a huge difference between Democratic and Republican positions on Medicare generally was bad politics. It’s an untenable position to say we’re not going to do anything on Medicare and Medicaid when that’s one of the biggest drivers of our budget deficit.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

This doesn’t lend encouragement to the downtown revival movement

The Nancy Pelosi school of real estate sales: You have to buy it to know what’s in it (at least we know it has electric and telephone service).

If there even is one, that is. 29 Ridge Street was purchased for $1.375 million in the beginning of 2008, just before the market collapse, “totally renovated” in 2012, and just sold for $1.280. I never saw the house and perhaps that  renovation was limited to the “new windows and baths” mentioned in the listing, but Ridge is a nifty little street close to everything and I’d have expected the owners of this house to at least get their money back.

Maybe the low price was caused by there being just one picture of it? Surely not, but when there are no interior shots, one wonders what’s been done inside.

Price reductions

 

The Dalai Lama will see you now

26 Ferncliff originally asked $1.980 back at the beginning of the year (and if it can hold on til next spring, its picture will be current again) and has been reduced today to $1.820 million. I’ve always liked this house but then, I have odd tastes in houses, so beware. The owners paid $1.480 for it in 2004 and then renovated. If you could get those renovations for free, that would be nice. If memory serves, there’s not much in the yard to interest anyone but a geologist, but you’ll save on lawn mower upkeep and free up your weekends (I write this pretending that people still attend to their yards in Greenwich).

2 Conyers Farm is now asking $5.895, down from $7.995 in 2009. This is, I think, the same parcel that sold for $9.5 million in 2007 and then sold at a loss to the current owners for $4.050 in 2005. It’s a gate keeper’s cottage, renovated, on ten acres next to but outside of the lower gate, comprised mostly of swamp, though there is an approved building site. Personally, I don’t understand why someone paid $4 million for this, let alone $9.5, but that’s what makes a polo game.

Eat your broccoli!

School system to install security cameras to monitor kids tossing their vegetables? It’s considering it. And those citizens who long for a government that will tell them exactly what to do and think and how to do it will cheer.

Why Dollar Bill can’t think: the destruction of the liberal arts curriculum

John Silber would have liked me – for lunch

Those readers of a certain age may remember when a degree in philosophy, history or even, sometimes, English was evidence that the holder had been trained to think independently and write clearly. Perhaps that’s a false memory, created from a nostalgic dream of Eden, but I had some pretty demanding professors in school. Even by the early 70’s, though, the dingbats had invaded and begun to dominate their respective fields of study.

But today? Well, here’s how our top academics intend to occupy themselves  at the upcoming national convention of “historians”. These are the people you are entrusting your children and your money to. The collapse of the higher education bubble can’t happen soon enough.

If you doubt that leftist activists now dominate the study and teaching of U.S. history, take a look at the program for the 2013 American Historical Association conference in New Orleans. The pattern  is similar to the University of Michigan’s history department, discussed here yesterday—a heavy emphasis on race, class, and gender, with more “traditional” topics frequently reconfigured to conform to the dominant paradigm.

On a panel entitled “Using Oral History for Social Justice Activism,” scholars look at their partnership with “activists” seeking to undermine “the dominant historical narrative.” Yet the “narrative” that these social justice activists pursue seems to conform to, rather than undermine, the academic status quo—Chicano activists, anti-war activists “working in G.I. Coffee houses,” and “Shirley Chisholm’s best friend, secretary and hairdresser.” It’s hard to imagine much opposition in the contemporary academy to exploring the history of any type of underrepresented racial or ethnic groups—or certainly anti-war activists.

The sweet spot, however, are panels that found a way to combine all three elements of the academy’s holy trinity: race, class, and gender. (Indeed, it appears that for U.S. history panels, the AHA has selected as many papers on African-American women specifically as on U.S. women’s history as a whole.) Take, for instance, a panel entitled, “Beyond Sally Hemings: Sex, Race, and Memory in Nineteenth-Century America,” which features such papers as “Progressive Fictions and the Sexing of Jim Crow.” Using only-in-academia language, the panelists state that they want to “consider the political and cultural work composing, sharing, and historicizing these narratives does, and how it has allowed historical subjects to speak—even obliquely—about lives experiences, desires, and anxieties that otherwise might have remained obscured.  We try to make sense of these stories—and their reception—as part of the incomplete historical record, and in light of the pressures on people in those times and ours.”

The most striking element of the AHA program, however, came in how many of the panels devoted to topics that could be deemed “traditional” (U.S. diplomatic, military, political, constitutional) are arranged  to conform to the race/class/gender paradigm. …

The existence of such topics should provide a reminder to outside observers of the academy—that even when colleges and universities have on staff professors who describe their research specialties as subfields considered more “traditional,” much of the time it’s just more obsessive concern race, gender and class. Few people outside the academy, after all,  would expect to study the Cold War through “the conflation of sexual and political agendas.”

It’s early, but this may already be the dumbest question of the day

 

Polling Place

Strip club brings pole dancers to downtown Hartford and Courant editor wonders why. Yes, the questioner is a woman, but if she has to ask, she’ll never know.

Calling on public officials to denounce, or asking whether such indecent behavior should be legal, is too easy. For Hartford residents, and all people of Connecticut, we should instead ask what leads a business to think parading pole-dancing women down Main Street in Hartford, is overall, a good idea. Really. What were they thinking?

Matt Damon was unavailable to star in this one

Anti-plastic bag ad funded by Chinese reusable bag company.

The infographic tracks the origins of bags from their crude oil beginnings to their ocean-floor resting place. It also contains visuals of imperiled whales, dolphins, and seagulls.

Factory Direct makes similar claims on its website, and connects plastic bags to the West Nile Virus. “Plastic bag ban could save lives,” one blog post contends.

However, Factory Direct neglects to mention the threat to life by the reusable bags it produces.

The product manufactured by FDP was linked earlier this year by health officials in Oregon to a strain of norovirus that afflicted a girls youth soccer team.

A 2011 study by the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) found reusable bags contained high levels of lead. CCF focused on testing bags that were constructed from “nonwoven polypropylene,” which is the most commonly used material in reusable grocery bags and typically made in China.