Geeze, are we going to have to apologize to AJ?

I missed this in the comments until now, but the story that the FBI missed tracking Bomber No.1 during his trip to Russia because his name was misspelled is absolute, pure, unadulterated bullshit. EOS is quite right: you cannot travel if your ticket and your identification documents don’t match exactly – I know; I had to have tickets reissued to include my middle initial because I use one on my passport. If Mugsy was allowed to board a plane to Russia using an assumed or even a misspelled name, it’s because the FBI wanted him to, and that leads to the interesting speculation, why?

Uh oh – Local Greenwich Democrat rock star’s in the pokey

Lee Whitnum arrested for trespassing.

Reached for comment, Greenwich Democrat Town Committee Chairman, Vice, William Gaston defended his party’s recent candidate: “hey, at least she’s not a Muslim, NTTAWWT – at least she’s not that!”

Lee Whitnum, Greenwich Democrat

Separated at Birth?

William Gaston, Greenwich Democrat

They’re Muslims: so?

Anyone consider it might just be attributable to a bad case of poutine poisoning?

Two would-be bombers arrested in Canada as they plotted to blow up passenger train. Liberals in both the US and Canada urged their fellow citizens not to rush to judgment, not to assume  that this has anything to do with Muslim terrorists. Yes,  Chiheb Esseghaier, 30, and Raed Jaser, 35, had been assisted with …something by Al-Qaeda in Iran, but that didn’t necessarily mean that their blood thirsty religion was involved and certainly shouldn’t be interpreted to cast suspicion on the Iranian government itself. Atlantic’s resident scholar Megan Garber weighs in:

We have new license to think beyond categories (and metaphors, and stereotypes). Their lives were like all of ours: full of small incongruities that build and blend to drive us in different directions. Another thing we think we know about the two [scum bags] is that they lived in  [two of Canada’s richest cities – okay, only cities, but you get the drift here], near a gas station. And a retirement home. And an auto-body shop. And a really good cafe that serves homemade ice cream. As a place it is tranquil and gritty, urban and not at all. It is messy and busy and real.

One day, the brothers left [to go blow the legs off little girls and shred bodies of people they’ve never met]. And to understand why they did that — to have even a prayer of progressing towards a world where two more young men don’t do that — we have to embrace complexity.

Well now we’ll test exactly how strong the non-Riverside/OG market is

 

88 Birch

88 Birch Lane couldn’t sell at $1.9 million in 2011. Now it’s back, unchanged, asking $2.3. $400,000 + better? Maybe.

Libertarianism for young people

One of my daughters sent me this link (can’t get it to post as the video, but you know how to click, don’t you?). Too bad they didn’t show this to her class in high school, but better late than never.

UPDATE: Hmm – there are (at least) two videos at this link. The second one is 13 minutes and that’s the one I’m referring to.

http://www.knowledgeoftoday.org/2012/01/american-dream-with-international.html?m=1

More on that Turkish March that NBC claims may have inspired the Boston Bombers

Okay, I’ll admit it: this one might indeed have set them off.

Yes, this spring market is far better than last (for sellers)

154 Stanwich Rd

154 Stanwich Road, $3.850 million, has a contract. I liked this house when it was first offered for sale in 2003 but I thought it overpriced at $4.750. Those whose opinions actually count, buyers, obviously thought so too, and it was pulled. It’s been on and off the market at various times and lower prices over the past ten years, but after failing to sell for $4.1250 last year it was withdrawn and only came back this month, April 12th, at $3.850 and now has almost immediately found a buyer. I’m sure its lower price helped, but so has this new, improved market.

Good house and I’m glad to see a healthy sale on Stanwich. There have been plenty over the years, of course, but like much of the town, not many since 2008, which was making things difficult when dealing with bank appraisers. This will help.

Nice house, on the golf course. I think the buyers will love it.

Contract on Londonderry

 

15 Londonderry

15 Londonderry, $1.395 million , 33 days. Some Merritt noise, but shielded in part by the house behind it. Two acres, mostly in front. It could be gutted and redone, I suppose, but the fact that it went directly from active to executed contract suggests (but does not necessarily mean) that it’s going for its land, with no mortgage or building inspection contingencies. I’d suggested it as a $1.1, $1.150 land deal to a couple of clients but they weren’t interested. Someone else was.

What? How could this happen?

 

This could all have been so easily prevented

Boston Bombers lacked permits for their guns.

The suspected terrorists accused of bombing the Boston Marathon, killing a police officer and shooting it out with cops in the streets of Watertown did not have licenses for their guns, an official tells the Associated Press:

Cambridge Police Commissioner Robert Haas tells The Associated Press in an interview Sunday that neither Tamerlan Tsarnaev nor his brother Dzhokhar had permission to carry firearms.

More than 200 rounds of ammunition were fired during the shootout with cops in the wee-hours of Friday morning after the suspects had reportedly killed Sean Collier, a 26-year-old campus policeman at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, and carjacked the driver of a Mercedes SUV.

I’m guessing they also used high capacity magazines, banned in Massachusetts since 1994. And I know, I just know they didn’t have permits for those pressure cooker bombs.

Zip!

 

41 Summit Road

41 and 103 Summit Road, Riverside, both report executed contracts this morning, just days after being put up for sale. Both are on the railroad side of Summit.

41, $1.749 million, 16 days.

103 Summit

103, $1.795, 10 days. Both claim five bedrooms; at least in 103’s case, I find that generous, but no matter.

Just wait until the full senate gets its paws on it

 

Irish Sitters

Gang of Eight loads up immigration bill with special favors for their constituents. More chicken pluckers, ski instructors and, most dangerously, Irish, and that’s just for starters.

Say goodbye to our overnight visitors?

Gourmet dining in Darien

The rest areas on I-95 are reopening soon, which should offer relief to the truck drivers who’ve been using the weigh station as a pit stop and leaving milk jugs of piss behind as a parting gift. Hey, ya gotta go, ya gotta go, but I’m sure we’ll be glad to see them go.

From the Greenwich Time article on this we learn that one of the new food shoppes will be Mac N’ Out, “which primarily serves varieties of macaroni and cheese.”

Even in the fatland of America, can there really be enough demand for tubs of macaroni to sustain a business? I’ll bet this lasts as long as a Crumbs muffin.

Glenn Reynolds suggests that maybe it just makes stupidity more apparent

Megan Garber and fellow Democrat boyfriend at Princeton

Powerline: Why Does Evil Make Liberals Stupid? Wonderful send up of some silly twit’s Atlantic article chastising stupid Americans for even considering that the Boston Bombers’ being Musselmen might have something to do with their willingness to kill and maim their fellows. Here’s a sample of the response, and the authors are just warming up – read the whole thing.

This piece in The Atlantic is a good exemplar of the mushy liberal commentary that has proliferated in recent days. Authored by one Megan Garber, it is titled: “The Boston Bombers Were Muslim: So?” Before taking a close look at Ms. Garber’s article, let’s advise The Atlantic not to put away that headline. It could come in handy so often. “The Cole Bombers Were Muslim: So?” “The Embassy Bombers Were Muslim: So?” “The First World Trade Center Bombers Were Muslim: So?” “The September 11 Bombers Were Muslim: So?” “The Madrid Bombers Were Muslim: So?” “The London Bombers Were Muslim: So?” “The Shoebomber Was Muslim: So?” The Underwear Bomber Was Muslim: So?” “The Fort Hood Shooter Was Muslim: So?” “The Beslan Child-Murderers Were Muslim: So?” “The Times Square Bomber Was Muslim: So?”

UPDATE: Weep for our country – Miss Garber is the product of what were once considered respectable institutions of learning: “Megan holds an honors B.A. in English from Princeton University and an M.S. from Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, where she’s served as an adjunct professor.”

Here’s a sample of Garber’s prose and her “thought”:

Particularly when we have so much access to people’s interior lives through social media — this Twitter feed seems to be Dzhokar’s, and it is revealing — we have new license to think beyond categories (and metaphors, and stereotypes). We have new ways to bolster our categories — “Muslim,” “Chechen,” “Causasian” — with the many caveats they deserve. The Tsarnaev brothers may have been Muslim, and that circumstance may have, in part, motivated them in their actions on Monday. They may have been Chechen. They may have been male. But that was not all they were. Their lives were like all of ours: full of small incongruities that build and blend to drive us in different directions. Another thing we think we know about the brothers is that they lived in the middle of one of America’s richest cities, near a gas station. And a retirement home. And an auto-body shop. And a really good cafe that serves homemade ice cream. As a place it is tranquil and gritty, urban and not at all. It is messy and busy and real.

One day, the brothers left it for Boston. And to understand why they did that — to have even a prayer of progressing towards a world where two more young men don’t do that — we have to embrace complexity.

Powerline: The United States is full of people whose lives, like those of the Tsarnaev brothers, are “full of small incongruities,” and who live close to auto body shops, gas stations, retirement homes, and cafes that serve homemade ice cream. And yet almost none of those Americans feel an irresistible urge to fill a pressure cooker full of ball bearings and detonate it, in hopes of killing or maiming hundreds of their fellow citizens. The distinguishing feature here is not the ice cream, it is the pressure cooker full of ball bearings. I have no idea what Ms. Garber thinks it means to “embrace complexity,” but if she means that we should let the perpetrators of the Marathon Massacre, or any who might have aided them, off the hook, then I say that she is a typically clueless liberal.

PAUL adds: I doubt that Garber has any clear idea of what she means in her incoherent closing paragraphs. All she knows, I suspect, is that if she wrote such claptrap in a college paper it would get her an “A” and that if she submitted it as a writing sample, it might well get her a job.