This should be interesting to watch

News that Obama secretly seized the telephone records of AP reporters  is twisting progressives’ knickers into knots: who do they side with here? Up til now they’ve offered fully supine support to the Man from Kenya, dismissing his gun running scheme to Mexico and the lies that accompanied it, his refusal to close Gitmo, his expansion of the drone war against US citizens, the Benghazi cover up, and on and on, because he was their ruler and could do no wrong.

But now he’s turned on the other institution that can do no wrong, the liberal press. Who’s right? Who’s wrong? Oh, how can they decide?  Their immediate response, I predict, will be to pull a Fudrucker: “nothing to see here, move along, move along”, but if the media keeps the story alive, and this is one story it won’t ignore, the progressives will be forced to choose. My second prediction: they’ll get in line as directed by their Stalin; they’ve certainly done that so far.

The Obama administration has aggressively investigated disclosures of classified information to the media and has brought six cases against people suspected of providing classified information, more than under all previous presidents combined.

Disaster averted

 

Armed and dangerous

Muslim arrested at airport when pressure cooker discovered in his luggage.

FBI surrounds house of Muslim student in Michigan when he’s seen using a pressure cooker (to cook rice).

In the first case, the traveller had torn a page out of his passport, which understandably gave rise to suspicion, but we do have a tendency to fetishize objects in this country, rather than focus on human actors. Plastic guns or for that matter, real guns, are an example.

Washington D.C. group forces Maine boat building class to cancel its blessing of the fleet

Interesting how everything is a national issue now, no matter how small, no matter how harmless.

SOUTH BRISTOL (WGME) — A centuries-old maritime tradition has been dropped from a local school ceremony. An interest group out of Washington D.C. threatened legal action if the South Bristol boat building program didn’t eliminate it’s Blessing of the Fleet at its end of the year boat launch.Every Friday the Boatshop at the Maine Maritime Museum turns into a classroom. It’s been that way for the past 16 years, but this year a piece of that tradition will be lost – because of this cease and desist letter.What happens inside the Boatshop isn’t changing but when South Bristol principal Scott White got the letter from American’s United, he knew a longstanding tradition was in jeopardy.

The Washington, D.C.-based group threatened legal action if the school didn’t drop it’s Blessing of the Fleet. The blessing is the culmination of a year-long boat building program for eighth graders, but American’s United says it is a direct violation of the first amendment.

There will still be a ceremonial launch, but for the first time in the programs history, without the centuries-old maritime ritual.

 

Busy times

Four more accepted offers move from the active roster.

6 Carriage Drive

6 Carriage Drive, $1.499 million.

958 Lake Ave

958 Lake Avenue. 6,000 sq. ft., 4 acres, $1.749. Pays to head north, if you don’t absolutely have to live in Riverside.

 

 

 

312 Sound Beach Ave

312 Sound Beach Avenue, $1.740. This sold for just $1.330 in February, 2012, but was totally renovated. Still, I suspect the owners did well here.

21 Lake Drive

21 Lake Drive, Riverside, $2.495. Couldn’t sell last year, but that was last year. We’re in a different market now.

And more again

Sales and accepted offers

38 Bramble Lane sold for $1.535 million, 12 days. In a way, I’m beginning to understand the feeding frenzy that’s hit Bramble and Hearthstone: buy land at $1.4 or, now, $1.535, build a 4,000 sq. ft. house for $1 million more and you’re in what is suddenly a $3.4 million neighborhood for $2.5. Good deal for end users, a tidy profit for builders. What still perplexes me is why anyone would pay $3.4 million to live on either of these streets.

And speaking of perplexing, 35 Boulder Brook has an accepted offer after just 28 days on the market, priced at $1.650 million. This is what I’d consider a teardown, the house sits on the only patch of dry land on the lot and all in all, held no attraction for my clients or me. But we’re certainly not the final arbitrators of anything, and someone obviously disagrees with our opinion.

71 Riverside Lane, still under construction and priced at $1.9 million, has a buyer. Ah, okay …..

22 Cherry Tree Lane

22 Cherry Tree Lane, down in Riverside’s Harbor Point neighborhood, finally has a buyer; asking price was $5.195 million. A beautiful house of top-level quality, but it was small. Not an issue for some buyers but my own clients have three children and though they absolutely loved this home, its lack of a playroom or space for one persuaded them to look elsewhere.  But what a great house. Its first price, by the way, was $6.995 back in June, 2011, and the broker who carried and marketed it since then through all its price cuts was dumped last month for another, who now gets to collect. Unfair, perhaps, but that’s the usual pattern of real estate sales, and is the risk incurred when a broker agrees to take on an overpriced listing.

And by gosh, here’s still more real estate activity

Six of note:  two sales, two accepted offers, two busted deals.

6 LEDGE

6 Ledge Road, OG, sold for $3 million. I liked this house when I saw it and said so here, but I’m a little surprised that it found a buyer so (relatively) quickly, between its age – I see charm, many buyers see dated – and the whole Hurricane Sandy/FEMA stuff. Its sale should reassure other homeowners down in the flood zone.

55 Will Merry Lane

And here’s a lesson: 55 Will Merry Road, once listed at $3.750, found a buyer at $2.8 million. It’s not an architectural masterpiece and backs up to the Merritt, but someone bought it, and that will come as a surprise to at least one of my clients, who saw it, shared my opinion as to its merits (or Merritts) and doubted it would ever sell. Hey, we were both wrong.

5 West End Court

5 West End Court, $970,000, Old Greenwich,  has a contract after 19 days. This one I get.

4 Cove Ridge

And one of my favorite houses in town, 4 Cove Ridge, also in Old Greenwich, has a contract, asking price $3.875, 40 days on the market. Great views, very appealing (to me) design, great area. Again, though, I’m a little surprised that the FEMA regs didn’t interfere with this one’s sale. (UPDATE: Reader Toonces says it’s at 15.75 feet, new FEMA rules set 13′ as the magic level, so that explains it).

8 Dempsey

8 Dempsey, $8.950 million, is back on the market after reporting an accepted offer last month (thanks, Mickster, for bringing this to my attention). I have no knowledge of what went awry, nor will I speculate; real estate deals fall apart all the time, for too many reasons to even hazard a guess as to cause.

14 Sandy Lane

14 Sandy Lane, on and off the market since 2006, when it asked $2.975 million, reported an accepted offer last month, when it was down to $1.895. Its listing specifically warned “impacted by Merritt parkway”, so whatever went wrong, it presumably wasn’t because the buyer suddenly discovered cars whizzing by the  kitchen. It’s a lot of house, if you can tolerate the traffic.

Weekend’s over, so there’s some real estate news to report

 

11 Norton Lane

11 Norton Lane, Hillcrest Park, sold for $1.275 million, which is a pretty good price (for the buyer) – house could use some renovation, but a full acre in  a nice neighborhood. This home’s history offers yet another example of real estate agents’ inability to price their own homes objectively. It started out a year ago asking $1.695.

8 Dartmouth

And while 8 Dartmouth Road, Cos Cob, is not owned by a real estate agent, it too had some difficulty with its first asking price, $2.395 million, in 2010 and reaching an accepted offer status just today, at a price of $1.795 (and, presumably, a selling price less than that). I thought it was an interesting house with great attraction for some buyers, but it definitely needed some modernization and the “yard” – boulders and cliffs, mostly, posed a challenge for families with young children. That said, I can see why someone would choose this: not everyone wants a colonial, thank goodness.

11 Watchill, over in the west, also has an accepted offer, after just 21 days. I didn’t see it, but it was asking $1.266 (don’t ask me), and looks like a good amount of house for that price.

White House: we believe in spontaneous generation

 

 

Don’t look for Indians on THIS land bridge!

For Indians, anyway. “Unless you’re a Native American, you came from someplace else.”

We were taught that at least three successive waves of Indians came to America, but that’s obviously the old, dead white men’s theory. Obama’s view is so much better.

More thuggery at the IRS

Not just Tea Party organizations, not just those encouraging the study of constitutional rights and not just pro-Israeli groups, it turns out the IRS was harassing any groups who dared questioned the federal government’s policies at all.

The Internal Revenue Service’s scrutiny of conservative groups went beyond those with “tea party” or “patriot” in their names—as the agency admitted Friday—to also include ones worried about government spending, debt or taxes, and even ones that lobbied to “make America a better place to live,” according to new details of a government probe.

The investigation also revealed that a high-ranking IRS official knew as early as mid-2011 that conservative groups were being inappropriately targeted—nearly a year before then-IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman told a congressional committee the agency wasn’t targeting conservative groups.

“Did the IRS threaten any liberal groups?” asked Greenwich Democrat Chairman Francie Fudrucker. “No? Then what’s the beef? Let’s move on.”

UN: eat more bugs

So while Whole Foods now carries locusts and cockroaches, this A&P refuses to do so

I always thought that the ultimate goal of the Mother Gaia crowd was to reduce us to eating dirt and sticks but the new world order has now permitted us to expand our menu.

Hey, works for me, but I wonder how the progressive ladies will take it

Greenwich Democratic Party members protest at Tod’s Point?

Boston bomber’s mosque: beat your women (but only as a last resort, if they refuse to obey).

“Hinting at punishment is an effective means of discipline, so the reason for hanging up a whip or stick in the house was explained in another report, where the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said: ‘Hang up the whip where the members of the household can see it, for this is more effective in disciplining them,’”

“Hitting is not the way to discipline; it is not to be resorted to, except when all other means are exhausted, or when it is needed to force someone to do obligatory acts of obedience As to those women on whose part you fear ill-conduct, admonish them (first), (next), refuse to share their beds, (and last) beat them (lightly, if it is useful)’”

Well if they just won’t listen, what are you going to do?