Engagement, Muslim Style

UPDATE, Prescience Dept.: I posted this picture yesterday, before it was disclosed that the latest California massacre was perpetrated by Muslim newlyweds.

It figures.

Oh, you shouldn’t have! Tee hee

Price cut on the Belle Haven peninsula

495 Field Point Road

495 Field Point Road, originally $5.450 million, now down to the odd number of $4,467,375. I wish brokers wouldn’t do this; it makes it difficult for former lawyers to calculate commissions, because the only math we learned in law school was how to divide by three.

But it’s a nice house.

Land sale in Riverside

59 Gilliam Lane

59 Gilliam Lane, one acre, sold for $2.850 million, from its original asking price of $3.9 million back in May, 2014. The house that sits on the land was built in 1998 and perfectly suited the needs of its downsizing owners, but 3,200 sq. feet is too small for most Riverside buyers these days, and the property was eventually listed as land, which it probably should have been all along – I think the owners and their broker set that first price where they did because they were attributing some substantial value to the house itself.

Views of a brackish pond across the street, but the pond’s actually quite pretty, and Gilliam’s a great spot.

And the threat of a resumption of WW 1 recedes in Greenwich, if only by a little bit

Trouble in the Back Country

52 John Street, owned by the Archduke of Austria (or some relative of the Emperor, the relationship is a bit muddy, to this royal genealogist) reports a contingent contract. Asking $3.990, it started at $4.850 million 540 days ago.

The royal’s departure from Greenwich is bound to help ease tensions between the Serbs and Croats still living and feuding up there north of the Parkway.

52 John Street

 

Which explains Obama’s and the world’s eagerness to end sanctions

Wall Street is drooling over prospect of getting at the wealth of Iran

Iran is entering the global economy, and some investment bank analysts are starting to get pretty excited.

Most outsiders see Iran as an anti-Semitic Islamic state run by extremists who tolerate terrorism (as long as it’s not in Iran).

But Iran is also the last large, modern, educated economy which is locked out of the global system, and the biggest one to re-enter it since the end of the Cold War.

Here’s a snippet from a note the researchers emailed out this week:

Iran is the largest economy to return to the global fold since the break-up of the Soviet Union and similarities include the complexity of the sanctions regime involved, the attempt at political rapprochement with the West and Iran’s vast energy wealth.

 

This will shake up the creationists of Mother Gaia Church

When all the world was young – and perfect

Dinosaur tracks found on the Isle of Skye, in an area that was once mere shallow water.

High Priest of Gaia Albert Gore insisted to FWIW that such a thing was impossible. “Sea levels, indeed the earth itself, have remained unchanged since the time they were first created by our mother”, he intoned. “Only recently, since man, evil man, began burning fossil fuels and using energy to live better than the other animals has that shifted.

“And so now we’re doomed, doomed! – but dinosaur tracks in old mud, really? Where are the human footprints next to them, then – tell me that!”

Disassociation

Obama does Paris

Obama, in Paris, claims that mass-scale killings with guns only occur in the United States.

He did, however, lay a single white rose on the memorial to those Parisians who were recently struck down by “not Islamic” freedom fighters armed with peashooters.

But they’ll be happier this way

CheCare™ at Hospital Cubano

Cuba reinstates its grip on doctors to force them to stay put. When you’re the property of the state, the state can decide, and will decide, how best to exploit you use your talents to serve the people. And in Cuba’s case, it needs the cash: it “earns” $8 billion a year renting out these People’s Doctors to other impoverished socialist states.

This is the liberal dream: from each according to his abilities, to each as we see fit.

I knew an otherwise-charming older couple, wealthy, retired, living on the waterfront in Riverside, who went to Cuba some years ago to see their socialist dream in action. They came back ecstatic, and told the charming story of the taxi-driver (assigned to them by the state) who drove them around Havana for several days. “He was civil engineer during the day, and drove a taxi at night, because he’s only pid $30 a month, just like everyone else. And he was so happy! ”

This tale of lies was recounted over cocktails on the deck of a $5 million home, overlooking the Sound, with the NYC skyline in the distance, and I felt mean when I pointed out that a civil engineer forced to spend his nights away from his family, driving a taxi, to make things meat (pun) hardly sounded like someone leaving a life to be savored,  but I did, and they were adamant: “But his housing, food and medical care are all provided for him!”.

I’m sure that same couple would be all for keeping the island’s doctors enslaved, just as long as they themselves could come back to Greenwich and enjoy the good life. They never understood, and never will until its too late, that when the Sanders Brigade comes looking for property to seize, theirs will on the list, probably near the top. I can hear their protests now: “But, but, we voted for Obama!”

UPDATE: Of course he is. Obama’s man, and Chicago’s mayor Rahm Emanuel will be spending Christmas holidays with his family in Cuba on a “secret” vacation.