And who'd of thought it possible? The LA Times actually reports objectively on Trump supporters

Liberals disappointed by Tuesday's results might wonder where these articles were back when the campaign was on, but they wouldn't have read them anyway; nor will they read them now, but the LA Times's effort might be a start towards some sort of rationality in the country.  "We're called redneck, ignorant, racist; that's not true". Trump supporters explain why they voted for him 

To his many critics, Trump is a racist, a bigot, a misogynist and a clown. The thought of him becoming the most powerful person on the planet is enough to produce stomach-churning anxiety, to bring sleepless nights and induce tears.

But more than six dozen conversations with Trump voters across the country — Democrats, Republicans, political independents — turned up a thoroughly different perspective.

They see an outsider unbeholden to a corrupt and rotten political system and brave enough to stake bold positions. They consider him fearless enough to defy the confines of political correctness. They view him as a vastly successful businessman, but possessing a common touch: a workingman’s billionaire.

...

Contrary to perceptions, it wasn’t all angry white men, terrified of the country’s changing hue, who swept Trump into office.

Kaatz, the Arizona hairdresser, for instance, is dating a black man she expects to marry next April and looks forward to raising their mixed-race children. Wright lives in a multicultural community in the Phoenix suburbs and welcomes the Muslim and black children who scamper through her front yard.

“I don’t look outside and think my neighbors are going to bomb me,” Wright said — though she welcomed the notion of a wall along the border with Mexico, a three-hour drive from her parents’ home in Tucson.

...

To hear them tell it, Trump supporters want a government that no longer works to make the rich even richer, offers handouts to the undeserving and caters to the whims of Washington’s army of lobbyists and special interests.

Perhaps more than anything, they want a president who pays attention to the half of the country bereft of hope: That, they said, would truly make America great again.

You can, if you wish, contrast real reporting with that of Greenwich Time and its sole political scribbler, Ken Borsuk. Here's his deep, profound analysis:

Excellent article in Greenwich Free Press on the proposed FAR changes

It's slowly dawning me that Greenwich has a real newspaper again; still limited, because it is, I believe, staffed pretty much by just Leslie Yaeger,  a one-woman show with a few high school interns, but she's doing actual reporting, filling the vacuum created when Greenwich Time stopped doing that. (And I may be wrong; there could well be others involved by now, but Yeager founded the paper and is the guiding force behind it.)

Here's a link to the FAR discussion, which should really be read in its entirety.

You can skim over the comments of our town planner, the truly incompetent Katie Blankley DeLuded, who tries to make it seem that FAR has been with us "since the 60s" - if it was, I can confidently state that it wasn't an issue until the 90s: I was practicing real estate law back in the 80s and early 90s and never - not once - was any kind of FAR restriction a consideration when vetting proposed home purchases.

But forget Katie, and read what FAR is doing to the town, from "mushroom roofs" to FARports to burying basements. I've railed about all of this for years, but the article provides a through, complete presentation, all in one piece. Here are some snippets, but really, read the whole thing, because this issue affects every homeowner in Greenwich, either as someone who's watching her property's value decline, or as a neighbor who's threatened with a huge retaining wall going up next door, or just as a resident who bemoans the destruction of so many older houses in our town.

Paul Pugliesi, who is president of Greenwich Land Company, a board member of the Greenwich Preservation Trust, and chair of the town’s Architectural Review Committee, agreed with Hatton.

“If you’re a buyer looking at an older house with an attic and a basement and wondering what options exist for adding on, you’re stuck paying for a full survey, which could cost $3,000-$5,000 just to determine FAR and existing grades,” Pugliesi said. “You have to hire an engineer to calculate and certify the grade plane. And that’s even before you hire someone to do drawings.”

Pugliesi estimated it can cost between $20,000 and $50,000 just to exclude the basement from FAR and be in a position to add some square footage to an existing house.

Pugliesi said the existing regulations on FAR that count basement and attic are a disincentive to hold on to an older house.

“A lot of people are thinking of this proposal as a new house amendment, but it would impact existing houses, including historic homes,” he said. “The Greenwich Preservation trust and Greenwich Preservation Network are looking for ways to incentivize people to keep older homes.”

Pugliesi said there are old homes in Greenwich that exceed FAR because of their attics and basements. “Rather than raise the grade and add trusses in the attic, in order to expand, if the amendment goes through, owners of old houses can discount the basement space. It might give additional FAR to expand a kitchen or add on to the second floor,” Pugliesi said. “That could make the older home more appealing to the market.”

“If you take the point of view that all older houses have no value, you might as well throw your hands up and expect them all to be replaced. If they do the grade plane adjustment, we’ll end up with a two foot  height increase,” Pugliesi said, referring to the proposed maximum height of 37 feet instead of the existing 35 feet. “The house still looks the same from the outside.”

Pugliesi said that the way building height is calculated has changed. Previously the height was measured from the midpoint of the space between attic floor and peak of the roof.  When the grade plane was introduced, they changed it to begin measuring from the peak of the roof, but did not allow for enough increase in height,” he said, adding that there was more than one house where the builder had to lop off a section of the roof in order to comply.

Pugliesi said the maximum 35 ft height is used up quickly with a 9-foot floor to ceiling height per story, plus a foot for the space between stories (floor and joists). Given 10 feet for the first floor, 10 feet for the second floor, plus 5 feet for the basement, only 10 feet remain for the whole roof structure. “You won’t find a single 21st century house with a 9-foot ceiling as new construction features higher ceilings,” he said. “We’re hoping they add the two feet to the maximum height to get a more traditional roof pitch.”

Pugliesi said the existing regulations could be driving the tear-down trend.

“To the extent you have a non-conforming property and the way only way to make any changes or additions is to do a dramatic alteration involving grading and site work, the decision becomes easy: Why not completely redo the house?”

Pugliesi warned that the proposed amendment change is not a cure-all. “It would only provide a degree of relief,” he said. “It won’t solve all the problems the grade plane created, but it will have an impact on the topography and give people the ability to have flexibility of how to use the rooms in their house.”Pugliesi said real estate agents are not proposing the amendment to further their own business, but are addressing a problem.

[snip]

“And,” said Pugliesi, “It’s not only giving some relief to the home owner. It’s giving some relief to the neighbors. Especially in some of the neighborhoods with smaller lots.”

And speaking of hubris

Or, don't let the door hit you on the ass.

The celebrities who promised us they'd leave the country if Trump won have changed their minds [sic] and now vow to stay so they can help us see the error of our ways. Please, please don't stay on my account.

The comedian [Chelsea]  Handler, who said in May that she had bought a house “in another country just in case,” reversed course Thursday, explaining that she plans to stick around for the good of the nation.

“Yesterday my staff reminded me that voices and platforms like mine are needed more than ever; leaving the country is quitting #keepfightin,” said Ms. Handler on Twitter.

In an interview six months ago on “Live with Kelly and Michael,” however, Ms. Handler said, “So all these people that threaten to leave the country and then don’t—I really will leave that country.”

Meanwhile, the comedian Schumer dismissed Tuesday her pre-election comment on BBC about moving to Europe, saying it was made “in jest,” and blasted those calling for her to take a hike.

There's some small irony in being lectured on white privilege and oppression of women by a white female entertainer who refers to "my staff", but I'll let that pass, if she'll just do her hectoring from outside our borders.

It was hubris what done them in

Obama gave Florida to Trump

The evidence is mounting that President Obama’s overzealous defense of his “opening Cuba” gambit cost Hillary Clinton the state of Florida. That misstep could end up wiping out most of the president’s carefully curated “legacy” achievements.

[I]n late October, President Obama... lifted limits on the import of cigars and rum, and then ordered our ambassador to the United Nations to abstain from a vote condemning the US economic embargo on Cuba.

... The Cuban-American community in Miami was irritated enough to give a second look to Donald Trump, who quickly reacted by shifting from his earlier tepid support for Obama’s Cuba policy to a promise that he would end relations unless Raul Castro began democratic reforms.

A New York Times-Siena poll, headlined “Cubans Come Home to Trump,” confirmed that all this was enough to add almost 20 percentage points to Trump’s support among Cuban-Americans.

... Clinton ended up losing the election to Trump by the razor-thin margin of 125,000 votes out of more than 9 million cast, in a state where Cuban-Americans number more than a million.

... Why did the president feel he could take such steps without endangering Clinton’s chances in Florida? He misinterpreted a poll by Florida International University which showed strong support for his policies among Cuban-Americans.

... The problem was, when you broke down those [poll] responses by the wave in which exiles entered the US — 1960-1980, 1980-1994, or 1994-2016 — the results varied greatly. The first two waves, especially the 1960s crowd, are staunch anti-communists; on principle, they did not want to deal with the Castros. The latter wave, more likely to be economic migrants with no fixed political philosophy, are eager to deal with the government of the country they just left.

Only 36 percent of the first group want to expand business relations with Cuba’s government, for instance, while twice as many — 73 percent — of the latter group do.

There is another difference among these groups: 98 percent of the first wave are American citizens, and 97 percent are registered to vote.

President Obama seems not to have realized these differences existed, or if he did, he may have thought that personal charisma or force of personality would preclude paying an electoral penalty.

Yup. And so went Florida. But let's not just focus on Florida and its Hispanics: Hillary gave the entire block of white middle class and poor Americans to Trump. She called them a basket of deplorables and "irredeemable" which was understood exactly as she meant it: worthless. Dismissing a large bloc of people as worthless, calling them racist, toothless idiots who have no business voting unless they vote for you, is a bad policy when running for national office, especially if you've miscalculated the number of people you're telling to fuck off; it turned out, the group she dismissed comprised more than half the country, which is why Hillary is now in Chappaquiddick - Chappaqua, planning a Thanksgiving dinner for one (more, if she breaks tradition and invites her Secret Service detail in from the garage).

And there was the hubris of the entire Democratic Party: Obama travelled to the rust belt in 2008 offering hope and change and persuaded most voters there to vote for a black president whose middle name was, as the dreadful Michael Moore pointed out (when disputing a fellow liberal's claim that Trump voters were racist), "Hussein". That's what he promised: what he delivered was gay marriage, transgender bathrooms and an unrelenting campaign against them, castigating and shaming them for enjoying their "white privilege". An unemployed steel worker can be forgiven for not readily seeing the relevance of letting little boys into girls' bathrooms, or recognizing his white privilege, let alone feel guilty about it. The Democrats tried winning this election by telling a little crippled boy that his Christmas present this year was a dress, given to a pretty girl five towns over, and that he was an ungrateful little brat for whining.

And when he did whine, Democrats didn't care; like their candidate herself, they wrote off flyover country as an insignificant part of the nation, banking on "their kind of people" in the Acela Corridor and California to carry the day. As their budgets over the past 60 years have shown, Democrats aren't good at math.

And blame the media, for its two-year focus on dismissing Trump supporters as uneducated, hateful people with no issues or concerns other than punishing Muslims and black people. I know that I personally grew so tired of being patronized by my lessers, called an idiot racist by people who clearly were my inferiors in everything from education, knowledge of history and even, probably, IQ, that I moved from being a hold-my-nose Trump voter to an advocate, and nothing would have deterred me from making sure I voted last Tuesday. Multiply this angry voter by millions, and there you have it.

Had Hillary, her party and their media spent any time at all actually listening to Trump voters' concerns and even pretending to understand them they could have won hearts and minds, and votes. Thank Jon Stewart for reminding Trump World that the liberal establishment cares nothing at all about them, and considers them sub-human trolls.

Trump did the opposite, and they responded, a result that could only surprise people as isolated and sure of themselves as Hillary Superiorettes. John Prine wrote a song about this in 1971, although I doubt he was thinking of Trump back then: "Hello in There".

Trump stopped and said hello, the Democrats walked on by.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfwGkplB_sY

Not a happy story, but a curious one

2 Little Cove Road, a land sale, was listed in October for $2.350 million and was immediately the subject of a bidding war. It closed Friday at $2.625  . Today, Greenwich Time has an article on Thompson Bossee, who lived there with his mother until she died and the estate's executor evicted him. The man was arrested and charged with number of gun-related felonies, but on its face, he hardly seems like quite the felon the police have charged him with being. He apparently had  "assault weapons" and unregistered "large capacity magazines" in his house when it was raided last August (under the pretense of arresting him for failure t appear on a DUI charge dating back to 1991), but "assault rifle" is a made-up term, based on the appearance of a particular rifle, not on its actual capabilities, and the "large capacity magazines" (any magazine capable of holding more than 10 cartridges) were required to be registered only two years ago; most gun owners I've heard of - I certainly don't personal know any such people, God forbid - refuse to comply; the legislature created probably 10,000 new felons with that silly law. All that said, an alcoholic with a bunch of powerful rifles in the house and a loaded pistol in his car doesn't sound good.

In any event, it doesn't sound as though the poor guy's been living a happy life these past decades, but he's out of the neighborhood now, and the house will soon be razed. With any luck, now that the house has been sold, he can post his $250,000 bail and get out of jail where he's been since August. Too late to return to Little Cove Road, but perhaps he'll be coming your way soon.

All very interesting. There may be eight million stories in the naked city, but when it comes to Old Greenwich, forget it Jake, it's Chinatown.

If they'll pass out an attendance roster, you could limit your blackballing to attendees; otherwise, I wouldn't hire any recent graduate of the University of Michigan Law School

Clearly they will be totally incapable of withstanding the rigors of the professional legal environment UPDATE: I hear that Greenwich Academy held a similar session for its students - true? Any parents want to chime in with details? If there's anything to the story, and I were such a tuition-paying parent, I'd want to know what my children were being taught that would cause them to be traumatic by this election; or any even that didn't meet with their approval and expectations.

For those who've been looking for one, here's a reason to subscribe to the NYT

You'll receive humorous - hilarious - messages like this in your inbox 

To our readers,

When the biggest political story of the year reached a dramatic and unexpected climax late Tuesday night, our newsroom turned on a dime and did what it has done for nearly two years — cover the 2016 election with agility and creativity.

After such an erratic and unpredictable election there are inevitable questions: Did Donald Trump’s sheer unconventionality lead us and other news outlets to underestimate his support among American voters? What forces and strains in America drove this divisive election and outcome? Most important, how will a president who remains a largely enigmatic figure actually govern when he takes office? [And why is it that he remains"enigmatic"? Is it because you focused on his attraction to felines? That you spent your time "reporting" on his racist supporters, instead of actually speaking with them and learning the issues that concerned them? Nah.]

We believe we reported on both candidates fairly during the presidential campaign. [hahahahaha]

You can rely on The New York Times to bring the same fairness, the same level of scrutiny, the same independence to our coverage of the new president and his team. [See comment above]

We cannot deliver the independent, original journalism for which we are known without the loyalty of our subscribers. We want to take this opportunity, on behalf of all Times journalists, to thank you for that loyalty.

Sincerely,

Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. Publisher

Dean Baquet Executive Editor

I'm so old, I remember when advocating "buy locally" wasn't considered racist

That would be all the way back to the evening of November 8th.

I personally think that Trump's goal of imposing strict tariffs and forcing companies to build products and grow food here in America instead of overseas (or, say, Mexico) would be a disaster, but when I tried making that argument to certain young uber-liberals of my acquaintance, wonderful people with big hearts, I was told I was being racist, somehow. So why aren't they embracing The Donald's demand that Walmart bring manufacturing back to our shores, Apple stop producing iPhones in China or, speaking of apples, we stop importing them from Chile?

So I'm puzzled. Maybe if unemployed Ohio factory workers began raising Llamas and smoking (more) dope, they'd gain the love and respect of these young people, affection that until now has been reserved for pot farmers in Vermont and potters in New Mexico.

Maybe.

Heads up, open housers

I was out showing houses most of yesterday, hence no blogging, (and limited today, until this afternoon), but at one showing Ellen Mosher told me about a renovation one of her builder/clients has done at 185 N.Maple, now asking $1.995 million. I didn't have time to accept her invitation to see it - we had to continue over to Riverside after viewing Ellen's listing on Park Avenue (Greenwich) - and there are no current pictures up yet because the GMLS was closed yesterday, but I trust Ellen, and if she tells me the builder's done a great job, I believe it. Unlike one or two of the agents I had to deal with yesterday, if Ellen says something, you can trust her word. There: didn't want you think that I can't still be snarky even while saying nice things about someone else.

We had a certain amount of fun with this house last year when the original owners were asking $1.625, which I'm sure is why Ellen suggested I look at it now; she doesn't want me trashing it based on what it was, but the house finally sold to this builder in March of this year for $1.150, and that should have left plenty of room to do a nice job.

As noted, the pictures that are currently posted are of the pre-renovation stage - they were posted because Ellen wanted to get the house listed in time for this weekend's open houses and pictures won't be ready until Monday. That reminds me of the moyle and the clocks in his shopwindow joke, but if  you haven't heard it, I'll just tell you the punchline: 'whadday want I should put in the window?". Here's her description below: I'm thinking that those readers looking at houses in the high $1s or low $2s might want to see this one, even if they aren't looking in this particular area, to see what you can do with a $1.150 house and stay in your budget. Sometimes it's hard to visualize these things.

Complete renovation/transformation of in-town house. All new 5 bedroom home with expansive open floor plan reconfigured and rebuilt by noted designer. Sun-filled modern styled interiors include transitional architectural elements/fixtures, extensive millwork and dark hardwood floors. Amazing gourmet kitchen with Caesarstone island and custom white cabinetry, Thermador appliances, wine cooler. Dining area opens to spacious family room with marble/stainless steel fireplace. Formal living room, Study with built ins. Private first floor guest bedroom. Beautiful master with walk-in closet and luxurious marble bath.Large lower level with family room, mudroom, bath, laundry room and wall of windows. All new energy efficient mechanicals and windows. Private yard with terraces. 2 car garage.

Wait wait, I thought it was unpatriotic for the rich to leave America!

It was just a few years ago, but now that it''s billionaire Silicon Valley types threatening to leave because Trump's coming, I guess it's okay. In fact, we're about to see a lot of old ideas resurface now that the Democrats are a true minority power. Remember the "no mandate because we Democrats got a whole bunch of votes" argument back in 2010? They don't; I do.

Or Harry Reid and his fellows in 2013  triggering "the nuclear option" that ended the filibuster of judges by the Republicans?

There's lots more to come, assuredly. The Bush crowd of gentlemen Republicans actually went along with that nonsense, but I'm hopeful that Trump will tell them to stuff it.