Maybe he should ask to be transferred to England

Somewhere in here is the world's smallest violin

Underwear Bomber complains that his lodgings in Super Max limit his opportunities to pray and convert fellow-muslims.

This seems ill-advised

Time for a bit of fish and chips, eh chaps?

Britain welcomes back its ISIS fighters and won't prosecute them, because "they were naive".

I'd think that any naivety disappeared with the first throat they slit, or the first victim they beheaded or the first woman they raped, but I suppose boys will be boys.

France is taking a different approach, hunting down and killing its former citizens. For once, France seems to have it right.

Waterfront contract

18 Oneida Court, in the Indian Harbor Association, asking $5.6 million. it was on the market for just 55 days, so I imagine this one is going for somewhere close to that.

Land sale? Probably.

Four years and a few million less, a contract for 93 Clapboard Ridge

93 Clapboard Ridge Road

Started at $9.750 back in 2013, dropped to $7.195, and now reports a contract (that will surely be in the $6s). UPDATE: A reader says it's going in the low $5s.

This is in line what I've been reporting here for several years, and what Greenwich Time just discovered today: mansions are still selling in Greenwich, but not at the prices their owners envisioned.

Welcome to the fight — gays discover the merits of armed self-defense

I suspect it's a pretty small group, hyped-up by the media, but apparently some of the left's darlings are feeling threatened, and have decided to learn how to use guns. God bless them; familiarity with guns will ease the fear that non-gunowners often hold against weapons, and the sense of security gained by owning and carrying one may help them understand the 70% of Americans who already own one (or a dozen or so).

And once they discover that their gun clubs can get great rates on insurance sponsored by the NRA, membership should soar.

Win win. 

For a generation that thinks the British won the Civil War, it's hardly surprising that they approve Trump's tax plan, when attributed to Bernie Sanders.

Lord Pickett's charge, July 3rd, 1863

The main stream media's Democrat bosses are fully aware aware of young voters' abysmal ignorance, and in fact, are counting on it: last year, Obama's chief defender of the Iranian missile deal, Ben Rhodes: "“The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old. They literally know nothing.”

20-year-olds are even more ignorant, if it's possible to know less than nothing:

Reader note - some perfectly - acceptable comments have been inadvertently blocked

I'm off to day three of my mediation course (which is a very interesting, informative process, by the way), so no more blogging today until after six, but I just discovered that some commenters have been blocked by my assignment of one particular comment to the "spam" folder. I try to moderate this blog so that a civil tone is maintained - maintaining an interesting, engaged commenter community is important to me because, to my mind, the comment section is a vital part of this dumb project, and the comments are usually the best part of that. 

But I just realized that when I've consigned a particular comment to the spam folder, any future comments from the same IP address are automatically sent there as well, and I don't see them. That's not what I intended, and will in the future hit "delete" on the (very few) comments I take off, which should keep future comments unblocked. Again: it's my attempt to maintain decorum, not to shut down discussion or to turn the comment section into an echo chamber. I still miss, for instance, our Harvard law student who used to provide intelligent counter-arguments to my own,and others' take on political issues. He was never, eve blocked: instead, he went on to join a huge, oppressive NYC law firm, and found better things to do than argue with a nitwit like me, but he was a fun, and enriching addition.

But here's the deal: if you readers who find themselves blocked would just use the same screen name each time, I can recognize you, and, when I see a regular commenter who generally posts comments that add to the discussion, I'll almost always give an otherwise-objectional comment a pass. Or, if I think that a particular post exceeds my totally-undefined limits, I won't bar all future comments from the same ip address.

Worth watching all 12 minutes: John Kelly on Gold Star families and congresswomen who exploit them for political gain

General Kelly, who lost one son in Afghanistan and has another still in combat, describes what happens when a soldier is killed and his family must be notified. It's awesome, and heartbreaking. And, for those who, like that Congresswoman, scurrilously claim that General Kelly "will say anything to keep his job" (reflect, for just a moment, how horrible a statement that is), note the General's oblique reference to the attack on "a Gold Star family" at our national conventions last summer - that would be his boss. But he says it was he who passed on to Trump what had touched Kelly himself when notified of his own son's death: "He knew exactly what he was facing, and still he volunteered: he was doing exactly what he wanted to do, surrounded by the best: the 1%, when he died" (paraphrasing). 

Good tape. Kelly begins 1:02 minutes in.

UPDATE: From the New Yorker's perspective, Kelly's comments illustrate "the language of a military coup". God how I hate that magazine, and I've learned to despise its readers. I used to read it at my parents' home growing up, and bought my own subscription to it during my first year of college, before I grew tired of its blather. In those years, people like E.B. White graced its pages. Now it's a scurrilous, snob publication edited and sold to a small band of delusional "intellectuals" who despise the country they abide in. Screw 'em

New Yorker readers are too stupid to recognize when they're being ridiculed, and consider this poster to be an essential wall accessory for their multi-million-dollar co-ops. So much for higher education 

Time marches on, and Connecticut is left behind

bicyle touring hartford

Reader Sensei has, with his usual genius, dredged up a video from the early or perhaps mid-60s extolling the virtues of Connecticut as a place to relocate. Viewing all 20 + minutes, it's astonishing, and dispiriting to see how almost everything touted in the film has disappeared. Hartford, which back then was "the insurance capitol of the world" was already a deserted wasteland after 5 pm when I lived here in 1978-81, and now those companies are gone forever, and almost all the manufacturers and corporations featured in the promotional are long gone. The brass industry along the Housatanic? Silver in Woodbury? Eagle Pencils in Danbury? Fuller Brush and Stanley Tools in New Britain? Gone forever, either disappeared or moved out of state.

Wilton's Norden, Stamford's Cyanamid, Revlon. Dorr Oliver, Yale Lock, and so forth: all gone. Their replacements: UBS (which swallowed Greenwich Capital) and RBS, and Tudor Capital,  are going, fast, and I see nothing coming in to replace them. Check out the video for a depressing view of what once was.

Connecticut  is destined to return to being a tobacco leaf provider and vacation spot for New Yorkers and Boston weekenders. The good news for Greenwich homeowners is that, for so long as NYC remains a financial center, we can continue to offer a wonderful place for that industry's top earners to live in and raise a family. When New York succeeds in driving out its Golden Goose, which it seems determined to do, there will be no one able to afford to buy our houses at their current prices.

I may have to switch my focus on representing buyers to sellers who want to get out while the getting's good.

Tesla: $150,000 to spend 10 hours on 6-hour trip

relax and explore bummfuck delaware for a few hours!

Business Insider has a ridiculous article on a Tesla test drive from NJ to Maryland, 340 miles: mostly fluff, stuffed with useless pictures, but this stands out: even using the Tesla "supercharger" stations, the author and his family spent four hours recharging the wunderkar at three different stations. Eliminating one of those stops on the way back, they still spent an extra two hours. 

And that's with the "supercharger". A regular station, had they found one, would have seen them spending the night in a Motel 6. This is the car of your future, as dictated by your government. 

Of course, that author's estimate of a 6-hour driving time was based on a top speed of 55 MPH. The faster you drive an electric car, the faster the drainage, so don't drive at 70!