Trump orders muslim children to be separated from their parents 25-hours a week to learn western values
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battle of tours, circa 2018
“Starting at the age of 1, “ghetto children” must be separated from their families for at least 25 hours a week, not including nap time, for mandatory instruction in “Danish values,” including the traditions of Christmas and Easter, and Danish language. Noncompliance could result in a stoppage of welfare payments. Other Danish citizens are free to choose whether to enroll children in preschool up to the age of six.
Denmark’s government is introducing a new set of laws to regulate life in 25 low-income and heavily Muslim enclaves, saying that if families there do not willingly merge into the country’s mainstream, they should be compelled.
For decades, integrating immigrants has posed a thorny challenge to the Danish model, intended to serve a small, homogeneous population. Leaders are focusing their ire on urban neighborhoods where immigrants, some of them placed there by the government, live in dense concentrations with high rates of unemployment and gang violence.
Politicians’ description of the ghettos has become increasingly sinister. In his annual New Year’s speech, Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen warned that ghettos could “reach out their tentacles onto the streets” by spreading violence, and that because of ghettos, “cracks have appeared on the map of Denmark.” Politicians who once used the word “integration” now call frankly for “assimilation.””
I think this is a terrible idea, but then I'm an American, not a socialist Dane. Combine a socialist philosophy with a tiny country being swamped by a population that hates it, and your results may be different.
“Nearly 87 percent of Denmark’s 5.7 million people are of Danish descent, with immigrants and their descendants accounting for the rest. Two-thirds of the immigrants, around half a million, are from Muslim backgrounds, a group that swelled with the waves of Afghan, Iraqi and Syrian refugees crossing Europe.
Critics would say “the state cannot force children away from their parents in the daytime, that’s disproportionate use of force,” said Rune Lykkeberg, the editor in chief of Dagbladet Information, a left-liberal daily newspaper. “But the Social Democrats say, ‘We give people money, and we want something for this money.’ This is a system of rights and obligations.”
Danes have a high level of trust in the state, including as a central shaper of children’s ideology and beliefs, he said. “The Anglo-Saxon conception is that man is free in nature, and then comes the state” constraining that freedom, he said. “Our conception of freedom is the opposite, that man is only free in society.””
Short sale on Belle Haven Peninsula pending
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13 Meadow Wood Drive, cheek by jowl to I-95 with a current asking price of $1.8 million is reported as pending. It's a short sale, meaning the mortgage is greater than the current price ($2.3-ish), so "pending" should be interpreted as a signal that the lender has agreed to some sort of loss on the money it extended.
Not a terrible house, if one can accept the highway roar, but the original broker David Ogilvy did his clients no favor by initially pricing it at $3.5 million back in 2011. At seven years on the market, this was not our oldest listing, but certainly not our freshest, either, and a better initial price and speedier price cuts might have shortened the waiting period considerably.
I am impressed, however, at the premium a location on the Belle Haven Peninsula commands — not homes inside the Belle Haven Association's boundaries, mind you, but simply within aspirational distance. This house on, say, Riverside's Lockwood Lane, also a neighbor of I-95, would probably sell for $500,000 less.
Location, and a desperate hope to hang out with the rock stars may explain it.
UPDATE, July 5th: A reader corrects me; this house is within the Belle Haven Association boundaries. I have never understood the Association's bizarre boundaries, and probably never will. It makes political gerrymandering districts look positively logical.
(The same reader says that he looked at the house some time ago but rejected it because of the noise, so at least I got that part right.)
Could work for me
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6 Windrose Way, Mead Point, is new to the market today, asking $20.5 million. I'm not wild about the exterior; looks sort of like two ancient Japanese warrior helmets joined together, but the interior and multiple outside decks have been designed to take full advantage of the views, and it all seems open and bright.
Mead Point is my favorite of our gated communities, and, for this neighborhood, the price isn't all that nuts. Besides, buyers in this price range have been known to splurge just to find a home in Mead's, so ....
My brother Anthony is the family expert on acoustics, but I'm guessing that this instrument, as sited, isn't good for much more than a place for party guests to gather and sing along to Mitch Miller records or maybe duke university fight songs.
Foreclosures tend to be worth exactly what you pay for them; or less, but certainly not more
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The "carriage house" (garage with maid's quarters) is to the left, the uninhabitable main house to the right.
The owners of 18 Dwight Lane (way up off John Street) paid $1,359,750 for it after the previous owners had been foreclosed, redid the floors in the maid's quarters above the free-standing garage, left the wreck of the main house untouched, and put it back up for sale last November for $2.1 million. Today, that price has dropped down to $1.495 million with, I suspect, plenty of falling room still to go. (Previous listing, with additional pictures, here.)
It's common for buyers of bank-owned property to think they've purchased at a discount, but in my experience, that usually proves to be delusional: by definition, they've paid more for the property than anyone else was willing to. When you're sitting around the poker table and can't figure out who the chump is ...
Speaking of chumps, though, how about U.S. taxpayers? The foreclosed owners were given a $6,289,900 mortgage on this place in 2006 from, of course, Countrywide (though Wells Fargo did kick in a bonus second mortgage of $250,000 at the same time). That was for a ruined, 1960 contemporary and 4.5 acres in a most undesirable area of town. Countrywide's appraiser, its lending officer and that officer's manager must all have been in on this scheme, but so far as I know, no one, including Chris Dodd and his pal, Countrywide's CEO Angelo Mozilo spent a single day in jail.
a little bleach on that diving board, replace the deck and gazebo, and bob's your uncle
And perhaps a new driveway
Perennial quick seller on Hillside Road
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55 Hillside Road, asking $3.695 million, is already pending after just 40 days on the market. It sold (for $3.476) in 8 days in 2015, and 23 days in 2012, so clearly this house and location has great appeal.
There's no arguing the merits of the 1.5 acre lot, set far enough back from Hillside to avoid the worst of high school traffic, but I'm struck by how out of date my tastes are: to me, all of the charm of this 1937 house was stripped long ago, especially during these sellers' brief ownership, but I'm obviously out of touch with today's generation of buyers.
I'll have to keep that in mind.
Unbelievable; four more car thefts and again all four had keys left in them
/How much trouble can it be to take your keys with you? Even if you can't be troubled to lock your car?
Our out of town nighttime visitors are having a field day in town because they know that Greenwich residents make it so easy. In a way, I suppose these idiots (Tommy Hilfiger is one, I recall) make it safer for those of us who do pocket our keys, or fobs, or whatever: rater than bust a window to get in, the thieves will probably pass us by, knowing that there will be easier pickings in the next driveway.
But, really ....
They breed 'em tough up in the Maine woods
/95-year-old man clubs rabid fox to death.
Brunswick: [Robert] Galen ... had been repairing his deck and was walking around the house to fetch planks. Wearing work gloves, he picked up one broken plank that was the size of a club, and when he looked up he saw a mature fox “looking me right in the eye.”
Galen estimated the fox was less than 2 feet away.
Asked if the animal attacked or lunged at him, “It never got the opportunity,” Galen said. “Any fox or rabbit or skunk that approaches a human being within a foot and a half is abnormal.”
It took him about 10 minutes to subdue the animal. As he fought the animal, he fell backward into a bush but continued to strike the fox.
A Maine warden took away the dead fox, and on Tuesday the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention notified him the animal had tested positive for rabies.
He was relieved.
“I didn’t want to kill an innocent animal,” he said.
95, still out repairing his deck, and fully capable of fighting off attackers. I feel like such a wuss.
Price cut on (Greenwich) Park Avenue
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140 park avenue
New construction at 140 Park Avenue, down to $4.295 million from $4.5. Nice enough, I suppose, but I personally liked the looks of 180 Park, diagonally across the street, which closed just last week for $3.750. 180 was built in 2008, not an auspicious time to bring a house on the market, and it ended up being rented out for the next ten years, but the owners brought it back to pretty much "like new" condition, so I'd consider it a good comp. Each house is on 0.4 of an acre, and each has about 4,000 sq.ft. above ground.
140 is a bit more private than 180, and that's worth something, but I'll take a brick Georgian over another humdrum "Colonial" any day.
Question: why, if a builder has just 4,000 feet to play with, would he build a master closet that takes up so much space? And a "laundry room" closet with stacked washer/dryer and little room for much else strikes me as inconvenient. Even if my Lord and my Lady's garments in that master closet are all dry-cleaned, surely, with four bedrooms (like 140, there's a nanny cubicle in the basement), children are expected, and they usually come with all sorts of dirty clothes, most of which are not appropriate for dry cleaning. Oh well.
Upate, June 30: Heard from my friend and this home's listing agent, Ellen Mosher, who assures me that there is a full laundry area in the basement, convenient to the nanny cubicle.
140 park's master closet
180 park
And so it begins
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SNL "Comedian" expresses his opinion on Justice Kennedy's retirement. Of interest, but not to this particular idiot, is that Kennedy was the swing vote upholding Roe-vs. Wade, gay marriage, and a host of favorite liberal issues.