And one of the most disgusting spectacles in our nation's history concludes

AND THERE WAS A GREAT WAILING AND GNASHING OF TEETH

Kavanaugh confirmed, will be sworn in tonight, with formal investiture creamy later.

It’s being said that the Democrats overplayed their hand with their hysterical, phoney lies, and I agree. For that matter, Saint Ford’s story was falling apart as each day revealed still more inconsistencies, so it was a good thing for her reputation that the matter ended today, rather than a week from now.

What's a 1956 house way up on Rogues Hill worth? Not as much as these owners hoped

You’d think someone would have done some landscaping since 1956, but no

483 Round Hill Road is back with yet another broker and yet another price: $4.895 million. It’s been for sale since 2011, when it began at $6.750, and so far, no-one’s bit. Good looking house, but totally dated. Good views.

Described in a previous listing as a “spectacular gourmet kitchen”. Imagine the disappointment of any buyer who drove almost to New York with cooking on her mind.

Seems to have been a poor choice to renovate

2 Round Hill Road, Lake Avenue frontage, is a 1961 home purchased in 2006 for $4.9 million, and underwent, to quote its current agent, a “total gut renovation in 2007”. It was placed back on the market this year at $5.950, and the tepid market response has caused the owners to add it to the “land” listing category today, at that same $5.950.

Trouble is, the house isn’t selling because it’s a disappointing, bland 1960s house, and as land, what’s 3 acres worth here? Not $6 million, that’s for sure, even for those who enjoy the rush and noise of Lake Avenue.

And we're back!

Sorry about that. The trouble with blogging is that it requires steady, conscientious effort, and if you lose the discipline to write every day, and with every day without writing, it becomes easier to just skip the whole thing. I was s disgusted with the whole Kavanaugh mess down in D.C. that I refused to even look at the internet and turned to grouse hunting and reading novels instead.

In any event, here we are, back in the game, and today’s lead off is that spec house I’ve written about before, 11 Round Hill Club Road, which today dropped from $11.950 million to $9.950.

The builders of this Lego set paid almost $4 million for the land some time ago (a price I would have advised against, but no one asked me) and put up their mansion for $17.950 (another price I’d have advised against, but …) in October, 2015. It’s been down hill ever since.

Someone is bound to come along who wants this place, but when that person will appear, and what price he’s willing to pay, remains unknown.

Presumably she isn't blaming Kavanaugh, but you never know these days

83-year-old legislator reveals that she was groped and kissed by an adult 70 years ago.

'Each of these experiences are seared in our brains, in our emotions, and on our bodies. And no we are not confused. We know who our assaulters are and we know exactly where we were when they happened.'

The octagenarian claims the isn’y confused, but it’s hard to understand why this Democrat would insist that the truth of am allegation of sexual assault can be found in the fact that the victims remember, indelibly, exactly when and where they were attacked. Dr. Ford fails that test, miserably. In fact:

Not only does Ford not remember where or when she was attacked, she can’t even remember things she did less than a month ago.

1. She still can’t confirm the basics of her account

She can tell everyone definitively that Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her, but she doesn’t know when, where, who took her there or picked her up (she was 15), or pretty much anything of significance. She has no facts, no corroboration, no medical report, no police report. There is nothing but a claim from a woman with a bad memory and a story contradicted by all her own witnesses. At this point, there is not even any evidence that there was a party at all, much less that Kavanaugh was there or that anything happened between Kavanaugh and Ford.

2. There’s the polygraph weirdness

Rachel Mitchell, a sex crimes prosecutor in Maricopa County, Arizona, who questioned Ford today, went out on what seems to be a strange tangent about the polygraph that Ford took in August. Surprisingly, it still prompted Ford to say a couple of very strange things. Ford said the polygraph was done in Maryland because of her grandmother’s funeral and she was asked if it was done on the same day as her grandmother’s funeral. Ford did not know the answer to that question. Mitchell also asked if she paid for the polygraph, which would normally be quite expensive, and again, Ford said she doesn’t know. If Ford doesn’t have a clear memory of big events that happened to her LAST MONTH, how can anyone be sure her memory of what happened 36 years ago is correct? Was Kavanaugh involved? You wouldn’t think someone could get confused about something like that, but you’d also think someone would know if she spent thousands of dollars paying for a polygraph last month.

3. She could have testified in California

At one point, in response to Mitchell’s comment about how this wasn’t the best forum to explore her allegations, Ford agreed it would have been better if she could have testified at home without having to do this publicly in D.C.  -- except she could have done exactly that. Not only was the offer made to her legal team, but there were also news articles about it. It was not a secret. So either Ford is lying or perhaps worse yet, she really doesn’t know what’s going on and her legal team unnecessarily tossed her into the meat grinder for political purposes.

4. Ford’s fear of flying is fake

Ford’s own lawyers have been publicly claiming that she’s too frightened to fly and they have gone out of their way to say that she won't get on a plane because of the Kavanaugh incident. Because of that, they said she’d have to drive cross-country to get to a hearing. Of course, she actually flew. Additionally, under questioning, she admitted she had flown to Maryland, Hawaii, and Tahiti. In other words, that was a bald-faced lie. If she is lying about that, what else is she lying about?

And our senior senator continues to embarrass the state

Blumenthal gilled Kavanaugh yesterday on whether the judge understood the meaning, false in one thing, false in all). This from a man who lied about being on the Harvard swim team and, of course, and more important, falsely claiming to have served in Viet Nam.

It took a bit of Photoshopping, but someone has come up with a picture of the senator’s heroic service in that lamented war:

Nope, Senator, you weren’t there

Next story: Kavanaugh slaughtered and dismembered elephants on the bedroom floor.

Actually, that particular story was used against the McMartin family day care operators, told by four-year-olds with “recovered” memories which delivered the family into a prosecutorial hell for ten years. A similar tale about the Amirault family in Boston was believed by a jury, resulting in jail sentences of more than ten years.

But today we have a third accuser of Judge Kavanaugh crawl from under a rock. First story was that he groped a girl’s breasts; when that lost some traction, the ext one up said he’d waved his dick in her face. Now it turns out he’s a serial rapist, at least according to a woman who claims that as a college student she attended, voluntarily, one presumes, a series of high school parties where girls were drugged with quaaludes and repeatedly raped. Why, exactly, she kept going to back to these parties for more is left unsaid, but it’s a remarkable achievement for a man with an impeccable history of propriety, to go from a teenaged titty fondler to a dick-waving drunk to a serial rapist, all in just one week.

In normal times, this third, absurd accusation would end the circus and we could all get on with seating this fine judge on the Supreme Court. But these are not normal times, or at least, this sort of mass hysteria didn’t used to be considered normal.

Yes, this is still a real estate blog, but when real estate activity is minimal, whacha gonna do?

Almost nothing to report. Lots of doings in the rental world, between price drops (once you’ve passed the opening of the school year, you’ve lost most of your market for homes) and actual rentals, but the single-family home market is practically dormant. I think that’s unusual for this time of year, but I haven’t run the stats to see whether my memory of past years is correct; I’ll post here after I do so.

I do note that 5 Sylvan Lane, Old Greenwich, reported as under contract just two weeks ago, is back on the active list. There are many, many reasons for deals to fall out of contract, ranging from sudden job transfers to the surprise delivery of divorce papers, to, the most dreaded by all commission-craving agents, buyer’s remorse. So you can never tell.

Sylvan’s price had been driven down over the past two years from $6.8 million to $5.195, and I considered it a pretty good deal: no flood problems, new construction that would certainly pass any house inspection, so what went wrong? Who knows, but that pesky buyer’s remorse is always lurking in the background of any purchase agreement.

Earlier this year, we managed to get a bid of $4 million accepted by an owner who’d paid $4.3 for the house, spent a couple of million restoring and improving it, and originally priced it at $6.750. $4 million was an incredible bargain (still is — call me), but when we notified the buyer with the happy news that his bid had been accepted he developed cold feet, and balked. That happens all too often (from an agent’s perspective), but that’s part of selling real estate here. In Greenwich, accepted offers are unenforceable by either party, seller or buyer, until an actual contract, prepared by the parties’ lawyers is executed by both sides — until then, either party can walk, with no cost; in fact, I have often encouraged buyers to toss a low-ball offer at a house, because they really have nothing to lose.

In other parts of the state this problem has been “solved’ by permitting real estate agents to draw up binding agreements (and thereby engaging in the unauthorized practice of law, in my opinion), but what could be dumber than committing millions of dollars to a transaction based on a contract drafted by a person who has no legal training and in fact, has no requirement to have even graduated from nursery school?

So I think the Greenwich Realtors’ approach is the proper one, but it does lead to disappointment for both sellers and buyers (when their “accepted” offer is dumped in favor of a higher bid) alike. In the case of 5 Sylvan, it appears that it was the seller who suffered the bitterness of lost expectation.

Were I advising a client in this price range, I’d suggest they submit an offer in the mid-to-high fours, just to see whether they couldn’t capitalize on the builder’s dashed expectations. Once a seller has started spending money in his mind, as this one probably has, a slightly-smaller sum is often still attractive.

Shocker: Twitter's anti-hate speech policy applies only to conservatives

Twitter, which has been blocking and banning writers who express conservative views the past couple of months, has no problem with true hate speech, so long as that speech arises from the left.

After a group of Antifa and socialist protesters drove Sen. Cruz out of the high-end restaurant Fiola on Monday night, the account “Smash Racism D.C.” promised future harassment from their members. (RELATED: Antifa Sends Threatening Message To Cruz After Disrupting His Dinner: ‘You Are Not Safe.’)

“You are not safe,” they wrote. “We will find you. We will expose you. We will take from you the peace you have taken from so many others.”

p6. This is a message to Ted Cruz, Bret Kavanaugh, Donald Trump and the rest of the racist, sexist, transphobic, and homophobic right-wing scum: You are not safe. We will find you. We will expose you. We will take from you the peace you have taken from so many others.

— Smash Racism DC (@SmashRacismDC) September 25, 2018

Twitter’s rules prohibit “behavior that crosses the line into abuse, including behavior that harasses, intimidates, or uses fear to silence another user’s voice.”

In fact, Twitter and Facebook have been silencing conservative writers at least since 2016, according to this report from the semi-neutral/lioberal “The Hill”. That effort has intensified since July. Interesting that the left claims that Trump threatens free speech while they’re the ones doing that, on campuses and in the two (plus Google), currently the most powerful social media sites. Coincidence or duplicity — you decide.

On the other hand, this Pecksland home didn't do as well as 11 Mayfair

1919 houses are even less popular than those built in the ‘30s

54 Pecksland Road, just a bit down the road from Mayfair and priced at $3.495 million, is also pending. Nice sum, but its owners paid $3.5 for it — $5.372 in current dollars — and after renovating it, have been trying to unload it since 2012, when they offered it at $6.495. I thought it overpriced back them, and haven’t changed my opinion since.