Jim Carrey and spouse colluded with Russians?

Die, you little bastids!

Russian trolls accused of fermenting anti-vaccine campaign

The same Russian social media trolls accused of meddling in the 2016 US election may be to blame for the deadly measles outbreak across Europe last year, according to a new report.

Scientists believe the St. Petersburg troll farm also pumped out anti-vaccination propaganda, contributing to the outbreak that killed 72 people and infected more than 82,000, Radio Free Europe reported.

The FBI and major media is undoubtedly looking into this as I write

[UPATE: Goddamnit, I meant fomenting, I wrote fomenting, and the auto-spell “corrected’ it to “fermenting’ without my notice or permission — in fact, it did so again while I wrote this addendum. I don’t know how to turn off this bonus feature, but I’m going to find out.]

UPDATE II: Apparently “ferment” can be used in the same sense, according to the Oxford dictionary, so perhaps the auto-speller was merely substituting its own judgement.

I hope, for Greenwich's sake, that's there's still a market for homes like this

359 North Street is new to the market today, priced at $7.495 million. Built in 1903, it was, I think, one of the twin homes built for the daughters of the man who built his own house up the road, on the corner of Dingletown and North, but I’m sure more knowledgeable readers will correct me if I’m wrong.

I think its price is high, even though it includes a separate building lot in its 2.5 acres — the beautiful yard, so close to town, only adds to its attractiveness, and who would want to destroy that? — but sheesh, this is such a special house, compared to a modern spec house. Or it is to me, but I’m older than our current buyers’ pool. The seller is a hugely-successful CEO, retired now, but he’s a nonagenarian; while I’m about midway between his age and that of many of those who are our buyers now, my tastes run with the owner’s generation, and tastes have changed radically.

Amazon calls it quits

(I had an entire post on this subject and it failed to “save”. Sheesh. I really don’t want to recreate the entire post, so here’s a brief summary of my thoughts:

State subsidies to businesses bad, but Amazon’s promise of 25,000 new jobs over ten years might have been worth it, especially because they promised to work with local community colleges to train, and hire graduates from this school, thus offering them skilled tech and white collar careers. Better than being hamburger helpers.

Polls showed that Black and Hispanic residents of Queens approved the project, white Manhattanites disapproved. A victory for OCA’s campaign contributors, if not her constituents.

Amazon was crazy to consider immersing itself into NYC’s swamp of corrupt politicians, unions and “community organizers”, all demanding a piece of the action, and its shareholders are lucky that it realized that.

The war goes on. Just as this same crowd blocked Walmart from opening stores in the Bronx and Queens, thereby condemning the city’s poor residents to shop exclusively at high-priced bodegas and small retailers (at lest one study has shown that families have saved $3-4,000 per year because of Walmart), they are now turning their anti-capitalist, pro-socialist fury on driving Amazon out of the city entirely.

Screw ‘em: the people are getting what they voted for.

What's next, membership in the Communist Party? Doing business with Israel?

the last hoorah

LA passes ordinance barring contractors from working for the city if they hold an NRA membership

The Los Angeles City Council voted yesterday to require companies who want to contract with the city to disclose their relationships with the National Rifle Association.

Welcome to the new normal. 

Prospective contractors now must disclose under affidavit any contracts or sponsorships they or their subsidiaries have with the NRA. The city has similar policies about companies involved in the construction of President Trump’s proposed border wall and over the historic investment in or profits from slavery.

The ordinance on the NRA was sought by Councilman Mitch O’Farrell, who cited several recent mass shootings in the U.S. At Tuesday’s meeting, he said the NRA has “been a road block to gun safety reform at every level of government now for several decades.”

A few years ago I’d have said this ordinance would be immediately struck down as unconstitutional on its face. These days, who knows? But advocates of laws like this should remember that majorities shift, and assaults on the First Amendment can come back to bite them.

Florida Man: does he ever slow down?

Love at first bite

Florida man dressed in dog costume admits to having sex with his pet husky “Ember”, filming it, and posting it online!

I haven’t checked, but the video is probably no longer available on You Tube.

(Update: I hadn’t realized, until now, that there’s something in the diagnosis manual called “zoophilia”. Give it a decade, and it will doubtless be considered just another mainstream “identity”. Remember, biology is a matter of mind over science — if Florida Man self-identifies as a husky, who are we to question?).

And there’s this, which should come as a relief to almost everyone: “A Chihuahua was also removed from Nichols home”.

Works for me

Screw your $1.3

Ted Cruz: use El Chapo’s $14 billion to ay for the wall.

Fitting.

Well that was quick

Police catch the suitcase killer

Da Silva, 24, was arrested late Monday in connection to the death of former flame Reyes, whose body was found dumped near Greenwich, Conn., on Feb. 5.

He was only charged with the New Rochelle woman’s kidnapping as of the Tuesday afternoon court appearance, but Greenwich cops had previously said that Da Silva “admitted a role in the death” under questioning.

The murderer is an illegal alien who got in on a visa, and stayed.

So much for the Green Dream's transcontinental bullet trains

California finally ends its bullet train project, after billions wasted

No way to build it, governor admits

Newsom added that while California has "the capacity to complete a high-speed rail link between Merced and Bakersfield," "there simply isn't a path to get from Sacramento to San Diego, let alone from San Francisco to L.A."

California voters approved this doomed railroad in 2008 despite being warned that it wouldn’t work, ever. Initial cost was estimated at $33 billion, a figure that later climbed to $77 billion, with projections of a real final cost of over $100.

Environment suits, refusal to grant right of ways, corruption and incompetence were just some of the fatal difficulties. And that was just for a short route from Los Angeles to San Francisco; how on earth do the dreamers expect to build trains across the continent? For that matter, how do they propose running transmission power lines to deliver all their solar energy?

Pending sale

4 Rapids Lane

(Public) schools are closed this week and that plus today’s miserable weather has kept real estate activity low, but there’s one pending sale reported that’s of interest: 4 Rapids Lane (off Winding, off Lake), currently asking $2.995 million. Ignoring the value of having a beautiful house to live in all these years, the owners haven’t hit a home run here.

They paid $3.7 million for it in 2000, renovated it and last year put it one the market at $3.975. That price had to fall a million dollars before this buyer showed up. Ow.

(It’s being carried on our tax roll at $4 million, so there’s another ow coming for us taxpayers. Our next reevaluation should be interesting, and if by then the Hartford Democrats have made good on their threat to impose a 1% tax on real property, ow ow ow.)

Sadly, millions of people suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome will believe this

Even in the face of irrefutable proof that that’s exactly what Northam said. They don’t care — the big lie, “verified” by Twitter. There are literally dozens (hundreds?) of examples of this sort of outright lying on the internet these days, and the TDS crowd, judging from their comments on tweets, fall for them, hook, line, and sinker