Finally, a politician who says what he means, and means what he says, and turns out, it's Obama!

“Okay, maybe I didn’t build it, but now I fucking own it, and yeah, Dude, those 67-acres and my beach are posted.”

Barack Hussain Obama: “At a certain point you’ve made enough money.” “You didn’t build that.” “There’s only so big a house you can have.”

Over in Obama World, the man who’s collected $40 million in speaking fees since leaving office, whose wife’s pocketed $135 million from book sales, and who, along with that wife, has just signed a mega-media deal worth millions and millions more, “you” really does mean “you”. Not him, for God’s sake, and not for his friends; he was addressing us Little People. Oh.

To prove his point and to rub our noses in it, our man of the people is under contract to buy a $14.5 million vacation home on Martha’s Vineyard, which will bookend his $8 million D.C. townhouse.

For the first time in my life, I’m proud to be an American

Someone under the Westchester flight path dodged a bullet

They just unloaded their house at 8 Carpenter’s Brook for $2.5 million. Admittedly, that’s a skosh less than the $3.250 they paid for it in 2014, but a lot of properties over there have been losing more than this one’s 5% a year, so all things considered, it’s a win.

Of course the new owners may find that they caught the bullet intended for the seller, but that’s their lookout.

In a comment to an earlier post on this house, FWIW’s resident architectural expert observed that this room “would scare the piss out of me”. That would be an efficient use of space, certainly, but I’d hate to enter it with a hangover.

San Francisco solves its homeless problem — the bums sleeping and crapping on the sidewalks are homeless no longer; now they're simply "housing-(un)involved individuals"

And no more criminals, drug addicts or winos either, thank God. I imagine the citizens feel safer already.

San Francisco decrees that convicted felons are now to be referred to as “justice-involved persons”

Under a new resolution by the city’s Board of Supervisors — which voted to use “person-first” language in the criminal justice system — they’ll be referred to as “justice-involved persons,”  the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

The guidelines nix other terms too, such as  “prisoner,” “convict” and “inmate,” along with any words that “obstruct and separate people from society and make the institutionalization of racism and supremacy appear normal.”

As part of the guidelines, a drug addict or substance abuser will become a “person with a history of substance abuse.”

And a “juvenile delinquent” will instead be referred to as a “young person with justice system involvement.”

As for the stinking, sticky brown stuff the formerly-homeless so happily deposit around the city, that’s gone, too, and replaced with “food with human digestive system involvement”.

New construction on Birch Lane finds a buyer

38 Birch Lane was priced at $6.8 million while under construction in 2018 and slowly dropped to $5.995. Now that it’s finished, it has a buyer, and a pending contract has been reported.

For children raised to be afraid of walking to school, this seems incredibly cruel

Schools placing students’ cell phones in lock boxes during the day.

Hundreds of schools in New York City and the tristate area are about to start the school year using magnetically sealed pouches during the day — so kids aren’t distracted by their digital lives while trying to learn.

….

Yondr’s pouches seal when students place their phones in them at the start of the day. Students then keep the pouches on them so their phones aren’t at risk of getting stolen. When school lets out, they get a code to unlock them.

Not surprisingly the same experts who make their living off of emotionally crippled children are already sounding the alarm against this threat to their profession:

Not knowing what’s going on can cause severe anxiety, research psychologist Larry Rosen told NBC Bay Area.

“I would caution this school that one of the ramifications of this policy is that you’re activating anxiety in your students, which may backfire,” he said.

He advocates for “technology breaks during the school day so students can alleviate their anxiety.”

Sod off, Swampy

They’re all the rage in Silicon Valley

British welfare sponge complains that the free housing provided her is not up to her standards.

(Go to this ink for the playable video, which your techno illiterate host can’t manage to post for himself. The video perfectly captures this ingratiate’s arrogance and petulant demands and is fun to watch, so long as you’re not a seething British taxpayer)

Miss Abubaker takes particular umbrage at being offered a converted shipping container as a home: “we are not animals, we are not storage — we are human beings and deserve a real home.” Not only does she fail to explain why she “deserves” anything for free, let alone a house that meets her specific demands, Abubaker chooses to ignore the thousands of young professional people currently living in storage containers, all with the NYT’s blessing. That paper published an article as recently as 2017,  “Coming Home to a Shipping Container,” in which the Old Grey Whore described the houses as “eco-friendly” and “affordable”:

“Containers are loved by the hip and the practical, artisans and DIY-ers, engineers and construction foremen, as they are both sustainable and affordable. And used 20- or 40-foot containers can be obtained for as little as several hundred dollars apiece, so it’s not surprising that some industry professionals consider them the future of home building,”

Don’t think of yourself as deprived, Lulu, consider yourself a pioneer living on the cutting edge of fashion.

From the linked-to post:

“It's a prison having children here,” [Lulu] Abubaker told Sky News. “For over eight years now we've been moving from one property to another - coming here is just a mental torture.”

In the multiple interviews she has given to news stations, no husband has appeared to voice his opinions, leaving one to wonder where the hell he is. Perhaps her life choice to have multiple children with an absent father (or multiple absent fathers) has something to do with her living condition. Nothing seems to be stopping this woman from getting a job to improve her situation, but that doesn’t seem to be an option she wants to exercise.

In Abubaker’s case, she isn’t even new to the country, but has been there twenty years. Two decades have gone by, and she still can’t support herself and her family and apparently still qualifies for free housing! (Sidenote: this is the same crowd the left wants us to import to America.)

Lulu already has spawned four children, including a brand new one. So while living on the dole, unable to support herself and three children, she decided that what Britain needed more of was a forth little Lulu to pay upkeep on. To quote OCA, “send her back”.

(Or just force her to watch this tear-jerker)

I've often had the same thought about mothers of five "struggling to survive on the minimum wage”.

KURT SCHLICHTER: ”If you’re too poor to birth control-up, you’re too poor to screw and you need to get your ass a job before you start hitting it. Banging is for closers”

The Great Society and its War on Poverty converted welfare from a temporary handout to a permanent entitlement and a way of life, but did nothing for poverty except make more of it.

UPDATE: Until Holden drew my attention to it, the reference in Schlicthters phrase, “banging is for closers” eluded me, doubtless because I haven’t seen Glengarry Glen Rose. I’ll correct that omission tonight, but in the meantime, here’s one of he best monologues I’ve ever seen in a movie. I always knew David Mamet could write like a demon; Alec Baldwin’s acting is a huge surprise.

(Okay, update II: I just remembered “State and Main”, another Mamet film and another fine bit of acting by Baldwin. Somehow, Mamet must bring out the best in that lout)

Yes, our local Democrats did violate campaign finance laws, and did so deliberately and knowingly

You wouldn’t think she just ate a canary, eh?

The State Elections Enforcement Commission (SEEC) has ruled on what Democrat good government types have repeatedly insisted was a baseless complaint concerning the $343,500 spent to elect them. Turns out, the expenditures were illegal.

2017 BET candidate and (now deposed) Chairman of the Greenwich Democratic Party Tony Turner was the individual subject of the official complaint filed by Republicans, but the SEEC’s findings make clear that the money: $350,000, poured into what was ostensibly Turner’s own campaign was in fact intended to and did benefit the entire Greenwich Democrat election slate, from Selectmen candidates to the BET. Turner’s memo to party members announcing the creation of an election committee explicitly stated that the purpose of his spending would be “to promote all Ds and down ballot for BET all with view to gaining BET control and not breaking any rules”. Nice touch adding the phony pledge of legality but in fact, as the SEEC decision maker clear, a Candidate Committee such as that formed by Turner can only benefit that single candidate, not his party, and not other candidates. Turner and his cohort were breaking the law the minute the committee was formed with an illegal purpose. Tuner’s betters spent his (?) money gleefully, assuming that if anyone was left holding the bag, it’d be poor, dumb Tony. It gives a new meaning to “chump change”.

Reached for comment by FWIW, the beneficiary of that spending, current First Selectman candidate Jill Oberlander was unapologetic: “This is all on Tony, and we had nothin’ to do with it. If he wanted to throw some barbecues at the beach to entertain himself, so what? And if he wanted to put out a couple of mailings touting the Party, is that any business of yours, of the State Fucking Election Commission?

“Yeah, maybe $60 grand for ribs and lobsters, seventy for mailings and maybe two-fifty for miscellaneous shit sounds like a lot for a two-bit election, but that was all Tony, and if the dumb fuck wanted to blow his cash on getting me elected chairman of the BET what, we should complain? Gimme a break; this is hardball, baby.

“And besides, I only went to one of those goddamned barbecues of his; after that, Tony just propped a cardboard cutout of me against the picnic tables and used a tape-recording of my stump speech to make it seem like I was there. Really. And the mailings? I never even read ‘em, so how was I to know what they said? Screw the SEEC, screw the election laws, and screw you very much for pestering me about this shit. I’m outta here, fella.”

Headquarters of Tony Turner Election campaign from which $350,000 of Tony’s money was dispensed for “my own, this is my very own, just for me” election campaign. Sold August 19, 2019, $1.130 million.

That was an expensive visit

75 Buckfield Lane, now asking $3.499 million, reports a contract. Seller paid $4.4 for it in September, 2015, and that’s where he priced it when he went to re-sell it in September, 2018. Assuming he gets, say, $3.4, his three-year (yes, EOS, “months” was a typo — stop picking on me!) stay will have cost him a million dollars, and another $300,000 in transaction costs. He’d have been better off renting.

The lesson here, or one of them, is don’t pay almost-full-price for a house in a remote location that’s been on the market for just 30 days. Let it mellow.

Cos Cob spec house sells

115 Bible Street, back lot, built in 2017, on the market since February, 2018, when it started at $3.495 million, has closed at $2.650. That’s not a bad deal for the builder; the buyers may discover that they paid a “new construction” premium, but that happens.

(No interior pictures at the link — presumably the agent couldn’t get over there with a photographer in the brief time since this was listed.)