Brave New World

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England: Drug dealer captured when he posts a picture of himself holding a block of cheese and police analyze his fingerprints

 A drug dealer has been jailed for more than 13 years after police got his ID from fingerprints he left on a block of Stilton.

Carl Stewart, 39, from Vauxhall, Liverpool, used the EncroChat encryption service to evade detection as he supplied class A and B drugs.

He used the handle 'Toffeeforce' to hide his identity, but law enforcement agencies managed to crack the encryption device.

Stewart was identified after he shared an image of a block of cheese in the palm of his hand, and his fingerprints were analysed.    

He was jailed for 13 years and six months on Friday 21 May after he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply cocaine and conspiracy to supply heroin at Liverpool Crown Court.

Stewart also pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply MDMA, conspiracy to supply ketamine and transferring criminal property.    

Detective Inspector Lee Wilkinson of Merseyside Police said: 'Today we have seen another significant sentencing as part of national Operation Venetic, which came about after law enforcement officials in Europe managed to crack the 'encrochat' service being used by criminals involved in serious and organised crime to carry out their business.

'Carl Stewart was involved in supplying large amounts of class A and B drugs, but was caught out by his love of Stilton cheese, after sharing a picture of a block of it in his hand through encrochat. 

'His palm and fingerprints were analysed from this picture and it was established they belonged to Stewart.'

Thirteen years on the lam, 13 1/2 years in jail; seems appropriately balanced.

Well, this isn't good

Over at PJ Media, Rick Moran writes: Partisan January 6 Commission Vote May Doom the Filibuster, and his prediction is quite plausible. Ugh.

The Senate will face a filibuster Waterloo next week when Democrats try to get a floor debate on the independent commission to investigate the January 6 riot at the Capitol.

….

Democrats have decided to make the commission Trump’s third impeachment trial. They will entertain no facts, call no witnesses, gather no evidence that doesn’t buttress the singular argument that Donald Trump engineered the riot in order to nullify the election and take over the government.

They don’t believe that the political violence in the cities during the summer was actually “political violence.” They see it as an understandable response to the cruelty and violence of racism.

At least, that’s how radical activists tell them that’s what it was. And no Democrat is going to cross that race line and expect to survive politically.

So Republicans are digging in their heels in the Senate and will not budge on creating such a commission. It may cost them dearly. The only way Senate Republicans can stop the commission from being created is by refusing to even take the measure up in the first place.

And that will give Democratic radicals ammunition to convince the few remaining holdouts to vote to eliminate the filibuster.

…

Politico:

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), one of the filibuster’s strongest supporters in the Democratic Party, seemed aghast that his GOP colleagues are on track to block the bill.

“So disheartening. It makes you really concerned about our country,” Manchin said. Asked if that is an abuse of the filibuster: “I’m still praying we’ve still got 10 good solid patriots within that conference.”

If Republicans can’t hold Manchin’s vote to keep the filibuster, it’s all over but the weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth.

This may not be a hill worth dying on. The Democrat’s commission, duplicating the work of a half-dozen ongoing investigations, will purposefully drag on into the 2022 elections, but we’re used to sound and fury, signifying nothing coming from that quarter for years now. iI’d let ‘em rant, and keep the filibuster around for as long as we can — there are some far more deadly bills in the hopper, and we’ll need a few of the saner Democrats to help stop them.

Just Sayin'

After six years, success

280 Riversville Road, that 1950 house that you, like me, may have confused for a sewage pumping station all these years, has sold for $1.650 million. It began in May 2015 at $2.1 million.

Pond/lawn mower combo included

One too many zebras?

who can say? but the current agent reduced the herd and it sold, so ….

Mask hysteria is easing in Portsmouth, but don't tell the BLM bitter-clingers

Portsmouth New Hampshire is about as liberal a city as you’ll find east of Seattle, and the mask mandate came early and is staying late, at least locally: the state dropped the rule weeks ago, probably in recognition that most people had already stopped obeying it, but the city itself says it’s keeping it’s local ordinance in force until June 30, “unless extended”.

But a people’s veto has occurred, and it seems as though 90% of the formerly coerced have stuffed their masks in their pockets and are daring to cheat death again. However, there remains a hard core of science deniers, almost certainly drawn exclusively from the BLM crowd, and boy, are they ANGWYYY!

Masked, aging hippy chicks in their 60s can still be seen pedaling their fat-tired, ecologically sustainable bicycles along the Memorial Bridge – a mile-long span across the Piscataqua River — while in the otherwise empty bicycle lane; no one around them for 1,000 yards. I can’t see behind their masks, but I’m certain they’re scowling, even on beautiful sunny days like today.

I can shrug my shoulders at these pathetic nuts because it’s none of my business, and if they want to be unhappy and fearful, it’s their misfortune, and none of my own. But I’ve noticed that as mask compliance plummets, the people for whom obedience to authority gives meaning to their lives are growing increasingly hostile, and it’s not unusual now to receive angry looks from these people when we pass on the sidewalk. My happy indifference to their troubles is souring, and my tolerance for their intolerance is ebbing.

This afternoon I noticed a couple pulling into a parking space as I was returning to my own car. I approached them with the intention of offering them my own soon-to-be-vacant space, which still had an hour on the meter (worth two bucks). I got only as far as asking, “are you …” when the husband in the passenger seat started yelling: “Back away! Back away!” The wife, whose window was down, joined his panic and started yelling too: “Yes! Yes! Get away! Go!”, shooing me back with one hand while fumblingly trying to don her useless paper mask with the other.

So why should I care? If I’m lucky, I’ll never see these crazy people again unless they show up as supporters at the next Trump rally, and that seems unlikely. On the other hand, I regret the loss of common social civility: one stranger doing a tiny favor for another. It’s what used to make small-town living so attractive and, if these weirdos will only return from whence they crawled, that good life can be restored.

Otherwise, we’re in for tough times.

A price cut in Riverside (!)

4 Buxton Lane has dropped from $2.995 million to $2.850 — it began in June 2020 at $3.350.

If, after a full year of looking, you haven’t found a buyer for your Riverside house, in this market, you’re (way) overpriced.

You could tell potential buyers that that’s not the roar of I-95 pummeling their ears, it’s the sound of convenience: they’ll be close to transportation!

Pending on Richmond Hill

73 Richmond Hill Road, $4.495 million, 47 days. Built by Billy Gardiner back in 1997, so it’s bound to be top-quality construction. My only objection, and it’s personal to me, is that Richmond Hill is way out of town, and houses there didn’t do well the past decade.

But Kung Flu seems to have dragged a lot of people into town who are looking for large lots again and for whom proximity to Westchester is a feature, not a bedbug, so ….

Butternut sales price reported

126 Butternut Hollow closed yesterday for $3.5 million.

Would it be rude to suggest that its architecture suits the street it sits on?

This seems like a good price; I'm surprised it took so long to find a buyer

44 Patterson Avenue, $6.475 million — it started off at $6.975 in November 2019, and I thought highly of it back then — more so than the buyers who were looking at the time, it seems.

I realize that even this lower price is not chump change, but 1.18 acres in central Greenwich, with a beautifully restored, 6-bedroom, 1922 house (and a two-bedroom guest house) with a pool, sounds enticing.

And there are certainly some inferior houses selling in this price range in other areas of town.

I just paid $1.54 for SINGLE, MEDIUM-SIZED, NoN-organic tomato — at that pricing, you could grow your own and pay the mortgage from the proceeds

And the gaslighting begins (or continues — take your pick)

LA Times: Shutdown didn’t hurt the economy

DuckDuck “Covid, shutdown, economic harm” — go ahead; I’ll wait here — and see the literally thousands of articles and studies on the economic damage wreaked on the world’s and this country’s economies.

Yet the rewriting of history begins.

The press may be the only institution whose trust has been destroyed even worse than that of our public health authorities. Well, trust in government itself hasn’t fared well either, but the point remains.

From the comments to the LA’s propaganda (Nearly a century after its awarding, by the way, the New York Times still refuses to return the Pulitzer it received Duranty’s deliberately false “reporting” from Stalin’s Soviet Union in 1933. Estimated deaths from Stalin’s forced famine are around 20 million, but as the great man himself said, “One man’s death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic.” )