That's not (particularly) racist, just stupid UPDATED

/

well, it’s true that lloyd bridges was a good swimmer, or he played one in hollywood, anyway

NYC Mayor Adams Suggests Illegal Immigrants Become Lifeguards Because They Are 'Excellent Swimmers’

(Just for my own amusement I looked up the actor “John Hott”, who’s given second billing on this poster, and, small world, he must have been a classmate of my father at Yale, class of ‘27. My father never mentioned him, and judging from his bio, not many others did, either.)

UPDATE: While I was at it, I looked up the co-star of this film, Nancy Gates, came across this film in her bio, “Hitler’s Children”. Produced in 1943, so you wouldn’t expect soft music and flowers, but, boy, Casablanca it was not. Absolutely brutal plot that I doubt would be greenlighted today for modern, sensitive audiences that require trigger warnings before Snow White is given a poisoned apple.

Of interest, to me, is that the heroine is sent to a concentration camp to be sterilized by a sadistic Nazi. It was my understanding that our government always denied specific knowledge of what was going on in the concentration camps until the war was almost over, but if it was known in Hollywood in 1943, I suspect that Washington was aware of the evil doings long before that.

Maybe not so much in Greenwich, but we've certainly seen some impressive — or depressing, depending on your view — price increases

/

what can’t go on, won’t

Instapundit:

WOW: US home prices have soared 47% since 2020.

Despite mortgage rates skyrocketing to around 7%, double what they were at the peak of the pandemic, home prices refuse to plateau.

That’s due the insatiable appetite for housing coupled with a crippling shortage in supply.

“Because the Fed kept rates too low for too long during the pandemic, listing inventory was essentially wiped off the map, keeping prices rising sharply despite the surge in mortgage rates,” appraiser Jonathan Miller told The Post. “Would-be home sellers that bought or refinanced at a 2.5% to 4% rate during the pandemic became trapped due to the lock-in effect. They became reluctant to list their homes because, as new buyers, they would get a lot less for their money because of the much higher mortgage rates. The way out of this appears to be to hope for a drop in mortgage rates, but that could take years.”

To put things in perspective, the median US home sale price hit $420,800 in the first quarter of this year. Compare that to a modest $327,100 at the beginning of the decade. It was $124,800 at the dawn of the ’90s.

Lance Lambert, co-founder of ResiClub, says housing price growth in the first 50 months of this decade has outpaced not just one, but the last three decades combined.

One step forward, two steps back

/

1 Stepping Stone Lane was listed on April 1 for $2.650 million and two days later reported a contract. That deal must have fallen through, though, because it was put back on the market April 17 at a new, higher price of $2.8. I speculated then that there must have been several offers above ask, and so the owners, naturally, tried to recapture that magic.

It didn’t work: the price was dropped to $2.725 on May 3, and today it’s been cut to $2.695 million, pretty much where it started off. We all hate when that happens, but it’s not at all uncommon when it does.

All good things must come to an end

/

37 N Porchuck, currently priced at $4.250 million, is finally under contract. It’s owner tried selling it back in 2012 at, first, $5.495 million and finally at $4.295 before giving up and renting it out. She brought it back on last September, once again trying for $5.495, but it same the same market indifference and the price has been dropping since. One final decline when the sales price is reported, and the process is done.

Well, why else would they do it?

/

NGOs Making Bank on Border Crisis

David Strom:

Would you like to make more than half a million dollars a year without having any discernable skills?

Well, the easiest way is to become a music therapist for migrant children. Christy Merrell was paid $533,000 in 2021 to soothe the savage breasts of migrant children in 2021 by the government-funded nonprofit "Endeavors."

Personally, I would prefer to go that route rather than make more than a million dollars a year as the CEO of Southwest Key Programs, another NGO that the Biden Administration is shoveling ungodly amounts of money toward. Being a CEO requires work and subjects you to some legal liability. 

Strom: “It makes you want to cry. Even some Democrats are appalled by the amount of graft.”

“The amount of taxpayer money they are getting is obscene,” Charles Marino, former adviser to Janet Napolitano, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security under Obama, said of the NGOs. “We’re going to find that the waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer money will rival what we saw with the Covid federal money.”

“I can believe that. Here in Minnesota, a Somali gang walked off with hundreds of millions of dollars of stolen COVID aid money that was supposed to feed school children who were part of the school lunch program. Since the kids weren't going to school, the money was given to nonprofits to feed them. 

They never did. And that's just one state. 

We see the same thing happening with the border crisis.”

The Free Press examined three of the most prominent NGOs that have benefited: Global Refuge, Southwest Key Programs, and Endeavors, Inc. These organizations have seen their combined revenue grow from $597 million in 2019 to an astonishing $2 billion by 2022, the last year for which federal disclosure documents are available. And the CEOs of all three nonprofits reap more than $500,000 each in annual compensation, with one of them—the chief executive of Southwest Key—making more than $1 million.

Some of the services NGOs provide are eyebrow-raising. For example, Endeavors uses taxpayer funds to offer migrant children “pet therapy,” “horticulture therapy,” and music therapy. In 2021 alone, Endeavors paid Christy Merrell, a music therapist, $533,000. An internal Endeavors PowerPoint obtained by America First Legal, an outfit founded by former Trump aide Stephen Miller, showed that the nonprofit conducted 1,656 “people-plant interactions” and 287 pet therapy sessions between April 2021 and March 2023.