Still falling

88 Cedar Cliff Road has cut its price from $16.995 million to $15.495. The owners paid $11.750 for this 1928 house in 2007, completely renovated and expanded it from 4,600 sq.ft to 9,000, and put it back up for sale in 2022 at $25.5 million. That proved to be overly-aspirational.

That said, great property, great street, protected views (because the land below it was given to the Greenwich Land Trust), and a pretty special house. Someone’s going to want it, and the owners’ loss, which must be substantial, will be their gain.

Swan song on Audubon

15 Audubon Lane, 4+ acres with a rather unfortunate example of 1960s contemporary design in deferred condition* and headed for the dumpster was listed at $1.299 million, went immediately to “highest and best”, and is now reported to be pending.

*”HIGHEST AND BEST OFFERS DUE MONDAY 5/6 BY NOON! Presence of mold in house, remediation required. Masks suggested when entering. Please call LA prior to entering house”-

It looks like a building lot comprising ledge, swamps and creeks, but apparently more than one buyer out there relishes a challenge. Good luck to him.

It’ll be a long night

Over at American Greatness Daniel Oliver has somehow already received the list of questions that will be asked. Samples:

1. Mr. Trump: Do you think your being impeached twice while you were president should disqualify you from being president again?

2. Mr. Trump: It was widely reported that you were Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s favored candidate in 2016 and that during the campaign your people colluded with Russia. Do you think you are still Putin’s favored candidate? I want to remind our viewers that the Mueller Report, after extensive investigation of your campaign’s interactions with Russia, explicitly stated that it had not exonerated you.

3. Mr. Trump: You said you never sexually molested E. Jean Carroll, but she sued you, and a jury of her peers—folks like the people watching this debate, folks like the average voter—decided you were not telling the truth and awarded her a judgment of $5 million. Why should the American public want someone who molests women to be president?

4. Mr. Trump: During the 2016 campaign, you were accused of having made numerous racially insensitive and offensive remarks, both in private and in public. Do you think you’re the kind of person Americans should elect as president?

5. Mr. Trump: On more occasions than we can count, you have used racist and offensive language, both in private and in public. Do you really think you’re the kind of person Americans should elect as president?

And here’s a list of questions the media are likely to ask Joe Biden:

1. Mr. President: As you know, the Republican Party is dead set against abortion, and many Republicans oppose any abortion at any time for any reason. Are you prepared to help every woman in America get an abortion if she wants one?

2. Mr. President: You have made it perfectly clear that you want to fix our broken border, but the Republicans refused—out of partisan spite—to pass legislation that would assist you in doing just that. Why do you think the Republicans refuse to give you the tools you need to fix the border?

3. Mr. President: Some people are concerned about your fitness for office. But many of your staff say they can hardly keep up with you. Why do you think Donald Trump keeps harping on that issue?

4. Mr. President: You have been a fighter for civil rights for blacks all your life. What are the three most important steps you will take to further the cause of civil rights?

5. Mr. President: It is said by many, including you, that what’s really at stake in this election is democracy itself. Can you tell this American audience what your concerns are?

Two different approaches, two different results.

On his first day in office, Biden declared war on fossil fuels by canceling the XL Pipeline and suspending oil leases. By coincidence, I filled my gas tank that day — January 20, 2021— in New Hampshire and paid $1.69 per gallon. I filled that same tank at the same gas station yesterday and paid $3.49 per gallon. Joe, I bought gasoline during the Reagan administration; I knew gas prices during the Reagan administration; I liked gas prices under the Reagan administration. Joe, yours is no Reagan administration.

From today’s Powerline:

Steven Hayward:

With reports that Joe Biden is once again considering taking oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve because of the national crisis of his flailing re-election campaign (and with oil prices today yo-yoing considerably), our pals at the Committee to Unleash Prosperity remind us of the long-term effect of markets and liberated production, as we saw after Reagan decontrolled the price of oil on his first day in office in 1981:

Hayward: Worth recalling how the left howled at this step, predicting doom. Here’s my account of it from chapter 2 of The Age of Reagan:

The conventional wisdom was that oil prices would surely head higher as a result of Reagan’s move.  Democrats and liberal interest groups seemed to compete with each other for the most fulsome expression of economic illiteracy. In the annals of public policy prognostication it is difficult to find such a wide assembly of wrongheadedness.  Sen. Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio said took to the Senate floor the next day to predict that “we will see $1.50 gas this spring, and maybe before.  And it is just a matter of time until the oil companies and their associates, the OPEC nations, will be driving gasoline pump prices up to $2 a gallon.”  Sen. Don Riegle of Michigan said that “It will hurt our people within a matter of days.”  Sen. Dale Bumpers of Arkansas had previously predicted that “without rationing, gasoline will soon go to $3 a gallon,” and now added that “Decontrol is designed to see how much we can squeeze out of the American people before they take to the streets.”  Maine’s Sen. George Mitchell said “Every citizen and every family will find their living standards reduced by this decision.”  Democratic Congressman Ed Markey said “I believe that decontrol as a cure will prove to be worse than the disease of oil addiction.” A Naderite advocacy group predicted that oil prices might go as high as $870 a barrel “under assumptions which many experts believe are realistic.”  Instead oil prices started falling almost immediately; from an average high of $1.41 in February 1981, pump prices fell steadily to a national average of 89 cents a gallon in the spring of 1986.  Oil imports from OPEC fell by 2 million barrels a day by the end of 1982.  Reagan’s integrated view of oil prices, inflation, and the value of the dollar is especially remarkable in comparison with the Carter administration, which never seemed to understand inflation, ascribing it to animal spirits or, at one point, even to the moral failings of Americans.

Gooder and harder

NYC is spending $39,000 per pupil to “educate” them, teachers and administrators demand still more.

Even after the tests were watered down in order to boost scores, NYC schools are still churning out a mediocre, failing product. Which only proves, of course, that spending should double.

About 77.6% of Asian American students and 70.2% of white students demonstrated proficiency their math exams, compared to 34.3% of students who are Black and 35.7% who are Latino. On reading tests, 72.3% of Asian American students and 69.5% of white students were on grade level, compared to 40.3% of Black students and 39.4% of Latino students.

Among students with disabilities, 21.7% demonstrated proficiency in reading and 24.4% did so in math. Among students learning English as a new language, 11.1% were on grade level in reading and 21.5% were in math.

They keep voting for Democrats because, despite all evidence to the contrary, they believe they are their friends

D.C. Now Requires 4-Year Degree to Teach in Day Care

David Strom offers his usual excellent analysis, but my takeaway is this: thousands of experienced daycare workers are going to lose their jobs, the number of available daycare centers will be slashed, and the cost of that daycare, already horrendous, will skyrocket, all for no improvement in actual care.

Progressives’ progress.

Well, this is just silly — they've ALWAYS taught that

Harvard, UC Berkeley are teaching students that you win at life by being obnoxious

About as believable as Biden's claim that Burisma put Hunter on its payroll @$80,000 per month because of his good looks and crack skills

she did what???!!!

Gold Bar Bob says all that cash and bullion was given to his wife, not him — because they loved her so?

New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez didn’t know anything about the gold bars hidden inside his home, his lawyer insisted in court Wednesday — blaming the pol’s “dazzling, tall” wife for stashing the trove away without his knowledge

The veteran Democrat’s lawyer told jurors in Manhattan federal court that Nadine Menendez “sidelined” her hubby — who prosecutors allege took the gold bars, plus hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and a Mercedes convertible, in exchange for wielding his influence to benefit three Garden State businessmen and the governments of Qatar and Egypt.

“Where were the gold bars found? [The] gold bars were found in a locked closet. It is Nadine’s closet,” Menendez’s attorney Avi Weitzman said during opening statements, pulling up a photo of the closet, which he said was “filled with [Nadine’s] clothes.”

“The senator did not know the gold bars were there,” Weitzman told jurors during the remarks, delivered loudly at a near-shout. 

[“When the facts are on your side, pound the facts. When the law is on your side, pound the law. When neither is on you side, pound the table.” Oliver Wendell Holmes (maybe) ]

“[Nadine] kept Bob sidelined. Nadine had these relationships long before she met Bob,” he added.

The feds found 13 gold bars worth over $150,000 and nearly $500,000 in cash when they raided the couple’s Englewood Cliffs, NJ home in June 2022 — all “fruits” of a corrupt scheme that began in 2018, when Bob and Nadine were just starting to date, prosecutors claimed.

It’s ludicrous to even dream that a trio of Egyptian businessmen seeking (and getting) U.S. approval for their ventures would stoop so low as to bribe the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — why, that would be illegal! — and it’s mere coincidence that they should fall in love with that politician’s wife, described by her hubby’s lawyer as a “beautiful, tall, international woman”, while they were currying favor in Washington. The senator? Why, says his hired pleader, the prosecutors’ allegations are “dead wrong; Menendez was just doing “his job” by reaching out to constituents and doing “diplomacy.”

He says it, I believe it, that settles it.

I'm beginning to see a pattern here

January 6th protestors, 5-20 years, after a year in solitary confinement in D.C., jail, anti-abortion demonstrator five years. The anti-abortionist chained herself to furniture in an abortion clinic’s , but sadly for her, she didn’t do millions of dollars of damage like the pro-Hamas demonstrators have done. If she had, she’d be a free woman today.

Speaking of "deferred condition" ....

608 Lake Avenue, 4.68 acres of back lot, was listed for sale just now at $2.250. Its listing agent, a gentlemen not known for his reserve when describing a property, mentions its “meandering and beautiful [shared] driveway”, the suggests that “the current home and detached garage guest house could be renovated and expanded.” Well, okay.