One step forward, two steps back (well, four, eventually)

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1 Stepping Stone Lane, $2,587,500 on $2.650 million asked. There’s a curious price history here, because the house was initially listed at $2.650 last April 1st, reported under contract three days later on the 3rd, then reappeared as active on April 17th, marked up to $2.8, with three price reductions thereafter, before this final price was agreed to.

I haven’t confirmed this with listing agent Sally Maloney, but I’d guess that what happened was that the house received multiple offers when it was first listed, the highest — probably $2.8 or $2.7ish — was accepted, and when that fell though, the perfectly logical assumption was made that the high interest justified a higher asking price. But it didn’t work out that way, which sometimes happens.

Again, Sally didn’t tell me this, and my speculations may be entirely unfounded, but I’ve seen this happen before; it’s a curious phenomenon.

In any event, it’s now sold, and at a pretty good price, just not the one hoped for.

San Diego law enforcement: puddles of urine, piles of poop, and used needles on the sidewalk, or soap bubbles in the park: guess who gets ticketed for littering?

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Aww, you peeked!

California officials ticket the 'Bubble Pirate,’ an artist and Navy veteran, for 'fluid littering'

A Navy veteran in California has been entertaining the local community with his creative bubble performances for over 10 years.

But Sandy Snakenberg, known as the "Bubble Pirate," was donning his pirate costume and performing his usual bubble show at La Jolla Cove in San Diego last week when he was issued a ticket by park officials, he told Fox News Digital. 

The ticket alleges that Snakenberg, 63, violated San Diego’s municipal code against littering due to the fluid from his bubbles.

Snakenberg said in a phone interview that he asked the park ranger to note that the liquid was from bubbles, but the officer did not do so, he said.

The ticket mandates that Snakenberg appear in court in October.

No-Go Zones bring a touch of Paris and Malmo to the U.S.

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The Washington Examiner provides background:

What is Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan gang running amok in Colorado?

Venezuela‘s largest criminal gang, Tren de Aragua, is wreaking havoc in Colorado, driving national attention.

The group revolutionized crime in Venezuela and across Latin America, in the words of author Ronna Risquez, running the country from prisons and extending its reach across the Western Hemisphere. In several areas, the gang has taken complete control, usurping government authority.

One unique feature of the group is its origins as a prison gang — the entire gang was run out of the Tocoron prison, which, prior to its storming by the Venezuelan army in 2023, had been turned into a luxury palace replete with swimming pools, a baseball field, and a zoo. Before the raids, more than half of the country’s prisons were controlled by gangs, the New York Times reported.

The leader of Tren de Aragua, Héctor “El Niño” Guerrero Flores, escaped the prison before the storming and is still on the loose. The Department of State and the Department of Justice are offering up to $5 million for information regarding his whereabouts. He is believed to reside somewhere in Colombia.

While in prison, Guerrero Flores extended the gang’s reach across the continent, recently expanding into North America and the United States.

The New York Post reported that the gang has been linked to more than 100 crimes across the U.S. Among the litany of crimes the group is known for are human trafficking, sex trafficking, extortion, kidnapping, drug dealing, murder, money laundering, contract killings, smuggling, and other types of theft.

One of the group’s tentacles extended to Aurora, Colorado, where the gang is making its presence known.

You'll be glad to know that she assured her CNN advocate today that her "values haven't changed", so we can expect to get still more of this, good and hard.

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Mr.Trump, tear down this wall!

“Last year, US taxpayers shelled out some $150 billion in government services and support to help the 20 million illegal migrants in the country, according to a study from the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).

“And most of the cost is being borne by state and local governments.”

(NYC alone has spent $5 billion on its “newcomers”, and expects that number to hit $10 billion by June 30 2025.)

And note this:

In an August 2020 article USA Today defended Kampalla against conservative posters who were charging her with hypocrisy by claiming that she had once supported a border. She absolutely did not! the paper insisted.

Our ruling: False

Sen. Kamala Harris has been a vocal critic of border wall funding, seeing the move as misguided. There is no evidence the 2011 photo's backdrop was meant to emphasize the border fencing, but rather the law enforcement personnel who appeared alongside Harris. We rate this claim FALSE, because it is not supported by our research.

Harris was one of the three senators who opposed a deal which would have granted Trump border wall funding as part of a legislative deal that also included a path to citizenship for recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

“I’m not going to vote for a wall under any circumstances,” Harris said during a 2019 CNN Town Hall where she called the president’s wall proposal a “medieval vanity project.”

Harris again called the idea of an expanded border wall a “vanity project” while on a tour for her book “The Truths We Hold: An American Journey.” Harris called the budgetary fight over funding for the wall a “distraction from the fact that you’ve got Mueller investigating.”

Harris also called the war on drugs “ineffective” and criticized the country’s cash bail system as “not reflective of a system of justice” because of its disproportionate cost and damage inflicted on poor Americans.

Harris later repeated the line during the May 2019 kickoff rally for her presidential campaign.

"Folks, on the subject of transnational gangs, let's be perfectly clear: The president's medieval vanity project is not going to stop them,” the senator said.

Elegant, without being overly ostentatious

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15 Thornhill Road, Riverside NoPo, has sold for its full asking price of $1.250 million. By the way, if there is any sort of hill on Thornhill, it’s as modest as the houses that grace it; I’ve never seen it, personally. But the road did have one notable feature in the past: there were at least three, maybe four cops living on this short cross road between Riverside Lane and Sheep Hill and it was, a life-long resident once told me, the safest street in town and completely vandal-free.

Howard Lane

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64 Howard Lane has sold for $2.890 million. Once owned by the late broadcaster Michelle Marsh who, before she hit the big time in NYC, was a stunning young woman who brightened up Bangor, Maine’s evening news back in the day. Imagine my surprise to discover that she’d followed me south.

Marsh paid $2.775 for the house in 2004, and sold it to these owners in 2013 for $2.250 million; such are the vagaries of real estate.

Works for me

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communists in the state department, fluoride in the water, u.s. in the un, and the Warren court. after all these years, The birchers have been proved right

The United Nations is ‘terrified’ of Trump, official admits in undercover video

The United Nations is “terrified” at the prospect of a second Trump presidency, according to a leaked conversation with a senior official at the global agency. 

“I’m not sure the United Nations is going to survive a second term from Donald Trump,” Jorge Paoletti, an associate legal officer at the UN Office of Legal Affairs in New York, told an undercover reporter from podcaster Steven Crowder’s Mug Club.

“Absolutely nobody wants Trump … because the purpose of Donald Trump is to end the international institutions that somehow level the playing field. He wants America first.”

Paoletti went on to explain that he dreads Trump’s “America First” policies interfering with the UN’s globalist agenda.

“One of the objectives of the UN is to create an identity of a global citizen, someone who shares an identity, a political identity, with everybody on this planet. [This idea] is a threat to the absolute power of the United States because [Americans] don’t want an institution over the US telling the US what to do.”

As the largest financial contributor to the UN, funding 22% of its budget, the US has undue influence, Paoletti complains, and under Trump, he fears it will refuse to go along with UN edicts.

“For example, say that the United Nations creates an environmental agency. And that environmental agency says that countries can only reach a certain level of pollution. How do you think all these crazy MAGA people are going to react to that? [Trump will say,] ‘Who are you globalists to tell me, the United States, what I can do?’”