Greenwich, Connecticut real estate, politics, and more.
Greenwich, Connecticut real estate, politics, and more
155 Cat Rock, $4.5 million, pending after 17 days. Nice house, built in 2017, though I wouldn’t pay too much attention to the listed tax bill of $21,810; that’s not in any way a deceptive figure — it’s the actual tax, and that’s the number a broker must use, rather than some speculative figure — but the town has appraised it at $2,660,700, a value that is sure to be adjusted when the new Grand List comes out – next year?
mr. zebra’s cousin welcomes you
528 Field Point Road, across from, but not inside the Belle Haven Field Point Circle gate (oh, so close!), has dropped its price again, and can now be yours for $6.195 million. The owners paid $6 million for it in July, 2023, and put it back on the market this past April at $6.950. Why they thought others would pay more than they had for what they no longer want remains a mystery.
“nah, ma can’t have this; it belongs to my secretary — she shot it.”
“Besides, if she’s hungry, she can just eat cat food, like the rest of my worthless family.”
"When my mom looks for that Social Security deposit to be made in her bank account, that's how she's going to feed herself. That's how she's going to get things done.”
Life at the public trough has hardened his heart while fattening his wallet
According to Forbes, Walz has an estimated net worth of over $1 million.
Walz has spent the better part of his career in the public service sector. He was a former public school teacher and Army National Guardsman who served six terms in Congress before becoming the governor of Minnesota in 2019.
printed T-Shirts, posters; who paid?
Victoria Taft, PJ Media:
Kamala Harris bused in "supporters" to a rally in what looked like an obvious effort to make her campaign look bigger than it is. Women dressed in "Handmaid's Tale" garb picketed in front of U.S. Supreme Court Justices' homes to pressure justices into changing their minds, insurrection-style, after the Dobbs draft decision was leaked. Democrat operatives sent agents provocateurs to Trump rallies to try and start fights while in line and disrupt his speeches in 2016. In 2008, at a Hillary Clinton speech, a couple of guys heckled her with "Iron my shirts!"
Who are these people? Don't these people have jobs to go to? Where do they come from?
Who are they, and how did someone know to be there to capture the weird scene and post it to a now non-existent TikTok account without explanation? Are they feds, or quirky guys who connected on Craig's List, Threads, or Reddit? Are they protesters-for-hire?
A TikTok video released the other day showed about 100 men in khakis and white masks holding odd flags and marching in (bad) formation to a snare drum cadence.
I asked the CEO of a company that hires and deploys renta-mobs.
The founder and CEO of Crowds on Demand, Adam Swart, doesn't hide what he does. I got a press release from his PR folks a few months, back and Matt talked with him for a PJ Media story about the threat of violent mobs outside the Chicago Democrat convention in July.
I thought I'd reach out to ask him about the flag-carrying khaki pants boys marching above.
“I had never heard of this group previously and I don't have any specific information on it. Reducto ad absurdum, reducing your opponent's case to its most ridiculous part, can be an effective technique.
“These folks seem dressed like neo-fascists marching in a militaristic style, which would likely make some folks pretty uncomfortable. Their style therefore seems designed to go viral online and spur fear.
“While many online have speculated that this is an attempt by government agencies to make Trump supporters look like fascists, I think that is unlikely.
“I think it is far more likely that an anti-Trump group would organize it for that purpose. However, it's important to note that these folks don't appear to be waving Trump signs, so if it is a fear mongering tactic then it's a subtle one.”
Or not so subtle.
Swart's company does a bit of everything.
Crowds on Demand promises crowds "to move forward a healthcare, financial, energy, or other social initiative, we can organize rallies and get media attention for your causes and candidates."
"If you need to hire protesters, we can get a crowd on the street, sometimes within 24 hours time," the company's website promises.
They can "staff" city council meetings: "If you need speakers to present at a council meeting, we can provide talented and well-spoken individuals to advocate for the cause."
Need to make astroturfed phone calls to Congress? "We also have a dedicated team of phone-banking staff who can call Congressional Offices and convince government officials to support your cause and help you overcome opposition."
Are you trying to remove a popular TV host or need some other letter-writing campaign? "[W]e have a network of tens of thousands of individuals across the country who can send well-written constituent letters to their representatives."
And finally, "We are the ultimate guerrilla lobbying and government relations firm."
….
Some events attract grassroots activists, but many, like a Joe Biden speech, need help. Motivated activists might drop everything to go to a protest, but protesting doesn't pay the bills— or does it? I'm told that protesters can make a couple hundred to a few hundred dollars per day depending on the job.
This kind of business model — which Swart didn't create but simply copied and perfected — should make you question everything.
The flag-waving episode was reminiscent of the tiki torch-carrying jacka**es in Charlottesville. An X user asked a good question about the edited and spliced video that went out on social media: "Who filmed the Hollywood-quality Tiki Torch march?" And why?
Was any of this activity an outpouring of genuine political zeal or is somebody trying to spin up something out of nothing? Were all of these astroturfed phony displays either by federal officers, opposition groups, or Lisa Fithian-inspired violent leftists trolling for coverage? Or were they paid protesters?
…. As a radio talk host, I visited the Occupy Portland charade every day. These union-paid activists destroyed the same parks where Antifa nearly destroyed the city only a few years later. They created clashes with police to get headlines.
It was all part of a show. They had a casting director and everything. Since I was keeping track of their communications, I saw their casting call for paid actors and actresses to play roles of "apologetic captains of industry" for the cameras.
It’s not difficult to round up a few thousand useful idiots on college campuses to riot for your cause, but who organizes these love-ins? Why do the same ringleaders show up at disparate protests around the country, and who pays their expenses? Taft has provided at least part of the answer.
RELATED:
ASTROTURF IS THE ONLY THING THAT ‘GROWS’ UNDER GASLIGHT: Democrats caught bribing TikTok influencers to mislead Generation Z.
Amy Curtis — Twitchy:
Russia! Russia! Russia!
Remember that? Remember how the Left screamed and whined and clutched all the pearls about Russia 'interfering' in our 2016 election?
Prepare yourselves for DEAFENING silence as the U.K. Labour Party plans to stick its nose in our election. For Kamala Harris, of course.
🚨 NEW: Nearly 100 current and former Labour Party staff are going to battleground states in the US election to campaign for Kamala Harris, with the party offering to ‘sort your housing’ pic.twitter.com/12EBTkuNL5
— Politics UK (@PolitlcsUK) October 17, 2024
Yes, this is illegal; no, the State’s DOJ will do nothing about it.
Created by FindLaw's team of legal writers and editors | Last reviewed July 30, 2020
The U.S. established regulations on election administration to thwart attempts against the U.S. electoral system, ensuring the protection of voting rights. This article offers an insight into the nature of foreign interference and its potential impact on U.S. elections. It highlights the importance of protecting the integrity of election offices.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) defines foreign election interference as harmful actions by foreign governments or agents. The act aims to weaken the interests of the United States and its allies by:
Sabotaging the credibility of the electoral system
Influencing policy development
Creating discord
Altering public discourse or
Disrupting the markets
Foreign election interference takes many forms, but the goal is almost always the same. It is to influence an institution to move in a more beneficial direction for the influencer. Foreign election interference can be overt or covert, which is part of the reason it is so difficult to prevent. Some examples of foreign election interference include:
Overthrowing a particular regime
Spreading misinformation on social media
Funding a specific political candidate
Creating doubt in political institutions or processes
Election interference can constitute a federal crime. The Federal Bureau of Investigation placed it under the Election Crimes and Security category. In general, an election crime is a federal crime if:
The ballot contains one or more federal candidates. This indicates the potential impact on the federal election outcome.
An election or polling place election official abuses their position.
The act involves false voter registration, sabotaging the integrity of the electoral process.
The crime intentionally targets minority-protected classes, violating their rights.
The action violates federal campaign finance laws.
These criteria emphasize the gravity of how the federal government looks at election interference.
Foreign and domestic interference are two distinct concepts in politics and international relations.
Foreign interference is the actions of a foreign country against another. The foreign country intends to manipulate or influence the domestic matters of the other country. The foreign country also aims to advance its interests at the expense of the targeted country. One notable example of foreign interference was during the 2016 election. Here, Russian government agents hacked the email accounts of Democratic campaign officials. The emails were then published before the 2016 presidential election in an attempt to affect the election results. Other examples of foreign interference are:
Attacks on cybersecurity
Disinformation campaigns
Covert operations
Attempts to sway election results
born in the swamp, educated in swamp north, busy continuing his father’s destruction of what was once a semi-reliable newspaper
This is stunning: The New York Times "plagiarism expert" now confirms that the paper deliberately withheld the full Kamala Harris plagiarism report from him and that, after analyzing the full claims, Harris's plagiarism is "more serious" than he told the Times. pic.twitter.com/EP1og7bIi0
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) October 17, 2024
Plus: “ABC does fake fact-checks to help Kamala. CBS stealth-edits an interview to help Kamala. New York Times withholds evidence to help Kamala. This is endemic—and only visible now because we have X.”
Posted at 4:53 pm by Stephen Green 80
WHEN THEY AREN’T ASTROTURFING, THEY’RE PROJECTING OR GASLIGHTING: Liberal Media Caught Astroturfing Reaction to Harris’ Fox News Interview.
SHOT: School rehires transgender female coach after he used girls’ locker room and bathroom September 10, 2023
Board members of the Gettysburg Area School District in Pennsylvania recently voted to rehire a transgender female tennis coach despite reports he had used a girls’ locker room and bathroom in the past year.
According to PennLive.com, the school board rehired Sasha Yates on September 5 by a 6-2 vote after deadlocking 3-3 on the issue a few weeks earlier.
These concerns included Yates (pictured) changing in and “walking through” the girls’ locker room, and “talk[ing] to students about undergarment preferences and menstruation.”
A more detailed report in The Epoch Times from late August notes that Yates, formerly known as “David,” had been coaching at Gettysburg since 2018. He switched to “Sasha” last year, and after being terminated in the spring reapplied in July.
The board’s initial 3-3 vote had maintained Yates’ termination; this was overturned last week.
Why was Yates let go in the first place?
The Times notes that in the fall of 2022 Yates changed his clothes in the girls’ locker room — “stripping down to bra and panties” — where the (girls) soccer team also was changing. Members of the team had reported “it was clear from what they saw that Mr. Yates was still fully a man.”
The following spring, Yates used a girls’ bathroom in which a member of the softball team was present. Yates reportedly “tried to strike up a conversation” with the 16-year-old female athlete, leading the girl to text her coach “[T]his damn tennis coach just walked into the girls bathroom … Like, [expletive] You’re a [expletive] man.”
The girl’s father brought the matter to the attention of school officials, whereupon he was informed Yates “would not be rehired for another season of coaching.” He thus considered the matter closed.
That is, until Yates’ name popped back up on a list of school coaches this summer.
“Now, everybody in this area seems to be crying that it is hate—that nobody wants this guy back because he’s transgender and it’s hate,” the father said. “This has absolutely nothing to do with hate on my part. I don’t care what the guy wants to call himself. My job as a parent is to protect my child. And he had no business going into that bathroom, and his actions proved that he cannot be trusted.”
Why was Yates brought back?
The Times notes that following the bathroom incident, a solicitor convinced board members not to fire Yates immediately as they could end up being sued. The solicitor then warned about a possible lawsuit if the board did not rehire Yates after he (re)applied.
PennLive reports while there were more people who spoke against Yates at the latest board meeting, “the majority of the comments were still squarely in the coach’s corner.”
A PennLive editorial essentially ignores the locker room and bathroom incidents, opting instead (in conditional language) to call for Pennsylvania lawmakers “to protect LGBTQ+ people”:
The state legislature should move immediately to provide clear protections for LGBTQ+ people in Pennsylvania and ensure what many fear is happening in Gettysburg doesn’t happen again.
No one should face discrimination because of their sexual orientation. No one should face obstacles to securing housing or access to services because they are gay, lesbian, or transgender. No one should be denied a job or face being fired because of their sexual orientation.
But supporters of Coach Yates believe that is the reason she hasn’t gotten her contract renewed to continue teaching tennis.
…..
CHASER: Transgender coach, rehired due to ‘transphobia’ concerns, resigns after porn video surfaces October 15, 2024
Having sex with another man in a ski mask, smoking meth
A transgender high school tennis coach who, despite complaints of inappropriate behavior, was rehired due to concerns of “transphobia,” has now resigned after a pair of videos surfaced of him engaged in vulgar behavior.
…. Yates had been dismissed after various complaints, including “changing in and ‘walking through’ the girls’ locker room,” and “talk[ing] to students about undergarment preferences and menstruation.”
But he later reapplied for his coaching position, and a solicitor recommended he be rehired — else the district could face a lawsuit.
Many in the local community favored Yates’ rehiring, claiming transphobia was behind his firing in the first place.
But as The Daily Wire reports today, many of Yates’ supporters now “have gone silent.”
That’s because board member Michelle Smyers received an email late last month containing a pair of videos along with the message “Thought you might find it interesting how your high school tennis coach spends her weekends.”
In one video, screenshots of which were reviewed by The Daily Wire, [Yates] appears to be smoking meth, with the assistance of a woman, and asks, “Am I a good meth whore?” In another, Yates — a middle-aged British man — is seen bent over a counter wearing a black bra and having sex with a man wearing a ski mask.
I wrote about 21 Kenilworth Terrace when it went pending back in August, and now it’s closed: $7.150 million, on a $6.995 askingp rice. 1893 home that according to the listing was completely renovated in 2024.
the doctor will see you now — briefly
I have no philosophical or religious (no mackerel snapper, I) objection to a terminally ill person deciding to end their suffering, but when the state gets involved, my hackles rise.
For now, medically- administered euthanasia is (usually) voluntary, but with people like Bill Gates and even a “friend” of mine arguing that the world’s maximum population is 1 billion, six billion of us are at risk, probably sooner than we might wish.
Canada’s doctors are raising grave concerns about a rising trend in euthanizing people who are not terminally ill.
Newly-unearthed communications reveal many physicians charged with carrying out assisted dying have found the loosening of criteria 'morally distressing.'
In 2021, Canada expanded its medical dying law to include people with incurable - but not terminal - illnesses, which led to a 30 percent increase in assisted deaths in 2022.
A doctor in Ontario wrote in his patient’s report that while the man had a severe lung disease, what drove him to euthanasia was ‘mostly because he is homeless, in debt and cannot tolerate the idea of (long-term care) of any kind.’
In another case, a doctor expressed their conflict at providing euthanasia to a patient simply because she was obese and depressed. Meanwhile, an elderly woman wanted to die because she was struggling with the grief of losing her husband.
An Associated Press investigation that involved obtaining internal data from the provincial government in Ontario revealed dozens of online posts by doctors on public forums.
Doctors provided the AP with messages shared on the private forums for assisted dying specialists on the condition of anonymity.
The messages came from doctors who both performed euthanasia and assessed people who requested it.
Many said they were uncomfortable with ending the lives of non-medically vulnerable people.
Others felt conflicted about providing euthanasia to people not suffering from terminal illnesses, but those experiencing grief or being obese.
One Ontario doctor who spoke with the AP revealed that their patient had severe obesity and depression, saying she felt like a ‘useless body taking up space.'
She had withdrawn from activities and social life and said she had ‘no purpose,' according to the doctor who reviewed her case.
While she was not actively dying, doctors said euthanasia was warranted because obesity is ‘a medical condition which is indeed grievous and irremediable.’
Meanwhile, a woman in her 80s petitioned for assisted death after losing her husband, sibling, and cat in a six-week period, according to AP reporting.
On top of that, she was on dialysis, an exhausting tri-weekly procedure that has someone hooked up to a blood-filtering machine for about four hours at a time.
But the official who reviewed her request said it had nothing to do with a medical condition - but rather it was because of her grief.
Because she had lost her support system, doctors said her suffering was permanent and thus approved her request.
Canada is on track to break euthanasia records once again with 15,280 doctor-assisted suicide deaths in 2023 — a 15 percent jump on the previous year, a campaign group warns.
Alex Schadenberg, director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, says ever-more people are approved for euthanasia even when they suffer from nothing more than 'frailty' and other seemingly benign conditions.
About 60,238 people have died from MAiD since the program was launched in 2016.
As part of its investigation, the AP obtained a copy of a classified report written by Ontario's Ministry of the Solicitor General which acknowledged past mistakes it has made implementing its expanded MAiD law.
One of these 'lessons learned' as the document puts it, was a case involving a 74-year-old blind patient with high blood pressure, a history of stroke, and other health issues.
The man was interested in MAiD due to his vision loss and lack of hope that it would improve.
The official report identified three instances where legal safeguards were not followed: no specialist in the patient's nonterminal condition was consulted, discussions about alternatives to euthanasia were limited, and the procedure was scheduled to fit the spouse’s preferred timing.
Another non-terminal patient euthanized was Rosina Kamis, 41. Ms Kamis had been facing eviction, needed a crowdfunding site to help pay for food, and was afraid that she would 'suffer alone.'
She also feared being institutionalized, and saw MAID as 'the best solution for all.'
She suffered from leukemia, but her condition was not terminal. She told her attorney that she was experiencing 'mental suffering,' not physical. The 2021 expansion of the law made it legal for people like her who are suffering from grievous and irremediable medical conditions but whose death is not imminent to qualify for MAiD.
Ms Kamis was approved for MAiD and chose to die on September 26, 2021, the date of her ex-husband's birthday. She passed away in her basement apartment after a doctor gave her a lethal injection.
As Canada prepares to expand its euthanasia law to include those with mental illness, some Canadians - including many of the country's doctors - question whether the country's assisted death programme has already moved too far, too fast.
January 13, 2023:
Dr Madeline Li can recall the first patient she helped die, about one month after Canada first legalised euthanasia in 2016. "I remember just how surreal it was," she said.
A psychiatrist at Toronto's Princess Margaret Hospital, she recalled checking on her patient that day, asking if she had the right music and final meal, and if she was sure she wanted to go ahead. The patient, in her mid-60s and suffering from ovarian cancer, said she was.
Five minutes later, the woman was dead.
"It was like stepping off a cliff, that first one," Dr Li said. "Then time passes and it normalises."
She has since overseen hundreds of medically assisted dying cases.
Dr Li stressed repeatedly that a physician's personal opinions should not influence how they assess a patient for assisted death. But she has significant concerns about the expansion of Canada's euthanasia and assisted dying programme beyond the terminally ill. She is not alone.
Since 2016, Canada's medical assistance in dying programme - known by its acronym 'Maid' - has been available for adults with terminal illness. In 2021, the law was changed to include those with serious and chronic physical conditions, even if that condition was non-life threatening.
This year, it is expected to change again to include some Canadians with mental illness.
That planned expansion has ignited controversy over the assisted death programme as a whole and raised concerns that it may be too easy for the vulnerable to die in Canada. Those fears have been stoked by a recent string of reports suggesting that for some, death has been used as a stopgap for a broken social safety net.
A number of reports suggesting that some Canadians have opted for assisted death, at least in part because they could not afford adequate housing, have also prompted fears it could be used as a solution for societal challenges - that someone may seek out Maid because of poverty, lack of housing, or extreme loneliness.
"Leaving people to make this choice [to die] because the state is failing to fulfil their fundamental human rights is unacceptable," said Marie-Claud Landry, chief commissioner of the Canadian Human Rights Commission in a statement in May.
Others have pointed to what they describe as the programme's flimsy safeguards.
"The Maid law is very Canadian. It was left so vague it could offend nobody," Dr Li said.
The law, she said, "is not specific enough to protect people."
And then we have the eager beavers:
Last summer, Global News first reported a case where a veteran claimed to have been pressured by a veterans affairs case worker to consider medically assisted dying.
(Full article at the link, but you get the idea.)
New to the market today, 9 Dorchester Lane is entertaining offers beginning at $5.995 million. Nothing unusual about that these days except, perhaps, its location on Dorchester, but what is unusual is what happened when the house this one replaced was put on the market in April, 2023 at $1,499,500: a listing agent’s standard hyperbole was actually fulfilled. “Drive by and submit your offer today”, Raveis’s David Wilk urged prospective buyers, “before it’s too late”. Son of a gun, the house sold immediately for $1.550 million.
“this one won’t last!” and it didn’t.
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