If you don't ask, the answer is always no. Of course, sometimes even when you do ask, the answer is still no

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7 Close Road asked for $12 million in March 2024 and closed today at $7.2 million.

7 Close Road, $7,200,000

Creamer Hill Road, 88 acres and a (very large) house, pictures of which have been taken down from the web*, also closed today: $39.5 million asked, $19.5 million got.

NYC buyer.

*But the video’s still up:

It may not be the ugliest building in Greenwich, but it's certainly the ugliest residential one. Now, 19 years after starting, and two years after being reported pending, it has sold.

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exterior front — no kidding

229 Stanwich Road, a “house” cleverly disguised to look like an industrial meat packing facility or a school for the criminally insane, was originally put up for sale in July 2006 and priced at $6.985 million ($10,833,000 in current dollars). To no one’s astonishment except, perhaps, its owners, it failed to find a buyer, and it lingered on the market until January 2023, when a client of Brother Gideon’s committed to buying it (or was committed there — Gideon’s vague on the point). There has been a two-year hiatus between the initial execution of the purchase contract and the actual sale, possibly due to sanity hearings, but the deal finally closed yesterday for $4.995 million ($3,221,000, 2006 dollars).

Gosh.

attached guard house

Which is exactly what Trump wanted them to do

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mission accomplished

There’s been a lot of discussion about madman Trump threatening to buy Greenland, or as the press claimed invade it and take it for the United States, but the reason he gave for his interest was less well reported: Greenland is almost entirely undefended, yet Denmark has done little to nothing in response to Russia’s and even China’s growing presence in the area. In fact, Denmark has been sheltering under the US security umbrella for years, as even some of its own citizens have noticed:

Avoiding the NATO Burden: “Denmark has made the skill of cheating the US into an art” Writes Danish Editor; “Denmark Deserves No Respect from America.”

“In relation to NATO, Denmark has for decades opposed American interests by pursuing a peddling strategy that is about securing security policy guarantees from the United States while at the same time avoiding having to carry its share of the burden in NATO. Denmark has made the skill of cheating the US into an art. In January 2025, Denmark’s real contribution to NATO is approximately 1.7 percent of GDP excluding donations to Ukraine, directly contrary to the agreement of 2 percent of GDP. The SVM government claims that Denmark spends 2.4 percent of its GDP on defense and security, but the Danish attempt to cheat NATO has been condemned and rejected by several NATO countries and the former Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, as the donations to Ukraine do not contribute to Denmark’s or NATO’s defense capabilities.”

Now, Trump’s “threats” have borne fruit:

Denmark to increase military spending in North Atlantic by $2 billion amid row with Trump over Greenland

The government of Denmark says it will increase military spending in the North Atlantic amid U.S. President Donald Trump’s bid to have Greenland sold or ceded to the United States. 

Late Monday, the Danish government announced an agreement of 14.6 billion-kroner – or nearly $2 billion – with parties including the governments of Greenland and the Faroe Islands to "improve capabilities for surveillance and maintaining sovereignty in the region."

The Defense Ministry in Copenhagen said those will include three new Arctic naval vessels, two additional long-range surveillance drones and satellite capacity. 

Frederiksen warned that Europe faces what she called "a more uncertain reality" and said her country would be strengthening its military presence around Greenland.

The trip comes after Trump has repeatedly made various statements calling Greenland vital to U.S. national and economic security interests and expressed interest in purchasing it from Denmark. Trump has even said he wouldn’t rule out using military force to gain control of the island's territory. 

Frederiksen didn't directly mention Trump's threat in comments at a meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, but she said that "we are facing a more uncertain reality, a reality that calls for an even more united Europe and for more cooperation."

She pointed to Russian activities in Ukraine and beyond and said that "it is up to Europe to define the future of our continent, and I think we have to take more responsibility for our own security."

And this:

EU MILITARY CHIEF SAYS IT WOULD MAKE SENSE TO PUT EUROPEAN TROOPS IN GREENLAND, WELT REPORTS

The top European Union military official, Robert Brieger, said it would make sense to station troops from EU countries in Greenland, according to an interview with Germany's Welt am Sonntag published on Saturday, as U.S. President Donald Trump has expressed interest in acquiring the Danish territory.

"In my view, it would make perfect sense not only to station U.S. forces in Greenland, as has been the case to date, but also to consider stationing EU soldiers there in the future," the chairman of the European Union Military Committee said.

Ultimately, such a step would require a political decision, the Austrian-born general said. The military committee is the highest military office of the European Council, but it serves as a consultative body since the bloc has no dedicated army.

U.S.-led NATO is the main military alliance for the EU.

"However, with increasing ice melt as a result of climate change, this also creates a certain potential for tension with Russia and possibly China," he said.

Trump has expressed an interest in making Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark, part of the United States. He has not ruled out using military or economic power to persuade Denmark to hand it over.

Greenland's strategic location along the shortest route from Europe to North America, vital for the U.S. ballistic missile warning system, has made it a priority for Trump.

And over in the west coast’s People's Paradise ...

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Goodbye Pacific Palisades, Hello Full Communism

Building back "in a more equitable and environmentally sustainable way," — and there’ll be a People’s Commissar to ensure that it is.

Embattled Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass made her big play this week to rebuild Pacific Palisades in her own image. Needless to say, it won't be pretty.

During what the Los Angeles Times called "a freewheeling half-hour walking tour in Pacific Palisades," with reporters and "chief recovery officer" and former LAPD commissioner Steve Soboroff, Bass announced that the city plans to hire "an outside consultant to handle a significant rebuilding contract for areas devastated by this month’s Palisades fire," as the Times put it. 

“They’re going to represent you and make sure that everybody does exactly what they say they’re going to do,” Soboroff told reporters. 

Pacific Palisades residents were not so much as consulted on the decision. "Locals have had virtually no input into any of the decisions currently being made by city and state officials," Breitbart's Joel Pollack reported on Tuesday. "Most were only able to access their property for the first time on Monday, after direct intervention by President Donald Trump."

Soboroff later clarified to Pollack that "the ‘consultant’ will be an ‘owner’s rep’ to oversee the work of the various agencies involved, much like a construction manager on a building project," and that there "would be a competitive bidding process for the role.”

In other words: this is going to take some time. Rather than a relatively simple process of homeowners filing their insurance claims and rebuilding once the money and the permits come through, big-name consultants will spend big money on big-name contractors to give the Palisades a big government makeover.

Indeed, that's exactly the case.

With homeowners locked out of the process and without any oversight, Bass will pursue her dream of rebuilding the Palisades "in a more equitable and environmentally sustainable way," as she put it. I'm picturing government-spec apartment buildings and other multifamily dwellings on burned-out lots where single-family homes used to stand. Those 15-minute cities don't build themselves, you know — mostly because, given the choice, people reject them.

Victoria Taft has also weighed in, as has Elon:

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass Just Confirmed the Fears of Palisades Fire Victims

Taft:

From the first spark on January 7, until the rains came, Los Angeles residents wondered if losing their homes would be the worst thing to happen to them. Maui's disastrous fire response wasn't far from their thoughts. Suspicions grew. Now, with an announcement from city hall, their worst fears are being realized. Now, their safe old neighborhood is probably going to be turned into an urban planner's "moonshot." 

I hope Angelenos have learned the hard lessons of Minneapolis, Portland, and Seattle. When you hire people for office and they haven't done the first thing to make you, the citizen, safer, they don't know what they're doing. It demonstrates that their priorities don't match the job. And when the worst comes — riots, police conflict, floods, disasters, and fires — these leaders lack the intellectual reservoir from which to draw their responses and solutions. When that happens, citizens, you're screwed.

After being confronted with the wave of competence from those who lost their homes in Pacific Palisades at that meeting with President Trump last Friday, Bass ignored it and, like the communist autocrat she is, announced she'd put a developer … in charge of planning the rebuilding of the Palisades from the ground up.

… The man chosen by Bass …. to oversee the rebuilding of Palisades is Steve Soboroff. The mayor says he'll act as the city's representative and the "owners' rep" for air and water quality and damage assessments and be the liaison with the feds. He's both. 

Over the years, leftists have replaced "the people" with "stakeholders" so that government or friends of government always have an outsized influence in decisions. So, Bass chose to name a guy no one was asking for, without any buy-in from the people on whose behalf he presumes to act. Homeowners are going to be surprised to learn that they aren't stakeholders. 

…. Already, urban planners from around the country have begun salivating to remake the Palisades neighborhood into something out of Europe. Reuters calls the remaking of the Palisade an urban planning "moonshot." 

The news site imagines "apartment buildings could spring up where strip malls and parking lots once stood, with locals walking to ground-floor shops, offices and cafes, European-style." The city could, "'infill' vertically to add affordable housing in safer downtown areas, rather than outwards with more single-family homes on fire-prone hills," the news site enthuses. 

One planner at Pomona College imagines that "burned-out lots could be turned into what he envisions as fire buffer zones. While disruptive to residents, Miller believes many would be willing to use the money to relocate." 

We're living in such a strange world these days that I'm not dismissing this possibility out of hand

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That’s the headline I wrote for a draft of this post yesterday afternoon, because, although I’d been following the story as it unfolded, and even though the paper publishing it, The Maine Wire, has done some excellent reporting in the past — uncovering and publishing a year-long series of articles about the huge marijuana grow industry in Maine being conducted by Chinese employing illegal Chinese aliens, for instance, and local corruption in various police departments in the state, I still was skeptical.

The Wire’s report in based on an investigation on Andy Ngo’s reporting, and he’s been fairly out there — but almost always right. However, like the marijuana scandal, this one is finally being reported in the mainstream media (well, the NYPost, but that’s close enough – they did break the Hunter Biden notebook story, when the rest of the media covered it up), so I’m beginning to think it’s all true. How bizarre.

New Details on Vermont Border Patrol Murder Suggests Suspects Were Members of “Trans Militia”

The two suspects accused in the fatal shooting of Vermont Border Patrol Agent David Maland, 44, have been identified as transgender extremists affiliated with the so-called “Ziz group,” according to a report from independent journalist Andy Ngo.

[RELATED: Vermont Border Patrol Murdered During Traffic Stop…]

On Inauguration Day, two suspects, since identified as the trans-identifying Felix “Ophelia” Baukholt, a German national in the U.S. on an H1B work visa, and Teresa “Milo” Consuelo Youngblut, 21, of Seattle, allegedly incited a firefight with Maland.

The shootout left Maland and Baukholt dead, and Youngblut injured and facing charges for allegedly firing at Maland.

“Both in the duo are leftist trans militants. One of the deceased armed militants is a German believed to be in the country on an H-1B visa. The duo is allegedly connected to a trans terror cell,” said Ngo on X.

Much more at the Post. None of this is really earthshaking, but it does make for interesting reading; there are sone very strange people wandering around the country.

Sale in Nosebleed territory

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1068 Lake Avenue, listed in October at $7.495 million, has sold for $6.550. That’s an improvement from the 2014 sale at $3.750, and even higher than the price achieved in 2000, when, two years after being built and trying for $5.9 million, it sold for $4.8.

My opinion of this place has always been that it’s an odd house with an odd layout, in an inconvenient location, but at least three different buyers have disagreed with that assessment over the past quarter-century, so there you have it.

The buyers are from Bear, DE, a modest town with, apparently, much to be modest about, at least according to Zillow:

Originally a small crossroads in a rural area, approximately 14 miles south of Wilmington, the area supported small farms growing mainly corn and cattle. In the late 1980s and 1990s Bear became a popular location for the construction of sprawling housing developments and shopping centers along U.S. Route 40. Much of Bear runs along the highway, and extends to approximately Delaware Route 896.

Phew! He won't have to find work in the blueberry fields after all — though the farmers could use the help

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Michigan State U. Dismisses Plagiarism Allegations Against Dean of College of Education

In October of last year, the Washington Free Beacon reported on Jerlando Jackson, the Dean of the College of Education at Michigan State, alleging that he had committed plagiarism in a number of academic papers over the course of many years.

From that report:

The complaint includes nearly 40 examples of plagiarism that span nine of Jackson’s papers, including his Ph.D. thesis, and range from single sentences to full pages. It adds to the allegations of research misconduct already facing the embattled dean, who was a coauthor on several papers implicated in complaints against diversity officials earlier this year, including Harvard University’s chief diversity officer, Sherri Ann Charleston.

“Jackson has failed all ordinary standards of academic honesty,” said Peter Wood, the head of the National Association of Scholars and a former provost at Boston University, where he helped lead plagiarism investigations of faculty and alumni. “As long as he remains as a dean, the university has no legitimate basis to hold students and faculty to basic standards of intellectual integrity.”

Now, months later, the school claims it has cleared Jackson of any wrongdoing, and is wrapping the story in a defense of DEI policies.

A letter sent to university leaders this month — and signed by President Kevin Guskiewicz and Provost Thomas Jeitschko — said a “preliminary assessment” was conducted by the university’s research integrity officer after it received a plagiarism complaint against Jackson.

Following that assessment, “it was determined that there was not sufficient credible evidence to support further review of the Allegation,” said the letter, which was shared with The State News by an MSU spokesperson.

“The (research integrity officer’s) thorough review encompassed relevant documents, records, and materials referred to in the Allegation and confirmed that Dean Jackson’s work meets our institution’s highest standards of academic integrity. In alignment with the university’s exoneration policy, we recognize the importance of restoring the reputation of individuals involved in unsubstantiated misconduct allegations. Michigan State University will continue to actively support Dean Jackson and his distinguished career in education.”

The dean’s accusers are not satisfied. I can’t say that I’m entirely comfortable basing a conclusion of plagiarism on an AI analysis, but it is what educators are employing to catch dishonest students, so sauce for the goose and all that, I suppose.