Greenwich address, Stamford schools (but listing says “Inquire about paid option for Greenwich schools” — new to me)*

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clever touch: an ironic reference to the tipi while boldly striking off in a new direction

416 Taconic Road, pending at $5 million. It started off December 4 at $5.5 million and dropped to its current price February 10th.

Stamford has appraised it at $2.383 million; if that changes, the current $37,000 tax bill may increase significantly.

*Gideon informs me that his fellow Hooligan is correct: $26,000 per student per year.

Oh please, of puleeeze! Either one — or both

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Chris Murphy makes his case to lead Democrats forward

[W]eeks into President Donald Trump’s second administration, Murphy, D-Conn., has taken steps to put himself at the center of aggressive resistance to Trump — and to let his party’s rank and file know it. Murphy is spending heavily to advertise on social media platforms and is flooding the zone on television and podcasts, positioning himself as the tip of the spear of Democratic Party efforts to oppose Trump in Washington. 

… In an interview in his Capitol Hill office last week, Murphy embraced the idea that he’s on a new path “after years pursuing a role as a Senate dealmaker and “foreign policy expert”. [HAHAHAHAH] He argued his newfound push to oppose Trump is an imperative.

[He has] spent more than $1 million on ads on Meta platforms in February alone, delivering his message directly to individuals. It’s more than he has spent on the likes of Facebook and Instagram in the last five years combined, a period that includes his 2024 re-election campaign … Murphy’s aides said he has doubled his Instagram following during the last two months and seen a significant increase in engagement across platforms.

….

But he’s not focused exclusively on Trump. Murphy also wants to lead the conversation about what has gone wrong for Democrats and how they can win again in the future.

“We’re actually the party of change, the party of transferring power from powerful people to people who have no power,” he said. “I think that the traditional sort of political rules still apply. If we have people out on the streets protesting, if we’re overwhelming Republican town halls, if we’re lighting up the phone lines here, political gravity still exists.”

Murphy just won re-election in the fall — and outperformed former Vice President Kamala Harris in his state with a 19-point victory, having vastly outspent his Republican challenger. He won’t have to face Connecticut voters again until 2030, so he’s not crunched for time to raise cash. First elected to the Senate in 2012, the year of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, which killed 20 first graders and six educators in Newtown, Connecticut, Murphy spent his first two terms in the Senate championing stronger gun laws. He eventually helped craft a historic bipartisan gun safety bill that President Joe Biden signed after the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. [And that solved that problem — whew!]

Now, Murphy told NBC News, the reason it seems like he’s trying to be everywhere is that he is. 

And of course, the NYT has to ring the bell for him, because that’s what the media branch does for its fellow travelers.

Burning Madoff sends along this perspective on the man:

And I’ll add that this self-proclaimed foreign policy expert’s “solution” to the Ukrainian war is to keep supplying the Ukrainians with guns and missiles and letting both countries slaughter each other until one side runs out of bodies. Given the respective populations of Russia and Ukraine, the loser there will be Ukraine, whereupon Murphy and his war hawks can declare victory, and evacuate any remaining U.S. soldiers and citizens (uness they forget to, as in Afghanistan).

More on the warmongers

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I’m proud to see that our senator Murphy’s fame is now being recognized as far away as Minnesota:

An “Arm of the Kremlin”?

John Hinderaker:

On CNN this morning, Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy, who might be the dumbest man in government today, decried the Trump administration’s position on the Russia/Ukraine war. You can read much more at the link, but I am going to focus on just a couple of points. First, the question asked by CNN’s Dana Bash:

Host Dana Bash said, “Do you think there’s hope of salvaging this relationship with Ukraine?”

This is mind-numbingly stupid. The proper question, as even Zelensky realizes, is whether Ukraine has hope of salvaging its relationship with the United States. So in this interview, you know from the beginning that you are in a fog of unknowing.

Murphy’s response–you can read much more at the link–included this:

So it is absolutely shameful what is happening right now. The White House has become an arm of the Kremlin.

Of course, if the White House were really an arm of the Kremlin, it would be suppressing domestic oil and gas production and pursuing “green” energy fantasies. That, much more than anything else, is how an American administration either helps Russia (Obama) or hurts Russia (Trump). Which is why for decades, as official intelligence reports have documented, Russia has provided covert support to American environmentalist groups.

But of course, Murphy isn’t talking about that. He is talking about the fact that Russia apparently is willing to agree to an immediate ceasefire and a permanent resolution of the conflict, while Ukraine, under Zelensky, wants to fight on. At our expense, of course. President Trump thinks that after three years, the war has gone on long enough, and the pressing need is to bring it to an end.

I agree. Estimates vary, but there have been something like a million casualties in this conflict. And the war has ground to a halt: it now resembles World War I trench warfare. Russia holds a slice of Ukrainian territory, where most residents speak Russian and probably are pro-Russia, but there has been little movement for months. So the outlines of a settlement are obvious.

Why, exactly, are people like Chris Murphy determined to fight on? What is the point? What is the goal? I am generally a hawk in military matters, not reluctant to use military force. But to what end? To recover a few square miles of Russian-speaking territory, historically a part of Russia, for Ukraine? What vital American interest is at stake here?

Europe Not So Unified on Ukraine After All

When Zelenskyy rushed to Great Britain after the fiasco in the Oval, Europeans embraced him in public while chastising him in private for going too far. They, too, hoped that Trump could be publicly shamed into writing a blank check, of course, and I think they underestimated Trump's intransigence given their history with Biden. Biden had been frustrated with Zelenskyy and had even yelled at him in private, but always stood with him publicly. Zelenskyy likely thought, especially given the advice from Democrats before the meeting to renege on the deal, that he could win a fight with Trump. 

That was a stupid gamble, obviously, but everybody thought it would be relatively cost-free. 

Now that it's clear that it was hardly that, Europeans are doing an about face, with even the most hawkish, like Kier Starmer, making Churchillian noises while doing the Chamberlain dance. 

The French are splitting off, as is Hungary. Germany has always been skeptical of sending weapons to Ukraine and deeply opposed to striking inside Europe, although they have kept their criticisms muted in public. Germany has been deindustrializing and can't afford to divert massive resources, especially without US backing. And the UK Ambassador to the US has said Zelenskyy must agree to Trump's plan. 

There’s much more at the link, all worth reading, but let’s move on to a related story:

European leaders on edge as prospect looms of Trump pulling 20K troops from continent

"The Europeans have a serious problem of readiness … that they’re trying to fix, but it takes time," Camille Grand, a former NATO official who is now with the European Council on Foreign Relations, said in a Washington Post report Sunday. "If Trump decides ‘I’m going to pull out U.S. troops from Germany because I’m upset with the trade imbalance,’ that’s much more complicated to manage than to say we have a plan to do this within X years."

The comments come as European leaders have become increasingly anxious about the future of the security of the continent in the second era of Trump, with the Washington Post reporting that leaders are wary that the American president is too friendly with Moscow and that they widely expect him to pull back roughly 20,000 U.S. troops that were deployed to the continent by former President Joe Biden in the aftermath of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

"I would not be surprised if at some point [those troops] go back to their home base in America," a NATO diplomat told the outlet while noting that those troops were sent to Europe at the height of an emergency and that their exit "would be, so to speak, a return to normalcy."

The current number of U.S. troops in Europe has fluctuated between 75,000 and 105,000 since 2022, according to data from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), with the higher end of that number being a result of the surge of forces into the region ordered by Biden.

…..

“Oooh, we need more time! We never expected this!”

Uh huh — sure. But:

“ American presidents from both parties have been warning European leaders for more than a decade of the potential shift of troops away from the continent as the U.S. seeks to focus more effort on confronting the emerging threat of China in the Indo-Pacific, leaving Europe in charge of a greater share of its own security.”

And from a reader:

I love to bring in numbers to discussions like this: Ukraine Support Tracker

 The US has provided more military aid than all of Europe.  when you combine financial, humanitarian aid and military aid, the US is $114b vs ALL of Europe of $132b. And this is a war in Europe. So when you see 44 countries in Europe tweeting versus one President in the US = basically the same voice when it comes down to dollars. 

 Europe gutted its military when they thought they could and decided, effectively, to let the US defend it as they wanted to reallocate those taxes into social programs. Thats fine and dandy until another war in Europe starts and (shockingly) they are unprepared. 

Sounds a lot like WW2, when all the countries stopped investing in defense until it was too late. 

The reason you study history is so that it doesn;t repeat itself. There are always going to be bad people who want to do bad things; no matter what you want to believe. Thats why you need a military.  Yet again, WW1, WW2 and now Ukraine .. the US needs to come to Europe's rescue because they are too divided and too short sighted.

I only disagree with the reader when he says that the U.S. needs to come to Europe’s rescue. Screw’em: Trump has given them warning; they can act on it, of we can just let them return their continent to the neolithic paradise it once was, and free the new muslim population to frolic to their hearts’ content.

Third price cut; maybe this will prove the charm, but anything that’s gone stale in the current Old Greenwich market must have some problems

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I’d start with the developer’s decision to sacrifice the entire tiny backyard to a swimming pool: half the market doesn’t want one, and that percentage only decreases when buyers have young children, as so many do in Old Greenwich.

Regardless, 60 Park Avenue has now dropped to $5.195 million from its September opening price of $5.495.

Just for fun, here’s how the listing broker for the bungalow that was replaced by this one wrote up her listing. A combination of Kamal Harris-speak and dripping sentimentality all in just one paragraph.

Plan, Design, and Build your dream home in Old Greenwich Connecticut. Currently, 60 Park Avenue is the site of a 1912 Bungalow in need of a singular vision of what could be. This incredible home site is nestled directly in the heart of the highly desirable enclave of Old Greenwich. Imagine the forever home you could build on this .26 acre level lot in a neighborhood full of historic and modern reimagined homes. This opportunity, to create your ideal home in this location, rarely happens in life. Moments from the quaint yet tony Old Greenwich Downtown Restaurants and Shops, @ 1/2 mile to Metro North Old Greenwich Train Station, and @ 45 minutes from Grand Central this is the opportunity you've been looking for.

Listed in January 2020 for $1.2 million, it finally sold that July for the plebeian sum of $915,000.

The mid-range market continues its recovery

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Not so very long ago, houses between, say $3.5 to $7.5 million were a drag on the market; that’s changed these past two years, as shown here at 19 Parsonage Road, listed at $5.8 million ten days ago and reported pending today.

Owners bought it new in December 2007 for $4.750 ($7.184 million in current dollars) at the apex of that decade’s market. The house it replaced was sold for its full asking price of $1.995 million in 2004.