New to the market in Old Greenwich, "a stunning Shore Colonial"

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I’ve got a folder on my computer where I’ve been listing descriptions that describe the house as “stunning”. Probably not dragging them out and posting them here, but suffice to say that “stunning” is the new literary version of Polar Bear Blue displacing even “this one won’t last” (to be fair, not much is lasting these days).

In any event, 4 Park Avenue is for sale at $2.8 million; that’s actually not a bad price, in this market.

Speaking of plane spotters, here's some interesting speculation that certain Iranians may soon join their ranks

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“I don’t see anything, how about you?”

Anyone Seen What's Happening at Diego Garcia Lately?

Duane Patterson

…. What I do find of extraordinary importance is what is taking place on a tiny island in the Indian Ocean that happens to contain a very long 12,000-foot runway. 

Diego Garcia Air Force Base is a joint U.S. and U.K. base on the largest of the Chagos Islands. The Brits have controlled much of the region as part of their British Indian Ocean Territories, but in 2024, they negotiated transfer of the island to Mauritania, with the exception of a 99-year lease for the Air Base, which is now operated and used by both the Brits and the Americans. It also happens to be due south of Iran. 

In the last 72 hours, a pretty significant buildup of U.S. aerial assets have been arriving on the archipelago, and the amount of open source information thus far is something that very well might be of great consequence to the greater Middle East very soon. 

Most of those B-2's, the bat-wing stealth bombers that will single-handedly ruin any adversary's day if they happen to drop the types of premium ordinance they usually contain, are usually stationed at Whiteman Air Force Base about three hours west of St. Louis. There are indications that there may be as many as 7 of the B-2's now on that island in the Indian Ocean. They're not there for rest and recreation. 

… Donald Trump was the first president since Ronald Reagan to give the Iranians, and their proxies, pause after the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, the leader of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. But then Joe Biden freed up all the money Trump sanctioned, pouring gasoline, and rockets, missiles, and drones all over the region, leading to the October 7th holocaust on Israel by Hamas in 2023. 

Now that Donald Trump is back in office, having talked to hostages in which he facilitated their release from the Hamas tunnels, he has seen enough. He gave Hamas an ultimatum to release the remaining hostages immediately, or all hell would break loose. They didn't, and Israel eventually began raining hell down on the Gaza Strip once it became clear the ceasefire was no longer working. 

Hezbollah has been effectively dismantled by Israel. Bashar al-Assad is no longer running Syria, and that country is now a failed state with all sorts of factions vying for control. Last week, the sustained campaign against the Houthis by the United States began in earnest, with the message to Iran being very, very clear. 

Iran has chosen no deal, Howie.  On St. Patrick's Day, Trump seemingly gave Iran one more final warning. 

It's a week later, and Iran has not heeded the warning. They floated video of short and medium-range missiles, presumably underground somewhere, as a tacit warning back to the U.S. to back off. Which brings us back to Diego Garcia. 

… Two carrier task groups have been dispatched to the region. This buildup, especially with the refueling tankers, is not something that indicates whatever is coming is a one-off. This is what you would see if you were planning on being there a while with a plan to rearrange the landscape of a country. The buildup is not for Yemen, because the Houthis are being eradicated pretty efficiently from assets in the Red Sea. 

So why all this firepower in this particular location? There really can be only two explanations, and neither one of them is very good for Iran. One is that Donald Trump is on his last nerve with Khamenei, and has ordered the staging in order to bring the promised hell to them and end this nuisance once and for all. The other is to make Tehran think they're about to be hit, hoping they will blink, roll over, and give up the keys to their nuclear program. 

Iran once was thought to be an ominous proposition to handle, militarily speaking, inside their borders. They have an alliance with Russia and China, and until recently defended their airspace with Russian S-300 surface-to-air missile batteries. Except last October 30th, Israel did us the good favor of destroying those batteries, leaving Iran defenseless from the air. 

The possible targeting, were hell to come visit Iran, could be small, and it could be large, or it could be a mixture. They have lots of oil, but very limited refining capacity. Would be a shame if something happened to their refinery. Their electrical grid is shaky. Would be a pity if the country looked like North Korea at night. Their nuclear program's key ingredients, centrifuges believed to be buried under mountains which would be formidable to most nations, are complicated but not out of reach to U.S. bunker busters that can be used as pile drivers of destruction with successive drops in the same location. 

I’m not sure how much military expertise and analysis the executive producer of the Hugh Hewitt show brings to the party, although he’s got at least as much, and probably more, than the Obama Iran “experts” who ran the desk for 12 of the past 16 years, and he does link to and seems to rely on this article by Alistair Bunkall , Sky News UK’s military correspondent, who does seem to have a pretty good grasp of the situation:

The United States appears to be significantly increasing its military presence in the Middle East with the deployment of highly sophisticated aircraft and a second aircraft carrier to the region.

In recent days, at least five B-2 stealth bombers have deployed to Diego Garcia, a British military base used by the US in the Indian Ocean. More are reportedly en route.

Seven C17 aircraft have also been tracked landing on the remote atoll, suggesting transportation of equipment, personnel and supplies, and refuelling aircraft have been repositioned to strategic locations.

The Pentagon recently ordered the USS Harry S Truman carrier strike group to extend its deployment in the Red Sea by a month, and a second strike group, led by the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier, is heading for the Middle East.

Both groups have support ships, including destroyers, as part of the group.

It is an unusual surge in military assets and an indication, perhaps, that the US is planning heavy strikes on the Houthis in Yemen and possibly looking to send a strong message to Iran.

The Houthis, an Islamist group that controls a large part of Yemen, including the capital Sana'a, have repeatedly attacked Red Sea shipping and Israel during the war in Gaza.

Those attacks stopped while the ceasefire was in force but have restarted following a resumption of Israeli military operations in Gaza.

Do we really want to go to war again in the Middle East? I think perhaps not, but if we’re going to do it, at least this time we have a worthwhile target.

Plane Spotters Special

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70 Sherwood Avenue, listed at $4.295 million, has sold for $4,724,528.12 (here’s a case where that open auction feature, discussed earlier this week, could have helped the winning buyer avoid such a silly bid).

The builders who renovated this house back in 2007 tried for $5.775 that year but had to settle for $3.375 in 2010. Those buyers, in turn, sold it to these sellers in 2021 for $3.495 million, and without making any noticable changes or improvements, sold it this week for a handsome profit. Timing is everything.

First, he systematically killed the world's poorest citizens; now he's disenfranchising illegal aliens here in America. Oh, make him stop; won't SOMEBODY make him STOP!?

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David Strom, HotAir:

Democrats are super angry about, and Marc Elias is suing to stop, a Trump Executive Order requiring states to ask people whether they are United States citizens on voter registration forms. 

…. Democrats are right to be concerned. After all, they have spent years and years, not to mention many billions in taxpayer dollars, running one of the largest human trafficking operations in world history to import millions of illegal aliens. 

Sure, they made a huge profit off the operation. Countless NGOs harvested billions of dollars in USAID grants, and lots of contractors made a mint transporting, feeding, and housing the flood of illegals, but the Democrats counted on harvesting millions of illegal votes in the bargain as well. 

Why do you think that all those Blue states started handing out driver's licenses and voter registration forms to illegals? To promote public safety or something? Or encourage the flood of illegals who were carrying communicable diseases, unvaccinated for COVID or other more preventable but deadly diseases, or sent all those mail-in ballots to homeless shelters?

I'm not saying that all 5'2", 449 lb people are insane, just beware of the ones who are if they share your crazy cat lady neighbor's politics

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Texas menace accused of ramming mini 4-wheeler into parked Teslas in chaotic spree

A 5-foot-2, 449-pound ATV-riding Texan was a massive problem to Tesla owners when he allegedly rammed his 4-wheeler into multiple cars during an unprovoked hit-and-run spree on Tuesday.

Demarqeyun Marquize Cox was arrested after one of his alleged attacks was recorded by the Tesla he purposely ran into, police in Texarkana, Texas announced.

mini-mario escape vehicle

Five weeks in and already Trump's killed poor, sick people all around the world; is there NOTHING he'll stop at?

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drop us a postcard from Geneva

Associated Propaganda BODIED for Shameful Article Blaming Trump Admin for Ethiopian AIDS Problem

We knew that the Left would start blaming President Donald Trump and DOGE for every death around the world following his USAID cuts.

And they already have. New York Times reporter Nicholas Kristof said President Trump killed two kids in South Sudan and Alex Cole blamed him for the death of a Taiwanese national in Thailand.

Kristoff first:

“Elon Musk says that no one has died because he slashed humanitarian aid. I went to South Sudan to check if that's true. It's not. Within an hour of starting interviews, I had the names of a 10-year-old boy and an 8-year-old girl who had died because of decisions by wealthy men in Washington. The visit that moved me the most was to a remote area that used to have no health care, where women routinely died in childbirth. Then a US-funded maternity clinic opened through UNFPA in December, [emphasis added] and not one woman has died since. I showed up, and people mistakenly thought I was responsible for the clinic. One new mom wanted to name her baby for me, and the village elders thanked me and hailed America's generosity. What they didn't know was that Trump/Musk had cut all funding for UNFPA and that as a result the maternity clinic will close this month, and women will once again be bleeding to death in the dust.”

How long has African poverty been going on? How long have pregnant women “been bleeding to death in the dust”? How long has the UN been operating in the continent? How much UN (US taxpayers’) money has gone to medical care vs Swiss bank accounts of corrupt African politicans? Kristoff doesn’t say.

Now Cole, with a comment from a woman who isn’t impressed with the reporter’s sudden concern for the wellbeing of a woman in another country on the other side of the world:

Twitchy’s Amy Curtis has questions:

The woman was a Taiwanese national who died in Thailand.

Thailand has universal healthcare. Why didn't they provide oxygen?

And I have a question: there are something like 3 billion people on the globe earning less than $2 a day; how many of those are we required to provide free medical care?

The Associated Press is here to add more bodies to the tally with this article:

HIV soars after a deadly war in Ethiopia’s Tigray.

Again, Curtis has questions:

Where is the U.N.? Where's the E.U.? Where are other African countries?

By the way, the war started in 2020. Who was president from 2021 until 2025, again?

We'll provide more real estate coverage when there's more real estate activity to cover

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Although there are bound to be a few more sales reported tomorrow and Friday, I looked at the past week’s activity on the MLS and it shows what’s happening: pretty much nothing.

Four single-family sales from last Wednesday to today, ranging from $16.9 million to $1,203,051.

No contracts, but note that, in this market, houses are moving straight to pending — no contingencies. Eight homes did exactly that.

And there you have it. I believe I’ve written about each one, and I’ll revist them when the quick-pending ones sell, because most of them will be going for more than their asking price.