Sales reported

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40 Upland Drive, $5.750 million — started at $6.225 in June 2024. Old look, but built in 2002/2003, when it sold for $4,017,500 ($6,783,487 current dollars).

Just six bedrooms, but the listing agent assured potential buyers that there’s the ABILITY FOR MORE BEDROOMS IF NEEDED ON THIRD FLOOR”. Whew!

40 Benenson Drive (2024 photo)

40 Benenson Drive, Cos Cob, new construction, $4.630 million.

It's Victor Davis Hanson, so very much worth reading, of course

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May 12, 2025:

The Decivilizing of America

From secure borders to functioning cities, America is shedding the hard-won pillars of civilization—by choice, not chance—in a sweeping, top-down descent into disorder.

By Victor Davis Hanson

Secure borders and stationary populations were considered the mark of emerging civilization by classical historians. In contrast to nomadism and constant strife over disputed territory, peoples who had clearly defined and protected borders ascended to statehood, maintained a distinct culture, and achieved greater prosperity and security.

In contrast, what we suffered from 2021 to 2025 was unprecedented. It was an intentional administration effort to de-civilize the nation by destroying its borders—as if to return to the premodern era, when there were no clearly defined or secure borders, and nomadic peoples migrated as they pleased.

….

Some 8,500 veteran soldiers were drummed out of the military for refusing the experimental mRNA vaccinations. Yet 10 million simply walked across the southern border into America, without a care from the Biden administration whether they were vaccinated, ill, or had criminal records.

….

One of the great hallmarks of Roman civilization and subsequent Western civilization was its ability to create large cities by importing clean water, removing waste through sewers, and collecting garbage from the streets. Even in the age before microbiology, ancient and premodern city planners knew the connection between cleanliness and epidemics and how to lessen disease through sanitation.

But in the last two decades, our major cities have been de-civilizing. Citizens are told not to flush non-biodegradable plastics down their toilets, both to preserve the environment and to ensure municipal septic systems work properly. They are reminded to pick up their pets’ excrement on sidewalks and in parks. For purposes of collective health, they are taught not to urinate, spit, or defecate in public areas.

Is all that for naught? After all, our mayors and city councils in our biggest and most iconic cities simply destroyed centuries of such health protocols and allowed tens of thousands of homeless people with impunity to inject, urinate, defecate, and fornicate in or on storefronts, streets, gutters, parks, and sidewalks. The stench, flotsam, and jetsam have utterly transformed American inner cities. Central Seattle, Los Angeles, parts of San Francisco, Portland, and Washington, DC, now resemble medieval London or Paris—as if a millennium-long knowledge of basic public health was simply ignored or mocked. In truth, the centers of America’s big cities are spaces where public health protocols are no longer enforced, where all the ancient and hard-won rules of civilization no longer apply. It would likely be safer to walk through Dickensian London of 1850 than to take a nocturnal ride on the New York subway.

Another hallmark of Western civilization was the creation of a judiciary that gave the state the power to enforce laws, ensure justice, and deter criminals by swift punishment, unaffected by ideology, bias, bribes, and personal vendettas. From the law codes of Justinian to the American Constitution, ascendant civilizations rose with a codified legal system applied uniformly, disinterestedly, and fairly.

Not any longer. Ideology has turned the American legal system into a commissariat of sorts in which relativism is now the norm. Vandalize a Tesla in a blue state and, like the South of old, the laws will be lightly if even enforced and applied selectively. No one seriously believes that Alvin Bragg, Letitia James, Jack Smith, and Fani Willis were interested in real crimes rather than concocting them to destroy a presidential candidate and thus warp the political system. In contemporary America, it was far more likely to suffer a jail sentence for walking peaceably but unlawfully in the Capitol than for torching a federal courthouse, historic church, or police precinct in the summer of 2020.

From the ancient world to the medieval city to the modern era, universities were catalysts for the advance of science, medicine, law, politics, and the humanities. Their civilizing missions were predicated on two unquestioned assumptions. One, unlike prior superstitions, inductive reason would guide intellectual inquiry; examining all evidence would lead to general conclusions rather than cherry-picking data to “prove” predetermined dogmas.

….

Tribalism was a premodern obstacle to civilization. It remains so in many parts of the Middle East, where it is routine to hire, promote, retain, and reward on the basis of kinship and bloodlines. In America, we were supposed to have a singular meritocracy, civilization’s effort to ensure that those with the most expertise and experience were charged with the most important tasks and responsibilities to ensure the safety and welfare of the majority. Race, religion, gender, and sexual orientation were neither rewarded nor punished.

Instead, we here, too, returned to premodern tribalism and race quotas, regressing to precivilization ideas that we owe our allegiance first to those who share a superficial appearance rather than to the body politic at large.

Finally, civilizations were often judged by their physical infrastructures—whether iconic, like the Parthenon, the Pantheon, medieval cathedrals, or modern towering skyscrapers, or practical by their roads, aqueducts, government buildings, and water and sewage systems.

But by that standard, too, we are decivilizing. Future generations will be amazed at California’s decaying high-speed rail to nowhere. Tens of billions of dollars and over a decade after the start of construction, there is still not a single foot of track laid, but instead only half-finished massive concrete overpasses that now resemble half-destroyed Mycenean palace walls. The nearly one-billion-dollar, half-finished, five-year-old Obama library resembles an oversized Stonehenge monolith.

In California, we do not just blow up dams, the brilliant work of a now-forgotten earlier generation. Instead, we use public bond funds, voted by the citizens to build new dams and reservoirs, to destroy them.

The more California requires lumber for new homes, fuel for its 31 million vehicles, and energy for its 15 million homes, the more the governor and legislature decivilize the state by shutting down timber companies, forcing oil refineries to flee the state, and closing nuclear power plants and fossil fuel generation, while witnessing replacement, new-age battery-power generation plants blow up into flames.

….

Why is America decivilizing?

In part, our mediocre schools have not produced competent stewards to maintain and expand the sophisticated infrastructure and ethos of a prior, far more capable generation.

In part, the sheer richness of our inheritance lulled our Lotus-Eater generations to consume what they inherited rather than reinvest it, given that since birth they had been insulated from the elemental and unchanging human and natural challenges to civilization.

And in part, a nihilism arose that despised the hard work of civilization and instead romanticized the wild—clueless that natural man, without the bridles of civilization, is a very dangerous beast, as we so often and lamentably see today.

Hanson confines his observations to just America, but it seems to me that Western Europe and Great Britain are only just a few years ahead of us.

Gangsters, murderers, drug dealers — and that's just the Congressmen and local politicians trying to storm the gates to free their voters

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Throwing her weight around

Flip it, Buster (Updated)

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Sen. Ruben Gallego Boasts About Using Filibuster To Block Trump Agenda After Campaigning To Abolish It

“My position is that the filibuster has to get reformed,” Gallego told MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell in January 2023 the day after he launched his bid. “It’s not a tool of compromise, it’s a tool of obstruction … At the end of the day, this [the filibuster] is actually really used to stop real moral movement and actual laws actually help people in this country.”

“Unlike Kyrsten Sinema, Ruben Gallego will vote to abolish the filibuster in order to be on the right side of the issues that matter,” Gallego’s personal campaign account X account posted in June 2023.

Unlike Kyrsten Sinema, Ruben Gallego will vote to abolish the filibuster in order to be on the right side of the issues that matter. Add your name today to endorse Ruben and send a clear message to Senator Sinema that her days in the Senate are numbered.

— Ruben Gallego (@RubenGallego) June 14, 2023

And remember this one?

The Left's Favorite Legal Slogan Became Its Biggest Weakness

Matt Margolis:

For years, Democrats have weaponized the phrase “no one is above the law” as a smug, self-righteous battle cry—using it to justify their endless lawfare campaign against Donald Trump. Whether it was the sham civil fraud case in New York or the partisan federal indictments, the left pushed the narrative that justice must be served, no matter how powerful the target, no matter how flimsy or fraudulent the case against them. 

Because, democracy and stuff.

But now, that hollow slogan is exploding in their faces. With high-profile Democrats under investigation for real crimes—not invented ones—their moral posturing is collapsing. You can’t chant “no one is above the law” while breaking it yourself, without looking like a complete fraud. And that’s exactly what’s happening.

Let’s look at the recent evidence.

In Wisconsin, Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan’s arrest by the FBI has sent shockwaves through Democratic circles. Last month, Dugan obstructed federal agents by helping Eduardo Flores Ruiz, an illegal Mexican immigrant facing domestic abuse charges, evade ICE arrest. According to court documents, Dugan, visibly upset, confronted agents, demanded they leave, and escorted Flores Ruiz out a restricted jury door, delaying his apprehension. Charged with obstruction and concealing an individual, Dugan faces up to six years in prison. But instead of condemning her actions, Democrats including Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), and Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) rushed to social media to express outrage—not over her conduct, but over the fact that a “sitting judge” was arrested—because apparently that made her above the law.

And then there’s New York Attorney General Letitia James, who campaigned on getting Trump, and twisted the law to do so. In other words, she said, “Show me the man I’ll show you the crime.” She led an legally dubious civil fraud case against Trump, resulting in a $454 million judgment. 

She now finds herself accused of her own financial misconduct.

Last month, the Federal Housing Finance Agency referred James to the Department of Justice for alleged mortgage fraud. Documents claim that James falsified records, listing her father as her husband and misrepresenting her primary residence to secure favorable loan terms. This week, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Albany, N.Y., opened a formal criminal investigation.

Ironic, isn’t it? The prosecutor who championed “no one is above the law” is now dodging questions about her own criminal activity. 

On Friday, a group of Democrats—including Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and Reps. Rob Menendez Jr., Bonnie Watson Coleman, and LaMonica McIver—staged a surprise “oversight visit” to an ICE detention facility in Newark, N.J. The group rushed the facility as a gate opened for an ICE bus, disrupting operations. The detainees they were so eager to defend reportedly include gang members and sex offenders, and Mayor Baraka wound up arrested. Oops.

(FWIW) I’ll add these two gems:

And …

Tesla vandal not likely to face criminal charges, Hennepin County Attorney's Office says

“Well, heck. Yes, he caused $20,000 - $30,000 in damage, but it was a Tesla — you know, a Hitler car.”

UPDATE: Of course, it’s mot just Democrat senators who practice gymnastis, their pet fkying monkeys do, too.

There are some people who should never be allowed on the street, ever; here's one of them

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mr. nataniel radimak, poster child for reopening alcatraz

Here's more from 4 Los Angeles:

[Radimak] was driving a Tesla at the time of the traffic altercation, police said.

At about 6 p.m. Wednesday, the department received a report of an 18-year-old woman who was parking her car with her 35-year-old mother as a passenger when she exchanged words with the driver of a gray Tesla. The Tesla driver got out of the car and assaulted the woman and her mother, police said.

The Tesla driver then left the scene.

Details about what led to the confrontation were not immediately available.

Profiles in Courage

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Fun article, but the best part is Pinsker's one-liner description of the soyboy

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even changing into a disco suit doesn’t help

DNC Vice Chair Now OPPOSES Gender/Racial Quotas, and You’ll Never Guess Why

You’ll be gobsmacked to learn that the reason is because his election as DNC Vice-Chair (in charge of gambling and prostitution?) is being challenged by a female (chicken feather) Indian who lost the vote, but here’s the intro I like:

David Hogg is the Democratic Party’s version of Greta Thunberg, only skinnier and with less upper-body strength: a youthful, baby-faced answer to complex social problems.