Sale prices reported

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79 Richmond Hill Road, $4.950 million. It started at $7.195 million last April, and I’ve had the opportunity to post on the property several times during that price’s slow slide downwards.

11 Shorelands Place, old Greenwich, the site of that tragic murder/suicide last August, has sold for $3,020,000 on asking price of $2.760 million. All pictures and listing data have been pulled from the internet, so I’ll honor that indication of a desire for privacy by not posting more.

A timely reminder for patriots everywhere

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Texas Issues Annual Reminder Not To Shoot Santa

U.S.·Dec 21, 2025 · BabylonBee.com

…. "We are once again asking all Texans to please put down your shotguns for just twelve hours," said Governor Greg Abbott. "Do not attempt to shoot any low-flying sleighs guided by reindeer, no matter how badly you want to bag a caribou. Most importantly, do not shoot Santa. Let the big elf put down the presents and get out of there alive. There are lots of kids counting on you to holster your pistols for this one night."

According to sources at the North Pole, Santa has begun taking extra precautions while delivering toys in Texas. "Santa never crosses the border now without putting body armor on under the coat," said an elf on condition of anonymity. "In advance of the sleigh, we also launch fake ducks in the air to smoke out any Texans hiding with a twelve-gauge. Dasher still refuses to go there, though. Santa always has to drop him at the Oklahoma border and pick him back up on the way out. It's a real pain."

At publishing time, the State of Texas had also asked residents to please refrain from hog-tying reindeer.

I myself had a annual tradition of shooting down my former scoutmaster Art Brown’s inflatable Santa each Christmas Eve — not that I had anything against Mr. Brown, mind you — he was a great guy — but I did like a challenge. The first year, my Sheridan pellet rifle did the job, but the next Christmas, when I shot it nothing happened, and I realized that the clever fellow had stuffed Santa with crumpled-up paper. Not to be denied, I returned home to Gilliam Lane, retrieved my bow and arrows from the closet, and went back and placed three arrows in Santa’s chest. They showed wonderfully.

I kept this up for a number of years and then gave it a rest, but one Christmas Eve, home from college and sitting around the fireplace with my mother, she asked, “isn’t it time for you to shoot Mr. Brown’s Santa?” “Mother”, I whined, “I’m twenty-one-years old; if I did that now, I’d be arrested, not just sent home for being a bad boy.” “But it’s a tradition,” she protested, “you have to do it.” So I sighed, got up from the sofa, picked up my weapon and went up the street and completed my task.

I quit after that year, but two decades later I was sitting on the Riverside Yacht Club deck when a stranger approached: “excuse me,” he asked, “but aren’t you Chris Fountain?” I know better than to admit to that kind of question, but I answered truthfully anyway, and he proceeded to introduce himself: “I’m Bill Howland, and when I bought Art Brown’s house last year, he told me that if I tied his Santa to the chimney at Christmas, Chris Fountain would come by and decorate it with arrows — but you haven’t done it.”

Until then, I’d had no idea Mr. Brown had known who the neighborhood nimrod was; the fact that he tolerated it and even found it amusing only increased my respect for the man.

So hooray for Texas; I’ll join the cowboys in their restraint, and have a merry Christmas anyway.

If only this worked on politicians

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The corruption just never quits

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Investigation Reveals Pelosi Purchased $10 Million Of Taco Bell Stock Day Before Marijuana Rule Change

Dec 20, 2025 · BabylonBee.com

WASHINGTON, D.C. — An investigation has revealed that Representative Nancy Pelosi purchased $10 million in Taco Bell stock the day before President Trump loosened marijuana regulations.

Taco Bell's stock surged 47% in the trading session following the announcement of easier access to weed.

"The timing of the stock purchase is purely coincidental. Ms. Pelosi has a long history of loving Taco Bell," said Pelosi's office in a statement. "She has always been a huge fan of the Crunchwrap Supreme. The stock purchase was in no way related to the imminent change in marijuana regulations, and it is a mystery why they would be connected. Ms. Pelosi is guilty of nothing but loving tacos and capitalism."

…. At publishing time, Pelosi had also been discovered to have purchased $1 million worth of stock in the parent company that owns Doritos.

I hope there's (a lot) more to this story than what's reported here, although there doesn’t seem to be

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Former Connecticut Rep. Victor Cuevas made homophobic remark during Waterbury spat, police say

$20,000 bail set for misdemeanor charge

(Irrelevant, but still worthy of note, given the Left’s tiresome trope that it’s the far-right that has a monopoly on hateful homophobia, this involved a Democrat accusing a Republican of harboring an unnatural attraction and affection towards callipygian constituents of the same sex.)

WATERBURY — A former state representative and political consultant from Waterbury has been arrested for using what police described as "hostile expressions" during a confrontation with a Republican candidate last summer. 

Victor Cuevas, 61, was charged Tuesday with second-degree breach of peace in connection with the Aug. 22 disturbance outside the Republican Party headquarters on Grand Street, according to Waterbury Police Sgt. Joseph Morais. 

The investigation took place after Cuevas was caught on video making a homophobic remark to Efrain Torres III, a then-candidate in a Republican primary contest for a Board of Aldermen seat.

Morais said an arrest warrant was issued for Cuevas after detectives consulted the Office of the State's Attorney for the Judicial District of Waterbury and determined the encounter was a “hate incident.” 

He said Cuevas turned himself into police without incident and was later released after posting a court-set bond of $20,000. Court records show Cuevas is set to be arraigned Monday. 

Britain’s been leading the way on this approach to unapproved speech in formerly-free countries; and people have noticed. We seem to be following them on the way to importing yet another unwanted product, as unpleasant as tea, although admittedly, not as soul-destroying as Herman’s Hermits — not yet, anyay.

AI Overview

Yes, Great Britain sees numerous arrests related to speech, often under "hate speech" or public order laws, leading to significant free speech concerns, with police making thousands of arrests yearly for online posts and even peaceful protest expressions deemed offensive, threatening, or disruptive, despite UK law protecting free expression. Arrests occur for social media posts, controversial opinions, and signs at protests (like anti-monarchy), raising debates about balancing public safety/anti-hate laws with free expression, with some cases highlighting police overreach and growing digital policing. 

November 22 2025:

9,700+ Arrests for Online Posts in UK Last Year

Shocking Comparison: UK Prosecutions for Speech Offenses vs. Victim-Based Crimes

Victim-based crimes include robbery, sexual offenses, violence, theft, and arson. Less than 10% of such crimes last year resulted in a charge in the UK, indicating that police have essentially given up on prosecuting crimes such as sexual assault. Especially, of course, if the culprits happen to be Muslims. At the same time, arrests for free speech criticizing government actions and woke narratives have increased dramatically in recent years.

The UK Daily Mail reported “shocking numbers” this month after obtaining data from 39 out of the 45 police jurisdictions in the United Kingdom. In 2024 alone, there were 9,700 arrests for social media posts in those 39 jurisdictions, while there were 13,800 arrests for the same reason in the previous year. 

While the number of arrests last year went down, they were still higher than before the COVID pandemic. Furthermore, it is not clear whether arrests have gone up this year again, as reportedly up to 30 people were being arrested a day in the UK thanks to aggressive free speech crackdowns. Among the jurisdictions that did not provide data was Police Scotland, one of the largest, so the true arrest number cannot be definitively stated.


China and Britain: Two Anti-Free Speech Dictatorships

Nov 29, 2025 – Communist China is a full-on censorship tyranny. But Great Britain is pushing hard to catch up.The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has a highly developed censorship and surveillance apparatus that enables the government to crush protests online and in public quickly and brutally. But while Britain’s government has not reached the...

Another Old Greenwich house will soon be on the market; one of the owners is a realtor — I wonder if the feds will let her list it herself?

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18 havemeyer lane

Yesterday we reported on the legal woes of Mr. Jeffrey Arsenault, and predicted that his house at 14 Highview Avenue would soon be gracing the Greenwich Multiple Listing pages. Today we have another property that will be coming on the auction block, but probably at a far lower price than Highview’s:

Connecticut Resident Sentenced To 37 Months In Prison For Fraudulently Obtaining $1.2 Million In Unclaimed Property

HARRISBURG - The United States Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania announced that Henry J. White, Jr, age 75, of [18 Havemeyer Lane, Old Greenwich] Connecticut, was sentenced by United States District Judge Karoline Mehalchick to 37 months in prison for submitting false and fraudulent claims for unclaimed property to state treasuries.   

According to United States Attorney Brian D. Miller, White, along with his sister and codefendant, Patricia A. White, together received over $1.2 million in false and fraudulent claims for unclaimed property from state treasuries around the United States. Henry J. White, Jr., using the names of corporate entities with which he was not affiliated and which he had no lawful authority to use, applied for and received unclaimed property from state treasuries throughout the United States. This scheme took place over the course of approximately ten years, from around 2013 until around 2022. State treasuries, relying on the certifications provided by Henry J. White, Jr., under penalty of perjury, issued payment checks, which were generally sent by U.S. mail to the shared home address of both defendants.

From there, the Whites deposited and cashed these fraudulently obtained payment checks, and these funds were then used for personal expenses, including for mortgage payments for their shared home in Old Greenwich, Connecticut.

Patricia A. White’s sentencing hearing, which has yet to be scheduled, will occur at a later date.

In addition to the term of imprisonment, Judge Mehalchick also ordered that White pay $1,208,271 in total restitution to approximately 30 state treasuries.

I criticized him for a bad PR move on the Reiners' murder; it's only fair to acknowledge his brilliant moves leading up to Wednesday Night

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How Trump Used Tucker Carlson’s Stupidity, Gullibility, and Paranoia to Score a Free Primetime Speech

Scott Pinsker:

In political PR, the real story is the story behind the story.

Take, for instance, President Trump’s primetime address. It aired Wednesday night; here’s a link if you missed it. Millions of Americans watched it live.

But the real story was what happened behind the scenes.

The TV networks don’t like forfeiting ad revenue — especially during the season finale of (gasp) Survivor, for goodness sake — and they expect a presidential address to feature breaking news. If you’re gonna preempt their precious marquee programming, you better deliver something salacious!

Like war, pestilence, famine, and death. (You know, the good stuff.)

The TV networks were expecting a galloping quartet of fast-breaking news.

But that wasn’t Trump’s goal. He simply wanted to reset his PR response to the so-called “affordability crisis” that had stymied GOP candidates. (And if you read yesterday’s PR column, you already know his speech was an extraordinarily successful earworm — and tactically, from the narrative framing to Trump’s loud, high-energy delivery, it was all absolutely deliberate.)

Other than sending free money to military members, virtually no news was broken. Had the major networks known this, they would’ve denied Trump the airtime, and that’s an ironclad, slam-dunk guarantee.

…. This led to an epic game of cat-and-mouse, where the White House kept its cards close to its vest, and everyone in the media guessed what the heck the president might say.

And that’s when the White House unloaded its big gun: Conservative pundit-turned-political shock jock Tucker Carlson.

Always on the lookout for warmongering Jews “Neocon Zionists,” Carlson is convinced that America is perpetually on the brink of World War III, because… well, something-something-Israel. (Tucker’s logic is hard to follow, mostly because it’s not very logical.)

[Tucker told us that bombing Iran’s nuclear sites would lead to “thousands of American deaths” and would become “America’s war”]

….

Judge Andrew Napolitano: Is Trump going to start a war in Venezuela?

[…]

Tucker Carlson: Here’s what I know so far, which is that members of Congress were briefed yesterday [Tuesday] that a war is coming, and it’ll be announced in the address to the nation tonight at 9:00 by the president. […] A member of Congress told me that this morning.

But [Caputo’s debunking] was too late. 

With rumors of war reverberating, the TV networks were trapped: War is the ultimate ratings-grabber; none of ‘em wanted to be asleep at the switch when the president announced that the dogs of war were released. 

That’s major news!

And Donald Trump is so gosh-darn unpredictable, maybe he really was about to invade Venezuela. The media didn’t know what to do. After comparing him to Hitler for a decade, it certainly seemed plausible.

Besides, if a member of Congress point-blank told Tucker Carlson that the White House briefed congressional leaders, that’s eyewitness testimony. Tucker got the scoop directly from a firsthand source. That’s about as official as it gets!

….

Regardless, the White House deftly leveraged Carlson’s childlike gullibility and/or willful stupidity to claim primetime real estate on all the major networks. Congrats to pundits like Michael Knowles and Jack Posobiec for connecting the dots:

First they want it, then they don't. First they want it, then they don't. First they want it ....

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For the fourth time in as many years, 89 Clapboard Ridge Road, a tear-down on 3.43-acres in the R-2 zone, has been sold to a new owner, this time for $4.7 million. Previous sales going back to 2021 (asking price in parenthesis):

  • May 2024: $3,752,375 million ($3.825)

  • January 2024: $3,582,500 million ($5.1)

  • November 2021: $3.3 million ($4.5)

It’ll be fun to see what it sells for when it’s next put back on the market in, say, May?