Duck! Pintail listing soars past offering price

/

17 Pintail Lane, asked $3.950 million, sold for $4,271,00.

It may be time to adopt the English practice of just posting “Guide Prices” which suggest the seller’s desired starting point.

(Of course, these properties are off-limits to native English-speakers)

AI Overview

In Great Britain, "suggested" prices in real estate ads are commonly listed as

Guide Prices, which are estimated valuations based on market data, demand, and comparable sales rather than firm selling prices. These guide prices are often used for auctions or premium homes and are open to negotiation, with buyers typically offering 5–10% lower or higher, note haart.

haart

Key Aspects of UK "Suggested" Price Ads:

  • Guide Price Definition: A guide price is an indication of the seller's minimum expectation and a guide for the starting price, but it is not a guarantee of the final sale price.

  • Negotiation Flexibility: Unlike a "Fixed Price" or "Offers Over" listing, a guide price encourages offers, allowing buyers to gauge interest and sellers to test the market.

  • Typical Usage: Frequently used in property auctions and high-end listings on portals like Rightmove.

Bonus material

While prowling the internet looking for examples of British guide prices, I came across Sotheby England’s page — If a cottage on Rogues Hill strikes you as too plebian and far below the minimum price that will impress your friends and tell the world how important you are, you may want to move your search across the pond; I’m sure Joe Barbieri would be willing to assist, and perhaps he’ll let me tag along.

TDS sufferers? Sure, but the media's one-sided cheering for the Iranian oppressors makes clear that it's actually just plain old anti-America.

/

Also anti-Semetic, which is curious, but that’s been the case for years.

Start with the actual facts: Last Thursday a muslim loaded up his car with explosives and deliberately crashed it into a Jewish pre-school:

Would-be Michigan car bomber rammed explosives-laden truck into Temple Israel preschool — before security guards shot him dead

The media immediately rushes to explain the Lebanese bomber’s motive: his brother was killed in an Israeli air strike last week, and the poor fellow was so distraught and angry that only killing innocent American children could assuage his sorrow. Who was the brother, and how was staying busy while in Lebanon? Ah, that was left unsaid, until the IDF said it:

Israel confirms Michigan synagogue attacker’s brother was Hezbollah terrorist commander

That was made known within hours of the attack, but ignored. In fact, just yesterday, the major news source for the liberals I know, the media branch they rely on to shape their knowledge of currents events, turned its sympathies to the rocket family.

His brother, Ibrahim Muhammad Ghazali, was responsible for managing weapons operations within a specialized branch of Hezbollah’s Badr Unit, the IDF said in a statement Sunday morning.

This unit of the Lebanese terror group is responsible for launching hundreds of rockets toward Israeli civilians throughout the recent war with Iran, the IDF said.

The will of the people? Not hardly

/

Glenn Reynolds:

MAKES YOU WONDER WHY ALL THESE COUNTRIES’ GOVERNMENTS ARE PURSUING THIS STRATEGY AGAINST ALL OPPOSITION:

“Oh, no, no, the popularity of our priests and our message isn't waning, it's just that their appeal has become more selective”

/

The Episcopal Diocese goes land developer

Episcopal Church plans to demolish Darien church, build four homes

DARIEN — The Episcopal Church of Connecticut plans to demolish an inactive church at 471 Mansfield Ave. and subdivide the property into four single-family home lots, according to plans expected to be submitted to the town this spring.

The Missionary Society of Connecticut, which owns the property, plans to submit a formal application to Darien’s Planning & Zoning Commission by spring, said Rosanna Rosado, the church’s canon for finance and operations.

The church stopped holding worship services at the Darien location in 2022 during the COVID-19 pandemic, when services moved online. [And haven’t returned in six years — just sayin’. Ed]

“We have a vibrant Episcopal community in the Fairfield County region,” Rosado said. “We have 30-plus communities of Episcopal churches," so members in Darien found other communities to worship in, she said.

Christian Charity

In addition to the church building, the property includes two single-family homes and a garage. One of the homes is currently rented to a family that helps maintain the property, Rosado said.

If the redevelopment plan is approved, the homes would also be demolished and the family would have to move, , Rosado said. 

(Somewhat related update) AI is getting scary good.

The article published in CT Insider and linked to here included a picture of the church as it exists today. I uploaded that to ChatGPT and gave it the following prompt: “Using this abandoned church as a model, show the building being razed with heavy equipment, perhaps by one of those claw-armed wreckers”. AI took it from there, tearing off the facade, piling rubble around the base, and even thought to add a traffic cone and runoff screening. Here’s the original photo: compare it with the one AI created — looking at the “enhanced” photo, I’d easily believe that the church is already in the process of being torn down.

What are odds that the missing books were claimed to have been written in Somali?

/

Top California librarian questioned about missing $650K tied to Dolly Parton child literacy program

State Sen Shannon Grove says situation 'reeks of horrific no transparency and potential fraud' during California budget hearing

California state librarian Greg Lucas is facing scrutiny from lawmakers after roughly $650,000 tied to a statewide literacy program connected to Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library could not be accounted for.

The issue surfaced during a Thursday Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Subcommittee No. 1 on Education hearing, which examined how funds were distributed for California’s participation in the book-gifting program.

Documents shared by the subcommittee as part of its hearing agenda claim that a nonprofit created to help administer the program reported spending roughly $1.2 million, while bank statements provided to Senate budget staff showed $555,000 in expenditures, leaving about $649,000 without supporting documentation.

"I find this to be incredibly concerning," said state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez, D-Pasadena, chair of the subcommittee. "There’s $650,000 that’s been unaccounted for in a program, a bipartisan effort that was intended to increase literacy among children. This is incredibly serious."

State Sen. Shannon Grove, R-Bakersfield, also criticized the lack of documentation, saying the situation raised serious concerns about transparency and oversight.

"That makes no sense," Grove said during the hearing. "And that reeks of horrific no transparency and potential fraud."

Lawmakers said Senate budget staff had requested financial records from the Strong Reader Partnership, the nonprofit created to help administer the program, multiple times, including receipts, invoices and bank statements to corroborate expenses.

According to the subcommittee, those requests were made on several occasions between November 2025 and February 2026, but the documentation had not been provided.

During the hearing, Lucas acknowledged that lawmakers had received bank statements accounting for roughly $555,000 in spending but disputed the claim that the funds were unaccounted for.

"I don't believe that's correct," he said. "I mean, we received a final report on the disposition of the money by the Strong Reader Partnership, which has expressed, and we've passed this on to you as well,

[Nothing suspicious here]:

“the difficulty in obtaining some of this information because they no longer have any money or members of the partnership since the money was transferred to the Imagination Library."

He added that his agency has repeatedly asked the nonprofit for additional records and pledged to continue requesting the information.

Pérez gave Lucas seven days to produce the financial records, saying the subcommittee expected invoices and receipts detailing how the money was spent.

Not that there’s anything unique about this scam:

EX-NONPROFIT BOSS ALLEGEDLY SWIPED $1.2M MEANT FOR HOMELESS PROGRAMS TO FUND LAVISH LIFESTYLE, DA SAYS

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the case follows years of scrutiny involving Westbrook and the nonprofit. According to the outlet, she was accused in 1997 of taking thousands of dollars from a cash box at a San Francisco Port parking lot where she worked. In 2015, regulators discovered unsanctioned blackjack tables operating inside a charity bingo hall run by the nonprofit, the Chronicle reported.

The charges come as homelessness spending in California faces heightened scrutiny. In Los Angeles, the head of another homeless services nonprofit was recently charged at both the federal and state level with allegedly misusing $23 million in taxpayer funds to finance luxury properties and vehicles.

TRUMP ADMIN UNCOVERS 'STAGGERING' $8.6 BILLION IN SUSPECTED CALIFORNIA SMALL BUSINESS FRAUD

Not that this East German ever hid her goals, but still ….

/

Merkel Blasted for Calling on Migrants to Vote Against Populist AfD Party

Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel has drawn criticism for calling on migrants in Germany to vote against the populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

Merkel, who served as the architect of the European Migrant Crisis in 2015, when she unilaterally decided to open the EU’s borders to unprecedented waves of foreigners from the Middle East and Africa, resulting in dramatic demographic transformations in her country and across the continent, appears to have let the cat out of the bag as to her motivation for doing so.

In an interview with establishment journalist Jagoda Marinić for Hesse Broadcasting earlier this month, Merkel openly called on the migrant population of Germany — many of whom she personally allowed into the country — to vote against the political right and vote against the AfD.

“I would like people with a migration background… or with a migration history… we join forces with those who do not make common cause with the AfD.”

“I wish everyone would stand together against this party. And we do not split ourselves as a political center, I say, onto those who have a migration history and those who have none. Because then our country would become weaker against the AfD,” she continued.

“Whether a German citizen has been a German citizen for two years or for four days or the entire family for three generations, it doesn’t matter. We are the German people… We must also stick together when we have to take action against people who have completely different ideas about our future.”

>>>>

Responding to the former chancellor, [AfD leader Alice Weidel] said on Saturday: “Merkel has inflicted severe damage on Germany. In addition to the ruin of our energy infrastructure and the open borders for everyone from all over the world, she is now calling on naturalized ‘people with a migration background’ not to vote for the AfD.”

>>>>

Despite her myriad failures in office, including sparking the migrant crisis, depleting Germany’s military, eroding its industrial base with trade deals with Communist China, and rashly deciding to scrap the nation’s nuclear fleet — a move that even her former acolyte EU cheif Ursula von der Leyen admits was a mistake — Merkel was recently awarded with an “order of merit” from the European Union.

She received the award on Tuesday for her “significant contributions to European integration and European values.”

That would be the new European values.

And from January …

She said this eleven years ago in her infamous 2015 “We can do this” speech, and repeated it in 2018.

2015: Angela Merkel says “Wir schaffen das” on accepting refugees

Igniting a heated debate within her nation and across the globe, German Chancellor Angela Merkel declares “Wir schaffen das” (“We can do this”) on August 31, 2015, as she commits to accepting a mass influx of refugees amid Europe’s biggest refugee crisis since World War II.

Merkel’s controversial stance involved providing humanitarian support to approximately 1 million refugees—primarily from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq—who sought refuge in the continent.

Supporters of the open-door policy saw it as a commitment to upholding human rights, while critics argued it would cause economic strain, cultural clashes, security issues and other long-term implications. The Alternative für Deutschland, an anti-immigration party, experienced a temporary surge in the polls.

“I put it simply, Germany is a strong country … we have managed so many things—we can do this,” she said during a press conference following her visit to a refugee center outside Dresden.

The statement received widespread media attention and became a recurring theme in her speeches. “If we start having to apologize for showing a friendly face in an emergency situation, then this is not my country,” Merkel, who served as Germany’s first woman chancellor for 18 years before stepping down in 2018, said in September.

2018:

In the first major speech of her new term, German Chancellor Angela Merkel struck a conciliatory tone on immigration while offering an inclusive message on Islam. "Germany can do it," she said, and "we are all Germany."

Wednesday was the first time Angela Merkel addressed the Bundestag after the unprecedentedly long and difficult process of forming a new government. It was thus a chance for the conservative Christian Democratic (CDU) chancellor to sell her plans for her fourth term in office and third as the leader of a grand coalition with the center-left Social Democrats (SPD).

So it was significant that Merkel began her address with a discussion of her own political Achilles' heel: her welcoming stance toward the numerous migrants and refugees who arrived in Germany in 2015 and 2016. She called her famous "We can do this" statement from 2015 a "point of crystallization" in a process that "has divided and polarized our country."

The chancellor noted that Germany had mastered this "unprecedented challenge" but added that they country's acceptance of more than 1 million migrants was a "humanitarian exception" that would not be repeated.

Merkel said that Germany would do more to strengthen United Nations aid programs while at the same time pushing for beefed-up security on the European Union's external borders. [Never done — Ed]. She added that Germany would continue to take in political refugees, but that the government would also focus on deportations.

'Islam is part of Germany'

Nutmeg Embarrassment

/

And Tokyo Rose is still at it:

Yes, I know that sounds like a grossly simplified explanation. But it's not. It's the actual truth. Military planners have understood the challenge of the Strait of Hormuz since Portugal seized the strait in 1507.

Protecting the vulnerable — in Virginia, those are their illegal aliens, not the state's children

/

‘Schoolboy’ charged with groping nine 11th grade classmates is exposed as adult illegal migrant released under Biden

FWIW Summary:

Sexual pervert sneaks into the U.S., is caught at the border and released to wander about the country as he pleases

Attends public school at taxpayers’ expense

Initiates a campaign of sexual groping of girls, behavior that continues and is tolerated by the school administration for months

Finally arrested, only the intervention of a judge prevents him from being granted bail: the prosecution filed no objection to the defendant’s bail request

An 18-year-old illegal immigrant from El Salvador allegedly groped 12 female classmates at a Virginia high school — and was allowed into the US under the Biden administration.

Israel Flores Ortiz, who is almost 19 but a junior at Fairfax High School, has been charged with nine counts of assault and battery after he was accused of repeatedly creeping up behind the students in crowded hallways and grabbing them between the legs.

Ortiz, who entered the country illegally in 2024, was released under a federal government policy during the Biden administration, according to local outlet 7News.

….

Parents claim that Ortiz’s disturbing behavior had been going on for months.

“There’s a group of about 12 individuals that have reported this assault,” the mother of one alleged victim said. “He just sneakily walked up behind them and put his hand in between their legs.”

The parent stressed the encounters went far beyond horseplay.

“It was not just a butt smack or a butt grab,” she said. “It was a groping of a private area. It had been occurring for several months.”

Families also blasted school officials, accusing Fairfax County Public Schools of downplaying the situation.

Principal Georgina Aye sent a letter to parents on March 12 informing them of a student’s arrest for “inappropriately touching other students” and described the incidents as the suspect “touching students’ buttocks while they were transitioning in the hallways.”

Parents said the wording minimized the allegations and only came after families demanded an explanation.

“[The county] attempted to diminish what happened to these girls,” one parent said, calling the district’s response “abysmal.”

Meanwhile, a Fairfax County judge denied Ortiz bail this week — even though prosecutors did not oppose his release — after reviewing surveillance video and determining the proposed conditions did not adequately protect the public.

And of course …

ICE lodged a detainer seeking custody of Ortiz for deportation, but the agency said the Fairfax County Sheriff’s Office failed to honor it.