West Side Story

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12 Bailiwick Road, listed 7 days ago at $3.095 million reports a contract today.

When it was put on the MLS last week I wrote about it, stating that, while I like the land itself, I felt (and still feel) that the first call a new homeowner should make would be a request of Camillo Carting to come up and haul the house away. Apparently, more than one buyer disagreed with my assessment of its qualities.

This isn’t wishful thinking on Politico’s part, it’s an announcement of a pre-arranged certainty

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scott weiner, author of California’s new pedophile bill and running to replace Nanny Box wine in congress, won the top position, so to speak

Becerra and Bass surge in California as anti-establishment fever breaks

Karen Bass advanced to a November runoff, while Xavier Becerra was in position to make the runoff in the governor’s race in early returns.

LOS ANGELES — The Democratic establishment swung back in California on Tuesday.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass advanced to a November runoff in a better-than-expected showing in her reelection bid, while Xavier Becerra was in solid position to make the runoff in the race for governor — both blunting a surge of outsider energy and massive spending in the nation’s most populous state.

While the governor’s race was still not called early Wednesday, and Bass still has a runoff to contend with, early results suggested the limits of anti-establishment currents that threatened for months to upend the party apparatus in this heavily Democratic state.

“We’ve been fighting, because we’re not going to let somebody turn back our clock,” Bass said in a fiery victory speech after dancing across the stage to the podium.

It was the same for establishment Democrats elsewhere.

…. Pratt, who was in second place as of early Wednesday, held a private party inside a Mexican restaurant on the city’s Westside he’s frequented since his years on mid-aughts reality show “The Hills.” Speaking to a gaggle of reporters outside, he said he looked forward to a one-on-one against Bass.

“I hope she’s ready,” Pratt said of Bass. “I literally could not be more excited.”

Money Quote:

But Pratt’s place in the runoff is not assured. As of early Wednesday, he held a lead over Raman, who is challenging Bass from the left. Political observers widely expect late-arriving ballots to skew more Democratic, which could aid Raman — a looming threat to the incumbent. Should Pratt hold on, however, Bass would have a considerable edge in a city with 15 percent Republican registration.

let the celebrations begin

Why not just arrest junkies who shoot up in public areas? (Spoiler alert: think NGOs, and additional state employees added to the payroll)

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With just $500, Maine’s syringe disposal program can’t get off the ground

Lawmakers, healthcare officials and harm reduction advocates have long been searching for a solution to the needle litter that many say has become a safety problem in Maine’s communities.

One bill seemed like it had it.

Rep. Ambureen Rana, D-Bangor, proposed a bill in 2025 to establish a state-run biohazard waste disposal grant program. Municipalities and community organizations could apply for grant funding to purchase and install disposal boxes, contract with disposal companies and hire clean-up staff ― services many are already providing.

The bill, LD 1738, passed in January, but not before the Legislature’s appropriations committee slashed nearly $240,000 in funding requested for a two-year state health position to lead the program.

Instead, lawmakers dedicated $500 to open an account that Rana, who served on the appropriations committee, said she hoped to fill with other funding. It still sits empty. …. Without funding, the grant program is at a standstill.

At the same time, residents in communities across Maine, including Augusta, Bangor, Lewiston and Portland, are increasingly concerned about discarded needles and public safety. As organizations across Maine work to reduce the ways HIV and hepatitis C can spread through shared needles, local leaders also bear the expensive burden of collecting and disposing of the ones on the ground.

Courtney Gary-Allen, executive director of Maine Recovery Access Project, [an NGO] said grant money would support stronger syringe disposal efforts across Maine. The Augusta nonprofit has distributed hundreds of disposal boxes and gathers volunteers for regular community cleanups.

“I think that communities could use every single one of those dollars to go out and do community cleanups,” Gary-Allen said. “It’s a real problem all across Maine. If we had the funding, there would be organizations ready to go on day one.”

Lawmakers tapped the Maine CDC to run the program. Through the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, the CDC had requested roughly $120,000 a year from the Legislature for a health planner position to administer it. The position was approved by the Senate and the House before it was cut in appropriations, Rana said. She now realizes that position was crucial. {Of course she does}

Uh oh, heresy!

…. Some people believe syringe services providers are why they see more needle litter on the ground. Sanford, Auburn and Lewiston have all taken steps to reduce or preclude programs in their communities in the past year. *

Not to worry, they’re on it:

…. However, several studies have found that syringe services reduce needle sharing — and disease incidence — without increasing litter. [Ya think? _ Ed] As part of its inaugural buyback program, the city of Portland distributed more than 1 million needles in 2025 and collected 86% of them.

Gary-Allen said syringe services providers are the solution, not the problem.

“Harm reduction is facing really a challenging moment all across Maine, where the public is not understanding our work, or some are not supporting it,” she said. “I think that this would be a way that we can show good faith to our communities that we want exactly what they want:

“We want safe, healthy communities, and we want to be able to ensure that children and everybody has access to these public spaces,” she said. “But we need the resources to be able to do so.”

The Bangor Public Health Department, which offers health programs, HIV case management and education in the city, is also planning to apply for syringe services program certification, said Jennifer Gunderman, the department’s director. She said the health department often receives calls from people who don’t know what to do with needles they use to inject medications, like insulin.

“There’s a lot of people storing their needles at home,” Gunderman said.

[Just throwing it out there: Diabetics living at home are probably not the ones littering parks, sidewalks and school grounds with needles, but it sounds good, eh? — Ed]

*Bonus reading:

State suspends license of Lewiston needle exchange group

Meanwhile, the Church of Safe Injection [hahahahah] says the condemnation of the Lewiston building that houses its office is the latest move in city’s ‘war on harm reduction.’

LEWISTON — The Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention has suspended the Church of Safe Injection’s certification as a syringe service provider after the organization’s home at 195 Main St. was condemned by city code enforcement earlier this week.

Meanwhile, the organization’s leadership is saying the city’s action is part of its continued targeting of the organization, and that the building’s issues were the result of an unauthorized break-in.

The city condemned the building Wednesday after police and code enforcement staff said they found several biohazard risks, including needles, unsecured sharps containers, fecal matter and evidence of unauthorized individuals sleeping in the basement. The state of the building also led staff to believe that it had been abandoned for months, with items “left as though operations had abruptly stopped.”

From the (NGO) Church of Safe Redemption’s website:

The Church of Safe Injection is a Maine-based harm reduction nonprofit that fights for the health, rights, and dignity of people who use drugs (PWUD). We fight for the closure of all prisons and other tools of structural violence against poor and marginalized people.

One Zoe Brokos, co-executive director of this NGO is also an officer at its parent NGO, the Freedom & Captivity Collective; I stopped researching the organization here, because these Russian nesting dolls go on forever.

Looks as though it will be Bass against Pratt in an LA showdown, but there's still time for the rulers to "adjust" the numbers as they count the mail-in ballots

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I asked ChatGPD how this all works so that you don’t have to if, like me, you don’t understand how California’s primary system works — I didn’t ask Chat how California’s voters can habitually elect people like Karen Bass and Gavin Noisome, because artificial intelligence is not the same thing as no intelligence at all.

Q: As a non-resident interested in Los Angeles' mayoral race, I see that today's primary (June 2 2026) saw Karen Bass get (approx) 36% to Spencer Pratt's 29.5%. I'm unfamiliar with that state's election procedures; do the results mean that Bass has won, or only that she'll be in a runoff later this summer with Pratt?

A: No—those numbers do not mean Karen Bass has won outright.

Los Angeles uses California's "top-two" (sometimes called "jungle primary") system for mayoral elections. All candidates run on the same ballot, and:

  • If a candidate receives more than 50% of the vote, they win outright.

  • If no one reaches 50%, the top two finishers advance to a runoff/general election in November.

With Bass at roughly 36% and Pratt around 29.5%, neither is close to a majority, so the current result points toward a runoff rather than an immediate victory. Reuters reported Bass leading with about 36.6% and Pratt second with about 29.8%, which would place those two in the November contest if the standings hold as remaining ballots are counted.

One wrinkle: California counts mail ballots for days or even weeks after Election Day, so the exact ordering of second and third place can still shift when margins are close. Some reporting overnight noted that Bass had clearly advanced, while the battle for the second runoff spot between Pratt and Nithya Raman was still not mathematically settled.

So the practical takeaway is:

  • Bass has not won the mayoralty.

  • Bass appears very likely to have qualified for the November runoff.

  • Pratt is currently in position to join her in that runoff, but the final certification will determine the matchup.

For someone coming from states that hold separate partisan primaries, California's system can feel unusual because what happened on June 2 was effectively a first round of the mayoral election, not the final election. The decisive head-to-head contest would be in November unless someone had crossed the 50% threshold.

Henry Nowak

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Just for the fun of it, a republican should introduce a motion for the senate to hold a moment of silence in memory of henry nowak

UK Police Release DAMNING Bodycam Footage of Themselves Handcuffing a Stabbed Henry Nowak

Twitchy:

This editor has written a couple of VIP posts about this case from the United Kingdom, which Elon Musk and others are likening to Britain's version of George Floyd. It's a tremendous scandal in England, and mobs are forming outside the police station on Tuesday after bodycam footage was finally released.

To catch up those who aren't VIP members: On May 28, 23-year-old Vickrum Digwa was found guilty of murdering 18-year-old Henry Nowak. Digwa, a Sikh, stabbed Nowak multiple times with an eight-inch ceremonial blade called a kirpan that he was carrying openly. When police arrived, Digwa told them he had been racially abused, so the cops put Nowak, who is white, in handcuffs even as he told the police he couldn't breathe and that he's been stabbed. There were reports that one officer told him, "I don't think you have, mate." Nowak bled to death internally while handcuffed and on the ground. In short, they were more concerned with Digwa's claim that he'd been racially abused than Nowak's telling them he'd been stabbed.

Digwa's mother was also arrested and convicted for hiding the weapon from the police.

People across Britain have been demanding the release of the bodycam footage, and it's damning for the police.

And of course ….

Earlier post supplies more details:

UK Police Handcuff University Student Who’d Been Stabbed and Later Died After Claim of Racial Abuse

… Accountancy and Finance student at the University of Southampton from Chafford Hundred in Essex, was fatally stabbed multiple times in the chest and leg while walking home from a night out with his new football teammates in the Portswood area of Southampton on December 3, 2025.

Prosecutors at Southampton Crown Court allege that Vickrum Singh Digwa, armed with a large Shastar blade, described in court as an extremely large 21cm ceremonial knife carried openly in a sheath, chased down and attacked the teenager following a brief street altercation.

Digwa claims he acted in self defence after alleging racial abuse.

According to the prosecution, the incident unfolded around 11:30pm on Belmont Road. Henry, who had been celebrating the end of his first semester, was captured on Snapchat footage sending videos to friends just moments before his death.

Digwa, reportedly carrying the oversized blade, confronted him.

Phone footage played in court shows Digwa saying, I am a bad man, as the confrontation escalated. Henry suffered a deep puncture wound to his chest, along with wounds to his leg and a cut to his jaw. He collapsed from massive blood loss and died at the scene despite desperate attempts to save him.

Disturbingly, when police arrived, they arrested and handcuffed the victim, Henry Nowak, based on Digwa's claims of racial abuse. It was only after he passed out that officers realised the severity of his injuries. First aid came too late.

Digwa, of St Denys Road, Southampton, denies murder and possession of a bladed article in a public place.

His mother, Kiran Kaur, 52, also of the same address, denies assisting an offender by hiding the murder weapon.

Both have pleaded not guilty and remain in custody. The trial, which began this week, is expected to last around 10 days.

And:

BRENDAN O’NEILL: The merciless mistreatment of Henry Nowak.

For me, the most chilling thing in the bodycam footage of Henry Nowak’s last moments of life is the cops’ cruel presumption that he is lying. As he writhes in terror and agony and cries out ‘I’ve been stabbed!’, a voice in the background – presumably that of the lowlife who murdered him, Vickrum Digwa – says: ‘He hasn’t been stabbed.’ A female officer responds. ‘I know’, she says. ‘But we have to check, don’t we?’

I know. It is delivered with dry, bureaucratic indifference. Henry is heard moaning, begging, ‘I can’t breathe’, yet here is a representative of the state seeming to agree with his knife-wielding tormentor that he is making it up. That cold, cavalier utterance – I know – will have cemented dying Henry’s great dread: that the police were taking the side of his killer rather than him. As his young, precious life came to an end, he heard himself being disbelieved, distrusted, icily written off as a fabulist. His murderer, meanwhile, was afforded respect. The state blindly bowed to his filthy lies.

The bodycam footage of the arrest of 18-year-old Henry Nowak after he was stabbed in Southampton in December last year is horrifying beyond belief. It is one of the most harrowing two minutes of video I have ever watched. Henry can be seen sprawled in agony in a stranger’s driveway, the place he sought sanctuary after being knifed four times by Digwa. His failing voice is thick with pain and fear. What he wanted in that moment – what he needed – was to be believed. The belief of others was the only thing that might have delivered him from his terror-stricken state. But it never came. He said ‘I can’t breathe’ nine times. He said ‘I’ve been stabbed’ four times. ‘I don’t think you have, mate’, said an officer with chirpy, inhumane derision.

Hey at least California has more Vanlords and more comfortable park camping (Updated)

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same day results in the andes, but then, unlike california, they don’t accept mail-in ballots from dead llamas.

So there’s that.

From a comment on Silver’s post:

I try not to contradict Nate very often but there’s a perfectly valid reason why it takes so long to count votes in California. Here is a typical timeline:

Election Day: everyone votes

  • Week 1: mail in ballots, absentee ballots, military ballots, overseas ballots, ballots accidentally issued to people’s pets, and ballots harvested from Skid Row start trickling in.

  • Week 2: As the ballots pile up, Officials consider appointing a Committee to Count Ballots.

  • Week 3: Committee to Count Ballots is appointed and commences discussion on electing a chairman.

  • Week 4: deadline for ballots from illegal immigrants.

  • Week 5: Committee decides that “chairman” is an outdated term and will be replaced by a term to be decided later once the Committee to Count Ballots Diversity Consultants finishes their report.

  • Week 6: fraudulent ballots from the Chinese Communist Party arrive.

  • Week 7: The Committee elects as Chairzerxon a nonbinary disabled child to count the ballots.

  • Week 8: it is discovered that the Chairzerxon does not actually know how to count.

  • Week 9: the ballots are thrown away and the Committee announces election results that are entirely made up.

ChatGPD:

Examples of developing ("third world") countries that often report results quickly

India

  • National elections involve hundreds of millions of voters.

  • Voting occurs over multiple days/weeks, but once counting starts, results are usually known within a day.

  • Electronic voting machines allow rapid tabulation.

Brazil

  • Uses nationwide electronic voting.

  • Presidential election results are often clear within hours after polls close.

  • Frequently cited as one of the fastest large democracies.

Mexico

  • Preliminary results usually emerge on election night.

  • Official certification takes longer.

Indonesia

  • Massive archipelago and huge electorate.

  • Quick-count systems often project winners the same day.

  • Official results take longer but outcomes are often apparent quickly.

Philippines

  • Automated counting system.

  • National results are often substantially reported on election night.

European countries with very fast election reporting

United Kingdom

  • Paper ballots.

  • Votes counted overnight.

  • Most constituencies report by early morning.

  • General election outcome is often known within 6–8 hours.

France

  • National projections are usually available immediately after polls close.

  • Final outcome is often apparent the same evening.

Germany

  • Exit polls at poll closing are often highly accurate.

  • Preliminary official results emerge throughout the evening.

Sweden

  • Election-night results are generally available quickly.

  • Some absentee and overseas ballots are added later.

Netherlands

  • Most results known within hours.

  • Final certification follows later.

UPDATE: Related, sort of, but definitely fun:

Scary? Well, alarming, anyway

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David Strom, HotAir:

Paul Krugman's Deranged Call to Purge America of MAGA Is Scarier Than You Think

It is now so common for leftists, indeed most Democrats, to call Trump supporters Nazis that it's easy to shrug and move on. 

Unfortunately, as much as we would like to think it is a mere rhetorical flourish, it is not one at all. If you think that Democrats aren't serious when they propose what sound like insane measures, just remember what they did during COVID, what they are doing with alphabet ideology (literally sterilizing and mutilating kids and putting sex offenders into girls' locker rooms), and what they did to President Trump before his reelection. 

They are quite serious about all the insane things they talk about, including Paul Krugman's call to "deMAGAfy" America, mirroring the measures taken after the Allies' victory in World War II. 

We need to, obviously, we need to, um, defang Trump as much as possible and make sure that neither he nor anybody who follows in his footsteps has power after the next two elections. Uh, but beyond that, we really need to do a thorough purging of the United States. We need a, a deMAGAfication, and that is... You know, I'm not going over the top by using a word that's very similar to the denazification, uh, that we pursued successfully after World War II in Germany. 

Strom:

Krugman is not alone. Others have referred to Bush's "deBaathification" after the victory in the Iraq War. 

If you don't know what that means exactly, let me tell you: outlawing political parties, rooting out supporters of the political cause you want to purge, removing academics, doctors, and other professionals associated with the movement, and banning them all from public life. It is Ursula von der Leyen's wet dream when it comes to AfD. 

There were also, of course, trials and executions for the top-level malefactors. And Rudolf Hess served life in prison until his death in 1987, at the age of 93. I assume Trump would get either the execution or life in prison. 

Americans have a hard time believing that their neighbors can really think like this, but the evidence is everywhere. In a 2022 poll, half of Democrats supported criminal penalties for questioning the effectiveness of vaccines. A substantial fraction wanted what amounted to COVID concentration camps and to take away children from parents who opposed forced vaccinations against COVID. 

Biden was building an entire censorship regime, sent the FBI after social media posters who dissented from his policies, and suppressed news he didn't like. He sent his Deputy Attorney General to New York to become the primary prosecutor of Donald Trump in the bogus criminal case against him. 

And that was before the communist wing of the party became ascendant. 

Jonathan Turley has been ringing the alarm bells on the New Jacobins, who are bringing the spirit of the French Revolution to America, and reminds us that it was the same class of people who ushered in The Terror that is now leading the New Jacobins in the United States. It wasn't the working classes who led the revolt. It was the professional classes. 

Turley:

Newspapers like the New York Times regularly publish calls to trash the Constitution or curtail rights such as free speech. In one column, “The Constitution Is Broken and Should Not Be Reclaimed,” law professors Ryan D. Doerfler of Harvard and Samuel Moyn of Yale called for the nation to “reclaim America from constitutionalism.”

Another mocked “Constitution worship” and warned that “Americans have long assumed that the Constitution could save us. A growing chorus now wonders whether we need to be saved from it.”

Republicans and law enforcement are now regularly called “Nazis” and “fascists” by Democratic leaders. Some are promising arrests from the President to individual police officers. Last week, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner promised to “hunt down” ICE officers like “Nazis.” Democratic strategist James Carville previously threatened that “collaborators” may be treated in the same way as they were after World War II.

Gov. Tim Walz, who has called ICE officers “Gestapo,” said that this may be our “Fort Sumter” moment, a triggering event for a civil war that killed hundreds of thousands of Americans.

The dehumanization of political opponents gives people license for extreme or even violent responses. In cities like Minnesota, protesters carried signs reading “Kill Nazis” and we have seen assassination attempts on President Donald Trump and Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Many celebrated or rationalized the murder of Charlie Kirk. A quarter of Americans now believe political violence is justified.

Strom:

Democrats are quite open about chucking the Constitution and seizing power. That may seem inconceivable, so many assume it is all rhetoric. 

It is not. They really mean it. And their hope is a Democratic sweep this November and seizing the presidency in 2028. If they manage that, they will start their project to pack the Supreme Court, add new leftist states to lock in Senate dominance, and it's off to the races. 

Think Walz or Spanberger on steroids. And perhaps even more, like "deMAGAfication." 

Another Benjamin Street moderate-income housing unit has come up for sale

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60 Benjamin Street, Old Greenwich, $6.850 million.

It’s not as though these prices are a new phenomenon — this house sold, pre-renovation and expansion, to these owners for $3.250 in 2021 — but as I watch Riverside and Old Greenwich become neighborhoods populated exclusively by multimillionaires, I’m a bit nostalgic for the middle class community I and even my children grew up in. Grow or die; I understand, but change can be sad.