Oh, the HUMANITY! Except ...

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Hey Grok, is swimming allowed in the reflecting pool?

No. Swimming was photographed in the Reflecting Pool shortly after it opened in 1926, and informal wading occurred at times (e.g. 1960s events), but it was never officially allowed as recreation. NPS rules have long prohibited swimming, wading, or bathing in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool (and similar memorial waters) to protect water quality, the historic structure, and its purpose as a reflecting pool—not a swimming hole. 

Current enforcement isn't new.

— Grok (@grok) June 23, 2026

Comment to Western Lensman’s post:

I've also heard that school children are no longer permitted to ride the pandas at the National Zoo. If you needed convincing that a dark night of authoritarianism has descended upon our nation, look no further.

A land sale, unfortunately

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The home of our late First Selectman Dick Bergstresser at 200 Old Church Road has been placed on the market today, priced at $2.150 million. Built in 1925, there doesn’t seem to be much left to preserve — certainly, the listing makes no claim that there is. The Bergstressers were in their 90s when they passed, Dick in 2025, and Jean in 2026, and the house sort of reflects that.

Our long, national nightmare is finally over

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105 Woodside Drive, Milbrook, $6.750 million

Well, okay, that may be overstating the matter just a tiny bit, but 105 Woodside Drive has finally sold, and to a Manhattan refugee (Zip 10010). It’s been a long road.

Purchased for $5.340 million in 2007, these owners priced it at $6.550 million and placed it back on the market in 2011, where it sat, unloved, for 720 days until the listing was allowed to expire in 2013. Renovations were performed, and it reappeared on the MLS at $6.925 million in 2021. When that effort failed, they tried again in September 2025, originally at $7.950 and reduced to $6.995 this past March, when a new agent was brought in. All respect due to that agent, Ellen Mosher, who’s one of the best, but I suspect it was the price that finally produced a buyer — that’s usually the case.

I'm shocked! Shocked, I tell you — who could imagine an educator looking like this would ever do such a thing?

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NY school board VP allegedly kept videos of infants being sexually abused on his phone

The vice president of an upstate New York school board was arrested for having several videos of infants being sexually abused on his phone, according to authorities.

Travis Barr Longo, 46, of Cazenovia, was cuffed on child pornography charges after state troopers seized his cellphone and discovered “numerous” videos and photos depicting sexual abuse on Thursday, according to the US Attorney’s Office of the Northern District of New York.

Longo, who serves as the vice president of the Cazenovia Central School District’s Board of Education, received the vile content from other users on an internet-based messaging app, prosecutors said.

The sicko appeared in federal court on Saturday and was ordered held behind bars pending further court proceedings.

His mugshot, released by state troopers, captured Longo with thick eyebrows and what appeared to be makeup smeared all over his face.

And here’s more bad news: no Gay Pride festival this year; no bouncy castle where, deep in the dungeon, counselors from Cazenovia Pride’s PTA could help children discover and explore their inner selves. Bummer.

He also founded Cazenovia Pride Fest, which evolved into the organization Cazenovia Pride, WSYR reported. Members of the group have decided to cancel the upcoming Pride festival in light of the serious accusations against Longo.

“I feel betrayed,” Danielle Synborski, the group’s president, told the outlet. “This organization is because of the work that Travis did to start the festival six years ago, and we saw a need that our non-profit could meet.”

The school board vice president also performed in drag under the name Anita Buffem, and claimed to be “the 1st Drag Artist elected to official position in U.S.” on his Facebook profile, the outlet reported.

You might wonder how and why voters in Cazenovia placed this person on their school board, but I’m sure they had their reasons; I couldn’t possibly say.

Related: Syntax is everything.

Old Greenwich School Celebrates Graduating Seniors with Inaugural “Parade of Pride”

Whew! No Cazenovia here, thank goodness.

Pending on Vista Drive — no, not the Donald's former house, that's farther down the road , on better waterfront

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tidal waterfront, so you won’t be tying up your yacht here (I suggest you make friends with your new neighbors at 21 Vista), but canoe and kayak enthusiasts will enjoy the opportunity to boat here 6-hours a day.

2 Vista Drive, now just an empty lot with a guide price of $7.995, reports a pending contract. The owners paid $6.2 million for it in 2019, tried to resell it for $6.999 in 2020 but got nowhere, and went nowhere. So they razed the existing structure and tried again in 2022 at $8.995. Four years and a price cut to $7.995 and they’ve found their buyer.

Update: Closed today (6/23/26) at $7.825

In this market it doesn't matter what you say about a house or how badly you say it; if the price, structure and location are right, it'll go

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34 1/2 Orchard Street, a rear lot, as the address might suggest, was listed at $1.895 million in May and has sold to a Long Island City couple (hey, I’d leave there, too) for $2,022,000. The owners tried for $1.795 million in 2023 and dropped it to $1.590 before giving up that year. It was worth their wait.

The listing agent will win no Pulitzer here, unless there’s a category for real estate cliches, but she did get the commission, so what does she care?

If your wishlist sounds something like: ''Greenwich, updated, bright, great for entertaining, and close to everything'' than 34 1/2 Orchard St. in beloved Cos Cob is what you've been waiting for. Nestled on a 1/4 acre, this stone & sustainable shingle colonial feels welcoming from the moment you enter.

Just out of curiosity, what do you suppose a “sustainable shingle colonial” is?

This shrieking, howling, deranged woman and her sisters in hate are the new face of the Demcratic Party

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David Strom, HotAir: Progressives Letting Their Freak Flags Fly Is Ugly to See

The beauty of being a communist is that you need not express yourself in a manner more intelligible than an inarticulate howl, and that is precisely what they are doing right here. 

No need even for words. All you need to do is sound like a Muslim woman in mourning while chasing somebody you dislike, and you count it a political win. And, perhaps, it IS a political win, since it succeeds in silencing your opponent and driving him off the rhetorical battlefield. 

And here’s their candidate, Darializa Avila Chevalier:

Chevalier is about as radical as you can be without having put a capitalist pig against the wall and shooting them, which explains why she was a leader for Students for Justice in Palestine as a PhD candidate at Columbia, and why she was a key figure in Zohran Mamdani's campaign. 

She doesn't believe that murderers belong in jail, and she hates the merely left-wing Democrats with almost as much passion as she does Republicans or Jews, since we are all easy to lump into the same non-communist category. Unsurprisingly, she is very much in the Graham Platner camp, and gets defended by the same people who are head over heels for him. 

It's difficult to overstate how insane her positions are, and by extension those of the Mamdani and even Bernie Sanders supporters. Mamdani and Sanders are holding rallies for Chevalier and the two other primary challengers in New York that Mamdani is trying to help get over the line, including Dan Goldman's challenger. 

The Democrat Socialist/Democrat Senatorial candidate is leading in Maine, Mamdani is already installed as mayor of the country’s largest city, and a majority of the next generation of votes have been thoroughly indoctrinated since Kindergarten and are ready to go:

According to a recent Heartland Institute/Rasmussen Reports poll, nearly 60% of likely voters age 18 to 24 want a Democratic Socialist in the White House in 2028.  

Mandani captured 78% of under-30 voters in November, per an ABC News exit poll.

The Democratic Socialists of America, once the haven of radical retirees reliving their 1960s glory days, is now powered by the young: DSA saw its membership’s average age plunge from 68 to 33 in the last decade.

Blame the leftist indoctrination in K-12 schools and in universities for this socialist and communist enthusiasm.

A staggering 62% of voters age 18 to 29 hold a favorable view of socialism, and 34% favor communism.

That’s what they’re being taught.

CoolKid Facts, a popular education website aimed mainly at elementary-age students, teaches kids that communists believe “the state should provide every citizen with their basic needs . . . and no one is above anyone else.”  

…. In New York state social studies classes, communism and socialism are presented as two economic systems that make things more equal and fair — again without discussing the atrocities that go hand in hand with property confiscation.

….

[Bernie Sanders [and most of Democrats, including CT’s Chris Murphy] want to sieze half (for now) of Elon Musks’s wealth, actual and paper, and bring it to Washington to be distributed as they see fit.]

His flimsy justification: “Since AI is built on the collective knowledge of humanity, the wealth it generates must benefit humanity.”

Sorry, senator — all inventions and breakthroughs are built on the knowledge that’s come before. 

The same argument could rationalize demanding half the stock of a biotech company that produces a cancer cure, or a musical composer who writes a hit. [It will, it will; remember Obama’s “you didn’t build that?]

…. Sanders’ bill is going nowhere while there’s a Republican majority in Congress — but ignore it at your peril.

It’s a warning: Outright confiscation is the left’s latest scheme to remedy inequality and pay for ever-expanding public benefits. 

….

And New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani agrees: He warned us at his inauguration that he’d introduce New Yorkers to the “warmth of collectivism.” 

His new Block by Block housing plan proposes seizing apartment buildings from their owners to give them to what he calls “responsible stewards,” including tenants — another outrageous attack on property rights.

Pay attention to how fast Democratic Socialist candidates spouting collectivism are making headway.

This week’s primaries produced outright wins or runoff advancements for more than a dozen Democratic Socialists-backed candidates in five states.

…..

It's a good thing that (once) Great Britain has declined into irrelevance, because this is bad news for that beknighted country; fortunately, it will have no affect on the real world

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No Starmer’s downfall will have no more effect on its slow collapse than Canada’s switch from Trudeau to Carney, or Chicago’s Lightfoot to Johnson

Fail, Britannia: Meet the New Commie, Worse Than the Old Commie

The U.K.'s most destructively feckless prime minister (since the last one) is history, but Keir Starmer's likely successor could prove Britain's final undoing — if the radical Liberian-born advisor who serves as Andy Burnham's "brains" gets her way.

Burnham, former Mayor of Greater Manchester, won the Makerfield by-election on June 18 with an impressive 55% of the vote — a full rebuke of Reform U.K., too — sending him to Parliament where he'll make a run at Number 10 Downing St. At least one potential rival, Wes Streeting, stood aside and endorsed Burnham on Monday, pretty much clearing his path.

In his endorsement, Streeting said he wants Labour to pursue "a progressive capitalism focused on wealth creation as much as wealth distribution," but nobody seems to have told the "brains" behind Burnham: the Liberian-born daughter of lefty radicals, Miatta Fahnbulleh.

CutMyTaxUK reported last year that Fahnbulleh "was born in Liberia as part of a prominent leftist revolutionary family, has served as a junior energy & housing minister in the Starmer government before resigning to support Burnham." Previously, as the "former head of the far-left New Economics Foundation," she proved "adept at churning out socialist policy proposals."

Or as CMT-UK put it, "Keir Starmer has appointed a Housing Minister who hates private housing."

Another U.K. publication, Guido Fawkes, put all of Fahnbulleh's most radical proposals in one handy list on Sunday:

  • A wealth tax and yet another windfall tax on oil and gas.

  • Mass nationalization e.g. of land, transport, and energy.

  • Extending national [welfare] insurance [tax to include] to investment income.

  • A cap on interest rates and charges on every form of consumer credit.

  • Hiking capital gains tax to income tax levels.

  • Hiking the dividend tax to income tax levels.

  • Abolition of the upper earnings limit for national insurance.

  • Huge expansion of the benefits system, including a “minimum income guarantee” paid to everyone apart from the rich.

  • Nationalization of banks and creation of new “green” banks with taxpayer funds.

  • Block on private banks lending to anyone with a “large amount of greenhouse gas emissions” and “penalization of banks that provide too many carbon-intensive loans.“

  • Forced sale of existing businesses to employees.

  • A tripling of the stamp duty [property tax, basically] surcharge to 9% for multiple homeowners and an increase to 6% for non-residents.

So, apart from urging the destruction of the energy industry, banking, and investment, ending private ownership of industry and housing, and a massive expansion of Britain's welfare state, she's practically a right-winger.

Cough, cough.