Paging AOC

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Here’s wisdom from an anonymous FWIW commenter, doubtless one of those gifted Wall Street denizens we see on TV stock shows:

Anon

3 days ago

An analytical analysis of the revenue generated by his companies relative to the market capitalization would conclude the valuation multiple given to Musk related companies are at least 5x those given to other companies. If you look at Tesla, they have had declining sales for two years and an uncompetitive product mix relative to Chinese competition. Thr stock value is held up by promises of humanoid robots nobody has seen and the quasi religious worship of this man by people like you buying the stock. AKA as stock pumping bullshit artist. Que the Tesla merger in 3, 2, 1 …

Were looking at interesting times come next year

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Origin unknown

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maryland man enjoys a frosty adukt beverage with his senator

Even the NYP plays the game. This, from October 19th:

Here's sad news — for Mamdani and his fellow Democrats, anyway

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Hamas terrorist who barbarically paraded Shani Louk’s half-naked body killed by IDF

The Israeli Defense Forces took out the last Hamas operative involved in the kidnapping and murder of hostage Shani Louk during the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack.

Tamer Muhammad Ibrahim al-Sabbagh, who was among the men caught on camera abducting Louk, 22, and parading her half-naked body around Gaza, was killed in an airstrike on Tuesday, the IDF said.

Al-Sabbagh was seen in the infamous Associated Press photo of Louk’s body as he sat right beside her as he and his fellow terror operatives howled in victory while driving off in a pickup truck during the terror attack. 

The men were quickly identified in the aftermath of the Nova music festival massacre, with the other Hamas operatives taken out during the height of the war in Gaza. 

Al-Sabbagh was allegedly working to carry out future attacks on Israeli troops and civilians while stationed in Jabalia when he was located by the Israeli military. 

Israel accused him of attempting to restore Hamas’ capabilities in northern Gaza, a clear violation of the cease-fire, according to the IDF and Shin Bet intelligence agency.  

Louk, who also had German citizenship, was a tattoo artist celebrating at the Nova music festival when Hamas descended on the partygoers and slaughtered more than 360 civilians.   

The image of her body in the back of the pickup truck became a symbol of Hamas’ brutality during the Oct. 7 attack. 

AI:

Yes, Shani Louk's body was paraded through the streets of Gaza City, and individuals in the crowd were filmed spitting on her.

The footage, which circulated widely on social media immediately after the October 7, 2023, attacks, showed her limp, partially unclothed body lying face down in the bed of a white pickup truck. [1, 2]

Key documented details from the video and subsequent reports include:

  • The Parade: Armed Hamas militants sat on and around her body in the truck bed, chanting slogans as they drove her through the streets. [1, 2, 3]

  • The Crowd's Actions: A crowd gathered around the vehicle as it moved, with individuals cheering, hitting, and spitting directly on her head and body. [1, 2]

  • Identification: Because she was lying face down, her family was initially unable to see her face but conclusively identified her from the video by her unique dreadlocks and distinct tattoos. [1]

Forensic evidence later revealed that she had likely been killed by a gunshot wound to the head during the initial festival massacre before her body was taken into Gaza and desecrated in the video.

Just in time for the anniversary

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“Battle of trafalgar. Nelson’s crushing defeat of the french and spanish navies on 21st october 1805, establishing britain as the dominant world navy power for a century, but at the cost of nelson’s life”

CDR Salmander:

Royal Navy Submarine Legacy’s Sad Deathbed

collapse and irrelevance happens slowly, then all at once

When I first saw this, I thought, ‘This is reporting from The Sun. Just tabloid trash.’

Not a single submarine commander passed the legendary Perisher course last year.

…

Only three were selected to attempt it, with two failing at the simulator stage.

Surface ships fared little better with less than ten officers passing the command qualification known as CQ2.

The Navy needs 35 passes a year to sustain its sea commands.

Sources say the only reason the shortage has not affected operations is because so many ships have been scrapped or stuck in port for repairs.

But no, it isn’t. Navy Lookout and others with very reliable track records are on it too.

Senior naval sources told Defence Eye that the Royal Navy has not run a Submarine Command Course, which qualifies officers to take command of its submarines, since December 2024.

The course, popularly known as ‘The Perisher’, dates back to World War One and is famous for its high standards and realistic training exercises. It has long been considered the ‘gold standard’ of submarine officer training, with navies from around the world sending officers to participate in the course.

For the past two years, the Royal Navy Astute-class fleet has been hit by a series of breakdowns and a long maintenance backlog. This year alone, it has only been able to put one boat, HMS Anson, to sea for a four month-long cruise to Australia. Since she returned to Devonport naval base for repairs in May no Astute boats have been recorded as going to sea.

With no boats available for operational tasking, it is not a surprise that training has had to be put on the back burner by the Royal Navy. The naval source briefed Defence Eye on the status of the Perisher Course in response to criticism from Australia, that the UK was unable to generate trained personnel to operate its submarines to meet its commitments under the AUKUS deal.

“Since [December 2024], three officers have successfully qualified for command through allied submarine command courses, including programmes delivered by Norway and Australia,” said the source. He suggested that the Royal Navy submarine availability crisis was soon to turn a corner, commenting, that “the next UK Perisher Course is due to commence next month, with a further candidate scheduled to undertake the Norwegian course in January.”

…. There is no serious person who thinks there is the political or economic ability right now for a serious recovery in British military capability at sea or ashore, regardless of who gives what speech. How much further can it fall? Things can always get worse, but all the wiggle room is gone.

Most are familiar with the rolling train wreck that is the once exemplary British submarine industrial capability. Even their closest Commonwealth allies have concerns. The admittedly challenged US submarine industrial base will have to carry the AUKUS load.

All of Britain’s traditional allies and partners over the last century assumed that, should war come, they could rely on even a diminished Royal Navy to come over the horizon to help. That time is long past. Everyone needs to reconsider that assumption. Though Britain may have the desire at some point, it just doesn’t have the ability to provide anything more than token assistance from here on out.

So who’s the real enemy of the people?

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Bank of America CEO Brian moynihan — hey, he’s got an american flag behind him, so you know he’s a patriot

$1.2 Billion Fine to Bank of America

Bank of America can find you if you swiped your debit card in Washington on the wrong day in January 2021. It can find you if your politics carry a whiff of “reputation risk.” What it apparently couldn’t find was $5 billion in suspicious transactions, Chinese money-laundering networks, and a few hundred sanctions violations involving Iran and Russia.

…. On October 13, the Treasury Department dropped the hammer: a $1.2 billion FinCEN penalty, a $750 million civil penalty from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency credited toward it, and an $11.6 million settlement with the Office of Foreign Assets Control over 475 apparent sanctions violations. All told, roughly $1.21 billion.

…. So what did they do to deserve this? The bank admitted to willfully violating the Bank Secrecy Act. Willfully. Not “inadvertently,” not “due to a regrettable software glitch.” The bank sat on reports of more than $5 billion in suspicious transactions instead of filing them on time. FinCEN said the bank failed to flag activity tied to national security threats, including Chinese money-laundering networks and illicit finance along the southwest border.

The OCC, meanwhile, found that the bank’s monitoring system failed to properly screen trillions of dollars in transactions. Uh, that's trillions. With a T. The sanctions side involved programs targeting Iran, Russia, narcotics trafficking, and global terrorism. That’s a list a compliance department ought to know by heart.

And the best part? The bank had already been warned. The OCC slapped Bank of America with a cease-and-desist order, back in December 2024. More than a year later, regulators said, the breakdowns continued. ….

…. The conclusion here seems inescapable. Bank of America’s surveillance machinery works fine. It just points in the wrong direction. But at whose behest?

Ah, but they can certainly track real enemies of the United States, like the January 6th protesters

After Jan. 6, 2021, according to whistleblower testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, the bank handed the FBI a list of every customer who used a BofA credit or debit card in the Washington area from Jan. 5-7. No warrant. No subpoena. Retired FBI analyst George Hill testified that the bank “data-mined its customer base” with no (publicly acknowledged) directive from the bureau. Bought a sandwich near the Mall that week? [Or bought a MAGA hat anywhere?*] Congratulations, you made the list.

So when the bank wanted to find people who might be Trump supporters, it found them in a hurry. It didn’t need a court order. It didn’t even need to be asked. Chinese money launderers moving billions? Hmm, that one’s tricky.

Then there’s debanking. The same OCC that just fined Bank of America has released a report on the nine largest national banks, Bank of America included. It found that all nine had broad “reputation risk” policies between 2020 and September 2025 that disadvantaged Americans based on their political, religious, or social views. Gould called it “irrefutable evidence” that the nation’s largest banks denied and discriminated against customers and lawful businesses, but ones Democrats disapprove of.

So let’s tally up the scoreboard:

  • Customers buying coffee in Washington on the wrong week: (found, listed, and shipped to the FBI.)

  • Conservatives, religious groups, and lawful businesses with the wrong vibes: (flagged as reputation risks).

  • $5 billion in suspicious transactions:(We'll get to it. )

  • Chinese money-laundering networks: (Ummm... who?)

  • Trillions in unscreened transactions: (Well, look, I've been busy).

To be fair, (and I suppose somebody has to be) the money-laundering penalty and the debanking findings are separate cases. Nobody has shown the bank skipped the cartel paperwork because it was busy hunting conservatives. But the contrast tells you everything about priorities. Bank of America built a compliance apparatus with enough horsepower to sweep its customer base for the politically inconvenient. Somehow that same apparatus couldn’t manage the one job the law actually requires of it.

Thought for the Day: A bank that can find your coffee purchase but not a cartel's wire transfer isn't blind. It's choosing where to look.

New Riverside listing

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117 Meadow Road, $14.750 million. The previous owners tried for $11.8 million in July, 2021, eventually fired that broker and hired a new one and sold it in May, 2022 for $9.6 million; things will probably go more smoothly this time.

There’s so much AI generated fluff in the listing pictures that it’s hard tell what condition the place is in, but I remember it as a good house on what that original 2021 listing described as a “coveted Riverside cul-de-sac” and I’m sure it still is — a good house; the cul-du-sac is no longer coveted, it seems.

5 months on the market without a price cut, but it's managed to find a buyer

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11 Butternut Hollow Road, listed in June for $3.495 million and still priced at that yesterday, has gone to contract. That’s a long time to be stubborn but, depending on what its final sales price turns out to be, seems to have paid off. My own philosophy in these situations is, if you want to move, price it right, sell it, and move; keeping your house and your schedule open to strangers for months on end strikes me as an irritating way to live, but to each his own.

Chilston Court

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Moving-in day at 275 mason street

Even as the bulldozers and cement trucks are still preparing the foundation, the $5 million to $10.5 million condo units at “Chilston Court” are flying off the shelves., with more going under contract or pending status every day. There are two sides to every story, and the other side of this story can be found across the street at 290 Mason, also underway. Together, there will be 75 units, 24 of which will be, as required by CT law, sold as “moderate -income housing” at approximately $400,000 (with a reduction of common charges that reflects that price disparity), and built, at the insistence of our P&Z, to comparable size and finishes, with equal access to all of the buildings’ amenities.

Is this a reasonable way to provide “affordable” housing for 24 single or 2-person households? Does it really do anything to address the shortage of houses and condominium in Greenwich? Why these 24 lucky people?

Note, by the way, that the cops and school teachers proponents of subsidized housing are always talking about will not qualify for these units: their salaries are too high.

The much larger issue is whether there is some inchoate “right” to live in a particular town: back in the late 80s, and friend of mine and I were discussing life in general and the price of houses in Riverside in particular. We’d both grown up in Riverside, and were both still living there, but the mid-80s had seen the invasion of the M&A guys, and prices were soaring.

“Chris”, my friend pointed out, “two people like us: a mid-level banker, and a small town lawyer, could never afford to buy a house here now.” He was absolutely right then, and now, 40 years later … ha! But neither of us thought that we had some claim to other people’s money, some right to demand that we be provided a house we could afford in any town of our choosing and subsidized by strangers who owed us nothing. I still don’t think I have that right so, luckily for you, I probably won’t be moving in next to you in the near future.

Here, courtesy of Google AI, is a summary of who will be allowed to partake in this beneficence:

The luxury residential development at 275 Mason Street (part of the Chilston Court project on the east side of Mason Street in Greenwich, Connecticut) features 55 condominium units in a 6-story building. Across the full dual-building project (including 290 Mason Street), there are 75 total residential units. [1, 2]

Project Breakdown

  • 275 Mason Street (East Building): 6 stories with 55 condominium units (including 12 designated affordable units). [1]

  • 290 Mason Street (West Building): 5 stories with 20 units (including 12 designated affordable units). [1]

  • Total Project Count: 75 residential units

The affordable units at Chilston Court (275 and 290 Mason Street) are designed as for-sale condominiums, not rentals, and their common charges must be lower than those of the regular units. [1]

The legal specifics behind these details, decided during a 2024–2026 court battle between the developer (Mason Street Partners/Caspi Development) and the Greenwich Planning & Zoning Commission, include:

1. For-Sale Condominiums (Not Rentals)

The entire Chilston Court project is an ownership development featuring luxury condos and penthouses starting around $4.3M to over $10M+. The affordable units are structured as below-market-rate for-sale equity units for qualifying moderate-income buyers. They are governed by Connecticut's 8-30g affordable housing statute, which locks in their restricted purchase pricing for at least 40 years.

2. Lower Common Charges

The Greenwich Planning & Zoning Commission mandated that common charges must be lower and proportional for the below-market units. [1]

  • The Dispute: The developer initially appealed this, arguing that all owners should pay a uniform rate based on square footage. For perspective, the standard monthly HOA/common charges for a market-rate luxury unit are roughly $4,627 per month. [1, 2]

  • The Ruling: In August 2026, a Superior Court judge dismissed the developer's appeal. The court upheld the town’s rule, finding it unfair to saddle moderate-income buyers with thousands of dollars in monthly luxury fees (covering high-end perks like the 24/7 concierge, pool, and resident speakeasy). The common charges for the affordable units will be heavily discounted or scaled to remain genuinely affordable. [1, 2, 3]

Additionally, the court affirmed that the affordable units cannot be tucked away into a corner; they must be dispersed throughout the project and built to a size that is at least 90% of the average usable square footage of their market-rate equivalents. [1, 2]

COST TO THE BUYERS

Because the Chilston Court development (275 Mason Street) was approved specifically under Connecticut's state 8-30g statute, its units follow a strict mathematical formula based on State Median Income (SMI), rather than the town’s local "Moderate-Income Dwelling" (MID) municipal guidelines. [1, 2]

1. Qualification & Income Criteria

For an 8-30g "set-aside" ownership development like 275 Mason Street, the state mandates that the units be deed-restricted for individuals or families earning 80% or less of the State Median Income (SMI). [1, 2, 3]

The Connecticut State Income Limits place the maximum gross household income limits as follows: [1]

  • 1-Person Household: $72,550

  • 2-Person Household: $82,900

  • 3-Person Household: $93,250

  • 4-Person Household: $103,600 [1]

(Note: Greenwich also runs a local town program called the Moderate-Income Dwelling (MID) program under local regulation Section 6-110. It is more generous, allowing up to 120% of the Town Median Wage—up to $121,550 for a single person—but prioritizing town employees like teachers and police officers. This local program does not apply to the state 8-30g units on Mason Street.) [1, 2]

2. How the State Estimates the Purchase Price

Under the Connecticut State 8-30g Regulations, the maximum purchase price of an affordable condo is not tied to real estate market values. Instead, it is reverse-engineered through a complex strict affordability formula: [1]

  1. The 30% Rule: The state assumes the buyer family size equals 1.5 persons per bedroom. It calculates 80% of the baseline median income for that family size and decrees that the buyer cannot spend more than 30% of their gross monthly income on housing costs. [1, 2]

  2. The Reductions: From that maximum allowable monthly housing allowance, the formula subtracts local property taxes, estimated homeowners insurance, regional utility allowances, and the property's monthly common/HOA charges. [1]

  3. The Mortgage Capitalization: Whatever monthly dollar amount is left over is treated as a maximum available monthly principal-and-interest payment. This remaining amount is capitalized into a standard 30-year fixed mortgage using current commercially reasonable interest rates. [1]

  4. Down Payment Cap: The formula factors in a maximum down payment, which is legally capped at the lesser of 20% of the purchase price or the state housing authority limit. [1, 2]

Estimated Pricing Breakdown

Because 275 Mason Street has been legally ordered to provide heavily discounted common charges to these units, less of the buyer's 30% income allocation will be eaten away by luxury building fees.

While the actual final prices depend heavily on prevailing interest rates when the units go up for sale near the project's late-2028 completion, benchmark pricing for an 8-30g for-sale unit at the 80% income tier in Fairfield County generally sits within these ranges:

  • 1-Bedroom Condominium: $260,000 to $310,000

  • 2-Bedroom Condominium: $310,000 to $370,000

This presents an extraordinary mathematical contrast: thanks to the 8-30g statute, a qualified moderate-income buyer will be able to purchase a newly constructed condo for under $400,000 inside a private compound where the identical, market-rate luxury units next door are commanding anywhere from $4.3 million to over $10 million. [1]