Well, it longer than expected, but 10 Verona Drive finally has a contract — the parties probably misplaced their pen, and that delayed things

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10 Verona Drive in Riverside hit the market last Thursday at $3.595 million, and FWIW intern Jimmy Olsen and I predicted it would be gone by that Sunday, February 1st. In fact, it took until today for contracts to be finalized and reported.

(In Jimmy’s and my defense, it can take a few days to sort through competing bids and then finalize contracts.)

Another truth we've known all long

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arrival of the replacements

Is This the Most Mask-Drop Moment Ever by a Leftist?

There's no shortage of telling moments when leftists have revealed their true feelings about their political opponents. Barack Obama’s comments about small-town voters at a San Francisco — where else? — fundraiser in 2008 weren’t enough to derail his presidential campaign, but revisiting them now reveals a mindset that should have raised serious doubts about his ability to unite the country.

“You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.

“And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Then there were Hillary Clinton’s "basket of deplorable" remarks at a 2016 New York — where else? —  fundraiser, which arguably irreparably damaged her campaign:

“I know there are only 60 days left to make our case — and don't get complacent, don't see the latest outrageous, offensive, inappropriate comment and think well he's done this time. We are living in a volatile political environment.

“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people, now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric. Now some of those folks, they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.”

…..

Now we have the quintessential mask-drop moment — a recent video from Spain showing that leftists don’t bemoan the disappearance of their ideological opponents. The official in the video is Irene Montero, the political secretary of the Spanish leftist party Podemos. She leaves no doubt about her views of those on the political right, even advocating their replacement:

I want to ask migrant and racialized people that they please don't leave us alone with so many retrograde right-wingers, and of course we do want them to vote, of course we do, we've achieved regularized-status legal papers, status regularization now already, and now we're going either after full citizenship or after changing the law so that they can vote, of course. I hope for Great Replacement theory, I hope we manage to sweep this country of retrograde right-wingers and racists with migrant people, with working people, of course  I want replacement to take place. Replacement of retrograde right-wingers. Replacement of racists. Replacement of scroungers, and that we manage to do it with the working people of this country, whatever skin color they may present, whether Chinese, black, brown, with all comrades the working people of this country.:

In her remarks, Montero was referencing the Spanish government’s decision to regularize more than 500,000 undocumented migrants, a measure that was agreed to by Madero’s party Podemos and the ruling Socialist party. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez tried to dress up such a civilization-destroying move by saying Spain was choosing the path of "dignity, community and justice." 

Greenwich has always known where its priorities lay

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While looking up something about the loss of the Titanic I came across this article from 1912. It’s not in a format that allows copying text, so I took two snapshots to give you a taste. The article itself is quite short — accessible to even readers with short attention spans (well, perhaps not the Irish descendants of steerage passengers), so the link’s there if you want it.

Here’s the part I like, where the reporter combines a bit of slight relief with true tragedy:

Not the car! Oh, no!

Not that this hasn't been pointed out before, many times, but it never hurts to repeat it

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a scene never to be seen in tiananmen square — ever. Not with live demonstrators, anyway

(china has been opening two new coal plants a week, every week, for years and is still at it)

What a wonderful picture HotAir's editors chose to illustrate their post; captures the essence perfectly

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Classifieds: WaPo Guild Posts Want Ad For Sugar Daddy

Jeff Bezos had lost $77 million in 2023 on the Washington Post, and reportedly lost $100 million more in 2024. In June of that year, publisher Will Lewis warned the Washington Post staff that these losses were unsustainable and that half of the paper's readership had walked away in the past few years. Changes needed to be made ASAP, Lewis warned, or the paper would not survive. Bezos himself wanted to focus less on progressive narrative amplification and instead expand interest in the paper by presenting a more balanced perspective in both the news and opinion sections, in an effort to rebuild the paper's lost readership and credibility. 

Rather than cooperate, the WaPo staff balked. They repeatedly tried to push Bezos to keep bleeding red ink on terms dictated by the newspaper's staff. Bezos and Lewis tried to make marginal reductions in staff and focus on reader credibility, but the staff insisted on sailing full speed into the credibility-iceberg field. When Bezos finally lowered the boom yesterday in an attempt to stop dissipating his fortune through annual losses into the nine figures, the wailing and gnashing of teeth from the media – not just WaPo staffers – reached fever-pitch levels of entitlement.

However, this statement from the Washington Post Guild might be the peak of entitlement:

The layoffs come as The Post continues to face significant financial struggles. The outlet lost an estimated $100 million in 2024, according to The Wall Street Journal, adding pressure on management to rein in costs.

“In just the last three years, The Post’s workforce has shrunk by roughly 400 people,” The Washington Post Guild, a union that represents some of the paper’s journalists, said in a statement Wednesday. “If Jeff Bezos is no longer willing to invest in the mission that has defined this paper for generations and serve the millions who depend on Post journalism, then The Post deserves a steward that will.”

A "steward"? Babies, Bezos isn't a steward; he owns the Washington Post. He's not Denethor – he's Aragorn. 

What does this even mean? The union has decided it's actually ownership. The guild seems to think that the staff owns the Post, and Bezos is just there to bleed money and shut up. 

Now, the WPG wants someone else to take over the Post so that the lunatics can continue to run the asylum into insolvency. They don't want a new owner, nor do they want a steward, because a steward makes decisions on behalf of the owner's best fiduciary interests. (That's Will Lewis in this case.) The WPG is now advertising for a sugar daddy, someone with deep pockets who will keep funding the trophy wife/girlfriend-experience partner's hobbies and interests with no questions asked. 

And for what benefit? If you expect a billionaire to spend nine figures a year on you, those sugar-baby efforts had better be mighty impressive, IYKWIMAITYD. We've already established what you are. Now we're just haggling over the price.

The folks at Hot Air aren’t alone in their lack of sympathy for these losers:

I'm shocked — shocked, I tell you!

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Obama directed that charges of voter intimidation by New Black Panthers Party be dropped, but don’t worry, Google assures us that the decision was not made by the adminisrtation, but by career officers of the Justice Department and thus wasn’t political.

Confirmation, maybe, but hardly a secret; it’s been known all along. Anyway …

Democrats have spent years insisting illegal immigrants do not vote, yet Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries just gave the whole game away.

In a letter to GOP leadership, they demanded a slate of “reforms” to immigration enforcement as the price for funding the Department of Homeland Security, including targeted enforcement, no masks, mandatory use of body cameras, and other demands, several of which I suspect are nonstarters.

I don’t see Democrats getting anywhere with these, but the big thing is that buried in that list is a rather revealing demand:

Protect Sensitive Locations - Prohibit funds from being used to conduct enforcement near sensitive locations, including medical facilities, schools, child-care facilities, churches, polling places, courts, etc.

Polling places?

They went out of their way to include polling places right alongside hospitals, courts, and churches. There is only one thing that happens at polling places that would matter to illegal immigrants, and it is not the bake sale.

Democrats have insisted for years that illegal immigrants cannot and do not vote, and that the whole issue is a right-wing myth. If that is true, then why is “polling places” even on their list of protected zones for immigration violators? No one accidentally adds “polling places” to a policy letter being negotiated at the leadership level. This is deliberate. It gives away what they are worried about... and what they are counting on.

“Democrats just admitted they think illegal aliens need to be protected at polling places. Why exactly would illegal aliens be at polling places? We MUST fully fund DHS AND pass the SAVE America Act,” Senator Katie Britt (R-Ala.) posted on X.

That is the obvious question Democrats do not want to answer. If illegal immigrants are not supposed to be anywhere near the ballot box, then immigration enforcement near polling sites ought to be a non-issue.