Ow. Final sale price for 88 Cedar Cliff Road has been reported

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88 Cedar Cliff Road, Riverside, has sold for just $13.250 million. The owners paid $11.750 million for it in 2008, completely renovated it while expanding it from 4,608 sq. ft. to 9,416, and put it back on the market for $25.5 million in April 2022. (A price, I admit, I originally thought was not too far off. Wrong!)

But if $22.5 was way too high, $13.250 is still an amzingly low price for this quality home and such a fine location. I’m envious.

Sale prices reported

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36 Highview Avenue, Old Greenwich. Priced at $3.495 million, sold for $3.750.

mill pond court

11 Mill Pond Court, Cos Cob. $1.895 million asked, $2 million got. Purchased for $1.650 in June 2023. Waiting for the market to cool off before purchasing is growing increasingly difficult to justify; there will inevitably be an end to this fever, and possibly another crash like the one we saw in 2008, but when?

Aww, c'mon: she's no more senile than our former president

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Oh course, she’s no less senile, either

This is from “Not the Bee”, not its sister publication “the Bee”, and is not satire or even invented news:

Nancy Pelosi Says Trump Shouldn't Discuss Peace With Putin In Alaska Because Ukraine Is Fighting For America's Democracy and "Russia Claims Alaska"

In summary:

  • Rep. Pelosi said that Trump hasn't delivered on his promise of ending the Ukraine war by day one of his presidency, that the people of Ukraine are fighting for our democracy by fighting for their democracy (their president suspended elections), and she is disappointed that Trump hasn't continued military assistance (she must not have heard about the July deal to send weapons to Ukraine?).

  • To offer a reason for Trump's lack of action (again, at least a billion dollars of weapons are going to Ukraine), Pelosi implied Russian President Vladimir Putin "has something" on Trump (despite declassified documents showing the Obama administration fabricated that rumor in 2016 to undermine Trump's presidency, arguably the worst presidential scandal in U.S. history).

  • For those who think discussing a ceasefire is still a worthy goal despite disagreements with the Trump admin's policy, Pelosi said meeting in Alaska with Putin is silly because "Russia claims Alaska" (they sold it to America in 1867), implying that Putin is only meeting with Trump in Anchorage so he can size the place up for conquest.


A 3% price cut after three fruitless months on the market may not be sufficient to overcome the dual handicape of location and exterior design

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25 Dialstone Lane, Riverside, cut its price from $6.195 million to $5.995 today, its first reduction since appearing on the market May 28th. I wasn’t taken with its design back then, and said so. Most commenters —12 out of 13 — agreed with that assessment but one, a very astute, experienced realtor, thought that its interior was fabulous enough to overcome its unfortunate exterior, and opined, “I wouldn’t be surprised if it had a deal by this weekend”. Well, the kid never did have much taste, so ….

But leaving the wild architecture aside, the problem of the home’s placement on Dialstone remains. It’s a perfectly nice street — my own aunt lived at 19 Dialstone for a decade or so, and was quite happy there — but the highest sale price on the street, so fa,r has been No. 12 for $3.795 million in 2021, and No. 9 for $3.050 in 2020 — every other sale has been below $3.

That’s not to say that 25 can’t fetch more, but $6 million is pretty aggressive. I remember back in 2009, a builder put up a spec house at 5 Dialstone on the corner of Lockwood, and priced it at $3.095; I scoffed at the price, in print, and suggested that out-of-town builders often didn’t understand micro-neighborhoods, and this one had been naive in believing that because he could toss a rock and hit a house on Bramble, he could charge as much as new construction on that street. At least back then, Riverside prices were lower for houses on the wrong (north) side of Lockwood, and Dialstone, I suggested, was not Bramble.

Well, the day my column was published, I happened to be touring the house in the company in the company of its listing agent, my friend Rndy Kelleher, when the builder himself showed up. He’d just read the article, and was not pleased to find its author in his house, and made that displeasure known, Randy got between us and I managed to escape with all my teeth. For all the angry carpenter’s indignation, however, the house did not sell for $3.095, and instead it sat on the market for months before finally selling for $2.455 million in late August 2010, 20.7% less than that first price. The builder never did call me to apologize and congratulate me for my perspicacity.

5 Dialstone Lane

Pot, meet Kettle

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OPM INTRODUCES SEN. WARREN TO THE FACTS:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), joined by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), ripped the Trump administration for “embedding” legions of DOGE political appointees into the career civil service. Their complaints were carried in a 10-page, single-spaced letter to U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Director Scott Kupor.

There is a process for political appointees to “career-in,” but it can be time-consuming and laborious, so few are those who pursue it. But Warren, et. al. cite multiple media reports that make it sound as if legions of Elon Musk robots are burrowing into the bureaucracy, including an NPR story with two specific names.

But according to an OPM spokesman responding to The Washington Stand, neither of the two former DOGErs is on the career civil service payroll. And, according to Kupor, there simply aren’t any such embedders: “No DOGE-affiliated individuals have ‘unlawfully burrowed’ into career roles. We welcome oversight grounded in facts.”

I hope it is true: the enemy has been burrowing into the administrative branch since FDR’s reign, and it will take decades to root them out and repair the rot. The sooner Trump can start this process, the better.

Deliberate duplicity, or merely moronic? They report, you decide

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“fiery but peacfful”

The screenshot on the right reads, “Raul Luna-Perez, 43, is accused of driving drunk on July 26 and crossing into oncoming traffic, causing a head-on collision that killed a woman and her 11-year-old daughter. The Trump administration has said Murphy, a Democrat, is to blame because of a state sanctuary policy for undocumented immigrants.”

The New York Post adds that Luna-Perez “had a blood alcohol level three times the legal limit, New Jersey officials revealed this week…[he] was driving more than 60 miles an hour down a residential street in Lakewood when his Dodge Durango rammed into 42-year-old Maria Pleitez’s Nissan Sentra,” adding that “The suspect was free to drive despite two DUI arrests in March and April and a domestic violence arrest in 2023, according to records.”

The rot runs deep

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DC sandwich slinger ID’d as DOJ trial attorney, fired from position after hurling sub at federal agent

A DC man who hurled a Subway sandwich at a federal agent on the streets of the capital earlier this week has been identified as a now-former Justice Department trial attorney.

Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Thursday that Sean Charles Dunn, 37, who is facing a felony assault charge for the sandwich strike, has been fired from his DOJ role.

Thirty-seven-years-old: the mind boggles. On the bright side, if the current DOJ team can secure a felony conviction from a D.C. jury — no sure thing, despite this moron’s confession — he’ll be unable to keep his law license, and firms that would ordinarily rush to hire such stalwart defenders of the Deep State won’t touch him.

Here are a few more details as supplied by the Hindustan Times:

According to court records accessed by The Independent, Sean Charles Dunn is charged with confronting a group of law enforcement agents on Sunday night and yelling at Customs and Border Protection Agent Gregory Lairmore.

Dunn shouted, “F*** you!” and pointed to the ground. “You f***ing fascists! Why are you here? I don’t want you in my city!” he added while standing closure to Lairmore. The squad also included a detective from the Metro Transit Police and additional federal agents.

According to authorities, Dunn continued to hurl slurs at Lairmore for a few minutes before crossing the street. In the records, which referenced an Instagram video captured by an onlooker, he then returned to “forcefully” toss a “sub-style sandwich” at Lairmore.

Dunn was apprehended despite his attempt to flee. “I did it. threw a sandwich,” he confessed to the police as [he was being processed].

The man was accused of assaulting, obstructing, or resisting various US officials and employees.

So, that’s the DOJ; there have been plenty of reports of the same type of “resisters” buried in every other government agency, including the State Department, the EPA, the Department of Education, Energy, and so on. An then there’s the military: the attribution of the linked-to XTweet to a Army general is not accurate: the “recently retired Army General” actually reposted a NYT opinion piece — approvingly — written by two former long time State Department employees and National Security Council members. The general point (so to speak) is on target.)

A buyer appears in Cos Cob

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24 Rippowam Road, current asking price of $1.595 million, is reported as pending, 139 days after starting off at $1.8 million. It’s not 579 Indian Field Road, but then, it’s also not priced at $43 million, so there’s that.

(I confess that, although I thought I knew, even if vaguely, the location of just about every street in Greenwich, Rippowam Road waa new to me. It turns out to be in that little enclave of streets at the foot of Valley Road.)