Well, this'll be er, ... interesting

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Category 4 hurricane is aimed at New Orleans, evacuation ordered

Projected to become a Category 4 hurricane, the storm would strike 16 years to the day since Hurricane Katrina made landfall there as a Category 3 storm with 125 mph winds near the riverside community of Buras in Plaquemines Parish.

Over at Instapundit, a 2005 post from Brendon Loy is up. Those with long memories may recall that Loy was a law student at Notre Dame back then, and ran the best weather site on the web, purely for fun and because he was a weather nut. He graduated and went on to lesser things, I suppose, but I wish he were still posting. He certainly nailed this one, long before most of the “official” meteorologists.

I think, but I’m not sure, that I read an article a couple of years ago stating that New Orleans really hadn’t done much to fix its vulnerability to hurricanes because there wasn’t much it could do — the place is at sea level, or below, and geography will rule. I hope my memory is faulty, or the article was, because it looks as though the poo’s gonna ht the fan, again.

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Throw a number in the mid-$2s at it; it probably won't stick, but so what? Walk away

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11 hedgerow.jpg

Bank-owned 11 Hedgerow Lane dropped its price again today to $3.750 million. That’s a nice price if they can get but I don’t think they will.

Hedgerow, like Birchwood and Gate Field, which I mentioned yesterday, is part of that 2000-ish development up near Will Merry. Houses did well there, originally, and there were a number of sales in the $4s, but there hasn’t been much activity in a long time.

Until just this past July, when No. 8 Hedgerow sold for $4.105 million. Which, again, is a nice price, but the owners paid $4.225 for it in 2004 (there’s that year again), put a ton of money into it, and tried for 1,007 days to get rid of it these past 3 years.

There are three other homes for sale on Birchwood, all priced in the $3s; no one has wanted one, yet, and whoever bought 42 Birchstreet yesterday certainly looked at all 4 houses on Hedgerow and passed. There’s a message there.

So, will a mid-$2 figure take this one? Probably not, but it’d be a safe number to “invest” on this street, and of the four Hedgerow houses available, the owner who paid pennies on the dollar for the underlying debt is the one most likely to blink. The house has been vacant for a year — do they really want to maintain it through another winter? Maybe you should wait a few more months and if it’s still around at the end of October, toss in a bid.

A possible counter-example to the Terrace Ave story below; or at least a caution

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12 Italian-American Avenue (FWIW is nothing if not politically correct) is currently priced at $1.795 million and after just 16 days, is reported to be under contract. That’s quick work, and the sellers, who paid just $1.575 for it in 2016 must be pleased.

But its price history from the last real estate boom perhaps reveals a cautionary note. The previous owners originally put it on the market in June 2004 at $2.350 but, presumably because they received a strong market response, raised the price $45,000 on August 1st to $2.395. That backfired; they couldn’t move it until April 2016, when it sold for $2.340. They could have had that price, or more, a year before.

And as noted, the people who paid even that reduced 2006 price lost $765,000 when they sold it ten years later, after the gold rush. What’s past is prologue? Oh hell, no one reads Shakespeare anymore, let alone reflect on his old dead white man’s wisdom, but maybe “what’s past could be prologue” could be undogmatic enough to work its way through young, unreceptive ears; especially if they’re told it’s a new adage trending on Twitter.

Who knew? Joe loaned Kampalla his spare set of pajamas for her overseas trip

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See you soon — maybe

See you soon — maybe

Terrorists kill U.S. troops (and 95 Afghans), Kampallawalla goes into hiding.

Media access to Vice President Kamala Harris’s address to U.S. troops at Pearl Harbor was suddenly pulled on Thursday.

No explanation was given, according to the White House press pool, but the move comes hours after two explosions outside of the airport in Kabul killed 13 U.S. service members and 60 Afghans during evacuations.

“The VP’s staff informed the pool during the flight that her event with troops at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam would now be closed press. No explanation given by the VP’s team for why it has been changed to closed press when asked by a member of the pool,” the dispatch said.

Biden: "It's the Afghans’ mess to clean up now, but we've left them the information they'll need to accomplish that"

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why ya’ calling me? Cmon’, man

why ya’ calling me? Cmon’, man

U.S. State Department gave the Taliban the names of all persons of interest the reformers might be interested in speaking to

In a move no one can grasp, U.S. officials in Kabul gave the Taliban a list of names of American citizens, green card holders, and Afghan allies, believing the Taliban would allow them to enter the militant-controlled outer perimeter of the city’s airport. Lawmakers and military officials are outraged.

“Okay, that might have not have been too smart — we’re gonna have to wait to see how it works out”, State Department spokesman Rufus T. Firefly conceded to FWIW, “but at worst, it was a one-time mistake, made to show our trust and faith in Taliban 2.0. If they betray that trust well, that’s on them, not us.

“And those guys will have it all taken care of within a few weeks — certainly, we won’t be hearing about these people a year from now in November. Let’s MoveOn™.”

UPDATE: It appears that our military can, and did share in the glory of what it’s now blaming on the State Department alone. That’s not surprising.

The Biden administration has been relying on the Taliban to provide security outside the airport, and Gen. Frank McKenzie, commander of US Central Command, and Rear Adm. Peter Vasely, head of US forces on the ground in Afghanistan, have referred to the Taliban in both written and verbal communications as “our Afghan partners,” two defense officials told Politico.