I kept thinking it was esniper but somehow my bash settings have a preset proxy that was creating the issue.
https://signin.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?SignIn: Couldn't connect to server: couldn't connect to host
curl manually to any URL is the same:
curl: (7) couldn't connect to host
Run curl with -vvvvvv mode to see the issue:
curl -vvvvvvvvvv http://realtechtalk.com
* About to c........