Oh shut up

Solar powered squirrel

Squirrel shoot in upstate New York denounced by NYC pol.

HOLLEY, N.Y. (AP) — A weekend squirrel-shooting contest in upstate New York is a sell-out, with all 1,000 tickets spoken for, organizers said, despite a push by animal rights groups and others to cancel the event.

The 7th annual “Hazzard County Squirrel Slam” will raise money for the volunteer Holley Fire Department, the event sponsor.

Critics have sought to stop the event through online petitions and protests, calling the event cruel and a bad example for children. The contest targeting red and gray squirrels is open to anyone over age 12 with a hunting license.

Supporters say hunting is just part of life upstate, including in the largely rural village of 1,800 people on the Erie Canal.

“This is a community of hunters and they’re going to hunt anyways. Why not hold a fundraiser that will reach our community,” the event’s chairwoman, Tina Reed, told the Democrat and Chronicle of Rochester. She said the event has grown each year: This year, 1,000 tickets were made available after it sold out of 200 tickets last year.

State Sen. Tony Avella, a Queens Democrat, called the contest insane during an Albany news conference with the group Friends of Animals earlier this week. The group planned to protest outside the Holley Fire House on Saturday afternoon.

There’s no reason to expect a city boy to know from squirrel hunting, but it’s not too much to ask that he acknowledge his ignorance and keep his yap shut about an event occurring 300 miles away in a world he’s never visited. Besides, squirrels are tastier than the rats Mr. Avella’s constituents cook up.

UPDATE: According to MapQuest, it’s 6 hrs, 34 minutes, 368 miles from Avella’s home in Whitestone to Holley, New York

Will Ethanol 15 ruin your engine?

Yes it will, and that’s just the beginning of its list of harms.

The new EPA mandated 15% ethanol content for gasoline will ruin your car’s engine and void all warranties before 2012, form a solid goo that will clog fuel injector ports (cars are already stalling in intersections, for instance, and on highway entrance merge lanes – fun!), ruin any small engine: motorcycle, snow blower, lawn mower, jet ski, outboard, you name it, rot out your boat’s fiberglass fuel tanks and coagulate if left in a tank for a couple of months.

Because ethanol absorbs moisture it must be transported in separate pipelines, thus causing fuel shortages and raising the cost of gasoline.

Because 40% of all US corn production is devoted to ethanol food prices are rising worldwide, causing poor people to go hungry. There’s more to the list, but let’s look at all the good things ethanol does: Nothing.

It does not make the air cleaner.

It does not save fuel – its production consumes more energy than it yields.

It does not promote energy independence.

So why are we required to buy it and why has the EPA now demanded we ruin our entire motorized society to use it? Because Iowa farmers grow corn and Iowa has an early presidential primary. The failure of our politicians, Republican and Democrat alike, to stop this mandate says all we need to know about politics and the governance of America. Forget the big issues, this is more immediately depressing.

New listings

Four discussed here.

29 Byfield

The unfortunate Mr. Tsoi has another of his failed projects back on the market, this time 29 Byfield Drive, now owned by his lender and priced at $4.3 million. The mortgage was $3.5. Can you say $3.1?

63 Winthrop, new construction, didn’t sell at $4.295 so it’s back today at $4.395. Call me crazy, but if a house can’t sell in Riverside’s heated market at one price, I see no reason to raise that price. But we’ll see how this works out. UPDATE: It worked out very well, thank you – accepted offer reported just this afternoon. Whoo boy – all those new houses on Hearthstone now look like good bets. I still hear the faint whiff of “Popcorn.com” in the air, but an awful lot of people made an awful lot of money on the .com boom before it went bust, so hey, go for it, if  that’s your inclination.

9 Frost

9 Frost Road, off of Lake, is a 1929 house asking $4.595. Maybe – its pictures look alluring and this is a wonderful neighborhood, so I’m looking forward to seeing it. It seems pricey, but depending on how much work it needs it could be a great buy. Two acre lot.

808 North Street

And 808 North Street is still with us, years and years, brokers and brokers after it was first put up for sale. It did sell, new, for $11.3 million in 2000 and those buyers have been trying to sell it again, intermittently since 2004, starting at $13.9 and drifting ever downward since. Today’s price is $10.988. Yawn.

That was quick

 

4 Gisborne

4 Gisborne Place came on last week and nine days later has gone to contract. It’s a 1981 “meh” house, but at $1.775, on a dead end, it’s pretty typical of what’s available, and given the sparse inventory at this end of the price range, you buy it or stay in your rental. No back yard, but there is the golf course where, properly padded and helmeted, your kids can play.

Only because he hasn’t thought of everything that offends him yet

No plastic here!

King Bloomberg: “I’m not banning everything”. Speaking of his latest edict, a ban on “Styrofoam” (he meant polystyrene – Styrofoam is a brand name for insulation, not the deli-take out boxes his Mikeness doesn’t like) the mayor said this:

Styrofoam, or polystyrene, does not degrade with time. It’s just there forever and it’s not good for you and it costs us a lot of money. The stores–most stores–have already gone away from it. This is not asking anybody to do anything that’s really going to hurt anybody. But it’s good for everybody.

Repeat after me, Mike: landfills are anaerobic - without oxygen, and without oxygen, nothing decomposes, not plastic, not paper, not even 100% certified-organic hemp Whole Foods recyclable shopping bags. N-o-t-h-i-n-g (!!!). Banning polystyrene is a feel-good gesture for dullards, period. Sort of like banning “assault rifles”, but never mind.

One good thing about Bloomberg is that he should provide inspiration for school children by demonstrating how anyone, no matter how ignorant, can grow up and get rich. Awesome.

New land listing on Grahampton

 

(Not necessarily representative)

32 Grahampton, 2.5 acres, described (I haven’t seen it yet) as “level, with pond”, $3.7 million. That seems steep for a building lot but depending on exactly how attractive the lot is, it could well be in the ballpark for a site on a good street with such a convenient location. There’s a 1949 house on the place “designed by renowned architect H. Lawrence Coggins” but with all respect to Mr. Coggins, who did indeed design some very attractive homes, there’s usually not much in them that appeals to modern tastes. At least from what I’ve seen of his houses, he was into colonial reproductions, which means low ceilings and small rooms. That’s not to say this one is like that – as noted, I haven’t seen it – but the fact that the property is listed under both residential and land suggests that the broker has her doubts too. Regardless, if you’re looking to build in mid country, this could work for you.

NYT no longer supports the right to die?

Ban guns because 2/3 of all gun deaths are suicides. Leaving aside what this statistic does to all their and other gun control nut’s horror at the death rate caused by firearms – are there no subways? No bridges? No pills? – no attempt is made to explain how banning “assault rifles” and high capacity magazines will address this perceived problem.

Glenn Reynolds suggests that  ”at the NYT, anything is a good reason for gun control,” but that’s the cynic’s view; I prefer to think they’re just morons.

Remind me again why this department exists

Department of Agriculture teaches its employees to say, “Pilgrims were illegal aliens”, ” ‘minorities’ are “emerging majorities “.

And this:

“White males founded the USDA! Say ‘Thank you, white males.’ I know it got stuck, some of you couldn’t get it out,” he said to laughter. “I understand. Let’s try that again. Go ahead.”

There’s a war going on here and the country is losing.

Video, courtesy of Daily Caller, Here:

Part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4

UPDATE from Colorado: White students barred from tutoring program. ”Emerging majority” indeed.