Too late for that

 

Carondelet High School will be dropping its mascot

“The last thing we want to do is to be seen as racially insensitive or perpetrate racial stereotypes”, principal says after striking collard greens, fried chicken, corn bread and watermelon off the “Black History Month” lunch menu.

I love fried chicken and corn bread and watermelon (leave the collard greens at home, please), but even insensitive, non-pc me can figure out that serving them as a special treat during Black History Month might offend the pupils so honored.

The principal has promised to hold a racial sensitivity assembly for both faculty and students, although I don’t understand why her students should be so tortured when she’s the dummy. Why not just make the lady write “I will try not to be an asshat” 5,000 times on the blackboard in school detention?

Foreclosure “deal”

35 Boulder Brook Rd

35 Boulder Brook came on today @$1.495 and has immediately reported a contingent contract, which I assume means a short sale is in the works (there’s no equity left). It looks lovely in the pictures but in fact, it’s pretty much of a wreck, and the one acre it sits on is almost all swamp.There’s a pocket of lawn which does support a pool, but this one’s worth whatever a marginal land parcel’s worth, nothing more.

Then again, $1.495 isn’t a huge amount of money these days.

As usual, guess which party he belongs to?

Massachusetts House of Representatives urged not to expel colleague just because he’s serving a six-month sentence for beating his girlfriend for refusing him sex.

Earlier today, the NAACP asked lawmakers to sit out the vote on the expulsion of Henriquez, a member of the Massachusetts Black and Latino Legislative Caucus and of the advocacy organization.

“The NAACP, New England Area Conference (NEAC), respectfully requests that the Massachusetts House of Representatives abstain from voting in the matter of the expulsion of Representative Carlos Henriquez, expected to come before the House today,” the organization said in a letter. “In the alternative, Members of the House are asked to vote against the expulsion of their colleague.”

The NAACP notes that Henriquez’s criminal conviction for assaulting a woman is under appeal, and states that the Legislature currently has “no rule for expulsion that applies to misdemeanor convictions.”

Henriquez has continued to insist he is innocent of charges he held down and punched a then-girlfriend after she wouldn’t have sex with him.

“Representative Henriquez was duly elected by the electorate and there is no legal basis upon which the House of Representatives can properly act,” the NAACP said in its statement. “Delaying any decision on the House Ethics Committee’s recommendation at this time would allow for a fair process to take place, as required under the law.”

War on women.

They tried to make me go to rehab, I said no, no no

Cop aide sent to rehab after refusing to search for drugs. Seems unwarranted.

“When you no longer can be sure that there are things the government wouldn’t do, you have to base your assessments on the things that it could do”

 

IRS head Lois Lerner takes the Fifth

So says Glenn Reynold,referring to the NSA, IRS and Obama’s “toxic legacy”.  I was reminded of that quote when I read this article on Russian surveillance of reporters at the Olympics.

The level of surveillance in Russia has only recently taken a back seat to tweets about unfinished hotel rooms. Nevertheless, NBC’s Richard Engel showed just how quickly Russian hackers exploited brand new computers in a Sochi coffee shop.

“Almost immediately we were hacked,” Engel reports. “Malicious software hijacked our phone before we even finished our coffee, stealing my information and giving hackers the option to tap or record my phone calls.”

Russia has made little attempt to hide it’s vast electronic surveillance of the Sochi area. Late last year, Russian investigative journalists Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan uncovered Russia’s “PRISM on steroids” which the FSB planned to use to “monitor all communications.”

“I think it’s very intrusive,” Soldatov said in an interview in Moscow. “Everyone should expect that all their communications, all the technical devices like smart phones, laptops, will be completely transparent.”

As we now know, our government “could do” all these things, and more.

I rather doubt it

(Architect’s Rendering)

J.P. Morgan has returned 89 Lower Cross Road to the market after completing its foreclosure, and priced it at $1.390. Zillow “Zestimates” it to be worth $2,000,000, which is lower than the $2.595 it sought back when ol’ JP was knocking on the door, but I wouldn’t get too excited about finding a bargain here.

You might remember this failed project because there was a (very) small foundation crammed against the road for several years, unfinished. Almost all of its four acres lie underwater; good for backyard privacy, bad for building on.

I’d suggest offering $650,000, and see where it goes.

Next they’ll ban statues of men in underwear

 

First they heard about it

Our tireless dickhead Richard Blumenthal joins other congressmen in a push to ban scary-looking e-cigarettes from the Capitol grounds. 

Electronic cigarettes produce a vapor instead of smoke, creating a “loophole” [sic] in the law that allowed smokers to puff away just about anywhere — until lawmakers got wind of it.

In a letter Tuesday to the House Office Building Commission and the Senate Committee on Rules, seven lawmakers acknowledged that the health risks from e-cigs are unknown.

But they argued that banning them anyway would be “an appropriate precautionary step to promote public health and maintain a safe environment for staff and visitors of the institution and its grounds.”

A FWIW reader points out that e-cigarettes aren’t taxed by the feds and that’s why they, and big tobacco are against them, but I’m sure a guy like Blumenthal could find the time to add a new tax. No, this is just more of the Nanny State at work.

Maybe they should knock an equivalent amount from the (unfunded) police pension liabilities

Chicago Mayor Emanuel rams through $900 million in new debt, $100 million of which will be spent paying off police brutality settlement and jury awards.

Several years ago, the CPD was rocked by a high profile case that eventually found Police Commander Jon Burge and his “Midnight Crew” of officers guilty of torture aimed at forcing suspects to confess to various crimes, whether they were guilty or not.

Mayor Emanuel has agreed to several multi-million dollar settlements over cases involving the Burge issue. By accepting the settlements, Emanuel helped shield former Chicago Mayor Richard Daley from being forced to testify of what details he knew–and when–about allegations of Burge’s brutality.

Obama: Pot harmless while guns are fearsome, but…

Dropping in on Barry’s place

 Fatal car crashes involving marijuana have tripled.

Li reported in the study that alcohol contributed to about 40 percent of traffic fatalities throughout the decade.

The researchers found that drugs played an increasing role in fatal traffic accidents. Drugged driving accounted for more than 28 percent of traffic deaths in 2010, which is 16 percent more than it was in 1999.

The researchers also found that marijuana was the main drug involved in the increase. It contributed to 12 percent of fatal crashes, compared to only 4 percent in 1999.

“If a driver is under the influence of alcohol, their risk of a fatal crash is 13 times higher than the risk of the driver who is not under the influence of alcohol,” Li said. “But if the driver is under the influence of both alcohol and marijuana, their risk increased to 24 times that of a sober person.”

May she do for her party what she did for herself

 

Happier days – Beth Krumeich and Francis Farunker campaing together

Beth Krumeich, who just a few months ago lost her race for First Selectman by 73%, announces her bid for Greenwich Democrat Town Committee chairman.

“We need a Chair dedicated to unifying and building our party through expanded communications within and outside of the Committee,” she writes in an email to Greenwich Time. What she and her friends don’t realize is that their only hope of winning office is if they can keep their plans and policies hidden from the voters. “Expanded communication” will only hurt.

Wellesley women terrified by a statue of a man in his underwear

Scary!

As noted yesterday, the inability to distinguish reality from the imaginary is a hallmark of modern educators. Now we know where those teachers are trained.

A realistic-looking statue of a man sleepwalking in his underwear near the center of Wellesley College has created a stir among the women on campus, especially as more than 100 students at the all-women’s college signed a petition asking administrators to remove it.

The statue, called Sleepwalker, is part of an art exhibit featuring sculptor Tony Matelli at the college’s Davis Museum. The exhibit, New Gravity, features sculptures that are often reversed, upended or atomized.

However, the statue of the sleepwalker — which is hard to miss in a high-traffic area by both pedestrians and drivers near the campus center — has caused outrage among some students in just one day after its Feb. 3 installation. Zoe Magid, a Wellesley College junior majoring in political science, started a petition on Change.org with other students asking college president H. Kim Bottomly to have the statue removed.

“[T]his highly lifelike sculpture has, within just a few hours of its outdoor installation, become a source of apprehension, fear, and triggering thoughts regarding sexual assault for many members of our campus community,” says the petition. “While it may appear humorous, or thought-provoking to some, it has already become a source of undue stress for many Wellesley College students, the majority of whom live, study, and work in this space.”

There was a time when college students were considered to be young adults, preparing to go out into the world. These days, they’re treated, appropriately, like nursery school pupils.