Well at least they’re working – not many government workers do

No no no, my friend! There is nothing in this can except garbage. Garbage, and perhaps my vest, but I am casting that away, I swear on the blessed head of Allah!

At least 50 ISIS supporters working at Brussels airport.

Police at Brussels airport have claimed at least 50 Islamic State supporters are working there as baggage handlers, cleaners and catering staff.

In an astonishing open letter, the officers said they have warned about the terrorist sympathisers whose security badges give them access to planes, but they remain employed.

The airport police, who are threatening to go on strike because of security deficiencies, also said they have raised the issue of terrorists scouting the airport to plan possible attacks.

The extraordinary claims come after the Mail reported how the family of two of the bombers involved in the attacks last week said they had worked as cleaners at the airport.

When in danger, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout

I make this announcement with a heavy heart,knowing the wreckage it will impose on the fine citizens of North Carolina, but our state employee union contracts insists: protection for perverts! I’ll deal with that budget thing next week, if I can’t come up with a high-speed rail project to announce, or something

Or, in Governor Dannel Malloy’s case, announce a travel ban to North Carolina for all state employees to “protect them” from that state’s refusal to let men use women’s bathrooms.

Just 2 days ago, the current $200 million budget deficit was papered over with debt and illusory layoffs of state employees, and the legislature and Malloy said they were turning their attention to the next disaster, the looming $900 million deficit that’s coming in July.

The governors and legislators congratulated themselves earlier Wednesday on a bipartisan $220 million fix for the current budget shortfall. Then they confronted the $900 million deficit — necessitating “hundreds of millions of dollars” in savings from state layoffs — in the spending package that’s effective July 1.

While Tuesday budget cuts were painful, those for the next fiscal year will be “four times” as bad, Senate President Martin Looney said.

Looney and Speaker of the House Brendan Sharkey, D-Hamden, said the new budget would not include tax increases.

“There are always going to be individuals who think that’s a solution,” Sharkey said. “I don’t.”

(I’ve booked marked this pledge of no new taxes so we’ll have it handy for easy reference when the first new taxes arrive)

Anyway, back to the lead story. Faced with all that, our government fool did not turn his attention to the next budget, he busied himself with an issue that (a) doesn’t exist and (b) no one in the state, with the exception of four he/she/its in Danbury Prison and the most liberal of Malloy’s base, cares about.

HARTFORD – Gov. Dannel P. Malloy on Thursday ordered a ban on state employee travel to North Carolina, citing that southern state’s recent attempt to overturn rights to public accommodations for gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transsexuals.

“When we see discrimination and injustice, we have to act. This law is not just wrong, it poses a public safety risk to Connecticut residents traveling through North Carolina. That’s why I have signed an executive order banning state-funded travel to the state. This law endangers the welfare not just of North Carolina’s citizens, but of all people visiting that state,”

Barring men in skirts from little girl’s bathrooms endangers whose welfare, exactly? Is Dannel worried that a Connecticut pederast with loving on his mind might lose his grip on his lower self if deprived of the opportunity?

The beclowning of our state continues.

 

All this is clearly intentional and heading for a goal, but I can’t see why even De Blasio wants to do it

Return to Fun City 1970

Continuing his campaign to return New York to the broken, dispirited city it was in the 1970s, De Blasio has ordered city workers to stop scrubbing off graffiti  So we have bums urinating and drinking in pubic with impunity, squeegee men back on the corners, and soaring crime.

De Blasio can’t really want to destroy the city, can he? And if not, why is he doing this? What is the desired end? That’s not a rhetorical question; I really don’t see where he’s going with this.

Really nothing to report today

3 East Point Lane, looking just a bit crammed in

Nothing new, except rentals, and nothing sold. There was a price reduction down in Old Greenwich at 3 East Point Lane, and it’s now down to $3.5 million, which is a chunk from its original list price of $4.3 million, and exactly the precept was purchased for,new, in 2006.

The listing says the house is “FEMA compliant”, which helps, but that means it lacks a basement and there are just 3,900 square feet above ground; small for this price. More discouraging that listing describes its automobile storage situation as “a small, 2-car garage” – in English, that means you can get exactly one of your two Suburbans in it, assuming that one is a convertible.

East Point Lane itself floods during hurricanes, so you’ll be staying put or boating some of the time, and, just being picky, I wonder about that aforementioned garage: it looks to be several feet lower than the main house.

But it is a nice house, so someone will like it.

Pending sales reported

11 Stallion Trails

11 Stallion Trail asking $2.950 million, reported a contingent contract back on December 28th, has moved ahead to pending. That’s an unusually long time between a contract and the satisfaction of all contingencies, but still, it got done.

The owner paid $2.5 million for this in 1987, started off this time at $4.849 a year ago, and ended up here (or lower, depending on its final negotiated price). I don’t imagine capital gains will be an issue.

15 Taylor Drive

And Cos Cob continues to buzz, with 15 Taylor Drive, listed at $1.595, also pending. It’s listing claims it’s just “minutes from shopping”, but that does the location a disservice: hop the fence, stroll across the asphalt and you’ve got drugs, fish and booze, all practically at your doorstep.

That said, Taylor Dive manages to be a quiet, very decent street despite the presence of the CVS mall, and this particular house is a good one, built in 2009. The asked-for price might be a tad high, but assuming a bit of a negotiated discount, I get it.

Why do vegetarians die sooner than carnivores?

Thomas Hobbes on the lives of vegetarians: “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”

For the same reason husbands predecease their wives: because they want to. And also, it turns out, because their diet is deadly.

 

Like every other socialist, he believes that passing a law will make it so

Ah, summer in Stockholm “Men vi passerade en lag!”

Swedish MP wants to make summertime permanent.

Price cut in Riverside

35 Lockwood Rd

35 Lockwood Road, 2004 construction that sold for $2.995 in 2005, was put up for resale last September at $3.295 and today has returned to that 2005 price, proving, I suppose, that even Riverside isn’t immune to market fluctuations.

Plus, and though I don’t remember this from watching while it went up, it appears to be a modular. Absolutely nothing wrong with that method of construction, but it yields the double-floor entrance seen in this one, and that can be an off-putting feature, to some buyers.

Just saying’.

UPDATE: and I was just sayin’ wrong. Mickster confirms both my own and the neighbor’s memory that this was – is – indeed a stick-built house. Ralph Straza built it and as Mickster says, he builds a good house.

But I still don’t like this entrance.

Land sale, Winding Lane

16 Winding Lane, to be exact, 2.3 acres asking $2.495 million. I’m guessing maybe $2.25 as a final price? Should be somewhere around there. Overlooks that huge hangar that was once the Rockefeller’s indoor tennis court and that’s a downer, but I’m sure you can screen that and have a nice house just a short hop from central Greenwich.

That tennis court complex by the way, is now owned  – maybe; my source is a little shaky on its provenance – by the Field Club, and leased to a separate group of members for their use. Accurate or not, it’s still in use and is, like all such structures, butt ugly. Oh well.

More lower end activity

2016

2014

12 Old Orchard, Riverside NoPo across from North Mianus School, dropped its price to $1.765 million and has found a buyer. In 2014, when this was listed at $1.995 million and failed to sell, the listing lead off with a front shot, showing an unprepossessing house. This time round, the agent put its best- rear – foot forward, and concentrated on the pool and the great back yard, and ditched any mention of the front. Smart move: obviously, no one bought this house without seeing the front of it, but to get buyers to see the interior and the rear, you first have to get them there – and this approach obviously worked better.

10 Butler Street

10 Butler Street, Cos Cob, $995,000 – contract in 21 days. Compared to a NYC co-op, it’s a bargain, and there’s a nice park across the street. Why not?

Madness at the urinal

Suspicious? Maybe so, but if he wanders into the girl’s room after your child, that’s his God-given constitutional right and don’t you dare question it

The latest “progressive” civil right:

 

Should you conform to the world’s reality, or should the world conform to yours?

That’s the question at the heart of the debate over transgender rights and the spate of “bathroom bills” it has spawned in cities and states around the country. Citing privacy and safety concerns, supporters of these bills want to enshrine in law something that in any other moment in human history would have been viewed as elemental common sense—boys must use the little boy’s room, girls must use the little girl’s room.

Not so fast, Bigoty McBigotface.

To the radicals behind the push to let transgender individuals use any bathrooms they like, the issue has become the latest in a long-string of valiant last stands against the intolerance and hatred of the traditionally minded. Like same-sex marriage—always less a core conviction than an effective cudgel to use against conservatives—this business of having the tiny minority of gender-confused people dictate to the rest of us how we should order society is likely to become the Civil Rights Issue of Our Time™.

 

…

Here’s the thing:  Women and children get attacked in public bathrooms by sexual predators with alarming frequency.

Radical LGBT advocates are deliberately twisting the issue to make it seem as if politicians like McCrory view transgendered individuals as a menace. In fact, laws being passed in cities like Charlotte and New York constitute an open bathroom invitation to legions of scumbag rapists, molesters, and peeping toms.

Gotham mayor Bill de Blasio—the Stringbean Sandinista—has issued an executive order allowing transgendered people to use any bathrooms they like “without being required to show identification, medical documentation, or any other form of proof or verification of gender.”

Fair warning: If you come to New York and you see a dodgy looking dude hanging around the little girl’s room, you’re better off keeping it to yourself. His reality is all that counts.

Back again

43 Burning Tree Road

43 Burning Tree Road has come off the rent rolls and its builder is trying again to sell it, this time for $5.295 million instead of its 2010 price of $6.295. The site, but not the house, was once the last project for Andrew Kissel before he was stabbed to death in his home at 10 Dairy Road, back in 2006. Eventually, his incomplete house was razed, and this one put up instead.

I think it’s a beautiful house, in a good location, on a very nice lot. A buyer could do far worse at this price range. I am still amused, however, at what happened in 2010, when I had a very interested buyer. The listing agent (not the current one) pulled me aside as my clients and I were leaving after our second or third visit and whispered, “Chris, it’s very important that your clients make their offer now, this weekend, because a very strong buyer is putting in his bid on Monday.” I passed that information along to my people, along with my opinion that the agent in question was a liar.

They passed on the opportunity, and, six years later, I guess that strong buyer is still biding his time, waiting to place his bid. The trouble with lying to fellow agents like this is that we remember, always.

Real estate stirrings, especially in the lower end of the market

108 Orchard Street

108 Orchard Street, on the market for 9 days and priced at $825,000, reports a contingent contract. At this price, it could be going to an end user or a builder; it would make sense for either one.

11 Old Forge Road

11 Old Forge Road, $1.650 million, reports fully executed contracts, contingencies (if any) met, and a pending sale. I’m not taking credit for this, but when I gave it some attention on January 25th, I heard from a potential buyer who was interested in it, but when we called to view it, we learned that it had just accepted an offer. In this case, I praised the house, but some agents who get so angry with me for mentioning a house should realize that, good or bad, a little extra-Zillow publicity can’t hurt.

185 N. Maple

185 North Maple asked $1.625 million, got $1.150 and closed yesterday. The house is a meh, but at this price ….

7 Crawford Terrace

7 Crawford Terrace stuck firm at $1.2 million until today, when the owners dropped it to $1.095. Sounds like they maybe got the message.

What the hell is she doing wearing our western clothing?

San Francisco University black (and white, judging from her skin color) student asserts her right, and her right only, to wear a kinky hair do.

(Speaking of campus violence, this girl is committing assault and battery, racial bias and a macro-not micro- aggression. I wonder when school administrators will bring her up on charges?)

UPDATE: A reader points out what I’d missed: this woman is a University employee (!). I hope the student she assaulted presses charges, and the university fires her, immediately. I’ll hold my breath on the latter development.

UPDATE II: The university denies that the woman is an employee, but is investigating the incident as a possible violation of its conduct rules. That’s something, maybe. We’ll see.

A threat to civilization is just a Muslim I haven’t met

German trains initiate separate cars for women and children, but insist that it has nothing to do with the rising incidents of sexual attacks by Muslims.

“We were just sitting around the office,” German Minister of Propaganda Joe Goebbels explained to FWIW, “looking for something to do, and someone suggested a new class of choo choo cars. It has nothing to do with nothing, just relax’.

Not all taxi drivers are created equal; you’ll just have to trust your luck

Judge rules that Saudi taxi driver who told terrified passenger that he “loved ISIS” and was considering blowing up the cab didn’t really mean it, so he can continue scaring passengers until he does.

“We’ll give him enough rope to hang himself”, administrative judge Kevin Casey told FWIW, “but I’ll be biking to work the next few months, and I suggest you do, too.”

The allegedly terror-fueled cab ride began shortly before midnight, in late November, when the businessman hopped in Ahmed’s cab near Third Avenue and East 21st St.

Just two minutes into his ride to his midtown hotel, the businessman testified that Ahmed asked him about the Paris terror attacks.

The passenger recounted that he told Ahmed the attacks were “unfortunate or very upsetting.”

The cabbie responded, he said, by boasting he “could’ve done a better job.”

It was the first in a string of disturbing remarks Ahmed allegedly made during the short ride, including asking his fare how to get an “ISIS visa” and wondering repeatedly if he should “blow the taxi up tonight.”

The ride was a “terrifying” and “terrible” experience, the businessman told the judge, adding the incident “ruined the night” and turned what had been a great trip to New York into a “an absolute disappointment.”

The businessman, who was not identified, called the police and TLC shortly after arriving at his hotel on Lexington Avenue at 37th Street.

What could possibly go wrong?

The Library of Congress will now call illegal aliens “noncitizens” (no hyphen, for some reason- maybe its like nonsense?)

The children of Dartmouth and their librarian friends are confused

And its explanation for the change is so patently facetious that it can only be considered a deliberate F-You to America.

Working with library staff at the Ivy League school, members of a Dartmouth coalition for immigration reform petitioned the Library of Congress in 2014 to replace the subject heading with a more accurate and less offensive term.

Officials concluded that the meaning of “aliens” is often misunderstood and should be replaced with “noncitizens,” and that the phrase “illegal aliens” has become pejorative. The heading “illegal aliens” is being replaced by “noncitizens” and “unauthorized immigration.”

 

“The heading Aliens is one of the oldest headings in Library of Congress Subject Headings, having appeared in the first edition of Subject Headings Used in the Dictionary Catalogues of the Library of Congress (published in parts between 1910 and 1914), the precursor to today’s LCSH. According to the current scope note for the heading, it refers to “persons who are not citizens of the country in which they reside.” The heading has been somewhat problematic over time because the word aliens has several dictionary definitions, one of which corresponds to the LCSH scope note and another that means beings from another planet. Because of the resulting confusion, PSD decided that it would be useful to reconsider the heading Aliens during its reconsideration of Illegal aliens.”

Even the dumbest, most illiterate liquid petroleum flow engineer of a gas pump jockey, even a Dartmouth student – but then, I repeat myself – can distinguish between a drug-carrying peasant creeping through the Arizona desert, still dripping Rio Grande water, and a visitor from Mars who lacks a tourist visa. And even the government employees at the Library of Congress know this, so their specious argument that eliminating the term will eliminate confusion is just insulting, and deliberately so.

As for the offending term illegal alien being “pejorative”, “illegal” is pejorative: it expresses disapproval, just as the dictionary says. And while it is true that the Obama administration and this country’s liberals no longer disapprove of Mexicans and their cousins breaking the law and entering this country to stay, that act is still forbidden and still on the books as an illegal act. The Library’s New Speak is clearly intended to help along the process of legalizing border crossing, but to lump illegals in with others in the category of “noncitizen”: green card and visa holders, permanent residents, and tourists alike, stamps the criminals with the imprimatur of official state approval, long before Congress itself has conceded defeat.

It’s also confusing, which is probably also deliberate.

If we can’t hang’em high, can we at least descend on Washington with tar and feathers?

Elephant graveyard

65 Clapboard Ridge Road – could we house our local pols in it and declare it a home for the criminally insane?

65 Clapboard Ridge Road, 14,500 sq.ft. of very expensively-finished space on 3 + acres, has cut its price, again, and is now looking for $9.975 million. The owners are bound to get something for this house -it’s really very nice, for its type, but the market for homes this large is small and getting smaller.

These owners paid $10 million for it in 2007, spent a lot of money renovating it in 2009-2010, and put it back up for sale at $12.495 a year ago. Today’s price cut shows how that’s been working.

Please sir, may I have some more?

Miles Cowperthwaite: “Do me again, hard, and keep doing it!”

Yale’s staying put in Connecticut.

“It’s wonderful to be recognized as an outstanding asset, but Yale, New Haven, and Connecticut have been on common ground to great mutual benefit for 300 years. We’re looking forward to reaching even greater heights in education, research and civic engagement over the next three centuries and more,” Yale spokesman Tom Conroy said in a statement provided to the News.

Hey, Yale can do what it wants to do, but the land of safe spaces and puppy dog counselors does seem to be rather thoroughly enjoying its rough treatment by Hartford Democrats. In fact, the whole institution sounds quite a bit like the crew of HMS Raging Queen.

Captain Ned: Is this how men act on a man’s ship? Where is your manliness? Fighting on deck is a serious breach on my articles of strict discipline! I’m afraid the guilty party is in for a very severe punishment!

Sailor #1: Captain.. I did indeed take Mr. Spunk’s spot. I’m ready to accept my punishment..

First Mate Spunk: Captain!  I threw the first blow. If anyone is to be punished, let it be me. I ask only that whatever you do, please don’t put me in a tight-fitting Lassie costume and make me eat from a monogrammed dog dish.

Sailor #2: [ entering ] Captain, I encouraged this fight – punish me! Make me wear nipple-pinching clothespins, sir!

Sailor #3: [ entering ] Me, Captain! Punish me!

Captain Ned: Stop! I’ve heard enough! Your manly admission of guilt is most manful. However, as your Captain, it is I who must bear the full masculine responsibility! And therefore, I will be punished. Spunk! Take me alone! I want a boiling oil rub..

A tale of two towns

I know it was you, Fredo, but that’s alright: it was all of us

Fairfield, Connecticut, has a population of 60,855, and encompasses 31.3 sq. miles. In 2006, Money Magazine named it “The Best Place to Live in America”.

Greenwich, CT, has a population of 61,171, and encompasses 48 sq. miles (corrected from earlier draft) much of which is in low-density neighborhoods. Despite the land size differences, you might think the two towns should have comparable budgets. You might think so, but you’d be wrong. Fairfield’s proposed 2016-17 budget is $130 million. Greenwich’s is $427.9 million, up from last year’s $411 million.

Here’s Fairfield First Selectman Mike Tetreau’s cover letter for his proposed budget:

Highlights of my proposed Townside budget are:

• ●  For the first time in over 20 years, my Townside budget is proposed to be less than the prior year. I am proposing a Townside budget that is just under $130 million. Last year’s Townside budget set a record for the lowest increase in twenty years. This year we beat that record with a .22 percent decrease. [emphasis added]
• ●  This budget does not reduce or defer any services.
• ●  The drivers for this reduction are lower healthcare costs due to the move to a new healthcare plan for Town employees, lower annual debt service, lower workers compensation expense, lower pension costs and lower fees and professional services.
• ●  This budget includes the annually recommended pension contribution, the annually recommended OPEB contribution, higher paving costs, higher sidewalk maintenance, more Public Works equipment, increased snow clearing expense, increased Senior Center support, increased Senior and Disabled Tax Relief, a supplemental contribution to surplus to support our AAA rating, and continued funding for school security personnel.

 

• If we can – fairly – blame our state’s horrendous spending and resulting budget disaster on 40 years of Democrats, who is to blame for Greenwich’s own out of control spending, a town controlled and run by Republicans for over a century?
• Certainly the local Democrats aren’t the answer to this mess – they want to borrow more money so they can further leverage their spending, but our own Republicans have demonstrated an ineptness that’s almost breathtaking these past few decades, and they’re only getting worse.

UPDATE: Ooops! Not quite a Gilda Radner “Never Mind”, but FAR Ghost informs me that the Fairfield budget of $130 does not include its school budget, which brings their budget to $295 million.  That’s still an extra $138 million to govern the same number of people, but not as bad as I understood it to be.