Obama wants to slip 100,000 Syrian muslims into the US by the end of next year

“They’re just students; we’ll give ’em all hall passes”

Congress doesn’t like it? Congress can lump it.

The Obama administration appears to be bowing to international pressure and pursuing under-the-radar “alternative” ways to bring in more Syrian and other refugees — as soon as this year.

…. At the [UN High Commission on Refugee] meeting, attended by State Department officials, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi called for countries to pursue “alternative avenues” for refugees – such as student and work visas, and expanded family reunification programs.

“These pathways can take many forms: not only resettlement, but also more flexible mechanisms for family reunification, including extended family members, [labor] mobility schemes, student visa and scholarships, as well as visa for medical reasons,” Grandi said. This followed an adviser suggesting the U.S. ask universities to offer scholarships to Syrian students, and help Syrian-Americans bring in their extended families outside the “time-consuming” refugee resettlement process.

The State Department immediately issued a media note reaffirming the “commitment to resettle at least 10,000 Syrians in FY 2016 and increase the total number of resettled refugees from around the world to 100,000 by the end of FY 2017.”

Nayla Rush, senior researcher at the Center for Immigration Studies, said she thinks the administration is “100 percent” behind the idea.

“My fear is they aren’t really going to let anyone know about it,” Rush said.

Unclear is whether the refugees can be properly vetted, especially if they come in through an array of different visa programs. In its media note, the State Department said the U.S. “has created a program to allow U.S. citizens and permanent residents to file refugee applications for their Syrian family members.”

Yet they say the NRA is too sensitive to infringement on constitutional rights

So, the attacker was just “downsizing” her victim’s uterus?

Woman who ripped fetus out of mother’s (oops! pregnant woman) womb couldn’t be charged with murder.

A woman who viciously cut a 34-week old baby from a mother’s womb was sentenced to 100 years in prison Friday for beating and attempting to murder the mother. She will not serve time for murdering the unborn baby who died as a direct result of the actions.

Dynel Lane was convicted in February of attempted first-degree murder after she stabbed a pregnant woman in her home who had responded to a Craiglist ad offering to sell baby clothes. Lane then cut the unborn baby out of her womb. She later showed up at the hospital with the dead baby, claiming to have had a miscarriage. The mother, Michelle Wilkins, had planned to name the girl Aurora.

Lane was convicted in February of attempted first-degree murder, four counts of assault and one count of unlawful termination of a pregnancy. But because the prosecution could not prove the 34-week-old girl took a breath outside the womb, Lane could not be charged with murder.

“Under Colorado law, essentially, there’s no way murder charges can be brought if it’s not established that the fetus lived as a child outside the body of the mother for some period of time,” Boulder County District Attorney Stanley Garnett said early on in the process.

Hospital staff noted the dead baby was “viable” outside the womb, and Lane’s husband told police he heard the baby make a “gasping breath” after he found her lying in the bathtub and rolled her over. Investigators, however, determined her lungs had not inflated, and the coroner ruled the death a “fetal demise,” which is legally similar to a miscarriage.

Colorado Democrats  have steadfastly legislation to pass a fetal homicide law that would apply to unborn “fetuses” harmed or killed during the commission of a crime, and it’s easy to understand why: if a fetus, even a 7-month-old fetus like the one one in this case, is recognized as a living person, the dominos may topple (and Planned Parenthood’s lucrative sideline business of selling baby parts might suffer).

The sponsor of the Colorado bill, Janak Joshi said, “In the past, pro-abortion legislators have tried to dismiss this type of bill as unnecessary. Even though this bill is not about abortion, the radical pro-abortion lobby is pulling out all the stops to defeat this bill. In fact, Planned Parenthood has publicly admitted that they refuse to give even an inch when it comes to protecting pre-born babies.

“It’s basic, common sense that violent offenders be held responsible for their actions, regardless of the age or status of their victim.”

It’s interesting that the anti-gun crowd, from Obama, all the way down to the lowest schleps in local politics like Peter Tesei all advice “common sense” gun laws because gee, you must be a fanatic to reject what’s just common sense”. But common sense has no place here; not when abortion is involved, even peripherally. Molon labe, baby.

 

Leonardo dissembles about global warming, now this

It wasn’t rape: “yes means yes”

Man lied about bear attack.

Shocker: putting time limits on public housing tenants benefits, rather than harms them

Locked in

Delaware gives tenants 5 years, with financial counseling and workfare requirements, and the tenants end up in a better place. Liberals claim that they and their polices are compassionate: judging from the results of that compassion, liberals are the cruelest branch of America.

More than 850 families have transitioned out of public housing in Delaware since the state began limiting the length of time residents are eligible to receive housing subsidies, and hundreds more have become homeowners.

“Before we started Moving to Work, we had people who were on their third or fourth generation of the same family who were at the same site,” Rebecca Kauffman, social service senior administrator at the Delaware Housing Authority’s Moving to Work program, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

The Delaware group is one of only 39 housing authorities out of more than 3,000 in the country that the federal government allows to have its own work requirements and residency time limits. The Moving to Work program was approved during the Clinton administration in 1996.

“It was tough at the beginning because there was no time limit,” Kauffman said. “People could come into public housing and stay forever.”

But the program has compiled an impressive record. More than 850 families have completed the program to enter assistance-free living, and 30 percent of program participants became homeowners when they left. Kauffman said she could probably count on one hand the number of people who ended the program facing possible homelessness.

“We think that at this point in time it is a very successful program and we are very proud of our program,” Kauffman said.

The contrast with the rest of the federal public housing program is vivid. The average resident currently receiving a Section 8 voucher in the U.S. has been doing so for nine years, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

In some places, the average stay is much longer. New York City residents on vouchers have received help for an average of 18 years. Nationwide, federal housing subsidies cost taxpayers more than $50 billion annually.

Having an expiration date on government-assisted housing motivates people to improve their financial situation, Kauffman said. The Delaware Moving to Work program requires all adults to work, and to work an increasing number of hours per week during their five year tenure — at least 30 hours a week towards the end of the program. Two of three participating adults work more than 30 hours a week.

Participants also have to meet quarterly with a case manager to plan their path to financial independence, and build savings goals. All school-age children in each home have to meet attendance requirements, and once a child turns 18, he has to either continue his education or meet the work requirements to remain in the subsidized housing.

Households with three strikes for failing to meet any of those standards lose their housing subsidy, as about 2 percent of program participants have, Kauffman said. People who, at the end of five years, prove they are doing all they can and need an extension, can apply for a one-time, two-year extension through a hardship panel.

“The time has come to face the fact that assistance to low-income families has to be limited in length and fair in distribution,” a 2005 Public Housing Authorities Directors report concluded. “That can only happen by limits on the time families can receive housing assistance.”

But little has changed since the original 1996 public housing reform. Rep. John Carney, a Delaware Democrat, introduced a bill last summer to expand the number of Moving to Work housing authorities from 39 to 60, but the measure never reached the floor of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.

Kauffman’s office receives a couple calls a month from other housing authorities hoping to try a similar program, but they worry about pushback from local poverty and housing groups and don’t have the authority to experiment with time limits.

A program works, the liberals oppose it. “We’ll keep ’em all beggars ’cause they’re easy to please.”

 

I wonder if that ban extends to penicillin?

Dining on cow patties in the Hindu Kush

Taliban doesn’t like McDonalds food; prefers cold mutton and rancid rice instead. I’m with the boys on the first part: I usually shun chain restaurants whose menus offer nothing that requires teeth to eat, but I found this part of the story interesting:

“We know it’s an American food company and our religious scholars have forbidden us from consuming any Western food and beverages,” he said, adding that he will visit the Quetta outlet with pals — but won’t touch the food.

I’m unaware of any of the life saving drugs currently used on the battlefield being invented in Muslim land, so do Taliban fighters eschew such treatment and just smear goat dung on their wounds?

As an aside, many Pakistani dishes prominently feature tomatoes and tomato sauce, probably to mask the taste of that same goat, but the tomato, too comes from the west. What’s a poor martyr to do?

Microsoft and the kleptocracy

Bribable? That’s not a bug, it’s a feature!

Microsoft will not be donating cash to the Republicans’ convention because it dislikes Donald Trump. 

It’s certainly understandable that a technology giant whose profits depend on a steady stream of cheap third-world tech visa employees would oppose a politician who wants to cut that source off.

Score another one for Trump – he’s scaring “big business”far more than Hillary, who has loudly demonstrated that she can be bought.

UPDATE: Balzac claims that large corporations are now joining Rino Republicans and teachers unions in opposing Trump, and says that this will spur “a large majority of American voters [to] reject this fool.”

Well here’s an image from yesterday showing some of those “Americans” opposing Trump; I think that sights like this, as well as a general revulsion against America-lasters will spur a huge numbers of voters to come out next November, but they will not necessarily be the people Balzac and his crowd are counting on to maintain the status quo.

Here’s a sweet deal

7 Stag Lane

7 Stag Lane reports a contract, asking price, $1.795 million. I know the owner; in fact, I gave him a price opinion (high $1’s as an ending point) in 2013, and worked with brother Gid when it was listed then for $2.150. A renter appeared, and the owner went in that direction.

He paid $2.525 for this in 2006 and then put more money into renovations. A smart guy (hey, he’s a reader), he acknowledged a bad trade, and was willing to accept the loss, which, as this contract shows, he has.

But for the buyer, this is an excellent buy, I think. The house is perfectly livable; far more than that, actually, but the lot is 4.6 acres, allowing plenty of room to build new, farther back, while staying put in the existing place (assuming living in a construction site is your cup of tea). Yes, the Merritt is across the road, but from here, its noise is buffered by trees and such, and I never heard it at a discomforting level.

Beautiful land, very decent house, all at a rock bottom price. Nice buy.

Back yard

And in Riverside …

8 Seagate Road, $9,250,000

8 Seagate Road (for some reason, this link still works, as of this writing) has sold for $9.250 million. That’s not the $14 million original price, a figure that was such an overreach that it kept this house on the market for three years, but it’s not chump change, either.

Another sale reported

13 Perryridge Road

13 Perryridge, which we’ve discussed here before but whose details are no longer available because of the rules of the GAR, closed at $2.435 million. Just 91 days from opening at $2.635 to contract. Very much not a house I’d choose for my personal residence, but that’s irrelevant.

Proof that in a hot market, even horrible staging can’t kill a deal

 

So what kind of terrace do you expect for just $2.4?

 

All good things come to those that wait

80 Birch Lane

80 Birch Lane finally closed, at $2.025 million. Brother Gideon remembers that we went over there together back in 2009 and suggest an asking price in “the low $2s”. To be honest, I don’t remember this specific house, but I’ve certainly given plenty of price opinions in that range, for houses of this era, in this area. Regardless of my memory – and I trust Gid’s more – the owner listed it at $3.485 that year, with predictable results.

I suppose the reason I can’t remember this price opinion jaunt is that it’s identical to so many others.

I’m not whining; this is all part of the real estate business, just observing.

A reprieve, finally, for Special Forces Sergeant Charles Martland

Obama honors the parents of Bowie Bergdahl for raising such a fine young man. The President has yet to say a kind word to Charles Martland’s parents

The Army in its great wisdom has finally reversed itself and permitted Sergeant Martland to remain a soldier after initially kicking him out. His crime? In 2011, he shoved an Afghan officer to the ground after catching him sodomizing a boy chained to a bed.

The Army initially dismissed Martland for beating down an Afghan rapist in 2011 while on deployment in Afghanistan. When Martland confronted the Afghan commander for chaining a boy to a bed post and raping him repeatedly, the commander laughed in his face, prompting Martland to shove him to the ground, which earned him the ire of higher-ups in the military. He was sent off the base and then sent home.

The United States military has a strict policy against expressing disapproval of our allies’ quaint sexual customs – Sergeant Martland should have read that memo, and heeded it, according to his “superiors”.

Great deal on Bedford Road

160 Bedford Rd

Or I think so. 160 Bedford, which sold for $3.3 million in 2007, closed today at $2.2. The house itself, which was in pretty good shape back in 2004 when the owner at the time sought $6.4 million (didn’t get it), but it declined over the years to a pretty-much valueless structure.

But eight, beautiful acres of meadows make me envious.

Price cuts

23 Glen Avon

26 Glen Avon, Riverside, continues to drop its price and as of yesterday, is now asking $3.995 million, down from its 2014 ask of $4.495.

It sold for $5.495 in 2006, then $4.775 in 2009 to the present owners. I like the house, and love the street, but between flood concerns (the street, not the house, which sits high and dry) and I-95 noise coming across the harbor, it’s meeting buyer resistance.

13 Aiken Rd

13 Aiken Road, off upper Round Hill, sold for $6.9 million in 2002, started off this time at $6.995 in 2013 and is now priced at $5.7.

Obama moves to protect Hillary, and most members of Congress

On the whole, I’d rather be in Philadelphia

By administrative order, applicants for federal employment will no longer have to reveal their criminal records.

“This move is long overdue”, White House Spokescis Dennis Hastert told FWIW.  “Far too many fine individuals, including at least one of the current applicants for the presidency, have been stopped at the gate before they even have a chance. That’s just un-American.”

If a crime occurs on a street that doesn’t exist, did it ever happen?

The perils of outsourcing

GT reports that an individual was caught with a pound of pot and a scale on “Lake Street”. Since I thought I knew every street in town, I wondered about this and, at least according to Google, my knowledge is still better than the paper’s reporters and editors (if the Greenwich Time had either).

Interesting that the guy was released without bail. Changing times –  back in the 70s, it would have been treated as the crime of the century.

Britain discovers Lyme disease

While first named after the town here in the Nutmeg State where a case was diagnosed, the disease has been around since at least the last (until the next one, now predicted for 2027) ice age, and at least one British parasitologist worries that it’s the fastest spreading nasty in Europe.

On any ranked list of nasty diseases transmitted by mosquitoes, ticks and fleas in the Western world, Borrelia burgdorferi, would have to lie near the top.

These bacteria cause Lyme disease, which was first recognised in the US in the early 1970s among patients in Lyme, Connecticut.

However, the oldest known case was the Ötzi the Tyrolean Iceman – a 5,300-year-old Copper-age mummified individual – discovered in the Italian Alps.

Lyme disease is one of the fastest growing diseases in the Western world – the threat it poses has become increasingly apparent in recent years.

Estimates suggest that more than 300,000 people are diagnosed with the disease each year in the US and more than 65,000 cases a year are diagnosed in Europe.

What a political science expert knows about non-human parasites is open to question, but I was struck by this suggestion from a layman that the disease may be caused by incest. Who knew?

In September British billionaire John Caudwell (left) announced that his 20-year-old son Rufus (right), an aspiring musician and his ex-wife and daughters have all been diagnosed with the potentially fatal disease. Mr Caudwell believes that the disease is endemic, arguing that if an entire family like his can be infected, the disease must be both sexually transmitted and passed from mother to child

 

News you can use

Fluffier rice means you can eat more volume, less weight in the Greenwich rice eating contest, if such a contest were ever ever held

Or I can use the news, anyway; I love rice

Cooks Illustrated’s test kitchen gurus says we’ve been cooking rice all wrong: ratio of water to rices should be 1:1, not the standard 2:1 recommended on the box, and taught to us by the cook in the family. This ratio holds for all rice types, including brown (which I was taught requires a 4:1 ratio).

Limiting evaporation is also key.

More from Joe Solari

(Actually, this chart was included in his original message to me, but my screen grab missed it)

 

Save that date: RTM meeting May 9, 7:PM

From Joe Solari:

Chris,

Trying to spread the word to get tax payers, business owners and associations to the RTM meeting on May 9^th – the night the RTM votes on the budget for the town of Greenwich. We need to send a message to our town government at this meeting. Can you help me get the room overflowing? I want to see Publius, Balzac, Cato, Cos Cobber, Mickster and (and dare I say Walt) at the podium! 

Get up, Stand up against fiscal imprudence and higher taxes in Greenwich 

 It is time for the silent majority in town to speak up! 

 RTM Meeting – Monday, May 9^th – 8pm – Central Middle School  

 

If this doesn’t give you young whippersnappers pause before procreating, you’ve wasted your education

He’s yours for life

Italy: Father ordered to keep paying for 28-year-old son’s upkeep.

An Italian court has ordered a middle-aged father to keep supporting his 28-year-old son through university, after he turned to the law to try and force his offspring to get a job.

The case underlines the country’s problem with “bamboccioni” – spoilt “big babies” who refuse to leave home and instead sponge off their parents.

The father had gone to court to argue that he should no longer be obliged to support his son, challenging one of the conditions of his divorce settlement, which had ruled that he must pay for the young man’s tertiary education.

The son completed a degree in literature, taking several years longer than expected to finish the course, and has now enrolled on a post-graduate course in experimental cinema in Bologna.

His father, who makes a modest living through writing, argued that his son should get a part-time job and start paying his own way.

“He does not deserve any further financial support, having made no effort to find work to support himself,” he told the court.

But the civil court in Modena, northern Italy, ruled that the cinema course is in keeping with the son’s “personal aspirations” and must be paid for by his father.