Some post-SOTU, palate-cleansing tidbits for you to chew on as you wind down your Tuesday afternoon:

• Expect 60 mph wind gusts tomorrow. This winter has been freakishly warm and windy round here. Expect more as global warming continues. Oh, and someone productize a consumer windmill I can mount on my house to take advantage of all this wind, please! If only we had some kind of local vision for making Rochester a renewable energy hotbed…
• We have a diversity of faith in Rochester (and all over the USA). But if you insist on supporting a candidate like Huckabee who apparently wants to do-over the Constitution into a religious document, please make sure he uses the beliefs of MY church, and MY church only, as a model. Everyone else is either fundamentally wrong or sadly misguided. Oh, and make sure we only allow one religion for our town meeting prayers.
• Duffy’s asking for Rochester to be on par with Albany’s spending-per-resident for other upstate cities:

Under Spitzer’s proposal, Rochester’s per-capita aid would amount to $420 per resident, compared with $578 per person in Buffalo and $510 in Syracuse. Rochester would get $92 million in state aid, but the city wants $127 million to put it on par with Buffalo.

• Oh, and there’s a bonus in the storychat of right-wingers poo-poohing the “class war” idea. Right, sure. The rich aren’t getting richer, and the poor aren’t getting poorer. And those of us in the middle class are doing just fine. Mmm…tasty koolaid!

• Community members from the 14621 area of Rochester are among those locals lobbying for the state leg to approve money to help these blighted areas. From the article:

Michael Weinstein, chair of regional renewal for A Regional Initiative Supporting Empowerment, a faith-based social activism coalition in the Capital Region, said the governor’s housing plan is “a vehicle for economic development.”

“Mixed-income housing brings in income and jobs,” he said. If workers can’t afford to live near where they work, local businesses suffer for lack of consumers and public services such as police and fire protection suffer for lack of tax revenue, he said.

Paige Bellenbaum, advocacy director of Habitat for Humanity New York City, urged the governor and Legislature to bring New York in line with the 38 other states that have enacted a “true affordable housing trust fund,” a permanent fund that doesn’t depend on annual votes of the Legislature.

• Another bad day to be a big-box store around here. Fairport village residents showed up in large numbers to a followup meeting about Walgreens’ attempt to build in the village. That large turnout, as before, in record numbers is succeeding in scuttling the attempt to build. (Note: check out the pic from WHAM13. That’s a crowd.)

The developer recently withdrew its application at the village’s request. But, some residents feel that Walgreens will keep submitting new plans until one is approved.