It appears the Obama era is over but for the crying. Here ABC late-night talker Jimmy Kimmel mocks Obama’s Warsaw workout and rather brutally.
William Lawrence Sr Omnibit 6-7-14
William Lawrence Sr Omnibit 6-7-14
A pity. Today 21 million Americans can’t read at all, 45 million are marginally illiterate and one-fifth of high school graduates can’t read their diplomas.
Bill Expands Good Samaritan Laws
The Pennsyvlania House, June 2, passed, 196-0, House Bill 2049, that would apply Good Samaritan civil immunity to school bus drivers who administer epinephrine autoinjectors, also known as epi-pens, to students.
Although law now allows school bus drivers to administer epi-pens , there is a general reluctance to do so as school bus drivers assume the legal ramifications if things go awry, said State Rep. Jim Cox (R-129).
This legislation would grant civil immunity for those operating in good faith, adhering to district policy and who are appropriately trained, said Cox..
The bill is now before the Senate.
Bill Expands Good Samaritan Laws
House GOP Pushes Pa Pension Fix
A contingent of Pennsylvania House Republicans is pushing a Pa pension fix.
The group unveiled a plan, June 4, to address the unfunded liability within the Public School Employees Retirement System and the State Employees Retirement System, reports State Rep. Jim Cox (R-129).
The combined unfunded liability is about $50 billion.
This plan establishes that all new employees who enter the state systems would be enrolled in a combination of 401(k)-type and traditional pension plan. By combining the benefits of both systems, this plan is estimated to save between $11 billion and $15 billion over a 30-year projection period.
Cox emphasized that the proposal plan would be for new employees only and would not change benefits for existing participants or retirees.
At least somebody is trying to do something. What is most terrifying about this no-brainer minimalist proposal is that there is a good chance it won’t get passed.
House GOP Pushes Needed Pa Pension Fix
Magic Bank Account
This Off The internet is The Magic Bank Account and is courtesy of Marie Martinelli.
Imagine that you had won the following **PRIZE** in a contest: Each morning your bank would deposit $86,400 in your private account for your use. However, this prize has these rules:
Everything that you didn’t spend during each day would be taken away from you.
You may not simply transfer money into some other account.
You may only spend it.
Each morning upon awakening, the bank opens your account with another $86,400 for that day.
he bank can end the game without warning; at any time it can say,”Game Over!”. It can close the account and you will not receive a new one. *What would you personally do?
You would buy anything and everything you wanted right? Not only for yourself, but for all the people you love and care for. Even for people you don’t know, because you couldn’t possibly spend it all on yourself, right?
You would try to spend every penny, and use it all, because you knew it would be replenished in the morning, right?
Actually, this game is real. Each of us is already a winner of this **PRIZE**. We just can’t seem to see it.
The prize is TIME:
Each morning we awaken to receive 86,400 seconds as a gift of life.
And when we go to sleep at night, any remaining time is NOT credited to us.
What we haven’t used up that day is forever lost.
Yesterday is forever gone.
Each morning the account is refilled, but the bank can dissolve your account at any time WITHOUT WARNING…
SO, what will YOU do with your 86,400 seconds?
Those seconds are worth so much more than the same amount in dollars. Think about it and remember to enjoy every second of your life, because time races by so much quicker than you think.
So take care of yourself, be happy, love deeply and enjoy life!
Here’s wishing you a wonderful and beautiful day. Start “spending”
Magic Bank Account
Radar Guns Bad Idea
Radar Guns Bad Idea
Every few years, an issue appears in Pennsylvania that raises people’s antennas, only to fall off the radar months later.
Hopefully, this time will be no exception, as there is yet another attempt in Harrisburg to allow local police to use radar. In the interests of Pennsylvanians and police alike, the best thing would be seeing this bill’s progress arrested so that it fails in a speedy manner, locking up the issue for years to come.
One of the things Pennsylvania has done right over the years is not permitting municipal police to use radar — the only state with such a prohibition.
Yet, there is a clamor from certain special interests — namely local governments and some police departments — to reverse that policy and arm police with radar guns. Their official rationale is “safety,” but we all know better. The real reason is blatantly obvious: Revenue collection. So because local governments squander millions in taxpayer money and now face record budget shortfalls, they want to break the backs of citizens by employing an onerous and unnecessary entrapment system that not only is counterproductive, but also takes valuable resources away from where they are truly needed.
Consider:
1. The police are doing just fine nabbing speeders, thank you very much. Proof? Pop in to any district judge’s courtroom and the place is packed. Law enforcement has plenty of methods for nailing speeders, all performed in real time (stopwatch, distance between two points etc.. Therefore, radar is inherently unnecessaryand would cost taxpayers more money — not just the initial cost, but also training programs and system upkeep.
2. Is radar use subject to abuse, as some claim? Sure, especially in Podunk where Uncle Cletus serves as police chief, judge and jury, but to generalize that police across the board are not to be trusted is a grossly misguided indictment. The legitimate concern is that unintentional mistakes will be made (such as radar guns not continuously calibrated), rather than deliberate game-playing.
3. Radar would relegate police officers to becoming revenue collectors (more than they already are) — and that’s not why they joined the force. Sure, maintaining safety on the roads is an important function of the police, but gunning people all day long just to fill township coffers is way beneath the talents of officers, not to mention creating intense boredom, which dulls their overall skills. And if radar use became law, bank on countless police departments receiving a portion of the revenue — a huge conflict of interest.
4. Police have better things to do. There are only so many cops to go around, yet the crimes they investigate are increasing exponentially. It is imperative that we use those limited law enforcement resources as efficiently as possible — and radar use doesn’t qualify. For every officer engaged in speed trap duty, it’s one fewer expert we have dusting for fingerprints, forensically examining a crime scene, interviewing witnesses and otherwise going after murderers, rapists and robbers.
It’s a lesson learned from the NSA spying debacle. All the untold billions and countless man hours spent wastefully reading law-abiding citizens’ emails was that much less time and resources dedicated to going after the real bad guys — like the Boston bombers. We have to be smarter with the tools and talents we have.
5. Radar would become yet another tool in the arsenal of deception, stoking a negativity in how citizens view police and leading to an “us against them” relationship on both sides. As it is, some police departments in other states (as well as Pennsylvania State Police) routinely hide radar guns on “broken-down” vehicles and farm tractors to catch those driving a bit too fast. Going to those lengths foments anger and leads to the bigger question of “what’s next?” If they are willing to deceive to that extent just for traffic violations, what else will they do in the name of “justice?”
Worse, local radar use would lead to increased use of unmarked cars in speed trap stings, with more positioned on private property (such as residential driveways and business parking lots). Not only does that practice smack of coercion and intimidation, but it is extremely dangerous, especially to women, when pulled over by a unmarked unit. The state law that should be passed would be one banning the use of unmarked cars in traffic/speeding duty. They serve no productive purpose.
With all the problems confronting police, stooping to the level of deception that radar invites — just to monetize routine traffic violations — transforms the respect that our men and women in blue deserve, into resentment.
The ways to deter speeding are easy: Eliminate ridiculously low speed limits (often changing with little or no warning) set for the sole purpose of nailing otherwise law-abiding drivers, and bolster police presence on a municipality’s roads with marked cars. It’s an easy equation, and not just for speeding: Increased police presence equals reduction in crime. It’s common sense.
From both the civil libertarian and utilitarian perspectives, let’s ask our legislators to place the radar gun bill where it belongs — completely off the political radar screen.
Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing
The Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule proposed last July by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) would give the feds “more effective means to affirmatively further the purposes and policies of the Fair Housing Act” as per the Federal Register.
HUD notes that the Fair Housing Act directs program participants to take steps to “foster inclusive communities for all.”
That sounds peachy until it dawns on one that what it means is not the breaking down of historic racial barriers but the breaking down of the barriers that discourage people who don’t play nice from living next to people who do.
It should further be noted that this inclusive fostering is not going to occur in the gated communities favored by many GS 15 bureaucrats and the political moneybags who fund their masters.
The rule is scheduled to be finalized in December. Apparently Obama and his team of incompetent wannabe feudalists are afraid of having it an issue in this November’s election.
Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing
Normandy Invasion 70 Years Ago
Seventy years ago this June 6, the Americans, British, and Canadians stormed the beaches of Normandy in the largest amphibious invasion of Europe since the Persian king Xerxes invaded Greece in 480 B.C.
About 160,000 troops landed on five Normandy beaches and linked up with airborne troops in a masterful display of planning and courage. Within a month, almost a million Allied troops had landed in France and were heading eastward toward the German border. Within eleven months the war with Germany was over.
The western front required the diversion of hundreds of thousands of German troops. It weakened Nazi resistance to the Russians while robbing the Third Reich of its valuable occupied European territory.
The impatient and long-suffering Russians had demanded of their allies a second front commensurate with their own sacrifices. Their Herculean efforts by war’s end would account for two out of every three dead German soldiers — at a cost of 20 million Russian civilian and military casualties.
Yet for all the sacrifices of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin was largely responsible for his war with Nazi Germany. In 1939, he signed a foolish non-aggression pact with Hitler that allowed the Nazis to gobble up Western democracies. Hitler’s Panzers were aided by Russians in Poland and overran Western Europe fueled by supplies from the Soviets.
The Western Allies had hardly been idle before D-Day. They had taken North Africa and Sicily from the Germans and Italians. They were bogged down in brutal fighting in Italy. The Western Allies and China fought the Japanese in the Pacific, Burma, and China.
The U.S. and the British Empire fought almost everywhere. They waged a multiform war on and under the seas. They eventually destroyed Japanese and German heavy industry with a costly and controversial strategic-bombing campaign.
The Allies sent friends such as the Russians and Chinese billions of dollars worth of food and war matériel.
In sum, while Russia bore the brunt of the German land army, the Western Allies fought all three Axis powers everywhere else and in every conceivable fashion.
Yet if D-Day was brilliantly planned and executed, the follow-up advance through France in June 1944 was not always so. The Allies seemed to know the texture of every beach in Normandy, but nothing about the thick bocage just a few miles inland from Omaha Beach. The result was that the Americans were bogged down in the French hedgerows for almost seven weeks until late July — suffering about 10 times as many casualties as were lost from the Normandy landings.
So how did the Allies get from the beaches of Normandy to Germany in less than a year? Largely by overwhelming the Wehrmacht with lots of good soldiers and practical war matériel. If German tanks, mines, machine guns, and artillery were superbly crafted, their more utilitarian American counterparts were good enough — and about 10 times as numerous. Mechanically intricate German Tiger and Panther tanks could usually knock out durable American Sherman tanks, but the Americans produced almost 50,000 of the latter, and the Germans fewer than 8,000 of the former.
Over Normandy, British and American fighter aircraft not only were as good as or better than German models but were far more numerous. By mid 1944, Germany had produced almost no four-engine bombers. The British and Americans had built almost 50,000 that by 1944 were systematically leveling German cities.
Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt were far more pragmatic supreme commanders than the increasingly delusional and sick Adolf Hitler. American war planners such as George Marshall, Dwight Eisenhower, and Alan Brooke understood grand strategy better than the more experienced German chief of staff. Allied field generals such as George S. Patton and Bernard Montgomery were comparable to German legends like Gerd von Rundstedt or Erwin Rommel, who were worn out by 1944.
The German soldier was the more disciplined, experienced, armed, and deadly warrior of World War II. But his cause was bad, and by 1944 his enemies were far more numerous and far better supplied. No soldiers fought better on their home soil than did the Russians, and none more resourcefully abroad than the British Tommy and the American G.I., when bolstered by ample air, armor, and artillery support.
Omaha Beach to central Germany was about the same distance as the Russian front to Berlin. But the Western Allies covered the same approximate ground in about a quarter of the time as had the beleaguered Russians.
D-Day ushered in the end of the Third Reich. It was the most brilliantly conducted invasion in military history, and probably no one but a unique generation of British, Canadians, and Americans could have pulled it off.
Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author, most recently, of The Savior Generals. He can be reached by emailing author@victorhanson.com .
Normandy Invasion 70 Years Ago
Charles Manson Not Paroled
Reports that America’s most twisted hippie being paroled are not true.
Manson is not scheduled for another parole hearing until 2027.
William Lawrence Sr. Omnibit 6-5-14
William Lawrence Sr. Omnibit 6-5-14
Q- Who was Mary Anderson?
A – Remember her the next time you drive in the rain. Mary Anderson invented the windshield wiper.