Strange Bedfellows

Nothing here. Nope. Nothing to see 😉

Problems With the I95/SR 1 Flyover

Ever since Rt 1 opened … I have dreamed of this day when more than a single lane would carry traffic from northbound SR 1 onto 95…..

It has now been a week and here is a list of problems needing immediate attention.

1) It is very difficult and dangerous to enter northbound SR 1 from the 273 exit off of Christiana-Hare’s Corner Road, then cross two lanes of fast moving traffic within a tenth of a mile, to head north onto 95.

2) This weekend North -7 was jammed by people used to getting in the right lane to make a right exit. That access is blocked and those people had to go through to Churchman’s Crossing, get off, go under Rt. 7, take the left and then enter northbound 95 off Southbound 7. Warning signs of New Traffic Patterns did not cut it. Something like ALL TRAFFIC FOR 95 NORTH GET IN LEFT LANE RIGHT NOW, would be appropriate.

3) Anyone leaving the mall from its south exits to go north, gets dropped on the through road underneath 95 with no access to northbound 95 Insufficient sign-age is available at those exit points, and most people used to going home a certain way, are suddenly surprised to be stuck in a traffic jam, of many similar very confused people. Then having to follow the above mentioned route to get out of it. NO ACCESS TO 95 WILMINGTON PHILADELPHIA OR NEW YORK would be the appropriate tone such a message should take at those exit points on the South end of the Christiana Mall. Another sign could direct them to the northbound side, where the exit north on 95 is open for business.

4) The left ramp dropping Northbound I 95 cars into the left lane of 95 is very dangerous. The narrow cattle shoot at the bottom of the ramp tends to slow cars just as they enter the very high speed lane of north I 95. The cars enter at 65 mph or under and much of the traffic is moving in that lane at 80-90 mph. High speed drivers are used to hugging the left lane. As soon as the lane opens up, they pull over into the left lane, right behind a car doing 55-65 mph. If blocked on their right, a crash occurs…. This is the most dangerous part of the flyover project. Immediately portable signs should be warning northbound I 95 traffic that slow traffic WILL BE approaching from the left.

5) Which brings up this interesting conundrum. We need to rethink our concept that the fastest traffic must always be on the left. For to have slower traffic move to the right then move back to the left to take the Wilmington side of the 95-295 split, defeats the entire purpose of dropping the lane on the left side. Any vehicle, car, truck, whose maximum speed is 65 and is coming from SR 1 and heading to Wilmington, wants to stay in the left lane and follow it all the way to Wilmington.

On this stretch of highway, across Churchman’s Marsh, it makes sense for the high speed traffic to fly down the center. Signs on both the right and left, reminding motorists that slow traffic keeps to the right, keeps to the left, are in order here. Otherwise the tendency to run on the left at speeds well over the speed limit (but against which the State Police are powerless to contain), will send fast moving traffic straight into the backs of slow moving vehicles simply stuck taking the only way into Wilmington from Northbound SR 1 onto 95….

The answer is to warn northbound traffic on Interstate 95 that slow moving traffic will be entering both the left and right lanes, and that fast moving traffic needs to be in the center three lanes…..

Until then, taking the trip north into Wilmington is pretty scary ….. as you keep one eye in the rear view mirror on those fast moving cars coming up on your tail from behind….

Contact Your Delaware State Representative

This same information is on the House Website, but it had an annoying extra step for emailing Delegates. Now, as with my Senator’s Page, I just copy and post the email address for emails and if I need anything else I click the email to go to their individual state website…

Name   Email address
Paul S. Baumbach   paul.baumbach@state.de.us
Andria L. Bennett andria.bennett@state.de.us
David Bentz  David.Bentz@state.de.us
Stephanie T. Bolden StephanieT.Bolden@state.de.us
Gerald L. Brady gerald.brady@state.de.us
Ruth Briggs-King  Ruth.BriggsKing@state.de.us
William J. Carson william.carson@state.de.us
Richard G. Collins richard.collins @state.de.us
Timothy D. Dukes Timothy.Dukes@state.de.us
Ronald E. Gray Ronald.Gray@state.de.us
Debra J. Heffernan debra.heffernan@state.de.us
Kevin Hensley Kevin.Hensley@state.de.us
Deborah Hudson House Deborah.Hudson@state.de.us
Earl G. Jaques Jr Earl.Jaques@state.de.us
James Johnson jj.johnson@state.de.us
S. Quinton Johnson Quinton.Johnson@state.de.us
Helene M. Keeley helene.keeley@state.de.us
Harvey R. Kenton Harvey.Kenton@state.de.us
John A. Kowalko Jr. john.kowalko@state.de.us
Valerie Longhurst Valerie.Longhurst@state.de.us
Sean Lynn  Sean.Lynn@state.de.us
Sean Matthews Sean.Matthews@state.de.us
Joseph E. Miro joseph.miro@state.de.us
John L. Mitchell Jr. john.l.mitchell@state.de.us
Michael P. Mulrooney Michael.Mulrooney@state.de.us
Edward S. Osienski  Edward.Osienski@state.de.us
William R. “Bobby” Outten   bobby.outten@state.de.us
W. Charles Paradee trey.paradee@state.de.us
Harold J. Peterman jack.peterman@state.de.us
Charles Potter Jr. Charles.Potter@state.de.us
Michael Ramone Michael.Ramone@state.de.us
Peter C. Schwartzkopf Peter.Schwartzkopf@state.de.us
Bryon H. Short Bryon.Short@state.de.us
Daniel B. Short Daniel.Short@state.de.us
Melanie George Smith melanie.g.smith@state.de.us
Stephen T. Smyk Steve.Smyk@state.de.us
Jeffrey N. Spiegelman jeff.spiegelman@state.de.us
John J. Viola John.Viola@state.de.us
Kimberly Williams kimberly.williams@state.de.us
David L. Wilson David.L.Wilson@state.de.us
Lyndon Yearick  Lyndon.Yearick@state.de.us

Port Of Wilmington SB 3 Bill Is Passed In Delaware’s Senate

Today inside the Senate a vote was taken on Bob Marshall’s bill that requires the General Assembly’s approval if the Port of Wilmington gets sold to Kinder-Morgan. The deal has caused considerably concern because it has been shrouded in secrecy. No one knows of any of its details. Someone may make billions off of this, so it is important that people look over the arrangement to see who or who isn’t hurt by this major public to private transfer…..

ACT TO AMEND TITLE 29 OF THE DELAWARE CODE RELATING TO STATE GOVERNMENT AND THE DIAMOND STATE PORT CORPORATION.
Synopsis: This act would require the Diamond State Port Corporation to obtain the approval of a majority of both Houses of the General Assembly and the Governor, through the passage of legislation, before entering into any agreement or transaction whereby the Corporation would transfer, sell, privatize, or lease all or substantially all of the Port of Wilmington to a single entity, or to a related group of entities.

Here are the cosponsors of the Bill.

Sens. Henry McDowell, Blevins, Townsend, & Reps. Keeley, Mulrooney , Brady, J.Johnson, Osienski

The bill passed with 11 votes yea and 9 votes nay, and one vote not cast. It was released out of committee on the same day with 2 favorables, 3 on the merits, and 1 unfavorable…

Unfortunately it was not an unanimous vote…

Understanding Christmas

To really understand Christmas, you need to be in the Third World, hot climate, where Christianity doesn’t exist. Life is just a normal day. Their religion’s calling out prayer, markets bustling as always, and you are working too…. Somewhere during that day, if you are an American, it hits you. Wow, its the 25th.. This is Christmas.

And so it was. No one knew who Jesus was. The Bible says that in his own way, God announced it. But if you were living in Bethlehem roughly 2000 years ago, it would be like what you see here before you today. Life as normal. Just like every other day…

And that is the beauty of Christmas. In your town, today, the child of the second coming could be born. You would never know. And that offers a clue to how God works… He works things in his own way….

And somehow, it works out…. Against all odds of the dice being thrown in multiple odds, it always lands the right way when it is needed…

After all your calls home, you report for duty in the hospital where you work, and from a room a newborn cries out. The question hits you. What if in two thousand years, everyone shall know his name? At first you scoff, he’s just another mid-eastern baby. But then, so was Jesus…..

It happened just like this… THAT is the mystery of Christmas…

70 Years of Infamies…..

Photo Courtesy of the horse’s mouth

Closing remarks of FDR’s declaration of war:

The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian Islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. I regret to tell you that very many American lives have been lost. In addition, American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu.

Yesterday the Japanese government also launched as attack against Malaya.

Last night Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong.

Last night Japanese forces attacked Guam.

Last night Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands.

Last night Japanese forces attacked Wake Island.

And this morning the Japanese attacked Midway Island.

Japan has, therefore, undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday and today speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation.

As commander in chief of the Army and Navy I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense. But always will our whole nation remember the character of the onslaught against us. .

Then There’s Newt Gingrich….

Again, lifted from Der Spiegal

The current favorite? He’s a political dinosaur, dishonored and discredited. Or so we thought. Yet just because he studied history and speaks in more complex sentences than his rivals, the US media now reflexively hails him as a “Man of Ideas” (The Washington Post) — even though most of these ideas are lousy if not downright offensive, such as firing unionized school janitors, so poor children could do their jobs.

Pompous and blustering, Gingrich gets away with this humdinger as well as with selling himself as a Washington outsider — despite having made millions of dollars as a lobbyist in Washington. At least the man’s got chutzpah.

The hypocrisy doesn’t end here. Gingrich claims moral authority on issues such as the “sanctity of marriage,” yet he’s been divorced twice. He sprang the divorce on his first wife while she was sick with cancer. (His supporters’ excuse: It’s been 31 years, and she’s still alive.) He cheated on his second wife just as he was pressing ahead with Bill Clinton’s impeachment during the Monica Lewinsky affair, unaware of the irony. The woman he cheated with, by the way, was one of his House aides and 23 years his junior — and is now his perpetually smiling third wife.

Americans have a short memory. They forget, too, that Gingrich was driven out of Congress in disgrace, the first speaker of the house to be disciplined for ethical wrongdoing. Or that he consistently flirts with racism when he speaks of Barack Obama. Or that he enjoyed a $500,000 credit line at Tiffany’s just as his campaign was financially in the toilet and he ranted about the national debt. Chutzpah, indeed.

Yet the US media rewards him with a daily kowtow. And the Republicans reward him too, by having put him on top in the latest polls. Mr. Hypocrisy, the bearer of his party’s hope.

“I think he’s doing well just because he’s thinking,” former President Clinton told the conservative online magazine NewsMax. “People are hungry for ideas that make some sense.” Sense? Apparently it’s not just the Republicans who have lost their minds here.

Taxes and The Wealthy

Right click to open full image… Pictograph Courtesy of Viral..

So, can someone tell me again, why we shouldn’t tax the rich, and instead, balance the budget on the backs of everyone else?…….

I seem to be missing that little detail where that all makes sense……

In A Perfect World….

Call it temporary insanity but let’s pretend, let’s just say, …that at one moment in time, if I chose to donate my youth out for my country, to be compensated back in the form of low pay; to completely and unjudgingly offer my fate up to the will of bureaucrats, all for the loss of my own self esteem, all for unending stretches of boredom, sparsed with interludes of a few intense seconds, that fortunately thorough my reactions and training, enabled me to continue living as I do today………….

I could reasonably be expected to be honored for that service to my nation, right?

In a perfect world, that is….

One would think, that in a perfect world, as needs were being debated across the universe of public funding, that a hierarchy resembling this, would sort of be the guideline, if not the rule?

National Heroes…..

over

We, The People…..

over

LLC corporations….

After all, if it weren’t for us, there’s a good chance those LLC. corporations wouldn’t be able to do business in a free and prosperous society, you would think?….

One would think, that if one of these heroes needed medical care, with the tremendous amounts of money being thrown away by our government daily, in the forms of corporate tax breaks enabling corporations to make “record breaking profits”…. that they would be put at the top of the list.. don’t you think?

Sorry, CEO… your operation will have to wait… We have a veteran who is in dire need ahead of you….

In a perfect world….

One would think, that a voucher system would be in place, or a blank check, where any veteran could walk into any hospital, and get immediate, necessary medical attention, have his prescriptions filled as a privilege for his service, and that the bill would be willing be paid by those with monetary resources more than adequate for their own needs?

One would think, (right?)… that it would be CEO’s, those who give pink slips so they can break profit records, those who cut benefits so they can break profit records, those who don’t invest in America so they can break record profits, ….who should be the ones finding themselves regulated to CEO hospitals, where they would then have to settle in on a waiting list for the next opening to occur, where they had to endure budget cutbacks and go without life-saving medicine because there was no money left in the CEO fund, perhaps because it had all gone to Veterans to pay THEIR expenses?

In a perfect world…..

In a perfect world, veterans would need no freebies…. They would not need welfare, or a pension, or a humble stipend to eke an existence… They would be working, contributing to society, in any way they could… If they had no legs, they would be outfitted at corporate’s expense, so that would not be an issue… If they had no arms, they could be outfitted at corporate’s expense so that was not an issue. If they had psychological damage, (and who wouldn’t?) they could be treated at corporate’s expense… so that was not an issue.

If they were so badly damaged that they create an efficiency drain on society, they could be honored for their sacrifice, and a useful voluntary capacity could be created to honor that commitment once made so long ago… Perhaps speaking about serving one’s country in every class, in every school, in every county? Can you think of any better civic’s lesson?

There’s a lot that can be done…

The problem is that veterans are deemed as just another expense…. Because to corporate America, that is just what they are… An expense, an obligation to be met that gets in the way of their making more money…

Unfortunately, our Congress is owned by Corporate America….

What should and does need to happen, is this relationship needs to be exposed. We need to call them out on it…

Republicans and Democrats are both complicit in allowing corporate raiders this unprecedented power. But Republicans are the symbol of Corporate America. Republicans are the ones who championed the Corporate Takeover. Republicans are the ones who dismanteled the safeguards that had been put in place to prevent that takeover from happening. That is why they need to go. Disappear… Whoever is left, the remainder, most likely after seeing the elimination of a large majority of their peers, will think twice before following their Dark Lord, now a soul less wanderer eking existence.. ……

In a perfect world…

Unfortunately, today we need to contend with obscene amounts of money saying Corporate is Good; Government Fairness is Bad….

But we have our lives telling us the opposite… It will take courage and strong will, to override all the overload of sensory data being pipelined into our soul, but we still have hearts, and those hearts are attuned to what makes America special. great, and the best place to live on this earth….

WE can still dream….

And those dreams should include a perfect world… one we CAN make happen, at least for those without whom we would not have the freedom, the resources, the nation, we have today….

Here’s to a perfect world?

Do Nothing Congress :(

Almost all Americans will agree… There is one thing America does best…. Nothing….

Well, actually in this case, that might be a good thing…. For in Congress’s naturally tendency to play it both ways all the time, whenever they enacted legislation, the also set in stone a date for it to expire…. So if Congress does nothing, the automatic policies go into effect and we have a $7.1 trillion deficit busting package signed, sealed, delivered right to Americans… almost as efficiently as an order off Ebay….

Hats off to Cassandra for pulling out this nugget….. Here is the source, and here is the savings….

● $3.3 trillion from letting temporary income and estate tax cuts enacted in 2001, 2003, 2009, and 2010 expire on scheduled at the end of 2012 (presuming Congress also lets relief from the Alternative Minimum Tax expire, as noted below);

● $0.8 trillion from allowing other temporary tax cuts (the “extenders” that Congress has regularly extended on a “temporary” basis) expire on scheduled;

● $0.3 trillion from letting cuts in Medicare physician reimbursements scheduled under current law (required under the Medicare Sustainable Growth Rate formula enacted in 1997, but which have been postponed since 2003) take effect;

● $0.7 trillion from letting the temporary increase in the exemption amount under the Alternative Minimum Tax expire, thereby returning the exemption to the level in effect in 2001;

● $1.2 trillion from letting the sequestration of spending required if the Joint Committee does not produce $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction take effect; and

● $0.9 trillion in lower interest payments on the debt as a result of the deficit reduction achieved from not extending these current policies.

How does a zero balanced deficit in ten years sound?

If Congress does absolutely nothing, something they’re good at, we’ll have it….