Thomas P O'Dea, Jr

Attorney / State Rep

[Thomas P O'Dea, Jr @ODeaJr]

Proud to be at the Women's Business Development Council Annual Gala luncheon. Well done Fran Pastore et al!

As I've often said - keys to peace and economic success throughout world - 4Es - Educate, Empower, Elevate & Elect women to position of power!

[Wesley Hunt @WesleyHuntTX]

Whoopi Goldberg’s comments reveal everything wrong with identity politics.

I didn’t marry my wife because she’s white.

She didn’t marry me because I’m Black.

We got married because we share the same values, the same faith, and the same vision for raising a family.

At no point did marrying a white woman make me less Black.

At no point did marrying a Black man make my wife less white.

What it made us was a family.

The people obsessed with race can’t understand that most Americans don’t choose friends, spouses, or family based on skin color. We choose them based on character, values, and love.

The civil rights movement wasn’t about putting race at the center of everything. It was about moving beyond it.

[Dr. Eli David @DrEliDavid]

Princess @NoorPahlavi: “My father's goal and our goal as a family is singular: the transition to free and fair elections in which Iranians decide their future.”

[Nikki Haley @NikkiHaley]

So called human rights “experts” at the UN have been bought and paid for by some of the worst abusers —like China and Russia. America is the largest financial supporter of this endless cesspool. Another reason we shouldn’t give the UN a dime until there’s accountability.

[Thomas Sowell Daily @DailySowell]

Thomas Sowell on the truth about the Great Depression:

“There’s this narrative out there that the reason we had mass unemployment in the 1930s was because the market failed.”

“It so happens that for the 12 months following the stock market crash, we never hit double digits of unemployment. Unemployment peaked at 9 percent two months after the crash and started going down.”

“The unemployment rate was down to 6.3 percent when the federal government figured it had to intervene. And that’s when the downward movement reversed and we never saw 6.3 percent again for the next decade.”

“It’s clear as crystal that the disaster came after federal intervention.”

[Rod D. Martin @RodDMartin]

🧵New Orleans just proved failing schools can be fixed at scale.

It became America’s first all-charter school district.

The results are staggering:

• 99th percentile nationally in reading growth
• 98th percentile in math growth
• The only state in America beating pre-pandemic levels in both subjects

This is what real reform looks like. THREAD 🧵

[John Clark @JClarkNBCS]

The Phillies have the second worst batting average in baseball, just 225. They are tied for the worst on base percentage in baseball, just 293. The Phillies are tied for the fewest runs per game in baseball over the last two weeks, just 2.5 runs a game.

But the Phillies are 21 and 10 under Don Mattingly https://t.co/6MSzMhEBXF

[Vivid.🇮🇱 @VividProwess]

This is the huge wall Egypt built on the border with Gaza.

One of the most well-fortified walls, with seven layers of razor wire, walls, and fences, just to make sure that not a single Palestinian from Gaza enters Egypt.

I wonder why Egypt doesn't want the Palestinians?

[Captain Allen @CptAllenHistory]

In 2005, Israel gave Palestinians exactly what the world demanded: “Land for Peace.”

They unilaterally withdrew from the entire Gaza Strip, but got no peace.

The IDF forcibly removed every last Jew — even digging up Jewish graves. Gaza was made completely Jew-free, exactly as Palestinians demanded.

Israel handed over thriving communities, farms, and hundreds of millions in infrastructure — including productive greenhouses that could have become an economic engine for a Palestinian state.

What did the Palestinians do with this gift?

They destroyed it.

Mobs looted and burned the greenhouses. They ransacked and demolished synagogues. They celebrated with Hamas flags and gunfire.

Then, in January 2006, they voted Hamas — a genocidal terrorist organization whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews — into power.

By 2007, Hamas completed a bloody coup, threw Fatah members off rooftops, and seized total control of Gaza.

The result?

- Tens of thousands of rockets fired at Israeli civilians

- More than 500 miles of underground terror tunnels

- Billions in international aid stolen for war, not welfare

- Gaza transformed into a fortified Islamic terror enclave

Land for peace was tried — and violently rejected.

Everything Israel gave away in 2005 became the launchpad for the October 7 Massacre.

This is the ultimate proof: the Palestinian movement has never wanted a state living next to Israel. Its goal has always been the destruction of the Jewish state — in any part of the Land.

Important note: The blockade only came after Hamas seized power in 2007 and turned Gaza into a launchpad for war. And when that happened, Egypt joined it too.

Disengagement didn’t bring peace.
It brought the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

[Today in History @TodayinHistory]

Voltaire passed away today in 1778.

There are two quotes of his I always come back to:

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

and

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

Finnish scientists trucked in real forest dirt and grass and laid it over the gravel at four daycare yards. They let the kids dig around in it for a month. The blood tests came back with changes the researchers hadn’t expected to see so fast or so clear.

The study ran at ten daycares in two Finnish cities with 75 kids aged three to five. Four of the yards got the forest treatment: about a tennis court worth of soil and grass laid over the gravel, plus planters and peat blocks the kids could dig and climb on. Three others stuck with their normal gravel yards. The last three were daycares where the kids were already visiting real forests every day.

After one month, the variety of bacteria living on the kids’ skin shot up, and the kind that helps train the skin’s immune defenses jumped the most. Their gut bacteria started to look like the gut bacteria of the forest-visiting kids. Their blood showed more of the immune cells whose job is to keep the body from freaking out at harmless stuff like pollen and peanuts, and overall inflammation dropped. The kids on the plain gravel yards showed none of this.

Childhood asthma in the US doubled between 1980 and 1995. Food allergies in kids jumped 50 percent between 1997 and 2011, then jumped another 50 percent between 2007 and 2021. And peanut allergies in one-year-olds tripled between 2001 and 2017.

The Finnish researchers think one of the reasons is simple: kids today don’t get dirty enough. 37 percent of American preschoolers now spend an hour or less outside on a normal weekday. Their immune systems are getting trained in environments stripped of the bacteria humans have always lived around.

Aki Sinkkonen, who led the study, put it in plain words: “It would be best if children could play in puddles and everyone could dig organic soil.” The Finnish government is now helping pay for daycares across the country to make the same changes.

[𝗟𝗶𝗯𝗲𝗿𝘁𝗮𝘀𝗪𝗮𝗿𝗿𝗶𝗼𝗿 @LiberTasWar79]

The image depicts Katherine Cathey, the pregnant widow of U.S. Marine 2nd Lt. James “Jim” Cathey, lying on an air mattress on the floor in front of her husband’s flag-draped casket the night before his burial. A Marine honor guard stands vigil in the background.

Jim Cathey was tragically killed in action in Iraq in August 2005. Overcome with grief, Katherine refused to leave her husband’s casket. She requested to spend one final night with him. Two Marines went to great lengths to provide her with a makeshift bed, using a mattress and pillows on the floor. One Marine stood guard over her and the casket throughout the night.

This powerful and Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph was captured by Todd Heisler in 2005 as part of his series “Jim Comes Home” for the Rocky Mountain News.

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

That water clarity is an engineering decision, and the math behind it is wilder than the video.

Roman aqueducts ran on gravity alone. No pumps, no pressure systems. Engineers carved channels with a gradient so shallow it borders on absurd. The Pont du Gard in southern France drops 2.5 centimeters over 275 meters. That's roughly the thickness of a coin over the length of three football fields. They surveyed that accuracy with plumb lines and wooden leveling instruments.

The clarity you're seeing is a direct product of flow velocity. Too steep and the water erodes the channel walls, picks up sediment, turns brown. Too flat and it stagnates. Roman engineers targeted a slope of about 20 centimeters per kilometer, which kept the water moving fast enough to stay fresh but slow enough to stay clear. Before the water reached the city, it passed through multi-chamber settling tanks where velocity dropped near zero. Suspended particles sank. Clean water flowed out the top into the next chamber. Repeat three or four times.

Pliny specified the minimum slope in writing. Vitruvius published the exact mortar ratio for hydraulic cement: one part lime to two parts volcanic ash for underwater work. The pozzolana from Pozzuoli reacted with water to form a calcium-aluminum-silicate compound that actually gets stronger the longer it sits submerged. Modern concrete degrades in water. Roman concrete bonds with it.

Scale the whole system and it gets harder to process. Eleven aqueducts fed Rome at its peak. Combined output: roughly 1 million cubic meters of water per day. That works out to about 250 gallons per person for a city of one million. Modern New York delivers about 125 gallons per person per day. Ancient Rome had access to double the per capita water supply of the largest city in the United States, running entirely on slope and stone.

The Trevi Fountain in Rome is still fed by one of them. Two thousand years, same source, same gravity, same water.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

💯

[Crazy Vibes @CrazyVibes_1]

July 26, 2020. A beach near Collingwood, Ontario.

Sixteen-year-old Jamey Ruth Klassen was supposed to be enjoying a quiet family vacation beside the icy blue waters of Georgian Bay.

Farther out on the lake, a man named Christopher Robertson had taken his kayak out alone for a peaceful paddle. Then the kayak filled with water and flipped.

Suddenly, he was stranded in the freezing bay, clinging desperately to the overturned hull while shouting for help.

Jamey didn’t hear him directly.

What she heard instead were strangers nearby calling 911, panicking about a kayaker who had disappeared beneath the surface and wasn’t coming back up.

Most teenagers would’ve stayed on shore.

The water was brutally cold. The distance looked impossible. Lifeguards and paramedics were already being called. Waiting would’ve been understandable.

Jamey never waited.

She ran toward the water and dove in.

Alone, she swam nearly 600 feet through Georgian Bay — the distance of two football fields — pushing herself farther and farther from shore toward the empty kayak floating in the distance.

By the time she reached it, Christopher Robertson was gone.

Then Jamey looked down.

Through the clear Canadian water, she could see him lying motionless twelve feet below on the lake floor.

She took one breath.

And dove.

The cold tightened around her body instantly as she reached the bottom. She grabbed Robertson beneath both arms and forced herself upward, dragging his unconscious body back toward the surface.

He wasn’t breathing.

His body hung limp in the water.

Jamey refused to let go.

She turned him onto his back, balanced his head against her shoulder, wrapped one arm across his chest, and began swimming him toward shore using only one arm and her legs.

Every second became harder.

Her muscles burned violently. Her lungs screamed. She had no formal lifeguard certification because the pandemic had canceled the courses she planned to take that summer.

Still, she kept kicking.

Then fear hit her.

Jamey realized she might drown beside him before reaching shore.

Exhausted and losing strength, she used the last thing she still had left:

Her voice.

She screamed for help.

A nearby paddleboarder heard her cries and rushed across the water. Together, they lifted Robertson onto the board while Jamey, shivering and exhausted, swam the remaining distance alone.

Onshore, police officers and paramedics immediately began CPR.

Moments later, Christopher Robertson started breathing again.

He survived.

Nearly a year later, Jamey Ruth Klassen received the Carnegie Medal — North America’s highest civilian honor for heroism. Out of millions of people, only eighteen recipients were chosen that year.

But Jamey barely spoke about herself afterward.

Instead, she used the scholarship money from the award to attend nursing school at McMaster University, quietly continuing the same instinct that had driven her into the freezing water that day:

If someone needs help, you go.

No hesitation.
No spotlight.
No waiting for someone braver.

Just a sixteen-year-old girl who saw a stranger drowning… and decided his life mattered more than her fear.

[John Stossel @JohnStossel]

It's the 20th Anniversary of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth."

NONE of his scary predictions have come true.

Mt. Kilimanjaro still has snow and Glacier National Park still has glaciers.

Here's why we are not doomed:

[Nikki Haley @NikkiHaley]

Taiwan makes almost 70% of the world’s semiconductors and more than 90% of the most advanced chips powering your phone, your car, and the AI race.

If China controls Taiwan, the Communist Party gains leverage over the world’s most critical tech supply chain. That’s not just a threat to Taiwan’s 23 million people living in a thriving democracy — it’s a threat to global freedom, security, and the future itself.

[Thomas Sowell Quotes @ThomasSowell]

Average home price vs. average salary over the last 100 years

[Shahriq Khan @RealShahriqKhan]

When I was Muslim, I compared Muhammad’s last words to Jesus’ last words.

Not just the facts, but the spirit behind them.

And bro, the difference is staggering. It shook my devout Muslim faith.

According to Sahih al-Bukhari, Muhammad’s final words included: “May Allah curse the Jews and the Christians. They made the graves of their prophets into places of worship.”

Those are words associated with his final moments.

No forgiveness. No reconciliation. No peace.

Now compare that to Jesus.

Beaten, betrayed, tortured, hanging on a cross with nails through His wrists, Jesus says:

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

And then: “It is finished.”

One dies speaking curses.

The other dies extending forgiveness.

One ends by drawing lines and reinforcing division.

The other tears the veil and reconciles heaven and earth.

And whether people like it or not, final words reveal something deeply personal about the heart.

That contrast shook me.

Because one man’s final moments reinforced separation, while the other’s changed eternity through mercy, sacrifice, and love.

Please sit with that honestly.

[RedWave Press @RedWavePress]

NAILED IT: Jeff Bezos: “A nurse in Queens who makes $75K a year pays more than $12K a year in taxes. Does that really make sense?”

“So people talk about making the tax system more progressive. How about we start by having the nurse in Queens NOT pay taxes? At all!”

“Why is a nurse in Queens who makes $75K a year paying more than $1K a month in taxes?”

“That’s $1K a month that could help with rent or groceries or anything.”

“And by the way, do you know what that all adds up to? The bottom half of income earners in this country pay only 3% of the taxes. It’s only 3%.”

“We can find 3%. So we don’t have... it’s a small amount of money for the government. You know that. And the more I thought about it, to me, it’s kind of absurd that we’re doing this.”

“We shouldn’t be asking this nurse in Queens to send money to Washington — they should be sending her an apology. It really makes no sense.”

Exactly!