All firefighters do is put out fires and save lives.
                                                            
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California Wildfires:

​“As the death toll from wildfires ravaging both ends of California climbed on Sunday, powerful winds swept through the state, stretching firefighting resources to the limit.
“At least 31 people have died in the fires: 29 in Northern California's Camp fire and two in Southern California's Woolsey fire.
“The Camp fire -- the most destructive fire in state history and one of the deadliest -- virtually burned the town of Paradise to the ground, destroying thousands of homes and structures.
“There are 228 people still unaccounted for as a result of the blaze, Butte County Sheriff and Coroner Kory Honea told reporters Sunday evening.
“The Woolsey fire continues to be a major blaze, displacing hundreds of thousands of residents as it moves east, including several celebrities. Firefighters on Sunday managed to contain flareups generated by high winds in Los Angeles County. But officials warned that the dry conditions feeding the fire are expected to continue into the week.
"'This is not the new normal, this is the new abnormal,’ Gov. Jerry Brown said of the role of climate change. ‘The chickens are coming home to roost, this is real here.’"  - CNN/ Dakin Andone, Nicole Chavez, and Emanuella Grinberg/ November 12, 2018
 
 
"American Red Cross workers have set up temporary shelters and food sites across the state. Donate to the efforts by visiting redcross.org or texting REDCROSS to 90999 to make a $10 donation. Donors can even specifically request their monies go towards California relief efforts by writing the specific disaster name in the memo line of a check made out to the organization.”   - U.S. News


Added 12/1:

"The effort to locate the remains of people killed in the Camp Fire north of Sacramento has concluded, the Butte County Sheriff’s office announced this week. The remains of 88 people were recovered from the blaze."The Camp Fire, which was fully contained on Sunday after burning 153,335 acres, was by far the deadliest fire in California history. The second-deadliest fire, Los Angeles’ 1933 Griffith Park Fire, killed 29. The wildfire is also the deadliest U.S. fire since 1918, when the Cloquet fire in Minnesota killed 450."     - Tara Law/ Time/ 11-30

 
 
 
Please give to the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation: P.O. Drawer  498/ Emmitsburg, Maryland  21727/ 301-447-1365

Happy Veteran's Day...
​To all that served: thank you.

"Veterans Day originated as “Armistice Day” on Nov. 11, 1919, the first anniversary of the end of World War I.  Congress passed a resolution in 1926 for an annual observance, and Nov. 11 became a national holiday beginning in 1938." - history.com/topics/ holidays/veterans-day-facts
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               A hero can be a migratory cheer of the heart before being shot down in flight                                  by second thoughts, a hero one day a dead duck the next. 



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Please give to the VFW (Veteran's of Foreign Wars): 406 West 36th Street/ Kansas City, Missouri  64111/  816-756-3390/ and:
34 Field Street/ Belfast, Maine  04915/ 207-338-2358.

Whether President Obama was born in Hawaii or Kenya was an ethical question but never a legal one.  Though President Obama's father was born in Kenya his mother was born in the U.S., so he was eligible to run for the presidency (though President Obama did have a Hawaiian birth certificate).  Senator Cruz was born in Canada, his father in Cuba, but his mother was born in the U.S., and so Senator Cruz was eligible to run for the presidency.


Posted on 1/6/2016:

-Presidential Eligibility:

21st Century consensus: those children born to U.S. citizen-parents in foreign countries qualify as natural born Citizens.  So a child born in a foreign country to American parents or parent can become president of the United States of America.  

Presidential eligibility is considered a "non-justiciable political question" that might possibly be a Congressional question and not a question for the U.S. Supreme Court.  
  - Wikipedia 

Within Article II of the U.S. Constitution (abridged):
"No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States" can become president.  Other requirements included in Article II: The president has to be of the "Age of thirty-five Years  and had been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States."
  - The World Almanac 2015 & Wikipedia



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Please give to the Shriner's Hospitals: 2425 Stockton Boulevard/ Sacramento, California, 95817/ 916-453-20000/ and  3551 North Broad Street/ Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 19140/ 215-430-4000   

The following isn't necessarily true:
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The Ugly American concept was a Soviet ploy used during the Cold War to disenfranchise our way of life, cause us immense dubbing difficulties with our movies especially in North Korea, and like an avalanche, to damage or hinder our dating opportunities overseas.  This was done, of course, before Mother Russia turned to capitalism and shrugged off the yoke of totalitarianism; at which juncture she was forced by free market riptides to adapt a creative standard of advertising, using more Machiavellian sales pitches to promote an idea or product instead of just ramming it down the consumer’s throat with Gulag accuracy.
For instance, say, ah, if you were selling a particular brand of soda pop here in America you wouldn’t say “buy our brand because the other brand stinks.”  This method of marketing might instill within a “consumer’s” mind a choice of brands only as “a lesser of two evils.”  So a “consumer” might bypass soda pop altogether and drink milk.  This would be fiscal suicide for the soda business in a free market…
However, the more milk “consumed” the more milk cows at large (you know the supply and demand Adam Smith thing). The more milk cows the more methane gas; the more methane gas in the atmosphere the greater impact on global warming.  On the flip side, with a more robust “consumption” of soda we’d have an exponentially greater human methane gas increase within the atmosphere, the wear and tear of trousers and skirts at the buttocks, and a subsequent impact on global warming too.
Of course with the soda impact on the human physiology, our overall health-care costs are impacted (dentist, false teeth, tummy tucks, Type Two Diabetes, etc.).  The more health-care engines and infrastructure employed the greater the power outlay, the greater the power outlay the greater the impact on global warming.  With milk the production facilities power consumption hurts the environment, not to mention the chiropractor manipulation of the farmers’ lower backs and hands (after years of milking), and of course the transportation pollution committed by the farmer’s vehicle traveling to the chiropractor and then to a bar…
In any case: 
You’re right -- as a responsible advertiser you’d sell your brand this way, “Our brand is extraordinary and excellent.”  You might lie a little bit and claim: “Our soda brushes and flosses your teeth even as you drink it” or “Processed sugar is good for you,” but even if the Federal Trade Commission lets you get away with it Laura Bush and Michelle Obama and Melania Trump will not.
With chocolate or strawberry milk you can advertise: “It came that way,” because it might have milk in it.
Socio-political international advertising slogans can be effective too: A couple of our best slogans during the Cold War aimed at the Soviets were acts of genius: “better dead than red” and the “Soviets are peckerheads.”
However, as our world has become smaller and more civilized and advertising more advanced one of the few anomalies left within the formula of “selling” a regular “consumer” the lesser of two evils is in politics.  For instance: you might vote for someone because she or he is not as bad as the next guy but you won’t drink a soda pop for the same reason --
Not unless you’re a dumb shit!     - from Dangerfield's Drum, a story by Kevin O'Kendley

Originally posted on 9/3/2016:


   A relative short-term mass round-up of 11 million illegal immigrants, as suggested by Donald Trump and others, logistically will entail a large source of manpower, secure storage areas to house prisoners, judicial support, transportation (trucks, trains, planes, etc.), healthcare, food, clothing, etc, beyond existing infrastructure and capabilities. Because of the Posse Comitatus Act the American military can't be used for this police action.*  The national guard can be utilized being under the control of the states.
   To raid homes, public areas, and work places, to arrest illegal immigrants, to take away adults, children, the elderly -- families -- possibly in military transports, might inspire in Americans (including law enforcement and the national guard) a resistance to do so, even under orders.  The exponential bureaucracy, the police and imprisonment operations could become a longterm issue -- a new and more aggressive policy of the containment and deportation of illegal immigrants.  To grab 11 million prisoners in 50 states will take millions and millions of dollars, and could prove to be more costly than current policy.  To deport millions of prisoners to Mexico, Central America, Asia, Europe, and elsewhere might encounter resistance from destination countries.  From any perspective -- right or wrong -- its gonna be tough, and it will change our country...
Please see: 8/27/15-blog, part 3, for additional perspective...

* added: 10/29/(16) The Posse Comitatus Act restricts the participation of the U.S. military in domestic law enforcement activities. It was written and passed as law by the 45th Congress of the United States and signed into federal law by President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1878.   - Wikipedia, Rand Corporation

added 9/4/(16):
Rudy Giuliani believes that Donald Trump does not favor mass deportations. "Giuliani told CNN's Jake Tapper" "that Trump 'would find it very difficult to throw out a family that has been here for 15 years and they have three children, two of who are citizens.  That is not the kind of America he wants.'" - CNN

Under the Obama Administration illegal immigrants are being expelled at nine times the rate of twenty years ago.  Though the illegal population -- the numbers -- have stayed relatively steady (even declining some last year), the arrests and deportations by the Border Patrol, ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), and other law enforcement agencies has dramatically risen, beginning with the end of the Clinton and through the Bush Administrations, reaching a zenith with the Obama Administration.  - Reuters, Washington Post, CNN
Please see: 7/24/16-blog on Carbuncle Moon for further information on illegal immigration.


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​Please give to the Volunteers of America: 1660 Duke Street/ Alexandria, VA, 22314/ 703-341-5000, 800-899-0089.