The FBI was so correct....

...Zararias Moussaoui didn't get on the flight.

There is no doubt what the USA intelligence knew!

There is nothing illuminating in stating that 911 was going to happen if "W" was pursuing the intelligence actively rather than planning his next book reading at a kindergarten.

The entire operation that day was quivering at the fact the FBI was absolutely correct! 

Germany told the USA about Atta and that was long before 911.  

When political idiots try to state 911 was always going to happen anyway they eliminate the pursuit of it's reality if "W" and Cheney actually gave a damn about the country rather than war. 

The excuses for not ? figuring it all out ? are as much idiotic as the fact the attacks happened.  

Cheney wasn't interested. He obstructed the entire reality from the second seat of power in the USA government. Don't tell me for one minute the attacks weren't going to happen if the intelligence was actively pursued. The intelligence included hijacking jets. That was never made clear to any airline. Don't even try it. 

The American people were subverted by their own Executive Branch. My god.   Zacarias Moussaoui was known. 

I didn't know there was such a thing as Republican sainthood.

Evidently, the political right wing wants to eliminate not simply women's health needs, but, the research, too.

There are open and wrongful attacks on Planned Parenthood. I would be interested in knowing what are the dates of the supposed illegal status of harvesting and selling fetal tissue in Texas?

August 15, 2015

Andrea K. McDaniels and Meredith Cohn

When Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine professor (click here) Akhilesh Pandey conducts research on cancer, he often turns to the best replica for studying the human disorder: fetal tissue.He could use animals or a computer model, but he says nothing else provides results that are as accurate.
"If we want to study a process, it's best to study the real thing," said Pandey, who has used fetal tissue for more than a decade to better understand pancreatic and breast cancers and leukemia. "Models can be insufficient in mimicking what we want to study. Even today we don't understand all the biological processes. We can make a little bit of skin in the lab or cartilage, but not organs. For that, there is more complicated interplay."
Scientists like Pandey have used tissue from aborted fetuses in their research for years, but debate over the practice has re-emerged after Planned Parenthood was recently accused by anti-abortion activists of profiting from the practice....

The political right wing is stating this is illegal. Clearly it is not. At least not in many states. The medical societies of the USA fought long and hard to conduct this research when "W" was first elected and he banned it from our country. So, this is simply a new attack on the same medical institutions that have created a moral environment for research that saves women's lives.

April 17, 2015
By Operation Rescue By Cheryl Sullenger

Worcester, MA – A loss in court (click here) and increased public outrage over fetal parts trafficking has prompted StemExpress, to sever its ties with Planned Parenthood and recalibrate its public profile to one that is “predominately” focused — at least outwardly — on adult blood and tissue procurement.
This news came in the same week that Operation Rescue obtained purchase orders that show the University of Massachusetts Medical School paid StemExpress a total of $29,000 for human fetal cadaverous tissue, (presumably harvested from Planned Parenthood abortions), for the purpose of creating “humanized” mice.
StemExpress is a biotech company in Placerville, California, that has been featured in video exposés released by the Center for Medical Progress, which show the company partnering with Planned Parenthood to harvest and profit from the sale of aborted baby parts....






No one has done anything wrong and there is a good chance any laws to stop the research by limiting availability of aborted fetus will be unconstitutional. No one is harvesting babies when they could have been born into a family. That would be murder and the world would not tolerate such a thing. These are voluntary abortions and the fetal tissue is sold for the purpose of maintaining women's health options at the clinic end and research to further the wellness of women at the receiving end of the transaction. There is not a darn thing wrong here.

The political right wing are threatening the lives of women. Just that simple.

Get them out of Afghanistan. NOW!

October 19, 2015

By Reuters

An American F-16 aircraft (click here) was hit by small arms fire while conducting a patrol in Afghanistan last week, U.S. military officials said on Monday.

The jet was flying a routine combat air patrol in Paktia province in eastern Afghanistan on Oct. 13 when it was hit by small arms fire, a U.S. military official said.

The fire hit one of the aircraft's stabilizers and damaged one of the munitions it was carrying, said a second official, Captain Jeff Davis, a spokesman for the Department of Defense.

"As a precautionary measure it jettisoned two of its fuel tanks (and) three of its munitions before safely returning to the base," Davis said....

It would be interesting to realize what happened on the ground when the fuel tanks hit and whether or not the munitions exploded along with jettisoned fuel or was it gathered up by the Taliban and/or Afghan children.

Small arms fire at jets that lose their fuel tanks and jettison their munitions is probably a really interesting strategy. Just like robbing banks to fund the wars.

We are such an obliging country. We do all sorts of predictably stupid things that creates and propagates the furtherance of war wherever we find it.

Don't get me wrong, I think the safety of the pilot comes first. The practices of losing military equipment and supplies should come before the death of a pilot. But, it is the idea war is preferred is what I believe a very bad habit of the USA military.

In most of my social circles it would be coined as "shooting yourself in the foot."

Anyone find out if the Iranians got that drone back in the air? It is such a nice piece of machinery I thought maybe.

Sadly, the deaths at Hajj are higher than first assessed.

October 19, 2015
by Jon Gambrell

Dubai, United Arab Emirates — The crush and stampede (click here) that struck the hajj last month in Saudi Arabia killed at least 2,110 pilgrims, a new Associated Press tally showed Monday, after officials in the kingdom met to discuss the tragedy.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Naif bin Abdul Aziz, who is also the kingdom's interior minister, oversaw the meeting late Sunday, according to the official Saudi Press Agency. It did not mention any official response to the rising death toll. The country's own toll since Sept. 26 has stood at 769 people killed and 934 injured.
"The crown prince was reassured on the progress of the investigations," the SPA report said. "He directed the committee's members to continue their efforts to find the causes of the accident, praying to Allah Almighty to accept the martyrs and wishing the injured a speedy recovery."
King Salman ordered the investigation into the Sept. 24 tragedy in Mina, just outside the holy city of Mecca. The disaster was the deadliest in the history of the annual pilgrimage, and came after a crane collapse in Mecca earlier that month killed 111 worshippers. The twin disasters marred the first hajj to be overseen by the king since he ascended to the throne at the start of this year....

Today, Lindsay Graham stated as soon as the British left Libya the late Ambassador should have been ordered out of the country at that time.

Senator Graham doesn't get it, but, saying such idiot things he is playing politics with the dead of Benghazi. 

Senator Graham has far more serious issues facing his constituency than planning the next war for the USA. He and his staff should be in South Carolina working up assessments and planning the request for funding following the devastating and deadly climate crisis storm that hit his state.

And if Senator Graham believes the activity of the personnel of the USA should measure their activities according to that of our allies, then he needs to demand our military leave Afghanistan ASAP. They are the only ones of NATO still there to pressure the decisions of the elections of 2016. I remind. The Taliban does not pose a threat to the USA.

There is an interesting statement made today in the Republican primary.

It relates directly to the truth. The truth I posted on this blog Sunday night regarding the support of "W"s administration and their purposeful lack of action to prevent the attacks of September 11, 2015.

Jeb Bush stated from a podium, not within the interview cited and primarily for his donors to hear, '..those. that hold my brother responsible for 9-11 have been marginalized....'

I find the statement more than interesting and as a political strategy this blog has identified called "plausible deniability." 

From the beginning, when Senator Feinstein called Dick Cheney regarding the CIA PDB everyone knows as "Bin Laden Determined to strike in the US," the strategy to allow terror to exist to the people of the USA, was plausible deniability. The PDB clearly stated the attack was anticipated within three months. Cheney stated that would not be addressed for six months. That is denying the FACT our intelligence services knew clearly there was a threat anticipated. The reasons the Bush/Cheney White House found deniability a preferred status of the PDB is obvious. Neocons love war. What the American people didn't bargain for was that reality. When "W" wrangled his way into the White House in 2000, that FACT about Neocons was unthinkable.

When Jeb Bush stated verbally within the past 24 hours, '..those. that hold my brother responsible for 9-11 have been marginalized....' was addressing his $100 or more million dollar PAC. To make that statement obvious, the former governor was saying the deniability of the terror attack has worked well all these years. He fully expected it to continue to work until he reached the White House in 2016.

So, voters need to realize when a Neocon and his party use every aspect of voter oppression to reach the White House there is an agenda of violence and war. It is a preferred status. It is a preferred status even in the face of the dissolution of the Soviet Union without firing as shot.  

I think it is obvious plausible deniability and the installation of fear would be completely clear to the majority of Americans these days. It is a definite political tool used by the Republicans. They deny a lot of things. They deny corruption all the time. They deny women need institutions such as Planned Parenthood and extended medicaid coverage. They deny there is a need to rein in gun violence. They deny there is gross disparity in USA treasury income and the national debt. They denied the jobs needed for an entire generation we now call Millennials. They deny the climate crisis while South Carolina was unpredicted due to lack of proper modeling protocols which caused enormous and unfathomable destruction of the state's infrastructure.

So, the truth about the prevention of terrorist attacks before the actual downing of the World Trade Towers was completely abandoned. The "W" administration preferred the OK Corral on a global basis than protecting Americans.

9-11 could have been detected and averted. There really is no doubt about that. The 911 Commission and Iraq Study Group established stark realities the people of the USA still haven't identified as chosen failures of the "W" administration. Make no doubt about it. "W" ordered the attacks into Iraq in the face of absolutely no finding of WMD by the UN security personnel in Iraq. After the attacks were carried out and it was stated, "You broke it, you bought it," David Kay did not find any evidence of WMD either.

Neocons are real. They play by rules most Americans abhor. And plausible deniability is their game. Make no mistake JEB! is exactly that and his inability to sincerely campaign is the fact he isn't interested in the truth or THE FACTS.

Don't embarrass yourselves by actually believing "W" brother.

Our children and their future is more important than war and there should never be plausible deniability to take their future from them.

When visiting Israel take the passport and pack the body armor.

October 19, 2015

Jerusalem (AP) " An Eritrean migrant shot (click here) by an Israeli security guard and then attacked by bystanders who mistook him for an assailant in a deadly bus station attack has died of his wounds, Israeli hospital officials said Monday.
The mistaken shooting of the migrant, for reasons that remain unclear, seemed to capture the current climate of ratcheted up tensions among Israelis after months of seemingly random lone-wolf attacks by Palestinians.
"It's terrible," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon. "It shows you what a terrible situation we are in."
The daily newspaper Yediot Ahronot left no ambiguity as to exactly why the man, identified as Mulu Habtom Zerhom, was shot. Monday's headline read: "Just because of his skin color."...

What is the DEFENSE BUDGET in Iraq?

October 19, 2015

Baghdad (AP) A government spokesman (click here) says Iraq's Cabinet has approved next year's budget, sending it to parliament for final approval.
Spokesman Saad al-Hadithi told The Associated Press Monday that the 2016 budget of 106 trillion Iraqi dinars (about $91 billion) will run with a deficit of 23 trillion dinars ($19.72 billion). Al-Hadithi added that the deficit will be relieved through loans from local and international lenders.
He said the budget calculations are based on an assumed oil price of $45 a barrel with an average daily crude oil output of 3.6 million barrels.
Iraq holds the world's fourth largest oil reserves, some 143.1 billion barrels, and oil revenues make up nearly 95 percent of its budget. Like other oil-reliant countries, Iraq's economy has suffered due to plummeting oil prices since last year.

China has always had extensive policies regarding the Panda. Maybe all countries should consider the level of brutality exhibited in Europe before participating in breeding or sale programs.

That is a great bear. Fun. What a ham.

A ban on participation with Europe could be effective and/or demands for excellent treatment or return them to their homeland.

19 October 2015

If European zoos (click here) continue to publicly dissect dead animals, Russia will have to review exchange agreements with such institutions, Environment Minister Sergey Donskoy has stated.

“If they continue to make such attempts we could reconsider all agreements with our colleagues. For me it is hard to even think about the possibility of our animals being shown to the public like this,” the minister told the Izvestia daily. “In any way, when we transfer some animals to foreign zoos, we always keep a record of their future fate,” he said.

Donskoy also added that the Russian authorities always request foreign partners to treat all animals with great care and this does not only include ones that were born in Russia.

The comment came days after the public autopsy of a dead lion in a zoo in the Danish city of Odense. It was performed in front of spectators, including small children. The stunt caused a global outcry, especially after the release of pictures and videos of children who started to cry when they saw the grizzly scene.

In 2014, staff at Copenhagen zoo publicly killed an 18-month old giraffe, dressed the carcass and subsequently fed the meat to lions. This happened despite worldwide protests and attempts to save the animal, which although healthy, had a weak gene pool, which is not allowed by international zoological bodies....

British Dental Journal 219, E6 (2015)
Published online: 25 September 2015

Paracetamol (click here) overdose secondary to dental pain: a case series

I. Siddique, H. Mahmood & R. Mohammed-Al

Introduction There have been documented cases of serious and life-threatening health effects due to patients taking unintentional analgesia overdose secondary to dental pain. We aimed to determine firstly what proportion of unintentional paracetamol overdose cases admitted to an acute medical assessment unit (MAU) were secondary to dental pain, secondly what proportion of such cases encountered barriers to accessing emergency dental care and finally what clinical burden such cases placed on the hospital services....

Paracetamol is an over the counter pain reliever / analgesic. It is found to be causing overdoes after dental work. I thought it was interesting from the stand point of how people are naive of their own ability to over medicate unintentionally. The USA had something similar with Tylenol over a longer period of time which resulted in liver damage.

People believe the labels. First World countries have people that are label readers. They trust. They trust labels because it is a place where their government is suppose to have authority to warn them of dangers. It would be nice of governments actually did protect citizens rather than allow pharmaceutical companies a pass on protects.

Over doses are serious business. Most people don't worry about overdoes and think more is better to solve their pain problems. When there is going to be significant pain other than over the counter medications should be considered.

Over the Counter medications should have a warning about overdose potential that can harm consumers. Over the past ten years we have seen medications that were once prescribed allowed to be sold directly to consumers. If this is what is to come of self-medication then the dangers have to be made obvious.

"Morning Papers"

The Rooster

"Okeydoke"

High School football season is beginning.

September 27. 2015
By Josh Barnett

On the same day (click here) that the high school football community in New Jersey was mourning the death of Warren Hills Regional quarterback Evan Murray, Bartlesville, Okla., was celebrating the life of Ben Hamm.
The funeral for Hamm, 16, was held Saturday morning. Hamm, a junior from Bartlesville’s Wesleyan Christian School, died Sept. 19 from injuries he suffered in game eight days earlier.
The death of Murray and Hamm follow the death of Franklin Parrish (Winnsboro, La.) player Tyrell Cameron in a Sept. 4 game in Louisiana. Late Friday night, Franklin Parish beat Richwood in overtime, its first victory since Cameron’s death.
According to the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research at the University of North Carolina, five high school players died last season of causes directly related to football such as head and spine injuries. Seven more high school players died from indirect causes such as heatstroke.
“This put a lot of things in perspective,” Franklin Parish coach Barry Sebren told USA TODAY High School Sports on Sunday. “You have to try to learn from those moments and take the opportunity to recognize that this thing it’s serious. Some things you thought were serious before are not really. These situations help you understand what’s important and what’s not important.”...

Young men are dying of brain trauma in high school. I think the President needs to get involved and halt the high school football season to evaluate what is going on with these young men. Our teenagers are traumatized. It needs to be addressed.


October 18, 2015
By Patrick Redford

Last night, junior Cam’ron Matthews of Alto High School in Alto, (click here) Texas died after collapsing near the end of the first half of his school’s game against Carlisle High. According to NBC, Matthews complained of dizziness and suffered a seizure on the sidelines. Matthews was airlifted out of the stadium and taken to a hospital in Tyler, about 50 miles away.

The school made the following announcement last night:

Cam’ron Matthews, passed away Saturday, October 17th. He was a junior and a member of the Yellow Jacket Varsity Football team. Please keep the Matthews family, our school and community in your prayers....

The year 2015-2016 is proving to be a repeat of 2014-2015. While there were some deaths related to heat, the majority of the deaths last year and this year are due to head trauma.

November 30, 2014
By Erik Brady

..."No one should die playing the game they love," (click here) his mother told USA TODAY Sports.
Penny Gilbert and Dean Janes want to spare other parents their pain. That's why they sat at a conference table in their attorneys' office here recently, telling stories about their strong-willed son and his life and death.
"We don't want to take away football," Gilbert said. "We just want to make it safer. We don't want Damon to be just a statistic."
The statistics are damning: Janes is one of eight players last year whose deaths were directly related to high school football, according to the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research at the University of North Carolina. This season, five players have died of causes directly related to football, such as head and spine injuries.
Nine high school football players died last season of indirect causes, such as heatstroke. There have been nine more such deaths this season, seven from high school.
And yet for those same seasons, there have been no fatalities directly related to pro, semipro, college and youth football. Which raises the question: Why are high school football players dying at a time when players from other levels are not?
"We're trying to wrap our minds around that," said Kevin Guskiewicz, founding director of the Matthew Gfeller Sport-Related Traumatic Brain Injury Research Center at North Carolina and who also directs the catastrophic injury center's traumatic injury division.
High school football players suffer three times as many catastrophic injuries as college players — meaning deaths, permanent disability injuries, neck fractures and serious head injuries, among other conditions, according to a 2007 study in the American Journal of Sports Medicine.
Three high school football players died in one week at the end of September and beginning of October, including Tom Cutinella, 16, whose undefeated Shoreham-Wading River High School team from Long Island, N.Y., claimed an emotional victory in the Class IV championship game on Sunday. The Suffolk County Football Coaches Association has created a memorial award in his name....

"Good Night, Moon"

The waxing crescent

5.7 days old

32.1% lit

Scientists state Jupiter's Red Spot is shrinking.

...Scientists (click here) have used the maps to spot an unusual wave near the equator -- similar to formations seen in Earth's atmosphere when cyclones are beginning to form -- that's only been seen once before on Jupiter....

...But as these images confirm, the GRS continues to shrink in size. It may have reduced by as much as half in the few hundred years we've been keeping tabs on it. These images show that it's about 150 miles shorter now than it was in 2014, and that it's growing rounder in shape. Its core is also growing less distinct than the rest of it, in terms of color....

TAPPER: So, what are you objecting to about Mr. Trump's remarks about 9/11 and your brother?

BUSH: Look, my brother responded to a crisis, and he did it as you would hope a president would do.
He united the country. He organized our country, and he kept us safe. And there's no denying that. The great majority of Americans believe that.
And I don't know why he keeps bringing this up. It's -- it doesn't show that he's a serious person as it relates to being commander in chief and being the architect of a foreign policy.
Across the spectrum of foreign policy, Mr. Trump talks about things that -- as though he's still on "The Apprentice." I mean, literally, talking about Syria, saying ISIS should take out Assad, then Russia should take out ISIS, as though it was some kind of board game, and not a serious approach, is just -- this is just another example of the lack of seriousness.... 

I don't appreciate 9-11 and "The Apprentice" in the same thought process. It is called politics. 9-11 is not politics. It is facts and deaths and a country wrongly at war in Iraq. It definitely is not politics.

The FACTS have been resolved nearly immediately after the Trade Towers fell, the Pentagon burned and a huge jet crashed in Pennsylvania.

It is called negligence, incompetency; but; more than that it was completely ignored as Cheney stated, to Senator Feinstein, "We won't be able to get to that for another six months."  

"...my brother responded to a crisis..."

No he didn't. The crisis started long before September 11, 2001. He ignored it. He allowed it to happen. 

Face paint for Halloween needs to be recalled because of heavy metals that are dangerous, especially to young children. Do you recall the paint before or after Halloween? 

George Walker Bush NEVER responded to a crisis. At least get that much right. Standing on a pile of rubble is not a crisis, it is what happened when the crisis was ignored.

"Bin Laden Determined to Strike US" (click here)

 "...patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.

The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the US that it considers Bin Laden-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our Embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group of Bin Laden supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives."

It looks to me as though the CIA and FBI were talking to each other.

Among those investigations was Zacarias Moussaoui the 20th suicide jet passenger. What else did anyone need to know? A hand written memo from Osama?

No, Mr. Bush, your brother did not respond to a crisis. He allowed it to happen.

Take the face paint back to the store. They contain heavy metals absorbed through the skin.

October 18, 2015
By Cody Griffin

Schumer (click here) said parents should beware of any Halloween product that is made in China, as all of the makeups tested had at least one risky chemical in them, like lead or nickel.

“These toxic ingredients can make a child sick, but they’re never listed on the package”, Schumer pointed out, holding up makeup palettes by Rubie’s Costume Company, Wet N’ Wild Fantasy Makers, and Fun World as examples of potentially risky products.
“In testing… 100% of the Chinese imports had one of the bad substances in it. So the best thing consumers can do is avoid anything made in China”, Schumer said.
According to a report conducted by the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, 10 out of 10 face paints tested for heavy metals contained lead, and six out of the 10 face paints tested contained nickel, cobalt and/or chromium.
He says parents should check what glitter, lipstick and other cosmetics go on their children’s faces this Halloween.
While lead is banned from makeup in Canada and Europe, it is not banned from makeup sold in the U.S.
“The U.S.is simply not doing enough to protect our children from these harmful ingredients – and that’s a scary thought”, Schumer said.

The site below will help identifying the dangers of these metals. Please take it seriously. The younger the person the worse the toxins will cause sincere damage. 

It is unbelievable that every type of face paint has heavy metals. What are people thinking when they put these products out for sale? 

Please put the warnings in the media. 

Heavy Metal Poisoning (click here)

...But, if these metals accumulate in the body in concentrations sufficient to cause poisoning, then serious damage may occur. The heavy metals most commonly associated with poisoning of humans are lead, mercury, arsenic and cadmium. Heavy metal poisoning may occur as a result of industrial exposure, air or water pollution, foods, medicines, improperly coated food containers, or the ingestion of lead-based paints....

October 18, 2015
By Cynthia Roldan

Lawmakers are expected in 2016 to no longer ignore the state’s already weakened infrastructure, which took a beating during recent floods. Brad Nettles/Staff
 

Columbia -  South Carolina’s lawmakers (click here) are gearing up for what’s going to be a “challenging” and busy legislative session.

Legislators return to Columbia in January, but recent damaging and historic flooding has them facing a costly problem: coming up with the cash to pay for South Carolina’s flood-ravaged roads that were already crumbling.

Before the flood, the S.C. Department of Transportation estimated it needed about $1.4 billion a year for the next 20 years to not only maintain but also improve and expand South Carolina’s roads....

October 18, 2015

By AP

Photos (click here) 
  Columbia, South Caolina - Sampson Pringle (click here) stood on the roof of his stalled truck on an unfamiliar road in the pouring rain. With water rising around him, he told his fiancee not to worry because he saw help coming.
Two days later, after the historic flood waters started to recede, his body had washed up on someone's lawn, hundreds of feet away from his truck.
Pringle was one of 10 people who drowned in the flash floods in the Columbia area from Oct. 3-5. Their common denominator: All were in their vehicles, caught off guard by rising water in places they likely didn't expect to flood. Some were out trying to help others.
"Some were going to work. Some were going to someone else's aid. Some people were just caught by surprise. Unfortunately, they all ended up the same place," said Richland County Coroner Gary Watts, who investigated nine of the drownings. "Just stay off the roads when it might be flooding. Water is much more powerful than you might think."
The victims drowned on little-known waterways like Crane Creek or 25-Mile Creek. A few died on waterways so small they have no name. Their bodies weren't found for hours or sometimes days in the chaos happening across Columbia where an inch of rain fell every 30 minutes for hours and hours. Several smaller earthen dams broke, but engineers still haven't been able to piece together which ones failed first and started the chain reaction....


October 18, 2015
By Ellen Thalls

Northwest Arkansas (KFSM)- Historic flooding in South Carolina (click here) earlier this month has left over a dozen people dead and thousands impacted. On Sunday (Oct. 18), one local non-profit sent volunteers to lend a helping hand.
"I can't sleep at night, I have to be there," Volunteer Chadd Landress said.
Landress is one of 100 volunteers Sheepdog Impact Assistance has in South Carolina. Landress has already spent a week in the wreckage and came back to Northwest Arkansas to load more supplies for a second round.
"It's suffocating for the individuals, you can look at a house has mud in it in one room, and it's easy to clean, when it's through the whole house, it's overwhelming, where does an individual begin, where do they start trying to put their life back together?" Landress said.
Sgt. Maj. Lance Nutt is the president of the organization. He said this time their mission is a little different, because the flooding put a hold on immediate outside help.
"We are usually a chainsaw response team, going in within the first 24 to 48 hours and helping clear roads and debris, this one it's more of a humanitarian mission to just deliver some of the basics," Nutt said.
Landress said they'll be taking down water, food and other basic survival items. He said it's the least they can do to help.
"I'm torn to know that somebody is suffering, we're all military, firefighter, police EMT we've all been given such skill, such training to do this kind of stuff, so it's almost like a personal mission, we've got to go out there and utilize those skills, for the betterment of those who are suffering," Landress said.
Landress said the group plans to have volunteers in the disaster area until Oct. 25.

His last hand wave "Good-bye"

Three sons and a daughter of this land, four individuals and four dreams: Lincoln, liberty; Martin Luther King, liberty in plurality and non-exclusion; Dorothy Day, social justice and the rights of persons; and Thomas Merton, the capacity for dialogue and openness to God.


Four representatives of the American people.

I will end my visit to your country in Philadelphia, where I will take part in the World Meeting of Families. It is my wish that throughout my visit the family should be a recurrent theme. How essential the family has been to the building of this country! And how worthy it remains of our support and encouragement! Yet I cannot hide my concern for the family, which is threatened, perhaps as never before, from within and without. Fundamental relationships are being called into question, as is the very basis of marriage and the family. I can only reiterate the importance and, above all, the richness and the beauty of family life.

In particular, I would like to call attention to those family members who are the most vulnerable, the young. For many of them, a future filled with countless possibilities beckons, yet so many others seem disoriented and aimless, trapped in a hopeless maze of violence, abuse and despair. Their problems are our problems. We cannot avoid them. We need to face them together, to talk about them and to seek effective solutions rather than getting bogged down in discussions. At the risk of oversimplifying, we might say that we live in a culture which pressures young people not to start a family, because they lack possibilities for the future. Yet this same culture presents others with so many options that they too are dissuaded from starting a family.

A nation can be considered great when it defends liberty as Lincoln did, when it fosters a culture which enables people to “dream” of full rights for all their brothers and sisters, as Martin Luther King sought to do; when it strives for justice and the cause of the oppressed, as Dorothy Day did by her tireless work, the fruit of a faith which becomes dialogue and sows peace in the contemplative style of Thomas Merton.

In these remarks I have sought to present some of the richness of your cultural heritage, of the spirit of the American people. It is my desire that this spirit continue to develop and grow, so that as many young people as possible can inherit and dwell in a land which has inspired so many people to dream.

God bless America!

There is something about fire that is hitting closer to home.

Colder weather is closing in and the use of heaters could be a factor, but, I have noticed Americans dying regularly from house fires. The story at the bottom of the page are three dead children because the mother turned on the stove to heat the house.

October 18, 2015
5:53 PM
 
CHICOPEE – (click here) An 87-year-old woman and her 60-year-old son were killed in a fast-moving fire that also came close to taking the life of a third family member Sunday.
The fire at 82 Montcalm St. was reported at 7:43 a.m. As firefighters raced from the station, they could already see a plume of black smoke from the fire, Acting Fire Chief Dean F. Desmarais said.
When they arrived, firefighters were told there were people inside and did everything they could to rescue them, but could not safely enter the house, he said....

Oct 18 2015 
06:25:51 PM EDT

Dearborn Heights, Mich - 
The Dearborn Heights Fire Chief (click here) says the mobile home fire that killed a 60-year-old man Sunday morning was likely accidental. The flames started in the back of the home in a bathroom cabinet.
The first happened just after 7 a.m. Sunday, when a neighbor saw smoke and called 911.
"I was afraid that he was in there," Brad Osada said.
The 60-year-old man was inside his mobile home when the fire started.
Chief Dave Brogan said firefighters found the man in the front living room unconscious and pulled him from the burning home. They were able to revive his pulse using CPR, but the man died from his injuries at Oakwood Hospital....

October 18, 2015

Firefighters battled (click here) a two-alarm blaze at a well-known Montgomery County country club Sunday.

The Lulu Country Club in Montgomery County is a total loss after a fire this morning....

...NBC10's Aundrea Cline-Thomas reported from the scene that about noon, roughly 100 firefighters were at the clubhouse fighting the blaze. The flames, which tore from the basement through the roof at one point, were knocked down by that point, and firefighters continued to put water on hot spots.

The building's old construction and a lack of a water source nearby created problems for firefighters trying to douse the massive blaze, officials said. Authorities believed the fire originated in the basement of the building and were investigating to determine what caused it later Sunday....

October 18, 2015

Minneapolis  - Friends, family and community members (click here) gathered at a church on Saturday to say goodbye to three young children who were killed in a house fire.
Six-year-old Latorious Thomas, 5-year old Latoria Thomas and 1-year-old Latorianna Thomas all perished on October 4 in a fire that consumed a Minneapolis house their family had just moved into that day.
At their funeral at Elim Lutheran Church in Robbinsdale, a number of pastors spoke, including Pastor Harding Smith who said, "When the kids came from Chicago four months ago - living with grandma - and they came over to the church, I still remember the energy of the little girl running through the church."
The program said Latorious loved activities, sports and money. Latoria loved dancing and watching cartoons. Latorianna, who was about to turn two, loved life and having fun....

From these disasters, we can take away two lessons: Increasing resilience now can build protection for the future, and stressed systems are more prone to disasters.

September 18, 2015
By Noah's S. Diffenbaugh and Christopher B. Field

...But before (click here) everyone gets too excited, it is important to understand this: Two physical realities virtually ensure that Californians will still face drought, regardless of how this El Niño unfolds.

The first is that California has missed at least a year’s worth of precipitation, meaning that it would take an extraordinarily wet rainy season to single-handedly break the drought. Even if that happened, we would most likely suffer from too much water too fast, as occurred in the early 1980s and late 1990s, when El Niño delivered more rainfall than aquifers could absorb and reservoirs could store.

The second is that California is facing a new climate reality, in which extreme drought is more likely. The state’s water rights, infrastructure and management were designed for an old climate, one that no longer exists.

Our research has shown that global warming has doubled the odds of the warm, dry conditions that are intensifying and prolonging this drought, which now holds records not only for lowest precipitation and highest temperature, but also for the lowest spring snowpack in the Sierra Nevada in at least 500 years. These changing odds make it much more likely that similar conditions will occur again, exacerbating other stresses on agriculture, ecosystems and people....

...Add in the fact that the drought and wildfires have hardened the ground, and a paradox arises wherein the closer El Niño comes to delivering enough precipitation to break the drought this year, the greater the potential for those hazards....

"How Pope Francis defines a good political leader."

I found it interesting The Washington Post revisited the words of Pope Francis in relation to leadership. I think that was very wise at a time when Washington has lot it's way.

September 24, 2015
By Jena McGregor

..."A good political leader is one who, (click here) with the interests of all in mind, seizes the moment in a spirit of openness and pragmatism. A good political leader always opts to initiate processes rather than possessing spaces."

The latter sentence recalls a passage from his apostolic exhortation from late 2013. In it, he promoted the idea that political leaders focus too much on the present and on power, when they should be focusing on actions that will "generate new processes in society." He also said, "Giving priority to space means madly attempting to keep everything together in the present, trying to possess all the spaces of power and of self-assertion ... giving priority to time means being concerned about initiating processes."

Perhaps the simpler one for lawmakers to comprehend is his first definition: that good political leaders are the ones who always think of the common good, and who take action with a realistic yet open mind. It's a reminder our elected leaders needed to hear....

A century ago, at the beginning of the Great War, which Pope Benedict XV termed a “pointless slaughter”, another notable American was born: the Cistercian monk Thomas Merton. He remains a source of spiritual inspiration and a guide for many people. In his autobiography he wrote: “I came into the world. Free by nature, in the image of God, I was nevertheless the prisoner of my own violence and my own selfishness, in the image of the world into which I was born. That world was the picture of Hell, full of men like myself, loving God, and yet hating him; born to love him, living instead in fear of hopeless self-contradictory hungers”. Merton was above all a man of prayer, a thinker who challenged the certitudes of his time and opened new horizons for souls and for the Church. He was also a man of dialogue, a promoter of peace between peoples and religions.

From this perspective of dialogue, I would like to recognize the efforts made in recent months to help overcome historic differences linked to painful episodes of the past. It is my duty to build bridges and to help all men and women, in any way possible, to do the same. When countries which have been at odds resume the path of dialogue – a dialogue which may have been interrupted for the most legitimate of reasons – new opportunities open up for all. This has required, and requires, courage and daring, which is not the same as irresponsibility. A good political leader is one who, with the interests of all in mind, seizes the moment in a spirit of openness and pragmatism. A good political leader always opts to initiate processes rather than possessing spaces (cf. Evangelii Gaudium, 222-223).

Being at the service of dialogue and peace also means being truly determined to minimize and, in the long term, to end the many armed conflicts throughout our world. Here we have to ask ourselves: Why are deadly weapons being sold to those who plan to inflict untold suffering on individuals and society? Sadly, the answer, as we all know, is simply for money: money that is drenched in blood, often innocent blood. In the face of this shameful and culpable silence, it is our duty to confront the problem and to stop the arms trade.