Thanksgiving Day has always been a special day to me. I'm blessed in so many ways and it's an important day to remind myself of that. It's also a day for great eats! Love the turkey, the gravy, the pie. Love the football on the TV. Love spending the day with friends and family.

This year, I'll be on the air with you in the morning with our traditional "Turkey Phone Bank" show--call us if you have any questions on how to cook your bird!We'll have chefs on hand to answer your questions. Eric Spillman will visit a few homes to see how folks are doing in their kitchens.

Later, the Buckley family will enjoy dinner with our friends, the Lachmans, who were kind enough to accept our invitation when we...invited ourselves over! On Friday, we'll head down to San Diego for a basketball tournament and enjoy the weekend with my parents who will join us there.

In short, it'll be a great weekend and I'll be giving thanks for all of it on Thanksgiving Day. On that day, I will also no doubt think back to one particular Thanksgiving Day from about 20 years ago when I was working as a reporter in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, that wasn't so wonderful.

I was still single and had just started working in North Carolina. I hardly knew a soul there and of course, I had to work the holiday. I was with a photographer who couldn't have been more depressed about working the holiday and while I started the day trying to think positive--it was tough given the company. We ended up eating pressed turkey at a Shoney's Restaurant for our Thanksgiving meal and then I went home to an empty apartment. I felt pretty blue by the time I went to bed.

I think about that memory because I suspect some of you may find yourself alone on a day when everyone else seems to be celebrating with family and friends. It can turn what's supposed to be a wonderful day, into a sad one. My advice? Go to your local shelter, your local church, your local food bank or senior center and pitch in. Last year, I spent just a couple of hours at the Los Angeles Mission helping to feed folks on the day before Thanksgiving and it was incredibly satisfying. You'll be surrounded by people, you'll be doing a great thing for your fellow man, you'll make a friend or two. And speaking of good works on Thanksgiving--I wanted to recommend a great program that will air on Thursday evening at 6 P.M. on CNN.

My old pals at CNN invited me to a taping of the program last weekend called "CNN Heroes: An All-Star Tribute." It was shot at the Kodak Theater like a big-deal awards program and hosted by Anderson Cooper. There were musical guests like Alicia Keyes and John Legend. Presenters included Cameron Diaz and Hugh Jackman. But these awards weren't given to fellow celebrities and stars. The honorees were "ordinary people" who've made an "extraordinary impact" through their volunteer efforts. Among the recipients--a Los Angeles nanny, Marie Da Silva, who lost 14 family members to AIDS and now funds a school in her native Malwai for children orphaned by the disease. It's moving stuff and the kind of program that makes one think about all the need out there and all the folks who are giving so much of themselves to fill those needs. If you can't catch it on Thursday, I recommend it for your TIVO list.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Back in the mid-1980s, I spent a summer interning as a reporter for The Detroit News. I lived at the University of Windsor in Canada and drove across the Ambassador Bridge every morning to write about the Motor City. One thing I learned that summer? Everyone in Michigan is connected in one way or another to the automotive industry.

Generations of Michigan automotive workers have fed their families, bought homes, sent their kids to college and generally lived the American Dream because of their work at the auto plant. That's why what's happening to the industry is so sad. The American auto industry is critically ill and may be on its death bed. Future generations of auto workers may not have a plant to go to. But the question is: should we bail them out? Should Congress loan the Big Three (Chrysler, GM and Ford) $25 billion of the $700 billion economic rescue fund to keep them afloat? 

That's exactly what the chief executives of the Big Three are asking us to do. If you buy their argument, these companies are so important to America's economy--not just Michigan's--that we have to keep them alive. As GM's Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner put it in an op-ed piece in today's Wall Street Journal: "The future of the domestic auto business is critical to the health of the U.S. economy. It is a vital engine of economic growth and a foundation of economic stability. It remains a path of upward mobility for millions of American families. For Americans to compete in the global market-place in the 21st century, it needs a strong manufacturing base and a vital domestic auto industry." Wagoner went on to say: "Short-term government support to bridge the current financial crisis will enable GM to continue as an engine for prosperity and as a creator of vehicles and technologies that America needs."

An op-ed piece in the New York Times today had a very different point of view. It was written by former presidential candidate Mitt Romney (whose father was chief executive of American Motors in the 1950s). The title of his piece: "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt." Romney writes: "Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course--the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check."

Romney goes after the management of the Big Three, saying "management as is must go. New faces should be recruited from unrelated industries--from companies widely respected for excellence in marketing, innovation, creativity and labor relations."

Some members of Congress, meanwhile, don't seem to be particularly receptive to the pitch from the big auto bosses--especially after learning they arrived in Washington...in their private jets. 

"There is a delicious irony in seeing private luxury jets flying into Washington, D.C., and people coming off of them with tin cups in their hand, saying that they're going to be trimming down and streamlining their businesses," said Rep. Gary Ackerman, a democrat from New York. "It's almost like seeing a guy show up at the soup kitchen in high hat and tuxedo. It kind of makes you a little bit suspicious."

He went on to say: "Couldn't you all have downgraded to first class or jet-pooled or something to get here? It would have at least sent a message that you do get it."

What's your view? Do they get it? Should the Big Three get a bailout from the economic rescue fund?

For those of you just waking up this morning, we've been broadcasting live since about 3 o'clock this morning on the fire burning in Sylmar. This one is as bad as it gets. We've seen dozens of homes burn. Our power transmission lines into LA are threatened. DWP is asking ALL DWP customers to conserve energy today--not to use major appliances. As I write this from the set, the 5 Freeway is closed through the Newhall Pass. There are other freeway closures on the 210, the 14 and the 118. Make sure to check with Cal Trans before you head out today. Here's an LA City FD line you can call for other fire information: 1-800-439-2909. If you have any firsthand accounts or want to pass along information on the fire to everyone, feel free to post it here.

Our prayers are with the firefighters, homeowners and other residents in the fire zone today.

I spent my childhood among the men and women who serve this nation in uniform. My dad was career military, my friends' dads were military men, too. While they wore the uniform at the office or in the field, at home and in the military housing neighborhoods that I grew up in, they were just dads. I knew them as Little League coaches and Cub Scout leaders. We went fishing and later golfing together. I hung out at their homes, ate burgers from their grills, drank Shasta from their coolers.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger says we need to increase the sales tax in California 1.5 cents on the dollar to deal with our budget shortfall. Add that to the half-cent sales tax hike we just passed (pending the final count) here in LA County to fund transit projects and we're looking at a 10.25% sales tax rate in LA.

Is it necessary? Are you willing to pay it? Will you leave California to make your purchases? We want to know what you think and we'll read some of your comments in the 8 o'clock hour this morning.

Four years ago today (Sunday), I was in Manchester, New Hampshire covering John Kerry's campaign. I was excited about being on the campaign plane, about being up-close to a presidential race, about seeing history unfold before my eyes.  I was also exhausted from the four hours of sleep every night, from the filing of stories under incredible deadline pressure, from the criss-crossing of the country with the senator as he sprinted toward election day.

By that final weekend of the campaign in '04, the polling wasn't definitively favoring President Bush or Senator Kerry. Still, Kerry campaign officials were telling us they were confident victory would be theirs.

As I told Wolf Blitzer on that Sunday before the election:

"Kerry advisers are feeling pretty good about polling. They believe the undecided voters will break for them at the end. And Wolf, they also add, that they believe they're in a better position at this point in the campaign than Al Gore was in 2000 in terms of paid media and ground game and their polling."

The message from the Kerry campaign on election day was much the same.

By then, we were in Boston for what was supposed to be the Kerry "victory" party. 

CNN Producer Carol Cratty and I manned the "live" position for much of the day before handing it off to the evening crew.

I immediately retired to my hotel room and crashed. I expected to awake from my nap a couple of hours later knowing who our next president would be. I was wrong.

The Kerry folks still felt confident their man would be elected, but as the results were coming in, it was becoming clear that it was going to be close.

Kerry went to sleep that night without declaring victory or conceding defeat. The next morning, we were told, he awoke to a debate within his camp about whether he should take legal action in Ohio to challenge the results there. It would have resulted in yet another post-election legal fight that would have kept the nation in limbo as election lawyers fought it out. Kerry decided it was a losing cause and he called President Bush the day after the election to congratulate him.

How will it turn out this time? We'll soon know the answer to that. This time though, I won't be waking up in a hotel room on the other side of the country before reporting the results. While I'll miss the up-close view of a campaign in its final hours, I won't miss the exhaustion. I don't miss the road. I'm looking forward to going to my local polling place on election day with my wife to cast our votes. We'll bring our sons with us to show them how democracy works.

On Wednesday, I'll be up early with the rest of the KTLA team for our special coverage of the election results. Our broadcast on Wednesday begins at 4 A.M. I hope you'll join us. And as always, I'd love to hear what you're thinking about the election, the candidates and the issues.