World News Korner

- image credit: screengrab via WKAR-TV -

Democrat candidate running for governor of Michigan, Mark McFarlin, tells Michigan Live he didn't vote for Obama because he believes Obama's birth certificate is suspect. Asked if Obama was born in Hawaii, McFarlin said, "No."

Excerpt via Michigan Live:

As is often the case, once they turn the TV cameras off, Off the Record guests suddenly make news.

The questioning started out rather innocently.

“Have you ever voted for a Republican?” the Democrat was asked.

“Yes, Mitt Romney,” he revealed while adding he had two chances to vote for Barack Obama and did not.

Now he had every correspondent’s attention as he launches into his assertion that Mr. Obama is not a citizen of the United States.

Donald Trump, step-aside.

Asked if he believed Mr. O. was born in Hawaii, he said, “No.”

Asked if he believed Mr. O. was born in the United States, he said. “No.”

As a private investigator, Mr. McFarlin argues the document the White House issued to
end this never-ending flap is suspect.

How’s so?

He claims the term “African-American” appears on the line for race on the birth certificate and Mr. McFarlin says at the time Mr. Obama was born the term was not in use. He argues the term should have been “Negro.”

But under further questioning, asked to confirm his notion that the President was not an American citizen, he seemed to walk it back.

“Based on the evidence that is out there that leads me to that direction.” [...] Continued @ MLive.

The first comment sums it up: I guess there is such a thing as an intelligent Democrat after all.





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Courtesy of Facebook

I saw this yesterday on Levi's Facebook account:

Hope everyone had a great thanksgiving! I'm thankful that I have a job doing what I always wanted to do. I'm thankful for my beautiful, loving, supportive wife and her inspiring drive in life. I'm thankful for the most perfect, gorgeous baby girl that is so fun loving and nothing but smiles. Very thankful for my perfect mini me of a son. I'm thankful that I might get to see him in December to come open all of his presents and hopefully get to stay for as long as possible!

That last part really got me. I could not help but be reminded of the number of holidays that I also celebrated without my daughter, when her mother moved out of state. But at least in my case I had a custody plan on record with the courts and I had something to use for leverage if my ex decided to play fast and loose with the time I spent with my baby.

I can tell you from experience that it hurts your heart in a way that nothing else can, to put on a happy face, and try to celebrate when all you can think of is who is not there to celebrate with you.

At least I was able to talk to my little girl on the phone and tell her that it was only a few weeks more and we would be back together. We would countdown together and talk every week as the time grew shorter.

Levi does not have that. And neither does Tripp.

They seem to live in a constant state of insecurity as to when they can be together, or how long they must be apart. But the thing is, that commonality will create a bond, and that bond will be one that his mother is forging right now whether she knows it or not.

I cannot help but feel badly for Levi, but his day is coming.

All he has to do is to never stop telling his boy how much he loves him, how much he misses him, and how much he wishes that things were different. As long as Tripp knows that, and knows who it is that is making it hurt so much, then he will know who to blame in the long run.

I don't know if Bristol reads here but let me warn her that these games may be satisfying right now, but she will live to regret them when Tripp gets older. I have worked with kids for many decades, quite a few who came from broken families, and I can guarantee that the parent who uses their child to punish their ex pays a hefty price.

Trust me.

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Courtesy of USA Today:

Healthcare.gov has doubled its user capacity and eliminated many bugs in time for today's deadline, when the Obama administration pledged the problematic website would operate smoothly "for the vast majority" of people trying to access the site.

Jeffrey Zients, who is leading a technical team charged with fixing the website after its disastrous Oct. 1 rollout, said capacity is being increased to 50,000 simultaneous users and more than 800,000 total consumer visits a day.

That would allow about 1.84 million people to "comfortably" sign up for health insurance coverage through the federal exchange by Dec. 23, or in time for Jan. 1 coverage, he said at a White House briefing. Potentially more than 9.5 million people could sign up before March 31, or the end of the 2014 enrollment period.

"That said, there could be moments in the middle of the day — seems to be the peak — where capacity goes beyond that current user level, at which point there will be a customer-friendly queuing system which would notify you when to come back to the site and sort of be first in line," Zients said. In other words, people will receive an e-mail letting them know when to return to the page.

There are still some glitches, but the improvements are impressive and mean that the time left for Republicans to use the website as an example of Obamacare's failure is almost up.

Once this piece is in place, and functioning appropriately, it should not take long for more stories about successful signups, and reduced premiums, will start filtering in and will soon outweigh those about cancelled policies.

The important thing is for all of this to get squared away before the 2014 election cycle. It would be immensely helpful if the Democrats could run on the success of the ACA rather than feel they have to run away from it.

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Locked in a closet with a broken door for hours. And this is what passes for Christian education?

"What special training do you have to deal with children who have special needs? You don't have anything. You have nothing."

"How dare you. How dare you take children who have special needs."

God I love that response!

I work with children who have special needs and behaviors problems and I can say that our training never stops. There are constant workshops and educational opportunities presented to keep us up to date and to ensure that we are providing adequate care.

I can also tell you that if I locked a child in a closet that would be my LAST day of employment, as well it should be.

And that arrogant asshole standing next to that teacher, in my opinion, represents Christian schools in nutshell.




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The Freedom Ship would be home to 50,000 people and have its own airport, casinos and shopping centers. The Florida-based company behind the city of the sea says it is hopeful it can raise the $1 billion needed to begin construction on the massive vessel.




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Sixty-three women from around the world broke the previous vertical formation skydiving record on Saturday, Nov. 30, leaping 18,000 feet from three aircrafts near Eloy, Ariz.


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By Tim Gaynor of Reuters

Actor Paul Walker arrives for the World Premiere of 'Fast & Furious 6' at a London cinema on May 7.



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By Daisy Nguyen and Jake Coyle of Associated Press

Wreckage of a plane that crashed Friday, Nov. 29, near Saint Marys, Alaska.


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By Dan Joling of Associated Press

Hey let's take a trip in our time machines, or actually Joe's book "The Rogue,"to remember a simpler time, a time of good basketball, good food, and good sex?

Courtesy of Deadspin:

After her graduation, Sarah returned to Alaska and worked on the sports desk of Anchorage television station KTUU. On weekends, she'd sometimes appear on camera, delivering sports reports during the 10:00 PM newscast.

Her attitude toward people of color was evolving. In Anchorage, she even dated black men. A friend says, "Sarah and her sisters had a fetish for black guys for a while."

Each year, over Thanksgiving weekend, the University of Alaska hosted a basketball tournament called the Great Alaska Shootout, featuring some of the country's best teams. In 1987, one of the top squads to visit Anchorage was the University of Michigan, led by six-foot-eight junior Glen Rice, number 41.

Rice would lead Michigan to the NCAA Championship in 1989, appearing on the cover of Sports Illustrated and setting a scoring record for the NCAA tournament that stands today. After graduating from Michigan as the school's all-time leading scorer, he starred in the NBA for fifteen years.

Whether in her professional capacity as a sports reporter or simply as a basketball groupie who'd begun to find black men attractive, Sarah linked up with the Rice during the weekend tournament. One friend recalls, "They went out. I suspect it was more than that. I can't say I know they had sex, but I remember Sarah feeling pretty good that she'd been with a black basketball star."

In one version of the story, Sarah's encounter with Rice took place in her sister Molly's dorm room at the University of Alaska Anchorage. "She hauled his ass down," a friend says, "but she freaked out afterward. Hysterical, crying, totally flipped out. The thing that people remember is her freak-out, how completely crazy she got: I fucked a black man! She was just horrified. She couldn't believe she'd done it."

Glen Rice remembers the weekend quite differently. When I spoke to him by telephone in March 2011, he said, "I remember it as if it was yesterday. She was a sweetheart. I met her almost as soon as we got out there."

Rice does not recall being in a university dorm room. "We hung out mostly at the hotel where the team was staying," he told me. "We just hit off. In a short time, we got to know a lot about one another. It was all done in a respectful way, nothing hurried."

"So you never had the feeling she felt bad about having sex with a black guy?" I asked.

"No, no, no, nothing like that," Rice said. "Even after I left Alaska, we talked a lot on the phone. I think right up until the time she got married. She was a gorgeous woman. Super nice. I was blown away by her. Afterward, she was a big crush that I had. I talked about her for a long time. Only good things. She was a well-rounded young lady. It's amazing the way that's stayed with me. I think the utmost of her and I felt that way from the start."

Well so much for the old adage, "Once you go black, you never go back."

However I wonder how many white women who had a fling with a black man then became an out right racist?

Was she simply angry that Rice was not as profoundly affected by their fling as she was, or was her racism already in place ("I fucked a black man!") and she was simply freaked out by the fact that she had slipped, and immediately ran back into the arms of the racially mixed, but totally passing for white, Todd Palin?

Whatever the case it seems that her love/hate relationship with African American men has endured to this day.

"Move Joe I just want to touch him." "No bitch back away before I call the Secret Service."

Happy Thanksgiving weekend Sarah! I know it will never compare to certain Thanksgiving weekends from the past, but hey how many times can a woman get her turkey stuffed by a 6 foot 8 basketball star anyway?

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Courtesy of USA Today:

The White House announced Sunday it has met its goal to make the Healthcare.gov website operate smoothly for most users by Nov. 30.

"The bottom line is health care.gov on December first is night and day from where it was October first," said Jeffrey Zients, the president's appointee to fix the website's problems. "The site is now stable and operating at its intended capacity at greatly improved performance."

When the site -- which allows people to compare private plan benefits and costs before buying an insurance policy -- launched Oct. 1, millions of people were disappointed by slow or frozen pages, an inability to log in, and incorrect or missing information. The White House tapped Zients to lead a team to fix the site.

At the beginning of November, Zients said the site had an "up time" of just 43%. As of Nov. 30, the site's up time was 95%.

"We have a much more stable system that's reliably open for business," he said in a Sunday conference call with reporters.

After hardware updates and bug fixes that continued through the weekend, the federal health exchange site now has the capacity to serve 50,000 people at a time, for a total of 800,000 people a day, according to a report issued Sunday by the Department of Health and Human Services.

That figure is "conservative," Zients said, because they figured it using an eight-hour day, rather than a 24-hour day.

According to the administration, Zients' repair team has so far:

• Made hundreds of software fixes, upgraded hardware, and monitored the system to make improvements;
• Stabilized the site at its original intended capacity; and
• Improved overall metrics, which means the site is working well for most users.

A new hardware upgrade made Friday quadrupled the registration capacity, Zients said, and response times are under one second with an error rate below 1%.

Over the holiday weekend, "Traffic has been significantly higher than a typical weekend," Zients said, but the website has handled the traffic smoothly.

Okay well, using Right Wing logic, if the fact that the website was NOT working effectively before meant that Obamacare was an abject failure, then doesn't the fact that it IS working now mean......

Now let the Republican scramble for new talking points begin!

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Courtesy of USA Today:

President Obama is doing his part to support small businesses.

Obama and daughters Malia and Sasha dropped in Saturday at Washington's Politics and Prose bookstore and purchased what he said was a "long list" of books that included The Kite Runner,Harold and the Purple Crayon, and The Sports Gene.

The president said he bought a reader for every age, from 5 to 52 — his age. He paid by credit card. The total was not announced.

(Well I can tell you which book he didn't buy!)

I have to admit that I am feeling a little sentimental towards our President right now.

After the holidays I might come back and bitch about the NSA or complain that the Healthcare.gov website should have been ready to rock and roll on day one, but right now I can't bring myself to do any of that.

During Thanksgiving the relatives waited until I was full of turkey and wine before going at me over Obamacare, but I am happy to report that I had little trouble knocking heads together and correcting talking points.

However at one point somebody said that President Obama was a failure, the worst President ever in fact, and I have to admit that I got pissed! Really pissed!

Instead of rationally explaining why that was incorrect, I lost my shit and demanded examples.

When they started throwing out talking points and quotes from Facebook I explained that if they were going to come at me with shit they read on Facebook they were going to walk away with stumps for arms.

I sat them in their chairs and went through the entire build up to the Affordable Care Act, from Hillary's attempt in the 90's, to the fact that it was really an expansion of Mitt Romney's Massachusetts plan, to the steady stream of Right Wing attacks it has endured since its inception.

I also asked my family to consider the purpose of the law, and why they thought this man considered it important enough to risk his entire presidency on.

They stuttered for awhile, so I explained the benefits from the program, and even explained why THEY should be building a damn statue to the man instead of running him down.

In the end I think they had their perspective shifted quite a bit, but I came away angry that the Republicans had been so successful that such a conversation had to take place.

So now I am just raring for a fight.

Who's next?

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