Yes, there is ...............

I saw this on Facebook, read it .... went on to other things ... and then went back and read it again. There is a lot of truth to it.

School shootings are dreadful, we wonder why, but ..... in a way .... they do not affect me, here, personally. I don't go to school, so, I am concerned as to why, in a way, but not directly concerned.

Ebola was not a concern, when it was ..... in Africa ....... WHAT, one in Columbus, Ohio, a few miles away .... great concern on my part, not so much for me, but my children and grand children and great grandchildren .... it was getting ....... "close to home."

I guess, also, perhaps a pharmaceutical company could come up with a vaccine or something to take care of the problem .... a much more difficult problem in the schools, and society.

There is a difference in concern though, he makes a good point.

This post if for Jim Madison out in OK .........

"There's a Kinko's three blocks South, they do resumes, Brady, good luck wherever you end up," the Michigan State coach commented during the post game, mid field handshake.

EAST LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Brady Hoke was the last person to enter Michigan's locker room, a couple of state troopers trailing behind him waited outside.

Moments later, Hoke's voice boomed loud enough to be heard through the concrete walls and into the hallway. The coach challenged his team to get back to work and laid the blame for the Wolverines' latest loss to rival Michigan State on himself.

"I didn't prepare you well enough," he yelled. It was brief. There's not much left to say.

Nothing seems to be changing for Michigan. Certainly not against No. 8 Michigan State.

The latest mauling of the Wolverines by the Spartans ended 35-11 on Saturday.

Michigan (3-5, 1-3 Big Ten) finally scored a touchdown in the fourth quarter, its first against their rivals since 2011. Whether or not the Wolverines could get into the end zone was the only interesting thing about the fourth quarter.

"We're all very disappointed and should be," Hoke said. "No. 1 a rivalry game and it's a Big Ten game. The message also is we're going back to work. We have each other."

It used to be news when Michigan State (7-1, 4-0) beat Michigan, when little brother rose up and knocked the mighty Wolverines down a peg. Now it's routine and the Paul Bunyan Trophy has taken up almost permanent residence in East Lansing. The Spartans have won six of seven, and the last two have been noncompetitive.

Michigan State has stepped on Michigan on its way to the top of the Big Ten, and the Wolverines inability to keep that from happening, to swing the rivalry back toward Michigan, is one of the reasons Hoke's future as coach in Ann Arbor is in serious doubt.

Win totals have been on the decline at Michigan since Hoke's first season, when he took a team left behind by Rich Rodriguez to the Sugar Bowl. Then it was eight wins in 2012 and seven last year. He came into this season needing to reverse that trend. Instead, the slide continues.

You know it's looking bad for a coach when the rival fans start begging for him to stay. Before Saturday's game a plane flew a banner over Spartan Stadium that read: U OF M - KEEP BRADY HOKE - PLZZZ. Michigan State fans chanted "Keep Brady."

"No," senior linebacker Jake Ryan said when asked if he heard the sarcastic chants. "We're going into work tomorrow."

Michigan needs to win three of its last four just to be bowl eligible, and finishes the season at rival Ohio State.

Steenkamp was about to leave Pistorius, says mother

London (AFP) - The mother of Oscar Pistorius's girlfriend believes that her daughter was about to leave the disgraced athlete when he shot her dead in what a South African judge ruled to be culpable homicide.

June Steenkamp -- mother of 29-year-old model Reeva Steenkamp -- also told Britain's newspaper The Times that she and her husband Barry were haunted by images of the shooting, for which Pistorius was sentenced to a five-year jail term.

"Her clothes were packed. There is no doubt in our minds: she had decided to leave Oscar that night," she wrote in her new book, serialised in the Times, adding that her daughter had confided to her that she "had not slept" with the runner and was "scared to take the relationship to that level".

Pistorius, the first double amputee Paralympian to compete against able-bodied athletes at the 2012 London Olympics, said he shot Steenkamp four times through a locked door to the bathroom in his Pretoria home because he mistakenly believed there was an intruder inside.
In "Reeva: a Mother's Story", June Steenkamp wrote that she was "shocked" that the athlete was found guilty only of culpable homicide, or manslaughter.

She called Pistorius "arrogant", "moody", "volatile" and "combustible", saying he was a "trigger-happy" gun lover who was "possessive" of her daughter.

SMI 10/25/14

Another Saturday Morning Inspection, my first one actually happened in 1950, at The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina ..... did them for a couple of years, then my ADD kicked in and I was able to talk my Dad in to letting me transfer to USC, the University of South Carolina .... BIG mistake ..... shortly thereafter I joined the Navy. Probably my first BIG mistake, changing schools, not joining the Navy.

Hello to Alice Tuttle, I always think of her on a Saturday morning, that was always her day to do her housecleaning, and the day we usually visited her, so Alice comes to mind.

Saturday mornings used to mean radio shows, then television shows when the kids were growing up, and, then it just became another day. When I was working, it meant a day off, a shopping day, we used to almost have a Saturday Schedule that we adhered to. It often meant ..... football, in the old days, listening to Notre Dame on the radio, I forget the guys that did the play by play, Mel Allen, Red Barber, I think Tom Harmon also did some.

Football on radio was great, more vivid than on TV. There were a few sports magazines with those great poses in it, the outlook for the team, the  Army-Navy game, great on radio.

Now, the Saturday morning news revolves around Ebola and school shootings and ISIS .... sickness and terrorism and senseless shootings.  Almost daily, we see school children running out of their schools, hands raised, running to safety, and shootings, so many shootings.

Truck crashes are also a common occurrence any more, someone questioned why they were happening, obviously someone who does not drive. They are caused by excessive speeding, weaving in and out of traffic and being on the road too long, and, there are thousands of trucks on the road, all speeding, all in a hurry.

Nice story, a little boy who will not live till Christmas ... a  town in Utah, that has Halloween and Christmas early, just for him .... there are good  people in the world ... 

Montana bride who shoved husband off cliff appeals murder conviction

By Laura Zuckerman

(Reuters) - A Montana bride who admitted pushing her new husband off a cliff at Glacier National Park is appealing her murder conviction on grounds prosecutors distorted facts, acted vindictively toward her and engaged in misconduct, such as publicly labeling her a sociopath.

Jordan Graham, 23, pleaded guilty in December to second-degree murder in the July 7 death of Cody Johnson, 25, her husband of eight days.

Graham was sentenced in March to 30 years by a U.S. judge after he rejected her request to rescind the guilty plea that she entered as part of a deal with federal prosecutors in exchange for them dismissing a charge of first-degree murder.

Prosecutors said Graham deliberately killed Johnson by shoving him off a cliff during a marital dispute while hiking a trail at Glacier, in Montana. Graham said the death was an accident.

Graham’s lawyer, Michael Donahoe, said in documents filed this week with a U.S. appeals court that prosecutors were “willing to distort and shape” facts to suit their purposes and showed vindictiveness by charging his client with first-degree murder and alleging premeditation in actions that sprang from “the heat of passion.”

Donahoe also said prosecutors engaged in misconduct by branding Graham a sociopath during a court hearing and used the media to promote theories of guilt they could not prove, he said. Those included a theory introduced late in the case by prosecutors suggesting Graham had tricked her husband into being blindfolded before she shoved him to his death, the defense lawyer said.

“The government’s effort from beginning to end was nothing but a kaleidoscope set of theories in search of evidence,” he wrote.

He asked the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to nullify Graham’s guilty plea and bar federal prosecutors from retrying her for murder.

Notre Dame freshman WR Justin Brent went to Knicks game with porn star ---- and more

Notre Dame freshman wide receiver Justin Brent found a good way to shake off the Irish’s loss to Florida State during the bye week.

Brent, a true freshman, was spotted sitting courtside at a New York Knicks preseason game at Madison Square Garden with adult film actress Lisa Ann. As pointed out by TMZ, Lisa Ann is 42 years old while as a true freshman, Brent is probably no more than 18 or 19.

Though he hasn’t registered a statistic for the Fighting Irish this season, that’s quite the catch for Brent off the field.

According to TMZ, the two met “earlier this year while Lisa was traveling” and she “made the first move and gave Brent her number.”

Notre Dame doesn’t play against until its November 1 contest with Navy at FedEx Field in Landover, Md., so we are going to assume that he had off from practice on Wednesday.

Brent, a four-star recruit in the 2014 class out of Indianapolis, has appeared in three games this season.

I have no comment to make on this ..... YOU can make your own. A strong, healthy athlete of 18 or 19 finds a porn star of 42 who likes basketball ..... and, he has a scholarship to Notre Dame ... he will score often ...........

Friday, 10/2/14le to slose him up.

Made it through another week, I thank Him for that. The Sun is out here in Ohio, a Fall "nip" in the air, leaves are almost down, the new season is here.

I have music from the 40's on ....Alvino Rey is playing something. I remember him in the 50's,, as I recall he was married to one of the King Sisters, lived in LA, and we investigated some of his parties where some sailors would meet ......... well, anyway, I ended up discharging them. I attended a couple of his parties .... the Navy was concerned.

Reminds me of the time my Chief at SP Headquarters at the Tijuana Border, said, "C'mon, we're going in to Tijuana." And we did, a visit to the Mayors Office which was attended by the Chief of Police, I was given "marked" money and instructed to go downtown and purchase some "porno" from a store. I did, walked out, handed the police my receipt, I was taken to jail, thrown in a cell, a Tijuana Jail Cell .......... nuff said. A while later, my Chief, my boss, my friend, Ralph Blanco, came laughing in and got me out. A number of service people were getting in trouble buying porno and trying to get it across the border, so, they were able to close him up.

Turned out, it was a major operation, state wide, big business, I would have to testify, instead, they sent me to Seattle, on a ship, and that was the end of it. My "Sam Spade" experience was over. I was not cut out for that kind of work, anyway.

On SP duty there, we used to make the rounds of the Tijuana Jail each day to see who that nabbed the night before. We even hit town jails farther South at least once a week. They reluctantly let go of their American prisoners.

I remember one kid was involved in a car wreck in Ensanada, hurt pretty bad, Ralph pulled some strings and got him taken to a hospital in Tijuana, the Miguel Alemán Hospital. It was a wealthy, well known family, who were on vacation in the West somewhere, had a hard time finding them .... finally did an "exchange" at the border and got him to Balboa Hospital in San Diego. Many "palms were greased" to accomplish this. When they found out the family had money ... things changed.

Shore Patrol duty at the Mexican Border in those days was a "hoot." We had a Navy station wagon there. We occasionally would get a telephone call, I would drive into Tijuana, purchase a large order of "booze" .... they never checked the car coming through. Some officer in San Diego would be having a party. I even made a few "runs" for some Border Guards.

A lot different than it is today, I am sure ..... still a different world in Tijuana though ....

California community suffers as wells dry up in drought

By Lucy Nicholson

East Porterville Calif. (Reuters) - In one of the towns hardest hit by California's drought, the only way some residents can get water to flush the toilet is to drive to the fire station, hand-pump water into barrels and take it back home.

The trip has become a regular ritual for East Porterville residents Macario Beltran, 41, and his daughters, who on a recent evening pumped the water into containers in the bed of his old pickup truck to be used for bathing, dish washing and flushing.

As if to emphasize the arid conditions that led them there, an emergency broadcast warned of a brewing dust storm.

The state's three-year drought comes into sharp focus in Tulare County, the dairy and citrus heart of the state’s vast agricultural belt, where more than 500 wells have dried up.

Donna Johnson's tap went dry in June. Since then she's been trying to help neighbors connect with help from the county and the state. She began making door-to-door deliveries of water donated by charities and such supplies as hand sanitizer – often in withering 100-degree heat.

“I saw all these people who couldn’t take a shower: kids, pregnant women,” the 72-year-old said.

Gov. Jerry Brown, who declared a state drought emergency in January, signed an executive order last month to buy drinking water for residents with dry wells. He also signed bills to regulate groundwater.

"The A and M Prospect" .............

Going back and forth ..... pro football, college and high school .... the HS is from Texas.

The commentators at the high school game, when they can, no names,  .... no individual names, just where they might, or are going to play college ball. ...."The A and M committed ......" or some such appropriate name .... I find that interesting, and the stadium they were playing in, in Texas, looked more like a college venue than a high school  ..... TV might have had something to do with it .......

MORE on the last story .........

Doctor Recently Back From Africa Tests Positive for Ebola at Bellevue: Source

By Melissa Russo, Brynn Gingras, Marc Santia and Jonathan Dienst

Mayor de Blasio and Gov. Cuomo were scheduled to hold a news conference from Bellevue Hospital at approximately 9 p.m. tonight.

A doctor who recently returned from West Africa, where he was on an Ebola assignment for Doctors Without Borders, has tested positive for Ebola at Bellevue Hospital Center after reporting a fever and gastrointestinal symptoms, a source familiar with the results tells NBC 4 New York.

Craig Spencer marks the first Ebola case in New York City and the tri-state area.

Spencer, who law enforcement sources say flew into John F. Kennedy International Airport from Guinea Oct. 17, began to feel ill Thursday and called 911. He was transported from a building on 147th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue to Bellevue, sources said. The city's Health Department said Spencer's temperature was 103 degrees.

Preliminary test results from one sample showed Spencer had Ebola, an official briefed on the matter said. A second sample will be flown to the CDC headquarters in Atlanta for another round of testing.

Officials decided to "conduct a test for the Ebola virus because of this patient’s recent travel history, pattern of symptoms, and past work," the Health Department said in a statement.

New York City is heavily dependent on mass transit, which presents a special challenge when dealing with a deadly contagious disease -- the subway is one place where so many of us gather and get close. So what is the MTA prepared to do for our protection? Andrew Siff reports.

A source familiar with the handling of Spencer's case said he told officials he had been out at The Gutter bowling alley in Brooklyn Wednesday night. Officials are now working to determine whether anyone else could have been exposed. Ebola is contracted from contact with bodily fluids of an infected person when the person is showing symptoms.

Mayor de Blasio said earlier the city was prepared to handle any potential case. "The patient is in good shape and has gone into great detail with our personnel" as it relates to his actions the last few days, "so we have a lot to work with," the mayor added.

Hundreds of emergency responders are trained on how to use personal protective equipment at Nassau University Medical Center on Long Island. Checkey Beckford reports (Published Friday, Oct 17, 2014)

Spencer is on the staff at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center, but has not seen any patients there or been to work there since returning from overseas, according to the hospital.

The hospital said in a statement Spencer "went to an area of medical crisis to help a desperately underserved population. He is a committed and responsible physician who always put his patients first."

on and on and on

This is just ridiculous that this continues.

Check it out:

Ebola may have come to Harlem.

A 33-year-old doctor who recently returned from the disease-wracked West African country of Guinea was rushed Thursday to Bellevue Hospital with symptoms of the deadly disease – including a 103 degree fever.
Preliminary results of tests done on the doctor, identified by sources as Craig Spencer, are expected in the next 12 hours, the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene said in a statement.

Spencer, who was one of the medics working in Guinea with Doctors Without Borders, had been back for 10 days and told authorities he quarantined himself after developing nausea and a high fever, sources said.

A doting old Great Grandpa ........

On Thursday, and don't ask why, we pick up our five year old Great Grandaughter, Miss Brooklyn, and take her to her pre-school class. A long drive, but we are rewarded with a big wave, Grandma gets hugs and kisses, I get none, we wave at her sister, Miss Emma, and chat on the way to school.

"How was the pumpkin patch yesterday on your field trip ..... how is Miss Emma .... etc., etc., etc.

We pulled up in front of her school, she and my wife got out, and as she was exiting .... "Nice talkin to ya," and she exited the car. Five years old ..... Nice Talkin to Ya ........... my little Great Granddaughter said that ..... to me ......... Nice Talkin to Ya ........

It does not take a lot to completely brighten the day of an old person like me. Four little words, brightened my day ..... and a phrase I will never forget ....................... Thanks Miss Brooklyn, you made my day...........................

Bill and the peanut butter sandwich

George Whittell's boat on Tahoe ............

Why am I thinking of Bill James, simple, it's morning, I did a thorough search of the kitchen, needing something for breakfast, nothing sounded or looked good, and then, it hit me, a Peanut Butter sandwich, and that is why I am thinking of Bill James. I am one of a very few who think of him.

I forget when I first met him, it was in Reno, and he had married in to the family.

He was an Osage Indian, from Oklahoma, but knew little of his early life. He had left the reservation at an early age, and somehow ended up in Nevada. He became a barber, at one time had a few shops around Nevada. Tonopah, Fallon and some other cities. The story goes that on one occasion, a friend and customer of his, George Whittell, walked in his shop and told him he was heading to Carson City to bid on some land around that lake up in the mountains and wanted Bill to accompany him and perhaps buy some of the "cheap" land that was up for sale. Bill did not go, why would anyone need or want land up in the mountain, around a lake, Lake Tahoe,

George bought some land, lots of land, and became a millionaire.

When I think of "nice" people I have known, Bill James heads to the top of the list. He was not sure how old he was, records on the reservations in those days were non existent, and he was not sure what his real, Indian name, might be. IF he knew, and could prove it, he could have been very wealthy. The tribe sold land, lots of land, and Bill had money coming to him, but, he could not prove who he was. He thought he was named after the famous outlaw, Jesse James. In those days the Indians did not use family names, etc., no birth certificates, delivery by a mid-wife ... he knew who his was ... but, she had passed on, and she was the last one who could help him.

Bill had a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast, almost every day, and he lived a long life, no one was sure how long, but some though ..... at least 100.

So this morning, I am having a peanut butter sandwich and a coffee for breakfast, and thinking of Bill. I doubt that anyone else is ... so, have one, and think of Bill James along with me.

Expelled Nazis paid millions in Social Security

Are we a great country, or what? .... "Pay them, and they will leave" ... Ironic, Some may have been in the SS in Germany, and were payed by the US SS to leave the country

OSIJEK, Croatia (AP) — Former Auschwitz guard Jakob Denzinger lived the American dream.

His plastics company in the Rust Belt town of Akron, Ohio, thrived. By the late 1980s, he had acquired the trappings of success: a Cadillac DeVille and a Lincoln Town Car, a lakefront home, investments in oil and real estate. Then the Nazi hunters showed up.

In 1989, as the U.S. government prepared to strip him of his citizenship, Denzinger packed a pair of suitcases and fled to Germany. Denzinger later settled in this pleasant town on the Drava River, where he lives comfortably, courtesy of U.S. taxpayers. He collects a Social Security payment of about $1,500 each month, nearly twice the take-home pay of an average Croatian worker.

Denzinger, 90, is among dozens of suspected Nazi war criminals and SS guards who collected millions of dollars in Social Security payments after being forced out of the United States, an Associated Press investigation found.

The payments flowed through a legal loophole that has given the U.S. Justice Department leverage to persuade Nazi suspects to leave. If they agreed to go, or simply fled before deportation, they could keep their Social Security, according to interviews and internal government records. Like Denzinger, many lied about their Nazi pasts to get into the U.S. following World War II, and eventually became American citizens.

Among those who benefited:

—armed SS troops who guarded the Nazi network of camps where millions of Jews perished.
View gallery

—an SS guard who took part in the brutal liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto in Nazi-occupied Poland that killed as many as 13,000 Jews.

—a Nazi collaborator who engineered the arrest and execution of thousands of Jews in Poland.

—a German rocket scientist accused of using slave labor to build the V-2 rocket that pummeled London. He later won NASA's highest honor for helping to put a man on the moon.

The AP's findings are the result of more than two years of interviews, research and analysis of records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and other sources.

The Justice Department denied using Social Security payments as a tool for removing Nazi suspects. But records show the U.S. State Department and the Social Security Administration voiced grave concerns over the methods used by the Justice Department's Nazi-hunting unit, the Office of Special Investigations. State officials derogatorily called the practice "Nazi dumping" and claimed the OSI was bargaining with suspects so they would leave voluntarily.

Since 1979, the AP analysis found, at least 38 of 66 suspects removed from the United States kept their Social Security benefits.

Thanks Gramma ............

Woman says she sold pot to help raise grandkids

BUTLER, Pa. (AP) — A 65-year-old Pennsylvania woman has admitted selling hundreds of pounds of marijuana from her home but says she needed the money to raise several grandchildren after her daughter died.

Candace Kelly, of Sarver, was originally charged last fall after authorities found 64 pounds of hydroponically grown marijuana and nearly $400,000 in cash at her home in Buffalo Township.

Those charges were withdrawn because of problems with a search warrant. Kelly was charged again in January after a grand jury investigation.

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review  reports Kelly pleaded guilty Wednesday in Butler County and faces up to 10 years in prison.

She told a judge she sold as much as 100 pounds of marijuana a year for more than four years.

Kelly is also forfeiting $393,000 seized by the state police.

Inka Dinka Do .............

I think I have mentioned this before in a post, saw something on TV that made me think of the incident.

I went through my "training" at the Nevada Club, and this was one of my first nights as a "dealer" and not a trainee, Mark told me to open up one table that had been closed. I uncovered the table, got out the dice, did all the things necessary, and stood there with my .... "I am so proud of myself" look.

A crap table is pretty long, I forget the length, but they were meant for two dealers, one on each end, and if we got really busy, the "stick man" would be on the opposite side controlling the dice and the game.

I was ready, it was around four in the morning, not too busy in the the club .... I heard a voice, a familiar voice, at the far end of the table ..... it was one ........ Jimmy Durante .... "C'mon kid, let me see them dice." I was somewhat in awe, but I slid the bowl with the dice in them to him, he picked a pair, made a bet on the Pass Line, and the game was on.

Almost instantly, a small crowd gathered, and the game was on. Not big enough for Mark to send me help, so I ran from one end to the other, taking and paying, it was fun .... I got some "banter" going on with Mr. Durante, he had a rather lengthy "hand" so we had some fun.

He finally finished his hand, handed me a few dollars, said, "Thanks, Kid," and left, as did all of those standing around the table.

My first celebrity, the first of many, but will never forget my time with .... one .... Jimmy Durante.

He was appearing at the time at the Riversisde and had finished his last show .....

An answer to a question ..........

In reply .... Marilyn and I will be married ..... 50 years ... November 11 ... I cannot imagine making that journey with anyone but her .......

U.N.C. Investigation Reveals ‘Shadow Curriculum’ to Help Athletes

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — A blistering report into an academic fraud scandal at the University of North Carolinareleased Wednesday found that for nearly two decades two employees in the African and Afro-American Studies department ran a “shadow curriculum” of hundreds of fake classes that never met but for which students, many of them Tar Heels athletes, routinely received A’s and B’s.

Nearly half the students in the classes were athletes, the report found, often deliberately steered there by academic counselors to bolster their worrisomely low grade-point averages and to allow them to continue playing on North Carolina’s teams. The existence of the classes — though not necessarily how blatantly nonexistent they were — was common knowledge among the academic counselors, and in some cases among coaches of the university’s sports teams, according to the report prepared by Kenneth L. Wainstein, a former official at the United States Justice Department and now a partner of the law firm Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft.Photo

The university released Mr. Wainstein’s report at a news conference Wednesday.

The report is the latest in a series of investigations into the scandal, which first came to light three years ago and covered classes between 1993 and 2011. The revelations have cast a decidedly unflattering light on U.N.C., Chapel Hill, which has long boasted of its ability to adhere to high academic standards while running a premier sports program. Until now, the university has been at pains to emphasize that the scandal was a purely academic one; on Wednesday, for the first time, it acknowledged that it was also an athletic one, with athletes being steered specifically into and benefiting disproportionately from the fraudulent classes.

The N.C.A.A. closed its initial investigation into the case, agreeing with North Carolina’s contention that the scandal was an academic one and had nothing to do with the sports program, but it has reopened it in light of the continuing revelations. North Carolina’s chancellor, Carol L. Folt, has said that the university had already put myriad structures in place to ensure that something like this could never happen again, and she planned to announce further reforms Wednesday.

Though the report found no evidence that high-level university officials knew about the fake classes, it faulted the university for missing numerous warning signs about what was going on and said it had “failed to conduct any meaningful oversight” over the increasingly out-of-control African studies department.

Some 3,100 students took the phantom classes, most of which were created and graded solely by a single university employee, Deborah Crowder, a nonacademic who worked as the department’s administrator and who told Mr. Wainstein she had been motivated by a desire to help struggling athletes. Over time, she was joined in the scheme by the chairman of the department, Julius Nyang’oro, who became the professor of record for many of the fake classes, although he generally left the details up to Ms. Crowder.

Ms. Crowder required that students turn in only a single paper, but the papers were often largely plagiarized or padded out with “fluff” like page after page of quotations, the report said. She generally gave the papers A’s or B’s after a cursory glance. The classes were widely known as “paper classes” because of the one requirement for completion.

As an indication of how important these classes were to the Tar Heels’ football program — which generates a huge amount of money for the university — the report detailed what happened in 2008 after word spread that Ms. Crowder planned to retire the next year, a development that would essentially put an end to the scheme.

BO - I'm doin pretty good ....

President Obama — who just came off a poll that showed his favor with America had dropped to an all-time low — nonetheless told a high-dollar fundraising crowd that he’s doing “pretty good” and that all’s well on the White House front.

“Whenever people ask me how I’m going, I say, ‘Actually, I’m doing pretty good,’ ” Mr. Obama said, The Hill reported. “I love the work. It is an extraordinary privilege to every single day work on behalf of the American people.”

The president did recognize that the Islamic State situation had created a “sense of urgency overseas,” along with Ebola and Russia’s aggression into Ukraine, The Hill said. But despite all, his outlook was positive — especially since Ebola has only claimed one life on U.S. soil, he said.

“So far, we’ve only got one person dying of Ebola, but people are understandably concerned in part because they’ve seen what’s happened in Africa,” Mr. Obama said, 

“This is a virulent disease and it is up to us to once again mobilize the world’s community to do something about it — to make sure that not only we’re helping on a humanitarian basis those countries, but we’re not seeing a continued epidemic and outbreak that can have a serious impact here.”

Some obviously disagree. How do you actually judge his performance? Let's remember, he had absolutely NO qualifications for the job, we're not even sure if he met the basic qualifications. I think he has done a miraculous job, just getting the job. There are still many just shaking their heads wondering, who is he, where did he come from, what happened? The fact that he "is" where he "is" ... is in itself ... one heck of an achievement. NO qualifications, NO experience, NO background, NO credibility ... he COULD NOT beat Hillary, but he did, he COULD NOT get his medical program passed, but  he did, he COULD NOT win reelection, but he did .... there was NO WAY he could become president .... BUT HE DID. To me, his performance, pales, in comparison to what he did to get elected. I am still skeptical that he will ever leave the White House .... there is NO WAY he could do something, enact something or do anything that would enable him to stay on .... as president, is there! He may be our last president .... and the first ... emperor or dictator or whatever term he decides to call himself .... NO WAY that could happen ..... is there?