Rocker Bret Michaels scheduled for surgery!

Bret Michaels is undergoing a procedure in Phoenix to close a hole in his heart.

Doctors discovered the hole in the rocker's heart in April while treating him for a brain hemorrhage.

A surgical team at St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center was performing the procedure Monday. The hospital said the rocker would undergo a cardiac catheterization during which doctors planned to insert a catheter into a vein in the groin and guide wires and a closure device into the heart with cameras assisting doctors as they operate to close the hole.

The closure device remains in Michaels' heart permanently to stop abnormal blood flow between the two chambers of the heart.

Doctors say without the procedure, Michaels risks developing blood clots and an additional stroke.


Diva's Nation
*Join The Conversation*

Oprah Winfrey finds sister she didn't know she had!

Oprah Winfrey has discovered she has a half-sister — a Milwaukee woman who was given up for adoption by Winfrey's mother nearly 50 years ago, when the talk show host was eight years old.

An emotional Winfrey introduced her newly found sibling to viewers Monday and explained the woman's persistent quest to find her birth mother.

"This, my friends, is the miracle of all miracles," Winfrey said before bringing out the 48-year-old woman, who throughout the program was identified only as Patricia, with no mention of her occupation or any other details.

After years of searching for blood relatives, the woman met Winfrey on Thanksgiving Day of last year.

When Patricia was born in Milwaukee in 1963, the young Winfrey was living with her father and did not even know her mother was pregnant, she said.

Patricia, who Winfrey said bounced from foster home to foster home until she was adopted at age 7, had given up after previous searches for her mother. But she decided to resume looking several years ago at the insistence of her grown children.

The effort seemed to hit a dead end when a woman from the Wisconsin adoption agency called to respond to her inquiries.

"She was telling me that my birth mother had called her back, and she had made the decision at that particular time that she did not want to see me," Patricia said.

Coincidentally, on the local news that day was a story about Winfrey' mother, Vernita Lee, who revealed details about two of her children who had since died. Those details, Patricia said, matched information she had seen in papers about her own adoption.

Winfrey's mother also said that one of the deceased children had been named Patricia.
"The hairs on the back of my neck stood up," Patricia said. "Because I knew one of my siblings and I shared the same name."

Later, she found more matching details, including the fact that Winfrey was born in 1954, the same year as the woman Patricia knew was her surviving sibling.

Patricia found the daughter of Winfrey's dead sister in Milwaukee, and they took a DNA test that confirmed their relationship.

Lee, who recently suffered a minor stroke, said she never told Winfrey about her half-sister, "because I thought it was a terrible thing for me to do, that I had done, gave up my daughter when she was born."

Winfrey said documents from the girl's birth reveal that Lee gave up the baby for adoption because she did not think she could get off welfare if she kept the child.

"I made the decision to give her up because I wasn't able to take care of her," Lee said during a recorded interview that aired Monday. "So when I left the hospital, I told the nurse I wasn't going to keep the baby."

Winfrey said she was particularly stunned by the news because of the way it came out.
 
She said Patricia had known since 2007 that the two were related, but never attempted to profit off her discovery or contact the press, even as she tried unsuccessfully to contact Winfrey, her mother or others in Winfrey's family.
 
"She never once thought to sell the story," Winfrey said, recalling how she felt betrayed by others who have sought to take advantage of their relationship with one of the largest figures in the entertainment world and one of the wealthiest women in the United States.
 
Winfrey, for example, recalled how her other sister revealed to the press years ago that Winfrey had had a baby when she was a teenager. The baby, Winfrey has said, died shortly after birth. And she talked about putting her sister in rehab twice for drug addiction, but that her sister ultimately died.
 
Patricia said she didn't consider revealing that she and Winfrey were half-sisters to anyone but Winfrey, explaining that she did not want to hurt Winfrey.
 
"Family business should be handled by family," Patricia said. "It couldn't be handled by anyone else. That's not fair. It wouldn't be fair to you."
 
Winfrey said she was heartened by learning that she had a half-sister, saying it "feels like closure" for the sister who died.

"It feels to me like you are Pat on her very best day," Winfrey told the woman. "You are what she wanted to be without the drugs."


Diva's Nation
*Join The Conversation*

Michele Bachmann's Tea Party Agenda Will Disrupt the GOP!

The Minnesota congresswoman has never shied from controversy, but her latest efforts to represent Tea Party interests are disrupting Boehner's push for the Republicans to rule effectively—and threatening the party's unity.

Michele Bachmann has certainly been keeping busy.

Within hours of winning her third congressional term in November, the colorful Minnesota Republican began campaigning for conference chair, the No. 4 position in the House GOP leadership. Why? Because "constitutional conservatives"—like her and, presumably, unlike the rest of John Boehner's team—"deserve a loud and clear voice!" A few weeks later, news leaked that Bachmann would be traveling to Iowa for a fundraiser—and that "nothing," according to her spokesman, "is off the table." Asked whether she was considering a presidential run, Bachmann told ABC News  "I'm going to Iowa—there's your answer."

Then on Friday Bachmann announced that even though Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan is slated to deliver the official Republican response to President Obama's upcoming State of the Union address, she would be giving her own online rebuttal on behalf of the Tea Party Express "shortly after" Ryan's speech concludes.

Bachmann's post-election maneuvering isn't particularly surprising; the ultraconservative Minnesotan, who by one estimate appears on national cable once every nine days, is always looking for new ways to get attention. But the response her scheming has received in top GOP circles—a response that would best be described as arctic—suggests that the battle between disgruntled, absolutist Tea Party activists (who want to blow the system up) and their more realistic representatives in Washington (who plan to work within it) is only beginning.

Consider how rank-and-file Republicans have reacted to Bachmann's recent displays of ambition. As soon as the congresswoman launched her conference-chair campaign, Eric Cantor and Mike Pence—the Indiana pol she would be succeeding in the position—endorsed her rival, Texas Rep. Jeb Hensarling. Boehner put Hensarling on the GOP's transition team, and left Bachmann out. Sarah Palin declined to endorse Bachmann, with whom she campaigned over the summer. And Ryan circulated a letter to lawmakers and recently elected Republicans asking them to support Hensarling over his opponent. After awhile, Bachmann took the hint and bowed out.

But while Bachmann is a genius at rallying the troops—and convincing them to give her their money—she's never displayed the slightest skill at (or interest in) turning her small-government rhetoric into a reality by, say, proposing or passing significant legislation.

The news that Bachmann was elbowing into the presidential spotlight was greeted much the same way: with sighing, scoffing, and the occasional burst of speculation about what she's "really up to." As one National Review commenter perceptively put it, she "know[s] that casual White House talk can help build up some momentum outside of her small, safe House district that she can use to build a Senate campaign. She wants a Senate seat in 2012 or 2014." Few people, in other words, consider her a credible challenger.

But the most revealing moment will undoubtedly come on January 25, when Bachmann faces off against Ryan. Even though they're both die-hard conservatives, the two SOTU responders reflect conflicting visions of where the Republican Party should be focusing its energies going forward. The selection of Ryan, a wonky Wisconsinite whose Roadmap for America's Future calls on Republicans to tackle the country's long-term debt by remaking Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, suggests that right now, Boehner and Co. are less interested in political grandstanding and knee-jerk opposition than in translating their campaign slogans about fiscal responsibility into actual legislation (or, at the very least, creating the impression that's what they're interested in). As Boehner told The New Yorker late last year, 2011 "is going to be probably the first really big adult moment [for Republicans]. You can underline 'adult.'" Ryan reinforces the "hey, we're grownups" message.

Bachmann, however, does not. A recent analysis by the Pulitzer Prize-winning watchdog site PolitiFact shows that of the 13 times she's been fact-checked, "seven of her claims [have been found] to be false and six have been found to be ridiculously false," says PolitiFact Editor Bill Adair. "I don't know anyone else that we have checked, more than a couple times, that has never earned anything above a false. She is unusual in that regard." Among Bachmann's greatest hits: saying that Obama will hike taxes on small businesses that make $250,000 ("pants on fire"); claiming that "the president of the United States will be taking a trip over to India that is expected to cost the taxpayers $200 million a day" ("false"); and declaring that in the 1970s, "the swine flu broke out… under another Democrat, President Jimmy Carter" ("pants on fire"). Beyond all the easily disprovable falsehoods, Bachmann is famous for simply saying outrageous things: that homosexuality is a "dysfunction"; that Obama is turning America into a "nation of slaves"; that conservatives should "slit their wrists" and be "blood brothers" to defeat health-care reform.

But while Bachmann is a genius at rallying the troops—and convincing them to give her their money—she's never displayed the slightest skill at (or interest in) turning her small-government rhetoric into a reality by, say, proposing or passing significant legislation. In many ways, that makes her the emblematic politician for our niche-media age. When success is measured by the intensity of your following as opposed to its size—and when Twitter, Facebook, and Fox News let politicians easily reach their most intense audiences with incendiary soundbites—it's no wonder so many of them wind up serving less as actual legislators than as conduits for a message.

Now that the midterms are over, however, the newly empowered GOP establishment clearly wants to tone down the hyperbolic PR and show that it, too, can engage in "adult" problem-solving. The story of the next two years will be the story of whether the Republican Party can shush its big-talking "Bachmann side" long enough for its more practical "Ryan side" to negotiate with Democrats and get stuff done, or whether the Tea Party types who lap up Bachmann's erroneous rhetoric will torpedo the GOP's efforts to enact its agenda. Tune in January 25, and let the games begin.

*Michele Bachman is clearly a rambuctious political idiot! Her rhetoric is fuming hate and negativity among Americans with her hate-filled speeches and rallys. Again, if the GOP keep going in the direction of Michele Bachman they will be recipient of the "raggety political party" award.*

Diva's Nation
Join The Conversation*

Russia: Suicide bomber attacked the Moscow airport!

Russian investigators say a suicide bomber most likely carried out the attack that killed at least 31 people and wounded over 140 at Moscow's busiest airport.

Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin says experts are now trying to identify the suspected bomber.

The explosion ripped through the international arrivals hall at Domodedovo Airport on Monday afternoon.



Diva's Nation
*Join The Conversation*