July 30, 2018

driver fired for purposely hitting puddles to drench pedestrians

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/puddle-dumping-driver-fired-by-contracting-company-will-not-face-criminal-charges




A contracting company has fired the driver who was seen on video veering into puddles to soak pedestrians in Sandy Hill.

“This individual is no longer employed with Black & McDonald,” the company said Sunday on its Facebook page, where members of the public posted a series of excoriating messages.

The driver will not face criminal charges.

“We consider the file now closed,” Ottawa police Sgt. Mark Gatien said Sunday. “The outcome from the employer we feel is enough of a lesson learned for him and your readers and viewers.”

Black & McDonald Ltd. did not name the driver, whose actions were caught by a rear-view dashcam of another vehicle driving along King Edward Avenue at about 3:30 p.m. Friday. The video, posted to YouTube by the user “Saif Khan,” showed a white Ford van marked with the Black & McDonald logo soaking people on the sidewalk.

Three times the video shows the driver veering to the right to run through deep puddles near the sidewalk, sending a deluge of water onto pedestrians.

Sgt. Gatien thanked the Ottawa division of Black & McDonald for its “quick and decisive action” in the case. “The driver of this van has been terminated from the company. I would also like to thank a patrol officer who assisted in this outcome,” he tweeted.

Gatien said there was no doubt that what the driver had done was deliberate.

A spokesman for Black & McDonald confirmed the firing. “The individual is no longer employed with Black & McDonald,” Tareq Ali said Sunday. “We have been contacted by Ottawa police and are fully co-operating.”

The video had been watched more than 624,000 times by Sunday afternoon, and some outraged viewers posted comments on Black and McDonald’s Facebook page.

“Those people should sue. Your company employee put them in harms way. Shameful,” wrote Steffen Wytenburg.

July 30, 2018

"we didn't let girls do it in the old days" says judge

https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/We-didn-t-let-girls-do-it-in-the-old-days-a-13114438.php



Buried in a footnote, the brief rebuke nonetheless marked a notable step in abridging gender discrimination in the legal workplace: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit scolded a veteran judge for making sexist comments in his Houston courtroom, calling his remarks "demeaning, inappropriate, and beneath the dignity" of his profession.

U.S. District Judge Lynn N. Hughes had been presiding over a criminal case against Simone Swenson, an adoption agency owner charged with fraud.

Under federal rules, prosecutors are permitted to wait until just before trial to turn over pieces of evidence, known as discovery. But when a female federal prosecutor delivered stacks of new documents during four pretrial conferences in early 2017 - weeks after the final discovery date set by Hughes - the septuagenarian judge was not impressed.


"You're supposed to know what you're doing," Hughes said to an assistant U.S. attorney on Feb. 6, 2017. "What else is out there that you misplaced or didn't think was relevant so you didn't check it at all?"

Hughes dismissed the Swenson indictment, faulting the prosecutor's mistakes.

Then he said something else that eventually became the basis of the rebuke.

"It was a lot simpler when you guys wore dark suits, white shirts and navy ties," Hughes said, according to the 5th Circuit. "We didn't let girls do it in the old days."

The U.S. attorney's office appealed the case's dismissal, which set up a panel of appellate judges to send back its censorious response.

July 30, 2018

Trump calls newspapers unpatriotic for reporting "internal deliberations of our government"

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/399421-trump-calls-media-very-unpatriotic-for-reporting-of-government

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1023646663590797312

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1023646665851449345

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1023646668179296257

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1023646669685104641

July 29, 2018

what the hell is Trump referring to with this morning's tweet?

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1023534604148518912

https://nypost.com/2018/07/29/trump-says-his-poll-numbers-are-higher-than-lincolns-even-though-polling-didnt-exist-then/

media is baffled about what poll he is referring to. no polls during Lincolns time. Trump is hallucinating



(on edit, he's talking about approval among republicans.. but even that's a lie. GW had higher approval among GOP after 9/11)

July 29, 2018

A 'F--- Donald Trump' yard sign sent angry man to Charlotte couple's front door

https://www.heraldsun.com/news/state/north-carolina/article215039475.html

A 'F--- Donald Trump' yard sign sent angry man to Charlotte couple's front door
BY ANNA DOUGLAS

video at link:

https://www.charlotteobserver.com/latest-news/article215057945.html

?auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=800&lastEditedDate=20180719123328


Tin Nguyen and his partner, Cat Bao Le, say they will continue to confront white supremacists and hatred after an unknown white man banged on their door, yelled racial slurs, threatened to call police, and argued with them about a sign in their yard that says “F--- Donald Trump.”

The man told Nguyen and Le, “I’m gonna get you, n-----.”

Nguyen is a 38-year-old lawyer in Charlotte who defends people in immigration cases and whose mother and father were refugees from Vietnam in the late 1970s. Le, 37, is also Vietnamese-American and is executive director of the Southeast Asian Coalition, a youth and advocacy organization in Charlotte.

What happened to them is the latest in a string of high-profile cases where a white person is captured on cellphone video demeaning a person of color or threatening to call police.

“They want to police everything that we do,” Nguyen said Tuesday, speaking to reporters in front of his home.

There, the sign still stands.

“The president deserves this sign. He deserves this big middle finger,” Nguyen said.

He and Le also have a yard sign welcoming refugees, a “Black Lives Matter” sign, and a sign opposing the arrest and deportation of immigrants.

“We want Charlotte to continue to resist white supremacy at all levels,” Le said.

July 29, 2018

Colorado billboard replaces letter in 'GOP' with communist symbols

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2018/07/28/colorado-billboard-replaces-letter-gop-communism-symbols/857564002/


?crop=583,433,x32,y0&width=534&height=401&fit=bounds


Soviet-era communism symbols could be on full display in one Colorado city until the November elections thanks to one frustrated resident.

An image using the hammer and sickle is being used to replace the 'O' in GOP on billboards in Grand Junction, Colo. The scheme is the work of resident Anne Landman, who said she's upset with the Trump administration's actions on Russia, immigration, and tariffs.

"I mean, I’m tearing my hair out over this stuff!" Landman told the USA TODAY via email. "How much are we as citizens supposed to take?

July 29, 2018

Guiliani's statement, that experts say the tape was messed with, will go to trump voters brain

and stick, Just like the other lies, nothing will dislodge that idea. No matter what tapes are brought out... they will now believe that they were messed with.

Guiliani said that today... that experts say the tapes were messed with. He knows they werent. doesn't matter.

that's how it works in the Trump era.

July 29, 2018

100 days until the Nov elections, early voting begins sooner. May we be celebrating in 101 days.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/07/battle-for-the-house-democrats-on-the-brink-100-days-out.html

Battle for the House: 100 Days Out, Democrats Are on the Brink

July 29, 2018

Yemeni American Commits Suicide After Trump Travel Ban Bars His Family

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mahmood-salem-kills-self-when-family-is-barred-from-us-trip-american_us_5b5cfcbfe4b0de86f497a9b1

Yemeni American Commits Suicide After Trump Travel Ban Bars His Family
Tragic death underscores toll of harsh immigration policies.


In the latest U.S. immigration tragedy a Yemeni American father killed himself after his family was barred from entering the country by the Trump administration’s travel ban.

U.S. citizen Mahmood Salem, father of five, fatally shot himself at his Louisiana home earlier this month after saying goodbye to his family on the phone, NBC News reported Saturday.

Salem’s three youngest children are also American citizens, but his wife and two other children were denied visas to join him because of Donald Trump’s travel ban. They were living in Djibouti in Africa when they got Salem’s call and frantically reached out to a friend for help, according to NBC. The friend found Salem, 31, dead in his home in Crowley.

Mimun Salem blamed the immigration predicament for his younger brother’s death.

“I’ll say it’s the first and main reason. I could give it 90 percent,” he told NBC. “He cannot bring them here and at the same time, he cannot take them back to Yemen because it’s war.”

There are thousands of Yemeni immigrants, many of them American citizens, who have been separated by family members due to the travel ban which bars people from seven predominantly Muslim nations. The Supreme Court upheld the ban last month.

The ban and Salem’s death is part of a broader picture of the toll of harsh i

July 28, 2018

voter study identifies 5 types of Trump voters and why they stick with him no matter what

[“Trump has offended immense numbers of people,” says Emily Ekins, director of polling at the libertarian Cato Institute, who has published a detailed analysis of Trump voters. “But most people aren’t paying as close attention as the people in New York and D.C. whose job is to follow these issues. And the economy is hugely important to understanding voter choice.”

There’s good and bad news for Trump in the stability of his support. He does seem to have a core set of voters who will back him even if he shoots somebody on Fifth Avenue. That may provide a floor of 30% or so to his approval rating, meaning he wouldn’t slip below that under any circumstance.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-supporters-never-waver-185256151.html


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In a study for the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group, a privately funded research outfit, Ekins identified five types of Trump voters and assessed how important each group was to Trump’s victory. The breakdown helps explain why Trump’s supporters stick with him, no matter how controversial he is. It also reveals Trump’s weaknesses, which are considerable. Here’s an overview:


Staunch conservatives and American preservationists are Trump’s true base, representing about half of those who voted for him. They tend to be America-first nativists who are socially conservative and opposed to immigration, and may feel culturally threatened. Trump’s hard-line immigration policy is meant for them, and they’ll probably stick with him no matter what.

The disengaged, a small portion of Trump voters, aren’t very knowledgeable about politics, but they do tend to feel powerless and left behind in the modern economy. Trump’s vilification of immigrants and Muslims may appeal to them and earn their loyalty.

Free marketeers and anti-elites are more moderate. They tend to be traditional Republicans who may have voted for Trump simply out of party loyalty. They support free trade and a light government touch on the economy, which is at odds with Trump’s interventionist trade policy. Some of these people already regret voting for Trump, and he could lose more if his protectionist trade policy backfires or the economy weakens. Since these two groups represent about 45% of Trump voters, his approval rating could fall into the mid or low 30s if the economy begins to struggle, which would weaken Trump’s political power and his leverage over fellow Republicans in Congress. This is his biggest vulnerability.

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“He has underperformed, given the economic fundamentals,” Ekins says. “It shows what being offensive can do to a candidate.” It may show even more if those fundamentals weaken.