August 22, 2018

This Company Offers Fur-ternity Leave for New Pet Parents

A number of new parents are still fighting for adequate maternity and paternity leave in the United States, but one Minnesota company is taking things a step further by offering fur-ternity leave to its employees. It’s exactly what it sounds like: leave from the office for new pet owners.

Unlike leave for new human babies, parents at the digital marketing company Nina Hale that take fur-ternity leave still have to work during it, but they’re able to complete their work at home so they can help their furball adjust to its new surroundings.

The leave is inspired by one of the company’s senior account managers, who adopted a new puppy earlier this year and approached his supervisor to ask about work from home opportunities while the puppy was getting used to its new home, Fox 8 Cleveland reports.

As for why it decided to implement the policy, a company spokesperson said that the perk was just “another step in helping employees start their families,” even if those families are made up of fur babies rather than human ones.

http://fortune.com/2018/08/20/pet-leave-work-parents/

August 22, 2018

.if you can stomach it... watch from 1:10:00 on this video. our babbling president

about the "elite" and his better education, and his better homes, and he's smarter.

August 22, 2018

Purdue University offers counseling after students offended by Andy Gross performance, some in tears

Purdue University denounces Andy Gross performance, offers counseling after students offended

Purdue University has promised never to invite comedian Andy Gross back to campus again after he offended students with a stand-up act that many deemed sexist and degrading.

“On Saturday night, a comedian performed as part of our [Boiler Gold Rush] student orientation closing session,” university officials said in a statement provided to The Indianapolis Star. “Accounts differ as to what exactly happened on stage, but some portions of the performance were clearly inappropriate and contrary to the university’s values of respect and support for all.

“We will not work with this comedian again and are proud of our students who are standing up and voicing their concerns about the performance,” the officials said.

Dozens of students reportedly walked out of Mr. Gross‘ performance after he invited a female student onstage and had her touch his leg as part of the routine. He also reportedly made crude jokes even as people started booing him and leaving.

Video of the performance posted by The Daily Mail showed that the audience was clearly uncomfortable during parts of Mr. Gross‘ set, particularly when the female student was awkwardly touching the comedian’s leg.https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/aug/20/purdue-university-denounces-andy-gross-performance/


Comedian Andy Gross is slammed for 'sexually harassing' a female student during a performance at Purdue University orientation by miming an erection and making her touch his upper thigh

Gross called the student on stage during his performance on Saturday

She was visibly uncomfortable as the ventriloquist and illusionist had her stand back-to-back with him and made her touch his leg

Students say he made multiple crude remarks throughout the show, causing several of them to walk out

They slammed the comedian on Twitter with the hashtag #AndyGrossisGross

Purdue officials said the show was 'clearly inappropriate and contrary to the university's values' and vowed never to associate with him again
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6076545/Comedian-Andy-Gross-stirs-outrage-Purdue-University.html

August 21, 2018

Former Fox analyst Ralph Peters: Fox viewers have 'utterly skewed view of reality'

https://money.cnn.com/2018/08/20/media/ralph-peters-president-trump-fox-news/index.html

On CNN's "Reliable Sources" on Sunday, he had more to say. "People that only listen to Fox have an utterly skewed view of reality," he said. He described the relationship between the president and his favored news network as a "closed loop," but that was hardly Peters' most strident critique of his former employer.

"Fox isn't immoral, it's amoral," he said. Later in the interview, when Reliable Sources aired clips that show Fox News hosts defending Trump's decision to strip former CIA director John Brennan's security clearance, Peters was asked if he thought his colleagues at Fox are "proud of their performance."

"The polite word is 'prostitutes,' so I'll just leave it at that," Peters fired back.

Peters garnered attention on Sunday for his stunning denunciation of Trump.

"Trump gives us something new to worry about virtually every day, but it's important not to lose sight of the overall picture," Peters said. "This is a distinctly un-American president who really doesn't seem to like America very much, certainly doesn't respect it. And he's a president who appears to be enthralled to a foreign power, a hostile foreign power."

August 21, 2018

David Rothenberg dies at age 42. set on fire at age 6 by his father in 1983

baby boomers will remember the story

https://ktla.com/2018/08/16/dave-dave-an-artist-disfigured-after-his-father-set-him-on-fire-at-buena-park-hotel-in-1983-dies-at-42/

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/17/obituaries/dave-rothenberg-whose-father-set-him-on-fire-in-1983-dies-at-42.html

August 21, 2018

Groups of FDNY firefighters are at war with each other. brutally beat each other but no arrests

A savage brawl between two warring groups of FDNY firefighters at a Bronx firehouse has sparked multiple investigations and shocked even hardened department brass, The Post has learned.

More than a dozen members pummeled three rivals with punches and kicks to the head during the melee, sources said.

“It was one of the most severe beatings they’ve seen on tape,” an FDNY insider said, recalling the reaction by brass who viewed video of the bloody fisticuffs.

“They can’t believe one of the guys wasn’t killed.”

The tape shows Adam Soler, 35, of Engine 68, being held down by two firefighters from Rescue Co. 3 and repeatedly kicked by a third, said sources who were told about the video.

“Someone grabbed his head and started pounding it into the pavement,” one said.

One firefighter accidentally kicked a curb. He is seen grimacing and holding his foot, which may have been broken, a source said.

----

The June 6 battle came after FDNY members from upper Manhattan and the Bronx traded insults and skirmished earlier that day at Billy’s, a bar near Yankee Stadium, following an awards ceremony.

Instagram videos showed firefighters tussling with cops as police tried to break things up.

One poster wrote: “NYPD VS NYFD a group of drunk firefighters fighting with pedestrians and NYPD around Yankee stadium @ 940pm. The police did nothing but send them home.”

Inside Billy’s, a clash erupted when a firefighter from Ladder 44 tossed a commemorative T-shirt from Engine 68/Ladder 49 into the trash, a source said.


Then a Rescue 3 captain allegedly hurled “the N-bomb” at an Engine 68 firefighter who is black, sources said.

Hours later, around 10 p.m., Soler and his brother-in-law William Fitzpatrick and James McGowan, both of Ladder 49, showed up at Rescue 3 on Washington Avenue and complained about being disrespected at Billy’s.

At that point, a group of 15 to 18 firefighters, not all assigned to Rescue 3, ganged up on the three visitors, punching and kicking them, said those told about the video.

https://nypost.com/2018/08/18/fdny-brawl-one-of-the-most-severe-beatings-seen-on-tape-insider/

August 21, 2018

I'm a doctor and even I can't afford my student loans

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/20/opinion/medical-school-student-loans-tuition-debt-doctor.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region&region=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region

Last week, the New York University School of Medicine became the first medical school in the nation to become fully tuition-free. Dr. Robert Grossman, dean of the medical school, cited young physicians’ “crushing debt” as an impetus for the move. One may think that doctors, with their gigantic salaries, are immune to student debt worries, but Dr. Grossman’s announcement made official what many medical school students have long known: The crisis of paying for education has finally caught up with the one percent.

My personal experiences highlight the magnitude of the problem. Upon graduation from medical school in 2013, I owed approximately $180,000 in student debt — what might seem an outrageously high number that is actually about $10,000 less than the average for today’s medical school graduates. I scrounged and saved during residency, living in a tiny Chinatown apartment, riding my bicycle to work every day, and sneaking expired patient sandwiches for lunch so that I could make my monthly $700 debt payment. Yet upon completing residency, the amount I owed had, to my disbelief, increased to $188,000 — all my efforts had not been enough to cover even the interest accumulating on my loans.

Growing up, I expected a career in medicine partly to be a ticket out of the working-class circumstances I grew up in. My parents, immigrants from rural Iran, struggled to provide opportunity for their children. A career in medicine promised a better future ahead. But five years after graduating from medical school, that future still seems on a distant horizon. I cannot afford to buy a house, still ride my bicycle to work and continue to skimp on meals in order to cover more than $3,000 in monthly loan payments.

I am far from alone. A mentor in residency, several years my senior and making over $200,000 per year, once revealed that she had moved back in with her mother just to get a handle on her student loans. Another colleague had a marriage proposal rejected because of his mortgage-size debt.

August 21, 2018

Sex, lies and DUIs: GOP dumps oppo on Dem House hopefuls

Sex, lies and DUIs: GOP dumps oppo on Dem House hopefuls
Republican ads are getting personal in the fight for the House majority.

By ELENA SCHNEIDER 08/20/2

Dramatized police dispatch calls of a DUI arrest. Allegations of sexual harassment. Court filings reviewing “failed” business investments.

Those are attacks leveled against Democratic congressional candidates in a new Republican ad campaign in recent days — part of a growing effort to personalize the midterm elections and disqualify individual Democratic hopefuls early in a bid to save the Republican House majority.


National trends are driving the general direction of the 2018 midterms, fueled by strong feelings about health care, taxes, President Donald Trump and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. But with so many first-time candidates running on the Democratic side — without the baggage of legislative voting records or controversial positions adopted over a long public career — and the political environment tilting toward them, GOP efforts to keep them out of the House may hinge on specific personal critiques, vetting them publicly for the first time.

That’s how Congressional Leadership Fund, the Republican super PAC, is starting its campaign against Democrat Sean Casten in Illinois, blasting him for “mismanagement, fraud, greed” at his company in a TV ad released Wednesday. (Casten’s campaign called it “false attacks” in a statement.) The group is also hammering Randy Bryce, the Democratic nominee in Speaker Paul Ryan’s district, over a drunk driving arrest.

And there's more to come: A review of research materials collected by the National Republican Congressional Committee shows that the campaign committee plans to litigate many more Democrats' professional history, including digging through client and case histories of a half-dozen attorneys running in top battleground districts. CLF set up its own in-house research unit, a first for the group this cycle as it seeks to dig up its own dirt on Senate and House candidates.

“The fact is that the treasure trove of research books on these Democratic candidates is amazing,” said Guy Harrison, a Republican consultant who led the NRCC during the 2010 and 2012 cycles. “It’s probably the deepest and most wacky I’ve ever seen in a cycle.”


https://www.politico.com/story/2018/08/20/house-republicans-oppo-research-788468
“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” Harrison added.

August 21, 2018

Baltimore, where he did his groundbreaking surgeries, is done with Ben Carson, taken down portrait

https://newsone.com/3822762/baltimore-ben-carson/?utm_source=moengage&utm_campaign=ben_carson&utm_medium=push

Baltimore Has Officially Canceled Ben Carson
Baltimore is a city that once adored the doctor who made history.
Parker Riley
Written By Parker Riley
Posted 9 hours ago

Although Ben Carson is originally from Detroit, he made history in Baltimore.

Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore is where Carson served as the Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery from 1984 to 2013. The neurosurgeon performed many groundbreaking surgeries, including a successful separation of conjoined twins.


In 2008, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and before he started worshiping Trump, he was considered an important figure in Black History. Now, the city where he made history has disowned Carson.


The Associated Press spoke to several faith and community leaders, all expressing their disappointment with the deplorable Carson. There was even a portrait of him inside Archbishop Borders School in Baltimore that has been removed. Principal Alicia Freeman, said, “I took it down. He was starting to become offensive.”


Bishop Frank Reid, a former pastor at Bethel AME Church in Baltimore who met Carson when they both attended Yale, explained, “This young African American who grew up in poverty and could have been put in jail or suspended from school made something great of himself. It was the American Dream. We believed he could walk on water.” Reid added, “Trump virus is weakening Ben Carson’s image. … He is no longer the hero he once was.”

Emmanuel Williams, 33, who grew up in Northwest Baltimore said, “He was taught during Black History Month and everyone was so proud because it was happening here in Baltimore. It was mythic. Sometimes I think the country looks down on us.” He continued, “So to have such a brilliant person who’s making history and making these great medical advancements in Baltimore? He was our crown jewel, and he was here. People feel betrayed. He can’t come back from this.”

You can say that again. Ben Carson has actively worked to dismantle fair housing. He has proposed rent increases on people in public housing that would only increase poverty. He wants to take “discrimination” out of the Housing and Urban Development’s mission statement. In addition, he is trying to create even more segregated housing, which Obama fought to end.

August 20, 2018

New Jersey Principal's Purchase of Washers and Dryers for His Bullied Students is an Act of Love

In a school where 81% of the students come from low-income homes, it isn't difficult for a student to become another statistic when societal and economic obstacles rear their ugly heads. The loving but firm principal recognized the effects of poverty on his pupils. When he was a vice principal at that same school, Cook noticed some students weren't attending classes regularly because of bullying due to the condition of their clothes or hygiene. So he took action.

"I refuse to let a kid come to school smelling or dirty and I'm sitting on a shirt that says 'West Side on it,'" Cook said, illustrating the fact that he gave his students unused school memorabilia, like t-shirts to wear.

"They were choosing to stay home rather than coming to school to be bullied or ridiculed," he said. "We didn't know until we started making calls."

He realized this was only a band-aid on a larger issue. Cook wanted to have a bigger impact on his students' lives, and at the same time; set them up for success academically.

Through dedication, hard work and research, a $20,000 grant given by the PSEG Foundation made purchasing these appliances possible. They were sent to the school and remain in the football locker room. A local UPS store donated laundry detergent and other cleaning supplies.

He received an outpouring and love from the community and he took to his social media to show his gratitude.

Cook stated: "He will always fight for the students and that every school needed to have a program like this."
https://www.diversityinc.com/Good-News/principal-helps-bullied-students?utm_source=WhatCounts&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=DI%20Newsletter%201%200820