February 14, 2019

house slides off foundation in California, hits another house, trapping resident

House slides a block off its foundation in Sausalito, trapping resident inside









A firefighter searches for occupants inside a debris-covered BMW following a landslide above Crescent Ave. in Sausalito, Calif., on Thursday, Feb. 14, 2019. The slide destroyed at least two vehicles and a home.

https://twitter.com/MatthewRPera/status/1096096608100347904?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1096096608100347904%7Ctwgr%5E363937393b636f6e74726f6c&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.marinij.com%2F2019%2F02%2F14%2Fmudslide-woman-trapped-inside-sausalito-home-rescued%2F

https://www.sfgate.com/weather/article/marin-mudslide-bay-area-storm-rain-13616254.php#photo-16927309

February 14, 2019

Extremely Rich Golfer Matt Kuchar Defends Stiffing His Caddie

Back in November, pro golfer Matt Kuchar won the Mayakoba Golf Classic in Mexico, which earned him $1.3 million. It’s customary for golfers on tour to give their caddies a 10-percent cut of their tournament winnings, which means that Kuchar’s caddie, David Ortiz, should have earned $130,000 for his week of work. But Ortiz only got a measly $5,000, and Kuchar doesn’t seem to think he did anything wrong.

Ortiz is a club caddie in Mexico, and was picked by Kuchar to serve as a replacement when his regular caddie was unable to make the trip. After stewing over his paltry payment for a couple of months, Ortiz sent an email to Kuchar’s agent in January asking to be paid $50,000. He was instead offered an additional payment of $15,000, which prompted Ortiz to tell Golf.com that Kuchar and his agency could “keep their money.”

Golf.com caught up with Kuchar this week, seeking explanation for why Ortiz was paid so little. Kuchar defended himself, claiming that the terms of Ortiz’s employment had been worked out in advance of the tournament, and that the caddie was only actually supposed to make $4,000; the extra $1,000 was a bonus Kuchar gave him for helping him win the tournament. Kuchar also seemed to imply that because Ortiz is from lower means than an established tour caddie, he should have been delighted to receive the little amount of money he did:

Kuchar said he did not really understand why the pay dispute has turned into such an emotional issue. Told that a $5,000 caddie payment on a $1.3 million payday seemed frugal, he nodded, but indicated he had a different view.

“For a guy who makes $200 a day, a $5,000 week is a really big week,” he said.

Kuchar is No. 10 on the all-time PGA Tour career earnings list, having won over $48 million over the course of his career. This, my friends, is one rich prick.

https://deadspin.com/extremely-rich-golfer-matt-kuchar-defends-stiffing-his-1832620093

February 14, 2019

All of City's Snow Plows Sabotaged With Latex Gloves put in the tanks. all garbage trucks too

http://www.newser.com/story/271271/someone-sabotaged-all-of-citys-snow-plows-with-latex-gloves.html?utm_source=part&utm_medium=uol&utm_campaign=rss_top

– "It’s a direct attack on the people of Mount Vernon. We are not going to be intimidated. We are going to catch whoever is responsible for this act of hate against the people of the city." Those were the strong words from Mount Vernon Mayor Richard Thomas after someone stuffed the gas tanks of the New York city's municipal trucks with latex gloves some time between Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning. As a result, the snow plows and salt trucks couldn't immediately clear the streets after a snow and ice storm Tuesday, Fox News reports. Two city trucks became disabled around 6am Tuesday, after which the gloves were found in their tanks and, subsequently, the tanks of 27 other trucks—all of the city's 16 garbage trucks and 13 snow plows in total.

Police are looking for a perpetrator or perpetrators who entered a public works garage to commit the sabotage, the Journal News reports. Several trucks were back in commission by 10am Tuesday. A fake pipe bomb had also been left in Mount Vernon City Hall Jan. 14, and on the same day, someone set a filing cabinet in the building on fire. Thomas appeared to link all the incidents, saying, "We’re very aggravated by the constant harassment by groups of people that want to obstruct progress and the protection of the people of the city." (Read more weird crimes stories.)

February 14, 2019

Record 7 million Americans are 90 days behind on car loan payments, Fed report says

https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/car-loan-delinquencies-record-7-million-americans-behind-on-car-loan-payments-red-report-says/

A new report on household debt finds a record 7 million Americans are at least 90 days behind on their car loan payments. Alana Frierson painfully recalls the day her car was repossessed.

"We were devastated. I was devastated," she said.

A city worker in Fort Worth, Texas, she fell months behind on her loan payments when her husband got sick and was unable to show up for his job. Bankruptcy followed.


"If you don't have any money saved, yeah, you're screwed. You're out on the street, or you're walking," Frierson said.

National debt tops $22 trillion for first time in U.S. historySmaller tax refunds could ding first-quarter GDP

According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, there are now 1 million more people behind on payments by three months than there were in 2010 when delinquency rates were at their worst.

Economist Austan Goolsbee is a former Obama White House official at the University of Chicago. He said millions of car loan delinquencies, even for subprime high risk borrowers, is a warning sign.

February 13, 2019

GOP Congressman Under Fire for Most Racist Office Display Ever

While it may seem shocking to find this in a congressman’s office, Miller was even more appalled when he read the page that was displayed from the open book:

In this enlightened age there are few, I believe, but will acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a political and moral evil in any country. It is useless to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it, however, a greater evil to the white than to the black race, and while my feelings are strongly interested in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are strongly for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially, and physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing is necessary for their instruction as a race, and, I hope, will prepare and lead them to better things. How long their subjection may last is known only by a wise and merciful Providence.

The. Book. Was. Inside. A. Glass. Case. Open. On. That. Page.

https://www.theroot.com/gop-congressman-under-fire-for-most-racist-office-displ-1832592236


When another union member asked a staffer if they had seen the throwback racism manual on display, the staffer said no, but asked them if they’d like to see more cool stuff, like a lock of George Washington’s hair. (The union members didn’t note how they responded, but I’m sure they declined to check out a 200-year-old lock of white people’s hair. Probably smelled like a roll of old nickels.)

Ferguson never showed up at his office, but the Union members demanded an apology for the indecent book. Miller told CNN that the Georgia Republican later called to apologize and say that he had no idea how that racist book got in his office.

It was probably ghosts. Or maybe it was the staffers who already said they hadn’t even looked at the book. Every office has a story about how some low-level aide brought white supremacist office decorations to secretly place in their boss’s office without his knowledge and no one ever knows how it got there. You’d be surprised. It happens all the time.

But don’t dismiss the ghost theory.

“He said he wasn’t aware the book was there. He apologized maybe 15 times on the phone,” Miller said. “It seemed as if they just said what was necessary to try to mitigate the situation.”

February 13, 2019

Trump floats new 'tradition:' 4th of July parade that already exists

https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/12/politics/trump-parade-july-4/index.html

President Donald Trump wasn't able to cut a deal for a grandiose Veterans Day military parade, but this year, he says he aims to start a new 4th of July tradition.

The only hitch? The "tradition" he says he wants to start in the nation's capital already exists.

Trump offered few concrete details Tuesday when he mused to reporters that it could take place in Washington and it could include a parade.

"We're thinking about doing, on the 4th of July or thereabouts, a parade, a 'Salute to America' parade. I guess it'd be really more of a gathering than a parade. Perhaps at the Lincoln Memorial. We're looking at sites. But we're thinking about doing something that would, perhaps, become a tradition," Trump said.

Unlike the hefty price tag the administration rejected for the planned but never executed Veterans Day parade, Trump said this time the fireworks would be free.

"The fireworks (are) there anyway, so we just saved on fireworks. We get free fireworks because it's already being done. So, that's very good," Trump said, referring to the stash launched annually on Independence Day in downtown Washington.
Speaking at a midday Cabinet meeting, the President said acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt would take charge of the event. But despite the holiday being less than six months away, the agency offered few new details.

A spokesperson for the Interior Department told CNN: "Salute to America is a great idea. We are working diligently to present the best options to the White House."

Washington, of course, already hosts major 4th of July parade. Called America's National Independence Day Parade, it goes through the heart of downtown Washington, consisting "of invited bands, fife and drum corps, floats, military and specialty units, giant balloons, equestrian, drill teams, VIP's, national dignitaries and celebrity participants," according to the parade's website. Other smaller parades take place across Washington's neighborhoods.

February 13, 2019

Lufthansa sues passenger for not taking last leg of flight

A method commonly used by airline passengers to get cheaper fares is at the center of a court row between a German airline and one of its customers.

Lufthansa has taken a passenger, who didn't show up for the last leg of his ticketed journey, to court in an apparent bid to clamp down on "hidden city" ticketing.

The practice involves passengers leaving their journey at a layover point, instead of making a final connection.


For instance, someone flying from New York to San Francisco could book a cheaper trip from New York to Lake Tahoe with a layover in San Francisco and get off there, without bothering to take the last leg of the flight.

According to a court document, an unnamed male passenger booked a return flight from Oslo to Seattle, which had a layover in Frankfurt. The passenger used all legs of the outbound flight, but did not catch the Frankfurt to Oslo return flight. He instead flew on a separate Lufthansa reservation from Frankfurt to Berlin.

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/lufthansa-sues-passenger-scli-intl/index.html

February 12, 2019

Top Leader at Interior Dept. Pushes a Policy Favoring His Former Client

Top Leader at Interior Dept. Pushes a Policy Favoring His Former Client
David Bernhardt, the agency’s acting chief, wants to roll back endangered-species protections on a tiny fish, a change that benefits few outside a California group he once represented as a lobbyist.

WASHINGTON — As a lobbyist and lawyer, David Bernhardt fought for years on behalf of a group of California farmers to weaken Endangered Species Act protections for a finger-size fish, the delta smelt, to gain access to irrigation water.

As a top official since 2017 at the Interior Department, Mr. Bernhardt has been finishing the job: He is working to strip away the rules the farmers had hired him to oppose.

Last week President Trump said he would nominate Mr. Bernhardt to lead the Interior Department, making him the latest in a line of officials now regulating industries that once paid them to work as lobbyists. Others include Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist who now heads the Environmental Protection Agency after the resignation of Scott Pruitt amid ethics scandals. William Wehrum, the nation’s top clean-air regulator, is a lawyer whose former clients included coal-burning power plants and oil giants.

If confirmed as the next Secretary of the Interior, Mr. Bernhardt would succeed Ryan Zinke, who left in January under a cloud of ethics investigations.

For the California farmers on whose behalf he once lobbied, Mr. Bernhardt’s actions to weaken environmental protections would free up river water, an asset of incalculable value as climate change propels California toward a hotter, drier future. Rerouting river water would also devastate the regional ecosystem of the San Francisco Bay Delta, scientists say, imperiling dozens of other fish up the food chain and affecting water birds, orcas and commercial fisheries and encouraging toxic algal blooms.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/12/climate/david-bernhardt-endangered-species.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

February 12, 2019

Texas hunter pays $110,00 to take "easy and close shot" to kill rare goat

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - The photograph, published last week in Pakistani newspapers, was stunning. It showed a magnificent mountain goat, with huge, symmetrically spiral horns, nestled on a rock and surrounded by breathtaking snowy mountains, with a man kneeling and smiling behind him.



It took a few seconds to realize that the animal, a wild Astore markhor, was dead. The caption described the man as an American hunter who had paid a record $110,000 to shoot it on a tourist expedition to Pakistan's northern Himalayan region of Gilgit-Baltistan.


"It was an easy and close shot. I am pleased to take this trophy," the hunter, identified as Bryan Kinsel Harlan, was quoted as saying. His home state or city was not identified, but his Pakistani guides said he is from Texas.

The story drew immediate expressions of sorrow and indignation on social media here. Some Pakistani commentators asked why there was no legal ban on hunting the markhor (Capra falconeri), which is the official national animal. Others suggested that foreign tourists be taken to photograph the exotic goats, not shoot them.

But there is another, more benign, rationale behind allowing Harlan, along with two other Americans, to pay enormous sums to kill three long-horned markhors in northern Pakistan in the past month. According to Pakistani officials and conservation groups, the practice has actually helped save a rare and endangered species from potential extinction.
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/A-US-trophy-hunter-pays-110-000-to-kill-a-rare-13609946.php




https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/a-us-trophy-hunter-paid-110000-to-kill-a-rare-mountain-goat-in-pakistan/2019/02/11/29654a74-2c73-11e9-906e-9d55b6451eb4_story.html?utm_term=.a5cbba3fbfe1

he happily pats and drags his dead goat.

February 12, 2019

newspaper cuts comic strip after finding "We fondly say go fuck yourself to Trump." tucked in corner

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/non-sequitur-wiley-miller-butler-eagle-pennsylvania-trump_us_5c61bf25e4b09247fcc06e5b


Newspaper Cuts Ties With Comic After Discovering ‘Go F**k Yourself’ To Trump
In the Sunday issue of Pennsylvania’s Butler Eagle, a reader spotted the insult in “Non Sequitur.”
headshot
By Jenna Amatulli
A newspaper has dropped a syndicated cartoon after finding an insult aimed at President Donald Trump tucked in a corner of the strip.

On Sunday, Pennsylvania’s Butler Eagle included the comic strip “Non Sequitur” drawn by Wiley Miller as it always does. However, this particular cartoon, featuring a “Bearaissance” character named Leonardo Bear Vinci, had a message scribbled in the lower-right-hand corner reading, “We fondly say go fuck yourself to Trump.”