The unimportant news thread

[Baron Scarpia]

Wouldn't it be interesting if Trump has to give the state of the union message, but the government is shut down.

"The state of the union is......shut down. Hey, is this microphone working? Did they sent the A/V guy home?"

[Todd]

Wouldn't it be interesting if Trump has to give the state of the union message, but the government is shut down.

He doesn't have to give a speech to Congress.  That's residue from Wilson.  Trump should kill the tradition and revert to sending a report to Congress, but he loves cameras too much.

[Spineur]

Paul Bocuse, the pope of French cuisine died at 91.  His restaurants were in Lyon and the neighborhoods (Abbaye de Collonges).  The meal I had there was a lifetime experience.

[Spineur]

The devil just announced he was ending hell and free his ovens so Paul Bocuse could cook a Poularde demi-deuil for him.

[Turner]

Paul Bocuse, the pope of French cuisine died at 91.  His restaurants were in Lyon and the neighborhoods (Abbaye de Collonges).  The meal I had there was a lifetime experience.

A news story that made a lot of headlines and various news entries up here too ...

[Wendell_E]

True about Haiti, but unless Klein thinks the US government controls hurricanes, her speculation is more fantasy than anything else.  And in the interim, those three hundred thousand emigrants are immediately eligible to vote, which means Florida might get much bluer by the November election.

Not unless the Haitians have short memories for how the Clinton Foundation screwed them.

Haiti's a country, not a U.S. territory, so Haitian emigrants wouldn't be eligible to vote in any case. He's referring to Puerto Rican emigrants.

[kishnevi]

In SoFla, there's a considerable number of Haitian immigrants who are naturalized citizens.  All the ones I know voted for Clinton, and thought anyone who voted for Trump was crazy.

(But Wendell is correct.  I was referring to los boriquenos.)

[zamyrabyrd]

Rather shocking news from a s**khole place, where loads of money enter and winds up in a sinkhole:
https://theintercept.com/2018/01/10/puerto-rico-electricity-prepa-hurricane-maria/

On Saturday, a day after becoming aware of a massive store of rebuilding materials being held by the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, the U.S. federal government — the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, along with their security detail — entered a Palo Seco warehouse owned by the public utility to claim and distribute the equipment, according to a spokesperson for the Corps...

The federal government "began distributing [supplies] to contractors," Vera said, including hard-to-find full-tension steel sleeves, critical to rebuilding. "We obtained several hundred of these sleeves on Saturday," Vera added. The armed encounter comes as around half of Puerto Ricans still remain without electricity well over 100 days after Hurricane Maria. As PREPA hoards crucial resources that could help remedy the island's dire situation, the Puerto Rican government is attempting to annihilate the power provider's only regulator.

[Todd]

Hawaii governor didn't correct false missile alert sooner because he didn't know his Twitter password

[Baron Scarpia]

Hawaii governor didn't correct false missile alert sooner because he didn't know his Twitter password

Civil defense alerts are implemented through twitter now? If you are not on twitter, you can burn up in the nuclear conflagration? I missed the memo.

[bwv 1080]

It may be a scam, but it how else can both I virtue and class signal at dinner?

[Todd]

Facebook should be regulated like a cigarette company, says Salesforce CEO

[Todd]

Nutella 'riots' spread across French supermarkets

[Spineur]

Lots of flooding in Europe.  A couple of pics from the Seine in Paris.  The Zouave at the Alma bridge is used to compare the different floods in Paris.  For the highest one in 1910 the water reached his shoulders.  Not quite there yet.  But without the many retention basins that have been built, this flood would have been far worse.

Here in spite of the heavy rains, the basement is still dry.

[Todd]

German carmakers backed studies exposing people and monkeys to toxic car exhaust

In their defense, this happened years ago - in 2014.  No one knew any better back then.

[Karl Henning]

Were the people US Congressmen?

[bwv 1080]

And here I thought ICOs were just a scam, this gives them a real air of legitimacy...

https://www.coindesk.com/venezuelas-president-announces-petro-token-pre-sale/

[bwv 1080]

But "clean eating" is, at its best, a marketing tactic that spreads awareness about the connection between diet and health; and, at its worst, "clean eating" pushes the movement's anti-science and regressive ethos (which is similar to the anti-vaccination movement, another brain child of the coastal elites).For instance, you can't walk into Chipotle and miss their signs declaring that nothing on the premises is produced with GMOs. But even if we leave aside the truthiness of the assertion, who cares? The argument against GMOs has been as thoroughly debunked as the anti-vaxxer mantra that vaccination causes autism. (It certainly is no antidote for E. coli.)

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/clean-eating-has-become-such-sham-fast-food-chains-are-ncna845081

[Todd]

Billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong reaches deal to buy L.A. Times and San Diego Union-Tribune

[Karl Henning]

Billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong reaches deal to buy L.A. Times and San Diego Union-Tribune

On Wednesday, The Times' corporate parent, Tronc, announced that it had reached a deal to sell The Times, the San Diego Union-Tribune, Spanish-language Hoy Los Angeles and community newspapers to L.A. biotech billionaire Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong. His investment firm, Nant Capital, agreed to pay $500 million for the Southern California papers and it will assume $90 million in pension liabilities.

The sale will bring a return to local ownership and possibly some stability for a 136-year-old institution that, in recent years, has lagged behind its better-resourced rivals on the East Coast. It caps a particularly stormy period for the newspaper, which has seen three editors in six months, its publisher placed on unpaid leave amid a sexual harassment investigation and a historic vote to unionize the newsroom.