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You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Saturday Morning Easy Layups Open Thread: Three Great American Pastimes, Spoiled

Saturday Morning Easy Layups Open Thread: Three Great American Pastimes, Spoiled

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Pizza, football, and arguing about value for money — there is nothing John Schnatter can’t make nastier. Since my life ethos has involved never living where there wasn’t adequate pizza delivery available, my only prior knowledge of “Papa John’s” involved its founder making a public fool of himself over the Affordable Care Act back in 2012…

… According to “Papa” John Schnatter, the cost of providing health insurance for all of his pizza chain’s uninsured, full-time employees comes out to about 14 cents on a large pizza. That’s less than adding an extra topping and a third the price of an extra pepperoncini. If you want that piping hot pie delivered, the $2 delivery fee will cost you 14 times as much as that health insurance price hike.

“We’re not supportive of Obamacare, like most businesses in our industry,” Schnatter said on a conference call with shareholders last week, as reported by Politico. “If Obamacare is in fact not repealed, we will find tactics to shallow out any Obamacare costs and core strategies to pass that cost onto consumers in order to protect our shareholders’ best interests.” …

Twitter users were quick to respond to Schnatter’s latest tantrum:

David Roth, at Deadspin, “The NFL’s Stupid Pizza Wars Were Always Coming”:

… If Trump has one single accomplishment as President, it is how thoroughly he’s revealed extremely rich people as being not somehow braver or smarter or more disciplined than the rest of us but somehow exactly the opposite—consumed by pettiness, enslaved by vanity, and perfectly willing to fuck important things up in order to make some point to themselves and their rancid peers.

If you understand this, then there was nothing really that surprising about flame-retardant Italianate foodstuff impresario Papa “John” Schnatter blaming his company’s declining profits on the NFL’s inability to successfully quash its nascent protest movement. It was a little startling, of course, because of how ridiculous it was, but it was less startling than it would have been two years ago. That the statement happened to be obviously incorrect should have been taken as a given.

The speculation that Schnatter might have been put up to this gambit by Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones seems like a bit much at first, until you remember that the phrase “a bit much” no longer applies. So, sure: Schnatter, the boss of the NFL’s Official Pizza Sponsor, took a shot at the leadership of the NFL commissioner at the behest of the vengeful Petro-Creature that owns the Dallas Cowboys, who is of course also Schnatter’s personal friend and an owner of at least 100 Papa John’s franchises, because the aforementioned Petro-Creature is upset about Goodell’s suspension of his star running back. Sure. Absolutely. Everything is this stupid, now…

.

AND YET IT GETS EVEN STUPIDER!

Truly, we are living in the dumbest timeline.

Reader Interactions

229Comments

  1. 1.

    Manyakitty

    I stopped buying that pizza because of the Obama care thing, and never looked back. What a festering bag of shit he is.

  2. 2.

    magurakurin

    I can honestly say I have never eaten a Papa John’s pizza. Never even seen one. I grew up in the Philly burbs, so lots of local pizza shops. Basically New York style, no real difference from up there. But, once you’ve been to Napoli and eaten pizza there…no comparison. I love my hometown Philly pizza and pizza up in NYC, too, but the stuff in Napoli is artistry.

  3. 3.

    Baud

    A retired U.S. Navy officer said he declined an award from the New Orleans Saints because of NFL players protesting the national anthem by taking a knee, WDSU reported.

    Cmdr. John Wells was selected for a Peoples Health Champion Award, which would have been presented at Sunday’s game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the Superdome. The award is given to Louisianans who have “significant accomplishments” and have reached “senior citizen status.”

    Wells, who is the executive director of Military Veterans Advocacy in Slidell, said he declined the award because of the ongoing controversy with the NFL and some players protesting during the national anthem.

    “I am unable, in good conscience, to enter an NFL stadium while this discourtesy prevails,” Wells wrote to executives of Peoples Health and the Saints.
    ……

    In a statement, the Saints said the team respects his decision and that “he has that right, and we thank him for his service to our country and his past efforts on behalf of the military and veterans.”

    “We will not allow Mr. Wells’ decision and subsequent media appearances to distract our players and organization from continuing to honor and support our military and veterans. We, as an organization, have decided to move on from this sad and divisive discourse and focus our attention on supporting our military and veterans,” the statement said.

    ajc.com/news/retired-navy-officer-refuses-award-from-new-orleans-saints-due-player-protests/GlIYt2js…

  7. 7.

    Amir Khalid

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    Never tried Papa John’s. Wouldn’t have been safe in America, and they don’t have outlets here. How do they compare with the not-well-loved Domino’s and Pizza Hut?

  9. 9.

    Manyakitty

    @Baud: You weren’t missing anything. I generally try to avoid chain food in all its myriad forms, but sometimes yield to convenience.

  11. 11.

    magurakurin

    @Baud: the only chain pizza I have eaten is Domino’s (because I used to work there as a driver) and Pizza Hut, because for some reason I have. I think I probably did eat some other ones when some job or someone ordered pizzas and I happened to be there. Where I grew up there were just so many local shops that were cheaper and better and when I lived in Oregon there was on NY style place that I used to go to. Chain pizza is so shitty. But I have somewhat recently discovered Vera Pizza which is an association in Napoli that certifies shops around the world. I’ve found my way to five of them here in Japan. Very excellent. There are quite a few shops in the US as well. There are member shops around the world.

  12. 12.

    Amir Khalid

    I learned something about The Girl today: she hates stainless steel plectra. Touch one to her strings and she crackles — probably because her metal parts weren’t grounded at the factory. Ah well, they were only RM16 for a dozen, and now I know not to get any more. Back to the cellulose picks.

  14. 14.

    magurakurin

    @Baud:

    Does the left have an official foodstuff? No wonder we keep losing.

    I vote for concrete and nails…because we seriously need to harden the fuck up.

  16. 16.

    Betty Cracker

    So the alt-right will spite-eat pizza that tastes like a ketchup-infused doormat? Works for me!

  21. 21.

    magurakurin

    @Raven: yeah, I mean the shit doesn’t even look good in the goddamn pictures…and that’s as good as it will ever look. Better to eat your own vomit than some of those pizzas out there.

  22. 22.

    JMG

    As one born and raised in the Acela Corridor, and who has lived almost all of his life there, too, I can say I have never eaten in a national chain pizzeria and I feel badly for the many folks who’ve had no other exposure to pizza. But to search out a chain for political reasons is clearly self-poisoning.

  23. 23.

    p.a.

    Damn. Can’t boycott a product I wouldn’t touch if you paid me to eat it. Spoiled Northeasterner here, but is it really that hard to find pizza in some places that you have to rely on poopy Johns and dominoes cardboard?

  24. 24.

    magurakurin

    @JMG: not much reason to living where you do. So many much better and cheaper joints just everywhere. I never could figure people who ordered out for chain pizza. Most local shops deliver as well. And forcing yourself to eat Papa John’s shit pizza to support some political agenda…self poisoning is the right word there.

  26. 26.

    cosima

    I still have fond memories of Godfather’s taco pizza. Sounds awful, but so much deliciousness.

    The twitter beatdown that DiGiorno’s (spelling? a frozen pizza company) gave PJohn over this was lovely.

  28. 28.

    magurakurin

    @p.a.: @p.a.:

    but is it really that hard to find pizza in some places that you have to rely on poopy Johns and dominoes cardboard?

    definitely. but it is better just to do without. I remember one place in Portland Ore. that everyone used to rave about. I went and they were rolling out the crusts with rolling pins. The crust was like a biscuit. Just awful. It wasn’t a chain place, though. I imagine things must be better now, that was nearly 30 years ago…

  31. 31.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Heh:

    The Swedish capital’s metro, or tunnelbana, has been described as the world’s longest gallery, with art permanently on display at 90 of the 100 stations along the 68-mile tunnel system. The decades-old permanent works grapple with issues from women’s rights to inclusivity and deforestation.

    But a provocative new exhibit has proved particularly controversial among commuters, sparking debate about the role of public art – and whether the wait for the train is the right time for breaking taboos.

    Graphic artist Liv Strömquist’s series of enlarged felt-pen sketches have been on display at Slussen station for the past five weeks. The Night Garden shows cartoon birds, cats, trees, naked men – and women with unshaven legs and visible menstrual blood.

    One image, of an ice skater in repose with a red stain on her leotard, is captioned: “It’s Alright (I’m Only Bleeding)”.
    ……..
    “It’s not fun explaining to a four-year-old about the red between the legs,” it quoted one tweeter as complaining.

    Much of the criticism of Strömquist’s work on Twitter centred on its appropriateness for the setting. “Lovely! Now Stockholmers can enjoy menstruation even in the subway!” wrote one user.

    “It is not enough to get [your period] once a month,” tweeted another. “Now you will be reminded every time you jump on the subway.”

    Personally, it wouldn’t bother me for even a second and as far as explaining it to a child, uncomfortable conversations just comes with the territory of parenting. YMMV

  33. 33.

    p.a.

    @magurakurin: I’m not a fan of frozen pizza, but some of the diy toppings, frozen plain dough products are OK to ok+. Here in RI many markets carry 1 and 2 pound bags of unformed pizza dough that local bakeries supply. I can’t form a disc to save my life, so I specialize in ‘rustic’ pizza with those.

  36. 36.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @magurakurin:

    yeah, I mean the shit doesn’t even look good in the goddamn pictures…and that’s as good as it will ever look. Better to eat your own vomit than some of those pizzas out there.

    That’s what I was thinking. Sort of “eh, dude, maybe sell product that doesn’t look like a cheep brand of frozen pizza?”

  37. 37.

    cosima

    @geg6: I don’t think they have it here in the UK. If they do we’ve never tried it. I might be willing to try solely for the awesomeness of their PJ twitter smash.

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: It definitely tasted so much better than it sounds. I converted a lot of people to that pizza.

  38. 38.

    Elizabelle

    Good morning all. So we’re having pizza with our coffee this morning?

    @magurakurin: Great to know. Here’s list of US pizza restaurants that are members of AVPN. Listed by city, not state. (AVPN being the True Neapolitan Pizza Association, based in Italy.)

    Ledo’s Pizza is not a Vera member. MD/DC/VA chain, really delicious. Their sauce is a little sweet, but addictive. High quality, nice managers, clean restaurants that support their local communities.

    Jonesing for a Ledo’s pizza after we win our Virginia elections on Tuesday!

    Go Ralph Northam. Jebus, is there a troll campaign against him. I don’t understand why the “left” is so naive about ratfucking. Hopefully it’s just a lot of smoke on the internet.

  42. 42.

    debit

    Obviously this dude has no problem with permanently contracting his customer base, but I wonder how his franchise owners feel when customer reaction to the brand has to go something like this: “What do you think honey? Papa Johns or Pizza Hut?” “Which one is the Nazi lover again?” “Papa John.” “Pizza Hut it is.”

    ETA: and meanwhile open carry whackjobs decide to show up in full regalia to show their support and only order a single and ask for water.

  43. 43.

    Elmo

    I’ll chime in here, because I’m frankly shocked at the number of commenters who profess not to understand or ever patronize chain pizza joints. Does EVERYONE here live in cities?

    I’ve only briefly lived in places where there was any pizza delivery other than chain shops. For a long time I had either Dominos or Papa Johns available and that was it – not even Pizza Hut. Now I have a few different choices, and I will risk the scorn of my betters by saying that Dominos is the best of the lot. (Pizza Hut doesn’t deliver here)
    The local shops are either pure grease, or burnt crust and too inconsistent. Dominos gets it right 9 out of 10.

  46. 46.

    magurakurin

    @Elmo: people from back East. There are reasonable local places everywhere and stand out places are never all that far either.

  48. 48.

    magurakurin

    @Elmo: I once heard a story about a park ranger in Yosemite…no idea if it is really true or not. A woman asked him what was the best thing to do if you only had an hour to see the park. He told her, “Lady, if I only had an hour to spend in Yosemite, I would sit down by the river and cry.” Domino’s getting it right 9 out of 10 made me think of that…?

  49. 49.

    Elizabelle

    @debit: Yeah. I wonder if you could have a class action suit of franchisees wanting to exit their agreements. If the owner has made the business environment toxic for his brand.

    Related to franchise chain restaurants, and why there are so many of them: it’s the financing. Banks (Wells Fargo and Bank of America) looking at fast food/casual dining as good risks; they’re now overbuilt and cannibalizing each other. While making it harder for Mom and Pop local restaurants.

    NY Times: Thanks to Wall St., There May Be Too Many Restaurants

    It was a good read. I avoid their moronic political coverage, but like a lot of the rest of the paper.

    Wall Street, and MBAs, gonna be the death of us. Monetize everything they touch. When life is often not that. It’s quality and authenticity and connections and things that cannot always be be quantified successfully.

  50. 50.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Elmo: I live out in the boonies and yeah my only choices are the chains but I still won’t eat Pizza Hut or Dominoes. I can get better out of the walmart freezer aisle.

  52. 52.

    magurakurin

    @Elizabelle: I never went to a member shop in the States, but I have in Italy and Japan. The shops in Japan were very close, but obviously the freshness of the mozzarella di bufala cannot be matched with that found in Campania.

  53. 53.

    ThresherK

    @p.a.: “Rustic” is my go-to adjective for why my food and desserts look as they do. And I’ve won prizes with recipes, so making the actual comestibles is not my issue.

    —

    I grew up two towns away from New Haven. Because of that, I thought it was the birthright of every American in a village with at least three stoplights to have a local place which knew how to make a good crust with just a touch of blistering on the edge.

    Also, I wanted to mention that Papa Gino’s still has shops in the urban/suburban Northeast, somehow.

  54. 54.

    satby

    Chicagoan here, so I grew up going to the original Giordanos and Gino’s east before they became chains. But we used to make our own a lot of the time, it took just as long as waiting for delivery.

  55. 55.

    Elizabelle

    @Tilda Swintons Bald Cap: Oh yeah.

    I remember when Ledo’s was more local to Maryland, that farflung state. (I am from Northern Virginia.)

    My BIL in California has Ledo’s Fedex a supply of frozen pizzas to him every few months.

  59. 59.

    Kay

    O’Neill’s platform will call for “legalization of recreational marijuana, a higher minimum wage, a decrease in in-state tuition, and the funding of mental health institutions across the state.”
    O’Neill said he’d remain on the Supreme Court until he’s “certified for the ballot in February of 2018 … To do so any earlier is unfair to the 2 million Ohioans who elected me.” Meanwhile, to separate O’Neill the justice from O’Neill the candidate for governor, O’Neill has recused himself from taking part in any new cases that come before the Supreme Court.

    I helped with one of campaigns for supreme court- he lost the year I helped but later won. He’s the “no money from nobody” candidate and kind of a pain in the ass- he’s the maverickyest maverick, spends a lot of time fighting with Democrats although he (supposedly) is one.

  65. 65.

    Yellowdog

    I used to own some stock in Papa John’s because my son used to deliver pizza for them (in 2002) and they treated him well. When this ACA statement came out I donated it all to Planned Parenthood.

  66. 66.

    Matt

    Dear alt-right: did you know car exhaust isn’t actually poisonous but gives you SUPERPOWERS? All that “don’t run your car in an enclosed space” stuff is a conspiracy to deny you your GAWD-GIVEN mojo and shrink your penis.

  68. 68.

    tobie

    @Elizabelle: @Baud: The new normal seems to be Russian interference in our elections. All of them. Virginia’s the best example, and yes, the purity ponies on the left seem to be particularly vulnerable to disinformation spread on social media. What a pity when northern Virginia has a really good local paper–the Washington Post.

  69. 69.

    Kay

    @Kay:

    O’Neill has recused himself from taking part in any new cases that come before the Supreme Court.

    All the sanctimony signs were there in his first campaign but I’m disappointed by this. He’s the only liberal on the court so he basically writes blistering dissents for a living but that doesn’t mean he should just decide not to do his job.

    Republicans are (of course) full of shit for attacking him on it because they all supposedly hold state jobs while they’re campaigning for governor but still. This “running for personal fulfillment” has to stop. His issues aren’t even good. Ohio raised the minimum wage already with a ballot question, it phases in, pot legalization is inevitable and the governor doesn’t fund mental health- the legislature does.

  71. 71.

    Another Scott

    @magurakurin: Some of the worst pizza I ever had was in Sicily. Burnt, tasteless, just horrible. :-p

    WaPo:

    When the American inventor Samuel Morse visited 19th-century Naples, the birthplace of the modern pizza, he described that city’s preferred street food as “a piece of bread that had been taken reeking out of the sewer.”

    A century later, a 20-year-old Greek named Sam Panopoulos found himself similarly disappointed. Stopping in Naples during a 1954 voyage to Canada, he found his first taste of “pizza” — a bun topped with sauce and spaghetti — uninspiring.

    Yet Mr. Panopoulos, who opened a restaurant in Chatham, Ontario, called Satellite, eventually warmed to the yeasted flatbread that Neapolitan bakers had popularized in the 1700s and that Greek chefs had whipped up for sailors more than a thousand years before.

    Searching for new pizza flavors one day in 1962, he reached for a can of fruit and launched a culinary revolution, topping his restaurant’s standard cheese pizza with bits of ham and pineapple. The result was sweet, sour and savory — a flavor combination hailed ever since as both revelatory and repugnant, a Canadian treasure and a “Polynesian perversion.”

    […]

    Modern, edible, pizza is an American (and Canadian) creation.

    ;-)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  72. 72.

    Mike in DC

    @Elmo:
    To be fair, Domino’s revamped their pizzas in response to customer complaints a couple years ago, and the quality noticeably improved. They now generally are at or near the top in consumer surveys about chain pizza. And if you’re jonesing for pizza at home at 11:15 at night, you could do worse.

  74. 74.

    Feathers

    Also, chains vary widely in quality, often by region. There are chains I’ve eaten at with my parents in northern VA that weren’t bad at all. When I gave them a try in New England, blech.

  75. 75.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Yes- he aged out as a judge. Can’t run again. His winning the court race was something of a fluke- no one knows who these judges are. When I helped with his first campaign we handed out fliers (“no money from nobody” means you hand out fliers). People thought I was him- they’d say “thank you judge” – I was like “you’re very welcome, commoner, but please use ‘your honor’ in the future” :)

    The whole thing is a little silly- a bunch of them had “O” names that year – people probably thought they were voting for another judge.

  78. 78.

    Another Scott

    @Elizabelle:

    I don’t understand why the “left” is so naive about ratfucking.

    It really is a bit of a mystery. We seem to think that folks nominally on our side have too many flaws, but everything on the other side is somehow totally transparent and straight forward. As if it’s inconceivable that the Teabaggers would try to mess with our perceptions of our candidates even though they do it every single election.

    Grrr…!

    Hopefully it’s just a lot of smoke on the internet.

    Agreed. Northam seems to over-perform his polls, and Donnie’s team has vastly underperformed his results this year. Here’s hoping it continues on Tuesday.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  79. 79.

    frosty

    @Elizabelle: Another Ledo’s fan here, too. Also spent time there while living in College Park and very happy that they’re in Hunt Valley where I work so I can bring it home.

    We have a local outfit that delivers. Nothing to write home about, but not a chain.

  81. 81.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    A Democratic county chair of a big county tried to keep him off the ballot when he ran as judge. I saw the actual email exchange which means many other people saw it too- it wasn’t illegal or anything – the county chairs are supposed to play a role and they can be as aggressive as they want – anyway- I felt like O’Neill didn’t come out well in it- acting like this county chair wasn’t allowed to influence the race when actually that’s part of why county chairs exist- they influence the direction of the Party. That’s the point. They’re not referees. They’re in the game. O’Neill is smart- he knows this- so his outrage was phony.

  82. 82.

    Suzanne

    I haven’t had Papa John’s in probably fifteen years. I remember thinking it was adequate at best. Better than Pizza Hut, but that isn’t saying much. We are lucky to have good independents and local chains. Phoenix is (oddly) developing a great reputation for pizza in culinary circles.

  83. 83.

    Suzanne

    I’ll put it this way: if I’m at a gathering and they’re serving Papa John’s, I’ll stick to veggies and dip.

  84. 84.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Nice profile of Tiffany Haddish at the Guardian:

    Haddish’s road to her comedy kit was lengthy and hard-fought, however. There is a well-worn cliche that standup comics tell jokes to mask their internal pain and dysfunction. In the case of Haddish, that cliche is something of an understatement. In the first chapter of The Last Black Unicorn, Haddish writes: “I should probably start with the car accident.” When she was nine years old, Tiffany was making dinner for her four step-siblings and waiting for her mother to return home from working the midnight shift at a post office. It was two months before she saw her mother again. Haddish’s mum had been in a car wreck that had left her unable to speak, walk or eat. (In the book, Haddish claims her stepfather would tell her she was lucky to be alive because he’d cut the brake cable, hoping to profit from the insurance gained by killing his entire family.)

    Haddish became the de facto parent to her step-siblings while being verbally and physically abused by her mother, who was now suffering from schizophrenia. A public altercation that culminated in Mrs Haddish hitting a baby with a plank of wood resulted in her being sectioned in state mental care for two years while Tiffany was put in various foster homes, where she was routinely abused and assaulted.

    It’s a harrowing backstory that would lead, in most cases, to a bleak future. Haddish attributes her survival to an unexpected source. “I watched Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” she says. “There’s a scene in that movie where the detective says to the rabbit: ‘Why are the people doing this for you?’ And the rabbit goes: ‘Because I make them laugh. Make people laugh, Eddie, and they’ll do anything for you.’ And I’m like: ‘This is how I’m going to survive. That’s how I’m going to get kids to do my homework.’ I was kind of like a Charlie Chaplin. I’d fall or I’d bump into things. It worked.”

    “The Dickensian horror of Haddish’s adolescence” would repeat itself ad nauseum.

    Which brings us to the period when the Dickensian horror of Tiffany Haddish’s adolescence resumes. “I was homeless for three months but there were three different times. You know how they say life is full of lessons, and each time you experience something you’re supposed to learn from it, and if you don’t it happens again? Well, it took three times for me and every single time it was about three months of me living in my car.” It also took the intervention of fellow comic Kevin Hart, who gave her $300, told her to get a hotel room and make a list of career goals, to make Haddish start to take her future seriously. Her list began with attainable objectives, such as moving out of her car and into a real apartment. As she kept writing, she let her imagination run free, giving voice to her ambition to work with Will Ferrell, Dave Chappelle and Jada Pinkett Smith. “I learned that I needed to be more honest than I was, more truthful with my comedy,” she says. “I’m really grateful God made Kevin.”

    I like the idea of Roger Rabbit and Kevin Hart being the heroes of one’s life.

  85. 85.

    Kay

    The Papa John’s guy looks exactly like the informercial guy who sold a plan for putting “tiny ads” in the classified sections of newspapers to make millions. Don’t ask- I don’t know how it works. This infomercial mesmerized me- I “hate watched” it before I knew what hate watching was. They may be the same person.

  88. 88.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Fuck it. Bring back the “machines”. My favorite AL post of all time was “political machines: time for a rebirth?” Paraphrasing!

    Now THAT’S a maverick stance.

  89. 89.

    Baud

    @debbie: I think that’s the point.

    @Kay: I’m not crazy about the machines, but it’s clear that we don’t have a good replacement when it comes to organizing.

  90. 90.

    MCA1

    @Mike in DC: Quite right. That’s why they do so well on college campuses, too.

    There’s also the factors of (a) kids like it, and (b) it’s inexpensive, in addition to the convenience. If my wife and I are going out and we find we don’t have time to prep something for the young’uns, an option that arrives in 20 minutes and feeds them all for 15 bucks and they like (such as Dominos) is pretty appealing. We prefer the wood oven place that sells amazing pies, but it does end up running abound $70 for the five of us to eat there when we could do two mediums from Dominis for $25 or so.

  91. 91.

    Jack the Second

    @Elmo: I grew up in southern Indiana; my childhood Pizza was first Pizza Hut, then Noble Romans because it had a window you coul watch them make pizza through, then Godfather’s because they had an arcade. I didn’t find out till Cain ran that the reason the Godfather’s closed was Cain converted it from a restaurant to a frozen gas station brand, because it was higher margin :-/

  92. 92.

    Emma

    @Another Scott: Funny. I haven’t been able to eat American pizza since I ate Italian pizza in a little hilltop town in Umbria. Fresh vegetables layered with think sprinklings of cheese, and no tomato sauce. Big slices of fresh tomatoes… yum.

  93. 93.

    debbie

    @Kay:

    Well, the Republican Chief Justice, Maureen O’Connor, is more than a little unhappy with that arrangement.

  94. 94.

    Kay

    @debbie:

    People used to say that female judicial candidates have an edge but it may just be urban legend. They are supposedly perceived as “more fair” vs male candidates in Ohio elections.

  95. 95.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    @p.a.: Depends on the community. I grew up in Grand Rapids, MI. Michigan is home to both Domino’s and Little Caesars so we know from pizza chains. Still, Grand Rapids has plenty of independent mom and pop pizza places that we always preferred to the chains. So my guess is that in most mid sized and larger cities you can do a lot better than the chains but in smaller towns maybe not. Most upscale smaller towns will have an independent pizzaria, but a lot of places in declined probably have nothing but chains. I never ate chain pizza growing up except at pizza parties where parents were buying to get lots of pizza cheap and not at all concerned about quality.

  96. 96.

    debbie

    @Kay:

    As you know, the female judges here are largely Republican and so fairness is non-existent. Judith French, for one. Grr.

  97. 97.

    ThresherK

    @Another Scott: I have Fernie Froze posting links to DailyWire, run by Ben (I used to run Breitbart) Shapiro, like it was from the fucking book of Revelations.

    Ratfucking works very nicely on stupid leftier-than-thous who can’t resist a story that’s too good to check out.

  98. 98.

    KithKanan

    @Kay: Coming from a state where judges are appointed, the whole idea of judges running for office seems inherently corrupt. How can they not be expected to recuse themselves from any case in any way involving anyone who campaigned for them?

  99. 99.

    Central Planning

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    it wouldn’t bother me for even a second and as far as explaining it to a child, uncomfortable conversations just comes with the territory of parenting.

    QFT.

  100. 100.

    Kay

    The Trump administration has downplayed the role of foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos during the 2016 presidential campaign. But the public record shows that Papadopoulos, who attempted to set up a meeting between Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, was a more prominent figure than previously understood.
    Papadopoulos was in Cleveland during the Republican National Convention where he was invited by the American Jewish Committee to speak on a panel about U.S. foreign policy, organizers said.
    “Papadopolous was only one among the many contacts AJC established and maintained among advisers to both parties’ 2016 presidential candidates and in the two parties’ national committees,” AJC spokesperson Ken Bandler said in a statement.

    We have a billion dollar (at least) private sector, for-profit campaign coverage apparatus where thousands of people are employed covering presidential races and people are just now finding out about the President of the United States, a year after the election. I don’t care how many excuses they make- this is a massive failure.

    16 months of email coverage means they had to make choices as far as resources and energy expended and their choice was not to cover anything substantive or important about Donald Trump. They’re wrong when they say they did both. Prioritizing one thing in the real world means you peg something lower on the list.

    There hasn’t been the slightest bit of analysis or soul searching or accountability, either. Instead they all dug in and denied it.

  103. 103.

    Kay

    I watched Putin’s Revenge last night (1st part) which was good and informative.

    Everyone in the country should watch it since they’re getting fuck-all as far as information about what went on during this election and we’re A YEAR past the election.

    Congress needs to tell people what went on. These closed door hearings are bullshit. They whole point of congressional hearings is that they’re not prosecutors- they can lay it out for the public. Trumpsters are going in there and giving hours of testimony and the public remains completely in the dark- there’s interference in the VA election, right now, today.

    I want them to tell us what’s going on and what, specifically, they are doing about it.

  104. 104.

    Manyakitty

    @Elmo: Domino’s is definitely less bad. Little Caesar’s works, too. Plus, their owner is a decent person.

  106. 106.

    Suzanne

    FYI, if looking for reasonable cheap pizza, one can do much worse than Costco. They don’t deliver, but you can call ahead and place the order, do your shopping, and have the pizza ready on your way out. The kids like it.

  109. 109.

    Central Planning

    @NotMax: Did not know what that was so I looked it up. That might be my new favorite rule to live by.

    Here in Rochester, we rotate between three local chains: Marks, Pontillos, and Salvatores. Marks is currently winning because they have the garlic parmesan sauce for their wings… I swear there must be heroin or something else addictive in that sauce. If it were polite, I would suck up the extra sauce with a straw and lick the piece of wax paper on the bottom of the container clean.

  110. 110.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay:

    We have a billion dollar (at least) private sector, for-profit campaign coverage apparatus

    I think I see the problem. “Hillary is EEEEEVIL.” sold more papers than “trump is an ignorant dyslexic moron”. Apparently the news media is just like Hollywood. They prefer to do sequels of previously successful stories than anything “new”. You just never can tell if it might bomb.

  111. 111.

    germy

    @Kay:

    Trumpsters are going in there and giving hours of testimony and the public remains completely in the dark-

    Can you imagine if the Jared hearing was televised? The senator who told him “You can leave whenever you feel like it” and Jared walking out in the middle of questioning from the Democrats?

  113. 113.

    Ian G.

    Living in the NYC area, I’ve never had to make use of any pizza chains. Anyone have any idea what the real reason for the sales decline is? I wonder if artisanal pizza is becoming a thing across the country (not just here) and is killing Papa John’s the way craft beer is killing Budweiser.

    On that note, it seems Budweiser is trying to go all in on the “real Americans drink our piss water!” theme in their ads and branding. Still, their ads have way too many black people for Breitbart to decide Bud is the official drink of Trump’s America.

  114. 114.

    NotMax

    @Suzanne

    True dat. And a good value at ten bucks for a 16-inch pie.

    Although not listed on the menu board, one can order a veggie pizza that is, IMHO, better than any the other offerings once sprinkled at home with a little extra basil, oregano and garlic.

  115. 115.

    Wyrm1

    I’m sure the African-American dude who owns the two franchises in my neighborhood is thrilled at the idea of his pizza becoming the official pizza of the alt-right.

  116. 116.

    Manyakitty

    @debbie: We have at least one female judge here in Summit County who is a Democrat- Kathryn Michael. I haven’t researched much about her, but I know when she first ran for the bench, I asked her about some local issue and she said she was too busy with her campaign to worry about the news. Not impressive. Didn’t vote for her then, haven’t since, but she keeps getting re-elected.

  117. 117.

    Kay

    Mueller found enough to indict in 5 months but 2 years of daily political coverage- longer- Trump launched his campaign with birtherism, so 4 years of political coverage turned up nothing about these people.

    Covering the emails (led by the NYTimes) had a cost. We’re now paying it.

  120. 120.

    satby

    @Manyakitty: When I was in high school, the original Giordano’s was in a small storefront and had about five tables. If you wanted wine you had to bring your own from the liquor store down the street. That didn’t matter since we were underage. So good!

  121. 121.

    Kay

    @germy:

    Mueller will have convictions before Americans learn anything about the President or his low quality, sleazy associates.

    I guess that was the standard for reporting on Trump. It had to meet “beyond a reasonable doubt” while Clinton coverage was “whatever anyone anywhere says about her”.

    This is fucked up and backward. It’s the opposite of Watergate. The prosecutor is the first we’re hearing about it. We find out about the Trumpsters when they are indicted. Jesus. God knows what they’re doing in there in the meantime, right? Overhauling the US tax code, for one thing. Not a minor policy shift, a tax code that further benefits unaccountable oligarchs. Putin himself would approve.

  124. 124.

    Denali

    @Kay,

    No question that the media completely failed to vet Trump. Was it simply profit motive that kept them from investigating him? It is certainly frightening to know that the public cannot rely on the press to shed light on candidates, not to mentioning the influence of the Russians. While many public figures openly stated that Trump was unfit for office, they did not explain exactly what that meant.

  125. 125.

    Elizabelle

    @Kay: Fuck the fucking Vichy NY Times.

    Slinks away, cuz I still subscribe.

    And I will send Maggie Haberman and Glenn Thrush their gifts of mouthwash and kneepads, to continue their reporting on Trump.

  126. 126.

    Kay

    Here’s a good question. Is there any Russian political interference on the tax code rewrite? Are they pushing Trump’s tax plan? Are they leading reporters around by the nose like they did with the emails?
    Because I feel like Americans should probably be told that before they’re ordered to follow this new law- which one of Trump’s criminal associates is drafting it or promoting it.

  127. 127.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Cowboy Diva: I do like Imo’s but have never had Ledo’s so I can not say. I’d just like to try some “Old world” pizza so I can compare. I’m not likely to ever make it to Italy as there are too many places ahead of it on my list.

  128. 128.

    Elizabelle

    @Ian G.:

    artisanal pizza is becoming a thing across the country (not just here) and is killing Papa John’s the way craft beer is killing Budweiser.

    Could be, indeed. I see that Sara Lee has rolled out “artisanal bread” (their label) in local grocery stores. It looks like artisanal bread, but texture is way soft.

    LOL. How to remember to spell artisanal. Artist anal. Then lose the second T.

  129. 129.

    Kay

    @Elizabelle:

    They’ll make millions off their Trump book. They don’t need your gifts. Access pays better than journalism. The NYTimes proudly promotes that they employ the Trump Whisperers. Unfucking believable.

    When that book comes out watch them promote it in the news section, like they did with Clinton Cash.

  130. 130.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    Papa John’s was our delivery of choice for one reason: they actually showed up while the pizza was still hot. (The alternative was Dominoes. We didn’t even have Chinese delivery until a few years ago.) The local places didn’t deliver at all, and I’ve not been to one that had a decent crust. I can only assume the people who give out the local “Best Of” awards think all pizza should taste like it came out of a white box with black letters.

    Apps like GrubHub are going to kill the pizza delivery market. Most places where the chains have done well, they’re the only option. Not any more.

  131. 131.

    Elizabelle

    @Kay: I may be watching that from abroad.

    it’s sickening.

    This is Pinch Sulzberger, isn’t it? The Clinton Derangement and $$$$ over accuracy?

    Pinch Pinch Pinch Pinch Pinch.

    (He apparently hates that nickname. Jr. Dad was “Punch.”)

  132. 132.

    OzarkHillbilly

    “Indeed, after travelling thousands of leagues over land with astronomical and physical instruments, you are tempted to cry out ‘Lucky are those who travel without instruments that break, without dried plants that get wet, without animal collections that rot; lucky are those who travel the world to see it with their own eyes, trying to understand it, and recollecting the sweet emotions that nature inspires’.”

    -Alexander von Humboldt

  133. 133.

    zhena gogolia

    @Suzanne:

    Even our local Stop and Shop has decent pizza. And we have at least two excellent artisanal pizza places in our fairly small town, so why anyone would go to Domino’s is beyond me. I guess it’s cheaper, but not by much.

  135. 135.

    ThresherK

    @Wyrm1: I smell a franchisee lawsuit. Talk about wrecking someone’s small business.

    (Well, I mean wrecking it by doing something worse than selling that fellow Papa John’s ingredients and recipes.)

  137. 137.

    RSA

    @Elizabelle:

    I don’t understand why the “left” is so naive about ratfucking.

    I wonder if it’s partly because of the studies, surveys, and analysis out there saying that liberals are smarter than conservatives? People might let down their guard a little about being fooled.

  138. 138.

    Kay

    Also- since Donald Trump is blatantly trying to influence the prosecutions of his sleazy associates and Sessions is one of his sleazy associates can we get some analysis on that the DOJ is pursuing and what they are declining to pursue?

    That’s how we would find out if Sessions is compromised. We can look at his work. Trump probably isn’t going to tell Maggie Haberman in an exclusive interview if he’s corrupting the DOJ. They’ll need another source of information.

  139. 139.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @NotMax: That’s right up there with “Kum & Go”. The first time I saw one I thought it was the perfect name for a drive thru whore house.

  140. 140.

    Bobby Thomson

    The condescension and cultural elitism in this thread is almost as bad as one of the ketchup posts at LGM. This is the kind of thing that fuels all that culture war crap.

    Papa John’s is actually not bad – definitely better than Pizza Hut (greasy as hell), and Domino’s (which is almost always mediocre at best). I liked it before their CEO decided to burn down his brand and reveal himself as an anti-worker asshole. So, yeah, he’s a tool and I don’t buy his pizza, but this “our pizza is better than their pizza” stuff is classist as hell.

  144. 144.

    mad citizen

    @Kay: I had this exact same thought last night while the Lester Holt news was on my telly. How could there not have been a few “journalists” among the thousands covering the election digging into what was happening? A massive jounalistic failure. Then I thought, well maybe there was some. I remember Samanta Bee and some of the other shows talking about the Hillary DC Pizza place child story, etc. But I guess the Russia connection was not made by anyone until Obama announced it?

  145. 145.

    Another Scott

    @ThresherK: One of the gas stations we passed on our short vacation to western Virginia had two big billboards on the property for the Trumpist candidates. As cutthroat a business as retail gas is, I wondered why they would risk turning away ~ 50% of their potential customers. But some people can’t conceive of people thinking about politics differently than they do…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  146. 146.

    NotMax

    Worst pizza ever was the single time went to a now long gone local outlet of Oahu-based Magoo’s. It was in an extremely ramshackle former stable building.

    They had expended no effort whatsoever to mask or improve the ramshackle look. Or the stable aroma.

  147. 147.

    rk

    @Bobby Thomson:

    The condescension and cultural elitism in this thread is almost as bad as one of the ketchup posts at LGM. This is the kind of thing that fuels all that culture war crap.

    I agree. It’s ridiculous to trash the pizza. I’ve had Papa John’s, Dominoes and Pizza hut and it’s all a matter of taste. The owner of Papa John’s is a piece of garbage. I don’t buy pizzas from chains anymore and go to a local small pizzaria. I suspect the man is a Trump supporter because a number of small business owners are Trump supporters. A very popular bakery owner in our area, as well as a prominent health club owner loudly and proudly supported Trump. I don’t go to the bakery and was never a member of the Gym. I can’t even begin to talk about our local nurseries.
    Local small businesses treat their employees worse than bigger chains sometimes. It’s just a matter of degrees of obnoxiousness. You just have to pick your poison.

  148. 148.

    Immanentize

    @NotMax:
    Wow. A&P. We old! My Godfather was the head meat cutter at our local A&P when I was a kid. Eight O’clock coffee was a big thing in our house….

  149. 149.

    Bobby Thomson

    @satby:

    you do know that pizza sells for about the same market price in each locality, right?

    Chain vs. Chain, mostly true, except Domino’s and Little Caesar’s both tend to go after the bottom of the market. Chain vs. gourmet shit that allows you to feel morally superior, not so much.

  150. 150.

    Elizabelle

    If you wanted to drink “Democracy Wines” with your pizza, better get a move on.

    Interesting story from The Daily Progress in Charlottesville (from their Lynchburg, VA affiliate): Democracy Vineyards closing after Thanksgiving

    I’ve seen their wine in local grocery stores, and won’t buy it because I assumed the owners were right-wing conservatives with their own personal tax shelter. Red, white and blue labels. Funny how the right-wing appropriation of actually good words — Freedom, Liberty — will do that.

    Anyway, the name was part of their problems. (It seems their most insurmountable was location.) Anyway:

    Prokop and Turpin mentioned multiple reasons for deciding to close the vineyard, including location, branding, decisions they made regarding winemaking and promotional opportunities not being sufficient to sustain or grow the business.

    Democracy Vineyards is off U.S. 29 on Mountain Cove Road, but many of the county’s other wineries, breweries and cideries developed in the western side of the county along Route 151.

    “We’ve enjoyed being in business here, but we just never really got a local foothold. We were too far from Charlottesville, and the Charlottesville people were going over to 151. We just never really got enough traffic to sustain the operation,” Turpin said.

    …. Naming the business Democracy Vineyards also might have played a role into why the business didn’t do as well, they said in the newsletter. They chose the name because they’re “history buffs” and “thought it would be fun to decorate the tasting room with our collection of historic and international campaign stuff and play off that theme in our name, Democracy,” they said.

    “It didn’t occur to us that some folks would have a negative reaction to that name until we encountered that repeatedly at wine festivals and from comments by some customers. By then, it was too late and too costly to re-brand,” they said.

    They should have rebranded. Their customers were warning them.** Ah well. Sound like nice folks; they learned a lot, and it’s a cautionary tale.

    Here’s their website with link to the newsletter.

    ** or so I’d assume. The GOP is all about “democracy.” They just don’t want Democrats to actually, you know, vote.

  151. 151.

    Elizabelle

    @satby: Yeah, but don’t you look at a lot of stuff and say “I wonder if that’s actually true?”

    I see some FB friends putting up crap that’s obviously clickbait for the left and Democrats. The shrieking titles, the websites you’ve never heard of.

  152. 152.

    LaNonna

    Il Nonno is our pizzaiuolo, and we use our beehive wood-burning oven, a standard fixture on any farmhouse property. Many summer nights with friends, after 9 pm when the weather finally cools off, I make the bases, you choose your toppings. A properly heated stone oven means the pizza is ready in about 60 seconds! Molto buono.
    Have never had chain pizza, my dad always made ours from scratch too.

  153. 153.

    NotMax

    @Immanentize

    Eight O’Clock coffee still survives.

    In 2009, Consumer Reports rated Eight O’Clock Coffee’s 100 percent Colombian brew as the “best buy” for ground brews, beating well-known brands, such as Folgers, Maxwell House and Starbucks.

  155. 155.

    JPL

    @Ian G.: Local pizza places are making a comeback in the Atlanta burbs. A few even deliver. Antico is now challenged as the best local pizza. It’s been a long time since I’ve had pizza from a chain.

  157. 157.

    OzarkHillbilly

    A Prayer for Bowe Bergdahl
    Five decades later, a veteran who ventured off his base in Vietnam finds sympathy.

    The case of Sergeant Bergdahl led me to reflect how some of us, for reasons known only to God, are able to escape the worst consequences of our most foolish actions. Perhaps in some alternative universe, Bowe ends up with an Afghan wife in the mountains and I end up in a bamboo cage in the forest. It certainly could have happened in this universe. But instead, I ended up in the middle of a tribal soap opera, and Bowe ended up in a Taliban cage. And so I cannot approach his story without reflecting on my own. And as I advance into old age, the phrase that most resonates with me is: “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”

    We train young men to act with maximum violence, and then send them to wars in which they must act with maximum diplomacy. We would not think it strange if a platoon of diplomats were clueless about how to use fire and maneuver to take out a machine-gun nest, yet we are frustrated that a platoon of young soldiers cannot maneuver in the complex streams of tribal politics. And when bad things happen, we are quick to fix the blame on the lowest level.

    It is understandable that Bergdahl’s comrades, the ones who didn’t walk off their posts but were sent to find him, would be less than sympathetic to his plight. But it should be different with the officers charged with judging him. It is quite true that military discipline must be enforced. But the Army should not evade its own responsibility in accepting for service a man whose psychological difficulties were already known to them. Ah, but recruiting sergeants, like used-car salesmen, have strict quotas that must be met. And one can only wish that the Army was as scrupulous about the misdemeanors in their senior ranks as they are about the missteps of enlisted men.

    I pray for Bowe Bergdahl. I pray that the Army will decide that in this case, justice is best served by compassion. I pray they will realize that he has already paid for his crimes with five years in captivity among the Taliban, and with all the problems he has had since. But in truth, my prayer is really a selfish prayer. It is a prayer for myself, and a reflection of the mystery of why some, like me, skip through life barely conscious of their own crimes, while others must pay to the last penny. It is a prayer for all the young men and women sent into strange places that have confounded our wisest diplomats while armed only with weapons of maximum lethality. And it is a prayer for our country, which can neither extricate itself from these wars nor resolve them. It can only place its young men in situations where they are bound to fail, and fail despite their own best efforts and sacrifices.

  158. 158.

    different-church-lady

    @Bobby Thomson:

    Papa John’s is actually not bad – definitely better than Pizza Hut (greasy as hell), and Domino’s (which is almost always mediocre at best).

    They’re all wretched. This is not elitism, this is sheer gastrointestinal preservation.

  159. 159.

    different-church-lady

    @different-church-lady: Additionally: I can hardly wait for the overpriced “craft/artisan” pizza bubble to burst too. I’m all for a well-made pie, but for crissake, do we really need one on every corner?

  160. 160.

    satby

    @Elizabelle: I fact check everything or confirm sources, so I end up pissing off lots of people on FB. Just now wondering if “Woke Folks” is a troll site, since they’re all in on the rigged DNC stuff.And
    Fucking Wilmer, pestilence be upon him.

  165. 165.

    hueyplong

    Seems like Bobby Thomson hurts his case by going on to rate the Papa John’s pizza himself after castigating others for rating it differently. Love the 10.03.51-inspired screen name, though.

    I think the owner is a shit and won’t give him a nickel for that reason. Don’t much care whether his pizza sucks. The first time I saw him on TV, I thought, “this guy’s a dick. He’s trying to turn his pizza ads into a low-grade personality cult. Fuck him.” The ACA thing cinched it for me, but all in all I guess seeing him in whining mode beats seeing him in triumphalist mode.

    So we’ve got that going for us.

    And anything that has the NFL power structure turning on itself is a Schadenfreudelicious treat.

  166. 166.

    donnah

    We usually buy local pizza. The worst pizza I ever had from a restaurant was worse then a ten cent frozen pizza. I was visiting friends in a suburb of Omaha and the “pizza” consisted of, from I could tell, a flat saltine covered with a scant layer of ketchup and topped with little clumps of ground up hamburger. It had virtually no spices and was inedible. I politely declined a second piece.

  167. 167.

    satby

    And almost an hour later, my lonely little comment about being at the original tiny storefront Giordanos with its five tables is still in moderation. So never mind.

  168. 168.

    Elizabelle

    @different-church-lady: Yeah. One is a real life former neighbor, married to a former newspaper reporter/editor. Which makes me do a spit-take, because I wonder what he thinks about all the poorly sourced crap on her FB page. She is waving the flag for Democrats, yes, but with the most partisan stuff out there, from who knows where.

    She is such a prolific poster that I wonder if she lets these groups autopost to her page. I have “unfollowed” her from time to time, to clean up my own feed.

    And she might be especially loaded for bear because she was born in a red, red, red state. Some interesting discussions with the folks she went to high school with …

  170. 170.

    Another Scott

    @different-church-lady: And reduce portion sizes by 40%, also too.

    One thing that really struck us about our Switzerland trip a few years ago was how much smaller the portions were in restaurant meals there. It took a few days to get used to, but after that the portion sizes seemed natural and appropriate. It’s not “progress” for (seemingly) every American meal at a restaurant to be 1500 – 2000 calories. :-/

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  171. 171.

    zhena gogolia

    @different-church-lady:

    Well, nothing stacks up to Sally’s or Modern in New Haven, but we can’t all live in New Haven. They’re not artisanal, they’re just people who really know how to make pizza and have been doing it for many years.

  173. 173.

    Frankensteinbeck

    I will trot out this story whenever John Schnatter comes up: I worked in one of his stores at a time when he spent a million dollars renovating it to have beautiful green marble and copper surfacing. Also at that time, raises had stopped until the base pay hit minimum wage.

    (It is interesting to note that until the chain became a big success, Schnatter paid substantially over the industry standard.)

  174. 174.

    Gator90

    @Bobby Thomson: Yeah, angry white men in the Rust Belt would totally vote Dem if liberal blog commenters weren’t pizza snobs. I know, let’s all say we love pork rinds! Then the angry white men will know we’re not elitists, and they will love us.

  176. 176.

    Elizabelle

    @Another Scott: True. Portion size.

    Europeans do not look like us. They just don’t. The northern Europeans might be tall, or broad, but you don’t see the obesity.

  177. 177.

    NotMax

    @Another Scott

    On the other hand, a continuing trend is for hoity-toity upscale restaurants to lay out artistically constructed portions which would barely feed an anorexic field mouse.

  178. 178.

    Another Scott

    @satby: I went to Giordanos a couple of times when I was in Chicago in the early ’80s. We had to get the spinach pizza (IIRC), naturally. It was good, but I didn’t understand the fuss. We lived near 64th and Pulaski for a year or so and there was a pizza place nearby that we liked a lot. They used a noticeably sweet sauce on a non-deep-dish crust, but it wasn’t ketchup or something – it was a real sauce. I miss it. (sigh)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  179. 179.

    Mike J

    I’d never eat Papa John’s but fuck Naples and and everyone who claims there’s only one true pizza.

    There are many good pizzas in the world of many styles. Not everything has to be exactly one way. Why on earth would you deny yourself the rich variety of pizza styles around the US because you were fixated on some bizarre “realism” fetish? You say, “but that’s not “real” pizza!” Who gives a shit? Many things in the world are inauthentic and still good.

    I would venture to say there are more excellent inauthentic pizzas in the world than there are remotely passable authentic pizzas. Naples has more shit pizza than they have good pizza. Every place on earth has more shitty versions of any food you can name than they have good versions of it, and authenticity has nothing to do with quality.

  180. 180.

    Spanky

    @Elizabelle:

    Rotating tag contender!

    Absolutely! I can’t get too worked up about pizza. Can rarely eat it anymore w/o gastrointestinal repercussions, too.

  183. 183.

    satby

    @Another Scott: They reduced the spices a bit (especially the garlic) when they franchised, which was a shame. The spinach was my favorite. But then, it’s often the case that I don’t make my grandmother’s recipes quite as tasty as she did either. Anyone can follow a recipe, but there’s a talent to bring a skilled cook. Not all franchisees have it.

  184. 184.

    Bobby Thomson

    @hueyplong: to the contrary, I think people hurt the moral case that can be made against that dickhead by then saying they don’t like his pizza anyway. Like that catcher on the Yankees used to say, the food is lousy and the portions are too small. If you like the pizza and choose not to eat it because the owner is a dickhead, that carries a lot more weight than implying your politics is better because you eat better pizza. And if that’s not the point people are trying to make, why are they muddying things?

  186. 186.

    Kathleen

    @germy: Why am I not surprised. NPR management treated this problem like NPR treats its “news” – denial and lack of investigation. “Some say” NPR needs to come to terms with lots of issues.

  189. 189.

    hueyplong

    @Bobby Thomson: Not a bad point. I am willing to follow the directive not to let the quality or non-quality of his pizza distract from what a dick he is.

    But providing a forum for a flame war over something like take-out pizza is kind of the raison d’être of a balloonjuice-like website.

  192. 192.

    SFAW

    @magurakurin:

    New Haven, the other Ground Zero for pizza in the US.

    New London natives might disagree with that.

    I only say that because, a couple of towns over, there’s a pizza joint that has “New London Style Pizza!” in BIG LETTERS on their sign. As if it were actually a thing. And, yes, I’ve eaten there, and it’s not “a thing.” Well, it’s “a thing” in the same way that Billings, Montana “pastromi” is “a thing.” Or Natick [MA] “baigels” are “a thing.”

  193. 193.

    Elizabelle

    @Kathleen: Yes indeed.

    NPR deserves its problems. Some rot there; it’s leaking out into the programs for some time now. Some good stuff, but gets smeared by the wobbly or wrongheaded stuff.

  196. 196.

    Kathleen

    @Elizabelle: I haven’t listened to NPR for over a year because of its campaign coverage and skewed coverage of other issues over the years. There have been far too many “I almost drove my car off the road” moments for me.

  197. 197.

    Elizabelle

    @Kathleen: Beginning of the WaPost story:

    Trump breaches boundaries by saying DOJ should be ‘going after’ Democrats

    President Trump on Friday repeatedly called on the Department of Justice and FBI to investigate his Democratic political opponents, a breach of the traditional executive branch boundaries designed to prevent the criminal justice system from becoming politicized.

    Trump urged federal law enforcement to “do what is right and proper” by launching criminal probes of former presidential rival Hillary Clinton and her party — a surprising use of his bully pulpit considering he acknowledged a day earlier that presidents are not supposed to intervene in such decisions.

    In a flurry of accusatory morning tweets, Trump claimed there was mounting public pressure for new Clinton probes, including over her campaign’s joint fundraising agreement with the Democratic National Committee that effectively gave her some control over the party’s finances, strategy and staffing before the primaries began.

    Trump invoked Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who had said that she believed the Democratic primaries were rigged in Clinton’s favor based on details of the arrangement in a new book by former DNC interim chair Donna Brazile. Using his pejorative nickname for Warren, Trump tweeted: “Pocahontas just stated that the Democrats, lead [sic] by the legendary Crooked Hillary Clinton, rigged the Primaries! Lets [sic] go FBI & Justice Dept.”

    Trump also called for probing the deleted emails from Clinton’s private server while she was secretary of state, as well as the sale of a uranium company to Russia and the international business of Democratic super-lobbyist Tony Podesta, the brother of John D. Podesta, who served as Clinton’s campaign chairman.

    “People are angry,” Trump wrote in one tweet. “At some point the Justice Department, and the FBI, must do what is right and proper. The American public deserves it!”

    Trump amplified his message later Friday morning, as he spoke to reporters on the South Lawn of the White House before he departed for a 12-day trip to Asia.

    “I’m really not involved with the Justice Department,” Trump said. “I’d like to let it run itself. But honestly, they should be looking at the Democrats . . . And a lot of people are disappointed in the Justice Department, including me.”

    … Trump made his displeasure clear in a Thursday radio interview on “The Larry O’Connor Show.”

    “You know, the saddest thing is, because I am the president of the United States, I am not supposed to be involved with the Justice Department. I’m not supposed to be involved with the FBI,” Trump said. “I’m not supposed to be doing the kind of things I would love to be doing and I am very frustrated by it.”

    …. The White House offered no explanation for why Trump publicly pressured the Justice Department on Friday. A Justice Department spokesman also declined to comment.

    …. Friday’s public pressure marks the latest attempt by Trump to use his presidential megaphone to direct the criminal justice process.

    [paragraph on Trump yapping about the NYC truck attack]

    The president’s comments complicated the work of FBI agents and federal prosecutors as they were investigating the attack and preparing criminal charges.

    End of the story, and thanks Mukasey:

    Trump’s comment sparked a torrent of criticism, including from former attorney general Michael Mukasey, who worked under former Republican president George W. Bush and was a vocal Clinton critic.

    “It would be like a banana republic,” Mukasey, who could not be reached for comment Friday, said at the time. “Putting political opponents in jail for offenses committed in a political setting, even if they are criminal offenses — and they very well may be — is something that we don’t do here.”

    Fuck him. Why don’t we just execute Hillary Clinton? Fuck him, fuck him, fuck him. I speak of Mukasey. Already wish Trump ill.

    It’s so sad. I don’t think we can take another 2 years of this, let alone a full administration. He, and the right-wing that enabled him, is tearing this country apart, and destroying its institutions from within.

  198. 198.

    Elizabelle

    @Kathleen: Yeah. They are not destination listening to me. And don’t get me started on Mara Liaisson.

    I am glad to see NPR having lots of problems. Drag those “both siders” through the mud. They stood by while they had a sexual harrasser in their own midst? Whom they’d hired from the FTF Vichy NYTimes? Cry me a river.

  199. 199.

    Aleta

    Like other Palm Beach County employers who staff their clubs with foreign workers, President Donald Trump is boosting the number of employees he’s bringing from overseas this winter.

    Trump won permission to hire 70 maids, cooks and servers at the Mar-a-Lago Club for the 2017-18 tourist season, according to newly released data from the U.S. Labor Department. In 2016-17, Trump hired 64 foreign workers at the Palm Beach property.

    The trend is similar throughout Palm Beach County. Employers won permission to hire 2,159 workers for low-paying temporary gigs this winter, up from 1,844 in the 2016-17 tourist season, according to a Palm Beach Post analysis of federal data.

    A strong labor market seems to confirm employers’ claims that they can’t find the workers they need. Palm Beach County’s unemployment rate fell to just 3.6 percent in September, its lowest level in a decade.

    Trump isn’t alone in looking overseas for low-wage workers through the federal government’s H-2B visa program. Nationwide, thousands of employers won permission to hire nearly 134,000 workers for 2017-18, up from 119,000 for 2016-17.

    However, hiring workers from abroad seems to contradict Trump’s public pronouncements. The president has publicly shamed Carrier Corp., Ford Motor and others for moving manufacturing jobs to Mexico.

    -Palm Beach Post

  201. 201.

    Kay

    @Elizabelle:

    “Breaching boundaries” doesn’t matter if no one ever does anything. Now that “boundary” no longer exists.

    All of these people with their smug certainty that the institutions they rely upon will survive them- it was never a guarantee.

    It’ll be “interesting” with no rule of law- the NYtimes can do a 5000 word meditation on it after the first round of political prosecutions. God forbid anyone should drop their sophisticated cynicism and insistence this is “normal”.

  203. 203.

    J R in WV

    We have really good wood fired pizza houses here in Charleston WV, and other really good pizza places that use specialty hi-temp gas ovens. With creative toppings on good crunchy crust. We ate some really good pizza in small local restaurants in hilltop Italian villages, too, but no better than the quality pizza here.

    Interestingly, we went to western Mass to hear music at Tanglewood, and while there were a ton of resorts/hotels/lodges, there were not a lot of really excellent restaurants. We’ve found that outside downtown NYC New England’s food is bland to a fault. I haven’t been in downtown Boston, but Philadelphia and DC have good food, very good food.

    Once we found a brick oven pizza place near Tanglewood, the pizza was good enough – but they had no crushed red pepper flakes! Now maybe they had some on a back shelf somewhere but the waiter never heard of such a thing. I like it spicy. He found us some hot sauce – Texas Pete I think. Or Frank’s Louisiana, neither what you would call hot. A pizzaria w/o hot pepper flakes???

  204. 204.

    Kay

    Two PA ladies, Trump voters. Mother got ACA for a little over $100 a month. Then diagnosed with basal cell cancer. “Mother and daughter still support Trump and want the law repealed. They just hope it’s in place a few more years until mother is on Medicare.”
    Ugh

    One of my sisters heard this on NPR. Bad at voting, Trump voters. The ladies apparently didn’t notice the douchebag is gearing up to cut Medicare. Oh, well. No one told them they could keep the things they rely upon with no work and no effort – it can’t be that important to them or they would have spent 5 minutes researching Trump.

    The only part I’m sorry about is they will harm tens of millions of other people who had nothing to do with their dumb decisions.

  205. 205.

    Kathleen

    @Elizabelle: Can I sit next to you? I despise most of the crew but Mara Liesalot is at the top of the heap. The NYT connection adds a delightful dollop of schadenfreude. I’m glad I’m not the Lone Cackler on this. Of course I don’t find what he did to the women at either place humorous. But the institutional blowback is gold.

  206. 206.

    Elizabelle

    @Kay: I am heading to Germany later this month, and look forward to some good conversations on historical parallels.

  209. 209.

    Boatboy_srq

    It’s particularly rich that Schnatter is b!tching about “Obamacare”, which has fvck-all to do with employer-provided insurance, and is actually configured to make the private insurance market more affordable and appealing than the employer coverage.

  210. 210.

    Elizabelle

    @Emma: Yes. And we don’t walk as much as Europeans do (for the most part; certainly true in suburbs and rural areas). Plus: insufficient healthcare for many.

    But mostly portion sizes and the quality of what we eat. The Europeans are more strict on both standards.

  211. 211.

    Elizabelle

    The Paper of Record just caught up. With the WaPost.

    FTF NYTimes top story right now:

    Frustrated’ Trump Wishes for Power Over Justice System
    By PETER BAKER
    President Trump’s repeated assaults on the criminal justice system cross lines other presidents have largely observed since the Watergate era.
    His frustration has been fueled particularly by the inability to control the investigation into whether his campaign coordinated with Russia during last year’s election.

    Ya think? And they put Republican whisperer Peter Baker right on it.

  212. 212.

    tobie

    @Kay: I’m trying to wrap my head around the gall of these two Pennsylvania Trump supporters, who benefitted personally from Obamacare but don’t seem to give a rat’s ass about what happens to anyone else around them. The selfishness is just appalling. Usually a brush with cancer will make you sympathetic to others. This has made them antagonistic.

  214. 214.

    Steeplejack

    @magurakurin, @Elizabelle:

    I have the good fortune to live a couple of miles from a Vera member, Pupatella, recently chosen #2 in the D.C. area for traditional margherita pizza by the Washington Post. Every different pie I’ve had has been great. The only problem is that you have to eat it there; it does not travel well. Fortunately, I have Brick’s on Arlington Boulevard for takeout or delivery. (Thanks to Redshift for that recommendation.)

  215. 215.

    Ruckus

    @Amir Khalid:
    The hut is at least minimally acceptable as pizza. Very, Very Minimally. All the rest of the chains are well below that. Never eaten there but as far as I’ve seen/smelled PJ is one of the worst of the worst. On the order of McDs. And I’ve gotten food poisoning twice at McDs. Be grateful that there is no PJ anywhere near you.

  218. 218.

    lgerard

    Best description of Pappa John’s pizza from Deadspin

    It tastes like how a long-distance bus ride feels

    that’s some fine writing

  219. 219.

    Citizen Alan

    Some people might find this amusing. I’d always been generally positive on Peyton Manning mainly because he’s Archie Manning son. But during the last Super Bowl he won before retirement, I didn’t really care about either team for good or ill. At least not until the end when the Broncos won … and the very first thing Peyton Manning did, before congratulating any coaches or teammates, was to run over and hug John Schnatter who had been standing on the sidelines. That image alone instantly made me hate the Broncos so much that I was retroactively angry they had won.

  220. 220.

    Shana

    @cosima: I grew up in a community where the local pizza chain had canadian bacon and sauerkraut as their specialty. Every few years I think back on it fondly. Evidently the guy who started the chain was snowed in somewhere and those were the only things available to top a pizza with. It’s certainly not standard but actually tasty.

  221. 221.

    Ruckus

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    Wow.
    He expressed my thoughts, far, far better and more organized than I ever could. A far better writer? The effect of having been there perhaps?
    The military is, about killing, although I think it should be about a lot more. Anything that detracts from that mission is suspect, and it shouldn’t be. It isn’t the distractions that are the problem, it’s the main mission that is. I know that Adam has spent a good part of his career trying to enlighten the military that there is a lot more to the goal, but not everyone in the chain gets that. At the top or the bottom.

  223. 223.

    Ruckus

    @Another Scott:
    1500/2000 cal?
    My experience is that is about the size of the appetizer. And the meal is not good calories either.
    Most everything in the US is touted as being a good value for the money, rather that worth what you pay for it. That means that the money is far more important than what you are getting for it. You need food, here is some crap fast so you can get back to making money, even if we only pay you shit wages and no benefits. Better to think of it as “Get back to work, making us more money, oh and fuck you.”

  224. 224.

    different-church-lady

    @zhena gogolia:

    They’re not artisanal, they’re just people who really know how to make pizza and have been doing it for many years.

    In other words, my kind of people.

  227. 227.

    Ruckus

    @Boatboy_srq:
    Exactly no one ever said he is a smart pizza chain owner. Let’s tally it up.
    1. His pizza is shit.
    2. He is bad at understanding the costs to his company. How many stores does he own? Isn’t the whole point of the franchise system to take the day to day costs, payroll, insurance, rent, off his shoulders and onto that of the franchisee? And he controls the costs of the supplies that his franchisees pay for. If his product was better than shit he would have to be an idiot not to make money.
    3. He’s a douchebag republican scum.

  228. 228.

    Ruckus

    @Kay:
    The cost for Medicare part B is currently $110/month out of your SS payment or billed if you aren’t collecting SS yet.

  229. 229.

    Steeplejack

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    It also took the intervention of fellow comic Kevin Hart, who gave her $300, told her to get a hotel room and make a list of career goals, to make Haddish start to take her future seriously.

    This pretty much raises my opinion of Kevin Hart 100%. For some reason his “I’m short” shtick really grates on me. Yeah, he is short—5'4", supposedly—but too often he sounds (to me) like he is battling against some life-threatening disability instead of a no doubt nettling but relatively minor physical characteristic.*

    So Kudos to Hart. That is a mensch move to support a colleague in need.

    * Apologies in advance if this ignites a firestorm from the height-challenged.

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