Real pizza is Neapolitan, having been invented and perfected in Naples in the 19thcentury and named after the queen of recently-unified Italy (the Margherita). No wonder there is an organization—the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana (the True Neapolitan Pizza Association)–devoted to its propagation and protection.
The association celebrates 35 years of activity this year, and is preparing for a global pizza Olympics.
It doesn’t matter what the problem is, the solution is always for us to give the government more money and power, while we eat less meat.
THE 21ST CENTURY IS NOT TURNING OUT AS I’D HOPED: Doctors warn against putting parsley into your vagina to induce periods. “Doctors have criticised Marie Claire magazine for suggesting ‘parsley vaginal inserts’ as a method of inducing periods.” I mean, that’s the women’s-magazine version of Buzzfeed journalism.
Anthony Cormier is one of the two investigative reporter at BuzzfeedNews who co-authored the bombshell report published Thursday night — a report which claimed President Donald Trump directed his former lawyer Michael Cohen to lie during Congressional testimony over discussions between the Trump Organization and Russian authorities about a Trump Tower Moscow project.
Cormier appeared on CNN’s New Day and revealed that he had not seen the evidence underlying his report.
One of the authors, Jason Leopold, has quite the history when it comes to bad reporting. Most folks know of his claim that multiple sources told him Karl Rove was going to be indicted in 2006 and how it turned out to be utterly false.
When Leopold’s story was first called into question a few weeks ago, Salon’s Tim Grieve reminded readers of Leopold’s checkered history with the publication. Salon removed Leopold’s August 29, 2002 story about Enron from its site after it was discovered that he plagiarized parts from the Financial Times and was unable to provide a copy of an email that was critical to the piece. Leopold’s response? A hysterical rant (linked above) which claimed that Salon’s version of events was “nothing but lies,” and that “At this point, I wonder why Salon would go to great lengths to further twist the knife into my back. I suppose the New York Times will now release their version of the events. I can see the headline now ‘Jason Leopold Must Die.’”
That is pretty big. But, like always in cases like this, there is more.
Leopold, Cormier, and BuzzFeed’s editors are obviously keenly aware of the magnitude of the charge here. They’re accusing a sitting president of a crime that makes his removal from office conceivable, even with a Republican majority in the Senate. They also must be aware that we’ll know whether they were right or wrong sooner rather than later. This charge won’t hang out there forever unresolved, like Michael Cohen’s alleged trip to Prague per the Steele dossier. Mueller’s working on his report, it may be ready as soon as next month, and this claim — if true — will be a key part of it. If the report emerges and there’s nothing in there about suborning perjury, BuzzFeed’s reputation will never recover. This isn’t a case like the dossier where they’re publishing someone else’s work product with no claims as to its veracity. They’re putting their own names to it. Every political scoop they publish for the next 20 years will be challenged by citing to the Leopold/Cormier fiasco. It’s basically professional suicide unless they really do have good reason to be confident in the reporting.
In addition to his Freudian slip about BuzzFeed itself, that’s a pretty nasty (albeit likely unintentional) subtweet from Smith aimed at former BuzzFeed staffer Andrew Kaczynski, who has since taken his habit of “resurfacing” old news to Time-Warner-CNN-HBO.
Plus, from the comments: “This ‘story’ was the top of hourly radio news all damn day today. And now we hear it’s crap, straight from the godhead, Mueller. The anti-Trumpers apparently just ate a dick the size of Oumuamua. Again.”
In two successive days, Trump’s owned Pelosi and the press, without even breaking a sweat. Welcome to 2019!
“Turnover in the restaurant industry, especially the back of the house with grill and fryer jobs, is incredibly high,” said David Zito, chief executive of Miso Robotics. Miso is known for its burger-cooking robot called Flippy. But it also makes robots for operating fryers for french fries, chicken tenders and other food.
“We don’t believe this is about job replacement,” he said. “We are developing solutions that are productivity enhancers.”
Zito may not believe in “job replacement,” but the people who are endlessly fighting to jack up the minimum wage forget that the true minimum wage is always zero.
Expressing disbelief at her romantic partner’s dramatic behavioral shift, local woman Emily Kittleson, 30, told reporters Friday that she had not expected her boyfriend’s attempts to recognize and curtail toxic masculinity would eventually turn him into a “weepy little pansy.” “Christ, I know the dope is trying to be conscious of the effects of his words and actions and to be more open and honest with his emotions, but there’s got to be a limit,” said Kittleson of her boyfriend Shane Magnusen, 31, whose efforts to reject toxic masculinity have begun to irritate her as she claims he has evolved into “a fragile fucking flower about everything” in recent weeks.
If feminists don’t want people to think they’re totalitarians, they’re doing a crappy job of it. Stacey Solie at the Daily Beast went to Louis’ show in San Jose Wednesday night, and she did what any good journalist would do: She shamed the people in line to see him.
The left turned into the New Puritans so slowly, I hardly even noticed. But fortunately, Jim did, so read the whole thing.
HORRORS OF THE TRUMP ECONOMY: Skills Gap Gives Workers Unprecedented Power, Perks. “A survey from CareerBuilder reports 25 percent of employers in manufacturing have lost revenue due to unfilled vacancies, and many are offering extended overtime pay to existing workers as they struggle to keep production lines running. Difficult-to-fill production jobs now command a wage premium, partially in an attempt to lure job seekers who might prefer other fields. Industrial engineers and other tech-savvy factory jobs offer four or five times the salary of a floor assembly role. Another key benefit workers have been able to negotiate as their value rises is on-site and in-role training. Employers who could previously depend on trained and certified workers to arrive at interviews are increasingly willing to offer training and certification to less-qualified but more readily available entry-level workers. Training is often paid and may reduce onboarding time by training participants for specific roles and proprietary systems.”
KAMALA HARRIS NOT LEFTY ENOUGH FOR THE LEFT?: An opinion piece in the New York Times complains that “Kamala Harris Was Not a ‘Progressive Prosecutor.’” The piece contains a litany of ways she fails to measure up to the author’s standard of Progressivism. Among the complaints is this one:
Ms. Harris also championed state legislation under which parents whose children were found to be habitually truant in elementary school could be prosecuted, despite concerns that it would disproportionately affect low-income people of color.
For me, that would be a reason to support Harris (though I have a feeling I am not the NYT’s target audience for this one). The attack on her is correct that this legislation would disproportionately affect low-income parents as well as African American and to a much lesser extent Latino parents. As I have written elsewhere about Harris’ empirical findings:
Among California students in kindergarten through 5th grade, the African-American rate of chronic truancy (i.e. 18 or more unexcused absences) is approximately five times the rate of white students. For example, former California Attorney General Kamala Harris (who is not among those who ignore the truancy issue) reports that, among kindergarteners, the rates are 7.9% (African American), 2.1% (Latino), 1.4% (white), and 1.1% (Asian). In the 5th grade the rates are 4.9% (African American), 1% (Hispanic), 1% (white), and 0.3% (Asian).
Harris rightly understood that making progress on closing the achievement gap requires making progress on closing the truancy gap. Good for Harris. If these “More Progressive Than Thou” types give a damn about actual low-income and minority students, they might want to cut her some slack on this.
FAST FROZEN ROPE: U.S. Army soldiers in Alaska practice rapid descent from a Blackhawk using the Army’s Fast Rope Insertion/Extraction System. Yes, FRIES works in the cold.
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