Good Upsets! UConn (hard to be an underdog when you’re seeded #1)! Oregon (a genuine surprise)!
Showdowns tonight.
I’ll be watching Baylor/Oregon. Oregon is an unknown quantity and Baylor beat us by 11 on January 3rd. The story of that game is UConn couldn’t shoot worth a damn. They led by a basket at the tip and then it was pure Vettel- the view is always the same.
Same thrashing Baylor gave us, we gave Notre Dame and there’s no reason to expect any different tonight.
Be amazing if this motley crew was the next National Champion.
“Bubbly Creek” is an arm of the Chicago River, and forms the southern boundary of the yards: all the drainage of the square mile of packing houses empties into it, so that it is really a great open sewer a hundred or two feet wide. One long arm of it is blind, and the filth stays there forever and a day. The grease and chemicals that are poured into it undergo all sorts of strange transformations, which are the cause of its name; it is constantly in motion, as if huge fish were feeding in it, or great leviathans disporting themselves in its depths. Bubbles of carbonic acid gas will rise to the surface and burst, and make rings two or three feet wide. Here and there the grease and filth have caked solid, and the creek looks like a bed of lava; chickens walk about on it, feeding, and many times an unwary stranger has started to stroll across, and vanished temporarily. The packers used to leave the creek that way, till every now and then the surface would catch on fire and burn furiously, and the fire department would have to come and put it out. Once, however, an ingenious stranger came and started to gather this filth in scows, to make lard out of; then the packers took the cue, and got out an injunction to stop him, and afterward gathered it themselves. The banks of “Bubbly Creek” are plastered thick with hairs, and this also the packers gather and clean.
And there were things even stranger than this, according to the gossip of the men. The packers had secret mains, through which they stole billions of gallons of the city’s water. The newspapers had been full of this scandal–once there had even been an investigation, and an actual uncovering of the pipes; but nobody had been punished, and the thing went right on. And then there was the condemned meat industry, with its endless horrors. The people of Chicago saw the government inspectors in Packingtown, and they all took that to mean that they were protected from diseased meat; they did not understand that these hundred and sixty-three inspectors had been appointed at the request of the packers, and that they were paid by the United States government to certify that all the diseased meat was kept in the state. They had no authority beyond that; for the inspection of meat to be sold in the city and state the whole force in Packingtown consisted of three henchmen of the local political machine!
According to the Seattle Times, the FAA has made a habit of delegating parts of the regulation process to Boeing due to cuts in funding. For the 737 MAX, FAA managers reportedly pressured the agency’s safety engineers to hand over safety assessments to Boeing itself, and to green-light the company’s findings. Remarkably, the paper was working on the report prior to the crash of the Ethiopian Airlines flight, which killed all 157 occupants onboard: “Both Boeing and the FAA were informed of the specifics of this story and were asked for responses 11 days ago, before the second crash of a 737 MAX last Sunday.”
In 2015, Boeing reportedly pushed to expedite the 737 MAX’s approval in order to compete with the comparable Airbus A320neo, which had hit the market nine months ahead of Boeing’s newest 737 model. Several FAA employees told the Seattle Times that their managers asked them to hurry up the process, and hand over more work to Boeing. “There was constant pressure to reevaluate our initial decisions,” said one former FAA safety engineer. “Review was rushed to reach certain certification dates.”
Much of Boeing’s self-certification concerned the 737 MAX’s flight control program, the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS). The FAA reportedly allowed Boeing to handle the safety analysis on the MCAS, and the report the company handed over — which certified the plane as flight-ready — had several flaws.
According to the Seattle Times, the safety assessments “understated the power of the [MCAS],” which could move the plane’s tail “four times farther than was stated in the initial safety analysis.” The extra power was necessary because the MAX’s large engines were placed farther forward on the wing. However, the system “failed to account” for how it could “reset itself each time a pilot responded.” On the Lion Air flight, black-box data suggests that each time the captain pulled the plane’s nose up, the “MCAS kicked in … to push the nose down again,” causing the plane to crash into the Java Sea 12 minutes after takeoff.
To help get the 737 MAX into the air more quickly, Boeing reportedly decided that its pilots would not need a full round of training on the MCAS system. According to the Seattle Times, it wasn’t even mentioned in their flight manuals. Dennis Tajer, a spokesperson for the Allied Pilots Association at American Airlines, told the paper that his training on the 737 MAX was made up of a one-hour session on an iPad that did not have simulator training. By cutting down on pilot instruction, Boeing was able to cut significant costs for the airlines that bought the plane. The Boeing site promised prospective buyers that “as you build your 737 MAX fleet, millions of dollars will be saved because of its commonality” with the prior 737 generation.
This is merely illustrative. The real reason I avoid flying is that Airports are enormously inconvenient and have become almost impossible since the 9/11 Pretend Security Show kicked in. Also, about Computers of which I know a thing or two- it’s never a surprise when they screw up, the wonder is they work at all, it’s like a singing dog.
(T)he biggest death toll is likely to come from Trump’s agenda of deregulation — or maybe we should call it “deregulation,” because his administration is curiously selective about which industries it wants to leave alone.
Consider two recent events that help capture the deadly strangeness of what’s going on.
One is the administration’s plan for hog plants to take over much of the federal responsibility for food safety inspections. And why not? It’s not as if we’ve seen safety problems arise from self-regulation in, say, the aircraft industry, have we? Or as if we ever experience major outbreaks of food-borne illness? Or as if there was a reason the U.S. government stepped in to regulate meatpacking in the first place?
Now, you could see the Trump administration’s willingness to trust the meat industry to keep our meat safe as part of an overall attack on government regulation, a willingness to trust profit-making businesses to do the right thing and let the market rule. And there’s something to that, but it’s not the whole story, as illustrated by another event: Trump’s declaration the other day that wind turbines cause cancer.
Now, you could put this down to personal derangement: Trump has had an irrational hatred for wind power ever since he failed to prevent construction of a wind farm near his Scottish golf course. And Trump seems deranged and irrational on so many issues that one more bizarre claim hardly seems to matter.
But there’s more to this than just another Trumpism. After all, we normally think of Republicans in general, and Trump in particular, as people who minimize or deny the “negative externalities” imposed by some business activities — the uncompensated costs they impose on other people or businesses.
For example, the Trump administration wants to roll back rules that limit emissions of mercury from power plants. And in pursuit of that goal, it wants to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from taking account of many of the benefits from reduced mercury emissions, such as an associated reduction in nitrogen oxide.
But when it comes to renewable energy, Trump and company are suddenly very worried about supposed negative side effects, which generally exist only in their imagination. Last year the administration floated a proposal that would have forced the operators of electricity grids to subsidize coal and nuclear energy. The supposed rationale was that new sources were threatening to destabilize those grids — but the grid operators themselves denied that this was the case.
So it’s deregulation for some, but dire warnings about imaginary threats for others. What’s going on?
Part of the answer is, follow the money. Political contributions from the meat-processing industry overwhelmingly favor Republicans. Coal mining supports the G.O.P. almost exclusively. Alternative energy, on the other hand, generally favors Democrats.
There are probably other things, too. If you’re a party that wishes we could go back to the 1950s (but without the 91 percent top tax rate), you’re going to have a hard time accepting the reality that hippie-dippy, unmanly things like wind and solar power are becoming ever more cost-competitive.
Whatever the drivers of Trump policy, the fact, as I said, is that it will kill people. Wind turbines don’t cause cancer, but coal-burning power plants do — along with many other ailments. The Trump administration’s own estimates indicate that its relaxation of coal pollution rules will kill more than 1,000 Americans every year. If the administration gets to implement its full agenda — not just deregulation of many industries, but discrimination against industries it doesn’t like, such as renewable energy — the toll will be much higher.
So if you eat meat — or, for that matter, drink water or breathe air — there’s a real sense in which Donald Trump is trying to kill you. And even if he’s turned out of office next year, for many Americans it will be too late.
I think Herr Doktor Professor errs in implying this is a policy peculiar to Unindicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio. It has been a core part of the Republican Party Agenda for 40 years or more.
The economic fallacy is that external costs do not exist because the are borne by the general population/environment. The truth is that we subsidize all kinds of businesses in all kinds of ways and Corporations as profit making Institutions are creatures of State dispensation at their core. They are not people, they are fictions of concentrated money.
Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from> around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.
There’s a lot we don’t know about the legacy Donald Trump will leave behind. And it is, of course, hugely important what happens in the 2020 election. But one thing seems sure: Even if he’s a one-term president, Trump will have caused, directly or indirectly, the premature deaths of a large number of Americans.
Some of those deaths will come at the hands of right-wing, white nationalist extremists, who are a rapidly growing threat, partly because they feel empowered by a president who calls them “very fine people.”
Some will come from failures of governance, like the inadequate response to Hurricane Maria, which surely contributed to the high death toll in Puerto Rico. (Reminder: Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens.)
Some will come from the administration’s continuing efforts to sabotage Obamacare, which have failed to kill health reform but have stalled the decline in the number of uninsured, meaning that many people still aren’t getting the health care they need. Of course, if Trump gets his way and eliminates Obamacare altogether, things on this front will get much, much worse.
But the biggest death toll is likely to come from Trump’s agenda of deregulation — or maybe we should call it “deregulation,” because his administration is curiously selective about which industries it wants to leave alone.
Consider two recent events that help capture the deadly strangeness of what’s going on.
The logic seems to go that everyone is better off, even minorities, when white people are calling the shots.
Donald Trump’s lie-filled rage tweets about Puerto Rico this week over disaster aid continue a Trump pattern that mirrors a method that white supremacists have used throughout American history. Particularly present since Reconstruction, this method involves proclaiming that minorities lack the character and capacity to create effective government, and therefore minority-led jurisdictions are a hopeless drain on resources.
He tweeted that Puerto Rico’s government “can’t do anything right” and that the island’s politicians are “incompetent or corrupt” and only “complain and ask for more money,” which they spend “foolishly or corruptly, & only take from USA.” He specifically called the mayor of San Juan “crazed and incompetent.”
Point of fact: Puerto Rico is part of the United States. It is a territory. Its citizens are U.S. citizens. The structure of Trump’s comments leaves open the possibility that he doesn’t know that, or conversely, knows it but doesn’t fully accept it or care about it.
If this were a one-off spat with politicians opposed to his conduct, one might reasonably write Trump’s comments off as politics as usual. Instead, this questioning of the competence of black and brown leaders is not anomaly but motif.
Not new “News” and certainly front and center since Gina Haspel, who has been proven to have run a CIA Torture Site in Thailand, still managed to get approved as DCI.
Wait ek, isn’t she a “good guy” for standing up to Unindicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio?
Well, that’s a little like saying a Serial Killer was a nice quiet neighbor who loved animals, it’s kind of a non sequitur.
Cable: There’s a list we’re goin to work down, together. Number 1, I’m going to bend something that’s not meant to bend.
Weasel: I’m going to stop you right there because I’m not going to make it to 2. I won’t even make it to 1. I don’t do well with pain, you know. I stub my toe, I’m done for the day. I cried when they canceled Felicity I think. When I get scared, I get nervous erections. I have one right now. Don’t look. It will only make it worse. I don’t want you to hurt me and I’ll tell you anything, anything you want to know. Except for where they are.
[Ominous Glare from Cable]
Russell’s in a convoy headed southbound on Gerry Duggan Parkway. The monster’s with them. I wouldn’t mess with him.
And that’s why torture doesn’t work ladies and gentlemen, I’ll tell you anything I think you want to hear. I’m not proud like that and I will lie my ass off to avoid pain. I’m a completely unreliable.
Except in matters related to the torture which are corroborated by the meticulous notes and videos (at least there used to be, and I’m not convinced all the copies were destroyed; by the way- Haspel was complicit in that Obstruction of Justice too) we, just like the Nazis, kept.
As testimony, even in a Kangaroo Court like the Guantánamo Military Tribunals, it’s useless. Merely evidence of War Crimes by W and Cheney and every President of the United States since who are Accessories After the Fact because of their complicity in the coverup. We hung Japanese and Nazis on less evidence.
The United States has gone to great lengths to pretend this never happened, even letting some bloodthirsty murdering terrorists walk scott free so they don’t have to explain and excuse our heinous behavior in Court.
Seventeen-and-a-half years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, and a decade after President Barack Obama ordered the C.I.A. to dismantle any remnants of its global prison network, the military commission system is still wrestling with how to handle evidence of what the United States did to the Qaeda suspects it held at C.I.A. black sites. While the topic of torture can now be discussed in open court, there is still a dispute about how evidence of it can be gathered and used in the proceedings at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
By law, prosecutors cannot use evidence gained through torture — or any other involuntary statements — at the war court, where eight of Guantánamo’s 40 prisoners are accused of being complicit in terrorist attacks. Prosecutors have made clear that nothing the defendants said at the black sites will be used as evidence.
But defense lawyers have continued to press for details of what happened to their clients and to be able to use the information either to fight the charges or to win more lenient sentencing. And they have been aided by changing circumstances, not least the government’s declassification of some details of how the prisoners were interrogated by the C.I.A.
The issue has been most intensely debated in Guantánamo’s two death-penalty cases: the 9/11 terror attacks that killed 2,976 people and the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000 in which 17 American sailors died.
Defense lawyers in those cases have sought for years to get access to eyewitnesses and graphic details from the C.I.A. sites. The lawyers want to use descriptions of torture to ask the judge to exclude some of the defendant’s own statements after they left the black sites. The defense lawyers also have said they would cite torture to seek dismissal of the charges on grounds of outrageous government conduct, an extraordinary legal defense that is used in civilian courts but is seldom granted.
If the men are convicted, the lawyers want the details of how the defendants were treated to argue that the United States has lost the moral authority to execute men it has tortured.
The fight over access to evidence and witnesses from the black sites is one of the factors that has slowed progress in the cases. In the process, it has illustrated how fundamental legal issues about the rights of Guantánamo defendants remain unresolved — and how the passage of time is altering how some of them are handled.
The conflict is not limited to the death penalty cases, as Mr. Khan’s proceedings show.
The topic of his torture was strictly taboo on Feb. 29, 2012, when he made his first court appearance since disappearing from his native Pakistan in 2003 at age 23. At that first hearing, Mr. Khan, who lived in suburban Baltimore for seven years and graduated from high school there in 1999, admitted to volunteering to work for Al Qaeda after Sept. 11 and plotting with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the accused architect of the attacks.
But in the intervening years, the Obama administration declassified details of what Mr. Khan said the C.I.A. did to him. By his account, he was beaten, hung naked from a wooden beam for three days with no food, kept for months in darkness, and submerged, shackled and hooded, into a tub of ice and water.
Additional details of his treatment were revealed in the partly declassified introduction to a Senate study of the George W. Bush administration’s black site program. In his second year of C.I.A. detention, according to a cable cited in the study, the agency “infused” a purée of pasta, sauce, nuts, raisins and hummus up Mr. Khan’s rectum, because he went on a hunger strike.
The C.I.A. calls this “rectal feeding.” Defense lawyers call it rape.
Mr. Khan’s lawyers now want to call witnesses and gather evidence to show his sentencing jury what happened to him.
Yup, we ass rape people.
Explain the difference between us and the Nazis again.
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
Bomb strikes a West Berlin disco; Gen. Douglas MacArthur and billionaire Howard Hughes die; Educator Booker T. Washington born; Kareem Abdul-Jabbar sets an NBA record; Katie Couric to become CBS anchor.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
I shall allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him.
If nothing else, the Mueller Team has been notoriously tight lipped, speaking only through indictments and warrants. It was a great surprise to me and I’m sure many others that it ended so suddenly and inconclusively.
Or maybe not. What we hear now from “sources close to the investigation” is that A.G. Barr has seriously misrepresented the results of the inquiry.
Trump’s game, echoed by his propagandists, has been to use William P. Barr’s cursory letter to downplay in advance the findings from Robert S. Mueller III’s report — which is reportedly more than 300 pages — to the point where the political media treats this as a closed matter. Perversely, he has simultaneously weaponized the letter against the very act — full release of the report — that would let Americans judge for themselves whether that characterization is actually true.
In this, the Barr letter gave Trump what he’d hoped for. It set a baseline definition of exoneration (no criminal charges) against which any demands for a fuller accounting of the undermining of the integrity of the election that lifted him to the presidency, and the extensive corruption and misconduct by Trump himself that flowed from it, could be cast as a refusal to “move on.”
A good deal of media analysis claiming a “cloud has lifted” from Trump uncritically internalized this framing.
The new revelations in the New York Times and The Post about anger among Mueller investigators at Barr will make this spin — and that media framing — a lot harder to sustain.
The Times reports that some of Mueller’s investigators “have told associates” that Barr “failed to adequately portray the findings of their inquiry,” and that they were “more troubling” for Trump than Barr’s letter indicated. Those Mueller investigators believe Barr “should have included more of their material.” It’s not clear from the Times report how exactly these investigators thought Barr’s letter oversimplified their findings.
But The Post’s account adds substantially to this portion of the story. Barr’s letter stated that Mueller’s report details evidence on “both sides” of the question of whether Trump committed criminal obstruction of justice, and said Barr stepped in to conclude that Mueller’s findings were “not sufficient” to establish that criminality.
…
The Post also reports that Mueller’s team had prepared summaries of their conclusions. Critically, one official says this was done so these summaries could be shared with the public, as opposed to the public being informed by “the attorney general’s summary of their work, as turned out to be the case.”
All of that is not just a direct indictment of Barr’s process decision to summarize the findings as he did. In effect, it also says that his summary has, through omission, misled the public about the gravity of those findings.
…
But when it comes to Trump’s obstruction of justice, we already know Mueller found damning evidence, some of which weighed in the direction that it constituted a crime. Barr’s letter explicitly says this — Mueller laid out “evidence on both sides of the question” — but without disclosing what any of that evidence was.
This rendered it impossible to evaluate Barr’s decision that the obstruction wasn’t criminal. And this is no small matter: As Randall Eliason explains, we simply don’t know whether that decision was grounded in Barr’s previously declared view that presidential interference in investigations cannot be obstruction of justice by definition, or in a comprehensive evaluation of whether the evidence pointed to corrupt intent on Trump’s part.
If the new reporting is correct, we’ve now learned that the Mueller team wanted the initial public release to disclose more of that actual evidence on obstruction than Barr did — and that Barr’s characterization of it potentially distorted the total picture created by that evidence.
Which points to another big question raised by the new revelations: whether the Mueller team wanted Barr to declare a finding on obstruction at all, or whether Mueller merely wanted the question placed before Congress, with no Justice Department conclusion preshaping perceptions.
Congress’ role in this matter is different from that of the Justice Department. As House Judiciary Committee chairman Jerrold Nadler notes, the special counsel’s role has been to “investigate allegedly criminal conduct” stemming from Russia-Trump campaign links, while Congress’ role “is to hold the president accountable any time he undermines the rule of law.”
Democrats are demanding the full report — not a redacted one, as Barr has promised — to carry out that latter mission, which entails examining the full factual record, regardless of whether criminality occurred. It bears repeating that even if Mueller didn’t find enough evidence to bring criminal charges for conspiracy with Russia, the report might still contain extensive evidence — beyond what we already know — of damning misconduct and wrongdoing on that front.
Trump’s efforts to derail the investigation, then, constituted an effort to prevent a full accounting of all of that misconduct and wrongdoing — as well as an accounting of the full extent of Russian sabotage of the 2016 election, regardless of whether there was conspiracy, which might call into question the integrity of his election victory. The full report would give us that accounting — and a full accounting of Trump’s obstructive efforts to prevent all of that from ever coming to light.
That basic public accountability — which Congress now has an institution obligation to pursue — is what Trump is trying to prevent from happening, now that he’s backpedaling furiously on his previous claim that he wants the full report released.
The Barr summary, whether intended or not, has become Trump’s No. 1 weapon in service of that goal. What remains to be seen is how unfaithful that summary was to the full factual picture in creating the impression that this matter is a largely a settled one. The new revelations should make it much harder to keep that full factual picture concealed — and much harder to sustain that impression, as well.
Some of Robert S. Mueller III’s investigators have told associates that Attorney General William P. Barr failed to adequately portray the findings of their inquiry and that they were more troubling for President Trump than Mr. Barr indicated, according to government officials and others familiar with their simmering frustrations.
At stake in the dispute — the first evidence of tension between Mr. Barr and the special counsel’s office — is who shapes the public’s initial understanding of one of the most consequential government investigations in American history. Some members of Mr. Mueller’s team are concerned that, because Mr. Barr created the first narrative of the special counsel’s findings, Americans’ views will have hardened before the investigation’s conclusions become public.
Mr. Barr has said he will move quickly to release the nearly 400-page report but needs time to scrub out confidential information. The special counsel’s investigators had already written multiple summaries of the report, and some team members believe that Mr. Barr should have included more of their material in the four-page letter he wrote on March 24 laying out their main conclusions, according to government officials familiar with the investigation. Mr. Barr only briefly cited the special counsel’s work in his letter.
Otherwise a ton of crap about how Barr was justified. So much for the toadies and suck ups at the Gray Lady.
Members of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s team have told associates they are frustrated with the limited information Attorney General William P. Barr has provided about their nearly two-year investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether President Trump sought to obstruct justice, according to people familiar with the matter.
The displeasure among some who worked on the closely held inquiry has quietly begun to surface in the days since Barr released a four-page letter to Congress on March 24 describing what he said were the principal conclusions of Mueller’s still-confidential, 400-page report.
In his letter, Barr said that the special counsel did not establish a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia. And he said that Mueller did not reach a conclusion “one way or the other” as to whether Trump’s conduct in office constituted obstruction of justice.
Absent that, Barr told lawmakers that he concluded the evidence was not sufficient to prove that the president obstructed justice.
But members of Mueller’s team have complained to close associates that the evidence they gathered on obstruction was alarming and significant.
“It was much more acute than Barr suggested,” said one person, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the subject’s sensitivity.
…
Some members of the office were particularly disappointed that Barr did not release summary information the special counsel team had prepared, according to two people familiar with their reactions.
“There was immediate displeasure from the team when they saw how the attorney general had characterized their work instead,” according to one U.S. official briefed on the matter.
Summaries were prepared for different sections of the report, with a view that they could made public, the official said.
The report was prepared “so that the front matter from each section could have been released immediately — or very quickly,” the official said. “It was done in a way that minimum redactions, if any, would have been necessary, and the work would have spoken for itself.”
Mueller’s team assumed the information was going to be made available to the public, the official said, “and so they prepared their summaries to be shared in their own words — and not in the attorney general’s summary of their work, as turned out to be the case.”
If you’ve ever seen The Post (and you should, it has Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks) it’s kind of funny to remark on the similarity to the rivalry portrayed in the film.
They don’t smoke as much any more, or at least not cigarettes.
So TMC and I are on the other side of the border in Niagara Falls where we stopped so she could mess with me by dangling over precipices which drives me nuts.
No, it was nothing like that. We were on our way home from a funeral and while our original intention was to shepherd Richard and Emily there, back, and around they were too sick to travel so we pressed on alone.
I have other stories but this will do. After scaring the crap out of me we went up the Midway (oh, if you’ve been, you know- could pay a buck to see a dissected fetus in the Museum of Life first time I was there) and found an Outback for dinner.
Now, everything in Canada is just… better. Except for Tim Hortons (to be fair they have a pretty good bacon croissantwich). You have to factor that in. Outback had a special on Sirloin but it’s not a cut I usually go for as I am frequently disappointed.
But we did 2 and I must say it was great. Very tender and flavorful.
I don’t normally go for Beef, I’m more a seafood guy, but I’m not a vegetarian though I can make a complete meal without meat and not miss it at all.
Aglio e Olio
At it’s core you only need 4 ingredients and water-
The Pasta
Pasta
This sauce is normally used with a noodle kind of thing, but that’s no reason you couldn’t pick any Pasta you happen to have on hand. I think Ravioli, Large Ziti or Shells, Lasagna, things like that, and really small things like Orzo could be problematic, but stuff like Tortolini would be fine.
Salt
The water is to cook the Pasta, the Salt is to flavor it. How salty should it be? “As Salty as the Sea.” But seriously it’s nearly impossible to over salt and the most frequent mistakes are not using a big enough pot or enough water or not bringing it to a full rolling boil before tossing the salt and again before you drop the Pasta (you can turn down the heat after you get there). Or not saving some Pasta Water as a general rule to keep the Pasta loose so you can sauce it, though that’s not usually a problem with this recipe because Olio.
Also, don’t overcook. Al Dente is Al Dente and if it’s mushy out of the pot it will be extra mushy on the plate as it continues to cook. If you’re not tasting/testing at 6 minutes (sooner for amounts less than a pound) you’re missing the window.
The Sauce
Which is why I like to have my sauce ready. Timing is a problem and were I really good I’d be able to have them both ready at exactly the critical moment.
I am not that good.
Olive Oil
Extra Extra Virgin, you’re not going to be cooking any hotter than you would with butter. I have an electric range. I run it at 40%.
The Olive Oil is to cook the Garlic in, then coat and transport the taste to the Pasta. You need enough for that (probably less than you think) but you don’t have to worry about being a little generous. You’re not going to be serving this swimming in sauce and the excess will mostly just drip off.
Garlic
The best Garlic you can lay your hands on.
Organic is pretty much a scam garbage label so don’t pay more. Go to the loosey bin in your store and pick ones that look fresh at the root end (it’s a relative thing) and all the bulbs are firm to the touch. In a pinch jarred minced Garlic or even Garlic powder will do but if a Head of Garlic costs you more than a $1 you’re being ripped off.
How much to use? If all you want is flavor and aroma you press it or mash and mince it (press myself, my knife skills aren’t all that great) and you’ll need about 3 – 5 cloves. If, like me, you enjoy a nice pan roasted Garlic, Whole Clove, Chunked, or Sliced, you’ll need 3 – 5 Heads or more depending on the amount of Pasta.
Don’t freak out. It doesn’t make it any more Garlicky. The longer you cook Garlic the less you taste it. You want Garlic? Try my 5 Lemon 5 Garlic Hummus or my Kalamata Tapenade.
They use raw Garlic. In this preparation Aromatic is done about the moment it hits the pan (no, really, it cooks that fast), for chunkier stuff you’ll want to get a little carmelization happening.
Assuming you’ll be early (overdone Pasta is impossible to fix) park it over the lowest low you can muster to keep it warm and liquidy.
Assembly
Toss the Pasta in the sauce allowing the extra to drain off when you transfer the Pasta to the Serving Bowl.
Umm… that’s it. Stupid simple eh?
Garnishes
Ok, some of these are pretty desirable but they are optional.
Cracked Black Pepper
Ok, practically a necessity but not quite.
Grated, or better, Shaved Parmesan
Most people use too much. If you are adding it you can toss with the Pasta in the Serving Bowl or you can serve individually so any guest who does not like Parmesan can skip it (my niece is fairly convinced she has a lactose intolerance).
Parsley
Why? For color? It doesn’t taste like anything but it’s in every classic recipe I looked at.
Of course there are a Billion variations. Make it your own.
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
Martin Luther King Jr. is assasinated; President William Henry Harrison dies; Hank Aaron hits 714th career home run; Maya Angelou is born.
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Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
There are many who lust for the simple answers of doctrine or decree. They are on the left and right. They are not confined to a single part of the society. They are terrorists of the mind.
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